Linux.Conf.Au now in wikipedia

Linux.Conf.Au now has a Wikipedia entry.

Please go and add more content.

tech/linux-australia | 31 Aug 2004 | #

Ghosts completes

More meetings, today we covered the budget which is the most important check-off item for Linux Australia. Another venue tour, this time without people. Everyone wearing out from such a hectuc weekend. Good result, but a little dragged out. Rusty did well in supplying 16 coffees late in the day.

Ghosts wrapped up, now time for a f2f Linux Australia meeting at the pub late in the day. Met for an hour or so over a very belated lunch. Saw the latest revisions to the new website, to be rolled out real soon now. Pia and Stewart have done a good job to continue where I left off - thee's some things I don't like, but fortunately for me they are willing to take comments :-)

Told everyone about the Chicago trip, and clarified for blog-readers that it's only for 6 months, not forever.

Completed the day with some really nice gelato, courtesy of Rusty. Rusty continued his great hospitality by taking me to the airport, and chatting in the Qantas club lounge.

Photos from the weekend will appear here soon.

Now resuming regular programming...

tech/linux-australia/lca2005 | 30 Aug 2004 | #

Replacing Windws apps with Linux apps

Looking for an equivalent Linux application to replace the one you have on Windows?

tech/advocacy | 29 Aug 2004 | #

Saturday Night

Up early with local Canberra wildlife chirping away outside the window. Different, nice, but too early.

Off to ANU for the start of the official Ghosts meeting. Lots of chatter and catchup while the inevitable network problems are sorted out. At least this year we didn't have to rely on AJ to bridge wired-to-wireless networking. Stewart showed us why he's not a morning person. We then did the standard Linux Australia thing and got off topic almost straight away but covering issues that needed to be talked about :-)

Did the venue tour of ANU - the site of LCA2005. Nice venue, lots of room, good level of excitment amongst the organising team - which is a good team of mixed skill individuals. They'll do a great job. Took lots of photos.

Lunch at the Purple Pickle was hearty, good discussion with Rusty, AJ, Agent Smith and mbp on IP issues and what we can do about it to make things fair for consumers, IT developers, artists and content owners alike (rather than the current imbalance towards content owners).

Afternoon dragged a bit, but we gained some insights into the exciting things that the Canberra LCA team will spring on the unsuspecting Australian OSS community - I've been sworn to secrecy, so don't even ask, just be here :-)

Evening off to a popular Canberran casual dining place, the Woodstock Steak and Pizza. Yes, it's named after that event, and yes there are gaudy 70's pictures on the walls.

Overall positive and producive day, still more to do tomorrow. Going to be yet another great conf! Can't wait!

tech/linux-australia/lca2005 | 28 Aug 2004 | #

Cool Stuff

Today's list of cool stuff from Planet GNOME is:

• Larry Ewing and F-Spot Hacking.
• Robert Love on GNOME netapplet entering CVS.
• Davyd Madeley on his jbuild tray icon.
• John Palmieri on his Application wheel of fortune.

What is it? Is there something in the water today that's making all this cool stuff appear?

tech/GNOME | 27 Aug 2004 | #

Where is the focus?

Joel made some comments on competing forces within Microsoft and lots of people commented, including me.

Well it seems that some people within The Great Satan have taken it to heart. What did catch my attention was this:

The Microsoft culture is about creating the newest, latest greatest thing that 'changes the world' not improving what is already out there and working for customers.

Wow.

Here's an important guy working in the trenches, creating APIs for millions of developers, and he admits they don't work for customers and they have a culture that's about doing cool stuff. Maybe they aren't that far from the OSS community after all :-)

Of course, Joel didn't miss that point either, and concluded:

As a developer, I would much prefer if the Raymond Chen camp won -- it sure makes my life easier -- but as a competitor to Microsoft, I have to assume that the stupider Microsoft is, the better.

...to which I add my thoughts. It's a balance - cool stuff and customer satisfaction. Cool stuff is strategic, long term, things you have to invest in or else you will lose in the end. Microsoft have to do this, because with 85% desktop market share, there's only one place to go - down, if they don't. There will always be some nimble startup, some guy in his garage, who will come up with something cool and eat your lunch.

On the other hand, customer satisfaction is tactical, short term, easily lost, and something that is driving people to Nirvana every day. The fact that security isn't getting better out of the box under Windows, that you still need to install n different products on top of Windows to get a usable and secure experience, and that every software upgrade needs a subsequent hardware upgrade due to the bloat creep, shows that they don't get the customer side of things either.

So, it's a balance. Does OSS do it better?

In some ways, yes. OpenOffice is seeing massive uptake everywhere I look - on the OSS desktop and on Windows. Similarly the Gimp - on OSS and Windows! Seeing how easy it is to manage my Debian boxes remotely puts Windows to shame with that SMS mess. But hearing horror stories of getting Gallery running with Apache, PHP and MySQL on Windows, shows me we still have a long way to go in some areas. OSS has the moral upper hand advantage too.

OSS needs to focus on delivering for customer, while continuing the astounding pace of innovation. GNOME's doing just that, other OSS projects can too.

tech/code | 27 Aug 2004 | #

Ghosts

Off to Canberra tonight for the Ghosts of Conference Past meeting with sjh and co to talk about preparations for Linux.Conf.Au 2005.

Also a face-to-face meeting with the rest of the Linux Australia committee.

tech/linux-australia/lca2005 | 27 Aug 2004 | #

Friday night ghosts

So Ghosts has started, for me this is the first time as the interrogator, rather than the interrogatee :)

First thing is that the flight from Adelaide to Canberra had one of the roughest landings ever. There were squeels from other passengers. On the flight started reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Not impressed so far, book review to come once I finish it. The other book I've brought with me to read is Mono: A Developer's Notebook by Edd Dumbill and Niel Bornstein.

Alli was on the same flight, so I hitched a ride with Alli and Rusty back to their place to see the wonderful jigsaw and to eat sugary nuts. Then off to All Bar None to catch up with Anand, AJ (briefly), Martin, Stephane, John (last two met for the first time) and of course the Man-Who-Has-Lost-His-Life-For-Another-7-Months.

Back to sjh's house, talked LCA some more, chewed email and blogged. Time for sleep. Big day tomorrow.

tech/linux-australia/lca2005 | 27 Aug 2004 | #

Getting noticed

Via Garrett's Blog I read about the Advice for Open Source Job Seekers talk at OSCON 2004. I was almost going to get to go on the company, but scheduling for the Chicago trip changed all that at the 11th hour :-(

Finding that also reminded me to write down the reference to mbp's advogato article on How to get a conference abstract accepted.

Both of these articles are worth a read if you want to get in on a good thing - submitting a paper to Linux.Conf.Au 2005 in Canberra.

tech/misc | 26 Aug 2004 | #

Peer to Peer

Kim Weatherall has a good summary of the legality in the USA of peer-to-peer file sharing networks, and the legal history which got us to where we are.

But why isn't peer-to-peer mainstream yet?

I mean, there's those people who trade in music and video and other copyrighted material today - but pimply teenage boys are hardly representative of society. Why aren't Linux distributors and big (proprietry) software companies using p2p to distribute their software? Why isn't Hollywood delivering DVD movie images to your home? Why isn't the music industry selling CDs the same way?

It just shows that even if something is legal, it doesn't necessary mean it will be adopted by corporations. There is a huge market here, and ad hoc polling says that consumers want this technology implmented by companies they can trust. But copyright holders don't want to go down that path because they fear the lack of central control.

Take a risk guys! - I remember reading about the guy who came up the DVD concept and his quest to get Hollywood to adopt his idea for high-quality movie distribution to people in their homes. Originally it didn't sell, Hollywood was scared to release high-quality format media to end-users, but it sure has paid off since! DVDs are now a huge money earner and the staple income source for movie makers.

Take a risk on peer-to-peer - sure, address the presevation of copyright problem - but let the distribution mechanism go free and watch the profits roll in!.

I'd certainly buy and download a music from the music industry if I was allowed to burn it to CD, put it on an MP3 portable music player as well as upload it to my car stereo. Bring on fair use (time and format shifting) legislation in Australia.

tech/IP | 26 Aug 2004 | #

FreeDNS

Signed up with FreeDNS since I can't get ADSL at home since Telstra cost-cut on infrastructure, and the only broadband I can get is Bigpond Cable, where I can't get a static IP address.

My domain name registrar had a web cloaking option, but it didn't work well with gallery and the web posting mechanism of PyBlosxom, hence the search for something better.

Very happy with FreeDNS so far - amazing how a free service run by one guy can provide better service than Australia's national telecommunications carrier that just reported a $AUD4,000,000,000 profit - it's highest ever :-(

meta | 24 Aug 2004 | #

GNOME Tutorials

I like GNOME.

I like the technology, I like the community, I like the fun.

Not only does GNOME now have some great applications, it's now producing some good developer documentation, and has done so for some time.

tech/GNOME | 24 Aug 2004 | #

My TiVo

I was able to get a TiVo Series 1 from eBay for only $AUD100 while in Chicago recently. Amazing that my seller would ship to an Amerisuite hotel in Illinois, but not to my home in Australia! Also picked up ethernet for it, which cost me more than the TiVo itself...

Something to play with in my spare time :-P

tech/projects | 24 Aug 2004 | #

AUSFTA Wrap-up

So the Australian parliament has ratified the treaty between the USA and Australia on Free Trade. The only improvements forced through by Labor were to help the PBS - the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Unfortanately we've signed up to chapter 17 - Intellectual Property as is, despite lots of evidence that there's no benefit to Australia. We gain obligations to follow the US-style DMCA, but have no agenda to implement "Fair Use" in Australian Law. It's also debatable when software patentability has been widened by AUSFTA obligations, that's unclear right now without seeing any proposed new legislation. I need to link to Rusty's Tragedy of RProxy article here - a good reason to say that software patents aren't in Australia's best interests.

All this makes me a little sad - the looming Australian Federal election has muzzled debate on the AUSFTA, and what benefit or loss there will be to Australia. We're just running head-strong in to this without examining the outcomes - and we're signing up for life - hamstringing Australian parliaments in the future to correct any mistakes.

The only good thing that came out is that our community has started to speak up - people like Rusty, AJ, Brendan Scott, Kim Weatherall, OSIA, CyberSource, Linux Australia, and many others, have all provided input into the political process. We're going to have to start doing more of this, to prevent more rights being taken away from consumers and software developers.

tech/IP | 23 Aug 2004 | #

Chicago Take 2

So it looks like I'm going back to Chicago again, but this time I get to take the family.

Passports for the family, check.
Visas, in progress.
Organising Life, not done.

travel/chicago | 19 Aug 2004 | #

Interview Tips

Joel on Software wrote some time ago on tips for interviews. If you ever interview where I'm on the panel, make sure you read that first!

Why am I blogging this? As I'm about to head off to Chicago I know that during the first few weeks I will be under intense scrutiny. Is this guy worth the cost of bringing him out here?

It's like starting a new job, the same sorts of enthusiasms required then will be required when I start the secondment. The first few weeks set the tone for the whole secondment (or new job). It's hard to overcome first impressions, so it's important to get them right first time.

tech/misc | 19 Aug 2004 | #

Secondary storage

mbp makes some good observations about how search engines are the new interface to the web, and that any particular web site isn't read deeply but rather the whole web is read broadly. I like Martin's thought processes.

He does ask this question though:

I ask: why are you publishing anything at all? Because you want people to have the information, and/or to have the information from you.

I'd answer that by saying that the reason I publish is for my own selfish benefit. My head is small, and fills up too quickly. My website is secondary storage for my brain. If others benefit, great. If via my website I can find the exact reference to that very interesting thing that I can't find via google, then my website has achieved its purpose.

tech/blog | 18 Aug 2004 | #

Trusted Code

To get .Net ISL running on a Windows computer where the filesystem where the bytecode lives is not local you need to make that filesystem trusted.

Why? Well, in .Net the local computer is considered safe and tamper free (even if it is running Windows :-) but remote filesystems, like ones residing on a Linux box mounted over NFS or via Samba, aren't. Neither are remote Windows shares btw.

So how do you get these remote filesystems trusted?

You need to create the Dilbert Zone.

Bring up the .Net Framework 1.1 Configuration tool (see Program Files\Settings\Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Microsoft .Net Framework 1.1 Configuration) and navigate to Runtime Security Policy\Machine\Code Groups\All_Code\LocalIntranet_Zone and select "Add a Child Code Group". Name that "The Dilbert Zone" (why? because then it's easy to find again :-) You need to specify that the membership condition type is "Zone" and the zone is "Local Intranet", and that the Permission Set is "FullTrust".

If you do all this, ISL that's sitting on a disk remote from your workstation will be sufficiently trusted to execute on a Windows box. Yay.

tech/code/C-Sharp | 17 Aug 2004 | #

Chicago photos up

Chicago Trip photos now available.

travel/chicago | 12 Aug 2004 | #

Back online

Finally webmail, gallery, blog, imapd etc for michaeldavies.org is online after the Chicago Trip.

meta | 12 Aug 2004 | #

Dashboard / Beagle wiki link

So, now the Chicago trip is over, I want to start playing with Beagle and Dashboard again. This link is just for future reference.

tech/code | 05 Aug 2004 | #

Don't Know Much About [American] History

On the flight home from Chicago I read Don't know much about history, which, strangely enough, is all about American History. What is interesting are the significant world events that we didn't learn in school in Australia - like the land grab of 1830 against Mexico, and the official policy to reduce American Indian numbers back 100 years ago.

Not very flattering for the land of the free...

But neither can most countries boast - there's dark secrets in most culteral groups backgrounds. It's just interesting that I'd never heard of either these two facts before.

tech/books | 03 Aug 2004 | #