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August 06, 2008
16:46
iTunes Surround Sound
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Did you know you can enjoy six-channel sound from iTunes? All you need is a decoder, six amplified speakers, and this squirrely software trick.

10:57
Oliver Ding's Freesouls slide show
» ‎ Joi Ito's Web

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Freesoulsview presentation (tags: joi_ito book photography creativecommons)
Oliver Ding has made an amazing Freesouls slide show and has shared it on SlideShare. Wow!

Oliver also started a freesouls group on SlideShare.

8:17
Kits and Mortar: ETech goes sustainable
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Kevin Charman Anderson explores this year's ETech theme and wonders about submitting a proposal. Read more of his thoughts here.
7:17
Codedifferent.com: Speaking at the RailsConf Europe in September about "Design on Rails for Usability"
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Christian Lupp is really looking forward to his talk at RailsConf Europe:

From Sept. 2nd to Sept. 4th 2008 the Ruby on Rails community will meet at the RailsConf Europe. It’s the third RailsConf in Europe and it will located in Berlin/Germany again. Last year, more than 800 Rails enthusiasts joined the conference - a great developer community event - and always the chance to drink your coffee besides one of the creative minds of the Rails Core team ;-) There is nothing that can replace the face-to-face communication within the community. So, I can warmly recommend joining the conference in Berlin to every Rails developer who is able to get there. And all those, who want to develop elegant web applications and do not work with Ruby on Rails yet - they should join us more than ever.

Read his whole post here.

5:52
KMD Digital Journalism Projects
» ‎ Joi Ito's Web

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I'm just finishing the grading for the KMD Digital Journalism class that I taught at Keio. It really was a great experience and I'm looking forward to keeping in touch with the class. We've decided to keep the class together as an extracurricular project and the students will continue to work on their projects even though the class is officially over.

The class was divided into four teams. Each team had to organize a theme, at least one interview and their own method of output. Since we had less than one week, these projects are still a work in progress, but I think they made substantial progress considering the time constraints. (It was also the end of the school term and they were heavily loaded with other classwork.)

The four projects are:

1Ds - Digital Media Policy throughout the World ( site / blog )

Kyah! - Search Engines and the Future of Search ( site / blog )

OCTOPAS - How non-Japanese view the Japanese ( site / Interviews )

Sandwich - What is Photo Journalism? ( site / blog / video )

Your feedback and comments on their projects would be greatly appreciated.
5:50
Board Report from June 2008 Creative Commons Board Meeting
» ‎ Joi Ito's Web

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Sorry about the delay. We've posted some notes from the June 2008 Creative Commons Board Meeting. Let me know if you have any questions.

4:59
Microsoft contracts stymie IBM laptop Linux plans
» ‎ Open Source

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I admire the audacity of what IBM is trying to do with its “Linux on a stick” program.

(This picture first appeared at our fine Apple Core blog in November. Say hi to Jason and David for me.)

It is amazing how cheap stick memories have gotten. Down at the local Fry’s you can get an 8 Gbyte stick for $35. I’m old enough to remember 5 1/4 floppies with 128Kbytes. (Hey, Sparky, today’s 6th graders have no memory of 9/11.)

But the hardware side of this remains a big problem, as I’m learning in my Linux laptop experiment.

It’s the channel, stupid. IBM abandoned PC retailing when it sold its PC business to Lenovo of China, four years ago now, but here in the world the channel is where we get our stuff.

So I used my fingers to do a little shopping and educate Big Blue.

When it comes to new hardware, most makers charge you for Windows even if you don’t get it. They do this to maintain their relationship with Microsoft.

Sometimes they’ll load something like FreeDOS on for you, but the cost of Windows is usually baked-into the price you pay.

Small dealers, like LinuxCertified, sell Linux-only laptops, but given their small quantities their rock-bottom price can be higher than what you’d pay for a similar Windows machine.

Given the fact that it takes less power and storage to run Linux than it does Vista, a used market might sound nice. But the savings aren’t huge and who are you dealing with?

The target market for Linux on a stick may be existing Windows users, but if your Windows laptop is working why do you want to get (and learn) a second OS, unless you are (like me) really, really motivated?

And then, as I noted in the first episode of this series, my story started when my Windows hardware fried. I need both hardware and software to happen.

This weekend I’m going to drop by some stores, get funny looks from clerks, and maybe take pictures of those funny looks for your amusement.

But, personally, I won’t be amused.

(Jeff Dunham, who performs Jose Jalapeno on a stick (left) is very amusing.)

For the Linux laptop to be more than a hobbyist toy it needs a wider channel.

Linux (on a stick) won’t do the job.

2:16
Annotated Questions: OSCON
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Tim Bray offers more notes on his OSCON Keynote:

Here are all the missing pieces, should you want to watch it (only 15 minutes, remember); plus a little extra commentary.

0:42
IBM should spend another $1B to sell its Symphony OpenOffice-Linux desktop to the masses
» ‎ Open Source

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IBM is enlisting the help of the top three Linux distributors to help its desktop Office and messaging software gain ground. It’s a small step forward but Big Blue must reach out to the masses to win this game.

At LinuxWorld, IBM announced that Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell and Red Hat have agreed to work with their PC partners to deliver a Linux desktop based on Lotus Notes and recently released Lotus Symphony by 2009. The company did something similar at its LotuSphere 2008 in January, by partnering with distros and adding an e-mail client to the mix. What a concept.

The announcement at LinuxWorld coincides with IBM’s 10-year anniversary of investing in Linux. Still, IBM’s Lotus Symphony – based on OpenOffice — was announced only a year ago and only recently shipped in June.

It’s not a bad idea, but my take is that IBM must dig deep and invest heavily in marketing and advertising to drive more general consumer acceptance about its open source Office. Techies know that OpenOffice exists and may need to be told that IBM is now shipping its own flavor. But more significantly, Big Blue has to tell ordinary consumers.

IBM, like Sun, is trying to drive more sales of the open source Office suite against the more ubiquitous Microsoft Office and gain steam as Google Apps takes hold. Although acceptance of the open source desktop has lagged adoption on the server, IBM hopes slower adoption of Microsoft’s latest operating system and the economic downturn elevate its prospects. It may — but only if the company targets everyday users via mainstream TV, radio and Web sites.

“The slow adoption of Vista among businesses and budget-conscious CIOs, coupled with the proven success of a new type of Microsoft-free PC in every region provides an extraordinary window of opportunity for Linux,” said Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president for IBM Lotus Software, in a press release issues Tuesday night. “ We’ll work to unlock the desktop to save our customers money and give freedom of choice by offering this industry leading solution.”

The bundle being proferred will include Symphony, Notes and Lotus SameTime IM with the Linux distribution of each vendor, along with applications and services from local IT dealers that sell it.

IBM claims that Austrian IT firm VDEL debuted the first offering named OpenReferent in Eastern Europe earlier this year with IBM’s OCCS on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and customers using it have enjoyed savings of between 30 and 35 percent compared to Microsoft Office.

As Dana points out, tapping the channel is a good move. IBM has driven and enjoyed its share of success in the Linux market and in open source in general. With Linux, it invigorated its free fall mainframe business and most forcefully demonstrated Linux’s ability to run across many platforms and architectures with little rework. Its leadership with Eclipse and participation in many open source projects is well known.

IBM has advocated Linux on the desktop for some time but its embrace of OpenOffice (until June) has been less enthusiastic. Its chief rival, Sun, after all, is driving the project. But IBM’s delivery of its Lotus OpenOffice derivative — just two months ago — has given advocates of open source Office more hope.

IBM is wise to try to push its desktop through Linux distributors and through the channel but it must invest heavily in marketing and advertising to make consumers – home users and business consumers alike — more open to a Microsoft Office alternative. End user resistance to change and high costs of retraining users are commonly cited as chief reasons why the open source desktop has faltered. IBM claimed in the late 90s that it would invest more than $1 billion to make Linux succeed against Windows — and it has largely succeeded on the server. Now it must dig deeper to make it happen on the desktop.

I have covered the Linux desktop for 10 years myself and have found it frustrating that open source vendors have largely failed to target mainstream consumers. Unlike most open source projects and backers of OpenOffice, IBM has the marketing dollars to shift public perception. Selling Linux on the server to IT pros required some investment but selling the Linux-OpenOffice desktop to consumers is going to require an even bigger investment than Big Blue shelled out to win the server market in its first 10 years. Will IBM shell out another $1 billion to win in the desktop market?
August 05, 2008
22:23
IBM’s clever idea is Linux on a stick
» ‎ Open Source

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IBM remains a quiet, background presence at LinuxWorld, 10 years after it began supporting the open source operating system.

But it has some great ideas.

Eclipse was a great idea. Here’s another: an IBM software appliance toolkit gives VARs a single stick memory or DVD they can install to get vertical market customers going.

The idea, the company says, is to get customers rolling in one-to-five mouse clicks.

Developing a channel is the key to increasing business market share, and software appliances can do that.

Now if they could give me one for desktop Linux, I could turn any PC into a Linux laptop.
21:38
Time for Google to take out Sprint
» ‎ Open Source

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If we are to see real competition, in wireless or broadband, it’s time for Google to take out Sprint.

Since making its deal with Sprint and Clearwire to deliver WiMax nationwide last year, Google has been very quiet in the wireless services area.

Meanwhile, Sprint Nextel has continued to fade, losing another $344 million last quarter, announcing plans to sell $3 billion in preferred stock. It has proven a bad investment for the institutions which own over 90% of the common.

While tests and deployment of WiMax are moving ahead, no one trusts the Sprint brand (and with good reason — I’m a dissatisfied customer). It actually lost 901,000 customers last quarter.

The answer is simple. Buy the preferred, becoming Sprint’s largest shareholder. Then, with institutional support, change the brand name to Google Wireless. Or Google Clearwire.

Customers will immediately give the company a second chance. Google gets a large retail network for pushing Android phones and WiMax cards, as well as Google swag and the Google brand.

As the WiMax services come on-stream, it puts pressure on shares of Verizon and AT&T, forcing them to maintain network neutrality to retain market share.

AT&T is well aware of the threat, which is why it has spent the last year before the FCC, trying to delay the Sprint-Clearwire transaction.

Putting Google’s name forward would not add further delays, in my view, it would actually accelerate the deal’s acceptance by focusing public attention on it.

So why not? For little more than twice what it paid for YouTube, Google can be a player in both wireless and broadband. Its market presence would do more to assure network neutrality than all the FCC-Comcast hearings in the world.
20:53
The fast track to mobile Linux
» ‎ Open Source

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Virtualization from Virtualogix can transform today’s mobile phones into Linux-based mobile Internet terminals in one product generation.

Founder Michel Gien will describe to LinuxWorld how this is done tomorrow, calling it a “Killer App Enabler or Atomic Fly Swatter.”

Gien, who previously co-founded Chorus Systems, now part of Sun, told ZDNet his software can jump-start the necessary replacement of the Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS) phones have been using with mainstream systems like Linux.

“High end innovation is going to come through the user community, through new people, through high level applications,” he said, and open source Linux is the best way to do that.

“Over the long term, virtualization is going to change the way software architecture works.”

Virtualogix lets these applications come to phones without extensive re-engineering. “Linux can replace RTOSs while the RTOS is still there to support the wireless stack,” and Virtualogix has joined the LiMo Foundation to push that idea.

What this means is the user interface is the only bottleneck preventing the market from emulating what the iPhone can do.

The mobile market of 2010 will look entirely different from what you see today.

20:17
Samba 3.2.1 Released with Enhanced Windows Server 2003/2008 Support
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The Samba Team released version 3.2.1 on August 5. It includes a bunch of bug patches for the version 3.2 released on July 1. In addition to IPv6 support (has anyone deployed IPv6 seriously and widely???), the release notes indicates a couple...
20:16
VMware Fusion 2 Beta 2: Almost There But Not Quite
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VMware Fusion 2 Beta 2 looks good when used with Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. I ran into problems when testing it with Fedora 8 though. It is a Beta release, however. So, I'm not passing judgement on it until I see the Release Candidate and production release.
16:16
FSK synthesis
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I'm in hardware now! Well, firmware at least. I posted a little comment to the electro-music.com DIY synthesizer forum about using FSK (Frequency Shift Keying) as a synthesis method, and Scott Gravenhorst took the idea and implemented it as an 8-voice, dual oscillator polyphonic synthesizer-on-a-chip using an FPGA (Field Programmable Gatorade)! How cool. He has posted some audio. I had...
7:46
Poll #9 How Much Log Security Do You Need?
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My next logging poll is out - with it I set out to figure out the old mystery of mine, why people don't protect their log data (e.g. see this lamentation "Top 11 Reasons to Secure and Protect Your Logs")...
5:16
The DIgital Bark:Open Source (and joy) from OSCON 2008 in Portland
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AshMUG member John Clark soaks in the best of O’Reilly’s convention in his special guest column.
4:47
ReadWriteWeb:'Web Meets World' Competition: Win Tickets to NYC Web 2.0 Expo
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RIchard MacManus supports the "Web Meets World" Auction by offering free passes for the best auction item ideas:

This year the Web 2.0 Summit conference (5-7 Nov) is hosting an auction to benefit a few innovative organizations that are solving big problems.

To show our support for this initiative, ReadWriteWeb is running a competition in this post.
4:17
O"Reilly Radar:ETech 2009 CFP: Living, Reinvented
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From ETech chair Brady Forrest:

ETech's CFP has launched. The theme this year is Living, Reinvented: The Technology of Abundance and Constraints. To that end I spent time with MITs Scratch Team (changing computer education) and the RoboScooter team (changing transportation). We're going to explore the following themes.
3:47
CIO.com:A Penguin with an Egg: Growing the Open-Source Community
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Esther Schindler came home from OSCON with thoughts on growing the size of the pool in open-source development communities. And it's all upbeat news.
3:17
Make:Making things (talk|blink) at OSCON 2008
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Michael Dory, Adam Simon, and Scott Varland of Socialbomb presented a tutorial on Arduino hacking at last month's O'Reilly Open Source Convention:

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

In this tutorial, participants will learn how to create devices for sensing and communicating with the physical world using the Arduino platform.

Read the rest">[http%3A] of the tutorial.
3:17
News Release:RailsConf Europe Tours Rails' Present Landscape and Drives into Future: Global Rails Community Returns to Berlin
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Sebastopol, CA--Co-presenters O'Reilly Media and Ruby Central have unveiled the program for RailsConf Europe, the official trusted event for the Rails Community in Europe on 2-4 September, 2008, in Berlin, Germany. Organizers have extended early registration until 30 July, offering community members the chance to save up to 150.

"RailsConf Europe is in its third year, and like Rails itself, it's an established presence but one with energy and real freshness. This year we've added some more presentations to the schedule, and we've got a great lineup of keynote talks and sessions centering around the Rails core team and both the present and future of Rails," says program chair David Black. "The presentation schedule is packed with focused, technically informative talks from experts in everything from security to internationalization to deployment, metaprogramming, database and UI engineering--the whole range of Rails activity and interest. The Rails scene, like the Ruby scene, has always been vibrant and rich in Europe, and we're tapping right into it."

Read more here.

0:27
LiMo, dude, where’s my Internet?
» ‎ Open Source

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The LiMo Foundation was very proud to deliver 7 new LiMo phones this week in time for LinuxWorld.

I checked them out. There’s one problem with all of them.

They’re phones.

The iPhone, the device these guys claim to be competing with, is not a phone. It’s an Internet terminal, and a phone. It is primarily a data device. And not little dribs of data, either, but great heaping gobs of it.

These phones aren’t, not really.
- The Motorola Motozine (shown) is basically a camera, with a standard phone attached to it. Hello, Moto? Goodbye, Moto.
- Four of the new phones are variations on the NEC 901, pushed by Docomo in Japan, and again these are phones. They think texting is a data service. Browsing is a data service.
- The other two phones, from Panasonic, come a little closer. The display is hinged so it can be viewed horizontally or vertically. The brag is this is a mobile TV phone. Close, but dude, where’s my Internet?
Basically, LiMo gave LinuxWorld a song-and-dance, talked about new partners, threw some chaff, but they did not deliver what we’re looking for, a mobile Internet terminal that can go head-to-head against the iPhone.

The problem of carrier control is a global one. Japanese carriers are no less prone to charging by the eyedropper, and demanding big chunks of the resulting revenue, than American carriers.

Apple made AT&T swallow the Internet and like it. AT&T has benefitted. For other carriers, or phone makers, to catch up they have to recognize this fact.

It’s not a phone. It’s a data terminal. Think browsing. Not texting, not TV, not cameras. Make this page look good, and you’re at least talking my language.

Until then, sayonara LiMo.
August 04, 2008
23:09
Did the bad cop gremlins get at Microsoft’s annual report?
» ‎ Open Source

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No. The anti open-source gremlins did not write Microsoft’s latest annual report.

(Today’s inconvenient truth. I saw George H.W. Bush in a Levi’s Gremlin just like this one, in 1974, outside the Republican National Committee.)

While there are now breathless headlines reading “Microsoft warns of open source threat,” we’re really talking about something far less sinister, the section of its 10-K report headlined “risk factors.”

Anyone who questions that open source is a risk to Microsoft’s future profitability is not paying attention, and the company would have been grossly remiss in not pointing this out to investors and potential investors.

Admittedly, some of the wording is a bit snarky:

These firms do not bear the full costs of research and development for the software. Some of these firms may build upon Microsoft ideas that we provide to them free or at low royalties in connection with our interoperability initiatives.

But how else are you going to put it?

The same section addresses the risk from ad-based software as a service (SaaS), admitting that the model is viable and Microsoft is trailing.

Most of the section is very fairly worded, and might lead a casual reader to assume Microsoft is doomed. But that’s just good drafting.

Microsoft is not doomed. Microsoft faces real competition from open source. Competition is a good thing. But it is also, in terms of any annual report, a “risk factor.”

(Like the risk some future tech reporter spies you in a 1974 Gremlin.)

21:16
Secrets Unhides Hidden Preferences
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Hidden preferences are among the favorite items covered in the Tips & Tricks sections of Mac-related websites, and the method usually presented for setting these preferences is via the defaults Terminal command. Thanks to a utility called Secrets, which compiles an extensive list of hidden preferences for the software installed on your Mac, there is a much more elegant and user-friendly way.
6:46
Yahoo! Developer Network: OSCON videos
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Our good friend Ricky Montalvo and his crew shot some great footage at OSCON. Check out their coverage and conversations here. Fishsticks?

5:32
Climate Matters Video Contest
» ‎ Joi Ito's Web

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Climate Matters: Inspire Your Next President
Brighter Planet and 1Sky are inviting Americans everywhere to participate in a contest to inspire our next president and political leadership on climate change. Between July 31std and September 22nd, Climate Matters contestants will upload a 30 or 60 second video representing their best attempt at delivering a compelling message to the next president and their political leaders to encourage bold action on climate change. A select panel of prominent judges will choose the winner amongst those ten videos which have accrued the most views in a single day. The contest will take place during both the summer Congressional recess and during the height of the presidential campaign season. To elevate the issue of climate change in the Congressional and the presidential campaigns, 1Sky will organize a strategic D.C.-based event for media and policymakers in early October to highlight the top 10 videos. We are also investigating multiple additional pathways for raising the profile and impact of the video submissions and winners.

Gillian Caldwell, the former ED of WITNESS and one of my heroes is the campaigned director of 1Sky. 1Sky is her "new thing" which I think is a super-important and exciting initiative. Please get involved and help out.

1:16
Dojo Goodness, Part 10 (It's time for a dojo.date!)
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Although I have forthcoming posts that involve 2D drawing with dojox.gfx and rendering editable data with the really awesome dojox.grid enhancements that are landing in version 1.2 of the toolkit coming up later in the month, I just rediscovered a "note to...
August 03, 2008
23:16
The future of Apple TV
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The future of Apple TV is the subject of much debate and controversy around the Internet. Yet, it seems to be a relatively simple, straightforward question. While Apple calls Apple TV a “hobby product,” this is clearly not an accurate description. No company in their right mind would ever invest the kind of money, time and energy that Apple has...

22:41
Neutrality gets an enforcement mechanism
» ‎ Open Source

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Given how often I have railed here about the Bit Trust, the government-enabled duopoly of phone and cable giants controlling the American Internet, you would think I’d be thrilled about the FCC’s latest Comcast ruling.

Nope. And not for the reason you might think, namely that it’s toothless, symbolic, worthless in the real world.

It’s because it is, or was, unenforceable. It’s a bit like some rulings from the late 1930s, demanding that radio stations remain inside their designated bands, at a time when frequency analyzers took weeks to do that calculation.

The answer came quickly, and gave birth to Silicon Valley. It’s told well in Mike Malone’s Bill & Dave. It was a real-time frequency counter, first sold as the 500a in 1943. (Picture from HP Memory.org.)

Only when you could measure waves accurately could you guarantee a civilian broadcaster wasn’t interfering with military frequencies. The law needed an enforcement mechanism.

The same is true for “net neutrality,” which means giving customers full access to the Internet services they are paying for. Unless consumers can catch their ISP in the act of denying them service, they can’t enforce the rule. You have anarchy.

The answer is Switzerland, a tool released today (in a very early form) by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The software determines when packets are dropped, forged or modified, and will be improved to let you collect a host of statistics on network performance to your PC.

EFF Switzerland does for today’s Internet consumer what the 500a did for yesterday’s radio station manager. It gives you the tools needed to demand enforcement of government orders.

So Comcast, and their phon-e brethren, will have a choice. They can either admit to violating consumer contracts, or rewrite those contracts and give consumers the power to choose another ISP.

My guess is they’ll do a rewrite, at which point consumers will recognize they don’t have any choice, at which point the game will truly be afoot. Sometime next year.

It’s the next President’s FCC nominations that will tell the tale on network neutrality. And whether they’re willing to enforce anti-trust laws again.
20:54
Linux laptop, make or buy?
» ‎ Open Source

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My recent call for a Linux laptop drew a lot of response and several kind e-mails.

Several vendors were said to be shipping such laptops. Lenovo, with SUSE Linux on it. Everex. Dell. Asus. A desktop “shootout” is planned this week at LinuxWorld.

I sort of expected a vendor representative to write and offer a unit, but that did not happen. This may tell more about the state of this market than anything else.

In fact, most of those who wrote in suggested I either make one myself, by buying a cheap laptop and installing a distro, or have one custom made for me.

Paul Rescino of PCA+ Computers near Chicago suggested he could sell me an Equus or Lenovo laptop with Ubuntu on it, which is a very kind offer.

But it brings up a key question. Is this a make market or a buy market? In a buy market, you go to the store and get one, or someone ships it to you. In a make market, you get parts shipped to you and become your own OEM.

Because Linux requires less storage, less RAM, and less chip speed to run than Windows Vista, it seems to mostly be a make market. You’re not going to get a deal buying something new, so why not refurbish something old that you’ll like?

Fair enough. So what do I really want in laptop hardware?
1. Something light. If you ever heard of something called Dana’s Iron Law of Laptops – an ounce on the desk is a pound in my hand — I’m Dana.
2. Something rugged. I haven’t dropped and destroyed a laptop yet, but there is always a first time. Rugged is good in this cruel world.
3. WiFi support. It doesn’t have to be built-in, a PC Card slot is fine. While we’re there, multiple USB ports would be nice.
Everything else is optional. I assume this unit has the power to run common open source applications like Open Office, Firefox, etc.

One of my intentions is to see just how much of a Windows box I can emulate, in terms of an application set, so extra memory is welcome.

But I’m not really very picky. What I’m describing is fairly low-end, borderline obsolete hardware. I’m not running Windows Vista, after all.

So what do you say?
20:43
LiMo vows to fight on, debuts new mobile handsets from Motorola, NEC, Panasonic
» ‎ Open Source

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The LiMo Foundation has no intention of fading away.

At the launch of LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco today, the foundation announced the release of several new Linux-based mobile handsets from Mototorola, NEC and Panasonic.

The addition of these latest models — including Motorola’s Motozine ZN5, NEC’s Foma N906i, N906iμ, N906iL and N706i, and Panasonic’s own Foma P906i and N906iμ — brings the total number of LiMo handsets to 21, the foundation announced today.

Several of these models incorporate mobile 2.0 features such as higher resolution displays, international 3G/High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) roaming capabilities, Global Positioning System (GPS), mobile TV and advanced video streaming, secure payment and advanced mail functionalities, the foundation announced.

LiMo’s Linux reference platform is one of several open source mobile platforms under development, including Google’s Android platform (also based on a Linux derivative) and Nokia’s plans for an open source platform based on the Symbian mobile OS platform, acquired earlier this summer.

Some have suggested that LiMo — a foundation founded in 2007 by six mobile manufacturers which now has more than 50 backers — will fade away amidst competition from Google and Nokia. But LiMo said it has no intention of going away and notes that Nokia is a member of the LiMo Foundation.

“Nokia should be lauded for its step in the right direction,” according to a release issued after Nokia announced plans to opne source Symbian over time. “It should also be noted that Nokia has its feet firmly planted in both the Linux and Symbian camps as members of the Linux Foundation, the Limo Foundation and creators of the N Series Mobile Linux device.”

Still, it’s not clear how long that will last. Nokia said the ”Symbian Foundation software will be released under a royalty-free license for foundation members as open source within two years, with the intent to use the Eclipse Public License.”

In response to questions about its commitment to the LiMo Foundation, Nokia said this:

“Our commitment remains to S60 on Symbian OS (and ultimately the Symbian Foundation platform) as our platform for converged mobile devices (or smartphones, as Symbian refers to them). However, we alre already producing mobile devices based on maemo Linux, our Internet tablet devices, we continue to see a strong role for Linux in that class of devices and will continue development,” said Mark Durrant, a spokesman for Nokia.

“With regard to LiMO, there are several different fora and consortia producing specifications and various technical and other documents to support development of mobile technologies. Nokia is constantly evaluating opportunities and is actively participating in some of those fora, such as the Open Mobile Alliance and Open Mobile Terminal Platform alliance. LiMo is certainly an interesting forum and we will consider in good time what kind of role Nokia should seek to have in this forum, if any.”

20:16
Matthew Paul Thomas: Why Free Software has poor usability, and how to improve it
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I have no idea who Matthew Paul Thomas is even after Google-ing (um, that should be using Google to search for more information) his name and learning he lives in New Zealand and has written some very interesting blog entires. However, I...

20:07
Vyatta changes the networking game
» ‎ Open Source

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Got a spare server sitting around?

Nothing fancy — 512 Megs of RAM and a 1.8 GHz processor will work fine.

Now, want to turn that into a networking box? The equivalent of a Cisco or Juniper router with 1 Gbps capacity?

That’s the promise of the Vyatta 2501, shipping today at LinuxWorld. It’s almost beside the point to mention it’s all open source.

I chatted about all this last week with vice president of strategy Dave Roberts, the company’s vice president of strategy.

“The product is fundamentally the software that can be packaged, either in our own hardware or a customer’s own hardware,” he said.

In other words if you want something that looks like an expensive Cisco or Juniper box, Vyatta will sell you one. Or you can find a spare server in the closet and download it.

“A gigabit Ethernet card for a Cisco router costs $5,000. A gagabit gigabit Ethernet card for Vyatta costs $50 and you can buy it at Fry’s. Or call the Geek Squad. That’s a huge difference in the economics.

“They both perform the same way. In some ways the open solutions perform better. The same or better performance for one-quarter the cost.”

This has enormous implications for the corporate networking space, but perhaps even bigger implications in public networking, where telcos insist they can’t keep up with demand.

“We have many customers who are Tier II and Tier III hosting providers,” ISPs that need big connections to the Internet. Vyatta also lets you aggregate local traffic on ordinary servers, great if you can get control of some local customers.

So who is calling, I asked. Everyone, Roberts said. But especially companies that want to build their own server clouds.

“We’re getting a lot of interest from people with cloud environments. They can use it in ways they can’t use a physical unit.”

How so? “Vyatta is software. It all becomes about things like virtualization and the ability to reconfigure, to reprovision. The fact you’ve got network infrastructure that’s fungible is really interesting to folks who build out large scale.”

As much as people may rail about Microsoft, it’s the telcos and their high-priced suppliers who are the real bottleneck in terms of improved computing.

Vyatta has just blown them out of the water.

August 02, 2008
21:46
Ruby Mendicant : Prawn's First Release!
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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I'm happy to announce I just cut the first alpha release of Prawn. It is chock full of features, and since the release notes are fairly detailed with good links, I've just pasted them for your review after the cut....

21:36
JasperSoft outsourced its community forge
» ‎ Open Source

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You’d never know this from a casual visit but JasperSoft has outsourced its community forge site.

Which is the point, you don’t need to know. It’s still Jaspersoft.org. It’s just running on the software, the servers, and with the help of EssentiaESP, which launched at OSCON.

The only evidence of a vendor is down at the bottom of the page, a small Essentia bug and an “About Essentia” link. The branding, the trade dress and the content all come from JasperSoft.

Essentia CEO Gopi Ganapathy said the trend away from Sourceforge and toward homegrown forge sites made sense until communities like JasperSoft’s grew to 50,000 dedicated users and more. Now they need help.

“Our goal is to build vibrant communities faster, cheaper, and better than they’re doing now,” he said.

In the case of JasperSoft:

We offer electronic support for the infrastructure. We have add-ons that allow them to pick up our community manager. Over time it’s our intention to offer fairly significant services because we have been in the space for 10 years.

Essentia’s ambition is to link the communities it’s managing. “Integrating and federating the communities is happening at multiple points, so you get a community of communities happening. That’s a big capability – you get layers of networks.”

If it works out, the communities Essentia manages become bigger, more complex, and more integrated than Sourceforge ever was. But you’ll never know it.

That’s the way Ganapathy and his team want it.

There’s a dose of irony here. Companies left Sourceforge to gain more control of their communities. Now they’re outsourcing those same sites. Essentia ate Sourceforge’s lunch and they never even heard the dinner bell.

4:16
Circuit Bending
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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The Documentary [absurdity.biz] If it bends, it's funny. If it breaks, it's not, because then it's circuitbreaking. This is the best presentation I've seen yet on the mystical art of circuit bending. Finally we actually see that it's so easy a kid could do it, and so cool that you can trip out on it late into your late, late...

August 01, 2008
15:55
各位老师
» ‎ Blog on 27th Floor

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看爱默生的散文，不小心翻到一篇“邪恶”。爱默生第一句话便说：

面对世间的邪恶，历史给我们上的第一堂课便是：恶有其善的一面。

既然爱老师把这一点当成了第一堂课，那自然就要论证这恶的善意了。于是，正由于诺曼底人威廉的种种压迫……才使得英国民众对促使国王约翰签署了大宪章。是这样吗？大宪章的产生，是有许多压力压迫英王约翰的结果，他上台的方法，他未能压回法国的领土，同教皇的纠纷等等，这都是直接的简单的原因。如果一定要把这件事一直追溯到好几代以前的诺曼底征服，还不如把这个大宪章归功于从9世纪10世纪以降的英国的部落原始共产主义传统呢。甚至更早些时候，英王登基宣誓时就要表示维护法律保证人民安全了。

爱老师又说，正是由于亚历山大的进军所带来的战争，才把希腊的文明、语言和艺术引入了野蛮的东方。这起码要算50%的胡扯吧。亚历山大很厉害，但他对征服显然兴趣最大，征服后得到最大利益的似乎也是希腊周边，而不是什么野蛮的东方吧。所谓70座亚历山大城中我们只能记得埃及的那个，那里的图书馆里充满了来自东方的知识。然后出现了比古希腊略差一点的希腊化时代，到底谁施谁受？谁更野蛮谁更文明？虽然也许佛的形象化要拜希腊化所赐。

其实爱默生文章写得很不错的，他说的并不全错，也算得有理有据；历史上的恶催生了善，善又催生了恶更是大家都认可的事。之所以看到这个，是因为另一位如椽大笔余秋雨。《书城》三月号头条文章是余大师的“西天焚音”，很长，写了佛教在中国的传播，发展等等事。本来也是挺好的事，可是大师为了证明佛教在中国传播的“不可思议”，就有一些说法：

当时从西域到长安，很多统治者都以抢得一名重要的佛教学者为荣，不惜为此发动战争。例如符坚为了抢夺佛学大师道安，竟然在公元三七九年攻打襄阳……（道安推荐了鸠摩罗什）符坚就故伎重演，派吕光率领重兵长途跋涉去攻打龟兹……抢得了鸠摩罗什……于是新帝王（姚苌？姚兴？）便出兵讨伐，直到抢得鸠摩罗什。

然后余大师就写爽了：

从这里我们就看到了一个令人惊愕的情景：在我们西北方向的辽阔土地上，在那个时代，一次次的连天烽火，竟然都是为了争夺某一个佛教学者而燃起！

五胡十六国的年代，连30年不打大仗都被认为是盛世的年代，在鸠摩罗什在吕光姚兴逼迫之下连破淫酒双戒的时候，诸位大牛们还如此倾心向佛，真是佛门大幸啊。（这里就有罗什吞什的故事，说明这位译经的大牛人也许同时也是印度外教的传人）

余老师还说他出生时（1946），他的家乡（浙江余姚）兵荒马乱，盗匪横行，唯一与文明有关的痕迹，就是家家户户都有一个吃素念经的女家长，……她们没有一个人识字，却都能熟练地念诵般若波罗蜜多心经，其中有三分之一的妇女还能背得下金刚经。……我相信，这些村落之所以没有被仇恨所肢解，这些村民之所以没有被邪恶所席卷，都与那支由文盲组成的念佛队伍有关。

这一段话，余老师下了多少个断语？其中又有多少真，多少假？他怎么一个注引都不给？

说起来，爱默生只是小问题，余大师有大问题。但要说谁能把问题转化成为武器，还要看更伟大的人物：

我说一切号称强大的反动派统统不过是纸老虎。原因是他们脱离人民。你看希特勒是不是纸老虎？我也谈到沙皇是纸老虎，中国皇帝是纸老虎，日本帝国主义是纸老虎，你看，都倒了。美帝国主义没有倒，还有原子弹，我看也是要倒的，也是纸老虎。……马恩只有两个人，那时他们就说全世界资本主义要被打倒……

我想这位是有资格这么说的，他也不是为了证明什么，他怎么说的，比他说了什么更重要。我们可以对他宽容一些。但对其他，虽然是散文，是随笔，但也不能胡说。

接着爱默生的的邪恶论，即邪后都有善；他似乎是要表明这样的态度，即混蛋才能长成好人，鬼迷心窍的人才能克服谨小慎微的人畏惧不前的障碍；世界上没有谁不曾受惠于自己的弱点。最优秀的人是由他们的缺陷铸就的。具有缺陷和激情力量的人，才是最好的栋梁之才。

这个人还是挺矛盾的，但在文章中塞进去那么多的警句实在是不容易，以至于我国的许知远老师在某一时期的作品中必定要引爱老师的话。至于诸位老师是否受到爱默生的混蛋才是好人这一论述的引导，就不得而知了。 cathayan.org 版权所有。

2:16
Microsoft Sponsors Apache
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Ooh, now this is cool: Microsoft is now a contributing member of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). This does not mean that Microsoft is just talking the talk; they are actually putting up money to help support the management and coders that...
1:46
O'Reilly TOC:How Hackers Show It's Not All Bad News at the New York Times
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Andrew Savikas, chair of the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, on The Times and Derek Gottfrid's presentation at OSCON:

But there's something going on at the Times that probably won't make it to Silicon Alley Insider, much less the mainstream business press, and it's something that's starting to make me think the Times just might succeed in adapting to the changing rules of the media and publishing game (though there will almost certainly be many more casualties before it's over).

So what's the Times doing that's so important? They're hacking.

Read the rest of the story.
1:46
Slashdot:OSCON 2008 Roundup
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Slashdot on some of OSCON's greatest hits:

An anonymous reader writes "Infoweek wraps last week's event with Inside The OSCON 2008 Conference, which pulls together interviews with Mark Shuttleworth, Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin, MySQL's Zach Urlocker and Sam Ramji, who directs Microsoft's Open Source Lab. Best quotes: 'We will make a significant attempt to elevate the Linux desktop to the point where it is as good or better than Apple,' from Shuttleworth; and 'If I would start a business tomorrow I'd do it in the netbook marketplace. I'd build a dead-simple $200 device that targets sports fans, women over forty,' from Zemlin."
1:46
InformationWeek:Inside The OSCON 2008 Open Source Conference
» ‎ weblogs.oreilly.com

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Serdar Yegulalp brings all his OSCON coverage together.

We round up our coverage of the open source OSCON 2008 conference. Don't miss Q&As with Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth and The Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin. Check out the photo gallery, too.

See all of Serdar's terrific coverage here.

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