Open Source at SF State University - Miscellaneous

My Linux has Windows problems

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 11:54:46 -0700

So, I finally decided to revive my Skype account. I used to have a Skype client on my Windows XP laptop, but ever since I got rid of XP (yes, I'm currently Windows free), I don't have Skype anymore. Skype does have Linux clients, so I installed it on Ubuntu. In the first two minutes, while I was trying to test the mic and speakers, I got a message! A secret admirer? Not really! This message was from a well wisher who was telling me how my Windows computer had malware (malware for malware?) and needed immediate attention. Amusing This is why I don't like systems that I cannot peer into. Yes, Skype is great. It works really well. I am forced to use it because so many others use it. But, I'd prefer if we had something I could look into and perhaps make it better. In the mean time, you Windows users should watch out for these well wishers. I have the good fortune of not using Windows, so I could easily tell that this was malware in itself. You may not be so lucky.

Fun with Freemind

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:43:14 -0700

I am a visual person. I have an incessant need to draw boxes and arrows on chalkboards. Or maybe its because I've been doing so for the last thirteen years Workflow diagrams, dataflow diagrams, entity-relationship diagrams, value chains, supply chains. If you think about it, the Yin-Yang circle is a diagram too. Diagrams are great!

Being a teacher in the Information Systems field, diagrams with boxes and arrows are important to me. They help represent logic (or lack thereof). So, in trying to organize the topics that OLPC-SF group addresses or discusses every month, I decided to make a map of the topics and how they are organized. I've used Freemind before, but this time I decided to do something a bit different. I started with gedit, the text editor in GNOME. For all you Windows users, you can use Notepad or Wordpad. I made a list of topics, and used tab to create a hierarchy. So, Under People (level 1) I have Educators, Children and so on, one item per line, tabbed once (so these become level 2). I have some level three items as well. This is fairly easy to make and allows me to combine my thoughts and organize them into a coherent structure. I wish OLPC had such a chart. I can never figure out how that bunch in Cambridge is connected!

A report on the OLPC-SF August meeting

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:15:15 -0700

This is a report of the OLPC-SF meeting held on August 16 2008 at SF State University's Downtown Center.

The focus of this meeting were two major and complementary presentations. One was Bruce Baikie's talk on how he got a stack of OLPC XOs to a village in Senegal. The other was about mesh networks, the pixie dust that makes these wonderful computers talk to each other once they get to a village like the one in Senegal.

XO Live CD with joyride 2282

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:54:25 -0700

A new live CD is now available (XO-LiveCD_080812.iso 426.01 MB) at:

Bittorrent - http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=0902d803b94822a07b7a5da6193147c10e0c83d8
HTTP - http://www.skolelinux.de/download/XOLiveCD/XO-LiveCD_080812.iso

Time travel...

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:24:06 -0700

July 19, 2008 - OLPC-SF meeting at SF State University

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:58:54 -0700

If you have an XO laptop, or are just interested in seeing how they work, come on down to SF State campus for a get together on July 19, 2008. If you have an XO or two (or several), bring them! Have [grand]kids who like XOs? Bring them too! Our campus is quite friendly. Don't have an XO? Download a LiveCD from http://dev.laptop.org/pub/livebackupcd/ or simply bring your enthusiasm.

Avoiding iPhone?

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:54:44 -0700

When the iPhone came out, I considered buying it. The price was a bit of a roadblock, but not too much of a big deal. What I realized was that after many years of using free and open source software, I really did not want to buy a computer (which is really what the iPhone is) that would lock its innards out completely. Now, the "garden variety" Nokia phone that I use every day is no different, but I don't have any expectations from it other than it being a phone.

Forget Gates and focus on bars

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:47:29 -0700

From a BBC article written by Richard Stallman:

"To pay so much attention to Bill Gates' retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers."

Read it in full at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7487060.stm

FOSS in Espoo, Finland

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:30:51 -0700

I am now in Espoo, a suburb of Helsinki, Finland. I will be here for approximately two weeks, teaching a short course on Global Software Management at Evtek. After I got an account at the school, I logged into the system. The desktops are Windows XP, with a Novell authentication layer running printers and shared drives. No surprises there, although I would have imagined that an Active Directory backend would make more sense to have an integrated experience.

FOSS in Varese, Italy

Thu, 29 May 2008 06:53:04 -0700

I am currently visiting Insubria State University in lovely Varese, Italy. I had a presentation yesterday titled "Open Source Software and Software Industry Change". The talk was attended by students and faculty. Information about the talk can be found here. To get the slides in PDF format, go to http://www.cresit.it/GetFile.aspx?ID=58&LCID=1040

Where we don't want you to go today

Sun, 11 May 2008 19:11:06 -0700

Its one thing to explore the limits of what technology can do for you, but it takes an entirely different mindset to figure out and limit what technology may do for you. How cheap can laptops get and still be useful? We are seeing this with many new products such as the XO-1 laptop from OLPC, The Eee PC from Asus, and many other ultra low-cost PCs as they are being called. One common theme across these cheap laptops has been the use of Linux. This article from PC World point out to an interesting effort from those people in Redmond. From PC World:

Open Screen Project from Adobe

Thu, 01 May 2008 09:36:34 -0700

It seems that Adobe is working towards removing some barriers to the adoption of its Flash technology. This may very well be due to pressure from potential competition such as Silverlight. From Adobe's site:

"...as part of Adobe’s ongoing commitment to enable Web innovation, Adobe will continue to open access to Adobe Flash technology, accelerating the deployment of content and rich Internet applications (RIAs). This work will include:

InetBoot: Internet-based Boot Loader

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:34:44 -0700

I came across this neat project called InetBoot. This is a web-enabled boot loader for booting into ISO files. The bootloader is a small ISO (5.3 mb) itself that does some initial booting, networking, and then a request for the ISO over httpfs. The incoming ISO is then mounted and the process goes on from there. Its neat in that with a small local bootable image, you can send in ISOs over HTTP instead of NFS. I am planning on trying ti out for the Live CDs for OLPC.

OpenOffice is being offered ad-free (wink, wink)

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:41:39 -0700

Fresh from the Slashdot spigot:

"News.com reports Microsoft has finally started offering an ad-funded version of Microsoft Works in some countries. Users who run the software see a small ad as they are writing their document or editing their spreadsheet. Although the program has the ability to update its set of ads online, today it runs mostly ads for Microsoft and a few partners, all of which ship with the product itself. Microsoft remains cagey on the details of where you can find Works SE. The company has been testing Works SE in 5 countries: The United States, France, Canada, Poland and the United Kingdom. It is available only through select computer makers and Microsoft won't say which computer makers those are. However, it seems Sony is offering it in the US."

Duplicity instead of rsync

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:17:52 -0700

While plain rsync is fine for making backups periodically, rsync itself will not encrypt your data. Duplicity is a tool for that job. From their site:

Duplicity backs directories by producing encrypted tar-format volumes and uploading them to a remote or local file server. Because duplicity uses librsync, the incremental archives are space efficient and only record the parts of files that have changed since the last backup. Because duplicity uses GnuPG to encrypt and/or sign these archives, they will be safe from spying and/or modification by the server.