Free-Office

Daily Links for Tuesday, January 19, 2010

2010-01-19T09:00:44+00:00

Open Source House: designing eco-affordable housing together

Open Source House (OS-House) is a non-profit organization that aims to provide better, more sustainable housing in low-income countries. 8 Design principles are utilized by OS-House to guarantee standards of sustainability, and meet the challenge of flexibility, ensuring that all designs can be locally embedded. Establish your name, and contribute your ideas and designs in our first design competition starting on the 15th of January 2010. The competition results will be shared on the OS-House platform thereby marking the beginning of this ongoing project.

Hundreds flock to open source software conference
The National Business Review – New Zealand / Kelly Gregor

Hundreds of technology enthusiasts from around the world will attend a week-long open source software conference that began in Wellington today. More 700 delegates are expected to attend the Linux conference, which will discuss the future and viability of open source software and its implications for governments and businesses.

Games

Searching for gold: how to fund your indie video game
Ars Technica / Michael Thompson

It’s never easy to secure financial support for an independent game project, but it’s even harder right now. Ars takes a look at some different ways to get funding for your project.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Games, Linux, News, Open Source.
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The Alexandria Project, Chap. 1: Meet Frank

2010-01-19T05:01:42+00:00

What's all this about? Find out here

On the morning of Sunday, December 12, a morbidly obese Corgi named Lily was sniffing a tree on 16sh street, in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C. A cold, insistent drizzle was falling, but Lily didn’t care, because Lily was sniffing at her favo...

Press Release: “IBM Client for Smart Work Available Through Business Partners in India”

2010-01-19T02:11:03+00:00

Here’s a another press release from today involving IBM, Symphony, Lotus Live, Ubuntu Linux, and Virtual Bridges. We’re continuing the rollout of the partner-led IBM Client for Smart Work:

IBM Client for Smart Work Available Through Business Partners in India

ORLANDO, FL & BANGALORE, India – 18 Jan 2010: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the immediate availability of IBM Client for Smart Work in India through business partners. The IBM Client for Smart Work, IBM and Canonical’s popular cloud-and Linux-based desktop package, is designed to help companies do more with less and lower desktop computing costs by up to 50 percent. CIO’s, IT directors and IT architects from all types of organizations in India, even those that typically cannot afford new PCs, can now gain immediate access to collaboration capabilities to help them work smarter, with the simple download of the IBM Client for Smart Work onto various thin clients, such as netbooks and other devices.

“Government leaders, CEOs and CIOs are seeking an open, cost effective and collaboration rich client strategy to leapfrog into the 21st century,” said Pradeep Nair, director of IBM India Software Group. “The IBM Client for Smart Work solution brings together the strengths of cloud-based collaboration, virtual desktops, netbook devices and open source, supported by a strong ecosystem of business partners, to help Indian innovators harness the next wave of growth.”

The collaboration package runs on Ubuntu Linux operating system available from Canonical and provides the option to deliver collaboration through the Web in a cloud service model. The Client comes with IBM Lotus Symphony, IBM LotusLive iNotes/Connections and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino, with the option to add IBM Lotus Connections and IBM WebSphere Portal, as well as virtual desktop capabilities using VERDE from Virtual Bridges.

With the mounting interest in this solution, IBM today also announced that Simmtronics Semiconductors will ship their new Simmbooks (netbooks) with IBM Client for Smart Work on Ubuntu already preloaded to clients in India, US, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, UK, and Vietnam.” We launched Simmbooks based on the high demand for netbook type devices for enterprises worldwide,” said Indrajit Sabharwal, managing director, Simmtronics Semiconductors. “Delivering Simmbooks with IBM Client for Smart Work on Ubuntu will help our customers lower their total cost of ownership and be on the forefront of innovation.”

…

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Cloud, Linux, News.
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Press Release: “Canonical Offers Dedicated Support Program for Lotus Symphony …”

2010-01-18T18:23:45+00:00

Canonical announced the following today via a press release:

Canonical Offers Dedicated Support Program for Lotus Symphony, the Core Component of IBM Client for Smart Work on Ubuntu

Canonical today announced a dedicated support program for Lotus Symphony, the no-charge office productivity alternative which is a core component of IBM Client for Smart Work (ICSW) on Ubuntu.

(PRWEB) January 18, 2010 — Canonical today announced a dedicated support program for Lotus Symphony, the no-charge office productivity alternative which is a core component of IBM Client for Smart Work (ICSW) on Ubuntu. This support is made available to customers by Canonical through the IBM and Canonical partner network. Organisations can now switch to an alternative platform from Microsoft for their business productivity needs with full confidence that the core solution is fully supported.

The IBM Client for Smart Work, based on IBM productivity and collaboration software, helps organisations save up to 50 percent per seat on software costs versus a Microsoft-based desktop, in addition to avoiding requisite hardware upgrades. The package allows companies to use their existing PCs, lower-cost netbooks and thin clients.

…

See the press release for the rest of the announcement.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Linux, News.
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Lotusphere photos: Ubuntu’s Peter Woodward and Tux

2010-01-17T21:01:53+00:00

Here’s the next round of photos from Lotusphere 2010.

Here’s Peter Woodward of Canonical/Ubuntu and me. Light could have been better, but you take what you can get in a meeting room.

Next is our friendly penguin friend sporting an “IBM Client for Smart Work” label. Get yours starting tomorrow at the Lotus Knows challenge immediately upon entering the exhibit hall at the bottom of the escalator.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Photos, Travel.
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Introducing The Alexandria Project

2010-01-17T20:46:40+00:00

Two very early Lotusphere 2010 photos

2010-01-17T18:49:37+00:00

Here are a couple of photographs taken very early at Lotusphere 2010 at Disney World in Florida this week and they are, perhaps, a bit different.

This was a lonely hammock by the beach looking toward the Grand Floridian Resort. The weather was very overcast and it threatened to rain for seeral hours before it finally did around 9 PM. There were some people walking around because, well, it is Florida, though not too many were swimming in the pool.

This pen, a give-away in the exhibit area for the IBM Client for Smart Work on Linux, is made from corn starch and is biodegradable. Get yours before they go in the compost pile.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Photos, Travel.
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Daily Links for Friday, January 15, 2010

2010-01-15T18:00:52+00:00

Virtual Worlds

Power users holding back Second Life?
Hypergrid Business / Maria Korolov

Second Life is being held back by an “elite group” of users, according to Forrester Research, Inc. analyst Tom Grant. There is an “Iron Law of Oligarchy,” Grant wrote this week. “Over time, a subset of customers emerge who participate regularly in user group meetings, discussion forums, the comments sections of blogs, groups in social media channels, and other channels of face-to-face and electronic communication.”

Music

Nils Lofgren Online Guitar School

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Music, News, Virtual Worlds.
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Top 10 Seed and Plant Catalogs for New England

2010-01-15T01:55:25+00:00

The ground is blanketed in snow, and will remain so for most of the next 3 months. The temperature ranges from cold to frigid. It is hard to think of spring, but now is the time when the garden planning begins, when I start making lists, drawing plot diagrams, calculating planting times, and anticipating, in my mind, the eventual blooms of summer and the harvest of next fall.

This is also the time when my mailbox fills up with catalogs from plantsmen and nurseries, offering new cultivars, rediscovered heirloom varieties and all manner of new garden gadgets. When possible I prefer to support local nurseries. Their plants are chosen to be well-adapted for my regional conditions. Of course, the downside is that if you buy locally, then you’ll be buying the same plants as your neighbors, and who wants to have their landscaping look the same as everyone else on the street?

Of the dozens of catalogs I receive every winter, there are a few that I return to year after year, the ones where I find the immense variety I crave, as well as high quality service. The following is my “top 10 list” of seed and plant catalogs suitable for New England:

Fedco Seeds (Maine) Their new 137 page catalog covers seeds, tubers and organic growing supplies. The emphasis is on hardy and short-season varieties suitable for northern gardens.
Nourse Farms (Massachusetts) Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries live plants, including new introductions. They are my first choice for berries.
Territorial Seed Company (Oregon) Very informative catalog, 167 pages, should be a model for others. Clearly indicates which seeds are open pollinated, which are F1 hybrids, which are organic, disease resistance, days to maturity, etc. Most seeds are available in different packet sizes, ranging from small samplers to larger packets for small commercial growers.
Artistic Gardens / Le Jardin du Gourmet (Vermont) Their 50 Sample Herb Packet Special is a regular annual purchase for me. At any other seed company you pay $3 or so for a packet containing enough basil seeds for a pesto factory. Total overkill for a mall garden, and expensive if you want to plant a wide variety of herbs. But for a very reasonable price Le Jardin du Gourmet offers a bundle of 50 herb seed packets, each very small, but providing “just enough” seeds for my small garden. You have no control over the variety, so if you absolutely must have Genovese Basil, this is not for you, but in turn for giving up control over the variety you get large selection of culinary and traditional medicinal herbs for a very reasonable price. I find it also gets me to grow herbs I might not otherwise try, like lovage or horehound.
Seed Savers Exchange (Iowa) This is the open source project of the seed world. Individual amateur gardeners and small farms preserving 12,613 varieties of heirloom, ethnic and unique vegetable varieties, growing from seed, and harvesting and preserving the seed to pass on to the next year. The resulting huge diversity of seeds are shared with members for the cost of postage. The variety is staggering. If they don’t have it, it probably doesn’t exist (or is protected by a plant patent). A subset of the most popular heirloom varieties is for sale on their website, but to get the full phonebook-thick catalog of member-offered seeds, you need to join.
White Flower Farm (Connecticut) The catalog, fully photographed in luscious detail, is a feast for the eyes. Strong on perennials (herbaceous and woody) and bulbs. I use it as much to generate ideas as I do for ordering.
Johnny’s Selected Seeds (Maine) I go to Johnny’s especially for their new vegetable variety introductions. For example, they introduced “Bright Lights” Swiss chard, one of my favorites. Their catalog always has something new to look forward to.
Raintree Nursery (Washington) If you want something unusual in the fruit department, this is where to go. From medlars to hardy kiwi to saskatoons, they have it. Their catalog has also the cultural information you need to be successful, including recommendations on compatible pollinators.
Bluestone Perennials (Ohio) Along with the White Flower Farm catalog, this is my main source for perennials. The PlantFinder search engine on their website is great for finding plants for a special niche, like “Zone 6 hardy, deer resistant groundcovers with blue flowers”.
Totally Tomato (Wisconsin) The name says it all. If you want a specific tomato variety and no substitute will do, this is the place to go. For example, their catalog lists 41 different cherry tomato varieties. This is the “long tail” of the lycopersicum world.

Maria Rodale: It’s Time to Order Seeds (huffingtonpost.com)
Almost Spring, in my dreams (sutor.com)

Questions to ask about open source projects

2010-01-14T16:20:31+00:00

So you’ve heard about this great piece of open source software and you are considering either contributing to it or using it a very serious way, maybe even a business critical way. What are some of the questions you should be asking about the project?

Is it good code and is it well architected?
Who are the founders, contributors, and users?
What are the motivations and behavior of each?
What is the form and governance of the community?
Is there a single dominant player that is controlling the direction or is it a more democratic community?
Are there intellectual property issues involving copyrights or code provenance?
What about that license?

You need the confidence that the code and the community that supports it is fit for your purpose, are sufficiently stable, and have no “gotchas.” That is, there should be no surprises around the intellectual property involved and no unexpected strangeness around the community and its leadership.

What other things do you look for and what other advice you would give along these lines?

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Open Source.
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Daily Links for Wednesday, January 13, 2010

2010-01-13T15:05:36+00:00

Linux

Another day, another SUSE/Moblin Linux netbook
ComputerWorld / Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

In all the hurly-burly of CES, a second SUSE/Moblin Linux netbook was quietly released. This one comes from Samsung.

Red Hat repurchases $33.4M of shares
Triangle Business Journal

Red Hat repurchased more than 1 million shares of company stock for $33.4 million from Dec. 1 through Jan. 8, the company revealed in filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Entertainment

Now, Electronics That Obey Hand Gestures
The New York Times / Ashlee Vance

In the coming months, the likes of Microsoft, Hitachi and major PC makers will begin selling devices that will allow people to flip channels on the TV or move documents on a computer monitor with simple hand gestures. The technology, one of the most significant changes to human-device interfaces since the mouse appeared next to computers in the early 1980s, was being shown in private sessions during the immense Consumer Electronics Show here last week. Past attempts at similar technology have proved clunky and disappointing. In contrast, the latest crop of gesture-powered devices arrives with a refreshing surprise: they actually work.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Entertainment, Linux, News, Open Source.
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A new manual for Krita

2010-01-11T21:16:00+00:00

An application isn't complete without good documentation. Those fine folks at Linux Format docked a lot of points from Gimp when they reviewed their new release because the manual wasn't updated yet... Krita 1.6 had a pretty fine manual for a free software application, but given that Krita 2.2 is going to be so much better than 1.6, the manual should be ace, too. And almost nothing from the 1.6 manual is still usable, there have been so many changes.

We have to rewrite, and make it even better this time. There is no way I can do this on my and code, it's got to be a collaborative effort. And there should be video tutorials, as well, as part of the manual. So... Enter userbase.kde.org. It's the perfect central place for efforts of this kind. I've started an outline for a new Krita manual, a manual with more than just a description of every menu option and dialog, but one that focusses on concepts, getting things done.

Also: the first Last Week in krita of 2010 is out!

Daily Links for Monday, January 11, 2010

2010-01-11T12:00:36+00:00

Open Source

Novell lose[s] Open Source CTSO as Nat Friedman leaves
The H Open Source: News and Features

Nat Friedman, co-founder of Ximian and Chief Technology and Strategy Officer for Open Source at Novell has announced in a blog posting that he has quit. Friedman, who co-founded Ximinan with Miguel de Icaza in 1999, joined Novell in 2003 when the company acquired Ximian. Since then he has headed up Novell’s open source strategy

A Few Resources for Women in Open Source
ITworld / Esther Schindler

When I first started programming in high school at age 15 (on a mainframe), I was one of only two or three girls in the class of perhaps 20 students. At the time, I thought that was a pretty good ratio. God knows that I never lacked for a date. Ever since then, however, I’ve been doing my best to encourage more women to get into the field. Not because I believe that the computer industry arbitrarily needs to have a one-to-one ratio, but because I love computing so very much and I want to share that excitement. My enthusiasm extends to the open source community as well.

Games

LEGO Universe – colorful plastic’s answer to World of Warcraft – is the brainchild of Colorado-based NetDevil
Denver News

In this sprawling realm of bricks and minifigs, hundreds of thousands of players will get to explore moon bases and castles and many other subjects covered by LEGO toys over the years, taking on massing forces of chaos and destruction

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Games, News, Open Source.
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Here We Go Again: Video Standards War 2010

2010-01-10T06:54:04+00:00

Think of the words "standards war," and unless you're a standards wonk like m...oh, never mind...you're likely to think of the battle between the Betamax and VHS video tape formats. That's because videos are consumer products that just about everyone uses, and therefore the bloodshed in that standards war was not only shed in public view, but the some of the blood that was shed was shed by the public (i.e., those that bought video players supporting Betamax, the losing, but arguably superior, format). Fast forward (pun intended) to the present, and the trademarks "HD DVD and "Blu-ray" may ring a bell - and that's no coincidence.
...

Almost Spring, in my dreams

2010-01-09T14:57:03+00:00

Late yesterday afternoon I trudged from the car through the snow to a Home Depot to pick up a few things for a home project. After getting inside and shaking off the snow, I was met with a wonderful display of seeds for the garden.

Around here, we can’t plant anything outside until May, and it’s usually late May at that. However, after the problems last year with the tomato blight, I decided to start my own seeds for some vegetables for this year’s garden. Therefore at some point I was planning on getting those seeds.

It’s certainly economical to do so: a pack of tomato seeds yielding one to two dozen plants is less than $2. To jump to the punchline, I did buy some seeds. I got 2 varieties of hot peppers, two of sweet peppers, two of basil, and four of tomatoes.

I’m not going to put plants from all the seeds into the garden, but since I’m not planting corn this year (the raccoons got all of it), I have a lot of extra room. So I might do half a dozen of each of the tomato and pepper varieties and then a lot of basil, most of it to be used for pesto. I’ll also plant other vegetables like lettuce, peas, and beans, but I’ll run through there when I publish the post mortem on last year’s garden.

Note that while I bought these seeds on impulse, my final selection of plants to start will be developed over the next couple of months. In particular, I’ll be looking at some organic seed providers such as High Mowing Seeds, based in Hardwick, VT. This company was featured in a one hour Emeril Green special in early January, 2010.

I’ll need to start the seeds indoors 6 to 8 weeks before they must go outside, so that puts the date around April 1. I have some work to do before then on this project, primarily figuring out where I’ll put the seeds and how to set up a grow light. It’s all fun, and all helps the winter go by faster.

Also see: “Getting ready for Spring gardening in upstate NY” for suppliers of gardening supplies, plants, and seeds.

Daily Links for Friday, January 8, 2010

2010-01-08T21:00:46+00:00

Linux

Red Hat CEO On Recession, Virtualization, Ballmer
InformationWeek / Charles Babcock

Whitehurst said many Linux conversions have been from Unix in the past, but during the recession, “more and more conversions [come] from Windows users.” Red Hat Enterprise Linux now runs on 15% of the servers in the data center, he said. (Microsoft sees Windows Server on 70% of new servers in the data center.) Customers are coming to Linux “we say because of its high value. But it is open source and lower cost,” which has a distinct appeal in hard times, he noted.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Linux, News.
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Life with Linux: Another week of work

2010-01-08T18:53:41+00:00

I use my Lenovo T400 Thinkpad as a work laptop but also as an experimental machine on which I put and delete various Linux distributions and software. At various times I’ve had Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE on the computer, though most often Ubuntu, and that’s what is there now.

Because I always seem to be in the state of configuring and testing the machine, I don’t usually take it on the road with me, because I don’t think of it as stable. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but I haven’t always thoroughly made sure I put everything on it that I might need and then test it.

So after about a dozen of these cycles of install, configure, install something else, reconfigure, I’ve decided that I’m going to keep just one distro on it and live with it for a few months, both in my home office and on the road. The distro I’m using now is Ubuntu 9.10 and I’ll keep it for a while.

I’ve used the machine set up this way on and off since October, but since the beginning of the week it has been configured for work. Here are a few observations, especially with respect to my various work on the desktop in earlier installments.

I don’t really need an automatic wallpaper changer since I rarely see the screen background on the laptop.
For some reason I can’t get Ubuntu to connect to my Snow Leopard iMac printer, though at various times in the past it has worked. There should be a button that says “connect to you Mac printer” – it is still too hard.
I’m still getting the hang of using multiple workspaces under GNOME, and I think the Mac probably handles the notion more smoothly. I should use Ctrl-Alt-Tab or something to find my apps more quickly. Wish I could get all open apps to appear on all workpace lower panels. (A setting somewhere?)
Update and solution from Brian Warner: Right click on the double dotted line handle to the left of the minimized windows in the bottom panel and choose Preferences. Then select “Show windows for all workspaces”.
Generally, I’m feeling that there is more clutter than I would like when I have all my apps and a dozen Firefox tabs open. Time for a rethink. Is this just in contrast to the Mac or am I not working optimally on the given desktop?
Update: The Tree Style Tab Firefox addon provides nice functionality to put the tabs on the sides and automatically shrink the tab bar.

Also see: Life with Linux: The series

Daily Links for Thursday, January 7, 2010 – Afternoon Edition

2010-01-07T21:00:26+00:00

Linux

MSI Ships First Netbook Powered By SUSE Moblin From Novell
Novell, Inc.

Addressing the growing demand for lightweight, mobile netbook devices, MSI and Novell today announced the upcoming availability of SUSE® Moblin preloaded on the MSI U135 netbook. Following the recent release of Moblin(TM) version 2.1, this marks the first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to sell a fully-supported Intel® Atom processor-based netbook running Moblin-based technology to consumers.

The next generation of Linux notebooks arrives at CES
ComputerWorld / Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

The major computer vendors are once more embracing Linux as HP and Lenovo both announce models with desktop Linux pre-installed and rumor is there’s more to come.

How (and Why) to Partition Your Hard Drive – washingtonpost.com
The Washington Post / Patrick Miller, PC World

Finally, partitioning lets you try out other operating systems–like Linux, for example. Generally, two operating systems can’t coexist on the same volume without stepping on one another’s toes, so you won’t be able to dual-boot Linux or ease into Windows 7 if you’re on a single-volume system.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Linux, News, Open Source.
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Nexus One: A First Smartphone First Impression

2010-01-07T15:57:02+00:00

For the past couple of years, I’ve contemplated buying a smartphone, but managed to avoid it for various reasons. While I appreciate the attention to detail in Apple’s phone platform, for example, there are other aspects of it that are just deal-breakers for me. I’ve long been considering the Android platform, but no phone seemed to offer the right mix of performance, design, and so forth. And I’ve not been thrilled to get tied into long-term contracts, or pay $100/month for a service plan when I don’t use talk much, and don’t do texting at all.

That changed this week, however, when Google announced their Nexus One. I’m not going to offer some in-depth review, which you can find elsewhere, but instead some brief first impressions of a more-or-less first-time smartphone user. So …

My base for comparison for the “smart” component of the smartphone is the iTouch, which I primarily use for accessing my Google based mail, news feeds, and calendars. How does the Nexus One/Android compare?

What I Like, in no particular order:

That I could buy an unlocked phone and worry about the service on my own.
Nice buying experience: after clicking a few buttons, the phone was off and on my doorstep less than 24 hours later. I dropped in my existing SIM card for a really simple, dirt-cheap, service through my employer, and was ready to go (albeit without data access, except through wi-fi; will probably upgrade to one of the new T-Mobile even more plus plans sometime soon).
The hardware is small and sleek and elegant, the screen is gorgeous, and it’s fast.
Nice integration. The multi-tasking of Android appears to allow for a nice notification system. My phone is charging right now, for example, but I can occasionally see the trackball light up, which means something (email, twitter updates, calendar reminder) has come up. If I sign in, I can pull a notification panel down for a quick summary. If I tap something, it brings me to the item(s) in question.
The integration with Google service is, not surprisingly, really good.
The widgets are really nice. For example, the weather one is way beyond what Apple provides: both really useful, and also beautifully-designed.

What I don’t like so much:

It’s not as “unlocked” as it could and should be. While it’s great I can use my existing SIM card from a provider other than T-Mobile, it really sucks that I cannot get 3G data service on any other service. It’s both bad for customers and bad for the buying experience to ultimately have three or four different “Nexus One” products just to cater to the idiosyncrasies of each carrier. Come on Google: you need to do better here. For the Nexus Two, let’s see a phone that can work on ALL the major networks: both GSM and CDMA.
UI Navigation. Let’s compare reading news feeds. On my iTouch, it’s really quick to move among different categories and feed options: I can do so by tapping on items, and by using the on-screen arrow keys that pop-up to move back, up, down, etc. On the N1, those screen-based navigation helps don’t appear; instead, I need to use the awkward “back” hardware key, and jump back-and-forth. Makes me wonder: did the Google people do actual user studies on this sort of intensive navigation? I’m sure such a study would uncover some obvious design flaws.
More on navigation: really don’t like the way the hardware navigation keys work: I have to press harder than I want, and generally don’t see the point of all of them.
Some of the aesthetic-design is an obvious step-behind Apple’s. For example, compare Google’s Gmail app to Apple’s Email one. The fonts (actually, in general) are not that great, and they are not terribly-well visually integrated into the (off-white) background. The bottom-line is despite the awesome screen, the emails are not as readable. Also, see point above about navigation.
On email, why a separate “Gmail” app?
Multi-touch would be nice to have, but not exactly a deal-breaker for me that it doesn’t yet have it.

Overall, however, my complaints are mostly minor issues that can be improved (and hopefully someone at Google comes across this at some point), and am generally happy with the phone.

Update: there’s an obvious problem with first impressions, of course, which is that they’re sometimes based on incomplete information. In the case of the news reader navigation issue I note above, I realized that the app (NewsRob) actually does allow for hovering navigation; it’s just hidden by default. This largely solves the problem.

Daily Links for Thursday, January 7, 2010 – Morning Edition

2010-01-07T12:00:06+00:00

Open Source

Munich administration switches to OpenDocument Format
The H Open Source: News and Features

Also see my blog entry “Update on sharing documents”.

According to a 2009 development review that the deputy project leader Florian Schießl has posted on his blog, open source OpenDocument Format (ODF) is now the main document exchange standard, with PDF being used for non-editable files.

Games

Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python
Al Sweigart

“Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python” is a free e-Book that teaches you how to program in the Python programming language. Each chapter gives you the complete source code for a new game, and then teaches the programming concepts from the example.

“Invent with Python” was written to be understandable by kids as young as 10 to 12 years old, although it is great for anyone of any age who has never programmed before.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Games, News, Open Source.
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Checking broken links in WordPress blogs

2010-01-06T21:06:17+00:00

I just installed the Broken Link Checker plugin. It scans your blog entries and pages and gives you an nice report and way to fix any links that end up in the great web void rather than honest web pages.

Though I installed it for this, my current blog, I was mostly curious what it would say for my archived blog, which has over 3000 entries created over 5 1/2 years. I was nervous, in fact, because I was afraid that I would have to spend a lot of time tracking down and fixing links that were no longer valid.

The good news is that there are only 16 broken links. The bad news is that of the few I quickly checked, I can’t find web addresses that are valid and current. That is, the old content is either gone or is now so well hidden that I can’t locate it. This happens, of course, but is rather sad somehow. Some of the online articles were no longer there because they were from now defunct newspapers. A couple of MIA links were from major IT trades and, if I remember correctly, vanished after some company mergers.

Should you be thinking of moving your content, learn about “redirection,” the way to tell your site where to go when it gets a request for a page that has been moved. This can be done at several levels, from the Apache .htaccess file, to some HTML, PHP, or even via a WordPress plugin. There are other ways to do it as well, depending on how your site is built.

Think twice before casting your content, and your links, into the web void.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Blog and Website.
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CodePlex Foundation Reports on 100 Day Goals

2010-01-06T16:32:00+00:00

Earlier this week, I noted the fact that the 100 day mark for the CodePlex Foundation had passed (on December 19) without any comment from the Foundation on how they had fared against their aggressive goals for that time period, including the replacement of the founding, interim Board of Directors, with a permanent board.

Working at Hyves?

2010-01-06T10:57:00+00:00

About a year and a half ago I started working at Hyves. Hyves is the largest social networking website in the Netherlands -- comparable to facebook, but much more popular in the Netherlands. My task was to build a Qt-based desktop application for Hyves. There are two components: chat and photo uploading. Most of it is free software, so this link goes to the source download!

Together with Arend (who used to work on Krdc) and Girish and Roopesh we have built a really cool application. It's a combination of Qt and Javascript running inside webkit, xmpp, photo manipulation using filters and svg, geotagging -- lots and lots of cool stuff. Windows, Linux, OSX, source releases... Working on the Hyves Desktop has taught me a lot of new techniques.

But it's time for me to move on: KO GmbH is getting busy, and my first love has always been KOffice and Krita.

And that leaves a gap in the Desktop team.

So, if you are interested in living in Amsterdam, working with smart people who get things done, on a Qt app that's mostly free software -- mail me!. I've always found Hyves a very good employer, and there is still plenty of exciting work to be done on the desktop application.

Krita Hackathon

2010-01-05T20:08:00+00:00

So today I booked two bed&breakfasts to handle the overflow of Krita hackers for the coming Krita sprint last weekend of February. We'll be seven, maybe eight developers and Peter Sikking. A weekend like this is usually more discussion, getting together and building a shared vision than hacking, but Cyrille, Sven and Lukas will stay on following the actual sprint for a whole week of what I suspect will be very intensive hacking.

Of course, an occasion like this should be marked by having its own t-shirt. The last dedicated Krita sprint was in 2005, and back then we had t-shirts designed by Nuno:

I gave the last surviving shirt to Cyrille during the Oslo KOffice sprint.

So... Is there anyone who wants to set the vestimentary tone for the 2010 sprint?

Daily Links for Tuesday, January 5, 2010

2010-01-05T16:00:16+00:00

News

Research Firm Gartner Acquires Burton Group For $56M
The Wall Street Journal Online

Gartner made the purchase, expected to expand its product and service offerings and increase IT research-market opportunities, Dec. 30. Burton, an IT research and advisory firm that has 41 research analysts and 40 sales and client-service employees, comes with projected 2009 revenue of $30 million.

10 IT Companies to Watch in 2010 | The Virtual Circle
The Virtual Circle / Robin Bloor

Note inclusion of IBM Client for Smart Work partner VirtualBridges.

As has become my annual habit, I’m providing a list of 10 companies, most of them relatively small, that I think will be worth watching this year.

Open Source

Exclusive: VMware Likely to Buy Zimbra From Yahoo
BoomTown/All Things Digital / Kara Swisher

Yahoo is close to selling its Zimbra unit to VMware, according to several sources close to the situation. Sources said the deal could be announced soon, but the price for the open-source email unit was still unclear. One source noted that the reason that VMware was interested in nabbing Zimbra was that its execs want to expand “up the stack” from the software company’s position in virtualization. And Yahoo’s reasoning? The Internet giant has been targeting assets for “de-acquisition” that are not central to the strategies of its new management.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: News, Open Source.
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Reminder: new blog and feed locations

2010-01-04T17:01:34+00:00

Effective January 1, 2010, my blog is split into current and archived versions.

Current blog

Please update your bookmarks and feed subscriptions as follows:

The address of the current blog is http://www.sutor.com/c/.

The link to the blog feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/BobSutor.

The blog comments feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/CommentsForBobSutor.

Archived blog

The address of the archived blog is http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
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Daily Links for Monday, January 2, 2010

2010-01-04T17:00:53+00:00

Open Source

Google Chrome passes Safari, releases ‘Similar Pages’ extension – Computerworld Blogs
ComputerWorld / Seth H. Weintraub

Well, we didn’t have to wait long into 2010 to find that Google’s Chrome Browser would surpass Apple’s Safari. Today, NetApplications released the news that Chrome gained .7 of a percentage point to get to 4.63% of the browser market. The largest month over month gain in Chrome’s history was attributed to the release of beta versions for both Mac and Linux (which isn’t supported by Safari) in December.

Entertainment

Inventing the plants of ‘Avatar’
Los Angeles Times / Lori Kozlowski

James Cameron’s science-fiction blockbuster “Avatar” takes place in 2154 on the lush moon Pandora. To help make the set believable, Jodie Holt, chairwoman of the department of botany and plant sciences at UC Riverside, was approached to consult on the film’s plant life, as well as how a botanist would study such flora.

‘Avatar’ worldwide total hits $1 billion as foreign grosses explode
Los Angeles Times

“Avatar” this weekend became the fifth movie in history to bring in more than $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales and the fastest by far to do so, breaking the nine-figure barrier less than three weeks after it debuted.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Entertainment, News, Open Source, Science.
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Site statistics through December 31, 2009

2010-01-04T12:00:27+00:00

Here are the rolling three month sutor.com site stats from Google Analytics, plus 12 month previous stats. Percentages are calculated with respect to total numbers of hits. Statistics are computed from the first to the last days of the months listed. The up and down arrows compare the latest month listed with the percentages 12 months earlier, not the previous month.

Net Analysis:

Winners: Apple, Linux, Macintosh, Firefox, Chrome
Losers: Microsoft, Internet Explorer, Windows, Opera

	December, 2008	October, 2009	November, 2009	December, 2009
Browser
Firefox	47.24%	56.45%	57.25%	↑ 55.85%
Internet Explorer	36.31%	21.91%	22.89%	↓ 23.35%
Safari	7.72%	7.86%	7.78%	↑ 7.99%
Chrome	3.31%	6.87%	6.85%	↑ 7.74%
Mozilla	1.20%	2.33%	1.49%	↑ 2.69%
Opera	3.31%	3.74%	2.84%	↓ 1.28%
Operating System
Windows	74.57%	61.83%	61.82%	↓ 64.68%
Linux	10.81%	21.17%	21.95%	↑ 17.59%
Macintosh	13.83%	16.14%	15.44%	↑ 16.74%
iPhone	0.25%	0.48%	0.34%	↑ 0.51%
Android	0.01%	0.04%	0.07%	↑ 0.11%
Browser / OS
Firefox / Windows	31.26%	30.76%	30.83%	↑ 33.98%
Internet Explorer / Windows	36.31%	21.88%	22.89%	↓ 23.34%
Firefox / Linux	9.25%	17.03%	18.19%	↑ 13.00%
Firefox / Macintosh	6.51%	8.60%	8.18%	↑ 8.83%
Safari / Macintosh	6.88%	7.02%	6.92%	↑ 7.02%
Chrome / Windows	3.31%	5.64%	5.61%	↑ 5.55%
Mozilla / Linux	0.95%	2.18%	1.35%	↑ 2.49%
Chrome / Linux	0.00%	1.07%	1.07%	↑ 1.62%
Opera / Windows	2.57%	2.93%	1.85%	↓ 0.97%
Chrome / Macintosh	0.00%	0.15%	0.16%	↑ 0.57%
Opera / Linux	0.51%	0.56%	0.92%	↓ 0.22%
Safari / iPhone	0.24%	0.39%	0.24%	↑0.35%

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
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Getting ready for Spring gardening in upstate NY

2010-01-03T13:00:45+00:00

Ok, it’s after New Year’s so I can officially start thinking about gardening again in about three months. I live in the northwest corner of New York State in the USA, so that very much affects what plants I can and can’t use. I’m in gardening zone 5B, which means that the lowest temperatures we can usually expect during winter are from -15 F to -10 F, or -26.1 C to -23.4 C.

Here are some gardening resources that I’ll be looking at in planning what I’ll be planting this year:

“High Mowing Organic Seeds is an independently-owned, farm-based seed company dedicated to supporting sustainable agriculture and providing farmers and gardeners with the highest quality certified organic seed.” High Mowing is based in Hardwick, VT, and was featured in a one hour Emeril Green special.
Burpee’s Seeds: More seeds than you can imagine, but may not be local to your area. Where I live, these are often available at a great discount toward the end of winter at Wegmans supermarkets.
White Flower Farms: Great selection of plants, especially perennials and bulbs. I’ve bought their naturalizing collection of narcissus several times through the years.
Park Seed Co.: Another company with a huge selection of both seeds and seed starting apparatus. Same caveat as above about seeds perhaps not being local to your area.
Musser Forests: Great source of seedling and transplants for trees and shrubs. Located in Pennsylvania. I’m thinking of using them to start a small stand of future Christmas trees for our family.
Garden’s Alive!: As they say, “Environmentally Responsible Gardening Products that Work”. Good for supplies for organic gardening.
Miller Nurseries: A big selection of fruit trees, as well as raspberries and asparagus plants.

If you have favorite sources of plants and gardening supplies, please append a comment with the details.

Last Year in Krita: 2009

2010-01-03T12:52:00+00:00

I missed the last two edition of Last Week in Krita, but my 2009 retrospective is up on krita.org. Summary: it's been a great year, and 2010 promises to be even better! But better read the whole thing...

The great website reorganization of 2010

2010-01-02T17:50:53+00:00

Well, I did it. Over the end of December, 2009, holiday break I took about 15 hours to do what I considered a much needed website reorganization.

Here are the highlights:

Modified my WordPress theme to have printing CSS support and a two column full page PHP template.
Split the website into two WordPress installations, one for the older, archived blog material and one for the current blog.
Moved all pages that were in Drupal into the new WordPress installation and set up .htaccess redirects for all the old Drupal pages. While Drupal is still present, all access attempts to pages should go to the new WordPress pages. In a few months I’ll delete the Drupal installation as I have no further plans for it.
Started moving auxiliary files like images and Mint into more standardized locations higher up in the site hierarchy. The rest of the work on this is lower priority and will be done as time permits over the next few months.
Started cleaning up the archived blog and adding some links to the current blog. The widgets used in the new and archived blog are similar, but the latter is simpler and encourages people to go to the new blog. I’ve greatly extended the time that entries in the archived blog are cached.
Aside: I find it really annoying to find errors in old blog entries. I wish someone had mentioned them if they had seen them.

I’ve talked elsewhere about some of my frustrations with using both WordPress and Drupal on this site. It was a worthy experiment to learn both technologies but, in the end, I was able to make WordPress do everything I wanted, with a few caveats (see below).

Why did I do this? I found …

… it untenable to have two content management systems with two similar but different themes. Now I can use WordPress and the same theme for both installations, any employ WordPress plugins. I may use different plugins, but at least they have the same technology base.
… that I was spending more time fiddling with my CMSs (content management systems) and not enough time creating new content, blog or otherwise.
… the size of the older WordPress installation (over 3000 entries and 3000) comments was making it excruciatingly slow to work with, even with caching.

What else does WordPress need to be useful for page-based content management?

Built-in support for wide pages for non-blog content in themes.
Built-in CSS support for printing (and eventually mobile styles) in themes.
Page hierarchy navigation at least as good as but preferably much better than what Drupal has.
Anything else that I’ve complained about before. (grin)

Finally some words of advice to the Drupal community: You really need to provide exemplary import of WordPress blogs if you want to move more people to your platform, no matter how many others are adopting it (e.g., the White House). You shouldn’t say it’s non-core, you shouldn’t say “somebody in the community will do it if they want to,” you need to make it easy, complete, and elegant. I know there are some import modules out there, but unless you can handle things like intra-blog links, automatic category and tag taxonomy creation, and generated redirects from the WordPress structure to the new Drupal structure, you won’t get people to move sizable blogs over.

That said, if I were starting from scratch I would certainly consider using Drupal, but WordPress is not only an excellent blogging platform, it is becoming a very capable CMS. It works for me.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Blog and Website.
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Open Source

Seeking Profit in Open-Source Search Software
The New York Times / Ashlee Vance

In the case of Lucid, the company hopes to profit from an open-source software package called Lucene.

When paired with some other software (another open-source package called Solr), Lucene turns into the basis of a pretty powerful and fast corporate search system — the kind of thing companies use to trawl through and organize their internal data.

Microsoft looks to fight OpenOffice
seattlepi.com / Nick Eaton

We know Microsoft is worried about Google Docs and is fighting against its expansion. Google Docs threatens one of Microsoft’s biggest cash cows– Office — and is, unlike Office, free for consumers.

Linux

2009’s Five Most Popular & Important Linux Stories
ComputerWorld / Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Before jumping into this, let me say that’s what popular isn’t the same thing as what’s important. So, I’m giving you a twofer list. The first is the most popular of my stories, and then there are the stories, which I think are the most important for Linux’s future.

Entertainment

Avatar
Chicago Sun Times / Roger Ebert

Watching “Avatar,” I felt sort of the same as when I saw “Star Wars” in 1977. That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. James Cameron’s film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his “Titanic” was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film. There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2010.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Entertainment, Linux, News, Open Source.
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Monthly disclaimer

2010-01-01T04:55:17+00:00

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent my employer’s positions, strategies or opinions, especially if they are about the guitar, fishing, gardening, carpentry, house painting, and musical tastes.

Blog entries before 2010 are in my Archived Blog.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2009.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, unless otherwise specified.
Posted under: Blog and Website.
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New locations for Bob Sutor’s blog

2009-12-31T23:43:01+00:00

I’ve been extensively reorganizing my website and effective January 1, 2010, my blog will be split into current and archived versions.

Current blog

Please update your bookmarks and feed subscriptions as follows:

The address of the current blog is http://www.sutor.com/c/.

The link to the blog feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/BobSutor.

The blog comments feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/CommentsForBobSutor.

Archived blog

The address of the archived blog is http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/.

New Hampshire snowscapes, 2009

2009-12-31T19:00:37+00:00

I’ve added some new photos of New Hampshire snowscapes to my collection of widescreen wallpapers and backgrounds. Click on the thumbnails below to see the full size images.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2009.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Posted under: Travel.
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U.S. Postage Stamps of 1959: A View from 50 Years Later

2009-12-30T16:45:24+00:00

What We Commemorate

Commemorative stamps memorialize recently-deceased presidents, mark important anniversaries, acknowledge national institutions, boast of engineering, scientific and artistic achievements and celebrate victory in war and in peace. Historically, U.S. stamps have portrayed the country as we like to imagine it is, or was.

If history is written by the victors, then that portion of history represented on our stamps is written by the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC). As we look at the commemorative issues of 1959, we might ask three questions:

What is the ostensible subject of the stamp, the real historical event?
What was notable about the subject matter in 1959? What recommended this for commemoration? How did the ethos of 1959 color the portrayal of the subject?
How is the subject viewed today? Is it of enduring interest? For example, was it widely celebrated in 2009?

The Lincoln Sesquicentennial

The sesquicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln in 1959 was celebrated by a redesign of the Lincoln Cent (retiring the “wheat back” and introducing the “Lincoln Memorial” reverse) and with a series of four commemorative stamps. The first stamp (actually issued in 1958) marked the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. I covered that stamp last year with the other 1958 stamp issues.

The Final Report of the Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission gives many details of these stamps and the ceremony around their release:

The second stamp in the Lincoln Commemorative series was of 1-cent denomination and the first-day issuance was held at Hodgenville, Ky., on February 12, 1959. Hodgenville was chosen as the site since it is the nearest post office to Lincoln’s birthplace. A commemorative event had already taken place here when on December 27, 1958, Commission Chairman Cooper, Senator Thruston B. Morton, and Representative Frank Chelf, all of Kentucky, formally presented to Carl Howell, president of the Hodgenville Chamber of Commerce, the Post Office Department’s cancellation die hub, especially prepared for commemorative use at the Hodgenville Post Office during Lincoln Year. The die was inscribed : “Lincoln’s Birthplace, Sesquicentennial, 1809- 1959″

Mr. Howell turned the die over to Postmaster Russell Parker, who began using it on January 1, 1959, to cancel all mail issuing from the Hodgenville Post Office. At this ceremony, also attended by Mr. George M. Moore, executive assistant to the Postmaster General, announcement was made of the first-day issue of the new 1-cent Lincoln stamp. This second stamp in the commemorative series was arranged vertically, printed in green and measured 0.84 by 1.44 inches in size. It bore the head of Lincoln from the famous portrait by George Peter Alexander Healy. After Lincoln’s election to the Presidency in 1860, he sat for a portrait by this famous American artist. This portrait, known as the “Beardless Lincoln,” is owned by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, and was used for the design of the stamp. Initial quantity issued: 90 million.

If you look at the original Healy portrait you will notice that Ervine Metzl’s stamp design departs just slightly from a literal copy. The features are the same, but the pose has been adjusted with a slight twist to the neck and tilt to the head. Compare the angle of the shoulders in the original compared to Metzl’s pose. Posing, like fashion, changes over time.

The third stamp in the commemorative series was of 3-cent denomination, arranged vertically, the same 0.84 by 1.44 inches in size, and maroon in color. It featured the sculptured head of Lincoln by Gutzon Borglum which was completed in 1906 in marble and is now in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. The first-day sale ceremony was held at the Cooper Union in New York on February 27, 1959, as a prelude to Cooper Union’s own centennial year and marked the 99th anniversary of Lincoln’s address there. It was on February 27, 1860, that Lincoln, speaking in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union, delivered what has come to be known as his famous “right makes might” speech. As he concluded his address, the campaigner said :

‘Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.’

As a memento of this first-day-issue ceremony, the printed program carried a picture of Lincoln delivering his Cooper Union Address on the front cover and the first-day cancellation on the inside. The Honorable Robert F. Wagner, mayor of New York City, gave greetings; Postmaster General Summerfield delivered the address; and Dr. Edwin S. Burdell, president of the Cooper Union, responded. Initial quantity of stamps issued was 90 million. There were 1,576,866 stamps sold in New York City on this first day of issue and 437,737 covers canceled.

Compare the stamp design with a photo of the Capitol’s Borglum Lincoln bust. The name Gutzon Borglum may be more familiar to you as the sculptor of Mount Rushmore.

The fourth and final stamp in the Sesquicentennial series was placed on first-day sale at a special ceremony on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., May 30, 1959. This date also marked the anniversary of the completion of the Lincoln Memorial, the most popular shrine in the United States. The stamp, printed in blue, arranged horizontally and measuring 0.84 by 1.44 inches, featured a drawing by Fritz Busse of the head of Lincoln in the Memorial sculpted by Daniel Chester French.

Cosponsored by the Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission and the Post Office Department, the stamp dedication ceremony drew an audience of several hundred persons, including diplomats. Cabinet officers, Members of Congress, Lincoln enthusiasts, and scores of visitors to the Nation’s Capital. Following the Presentation of Colors by the Joint Services Color Guard and an invocation by Maj. Gen. Frank A. Tobey, Chief of Chaplains, U.S. Army, the audience heard a stirring eulogy to Mr. Lincoln by John B. Fisher, a member of the Commission’s Executive Committee. Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton- delivered an address of welcome, Deputy Postmaster General Edson O. Sessions gave the dedication address, and Mrs. Katharine McCook Knox, an honorary member of the Commission, presented to the Post Office Department a reproduction of the Healy portrait of Lincoln on which the i-cent stamp in the series is based. L. Rohe Walter, special assistant to the Postmaster General, presided.

Oregon Statehood Centennial

The Oregon Statehood issue, Scott #1124, was designed by illustrator Robert Hallock. The wagon is unhorsed, signifying that the travelers have arrived at their destination, perhaps having traveled along the famed Oregon Trail. The star represents statehood. You can see Mt. Hood on the right.

Ten Years of NATO

Only 10 years? This seems like an unsubstantial achievement. Or was this beating expectations? Keep in mind the world of 1959: Castro in charge in Cuba, the first American dies in Vietnam, the Space Race heating up, and de Gaulle withdrawing France from NATO in 1959, preferring to develop their own force de frappe deterrent. So I’m not sure what exactly we were celebrating.

The design here is by Stevan Dohanos, a social realist illustrator known for his Saturday Evening Post covers.

Arctic Explorations

This design by George Samerjan marks two events: the 50th anniversary of Admiral Peary reaching the North Pole, and the 1959 sub-polar transit (Operation Sunshine) of the nuclear submarine “Nautilus”.

(Btw, it is well worth a trip to Groton, Connecticut to visit the Submarine Force Museum. If you are not claustrophobic you can take a self-guided tour of the Nautilus.)

World Peace through World Trade

There is an IBM connection on this one. Former IBM president — and a giant of industry and commerce — Thomas J. Watson, Sr., coined this phrase in an address to the International Chamber of Commerce in 1937. It then became an IBM advertising slogan which was featured for many years on a 30-foot sign on the side of 590 Madison Ave in NYC.

It is interesting that the slogan was pre-war, though the stamp is post-war. Certainly the optimism of world peace in 1937 was not very prescient. But post-war there was a string of successes including Bretton Woods (1944), GATT (1947) and the Marshall Plan (1948). For a generation that saw two world wars and world-wide depression, there was a lot to be optimistic about in 1959.

The design by Robert Baker, features a globe and laurel.

Centennial of the Comstock Lode

Silver was discovered in Utah Territory (now Nevada) in 1859 on the slopes of Mt. Davison. The commemorative stamp, designed by Robert L. Miller and W.K. Schrage is based on an old print which I have not been able to identify.

Of course, this is a romanticized view of the original event, which was soaked in blood and whiskey. No mention is made of the most significant social result of the silver rush, namely the instability introduced into the US currency system, then based on gold and silver, by the rapid increase in the silver supply. Left uncorrected this would have lead to inflation, which was favored by those in debt. This became the largest political issue of the day, culminating in the Coinage Act of 1873 (which de-monetized silver) and the 1896 presidential campaign of the populist William Jennings Bryan and his renowned “Cross of Gold” speech:

If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

Opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway

The St. Lawrence Seaway was opened in 1959, a joint U.S.-Canadian venture that connected the Great Lakes to the sea, an event considered momentous enough to warrant a contemporary stamp issue. The design of the stamp was also a collaborative venture, by Arnold Copeland, Ervine Metzl, William H. Buckley and Gerald Trottier. There was a corresponding Canadian stamp featuring the same design which was issued simultaneously.

The 49-Star Flag

Alaska joined the Union as the 49th state on January 3rd, 1959. The design of the Union (that portion of the flag which has the stars) was updated to include the 49th star, but this design was in use only for a short period of time, since Hawaii became the 50th state later that year. So the 49-star flag was only officially used from July 4, 1959 to July 3, 1960. It must have been good business for flag makers that year.

So what happens if a new state is added in the future, say Washington, DC, or Puerto Rico? USC Title 4, Chapter 1, § 2 covers this:

On the admission of a new State into the Union one star shall be added to the union of the flag; and such addition shall take effect on the fourth day of July then next succeeding such admission.

What about the design? Where exactly do you put a 51st or 52nd star? The US Army’s Department of Heraldry has that covered, with contigency designs for 51-56 stars. Just in case.

Soil Conservation

Now here’s a topic you don’t hear a lot about these days. Errosion. Soil conservation. Contour plowing. We don’t hear much about it these days, mainly because the movement, lead by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Soil Conservation Service after the 1930’s “Dust Bowl”, was successful. By plowing fields parallel to the natural contours of the land, water run-off was reduced, preventing topsoil errosion, improving the efficiency of irrigation and increasing crop yields.

Centennial of Drake’s Oil Well

When you think of oil wells, you typically don’t think of Pennsylvania. But that is where a lot of the early work happened, including the first US oil refinery (Pittsburgh) and Colonel Edwin L. Drake’s early oil well (some claim it to be the first in the U.S.) in Titusville. Of course, there were no automobiles in 1859. Coal was king. So what kind of “petroleum” industry was there? Kerosene, mainly for lamps, as a replacement for whale oil.

American Dental Association Centennial

The American Dental Association resulted from a merger of several smaller associations at a convention in Niagra Falls in 1859. The Association’s 1959 centennial celebrations in New York City made the headlines due to an unplanned intersection with cold war politics. The Association had booked the Waldorf Astoria for their celebrations, but the day before their event, they received a call from the City asking if they would relinquish that space so the City could hold a luncheon in honor of the visiting Soviet Premier Khrushchev. The Association refused to give up their space, a stance warmly supported by Vice-President Nixon, who was a featured speaker at their event. Probably a wise choice. Remember, this was a time when many thought that fluoridation of water was a communist conspiracy. If the ADA had yielded publicly before Khrushchev it would have given the lunatic fringe more fodder.

Daily Links for Wednesday, December 30, 2009

2009-12-30T14:46:14+00:00

Open Source

Oracle gives open source a patent pass
Computer Business Review

Oracle has vowed not to assert its patents against open source projects such as the Linux operating system kernel and the MySQL and PosgreSQL databases by entering into a licensing agreement with the Open Invention Network.

Why does Microsoft fear OpenOffice.org?
ComputerWorld / Preston Gralla

It’s well-known that Microsoft worries that Google Docs may eat into the profits of the Microsoft Office cash cow. But Microsoft also appears to be extremely worried that an unlikely source may be a major threat as well — OpenOffice.org. At least that’s what a recent job posting at Microsoft shows. And market share numbers back it up.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2009.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
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All Quiet on the CodePlex Front as 100 Day Mark Passes

2009-12-30T13:08:01+00:00

As you may recall, Microsoft announced back on September 10 that it had launched a new foundation "as a forum in which open source communities and the software development community can come together with the shared goal of increasing participation in open source community projects." It called it's new non-profit organization the CodePlex Foundation, echoing the name of a commercial site, called

Some favorite 2009 blog entries on open source, standards, and cloud computing

2009-12-29T20:14:11+00:00

I’ve been doing some year-end maintenance on the blog and in doing so put together the following list of blog entries that are among my favorites on the topics of open source, standards, and cloud computing. I could have also done a similar list for gardening and carpentry, but I restrained myself …

“Topics on open source for college classes”, December 13, 2009.
“Starting an open source business: preliminary thoughts”, November 2, 2009.
“What does a cloud computing user want?”, October 25, 2009.
“Who is the user for cloud computing?”, October 24, 2009.
“Advancing a culture of IT openness”, June 18, 2009.
“So you want to be an open source contributor?”, May 4, 2009.
“Standards leader job responsibilities”, April 13, 2009.
“When you choose your clouds, don’t make foggy choices”, March 30, 2009.
“Some notes on cloud computing and standards”, January 27, 2009.
“Open source and the lone developer”, January 15, 2009.
“Managing open source adoption in your IT organization”, January 6, 2009.
“Hunches and predictions for open source in 2009”, January 1, 2009.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2009.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Posted under: Cloud, Open Source, Standards.
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Cross-compile Qt4 app for Windows on Fedora 11

2009-12-29T18:17:30+00:00

I made school project in Qt4.5.3 and my teacher does not use Linux so I decided to try to cross-compile the project for her from Fedora 11. Here are the steps. Let’s hope it is useful for you too.

First you have to install mingw compiler, so I did something crazy like:

yum install mingw32*

That grabs everything related to mingw (installs Qt4 libs, compiler, qt-qmake specs files) on Fedora 11. Many unrelated libs are installed too (Gtk, …) – you have been warned.

Then you create Qt4 project file if you don’t have one already

qmake-qt4 -project

Pass the qmake specification:

qmake-qt4 -spec fedora-win32-cross

Run this so that QtGui is found

QMAKESPEC=fedora-win32-cross qmake-qt4 QT_LIBINFIX=4

Compile!

make

Then I found exe file in release/ directory. I wanted to distribute it so I needed to distribute some dlls too. To find out I run

i686-pc-mingw32-objdump -p prog.exe | grep dll

It lists all used dlls.I copied them from Fedora box to the same folder as the binary and I was done!

I used locate to find them (found in /usr/i686-pc-mingw32/sys-root/mingw/bin/). QtCore4.dll, QtGui4.dll and libgcc_s_sjlj-1.dll was needed for me.
I did not copied KERNEL32.dll, msvcrt.dll etc. Windows users usually have those files.

Then it worked for me. The app looked bad but worked as supposed to. In Wine it had some bug, but it worked on Windows XP.

Thanks for help to the fedora-mingw team at #fedora-mingw on freenode IRC
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW/Tips – related wiki page

Daily Links for Tuesday, December 29, 2009

2009-12-29T15:53:30+00:00

Open Source

Is OpenOffice.org a Threat? Microsoft Thinks So
ComputerworldUK / Glyn Moody

This confirms what many of us have been warning about for some time: that Microsoft’s new-found eagerness to “engage” with open source has nothing to do with a real desire to reach a pacific accommodation with free software, but is simply a way for it to fight against it from close up, and armed with inside knowledge.

More than ever, saving is in vogue
Baltimore Sun / Gregory Karp

Don’t forget Lotus Symphony as well.

Also popular was a column on free software. Best advice? Use free antivirus programs, such as Avira AntiVir Antivirus Personal (free-av.com) and AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition (free.avg.com). And try the OpenOffice.org, instead of paying for Microsoft Office.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2009.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Posted under: News, Open Source.
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Finishing up 2009

2009-12-28T15:55:44+00:00

There’s not been much action here in my personal blogosphere in the last few weeks since December has been exceptionally busy. I had two domestic business trips plus a week in Tunisia in North Africa, then followed by the holidays. Basically, it’s been run, run, run, but now I’m trying to sit, sit, sit, at least until the beginning of January.

Once I went on break from work, I turned my attention to renovating our kids’ bathroom. This wasn’t a major renovation, but it was more than redecoration. This bathroom has a skylight, and through the years some of the plaster or joint compound near the corners of the shaft to the roof needed repair. I’m not sure if it was water damage from the shower or a leaky roof that caused the problem, but since we had the roof replaced last summer, I decided that it was time to fix the ceiling.

With that done, I painted the ceiling with a white semi-gloss paint and then did the door and beadboard woodwork in a high gloss white. I don’t think flat paint works well in bathrooms because of the moisture. Some sort of gloss is always appropriate for woodwork and I think the semi-gloss on the ceiling gives extra protection.

The walls had been wallpapered, but I think this is also a problem in small bathrooms with a shower. I decided that paint would be best but our family quandary was the choice of color. There are pink accent tiles in the walls and floor, and they were not going anywhere. Since this bathroom is used primarily by my son, I wanted to reduce the pinkness, and I declined his suggestion that I rip out the pink tiles. We briefly considered some shade of green, but then moved to blue. I ended up getting a deep, slightly gray blue called Celestial Blue by Olympic Paints. I used a satin finish, though semi-gloss would have worked here as well.

After the paint, it was time to improve the fixtures. The bathroom had one 24″ towel rod on the wall, so I replaced that with a double rod and added one to the door as well (two kids = a lot of towels). The medicine cabinet is quite old (as in over a hundred years) and I wanted to keep that, so I painted it with the high gloss white and put a new chrome knob on it to match the other fixtures.

Plumbing-wise, I replaced the separate hot and cold faucets with a single bridge model. This fits into the 12″ faucet spacing but has a horizontal pipe that mixes hot and cold, with a centered spigot. It looks traditional but has modern conveniences.

I have a few other odds and ends to finish up before New Year’s Day, both in this project and otherwise. Here’s hoping that everything gets done and that we can all start 2010 with new projects, fresh ideas, and enough energy to get them all accomplished!

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2009.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
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Daily Links for Wednesday, December 24, 2009

2009-12-24T17:44:57+00:00

Open Source

Red Hat Revenues Up 18 Percent in Q3
eWeek / Darryl K. Taft

Red Hat reported financial results for its fiscal year 2010 third quarter, showing revenues up 18 percent.

For its third quarter ended November 30, 2009, Red Hat reported revenues of $194.3 million, up 18 percent over the same period a year ago and beating expectations. Meanwhile, the open source software company reported that subscription revenue for the quarter was $164.4 million, up 21 percent from last year.

Novell stacks Linux and Mono for mainframes
The Register / Timothy Prickett Morgan

Novell doesn’t just want mainframe shops to put SLES 11 on their boxes and run Linux workloads, it wants them to take the commercially supported Mono clone of the .NET runtime environment and use that to move Windows workloads over to mainframe boxes. So Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Consolidation Suite (SLECS) bundles roll Linux and Mono software together and provide a single support package for the stack.

openSUSE News
Linux for Education Updated / Joe Brockmeier

The openSUSE Education team is proud to announce the availability of the updated Li-f-e hybrid ISO. Unlike the official openSUSE release, the Edu project’s Li-f-e flavor will get updated almost on a monthly basis. These minor releases will contain all the official openSUSE 11.2 updates, some important package version updates and may be addition of new features too. With these gradual improvements we are hoping to make one of the best Education OS even better.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2009.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Posted under: Education, News, Open Source.
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David and Goliath II: i4i Wins (Again) over Microsoft

2009-12-23T12:51:22+00:00

Yesterday a very small company won a very big victory against a very large software vendor. The small company is i4i, a Canadian company that claimed that the large company had not infringed its patent accidentally, but knowingly and willfully, after engaging in discussions relating to the very same technology in question. For the small company, the functionality in question represented its main product, so when the big company bundled the same technology for free in its own product, i4i's business was gutted. If you've been following the story already, you know that the big company is Microsoft.

Daily Links for Monday, December 22, 2009

2009-12-22T04:57:29+00:00

Open Source

A Concise Introduction to Free and Open Source Software
Consortiuminfo.org Consortium Standards Journal — August – September 2009 / Andrew Updegrove

Abstract: In the early days of information technology (IT), computers were delivered with operating systems and basic application software already installed, without additional cost, and in editable (source code) form. But as software emerged as a stand-alone product, the independent software vendors (ISVs) that were launched to take advantage of this commercial opportunity no longer delivered source code, in order to prevent competitors from gaining access to their trade secrets. The practice also had the (intended) result that computer users became dependent on their ISVs for support and upgrades. Due to the increasingly substantial investments computer users made in application software, they also became “locked in” to their hardware and software vendors’ products, because of the high cost of abandoning, or reconfiguring, their existing application software to run on the proprietary operating system of a new vendor. In response, a movement in support of “free software” (i.e., programs accompanied both by source code as well as the legal right to modify, share and distribute that code) emerged in the mid 1980s. The early proponents of free software regarded the right to share source code as an essential freedom, but a later faction focused only on the practical advantages of freely sharable code, which they called “open source.” Concurrently, the Internet enabled a highly distributed model of software development to become pervasive, based upon voluntary code contributions and globally collaborative efforts. The combined force of these developments resulted in the rapid proliferation of “free and open source software” (FOSS) development projects that have created many “best of breed” operating system and application software products, such that the economic importance of FOSS has now become very substantial. In this article, I trace the origins and theories of the free software and open source movements, the complicated legal implications of FOSS development and use, and the supporting infrastructural ecosystem that has grown up to support this increasingly vital component of our modern, IT based society.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2009.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
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Lake effect night snow in low rez

2009-12-22T04:48:30+00:00

Photo of Lake Ontario lake effect snow on a cold December evening, Nazareth College, Pittsford, NY.

Spray improvements

2009-12-21T14:08:48+00:00

I spent a lot of time working on spray brush because it is really fun to improve it. After some time developing it I heard from enki, our great artist who is available for feedback, that he was able to do something with spray in a few seconds in a comparison doing the same thing with image hoses in GIMP. Great, I’m reaching my goal.

Last time I blogged about spray, it wrote about adding support for spraying bitmaps. Since then I have added more control to rotation of the particles which are sprayed from spray. The particle’s rotation follows the mouse position, can be rotated by random or by constant angle. And even you can mix it, so you can rotate partially random and partially constant and partially by following the mouse position. Almost every particle type (ellipse, rectangle, image) supports this expect pixel particles. It will be fixed by moving the pixel particle type to a different user interface so that the user is not confused.

From the UI point of view there is a “keep aspect” button in the particle type setting dialog. When you change the width of the brush, the height is locked and changed according the aspect. Also the proportional setting has been merged into less UI components to make the dialog nicer.

The spraying area of spray has been improved. So far you were able to spray particles in circle and you were allowed to change the distribution of the particles to gauss distribution. Gauss distribution is nice, because it behaves somehow “naturally”. In spray more particles are randomly distributed around the center of the spraying area with this distribution. Common ANSI C command rand() distributes the numbers uniformly so every particle position should be distributed with the same probability. This is used when you don’t check gauss distribution in the spray UI.

Now I made it possible to spray in ellipsoid shape. And this brings new opportunities — I can rotate the area. On this picture you can see that I rotated the ellipsoid distribution of circle particles in the “sun”. I used the circle tool, dabs of spray has been rotated. Then on the cloud you can see that particles are distributed in ellipse too. Rotation can be controlled manually by constant angle.

I added also few sensors called “Size”, “Opacity” and “Rotation”.The rotation sensor allows you to rotate the distribution by tablet’s tilt, pressure and by some funny attributes like time or drawing angle. The size sensor controls the size of the distribution area. Opacity controls the overall opacity of the single spray dab. The sensors are Cyrille’s idea and I’m trying to use it in my paintops, so that we have consistent UI and we share more code.

Another thing was exponential slider in kdelibs4.3. Now you can reuse bigger area of the slider for setting your preffered size of the brush.So far the slider has been linear. You move a little and you would end up with a size of 200px. Now if you move a little from e.g. 50px size, you get 70px and not 200px. You usually use smaller values often and only sometimes you want big brush with 1000 px width. Again Cyrille’s patch for kdelibs and implemented by me in Krita Spray has exponential sliders in UI for particle count and diameter. It is very nice and I consider it very usable.

I added many sliders to spray because David Revoy wrote me longer time ago that he prefers them with tablet. I added so many sliders that the UI is becoming very ugly, but useful! My brush engines are becoming something like motor engines Just few folks around knows how to tune them because they understand them.. This is wrong of course. One solution is that you as user should get nice presets so that you don’t have to touch engine too much. You just fine tune size or rotation a little. That’s where it is heading now somehow. We will have a lot of presets for you when we implement presets saving/loading I hope.

There are some bugfixes also in UI here and there, chalk has been improved a little – ink depletion can be turned off. Opacity sensor has been added to chalk so you can control overall opacity with tablet and some minor fixes. So far so good. I plan to constantly improve digital painting in Krita.

More information can be found at our “commit-digests” Week in Krita at krita.org. See week 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 and soon 51. Nice read when you want to watch Krita development.

Life

I have been in Oslo for KOffice sprint and it was wonderful. I had a lot of fun, meet other Krita hackers and we had nice discussions about Krita.I had a lot of fun with Jarek Staniek, the Kexi guy. Very nice man! He helped me to setup Windows development environment for Krita, but I failed somewhere and I did not find time to fix it and continue.I learned something about building API too. Oslo is nice place, but quite dark for me and quite expensive. I would like to thank Thomas Zander and Alexandra Leisse for the organization.

We started a campaign to gather money so that a member of Krita team can work full-time on Krita. I’m that team member I would like to thank every donor that you make this possible. Thank you! As you can see we are over goal, but you can still donate if you want.

I remember days when people put some money together to allow Blender being a open-source application and look where Blender is now – it is used by professionals. Now something similar can happen with Krita. We have a plan to implement and we think that it can make Krita very usable for digital painters . I’m looking forward to work on Krita full-time. Just few last exams in university in January and I’m ready to start to work.Keep the fingers crossed! I will keep you informed about the progress regularly.

Creating a presentation quickly from a directory of images in OpenOffice Impress

2009-12-21T12:16:00+00:00

Once I installed this extension, it took me about six seconds to create a presentation based on a directory of graphics, one slide for each graphic.

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/node/419

Download the extension, don't unzip it, then choose Tools > Extension Manager as always to add it.

Then choose Tools > Addons > Create Photo Album.(If that doesn't show up, restart OpenOffice.)

Point to the directory where your graphics are. That's it. You get a presentation.

Only thing is, the randomly chosen slide transitions are a little annoying, so click the Slide Transitions item, select No Transition (or something you like), then click Apply to All Slides. And you can use that pane also to change the amount of time on each slide, or to switch it to manually going from one slide to another.

Chronicles of a trip home

2009-12-21T04:18:13+00:00

This last week I had the pleasure to travel to Tunis, Tunisia, in North Africa, to speak at the Conference on Open Source Software. In another post I’ll put up some photos of my two hour tourist time in Carthage on Thursday, but here let me tell you about my trip home.

My return flight was scheduled to leave Tunis on Friday at 4 am. This is a not a great time to travel in general, but since I had a full work day on Thursday, I had some decisions to make. Should I bother trying to sleep before the flight? What time should I get to the airport?

Despite some trouble related to weather and travel the previous week, I wasn’t anticipating any problems. My idea was to put one foot in front of the other and repeat through the various flights and airports until I got home.

I returned from the IBM offices to my hotel about 8:15 PM on Thursday night. I had thought about skipping dinner, but I was pretty hungry so I ordered a light meal from room service (the hotel was far from any restaurants). I did most of my packing and some email, and around 10 pm decided to take a nap.

Though I wasn’t sure I could sleep, evidently I did because when the alarm went off at midnight, I woke up, and woke up hard from a very deep sleep. Though I was groggy, I finished getting ready and caught my ride to the airport at 1 am. It probably helped that I kept telling myself that it was only 7 pm Thursday night at home.

The first leg of my trip from from Tunis to Frankfurt on Lufthansa. There were plenty of free seats when I checked in online on Thursday afternoon, which made sense because, I thought, how many people would choose to fly at such a bizarre time? I took me some time to find the check-in counter for Lufthansa (at the far end of the hall on the right) and then where I was to go for passport control and security (back of hall to the left, under the departures sign).

Unfortunately, though I was all set by 1:30, the doors didn’t open until 2 am. While I was waiting, I met a man who had been in the airport for twelve hours. Bad weather (bad weather?) had caused the airline to cancel his earlier flight to Paris and he had hours to go before his rebooked flight.

I was the first one through the processing and found my gate. At first, a few people trickled in and then more and more as we got closer to the boarding time. Unlike in the US and with some airlines, overseas flights sometimes board by saying “ok, everyone get on.” Oddly enough, this works pretty well.

The flight was packed and included a lot of families with children, presumably traveling home for the holidays.

I always bring ear plugs when I fly. It helps with noisy passengers and, oh yes, noisy planes.

Though I had very little legroom, I at least did have an aisle and slept on and off during the two and one-half hour flight. The first passport control was right on the plane – officers stood at the front and back doors of the plane and checked our credentials. After that, we boarded buses and waited twenty minutes.

Eventually we took off and I got through passport control #2 and then over to Hall C for my American Airlines flight to Chicago. Luckily, AA was opening up for earlier flights as I had an eight hour layover. I got my boarding pass and went to the Admiral’s Club. I’m not a member, but if you have AA Platinum status, you can use the club lounge if you are traveling abroad, even if you are in economy, as I was.

I settled in for a long wait. The television behind me was running a continuing story of snowy weather hitting London. I had originally planned to fly through London, but the need to switch planes between Heathrow and Gatwick put the kabosh on that. And so I sat as people came and went. Most of the people in the lounge were taking the 10 am flight to Dallas.

Around 9 an announcement came on that the Dallas flight would be delayed, with more details later. Then: “flight delayed due to mechanical problems.” Later: “there is a hydraulic system leak.” Finally: “a part is needed, it’s coming from Paris, we hope it will be here at 7 pm.”

I, however, was going to Chicago, not Dallas, and my flight left on time. I hope all those people eventually got home to Dallas and beyond.

When I chose my seat I got an exit row aisle, but I made a small mistake. When there are two consecutive exit rows, the seats in front don’t recline as much as the back ones. The bulkhead wall was a bit to close for comfort but I again slept on and off for the nine and one-half hour flight. My left knee kept cramping, but I got through it. Incidentally, I finished reading To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis.

There were no problems with AA, passport control, and customs in Chicago and I headed over to Terminal 1 for my United flight for the last leg of the trip. I was supposed to have a four hour layover, but I was early enough for an earlier flight. Though I had to pay for the honor of switching (United makes you pay for everything), I did the change to get home a couple of hours early. Moreover, my originally scheduled flight was delayed, so it seemed like a good bet to take the earlier plane.

I got to the gate and it was crammed with people who, of course, were trying to get to Dallas. And their plane was delayed due to mechanical problems. They did better than the folks in Frankfurt, and left without too much delay. My flight was delayed a bit as well, maybe an hour, but as long as the last leg of a trip actually flies, I’m cool.

I finally got home around 11:15 pm Friday night, about 29 hours after I had awakened from my short nap in Tunis. On Saturday a big storm hit the east coast of the US, but we got none of it here in northwestern NY. So it’s been a long weekend with delays and winter weather all around me, but I did pretty well.

I know the travel gods will make me pay for it eventually.

Daily Links for Sunday, December 20, 2009

2009-12-21T01:49:07+00:00

Open Source

WordPress 2.9, Now with Built-in Image Editor and Delete Undo
Softpedia / Lucian Parfeni

The latest version of the world most popular self-hosted blogging platform, WordPress 2.9, is now out and available for everyone to download and install. It’s been quite a while since the last major update, more than six months actually, and the latest version comes with a few big new features and a bunch of smaller ones as well as updates, bug fixes, the works. The biggest feature is likely the new image editor which allows users to do basic photo editing inside the post editor without having to rely on third-party tools.

The Five Distros That Changed Linux
Linux Magazine / Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Linux’s history can be measured in both releases 2.0, 2.6, and so on, and in its major distributions, which brought these releases to the masses at large. Here’s my list of the top five major Linux distributions that had the most impact in the operating system’s brief history.

A Concise Introduction to Free and Open Source Software

2009-12-19T15:56:04+00:00

If you're like me, you became fully aware of free and open source software only gradually, rather than suddenly and all at once. In my case, the process was somewhat schizophrenic, because I was personally involved, through my clients, in some of the evolutionary steps of FOSS itself, and only realized in retrospect how they fit into the whole picture.

Over the past few months, I've been reading several books on the early days of FOSS (I hope to review them later), each based upon extensive interviews with those that made FOSS happen. That's been especially revealing, because in...

Applying borders to nonconsecutive cells in Calc 3.2 spreadsheets

2009-12-17T13:04:00+00:00

In OpenOffice.org 3.2 you can apply borders to nonconsecutive cells using the toolbar.

Currently if you try to select multiple cells that aren't together and apply borders on the toolbar, you get an error. (You CAN apply border formatting from the Format > Cells, Borders tab currently.)

In 3.2, though, there's no problem using the toolbar icon.

Planned Migration of An Antic Disposition

2009-12-16T22:31:00+00:00

Sometime over the next two weeks I’ll be migrating An Antic Disposition over to WordPress, introducing a new visual theme, and relocating to a new hosting company. This will allow some additional capabilities that I look forward to enabling down the road.

My plan is to preserve all of the comments during the migration, not to break any incoming links, and to minimize any downtime. That is the plan. But minimal downtime is not the same as zero downtime, so don’t be surprised if you see me not here, at least occasionally.

One last thing to check, dear reader, especially if you follow me via my feed. Around a year ago I wrapped my feed via FeedBurner. If you have subscribed since then, you should be fine, since that FeedBurner URL will continue to work. However, if you still subscribe to my old original Blogger feed (http://www.blogger.com/feeds/11236681/posts/full) then you will need to resubscribe with the new URL:

The main feed is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/robweir/antic-atom

12/28/09 Update

I’ve completed the migration from Blogger to WordPress. It went easier than anticipated. The posts and comments came over without problems. I think I was able to preserve almost all of the post permalinks. I’ll monitor the logs for 404 errors and add 303 redirects to fix any remaining URL mismatches. However, I have not made any attempt to preserve the URLs for the archive or tag pages. For the various legacy feeds, I’ve redirected all of them to the FeedBurner feed.

Daily Links for Wednesday, December 16, 2009

2009-12-16T11:31:47+00:00

Standards

Netherlands helps Denmark with open IT
The Industry Standard

The Dutch government has provided Denmark with information regarding the Dutch national plan Heemskerk for open government IT.

In Denmark, there is heated debate about the approach for open IT usage by the government. One of the obstacles is the open file format for mandatory use by the government and government organizations. ODF (Open Document Format) and OOXML (Open Office XML), originally developed by Microsoft, are the candidates for use.

Open Source

IBM Sala de Prensa – 2009-12-15 IBM presenta en Madrid el Open Company Center
IBM

IBM (NYSE:IBM) ha presentado en Madrid el Open Company Center. Se trata de un centro de prueba, ubicado en el IBM Forum, donde clientes y socios comerciales de la Compañía podrán experimentar con diferentes alternativas de sistemas de escritorio independientes y de arquitectura abierta.

Open Source Group Sues Consumer Electronics Companies
InformationWeek / Antone Gonsalves

Best Buy, Samsung, Westinghouse, JVC and 10 other consumer electronics companies were named Monday in a lawsuit accusing the companies of license infringement in the use of open source software.

The Software Freedom Law Center filed the suit in federal court in New York on behalf of the Software Freedom Conservancy. The latter group claims the defendants sold products containing its BusyBox application in violation of the terms of the software’s license, the GNU General Public License version 2. The GNU GPL v2 governs the use of many open source technologies.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2009.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
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The Relevancy of ODF 1.0

2009-12-15T04:52:00+00:00

By the time you read this (actually probably by the time I finish writing this post) a ballot approving the Public Review Draft of ODF 1.2, Part 1 will have passed. Part 1 is the largest of the three parts of ODF 1.2, and reaching a Public Review Draft status is a major accomplishment. Expect to see an official notice of the start of the public review period over the next few days.

But as we look forward to ODF 1.2, and then beyond to “ODF-Next”, it is worth giving some consideration to what we do with ODF 1.1 and ODF 1.0.

Today, if you surveyed ODF implementations, you would find that the preponderance of them write ODF 1.1 documents by default. Twelve months ago many of them wrote out ODF 1.0 format, and in another 12 months I predict most will be writing out ODF 1.2 format by default.

So what does this mean for ODF the standard?

Every 5 years each ISO standard undergoes what is called “Periodic Review”. The outcome of this review is to classify the standard as one of: confirmed, revised, stabilized or withdrawn. If it is confirmed, it means the standard is of continued relevancy and is still undergoing maintenance. Revised means it is currently undergoing revision and periodic review is not necessary. Stabilized means it “has ongoing validity and effectiveness but is mature and insofar as can be determined will not require further maintenance of any sort”. And a standard is withdrawn (the most extreme option) if it has been declared unsafe, has a non-RAND patent asserted against it, or is “no longer in use”.

Some of the nattering nabobs in SC34 (e.g., Alex Brown) are floating the idea that ODF 1.0 should be withdrawn from ISO, claiming it is not implemented and not relevant. At the recent SC34 meeting in Paris this view was echoed by a Microsoft participant (one of many) in the meeting, who additionally urged that a motion to withdraw ODF 1.0 be brought forward at the Stockholm SC34 Plenary in March.

I think this shows an extraordinarily poor understanding of how documents and document format standards work. ODF is not a standard for a transient phenomenon, like a network or telephone protocol standard, that is no longer relevant when the last producer of the network protocol is gone from the market and the last signal fades from the wire. ODF specifies a document format, and documents persist and remain relevant so long as the documents and their owners remain.

Additionally, and especially in public sector use, there are regulatory or statutory requirements for how long documents (records) must be preserved. Some for 3 years, some for 7, some for 30 years, and some records must be preserved forever. Just because ODF 1.2 comes along does not make ODF 1.0 retention and public access requirements go away.

Although most major ODF editors now write out new documents in ODF 1.1 format by default, they all are able to read and process ODF 1.0 documents as well. So they are all “consumers” of ODF 1.0 and conform to the ODF 1.0 standard. This occurs at the same time they are also conforming ODF 1.1 “producers”. So it is absolutely false to say that there are no ODF 1.0 implementations today. There are many, including OpenOffice, Symphony, Google Docs, KOffice, even Microsoft Office. The are all ODF 1.0 consumers.

We should also consider the needs of new word processors that implement ODF, since there are still a few that do not support ODF yet, like Apple’s iWork. When they eventually implement ODF they will want to implement write support (“producer” conformance) for the current version of ODF, as well as read support (“consumer” conformance) for earlier versions of ODF. So to enable competition in this space, and allow for new players, we must preserve access to the relevant legacy standards. Otherwise we would be perpetuating the type of information exclusion we typically associate with Microsoft, in the decades when they restricted access to their legacy formats.

In any case, it is still puzzling to me why some are pushing for the very unusual and extreme action of withdrawing ODF 1.0 from ISO. This doesn’t pass the sniff test. Something is rotten here. This is an anti-competition, anti-user, anti-adopter and overtly political move, lead by Microsoft employees and Microsoft consultants in the Microsoft-dominated JTC1/SC34. (I wish I had a pump big enough to drain that swamp.) Ironically, by questioning the relevancy of ODF 1.0, they will cause many more to question the relevancy of SC34.

At some point, I agree that stabilization may be something to consider in the future. But for now, ODF does not fit in that category because it is actively undergoing maintenance. SC34 members, including Alex Brown, have submitted defect reports against ODF 1.0, and the OASIS ODF TC is responding to them. It is quite reasonable to expect that ODF 1.1 and ODF 1.2 will be broadly implemented at the same time as ODF 1.0 continues to undergo corrective maintenance. That is the nature of document format standards like ODF. Their relevancy, as perceived by users and adopters of the standard, is determined by the mass of legacy documents in the format, not on whether their current word processor saves in that format by default.

[12/15/09 Doug Mahugh today wrote to the OASIS ODF TC list, apprently concerned that this blog post might be misread as an official statement of the OASIS ODF TC. I've attempted to dispel such notions in my response on that list. As I've made abundantly clear on my Who is Rob Weir page, "The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent the positions, strategies or opinions of any of my employers or the organizations I'm associated with".

My practice is simple: I am not speaking as OASIS ODF TC Co-Chair, unless I am posting ODF TC agendas, minutes or similar official ODF TC notices to the ODF TC's mailing list, or when I explicitly sign my name with the title, "Co-Chair, OASIS ODF TC".]

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Topics on open source for college classes

2009-12-13T21:51:13+00:00

I’ve been asked several times for some ideas about topics on open source that would be suitable for one or more classes at universities. While I know there are curricula out there, here are some specific discussion areas that could be covered in computer science or business classes:

Open source vs. traditional software: What’s the same and what’s different?
Software business models: where does open source fit?
Open source licenses for the ICT professional
Building an open source community: it’s more than just coders
Innovating within an open community
Organizational governance of open source
Procurement: open source and traditional software, and services
Leadership models to maximize open innovation
Merit-based vs hierarchical software development leadership
Case studies of successful companies using open source

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2009.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Posted under: Education, Open Source.
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Daily Links for Saturday, December 12, 2009

2009-12-12T16:42:11+00:00

Open Source

Linux Foundation Announces “Get One, Give One” Holiday Membership Program
The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that for every new individual member who joins the organization between today and January 31, 2010, the Linux Foundation will give a free membership to a student for one year.

Fedora 12 – A Visually-Pleasing, Highly-Configurable Linux Distro You Might Want To Try
makeuseof.com / Susan Linton

In addition to Fedora’s commercial uses, it remains a favorite of many desktop users. The latest hardware support and software innovations go into Fedora making it one the most desirable distributions for those who regularly update their hardware or crave the latest in software goodies.

Wow!

2009-12-12T12:36:00+00:00

Thanks to our latest donor, Silvio Grosso, we're at four thousand euros now on Pledgie: Help raise Krita to the next level -- which together with the donations people have made into my bank account directly, means that, even after Paypal has taken its cut, Lukas will be able to work on Krita for another month in the summer!

Here's a screenshot of Krita showing off a feature Silvio asked for that we never really highlighted before: using flake shapes, it's easy to add vector arrows to screenshots, to point out important items. In this case, the default color setting for a new image, which is what I'm working on currently:

Deep-felt thanks go to the more than 160 people who cared enough about Krita that they made this donation drive such an unbelievable success! It is a big vote of confidence and I am determined that we'll prove ourselves worth of it.

First big snow of December, 2009

2009-12-11T22:45:35+00:00

We’ve had some snow already this year, including very blustery weather yesterday, but overnight we had the first big snow. Here’s what the vegetable garden looked like this morning.

© Robert S. Sutor for Bob Sutor, 2009.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Posted under: Home.
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Free-Office

Daily Links for Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Alexandria Project, Chap. 1: Meet Frank

Press Release: “IBM Client for Smart Work Available Through Business Partners in India”

Press Release: “Canonical Offers Dedicated Support Program for Lotus Symphony …”

Lotusphere photos: Ubuntu’s Peter Woodward and Tux

Introducing The Alexandria Project

Two very early Lotusphere 2010 photos

Daily Links for Friday, January 15, 2010

Top 10 Seed and Plant Catalogs for New England

Related articles by Zemanta

Questions to ask about open source projects

Daily Links for Wednesday, January 13, 2010

A new manual for Krita

Daily Links for Monday, January 11, 2010

Here We Go Again: Video Standards War 2010

Almost Spring, in my dreams

Daily Links for Friday, January 8, 2010

Life with Linux: Another week of work

Daily Links for Thursday, January 7, 2010 – Afternoon Edition

Nexus One: A First Smartphone First Impression

Daily Links for Thursday, January 7, 2010 – Morning Edition

Checking broken links in WordPress blogs

CodePlex Foundation Reports on 100 Day Goals

Working at Hyves?

Krita Hackathon

Daily Links for Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Reminder: new blog and feed locations

Daily Links for Monday, January 2, 2010

Site statistics through December 31, 2009

Getting ready for Spring gardening in upstate NY

Last Year in Krita: 2009

The great website reorganization of 2010

Top 10 Blog Posts of 2009

Top Blog Posts

Top Browsers

Top Operating Systems

Daily Links for Friday, January 1, 2010

Monthly disclaimer

New locations for Bob Sutor’s blog

New Hampshire snowscapes, 2009

U.S. Postage Stamps of 1959: A View from 50 Years Later

What We Commemorate

The Lincoln Sesquicentennial

Oregon Statehood Centennial

Ten Years of NATO

Arctic Explorations

World Peace through World Trade

Centennial of the Comstock Lode

Opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway

The 49-Star Flag

Soil Conservation

Centennial of Drake’s Oil Well

American Dental Association Centennial

Daily Links for Wednesday, December 30, 2009

All Quiet on the CodePlex Front as 100 Day Mark Passes

Some favorite 2009 blog entries on open source, standards, and cloud computing

Cross-compile Qt4 app for Windows on Fedora 11

Daily Links for Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Finishing up 2009

Daily Links for Wednesday, December 24, 2009

David and Goliath II: i4i Wins (Again) over Microsoft

Daily Links for Monday, December 22, 2009

Lake effect night snow in low rez

Spray improvements

Creating a presentation quickly from a directory of images in OpenOffice Impress

Chronicles of a trip home

Daily Links for Sunday, December 20, 2009

A Concise Introduction to Free and Open Source Software

Applying borders to nonconsecutive cells in Calc 3.2 spreadsheets

Planned Migration of An Antic Disposition

Daily Links for Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The Relevancy of ODF 1.0

Topics on open source for college classes

Daily Links for Saturday, December 12, 2009

Wow!

First big snow of December, 2009