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CIO encounters Windows, OSX, Linux

Slashdot reported a long-term field test by John Halamka, CIO of Harvard Medical School and CareGroup regarding Operating systems in corporate environments on a notebook.

CIO Article

The power of Windows lies in its availability for niche business software, OS X and Ubuntu appeal to the usability and enterprise Linux systems such as Novell and RHEL focus on Windows like usability and are meant to fill the corporate Client/Workstation segment.

Regarding Linux strategies, enterprise solutions should be the first ones to take some market shares from Microsoft in the corporate segment.

Ubuntu is gaining more and more support due to its stable Debian base and its usability. Taking Ubuntu to the corporate sector seems very possibly but this may rely on further strategies of the Canonical Foundation.

here is the Ubuntu report

One thing regarding Debian: There may be some confusion to people jumping in the Linux sector regarding the Debian policy on non-free software. The fact is Debian is very attached to its roots in the GNU and the ideology of the Free Software Foundation which is a good sign in times where Linux distributors are contracting with Microsoft, the very company that states open source as something evil and a violation of individual intellectual property and tries to stop the growing success of Linux by fear mongering potential users by stating that Linux and Open Source violate several hundred Microsoft patents without delivering a proof.

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DMCA = Datenschutzgesetz?

Today i stumbled across something odd. A search engine query was censored by the german google search notifying that an entry was removed due to the DMCA (Digital Milennium Copyright Act) which was translated as Datenschutzgesetz. This term actually states a data privacy law not a a copyright law

Note to self: If you censor data queries, make sure you give correctly translated errors otherwise disinformation ensues…

I still prefer the translation errors in which hilarity ensues (All your base are belong…)

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CUPS vs. CUPS

Today i took some time to upgrade and enhance our student printing functionalities. As i checked the usual printer queues i noticed that cups was suddenly listing a lot of new printers that were not even on our network. Tracing the error lead to a Mac book on the student network that was running a cups daemon with gimp-print drivers.

Quite odd that a Mac OS X based cups deamon is broadcasting printers to another cups server without checking if the printers are actually availabe.

Ill try to find out more scenarios in which a cups server will include shared printers from another printer deamons.

Disabling the printer search

Browsing off
in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf will disable this feature

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openmoko soon to be released to the users

The openmoko has launched its first “completely freed” cell phone – the Neo 1973

Currently it is only available in order to give developers a head start, so consumers will have some software when it releases to the main stream market. The Neo Base is currently priced at 300 USD which should be around 250€ in the european market.

Here is a list of features from the openmojo project:

  • 2.8″ VGA TFT color display
  • Touchscreen, usable with stylus or fingers
  • 266MHz Samsung System on a Chip (SOC)
  • USB 1.1, switchable between Client and Host (unpowered)
  • Integrated AGPS
  • 2.5G GSM – quad band, voice, CSD, GPRS
  • Bluetooth 2.0
  • Micro SD slot
  • High Quality audio codec

Some of the more advanced technology such as UMTS (3G) and Wi-Fi are functionality are missing but further releases on the mojo project should have all the features a tech-oriented hacker would want.

With my e61 and and n800 i have all the features i need ocvered by two devices. But this gadget looks very promising.

More to come so check out http://www.openmoko.com/

 

 

 

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Gecko engine available for n800 browser

The original n800 Opera browser can now be replaced by a gecko engine – thus a mozilla browser for your favorite pocket gadget. The ui is identical to the old opera browser and adds further functionality such as full AJAX support and the possiblity to install add ons.

Installing the new engine is quite simple:

  1. Update your n800 firmware
  2. Load this link in your n800 browser to add the repository and install the engine
  3. Restart your browser and have fun with Gecko 1.9 on your n800

Note: Since the install will only replace the rendering engine of the browser, all your bookmarks will remain untouched, but make sure you back up your n800 before updating the firmware.

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Canon about to unveil “photo criminals” by faulty products?

Canon has claimed to identify the serial number of the camera that produced a bootleg of the new harry potter book. Canon assumes that the product – in this case a rebel 350 – perhaps may be sent to customer service for maintenance since most products tend to have technical flaws in the first 3 years of purchase.

So perhaps Canon is telling us here that they are eavesdropping on customers who buy their quality products and send them in to maintenance. Well its not that Canon has never done something like this before.

In 2004 Canon was awarded the German big brother award for placing a digital serial number in their copy machines making it possible to retrace any document to a certain machine.

I bet countries that suppress freedom of speech really love this feature tracing people who take photos or copy flyers to express their thoughts against any institution that does not suit them and stepping out in public would place them in a situation where they may risk their freedom or even lives.

So now i now why Canon uses a cash back system.

just my thoughts as a long term Canon customer after reading this article (german)

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Skype released for n800

Skype has been finally released for the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet.

It has been running pretty stable so far and thus will add another commuication base to the n800. A roadtest can be found on the skype homepage.

Download skype for the n800 here.

Updating to the new nokia firmware is quite annoying because all data is lost…

Updating N800 firmware hints:

Backup the sources.lst to one of the sd cards:
cp /etc/apt/sources.list /media/mmc1

Create a list of all your previously installed applications:
dpkg -l | cut -d " " -f3 > /media/mmc1/install_list

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SyncML: Managing mobile phones with wammu

Wammu is a gui interface for gammu – the most common phone manager to Linux users.

The SyncML library supports a large variety of mobile phones. Here is a list of phones supported by gammu, although not all features may be available depending on the phone you are using.

Here are the features listed on the developer page.

  • complete support (can read/edit/delete/copy) for contacts, todo, calendar
  • can read/create/save/send/backup smses
  • sending files to phone (OBEX and Sony Ericsson phones only)
  • sms composer for multi part smses (currently only text and predefined bitmap/sound can be edited)
  • display message including pictures and ringtones playback
  • support for backup and import in various formats (vCard, vCalendar, vTodo, iCalendar, gammu own backup,…)
  • export messages to mail (IMAP4, maildir and mailbox storages are supported)
  • searching for phone
  • translated into several languages
  • rated as best on many software servers

Here is a selection of thumbs from the gui:

So get your phone cable ready or fire up bluetooth and goto http://wammu.eu/