NDISWrapper for Linux WLAN cards
Some vendors do not release specifications of the hardware or provide a linux driver for their wireless network cards. This project provides a linux kernel module that loads and runs Ndis (Windows network driver API) drivers supplied by the vendors... The driver works quite well on many builtin cards as well as PCMCIA (Cardbus only) cards. Some USB cards are also supported.
Postscript:Debian + ndiswrapper == hair loss says it all ;-)
Postscript:Debian + ndiswrapper == hair loss says it all ;-)
8/31/2004 01:34:00 pm: permalink
Space for ideas
Six original works have been commissioned from thought leaders Dr. Edward de Bono, Robert Heller, Baroness Susan Greenfield, Jonathon Porritt, Professor Richard Wiseman and Reverend Peter Owen Jones to help businesses and individuals generate new ideas and thinking. Developing and sustaining a business is a craft that requires intuition, energy and plenty of ideas. Unlike typical management texts these essays are written to be practical.
8/31/2004 11:26:00 am: permalink
No relief from the misery?
Many British people fail to relax at weekends, despite working some of the longest hours in Europe, researchers have said. According to a survey, many people are spending their weekends worrying about work or catching up on chores. Less than a quarter of people associate weekends with having fun [the poll indicates]
And holidays provide little respite either: Misery on the first day back comes shortly after logging on, as a quarter said a full email inbox - or in-tray - would sour their return. However, it was the simple things that could turn the day around, with 58% saying they just wanted their boss to show they cared, and 44% saying they would perk up if they heard a cheery "welcome back". But for a gloomy one in eight, nothing their boss could do would erase the dark clouds. The chief executive of Investors In People, Ruth Spellman, said: "Employers must take action before eagerness for change leads to a determination to leave. It's so clear that the simple steps count. It doesn't take much to say 'welcome back', and the research shows it could have a massive effect on motivation."
And holidays provide little respite either: Misery on the first day back comes shortly after logging on, as a quarter said a full email inbox - or in-tray - would sour their return. However, it was the simple things that could turn the day around, with 58% saying they just wanted their boss to show they cared, and 44% saying they would perk up if they heard a cheery "welcome back". But for a gloomy one in eight, nothing their boss could do would erase the dark clouds. The chief executive of Investors In People, Ruth Spellman, said: "Employers must take action before eagerness for change leads to a determination to leave. It's so clear that the simple steps count. It doesn't take much to say 'welcome back', and the research shows it could have a massive effect on motivation."
8/31/2004 10:59:00 am: permalink
Software Freedom Part 3
Should FOSS be open (as in door) rather than open (as in source)? Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's new chief executive officer, has created a lot of controversy by posting provocative attacks on Red Hat and IBM on his blog. Still, he has scored one palpable hit by pointing out that what customers really value is not openness per se, but the ability to substitute one product for another.
8/31/2004 10:55:00 am: permalink
Software Freedom Part 2
The UN sponsored International Open Source Network recognises that FOSS represents an opportunity for developing countries to adopt affordable software and solutions toward bridging the digital divide. Cost-savings will allow funds to be used on other priorities and development objectives... The International Open Source Network (IOSN) is a Center of Excellence for FOSS in the Asia-Pacific Region. It shapes its activities around FOSS technologies and applications. Via a small secretariat, the IOSN is tasked specifically to facilitate and network FOSS advocates and human resources in the region... IOSN is an initiative of the Asia-Pacific Information Development Programme (APDIP), which has been supporting the strategic and effective use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) for poverty alleviation and sustainable human development in the Asia-Pacific region since 1997.
8/31/2004 10:49:00 am: permalink
Software Freedom Part 1
On August 28, 2004, we will celebrate the first annual Software Freedom Day. On that day, we will make the world aware of the virtues of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), and encourage its widespread use. We will set up stations in public places to give away informational fliers and CDs with selected FOSS, including TheOpenCD and a Linux Live CD.
8/31/2004 10:46:00 am: permalink
Climate warming all at sea
According to SAHFOS strange things are happening in the North Sea. Cod stocks are slumping faster than over-fishing can account for, and Mediterranean species like red mullet are migrating north. Several sea birds are also in trouble. Kittiwake numbers are falling fast and guillemots are struggling to breed. And, earlier this summer, hundreds of fulmar (a relative of the albatross) corpses washed up on the Norfolk coast, having apparently starved to death. Scientists suspect these events are linked and they are trying to work out how.
8/31/2004 10:42:00 am: permalink
Beyond global warming: where on earth are we going?
At the EuroScience Open Forum Professor Schellnhuber said 12 "hotspots" had been identified so far, areas which acted like massive regulators of the Earth's environment. If these critical regions were subjected to stress, they could trigger large-scale, rapid changes across the entire planet. But not enough was known about them to be able to predict when the limits of tolerance were reached. "We have so far completely underestimated the importance of these locations," he said. "What we do know is that going beyond critical thresholds in these regions could have dramatic consequences for humans and other life forms." One example of a hotspot was the North Atlantic current, the ocean circulation pattern responsible for bringing warmer air to northern Europe, the collapse of which could lead to a very large regional climate shift. Others were the West Antarctic ice sheet, the Sahara desert, and the forests of the Amazon basin. Yet another hotspot, Professor Schellnhuber said, was the Asian monsoon system. (from BBC news)
8/31/2004 10:36:00 am: permalink
Business slowly adopting Linux
According to ZDNet about a third of businesses plan to migrate at least some Windows machines to Linux, according to a recent survey, but adoption will continue to be both slow and cautious, as companies evaluate a maze of economic factors. In a report on total cost of ownership for the Linux, Unix and Microsoft Windows operating systems, research company The Yankee Group found that only 4 percent of businesses planned to migrate Unix servers to Linux within the next two years. A total of 11 percent intended to move Windows servers to Linux, while 21 percent proposed to add Linux servers to a predominantly Windows environment. On the desktop, 36 percent of businesses expected to have a few Linux PCs in their business, but only 5 percent planned a total migration to Linux. A majority -- 57 percent -- planned no changes for Windows on the desktop.
8/31/2004 10:30:00 am: permalink
Online personality questionnaires
Try these:
8/19/2004 04:03:00 pm: permalink
From DOT to GraphViz
I've seen DOT in use a few times (from visualizations of possible paths in an XML messaging system to spidery depictions of interdependent SQL stored procedures) and have just stumbled across its successor (?), GraphViz:
The Graphviz layout programs take descriptions of graphs in a simple text language, and make diagrams in several useful formats such as images and SVG for web pages, Postscript for inclusion in PDF or other documents; or display in an interactive graph browser. (Graphviz also supports GXL, an XML dialect.)
The Graphviz layout programs take descriptions of graphs in a simple text language, and make diagrams in several useful formats such as images and SVG for web pages, Postscript for inclusion in PDF or other documents; or display in an interactive graph browser. (Graphviz also supports GXL, an XML dialect.)
8/19/2004 02:34:00 pm: permalink
20 minutes = 1 zombie PC
Virgin PCs connected to the Internet won't even last long enough to download critical patches, says the SANS Institute. The time that an unpatched PC can survive connected to the Internet has dropped to an average of 20 minutes, down from 40 minutes in 2003... "If the human body did patch management the way IT does we’d all be dead." (From ZDNet.co.uk)
8/18/2004 09:22:00 am: permalink
Running Lotus Notes under Linux using Wine
The most concise HOWTO instructions ever. And it works... after a single-user reinstall to c:\\lotus\\notes because my existing multi-user install in c:\\program files wouldn't start! (The 6.5.1 Notes client is available as a 100MB download via the "90 day trial" link on the IBM Notes homepage.)
8/17/2004 11:11:00 am: permalink
iText - a JAVA-PDF library
A project I'm working on recently started using this. So far it's working really well!
iText is a library that allows you to generate PDF files on the fly.
The iText classes are very useful for people who need to generate read-only, platform independent documents containing text, lists, tables and images. The library is especially useful in combination with Java(TM) technology-based Servlets: The look and feel of HTML is browser dependent; with iText and PDF you can control exactly how your servlet's output will look.
iText requires JDK 1.2. It's available for free under a multiple license: MPL and LGPL.
iText is a library that allows you to generate PDF files on the fly.
The iText classes are very useful for people who need to generate read-only, platform independent documents containing text, lists, tables and images. The library is especially useful in combination with Java(TM) technology-based Servlets: The look and feel of HTML is browser dependent; with iText and PDF you can control exactly how your servlet's output will look.
iText requires JDK 1.2. It's available for free under a multiple license: MPL and LGPL.
8/11/2004 11:39:00 am: permalink
Python IDEs
It's hard to argue against the cost of Eclipse as a Python IDE (FLOSS requires an initial outlay of zero after all) but perhaps other IDEs have more features. I've recently seen recommendations for ActiveState Komodo and Wing IDE and so they should be worth checking out...
8/11/2004 11:30:00 am: permalink
Psyco - JIT for Python
Psyco is a specializing compiler... Think of Psyco as a kind of just-in-time (JIT) compiler, a little bit like Java's, that emit machine code on the fly instead of interpreting your Python program step by step. The difference is that Psyco writes several version of the same blocks (a block is a bit of a function), which are optimized by being specialized to some kinds of variables (a "kind" can mean a type, but it is more general). The result is that your unmodified Python programs run faster.
Benefits
2x to 100x speed-ups, typically 4x, with an unmodified Python interpreter and unmodified source code, just a dynamically loadable C extension module.
Drawbacks
Psyco currently uses a lot of memory. It only runs on Intel 386-compatible processors (under any OS) right now. There are some subtle semantic differences (i.e. bugs) with the way Python works; they should not be apparent in most programs.
Benefits
2x to 100x speed-ups, typically 4x, with an unmodified Python interpreter and unmodified source code, just a dynamically loadable C extension module.
Drawbacks
Psyco currently uses a lot of memory. It only runs on Intel 386-compatible processors (under any OS) right now. There are some subtle semantic differences (i.e. bugs) with the way Python works; they should not be apparent in most programs.
8/11/2004 11:28:00 am: permalink
We've never had it so good
And according to George Monbiot we never will again: we are living off the political capital accumulated by previous generations, and that this capital is almost spent. The massive redistribution which raised the living standards of the working classes after the New Deal and the Second World War is over. Inequality is rising almost everywhere, and the result is a global resource grab by the rich. The entire land mass of Britain, Europe and the United States is being re-engineered to accommodate the upper middle classes. They are buying second and third homes where others have none. Playing fields are being replaced with health clubs, public transport budgets with subsidies for roads and airports. Inequality of outcome, in other words, leads inexorably to inequality of opportunity.
The second line of evidence is that our economic gains are being offset by social losses. A recent study by the New Economics Foundation suggests that the costs of crime have risen by 13 times in the past 50 years, and the costs of family breakdown fourfold.(2) The money we spend on such disasters is included in the official measure of human happiness: gross domestic product. Extract these costs and you discover, the study says, that our quality of life peaked in 1976.
But neither of these problems compares to the third one: the threat of climate change. In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.
The second line of evidence is that our economic gains are being offset by social losses. A recent study by the New Economics Foundation suggests that the costs of crime have risen by 13 times in the past 50 years, and the costs of family breakdown fourfold.(2) The money we spend on such disasters is included in the official measure of human happiness: gross domestic product. Extract these costs and you discover, the study says, that our quality of life peaked in 1976.
But neither of these problems compares to the third one: the threat of climate change. In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.
8/10/2004 12:26:00 pm: permalink
Sea's dead zones doubling every decade
As summer comes to the Gulf of Mexico, it brings with it each year a giant “dead zone” devoid of fish and other aquatic life. Expanding over the past several decades, this area now can span up to 21,000 square kilometers, which is larger than the state of New Jersey. A similar situation is found on a smaller scale in the Chesapeake Bay, where since the 1970s a large lifeless zone has become a yearly phenomenon, sometimes shrouding 40 percent of the bay.
Worldwide, there are some 146 dead zones—areas of water that are too low in dissolved oxygen to sustain life. Since the 1960s, the number of dead zones has doubled each decade. Many are seasonal, but some of the low-oxygen areas persist year-round.
What is killing fish and other living systems in these coastal areas? A complex chain of events is to blame, but it often starts with farmers trying to grow more food for the world’s growing population. Fertilizers provide nutrients for crops to grow, but when they are flushed into rivers and seas they fertilize microscopic plant life as well. In the presence of excessive concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus, phytoplankton and algae can proliferate into massive blooms. When the phytoplankton die, they fall to the seafloor and are digested by microorganisms. This process removes oxygen from the bottom water and creates low-oxygen, or hypoxic, zones.
The scale of the problem is hard to appreciate from the surface of the sea: Summer tourists cruising the waters off Louisiana or Texas in the Gulf of Mexico take in gorgeous vistas as they pull in red snappers and blue marlins. Few realize that the lower half of the water column below them may lack fish, despite the piscine bounty near the surface. For many years now, an annual dead zone has developed in the Gulf, beginning as early as February and sometimes lasting until mid-fall. This zone—water where the oxygen content is so low that denizens can't survive—tends to leave no surface clue.
Worldwide, there are some 146 dead zones—areas of water that are too low in dissolved oxygen to sustain life. Since the 1960s, the number of dead zones has doubled each decade. Many are seasonal, but some of the low-oxygen areas persist year-round.
What is killing fish and other living systems in these coastal areas? A complex chain of events is to blame, but it often starts with farmers trying to grow more food for the world’s growing population. Fertilizers provide nutrients for crops to grow, but when they are flushed into rivers and seas they fertilize microscopic plant life as well. In the presence of excessive concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus, phytoplankton and algae can proliferate into massive blooms. When the phytoplankton die, they fall to the seafloor and are digested by microorganisms. This process removes oxygen from the bottom water and creates low-oxygen, or hypoxic, zones.
The scale of the problem is hard to appreciate from the surface of the sea: Summer tourists cruising the waters off Louisiana or Texas in the Gulf of Mexico take in gorgeous vistas as they pull in red snappers and blue marlins. Few realize that the lower half of the water column below them may lack fish, despite the piscine bounty near the surface. For many years now, an annual dead zone has developed in the Gulf, beginning as early as February and sometimes lasting until mid-fall. This zone—water where the oxygen content is so low that denizens can't survive—tends to leave no surface clue.
8/07/2004 12:21:00 pm: permalink
The decline and fall of the Wintel empire
Silicon.com discusses the similarities between Intel and Microsoft trying to maintain market dominance and the Roman emporers trying to maintain their imperial control: The creeping sense of privileged paralysis is one of the dominant themes of Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, perhaps the ultimate book about big organizations gone bad. (Todd Nemet, an engineer at Google, sends this sometimes-active link that allows people to test what kind of an emperor they would be.) In over six volumes, Gibbon describes how the political and military leaders of Rome shifted from concentrating on governance to personal enrichment. The quest for continual growth outstripped their ability to control a sprawling land mass covering contrasting climates and various tribes. Augustus, the first emperor, clearly saw the problems with expansion, but his vision was discarded. "The seven first centuries were filled with a rapid succession of triumphs; but it was reserved for Augustus to relinquish the ambitious design of subduing the whole earth, and to introduce a spirit of moderation into the public councils," Gibbon wrote. "Inclined to peace by his temper and situation, it was easy for him to discover that Rome, in her present exalted situation, had much less to hope than to fear from the chance of arms; and that, in the prosecution of remote wars, the undertaking became every day more difficult, the event more doubtful, and the possession more precarious, and less beneficial."
8/05/2004 11:29:00 am: permalink
How can anyone make money from Free Software?
This (old) article by Michael Bauer contains a great description of the problem: Information goods are tricky things. A fundamental economic principle is that the price of a manufactured good tends toward the cost of production, all things being equal. That is, if it costs you $1 to make something, then eventually, what with all the competition and everything, you'll see the price you could charge drop from say $10 to $1.01. The problem with an information "good" is that the cost of production tends to get to $0. Downloading a copy of a software program costs about zip. So, the price of that software tends to that price, $0. If you're giving the software away that price tends to be reached pretty quickly.
8/04/2004 02:31:00 pm: permalink
Want to be an ISP for your friends and neighbours?
One of the cheapest Linux computers you can buy brand new (not at a garage sale) is the Linksys WRT54G, an 802.11g wireless access point and router that includes a four-port 10/100 Ethernet switch and can be bought for as little as $69.99 according to Froogle. That's a heck of a deal for a little box that performs all those functions, but a look inside is even more amazing. There you'll find a 200 MHz MIPS processor and either 16 or 32 megs of DRAM and four or eight megs of flash RAM -- more computing power than I needed 10 years ago to run a local Internet Service Provider with several hundred customers. But since the operating system is Linux and since Linksys has respected the Linux GPL by publishing all the source code for anyone to download for free, the WRT54G is a lot more than just a wireless router. It is a disruptive technology. Read more of this article by Robert X. Cringely here.
8/04/2004 08:38:00 am: permalink
When fruit harms children
From Friends of the Earth: young children [...] could have been exposed to potentially dangerous levels of pesticides just from eating a single apple or pear. The research also showed that internationally agreed safety levels on pesticides can be breached even when the legal limits on pesticides were met.
8/01/2004 01:00:00 am: permalink
