systems on SWiK

Linux Weather Forecast/filesystems - The Linux Foundation

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:13:50 -0700

Unix and Samba password sync on Debian Etch | Jaka Jančar

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:11:32 -0700

Giz Explains: Illustrated Guide to Smartphone OSes

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:05:10 -0700

Microsoft Hires Boy Band to Promote Windows 7 and PDC 2008

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:49:30 -0700

To promote the upcoming Professional Developer Conference (PDC 2008) and announce that attendees will get a free Windows 7 pre-loaded 160GB hard drive, Microsoft has filmed the following clip, that, shall we say, will leave you with a really bad taste in the mouth. Lyrics after the jump.

PDC 2008 - 4 Softies and a Pizza Guy - Lyrics:

I’ve seen you in my dreams, I love you so much
I know I’m gonna love the way that you respond to my touch
So fine, I need to make you mine
When we’re together there ain’t no mountain we can’t climb

P-D-C, two thousand eight
Windows 7 is coming and I can’t wait
I’m gonna get the first one, right out of the crate, Wrap your windows around me

I share my best ideas with you
Make them come true, ’cause that’s what you’re meant to do
You take me closer to heaven
Tell your dreams and hopes to me
Get close to me, ’cause that’s where you’re ’sposed to be I’m talkin’ about Windows 7.
ooaahooo

You turn me on, with your graphics and text I get so excited when I think about where you’ll take me next
I’m gonna leave with my developer guide
And tons of Windows content on a hundred sixty gigabyte drive!

P-D-C, two thousand eight
Windows 7 is coming and I can’t wait.
The desktop and taskbar will integrate,
Wrap your windows around me.

They say the eyes are the windows to the soul
When I look in your eyes, I almost lose control
We’ve got a strong foundation, efficient applications
And new APIs
When I’m with you I feel energized!

7 is my lucky number
At night I get 7 hours of slumber
And Windows 7 at the PDC, twenty o eight, is gonna go and steal the other guy’s thunder Developers and users, be good to your computers
Ya can’t win with another system made for losers. for Windows 7, my love is true Now let me use direct 3d to unlock your GPU!

P-D-C, two thousand eight
Windows 7 is coming and I can’t wait
I’m gonna get the first one, right out of the crate, Wrap your windows around me

Google’s Best Energy Bet: Organizing Energy Usage

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:50:07 -0700

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information — be it via search, email, online maps or mobile apps — but it could someday help you manage your daily energy consumption, too. At a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that as part of its recently announced collaboration with GE, the search engine giant is currently looking at designing tools to help consumers understand their energy consumption. Google has also been actively looking at utilities’ smart meter projects, he said, and at using its strong connection with consumers to play a role in consumer energy management.

In fact, out of all of Google’s grand energy schemes, among them its $4.4 trillion energy proposal, its $45 million investment into energy-related startups and its plug-in vehicle project, energy data management could be one of the only places where Google plans to generate revenues. Schmidt said during his speech that there is an internal debate going on at the company as to how much of its energy initiatives will turn into real revenues, but that, “[T]o the degree that we can be in the information businesses or communications businesses about energy and its impact on the world, we are clearly going to be there.”

Helping consumers, even utilities, manage energy data is a perfect fit for Google. Power grids throughout the world will need to undergo a dramatic buildout and restructuring to accommodate both an increased demand for energy and a switch to renewable power. By 2050, the world’s population is forecast to balloon to 9 billion people from 6.5 billion — all while the world is trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by some 80 percent. The power grid in its current form won’t be able to support the loads — inefficient and unintelligent, it has yet to benefit from the technologies of the information age. Meanwhile, at the edges of the grid, consumers know very little about their energy use; monthly electricity bills have an appalling lack of transparency and options compared to industries like cell phones.

But change is on its way. Utilities are starting to install smart meters in homes to provide two-way digital communication. According to data from the Cleantech Group, venture capitalists invested a record ~~$220~~ $202 million into smart grid startups in the third quarter of 2008, including companies like GridPoint, Eka Systems, BPL Global and Trilliant. Startups like Greenbox, PowerMand, and EnergyHub are building energy dashboards and wireless home network products to help consumers manage energy use. Google could easily acquire its way into this market, too. (See our report on 25 up-and-coming Smart Energy Home startups) As Cees Links, the CEO of GreenPeak, a startup that builds wireless energy sensor networks, put it, there’s a simple but revolutionary change going on, that of “a growing awareness of energy being a precious resource.”

That said, there probably isn’t a company that has changed consumer behavior online more than Google. It has not only shaped how consumers access information — from news to images to direction — some have argued that Google is even changing the way we think and process information (See the Atlantic’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”). The company has spent years organizing personal consumer information through web searches, advertising, and email, information that could come in very handy when it comes to building smart tools to offer energy-saving services.

So Google is wise to be looking into online tools, or even a wireless home networking product, that could help consumers change their energy consumption behavior. They’re clearly headed in that direction: “It seems obvious to me that if you give [energy] information to end users they behave smartly,” Schmidt said in his speech. “So we are working on that.” It could ultimately be the most important contribution Google makes to fighting climate change. As Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency notes, advanced technology deployments will take several decades and a lot of capital. Simple tools that can affect the behavior of the average consumer’s energy usage will be more cost-effective and can be implemented now. For all its do-gooder intentions and philanthropic Google.org aims, how can Google resist such an easy target?

Image courtesy of Google.

This article also appeared on Businessweek.com.

fleetmanagement

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:27:19 -0700

I got to know that the fleet management device ig going to be the main part of Project Livesaver. The GPS will be in the form of a bracelet that will be worn by those who are suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, autism, and other physical and mental disabilities.

Amanda Open Source Backup

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:45:40 -0700

Welcome to OpenVPN

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 23:05:42 -0700

OpenVPN is a full-featured open source SSL VPN solution that accommodates a wide range of configurations, including remote access, site-to-site VPNs, Wi-Fi security, and enterprise-scale remote access solutions with load balancing, failover, and fine-grained access-controls. Starting with the fundamental premise that complexity is the enemy of security, OpenVPN offers a cost-effective, lightweight alternative to other VPN technologies that is well-targeted for the SME and enterprise markets.

SourceForge.net:Systems - Hardware

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 17:59:49 -0700

Plone CMS: Open Source Content Management

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 06:08:28 -0700

Royal Pingdom " 10 amazingly alternative operating systems and what they could mean for the future

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:17:45 -0700

Google’s SketchUp Goes to Work for Green Buildings

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:18:46 -0700

Michelle Kaufman's mkLotus design in SketchUp

Back in 2006, when Google acquired startup @Last and its 3-D modeling product, SketchUp, most observers saw it as a nice add-on for Google Earth, perfect for “hobbyists and enthusiasts.” But since then, the SketchUp program has blossomed into a tool in its own right, used by design professionals to fashion everything from consumer products to urban landscapes to country homes.

Green design professionals are particularly taken with the program. Widely praised by architecture and design community for its “intuitive” nature, SketchUp, one of the few 3D rendering programs on the market, is also by far the easiest one to use. And its integration with Google Earth and the Google 3D Warehouse have elevated the program from a simple design tool to a location-based, product-inclusive architectural design powerhouse. As a result, SketchUp is nurturing a growing ecosystem of green design startups.

Begin at the beginning
Getting energy, water and carbon information into the design process early on was once a costly, if not impossible, endeavor. But the sooner modeling and analysis tools are involved in the process, the bigger the questions are that designers can ask, and the more impact they can have on the final design.

“The software tool you choose is always going to arise from the question that you’re asking,” says Chris Meek, a University of Washington professor who heads up the Integrated Design Lab in Seattle. “What role do these tools have in their design process? What’s it going to affect in the design?”

Out of the box, SketchUp offers some great features for green design, which the cleantech-happy Google has been quick to promote. Because it integrates smoothly with Google Earth, SketchUp users can punch in the actual latitude and longitude of their project site to visualize buildings in their real-life context. That not only helps designers communicate to their clients how the project will look, but allows them to accurately model how nearby landscape features and structures will cast shadows over the building — useful for fine-tuning a building’s site orientation or window placement to cut energy use, or for positioning solar panels.

The proof is in the plug-in
A handful of startups (and even the federal government) are working to soup up the SketchUp toolbar with energy analysis plug-ins that support even more detailed information about materials used and spatial relationships within the building. For the startups, it’s a way to raise visibility for their own proprietary tools.

Integrated Environmental Systems (IES) offers VE-Ware, a free energy and carbon analysis tool that benchmarks designs against the energy reduction goals of the Architecture 2030 Challenge, as a free Windows-only plug-in. The professional versions of IES’s Virtual Environment software can provide more detailed analysis and its consulting practice can help make sense of the data analysis for those new to the world of green building design.

Demeter, an energy analysis plug-in from Greenspace, lets users dig deeper into how much energy their design might use by taking into account details such as surface materials. By gathering this kind of information, the program allows architects to quickly export the model to Green Building Studio, a sophisticated analysis program developed by Greenspace Green Building Studio Inc. that was acquired by Autodesk in June, and run a complete energy modeling analysis report. (Since it requires users to export their data, this plug-in isn’t available for those using the free version of SketchUp. The Pro version, which integrates presentation tools and allows users to export their models into other design programs, costs $495 a pop.)

It’s what’s inside that counts
With a growing number of green designers using SketchUp, green building product manufacturers have gotten into the game as well. SketchUp integrates seamlessly with the Google 3D Warehouse, and as architects pull together models of their home designs, they can stock their models with everything from paint to doors to dishwashers from its reserves. Need a toilet for your bathroom model? Find one in the 3D Warehouse and download it into SketchUp.

For the many startup companies marketing green building products, SketchUp can be an inexpensive way to break into the market. While not every green building product manufacture is already SketchUp savvy, the easy-to-use program lowers the bar for learning. If that’s still too much of a challenge, Blue Marble Project is one startup aiming to get green building product companies into this market. Started by the guys who launched Go2School, an educational podcast series on using SketchUp, Blue Marble Project creates models of a company’s products with information about their size, shape, surfaces, environmental properties and even their SKU numbers. The company, launched in 2007, has been gradually adding new clients, including Whirlpool and West Elm, according to co-founder Mike Tadros.

While integration with Google Earth allows SketchUp to position digital models in the real world, the 3D Warehouse lets green design move the other direction as well.

This article also appeared on Businessweek.com.

10 amazingly alternative operating systems and what they could mean for the future

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:15:21 -0700

No Surprise: Survey Shows U.S. Consumers Hate Broadband Caps

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:18:28 -0700

It should hardly come as a surprise to anyone — but nevertheless a survey conducted by International Data Corporation on behalf of Zeugma Systems, a company that makes an edge router for broadband networks, shows that consumers simply hate bandwidth caps and will likely switch to another carrier if they have the option. The survey polled 787 U.S. consumers. Here are some key findings of the survey:

81 percent do not like the idea of establishing a bandwidth cap and charging for use above the cap.
51 percent would try to change service providers if their BSP imposed bandwidth caps.
83 percent say that do not know what a gigabyte or have no idea how many gigabytes they use.
Even light users are opposed to the whole idea of bandwidth capping.
Only 5 percent said unequivocally that “those who use more should pay more.”

This data is pretty close to the findings of a poll conducted by us earlier this year. Ninety-one percent of 1,159 voters said that they would switch to another ISP, while 6 percent said they would not switch. Comcast is the biggest proponent of metered broadband, with Time Warner being a close second.

In light of this data, AT&T and Verizon (and Best Buy) should make it a point to emphasize that it is cable companies and not they who are capping bandwidth and get people to switch. Maybe that would be the kind of spanking that would bring cable companies to their senses. That said, the larger issue is that the FCC and our government have helped create a broadband duopoly that has almost always worked against the consumers. We need to fix that issue before we can address anything else.

Back to the survey: about 95 percent of those surveyed said that they would happily pay for more premium bandwidth services if they can get it for services such as video, VoIP, gaming and telecommuter VPNs. Around 54 percent would switch service providers if a competitive service offered a premium tier, while another 26 percent said they would pay their service provider an additional fee for premium bandwidth services.

Take that last paragraph with a pinch of salt: this dovetails nicely with the kind of traffic management gear Zeugma is trying to sell to the carriers.

Royal Pingdom " Blog Archive " 10 amazingly alternative operating systems and what they could mean for the future

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:14:39 -0700

Will Trixbox work with remote phones behind a Watchguard Firebox firewall? | trixbox

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:16:35 -0700

New install using VMware package - can't update Trixbox or get to modules online | trixbox

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:16:27 -0700

trixbox troubleshooting for package updates

Royal Pingdom " Blog Archive " 10 amazingly alternative operating systems and what they could mean for the future

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 10:14:50 -0700

بدائل عن الويندوز واللينوكس والماك

Royal Pingdom " Blog Archive " 10 amazingly alternative operating systems and what they could mean for the future

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:13:52 -0700

Royal Pingdom " Blog Archive " 10 amazingly alternative operating systems and what they could mean for the future

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:13:45 -0700

10 amazingly alternative operating systems and what they could mean for the future

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 08:14:10 -0700

GHC Manual: Generalised Algebraic Data Types

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 04:13:05 -0700

Gamasutra - AGDC: A Generative, Adaptive Music System for MMO Games

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:15:04 -0700

Sebek Homepage

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 09:14:02 -0700

Fonality | IP PBX, Asterisk-based PBX and VoIP PBX Phone Systems

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:02:31 -0700

Expanding the Cloud

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 03:03:05 -0700

For many the "Cloud" in Cloud Computing signifies the notion of location independence; that somewhere in the internet services are provided and that to access them you do not need any specific knowledge of where they are located. Many applications have already been built using cloud services and they indeed achieve this location transparency; their customers do not have to worry about where and how the application is being served.

However for developers to do their job properly the cloud cannot be fully transparent. As much as we would like to make it easy and simple for everyone, building high-performance and highly reliable applications in the cloud requires that the developers have more control. For example a reality is that failures can happen; servers can crash and networks can become disconnected. Even if these are only temporary glitches and are transient errors, the developer of applications in the cloud really wants to make sure his or her application can continue to serve customers even in the face of these rare glitches. A similar issue is that of network latency; as much as we would like to see the cloud to be transparent, the transport of network packets is still limited to the speed of light (at best) and customers of cloud applications may experience a different performance depending on where they are located in relation to where the applications are running. We have seen that for many applications that works just fine, but there are developers who would like more control over how their customers are being served and for example would like to give all their customers low latency access, regardless of their location.

At Amazon we have been building applications on these cloud principles for several years now and we are very much aware of the tools that developers need to build applications that are required to meet very high standards with respect to scalability, reliability, performance and cost-effectiveness. We are also listening very closely to the feedback AWS customers are giving us to make sure we expose the right tools for them to do their job. We launched Amazon S3 in Europe to ensure that developers could build applications that could serve data out of a European storage cloud. We launched Regions and Availability Zones (combined with Elastic IPs) for Amazon EC2 such that developers would have better control over where their applications would be running to ensure high-availability. We are now ready to expand the cloud even further and bring the cloud storage to its customers' doorstep.

Today we are announcing that we are expanding the cloud by adding a new service that will give developers and businesses the ability to serve data to their customers world-wide, using low-latency and high data transfer rates. Using a global network of edge locations this new service can deliver popular data stored in Amazon S3 to customers around the globe through local access.

We have developed this content delivery service using the robust AWS principles we know work well for our customers:

Cost-effective: no commitments and no minimum usage requirements. You only pay for what you use in a manner similar to the other Amazon Web Services.
Simple to use: one API call gets you going. You store the data you want to distribute in an Amazon S3 bucket and you use this API call to register this bucket with the content distribution service. The registration will provide you with a new domain name that you can use in url's to access the data through this service with HTTP. When your customer accesses your content through your new url the data it refers to will be delivered through a network of edge servers.
Works well with other services: The service integrates seamlessly with Amazon S3 and the data/content served through the service can be accessed using the standard HTTP access techniques.
Reliable: Amazon S3 will give you durable storage of your data, and the network of edge locations on three continents used by the new service will deliver your content to your customers from the most appropriate location.

This is an important first step in expanding the cloud to give developers even more control over how their applications and their data are served by the cloud. The service is currently in private beta but we expect to have the service widely available before the end of the year. You can get a few more details and sign up to get notified when the service is becoming on this AWS page Also check Jeff Bar's posting on the AWS weblog.

Joomla SEO Solutions for 5 Common Issues

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:12:51 -0700

If you ended up here, I am guessing you already know about Joomla, one of the most popular open source content management system (CMS) in the world today. As most Joomla users, I enjoy its user friendly administrator interface and passionate community that has been providing us with great extensions, patches and templates since the [...]

Cisco Betting Big on Buzzwords for Growth

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:10:07 -0700

Had I not been mired in preparing for our Mobilize 08 conference, which kicks off tomorrow, I would surely have attended Cisco’s analyst day, if only to find out how the company with some $40 billion in annual sales plans to keep growing in the face of a tighter global economy. What would have become immediately clear to me is that the company is betting on three buzzwords — video, collaboration and virtualization — to spur annual growth of between 12 and 17 percent over the next few years.

We have written extensively about Cisco’s various moves into collaboration, in particular its pesky fight with Google and Microsoft, as well as its commitment to data centers. While it’s still too early to tell how it will all shake out, our industry sources say that the Cisco sales machines has started to march in this direction.

Not that the company has a choice. Cisco’s core markets of switching and routing (54 percent) are maturing and may grow just 8-9 percent over time, so the company needs to find new growth opportunities — fast. Success, however, is far from guaranteed, especially in the light of competition from certain players that have traditionally been seen as friends.

Numerous analysts that were at Cisco’s analyst day emailed me their research notes. Here are some highlights from RBC Capital Markets, UBS and Lazard Capital Markets:

Video, collaboration and virtualization were key areas of focus and may collectively represent $62 billion in additional addressable markets.
Cisco’s core markets of switching and routing (54 percent of their revenue) are hitting middle age and may grow just 8-9 percent over time.
Cisco expects 8 percent year-over-year growth.
U.S. financial sector only accounts for 3-4 percent of Cisco’s total sales, so its woes won’t have much of an impact, the company says.
UBS analysts agree with my prognosis that, along with slugging it out with Microsoft, Cisco is going to butt heads with server makers like HP and IBM.
Lazard Capital Markets said what we reported back in March, that sooner or later, Cisco is going to make blade servers. As analyst Ryan Hutchinson wrote:

“Are blade servers the next move? Our industry contacts suggest Cisco will enter the blade server market over the next several months. While we have yet to collect all the details, we believe this is an aggressive move toward increasing its control over the next-generation data center.”

What do analysts think about Cisco?

Mark Sue, RBC Capital Markets: “[D]espite the muted environment, Cisco may be executing better than its peers…we view Cisco as a strong relative defensive name.”
Ryan Hutchinson, Lazard Capital Markets: “Chambers’ tone continues to be bullish despite the continued macro situation, expressing confidence in Cisco’s ability to grow and take share during market transitions.”
UBS analysts: “We believe given the slowdown in organic growth & an increasing chance of acquisitions, Cisco’s multiple will likely remain in the mid to low end of its 15-20x historical PE range.”

Photo courtesy of Cisco Systems.

900 million PCs or 300 billion mobile handsets. Which is the bigger opportunity?
Mobilize 08: GigaOM’s Next-Generation Mobile Conference

451 CAOS Theory " Proprietary, open source systems management get closer

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 11:06:27 -0700

First, part of the technology that CA and IBM are using to link up their systems management software, which allows it to share information between the two CMDBs, is actually open source software itself from the Eclipse Cosmos Project. Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.the451group.com%2Fopensource%2F2008%2F09%2F09%2Fproprietary-open-source-systems-management-get-closer

Apache Directory - LDAP and Kerberos, entirely in Java

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:00:11 -0700