tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-298109102024-03-05T14:17:47.437+02:00Life with Linuxoronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-58657265739191307432010-10-08T23:05:00.000+02:002010-10-08T23:05:38.349+02:00Sick PCs should be banned from the net<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A lunatic from MS <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11483008">suggests</a> that "Sick PCs should be banned from the net".<br />
<br />
I have an easier to implement and more effective idea:<br />
<blockquote>Let's ban companies selling sick Operating-Systems.</blockquote><br />
Anyone who looks for some sanity in this madness is welcome to read John Gilmore's thoughtful <a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/409224/">rebuttal</a>.<br />
<br />
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</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-2602993051845029432010-08-13T09:44:00.000+03:002010-08-13T09:44:59.850+03:00Photos from Campus Party Mexico<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Me with <a href="http://twitter.com/tacvbo">Octavio Ruiz</a> (left) which directed the "Software Libre" part of CPMexico-2010 and <a href="http://twitter.com/octagesimal">Octavio Mendez</a> which manages (together with Claudia) the <a href="http://www.g-blender.org/">G-Blender community</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/oron_peled/4887501724/" title="IMG_2273.JPG by Oron Peled, on Flickr"><img alt="IMG_2273.JPG" height="375" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4098/4887501724_2c54b173a6.jpg" width="500" /></a><br />
<br />
Exhibition hall. Each track has an area along the walls. In the center there is a public work space with tables, electrical outlets and network cables.<br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/oron_peled/4887504964/" title="IMG_2274.JPG by Oron Peled, on Flickr"><img alt="IMG_2274.JPG" height="375" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4080/4887504964_e709c815ed.jpg" width="500" /></a><br />
<br />
Panoramic view of the camping area. I was told there are 3,400 tents... try and count them.<br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/oron_peled/4886921861/" title="cpmexico.camping.panorama.tif by Oron Peled, on Flickr"><img alt="cpmexico.camping.panorama.tif" height="207" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4115/4886921861_ea9d7814fc.jpg" width="500" /></a><br />
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</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-91437025031375515802010-08-10T23:24:00.000+03:002010-08-10T23:24:14.697+03:00Campus Party - Mexico<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div>I was invited by <a href="http://twitter.com/tacvbo">Octavio</a> to give a lecture in this conference...<br />
It would be tomorrow morning (about <a href="http://haifux.org/lectures/193/autotools-1.6.pdf">autotools</a>) and we jointly decided it would be in Spanish... let's see what would happen with this.<br />
<br />
Today I went to the conference (missed yesterday... had Acapulco sea instead), and the first impression is <b>WOW</b> -- never saw any conference this big and in such interesting format:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>6000 participants</li>
<li>People can sleep over in supplied tents in a huge covered area. I think there are more than 2,000 tents there. After I connect my panorama pictures with <a href="http://hugin.sourceforge.net/">hugin</a> and upload the result, you are invited to try and count them ;-)</li>
<li>There is another huge place where each of the different tracks (Music, Digital arts, Free software, Astronomy etc.) are situated and each have their own place for their lectures along the walls (little acoustic problem -- let's see how the neighbouring tracks are going to suffer from my voice tomorrow ;-)</li>
<li>The central area is covered with tables and seats (and some coaches) all equipped with electrical outlets and good LAN connection (apart from the slower wireless). Everyone navigate among the piles of wires. There is plenty of room, everybody come with their favourite laptops, desktops, whatever.</li>
</ul></div>Octavio met me and is introducing me to many people from the conference and the local community. In the meantime I've met Octavio (that's another Octavio) and Claudia Mendez (sp?) a wonderful couple which created a flourishing <a href="http://www.g-blender.org/">blender community</a> and practically adopted me (Thank's to Claudia I may be able to move the camera in blender ;-)<br />
<br />
<div>In one word -- <b>incredible</b> (I'll describe in more words + photos later on)<br />
<br />
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</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-67345994565256837792010-06-20T22:03:00.003+03:002010-06-20T23:31:10.746+03:00פיתוח חופשי של תוכנה, תחת רשיון קוד סגור -- בית משוגעים<div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;">עורך דין אחד תאר בבלוג שלו את <a href="http://kedemlaw.blogspot.com/2010/06/blog-post_20.html">הקשיים והסכנות</a> האורבים לארגונים המשתמשים בתכנה חופשית. מעבר לתשובות הטובות שכבר נכתבו אצלו על ידי שלומי, ליאור וצפריר, הבא נבדוק את האלטרנטיבה הנרמזת על ידי עורך הדין המכובד -- שימוש <span style="font-weight: bold;">בתכנה קניינית</span>.<br /><br />חברות תכנה גדולות משלבות במוצריהן הרבה רכיבים מצדדים שלישיים. בעולם התכנה הקיניינית כל רכיב כזה מגיע עם רשיון משלו:<br /><ul><li>בחלק מהמקרים רשיון "סטנדרטי" שמספק יצרן המרכיב (כל יצרן והסטנדרט שלו כמובן)</li><li>בחלק מהמקרים רשיון שנכתב במיוחד על ידי עורכי הדין של שני הצדדים כחלק מעסקה</li><li>לפעמים הקוד המדובר מגיע "במקרה" עקב כך שהחברה שפיתחה אותו נרכשה על ידי היצרן (לפעמים ללא קשר לתכנה המדוברת)</li><li>בחלק מהמקרים הקוד עבר כבר כמה ידיים עקב רכישת חברות, פיצולים, מיזוגים וכדומה</li><li>וזה מבלי להתחיל אפילו לדבר על תכולת הרשיונות (שימוש, לאיזה מטרות, יצירות נגזרות באיזה מקרים, רשיונות פטנטים משתמעים, רשיונות פטנטים מפורשים, וכו')</li></ul><br />תרגיל בדמיון מודרך: חברה בשם Digital נרכשה על ידי Compaq שאחרי כמה שנים נרכשה על ידי HP. נסו לצייר בדמיונכם מה קרה לקוד של כל הפרוייקטים של שלושת החברות הללו ב־15 שנים האחרונות... (כמה עורכי דין היו דרושים להתיר את הפלונטר? כמה יהיו דרושים אם/כאשר יהיה פלונטר אמיתי).<br /><br />כמה מרכיבי תכנה שונים כולל לדעתכם מוצר גדול המפותח ומתוחזק לאורך שנים ונמכר להרבה לקוחות? עשרות? מאות? כמה מתוכם הגיעו מצדדים שלישיים בדרכים שונות ומשונות?<br />על כמה מהם יודעים המנהלים (הנוכחיים) ועורכי הדין (הנוכחיים) של החברה?<br /><br />אגב, לא צריך ניחושים באויר כמו שזרק עורך הדין. יש לנו כמה דוגמאות היסטוריות של מוצרי תכנה קיניינים גדולים שהפכו למוצרי קוד פתוח -- רק לפתור את הספגטי של <span style="font-weight: bold;">הרשיונות הקנייניים</span> לקח לכל פרוייקט כזה לפחות שנה של עבודה טכנית/משפטית. בחלק מהמקרים זה גם גרר ויתור על יכולות שהיו במוצר המקורי ולא היה ניתן לפתור את בעיות הרישוי שלהם.<br /><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: right;"><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;">מי שעוסק בעובדות במקום ספקולציות והפחדות בוודאי יודע לאיזה דוגמאות התכוונתי:<br /></div><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: left;"><ul><li dir="ltr">Mozilla</li><li dir="ltr">XFS</li><li dir="ltr">JFS</li><li dir="ltr">OpenOffice.org</li><li dir="ltr">Java</li></ul><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: right;"><br /><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;"><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;">לקינוח, מעט נתונים מספריים. מתוך מחשב אחד שלי הפקתי רשימת רשיונות וספרתי כמה חבילות מכוסות על ידי כל רשיון -- והרי תשעת המובילים (פדורה 13 עם KDE ו־GNOME למי שסקרן):<br /></div></div><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;" dir="ltr"><li dir="ltr"> 24 - Public Domain (technically, not a license)<br /></li><li dir="ltr"> 30 - GPL+</li><li dir="ltr"> 42 - GPLv3+</li><li dir="ltr"> 44 - LGPLv2</li><li dir="ltr"> 91 - BSD</li><li dir="ltr"> 133 - GPLv2</li><li dir="ltr"> 142 - MIT</li><li dir="ltr"> 271 - LGPLv2+</li><li dir="ltr"> 323 - GPLv2+</li></ul><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;">סה"כ 1100 חבילות מכוסות על ידי 9 רשיונות בלבד. כולם ידועים ומפורסמים. אגב, באותו מחשב יש עוד יותר מ־250 חבילות שפשוט מאפשרות הרכבה של כמה רשיונות. לדוגמא:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>9 - MPLv1.1 or GPLv2+ or LGPLv2+</li><li>2 - MIT and GPLv2<br /></li></ul><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;"><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;">ויש כמובן מספר חבילות בעלי רשיון יחודי משלהן. כמה דוגמאות מפורסמות:<br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;"><ul><li>1 - ImageMagick</li><li>1 - OpenSSL</li></ul></div></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: right;"><br /><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;"><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;">בקיצור: עם תכנה חופשית -- למעלה מ־1000 חבילות מכוסות על ידי 9 רשיונות בלבד.<br /><br />כמה רשיונות נצטרך לנהל למוצר קנייני המכיל רק 50 מרכיבים חיצוניים? כמה עורכי דין נצטרך כדי לוודא ש־50 הרשיונות תואמים אחד לשני (ולדרישות החוק במדינה שלנו, או מדינות אחרות).<br /><br />הוא שאמרתי: בית משוגעים.<br /><br />כאיש תכנה שאינו עורך דין, אין ביכולתי להעריך את יכולותיו המשפטיות של כותב המאמר המקורי. אבל כדי להשמיע דעה מבוססת בנושא תכנה חופשית וקוד פתוח, רצוי שירכוש מעט ידע מינימלי בתחום התכנה בכלל ובתחום אותו הוא מבקר בפרט.<br /></div><br /></div></div><br /></div><br /></div></div></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-42173624264945133662010-05-26T00:11:00.004+03:002010-05-26T00:33:08.808+03:00פדורה 13 שוחררה<div style="text-align: right;"><div style="text-align: left;"><a style="" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiicOP77vcYq2DiFrkXkDKbXSJUVZ7CuxzScEHY_PKxvz-RFfA9TglrmMPHDpvos86khB4I9zdFKrdTf-7KydQxmGpaPzQ6cWE9aYWilS7LOh4csJWvxlEKe0q5PLaCHeCt-zfZZw/s1600/f13release.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 100px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiicOP77vcYq2DiFrkXkDKbXSJUVZ7CuxzScEHY_PKxvz-RFfA9TglrmMPHDpvos86khB4I9zdFKrdTf-7KydQxmGpaPzQ6cWE9aYWilS7LOh4csJWvxlEKe0q5PLaCHeCt-zfZZw/s320/f13release.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5475319441590749810" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><ul><li>גישה דרך הדף <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/he/">הראשי<br /></a></li><li>הורדה דרך <a href="http://torrents.fedoraproject.org/">נחשול הביטים</a> (bittorrent) -- לא מקושר מהדף הראשי</li><li>יש גם עותק באתר <a href="http://mirror.isoc.org.il/pub/fedora/releases/13/Fedora/">המראה הישראלי </a>-- תודה לליאור קפלן<br /></li><li>אלעד הספיק לתרגם ברגע האחרון חלק גדול <a href="http://docs.fedoraproject.org/he-IL/Fedora/13/html/Release_Notes/index.html">מהודעת השחרור</a> -- כל הכבוד<br /></li></ul></div><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;">אז קדימה להניע את הביטים...</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-58842276052105634832009-11-25T10:44:00.003+02:002009-11-25T10:55:11.520+02:00Meet The Gimp -- via bittorrent<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: right;"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">Hebrew:<br /></div><div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;">מישהו טרח ואסף את 100 סרטוני ההדרכה החופשיים והמצויינים אודות GIMP ויצר DVD הניתן להורדה בנחשול הביטים. פרטים נוספים בבלוג של <a href="http://meetthegimp.org/get-episodes-1-100-as-a-torrent/">רולף</a>. הציפו את הביטים...<br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: right;"><br /><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">English:<br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">The excellent and free video tutorials about the GIMP were collected on a DVD available for download via bittorrent. Further details on the blog of <a href="http://meetthegimp.org/get-episodes-1-100-as-a-torrent/">Rolf</a>. Spread the bits...<br /></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-89098055541364280582009-11-16T00:01:00.005+02:002009-11-16T00:42:15.506+02:00HOWTO: Shift MS-Exchange users to sane (TZID) time zones<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">All invitations I got to a specific (MS using) company were shifted ~10 hours.<br /><br />Since I was pretty familiar with MS software time-zone related oddities I ignored it for a while. But then as a curiosity I decided to look into the attached meeting content (vcs file). Lo and behold, it was saying: "Pacific Standard Time" ... as if our life at the middle east were really pacific ;-(<br /><br />MS inventing their own "standards" is..., well, pretty standard. However, being a KDE user I was thinking if I can make korganizer understand their terminology:<br /><ul><li>An strace proved korgranizer was obediently trying to convert the time by searching for /usr/share/zoneinfo/Pacific Standard Time</li><li>So I tested a simple workaround (which worked):</li></ul><blockquote>ln -s America/Los_Angeles "/usr/share/zoneinfo/Pacific Standard Time"</blockquote><ul><li>A little search showed <a href="http://unicode.org/repos/cldr-tmp/trunk/diff/supplemental/windows_tzid.html">some organization</a> already made a formal map between LaLa-Land and the real world (even including an XML representation).</li></ul>It was easy enough to generalize it by creating a small <a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=532169">package</a> that install a links-farm to do all these mappings. It simply uses the XML data together with a small perl script to create these links during build.<br />(hint, hint, review, review ;-)<br /><br />People from other distros can grab the script <a href="http://oron.fedorapeople.org/tzdata/windows2tzid">here</a>.<br /><br />If all MS kinks were as simple as this...<br /><br />[BTW: I am fully aware that this can be generated by modifying the source of tzdata -- I was looking for a simple solution with minimal disruption of existing packages].<br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-80926958726321820922009-10-26T13:32:00.004+02:002009-10-26T14:04:53.960+02:00“please get a newer Subversion client”<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">An old problem -- a new trick...<br /><br />This error message is familiar to any Subversion user. The error is the result of trying to access a new working copy (WC) with an old subversion client.<br /><br />An example scenario:<br /><ul><li>Your Subversion WC is shared between several hosts.</li><li>You work on the WC from one host (e.g: Centos5).</li><li>You access the WC by mistake from another (e.g: Fedora11).</li><li>The next time you try accessing your WC from the old host, you get this error message.</li></ul>This behavior is pretty dumb:<br /><ul><li>Subversion silently upgrade your WC metadata.</li><li>It doesn't bother asking your permission to do so.</li><li>It does it even for supposedly non-modifying actions like 'svn status'.</li><li>The official FAQ says your only recourse is to upgrade the client...</li><li>And you may "loose" many uncommitted changes!<br /></li></ul>Previously, I didn't have any better idea than this:<br /><ul><li>Check out a clean working copy to a temporary directory.</li><li>Use: <span style="font-family: courier new;">diff -ru -x .svn damaged-wc/ fresh-wc/</span></li><li>Manually merge files from damaged-wc/ to fresh-wc/</li><li>Keep working from fresh-wc/</li><li>Remove damaged-wc/</li></ul>I just found a very nice workaround that was briefly <a href="http://rejon.org/2007/07/please-get-a-newer-subversion-client-one-liner/">mentioned</a>:<br /><span style="font-family: courier new;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-family: courier new;">rsync -r --progress \<br /> --include='*/' --include '.svn/**' --exclude '*' \<br /> fresh-wc/ damaged-wc/</span><br /></blockquote><br />That post only mentioned that emsearcy from <a href="http://osuosl.org">OSUOSL</a> is the source of this nice trick -- after googling I found it in an IRC <a href="http://dev.gentoo.org/%7Edberkholz/irclogs/freenode/%23osuosl.log">log</a> (big one).<br /><br />So, this should serve as another documentation for this.<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-56979190569347594342009-10-26T13:00:00.006+02:002009-10-26T13:10:39.343+02:00USB mouse + hibernation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">My laptop (<a href="http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_7bcd79a6-c43f-4c36-85dd-ea6b3770c191">smolt</a>) works nicely, but I have one quirk -- whenever the laptop wakes up from hibernation (suspend to disk), the external USB mouse does not function at all (while the synaptics touchpad works flawlessly).<br /><br />My workaround was always to plug it after the wakeup (or if it was plugged before, simply take it out and re-plug it). Few weeks ago I stumbled on a nicer workaround:<br /><ol><li>Run lsusb (the mouse doesn't show, but...)<br /></li><li>It works</li><li>Running lsusb again, for verification, shows the mouse.</li></ol>It seems like the bug is in the host controller driver, or is it?<br />Can somebody shed more light about the real bug?<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-60224331962064866282009-10-14T01:23:00.004+02:002009-10-14T01:35:43.238+02:00monitoring fetchmail<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">I use <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/fetchmail">fetchmail</a> to pull mail from several accounts in several places.<br />After my ISP had some "<a href="http://life-with-linux.blogspot.com/2009/08/big-isps-and-what-they-cost-us.html">technical difficulties</a>" it was obvious I should monitor<br />the logs for fetchmail errors.<br /><br />Surprisingly enough, I didn't find anything ready for <a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/logwatch">logwatch</a>. So now <a href="http://oron.fedorapeople.org/logwatch/">there is</a> ;-)<br /><br />Also opened a <a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=528838">bug report</a> with links to the script + config file and their installation<br />directories.<br /><br />Enjoy,<br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-52489094059325376982009-09-30T10:12:00.003+02:002009-09-30T10:43:43.680+02:00OO.o misterious freeze isn't a mistery anymore<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">I wonder how many more languages (beside Hebrew) are affected by this...<br /><br /><a href="http://ilsh.info/?p=1912">Ilan Shavit</a> (Hebrew) posted about an OpenOffice.org "freeze" and a workaround:<br /><ul><li>Whenever someone started writing something in Hebrew in an OO.o session there was a noticeable freeze of the application for several seconds. After this first freeze everything would be back to normal and you could open/edit/close Hebrew documents without further freezes.</li><li>Ilan pointed to a thread in some local (Hebrew) <a href="http://www.tapuz.co.il/TapuzForum/main/Viewmsg.asp?forum=2029&msgid=134017441">forum</a> containing somewhere a link to improved Hebrew myspell <a href="http://mirror.isoc.org.il/pub/openoffice.org.il/3.1/dict-he.oxt">dictionary</a>. (prepared by the good guys from Tk Open Systems that work on improving Hebrew support in OO.o on behalf of the Israeli government).<br /></li></ul>It turns out that what they did is convert the dictionary from ISO-8859-8 encoding to UTF-8.<br />A quick test on one of my computers:<br /><ol><li>Run oowriter, started writing the word שלום (Peace in Hebrew). It freezes after the second letter.</li><li>Close oowriter and repeat step 1 three times (to eliminate caching effects).</li><li>Measured the freeze -- it lasted for about 10 seconds.</li><li>Replace he_IL.aff and he_IL.dic with the "fixed" ones.</li><li>Repeating step 1 now freeze for less than 1 second. WOW!<br /></li></ol>Questions:<br /><ul><li>What is the exact conversion process? The .aff file is textual, so it's easy with iconv(1), however I don't know the myspell toolchain (maybe translate-toolkit has the correct tools, didn't check).</li><li>Do other languages have similar problems? Maybe only CTL languages affected?</li><li>How hard it would be for package maintainers to fix this until upstream rolls it out?<br /></li></ul></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-10630365644814585882009-08-23T22:05:00.004+03:002009-08-23T22:47:20.206+03:00HOWTO: Sendmail authentication against your ISP<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">After the trouble I had with incoming mail, I decided to migrate my sendmail configuration to use the big ISP mail server -- this documents establishing SMTP authentication against an ISP.<br /><br />What I already had:<br /><ul><li>SMART_HOST configured in my /etc/mail/sendmail.mc:</li><br /><blockquote>define(`SMART_HOST',`smtp:mail.actcom.co.il')</blockquote><br /><li>Masquerade definitions, as I use a fictitious domain on my internal network.</li><br /><blockquote>MASQUERADE_AS(`actcom.co.il')dnl The domain of my ISP<br />... some optional features...<br />FEATURE(masquerade_entire_domain)dnl<br />... The domains that are masqueraded<br />MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(localhost.localdomain)dnl<br />MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(my.internal.domain)dnl<br /></blockquote><br /><li>The sendmail m4 macro package installed. In Fedora it is packaged<br />as <span style="font-weight: bold;">sendmail-cf</span></li></ul><span>The only changes in /etc/mail/sendmail.mc were:<br /></span><ul><li>Updating the SMART_HOST to the new mail server (out.bezeqint.net).</li><li>I <span style="font-weight: bold;">did not</span> need to update the MASQUERADE_AS, since my mail address remained the same.</li><li>Adding a new FEATURE:</li><br /><blockquote>FEATURE(authinfo)dnl</blockquote><br /></ul><br />Now I had to create a new file /etc/mail/authinfo and make it readable only by root:<br /><blockquote>cd /etc/mail && touch authinfo && chmod 600 authinfo</blockquote>The content of this file (for my ISP) is:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:90%;">AuthInfo:server "R:realm" "U:user" "P:pass" "M:mechanisms"<br /></span></blockquote>Details:<br /><ul><li>server - the name or IP of your ISP mail server (out.bezeqint.net for my ISP)<br /></li><li>realm - the domain of your ISP (bezeqint.net for my ISP). I first didn't set it and it caused obvious auth failures, as the default was my fictitious internal domain.</li><li>user - for me it was different than 'oron' because the ISP modified the internal names of the users when it acquired Actcom.</li><li>pass - guess what?</li><li>mechanisms -- the default is a list of secure mechanisms (GSSAPI, etc.) obviously my ISP doesn't use anything like that so I had to give it explicitly as: "M:LOGIN PLAIN"</li><li>The quotes around each items are mandatory!<br /></li></ul>For anyone who want the gory details, just make sure you have the sendmail-cf package installed and search authinfo (ignoring case)<br />in /usr/share/sendmail-cf/README.<br /><br />Last but not least. They seem to be using Postfix, but don't support TLS, which means the users password is transmitted in the clear every time she send mail. Please don't tell this to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wietse_Venema">Wietse_Venema</a> so he won't get a heart attack.<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-22999898657049995672009-08-23T10:35:00.003+03:002009-08-23T11:39:11.980+03:00Big ISP's and what they cost us<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">I was using the same small ISP (Actcom) since ~1997. An important reason was that it was founded and managed by Amir Plivatzky, which at the beginning of the 80's while studying for Masters degree at the Technion managed the BSD-4.1/4.2 systems in the Technion -- For me as an EE freshmen at the time, people like him should be blamed for sending me down the *NIX road ;-)<br /><br />About a year and a half ago, Actcom was bought by one of the big players in our ISP pond (Bezeqint). I was worried, but since they promised to keep the status-quo, decided to wait and see how it goes.<br /><br />To their credit, they did try to leave things as they are, but without the original knowledgeable people that's hard to do.... so things slowly deteriorated:<br /><ol><li> One of the first things to go was the web-app enabling a customer to securely manage its own mailbox. So to change your mailbox password, you have to call their support and <span style="font-weight: bold;">tell them</span> the wanted password :-O<br /></li><li>Webmail (which I use when out of country) was also migrated to their systems. Problem? the link to it leads you to an 'http:' login screen -- as I don't want to send my password as cleartext across the globe it became a non-starter for me.</li></ol>Last week I got another blow. Some mails I expected from people didn't show up. At first I didn't suspect anything unusual since I did get other mails. A few days later I dug my maillog and saw fechmail got a lot of 'Host unreachable' errors. A quick perl script found that in the last two weeks, only 3 out of 20 connection attempts per hour succeeded. The total amount of received mail was also very low. Emergency mode now starts... calling their support.<br /><br />They were clueless as expected but they do deserve to be credited as they were:<br /><ol><li>Quick to answer the phone, polite and making an <span style="font-weight: bold;">effort</span> to help the best they could.</li><li>Didn't panic when finding out I didn't use Outlook but fetchmail (which they didn't heard of before). I explained them the problems and walked with them over the tests I did (resolving the mail server name to IP, pinging, testing the IMAP port number via telnet, testing POP3 as fallback).</li></ol>They admitted they can barely manage Actcom's original mail server and advised me to work against their normal mail server. A quick change in my fetchmail parameters and >700 delayed mails landed in my mailboxes (I host 3 of them).<br /><br />All good? Not so quick. Two days later I found that my mails stream is thin again. My logs show it was an authentication problem now. Quick call to the support line. The result? I had to change the internal user name of the mailbox with some prefix they assigned to Actcom customers. Still a bit unexplained:<br /><ul><li>How it managed to suck >700 mails with the original names?</li><li>Of the three mailboxes, two authenticate only with the new name, one authenticate only with the old. Go figure...</li></ul>As you can understand I'm in damage control mode now and I haven't even thoroughly tested yet the outgoing mail path...<br /><br />One small benefit. I wrote a quick and dirty logwatch plugin for fetchmail so at least I'll be alerted on time. I'll upload it somewhere (and try to push it to fetchmail Fedora package) when things calm down a little.<br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-80052428442801382082009-07-21T00:11:00.003+03:002009-07-21T00:16:28.766+03:00Microsoft Contributes...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">In my previous post I forgot to mention another patch MS people should make to their code base:<br /><blockquote>find . -type f | xargs sed -i 's/Patent Promise/Patent License/g'<br /></blockquote><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-80063116428546605342009-07-20T22:59:00.005+03:002009-07-21T00:00:37.250+03:00Microsoft Contributes Linux Drivers to Linux Community<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;">Welcome Microsoft to our GPL club. Let's try to help you with some tips:<br /><ul><li>While taking help from a prominent kernel contributor as g-k-h was very wise and he, no doubt, prevented you from falling in many pitfalls; you would still need a lot of patience. It takes time until people review your patches, ask questions in LKML, propose different approach, ask for rational etc, etc. Take your time, it's nothing personal against you -- it's simply the (somewhat) painful process for including code in the Linux kernel.</li><li>Also, many times the results of this process generate a very different outcome than what the initial coder was thinking. You can just ask Ingo Molnar (as an example) how much time he's been working on the RT patches, how many iterations has passed and how much the result differ from the initial code contributed by MontaVista.</li><li>In some cases the code may have to be maintained outside of the official kernel for a long time. Don't take it personally, it happened to the best/biggest Linux companies. Take as an example GFS2 and OCFS2 -- two clustering filesystems that are in active use by customers of RedHat and Oracle respectively for several years. Both are still not part of the Linux kernel (you can dig LKML for the gory details).</li><li>There were even some extreme cases where code was not (shock, panic, awe...) merged <span style="font-weight: bold;">at all!</span> Even after IBM (which is one of the 3 biggest kernel contributors) invested a lot of time into EVMS (yes, it was long time ago..), its solution never made it to the official kernel. LVM2 took its place. Sometimes life can be tough. If worst happens and your code is left out in the cold -- don't despair, maybe next time...</li></ul>Ah, and just another detail. There would be no doubt people in our community who would raise the patents issues and use them as an argument to reject your patches. While I cannot offer you a complete solution to this problem (until the patent system is revised to the ground), a small and simple idea may mitigate your problem -- make every patch sent to LKML contain the magic line:<br /><blockquote><pre>Signed-off-by: Steve Ballmer<br /></pre></blockquote>Cheers,<br /><br /><br />Yes: this post was written with a tongue in the cheek.<br />However: all claims are valid -- nobody has promised a free ticket into the kernel to any company who is willing to contribute code...<br /><br /><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-66455616914375620302009-06-17T10:18:00.008+03:002009-06-17T10:44:42.505+03:00עברית בפדורה 11<div style="text-align: right;">כאשר שוחררה פדורה 11, כל מי שניגש <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/he/">לדף הראשי בעברית</a> היה משוכנע ששוב דחו את מועד השחרור.<br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">זוהי כמובן אשמתו של עבדכם הנאמן שמצא זמן לעדכן את התרגום רק עתה.<br /><br />ובאותו נושא, חנוכת הגרסה החדשה של <a href="http://transifex.org/">מערכת התרגום</a> היא הזדמנות מצויינת להזכיר שיש עוד <a href="https://translate.fedoraproject.org/languages/he/collection/fedora/fedora-11/">עבודה</a> ומתנדבים אף פעם לא מיותרים. כמה הערות:<br /></div><ul style="text-align: right;"><li>אם אתם עסוקים בתרגום של פרוייקטים במעלה הזרם, התעלמו מבקשתי. תמשיכו לעזור לתומר במוזילה, לדיאגו ב-KDE לאנשי אופן-ולכל שאר האנשים הטובים שבזכותם נמנעת עבודה כפולה ומיותרת בכל ההפצות.</li><li> עדיין אינכם מתרגמים? נו למה אתם מחכים? גם מעט תרגום סולל את הדרך להרבה אנשים, אז קדימה לעבודה.<br /></li><li>אם אתם משתתפים בפרוייקט תוכנה חופשית, אולי תרצו לחבר אותו למערכת Transifex של פדורה. כל התרגומים של המערכת יוכנסו ישירות למערכת ניהול הגרסאות בה אתם משתמשים (git, svn, mercurial, וכו'). העקרון המנחה בפדורה הוא <span style="font-weight: bold;">לא ליצור פיצול</span> מהפרוייקט במעלה הזרם אלא להזין אותו ישירות -- זה נכון גם לקוד וגם לתרגומים.</li></ul>אז באיזה <a href="https://translate.fedoraproject.org/languages/he/collection/fedora/fedora-11/">מרכיב</a> אתם מתחילים?<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-61867900142367216362009-05-18T00:44:00.005+03:002009-05-18T01:07:03.652+03:00זבל, האם אפשר להתגבר עליו?<div dir="rtl" style="text-align: right;"><br />קבוצת מתנדבים באסטוניה ניקו את המדינה:<br /><ul><li>מבצע של יום אחד!</li></ul><ul><li>כ-10,000 טון אשפה מאתרי טבע!</li></ul><ul><li>הפעילו 50,000 מתנדבים.</li></ul><ul><li>בעלות של כחצי מיליון יורו.</li></ul><br />להשוואה:<br /><ul><li>יחסית לאוכלוסיה, שקול לכ-15 מיליון מתנדבים בארה"ב.</li></ul><ul><li>אם המדינה היתה צריכה לבצע, היה לוקח כ-3 שנים וכ-22 מיליון יורו.</li></ul><br /><a href="http://www.opensource.org/node/433">והקשר לקוד פתוח...</a><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-24658814606894758452009-02-11T00:04:00.005+02:002009-02-11T00:18:14.799+02:00Internet Draft: Transport Layer Security (TLS) Evidence Extensions[mail to ietf@ietf.org]<br /><br />I was worried by the <a href="http://www.fsf.org/news/reoppose-tls-authz-standard">information</a> about a new Internet Draft which<br />seems to be troubled by patent claims even before its approval.<br /><br />So, I decided to read a bit before forming a final opinion.<br /><br />First I've read the following link from <a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/1026/">19-Nov-2008</a><br /><br />IANL but the language looks too familiar...<br /><blockquote> "RedPhone Security agrees to grant licenses for such uses in a fair<br /> and nondiscriminatory manner. This statement applies to the<br /> Disclosed Patent Information, including all amendments in all<br /> nations as published during the course of prosecution."<br /></blockquote><br />I'm sure you are well aware that "fair and nondiscriminatory manner"<br />is the usual "newspeak" term for discriminating free software.<br />E.g: if someone only ask 10$ per-copy it means you cannot<br />distribute without having some copy counting mechanisms in place.<br /><br />Looking further I've read the following link from <a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/ipr/767/">26-Nov-2008</a><br /><br />So, about two weeks later, the same company says:<br /> <blockquote>"Any party wishing to request a license under the patent<br /> applications listed in Schedule A and/or any issued patents<br /> from such applications is encouraged to contact RedPhone Security."</blockquote><br /><br />Which clarifies they reserve the right to provide licenses on a case<br />by case basis (yes, under the non-yada-yada etc). This is very different<br />from cases where comprehensive blanket licenses are given by relevant<br />companies for inclusion of their technologies in standard setting papers.<br /><br />Which begs the question -- why all this is disclosed barely two months<br />before the (supposed) approval of this draft standard? To hush<br />criticism? To make IETF think harder about withdrawing after investing<br />a lot of time and work into this?<br /><br />Regretfully, we already saw in some industries the advent of litigious<br />companies messing with industry standards (a sad refresher is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambus">here</a>)<br /><br />Not long ago, we saw other important standard bodies loses much<br />of their credibility due to similar tactics (I obviously refer to<br />the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 farce).<br /><br />I obviously don't want IETF to fall into a similar trap. It's<br />important to reject this proposal so all of us can trust any RFC<br />or STD for what they are -- a free specification for anybody to<br />implement as they see fit.<br /><br />Furthermore. Patent disclosure at the end of the process instead<br />of the beginning is not an example of honesty (do you think<br />they "forgot" they applied for these patents?)<br /><br />IMHO, the only way for the IETF to protect itself and its reputation<br />from such predatory behaviour is to apply a mechanism to deter such<br />companies. Maybe something along the line of:<br /><br /> <blockquote>"You made us work X months without trusting us with your secret plan?<br /> Good. You lost our trust for the next X months. You are welcome<br /> to come back with different proposal *after* this time lapse."</blockquote><br /><br />I urge you to reconsider and not risk the great achievements of<br />Internet in general and the IETF in particular for a short term "gain".<br /><br />Thank you very much for all your efforts,<br /><br />[This mail was prepared and sent by free software, running on a<br /> free operating system, abiding by freely available Internet standards]<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-62281277929247026182008-12-21T00:24:00.004+02:002008-12-21T00:50:16.622+02:00KDE-4.2 בעברית<div dir="rtl">לפני כמה ימים דיאגו <a href="http://elcuco.blogli.co.il/archives/202">דן בנושא</a><br /><br />לשמחתי, הוא בדיוק העלה את הנושא בזמן המתאים.<br />כעת קל להתרשם/לבדוק בלי לגעת במערכת הרגילה שלכם:<br /><ul><li>הורידו את קובץ ה-ISO <a href="http://rdieter.fedorapeople.org/torrents/">מכאן</a>. קובץ זה מכיל גרסת Fedora-10 עם KDE-4.2beta2.<br /></li><li>אפשר להתקין אותו בקלות על גבי DOK במקום לצרוב:</li></ul></div><pre>livecd-iso-to-disk --reset-mbr --noverify \<br /> --overlay-size-mb 100 --home-size-mb 150 \<br /> --unencrypted-home --delete-home \<br /> f10-image.iso /dev/sdc1<br /></pre><br /><div dir="rtl"><br />נא לבחור את המחיצה הנכונה של ה-DOK שלכם. התהליך אינו מוחק את תוכן ה-DOK הקודם.<br /><br />פרטים נוספים <a href="https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2008-December/msg03033.html">בכתובת</a><br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-68638860376380363902008-12-08T22:39:00.003+02:002008-12-08T23:13:45.329+02:00Computer based testingAbout 6 months ago I encountered an interesting web based system for managing and running exams via the computer. It was <a href="http://tcexam.org">TCExam</a> and it got me in an excellent timing.<br /><br />I was running an introductory Linux and free-software course for a group of teachers (which was organized by the tireless <a href="http://www.vaya.org.il/">Yael Talmor</a>) and we were looking for a final project we can give them. However, most were non-technical users.<br /><br />So we decided to let them translate TCExam to Hebrew:<br /><ul><li>They only need short explanation and can use gedit for that.</li><li>They are bound to use Linux for that (it's UTF-8 encoded and doing conversion to windows would be more difficult for them than simply use the desktops we installed during the course).</li><li>They may have direct benefit for their school (TCExam server).</li><li>Either way, it would help other school projects in Israel.</li></ul><br />It took them longer than I was hoping for, but they collectively did some 3/4 of the job. In the last days I finished the rest (most of it, ~10 big strings + cleanups are needed), sent it upstream and packaged the latest and greatest version.<br /><br />Status:<br /><ul><li>It's still waiting for <a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=465159">review</a> (hint, hint...)</li><li>There are some minor problems (e.g: the front page of the admin interface have some formating problems I didn't have time to debug yet).</li><li>However, it's usable.</li><li>Grab the <a href="http://oron.fedorapeople.org/tcexam/">RPM</a>s for F10: tcexam, tcexam-selinux, tcexam-mysql, tcexam-postgresql</li><li>Packagers for other distros (Debian?) you may want to look at the <a href="http://oron.fedorapeople.org/tcexam/tcexam.spec">spec</a> file.</li></ul>Comments/flames etc. are most welcome (especially if they refer to the specific problems reported by rpmlint or the package design issues I mention in the review <a href="https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=465159">request</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-12500726128006474892008-10-25T13:00:00.007+02:002008-10-25T13:15:49.219+02:00האם ניתן לגרום למיקרוסופט לשתף פעולה<div dir="rtl"><br />יתכן שכן<br />אתמול דווח שמיקרוסופט הצטחפה כחברה בוועדת התקינה של <a href="http://ampq.org/">AMPQ</a><br />ההבדלים הבולטים בין "הצטרפות" זאת למקרים אחרים הם:<br /><p></p><ul><li>התקן מובל על ידי עולם הקוד הפתוח, חברת רד-האט היא מהמייסדות שלו ובצעה התקנות בארגונים גדולים</li><li>חברות בוועדה דורשת חתימה על הסכמים שמונעים מהחברים לבצע תעלולי פטנטים וכדומה</li></ul><p dir="rtl"><br /><a href="http://bryanche.blogspot.com/2008/10/welcome-to-amqp-microsoft.html">פרטים נוספים באנגלית</a><br /><br />מסקנת ביניים שלי: אם לא נכנעים ללחץ שלהם (כמו בהסכם של נובל) וממשיכים לרוץ קדימה, אז בסוף אין להם ברירה. כך, אולי כשהמשיח יבוא (או יותר סביר, כאשר המונופול שלהם יישחק) הם עלולים ללמוד להתנהג כראוי... (ואז גלעד בן-יוסף יוכל להגיד שהוא צדק)<br /><br /></p></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-35097518920651131972008-10-14T21:23:00.003+02:002008-10-14T21:53:16.896+02:00Hebrew installation of Fedora 10Few minutes ago I sent my latest update to anaconda Hebrew translation which brings us to 92% translated strings. Thanks to the wonders of <a href="http://transifex.org/">transifex</a>, it is already <a href="http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=anaconda.git;a=summary">committed</a> into anaconda git repository. So now we are officially qualified and Hebrew speaking people can use their native language during the installation process.<br /><br /><br />I'd like to thank two people for that:<a href="http://liorkaplan.wordpress.com/"><br /></a><ul><li><a href="http://liorkaplan.wordpress.com/">Lior Kaplan</a> who have done the Hebrew translation for Debian Etch (some two years ago) and as a result for all Debian-derived distros. That was what pushed me to match the record for Fedora...</li><li> Mark Krapivner who sent me some quality translations and helped me finish it in time.</li></ul><br />Hebrew speakers, please test. Few tips for the testers:<br /><ul><li>The <a href="https://fedoraproject.org/he/get-prerelease">Beta</a> release already contains the "Hebrew" selection, although at the time it was composed there was only some ~75% translated (and I've done many fixes later).</li><li>Booting from an install image should give you Hebrew (עברית) when you start the install.</li><li>If you boot a live-CD, you should select Hebrew at the gdm login screen (thank the GNOME translators). Then, you'll get a Hebrew desktop. (Double)-clicking on the installation icon on the desktop would start /usr/bin/liveinst in Hebrew (like any other application).</li><li>If you boot KDE live-CD, there's a quirk. The kdm login screen present no language selection because of the different way of language setup in KDE. As a result, you'll get a KDE4 desktop in English and your locale would be en_US.UTF-8. The workaround for any foreign language install is to open a 'konsole' and run:</li></ul><blockquote><br />su - # Open a root shell (no password, it's a live CD)<br />LANG=he_IL.UTF-8 liveinst</blockquote>[note: if anyone has a non-commandline workaround/fix for KDE-live-CD, say so]<br /><br /><br />Enjoy...<div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-29593070653088375332008-09-25T02:55:00.011+03:002008-09-25T03:25:21.068+03:00מזל טוב פדורה<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFo1S1Utm7zkpM5kDFNuJ3Ed8Ex-Hgp_68DHCiaEzT4H1TD8t8CFSqrdrbK348LL_g3gaSZV0fVcpDbyhWBDuQpDHO5CHVRyReKuHUXLwmqAdEeA5E70VjLQ6TmY2DpczY656piQ/s1600-h/5years-banner-large.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFo1S1Utm7zkpM5kDFNuJ3Ed8Ex-Hgp_68DHCiaEzT4H1TD8t8CFSqrdrbK348LL_g3gaSZV0fVcpDbyhWBDuQpDHO5CHVRyReKuHUXLwmqAdEeA5E70VjLQ6TmY2DpczY656piQ/s320/5years-banner-large.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249745062832245634" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: right;">ואי אפשר בלי שי קטן<br />אז יש לנו תכנה עברית קטנה שנכתבה על ידי קובי זמיר<br /><div style="text-align: left;">yum install libhocr<br /><div style="text-align: right;">כן היא כעת חבילה רשמית ב<a href="https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F8/FEDORA-2008-7613">פדורה</a><br /></div></div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-24085112717075762522008-09-04T22:51:00.004+03:002008-09-04T23:52:00.733+03:00Linux (and this new Chrome thingy...)Chrome was covered so widely that I decided not to refer its features, but<br />try to focus on the Linux side of things.<br /><ul><li>Many journalists reported that "...only a Windows version was released..." Since they come from a Windows world, they obviously don't understand the role of distributions and packagers:</li><ul><li>Check license before, not <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/150637/google_amends_chrome_license_agreement_after_objections.html">after</a> you install.</li><li>Be in contact with (or part of) the upstream development team -- so the development process is open as well as the license.<br /></li><li>Integrate with the rest of your distribution -- there's no need to have two copies of google-gears or other shared resources. The new architecture may help us isolate it better via SELinux policy or other means (chrooting selected web-sites?)</li><li>I.E: leaving the binary composition to the distributions was a wise decision IMO.<br /></li></ul><li>There were also a lot of speculation about Chrome killing of Firefox or vise versa. Again, this Windows mentality of "zero sum games". We Linux people (and Unix veterans) are used to have many "competing" tools -- Perl/Python/PHP/Ruby, GNOME/KDE, etc. -- Tools like nm-applet and pk sit nicely on my KDE system tray, just like Amarok can sit nicely on the GNOME panel.</li><li>In the free software world, most of the competition result in variety of reusable toolkits, each with its own pros/cons -- this is a win/win situation:</li><ul><li>Long live Konqi (yes, we want Webkit ;-)<br /></li><li>Long live Firefox (Prism, TraceMonkey, maybe even Gecko...)<br /></li><li>Long live <a href="http://code.google.com/chromium/">Chromium</a><br /></li></ul></ul><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29810910.post-82163083483939540972008-08-01T05:10:00.003+03:002008-08-01T05:57:11.848+03:00August PenguinsThe yearly conference of the <a href="http://august.penguin.org.il/">Israeli penguins</a> had an unexpected<br />(or rather <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/149109/2008/07/microsoft_apache.html?tk=rss_news">expected</a>) sponsor.<br /><br />To help these poor outsiders adjust, I decided to prepare a short guide (PDF):<br /><ul><li><a href="http://users.actcom.co.il/%7Eoron/oron/docs/August-Penguins-2008.pdf">Hebrew</a></li><li><a href="http://users.actcom.co.il/%7Eoron/oron/docs/August-Penguins-2008.en.pdf">English</a><br /></li></ul><a href="http://august.penguin.org.il/"></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="<$BlogSiteFeedUrl$>" title="Atom feed">Site Feed</a>
</div>oronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00302498410948542598noreply@blogger.com0