Planet Software Freedom Day

February 09, 2010

einfeldt: Doh! ♺ @glynmoody Microsoft eliminates multitasking support in Windows Mobile 7 http://bit.ly/dfSMPy great news for Android

einfeldt: Doh! ♺ @glynmoody Microsoft eliminates multitasking support in Windows Mobile 7 http://bit.ly/dfSMPy great news for Android

einfeldt: thx to @grantbow & @daemonicpenguin 4 brainstorming solutions to the CAS Lab issues that came up 2day. :-)

einfeldt: thx to @grantbow & @daemonicpenguin 4 brainstorming solutions to the CAS Lab issues that came up 2day. :-)

February 08, 2010

FSFE Newsletter - January 2010

In January, FSFE was awarded the Theodor Heuss Medal as a "trendsetting organisation". This recognition for the hard work of the past years was a good start into the new year.

Getting Started with Zenoss Core Webinar February 9

Have you recently downloaded Zenoss Core, or do you have questions about implementing the solution in your environment? If so, please register  to attend our bi-weekly Getting Started with Zenoss Core Webinar. The February 9 session is still open for sign-up, if you can’t make this session, the next one is already on the schedule. You can register here:

 

Tuesday, February 9 2:00 p.m. EST

Tuesday, February 23 9:00 a.m. EST

 

Here’s   what you’ll get out of the session:

  • An introduction to the Zenoss Community
  • Installing the software properly
  • Preparing your environment
  • Logging in to get started
  • Adding, classifying and auto-discovering your devices
  • Getting and staying organized
  • Seeing the “big picture” (dashboard, network map, event console, Google Maps, etc.)
  • Avoiding common mistakes

 

We also have a Zenoss engineer available to answer questions live – and there are usually lots of questions submitted! If you’re interested in seeing past Q&A logs, take a look at some of the previous Getting Started with Zenoss Q&A sessions where we document and upload all of the questions submitted along with answers.

LibrePlanet Free Software Conference: Free as in Freedom!

The annual free software conference LibrePlanet is the place for the free software community -- from old school hackers to brand new users -- to come together and further the collective goals of the free software movement. At LibrePlanet 2010 you can help your neighbor get a head-start in free software or explore the very latest philosophical ideas that will shape computing and user freedom for the next generation.

February 07, 2010

Peaceproof through Discourse Ethical analysis? – Weapon of mass construction: The Internet


Make me believe!

Background

The Internet has been nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Conclusion

Given that the Internet has allowed a powerful global conversation to start and thus implies non-violence as well as being a platform for global voluntary cooperation, it should be given the Nobel Peace Prize. Although the prize itself is meaningless, it does have an undeniable symbolic value.

Now the analysis.

The Nobel Prize to Barack and “Scandinavian” as adjective:

One of the main reasons for Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize was his stand and preliminary work against the dispersion of nuclear weapons. Well let’s not forget that we, the world, are still facing many dangers that are not being fought against by any politician. Instead politicians ally themselves with them to set the discourse of the day, and this is true for most societies worldwide. So it’s fair to call these dangers for what they are: Press, Radio and Television = Weapons of mass destruction!

Well, as much as I was disappointed with the stupidity of the Nobel committee here in Oslo last year, I don’t blame them. I guess Thorbjørn Jagland, chair of the committee, wanted to shake hands with Barack and play the cool kid in front of the world. To me that is not surprising coming from him. In my eyes he is a poster child of the manic Scandinavian obsession with and speciality for organizing peace and freedom. He also represents the historical, and current, Scandinavian pushing for the creation (notice where the first 2 UN Secretary General are from) of a One World government. And as any politician or person of power, he likes to show off. Period.

In second though, the peace organizing behavior might actually be driven by guilt or might just be categorized as schizophrenic as the track record of Scandinavian countries (read Norway and Sweden specifically) is not as peaceful or uneventful as you might think. But please, don’t get me wrong. I love Norway and the other Scandinavian countries and their people, I just want us to acknowledge collectively that we are acting sanctimoniously. If we are to change things we have to recognize mere facts first!

The point:

So before you get me going with my rant and I bore you to death: The Internet has allowed individuals from al parts of the globe to communicate  and in the process it has changed the way we think of ourselves,  people around us, country borders and the world itself. I guess we can link this to the idea of the Internet being a global conversation driven by argumentation, and this does not only apply to markets, but also has political and social implications. Thus, Discourse ethics can seem to be a valid tool to search for interpersonal relations and moral implications in this global polilogue of ours.

Not surprisingy, as I have taken my stand, I will take a libertarian approach and analize if this global conversation actually has brought us some amount of peace or, at least, less violence. Anyway far less damage than Nobel’s invention.

From Wikipedia’s article about Discourse Ethics:

Drawing on the work of Habermas and Apel, Hoppe, a former student of Habermas’s, asserts that argumentation, or discourse, is by its nature a conflict-free way of interacting and requires individual control of resources; thus, he argues, certain norms are presupposed as true by anyone engaging in genuine discourse. These norms include the libertarian principle of non-aggression, which itself implies libertarian rights. Therefore, no one can argumentatively deny libertarian rights without self-contradiction.

Now let’s see Gary B. Madison’s analysis on the subject:

the various values defended by liberalism are not arbitrary, a matter of mere personal preference, nor do they derive from some natural law. . . . Rather, they are nothing less and nothing more than what could be called the operative presuppositions or intrinsic features and demands of communicative rationality itself. In other words, they are values that are implicitly recognized and affirmed by everyone by the very fact of their engaging in communicative reason. This amounts to saying that no one can rationally deny them without at the same time denying reason, without self-contradiction, without in fact abandoning all attempts to persuade the other and to reach agreement.”

These implicitly recognized values include a renunciation of the legitimacy of violence. Thus,

it is absolutely impossible for anyone who claims to be rational, which is to say human, outrightly to defend violence …. [As Paul Ricoeur writes:]‘. . . violence is the opposite of discourse. . . . Violence is always the interruption of discourse: discourse is always the interruption of violence.’ That violence is the opposite of discourse means that it can never justify itself—and is therefore not justifiable—for only through discourse can anything be justified. As the theory of rational argumentation and discussion, liberalism amounts, therefore, to a rejection of power politics.”

Thus, Madison, like Hoppe, argues that the fact-value gap can be bridged by an appeal to the nature of discourse.

While Hoppe attempts to show that the non-aggression principle (i.e., self-ownership plus the right to homestead) itself is directly implied by any discourse or argumentation, Madison’s arguments are a bit different. For instance, he argues that, because discourse has priority over violence, this validates the Kantian claim that people ought to be treated as ends rather than means, which is the principle of human dignity. The principle of freedom from coercion then follows from the principle of human dignity.

Out of this we can derive, among others, that the internet is just the platform for this global argumentation, and it’s infrastructure hosts the reflection of this argumentation as text. But the conversation itself is driven by its users. All of them.

So, give the Nobel Peace Prize to all of us, to humanity that always finds ways to do what we have evolved ourselves to be best at: cooperate!

Go back to the top for the conclusion.

I know this whole analysis is quite naive, but I had to get it out of the system.

Thanks for reading!

Laptop/netbook for a university student and a HP Mini 311 quick review

I recently asked on Twitter:

For a college/university student, would you get ‘em a laptop or a netbook? Need opinions ASAP. Thanks!

HP MiniThe Twitterverse was quick to respond. Thank you all for responding! A little summary:

  1. @sniffit suggested that netbooks are underpowered, but might change with Linux being on them.
  2. @redsheep went for a laptop, unless I planned on being a mean uncle that didn’t want them to play games/do graphics/etc. Why, I can’t be a mean uncle ;-)
  3. @spinzer said go with a laptop because students have diverse working nature, and a netbook wouldn’t cut it.
  4. Both @alphaque and @brianritchie suggested to watch for the coursework: Computer Science, Graphics, Statistics deserve a laptop, otherwise, go for a netbook.
  5. @saimatkong suggested a 12″ notebook, but those tend to be quite expensive, to the best of my knowledge.
  6. @sureshdr, @tjunkie, @thechannelc, @liewcf, @bleongcw, @r0kawa all suggested a laptop would be better. In fact, @liewcf suggested a MacBook.
  7. @jerng brought up a good point: it should depend on the preferences of the user as speed tends to be a secondary issue.
  8. @biatch0r was the only one that outright said go for a netbook, lugging around a 10KG laptop is so 20th century :) I tend to agree.

So a bit from where I’m coming from, which I didn’t say in the original tweet. This laptop/netbook is for a complete stranger, whom I’ve never met. We do however, know her father. His daughter had just been accepted into a university somewhere up north in Malaysia, and she clearly needs a laptop/netbook for her coursework.

Anyway, all that aside, and with much thanks to the Twitterverse, I set out to pick up a machine quickly (think, 0.5hr). I had to be near MidValley for another reason, so hopped in. Checked out the Asus, and Acer stores, and found laptops and netbooks to exist, and you’d average around RM2,100 or so. Dell had a laptop for RM1,999, but it was a 14″ clunker, and it seemed really heavy. This seemed to be the large problem with a laptop: they came with everything (including a DVD-RW drive), but would come with a 13″ or 14″ screen – and they were all mighty heavy. Acer seemed to offer OS-less laptops, but I didn’t want to spend more time than need be, so wanted an operating system.

I went over to the HP store, my last stop, thinking in my head, I’d pick up the Dell. But I was taken aback when I saw the HP Mini 311. The specifications were amazing: 1.66GHz N280 Atom processor, 2GB RAM, 250GB hard disk, an external 8x DVD-RW drive (!), 11.6″ screen boasting a resolution of 1366×768, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11b/g WLAN, 92% full-size keyboard (with great tactile feedback – I spent a lot of time in the store trying it). But that’s not all, it comes with 3 USB ports, HDMI output (why?), VGA output (and no need for any silly cable like their previous items), a multimedia card slot (for SD’s, etc.) and a built-in webcam.

The exact model is the HP Mini 311-1002TU. It seems like its an edition only available in Asia, and it comes with Windows 7 Starter Edition. Did I mention that it cost a mere RM1,799?

More goodness about it. It doesn’t come with an Intel graphics chipset, but an nVidia ION. Video performance is pretty darned good, in comparison to what Intel doles out, even on the netbook that I own (an Asus 1000HE). In my quick experiments, I was getting a good 5 hours of battery life running Windows 7.

First thing I did was install: Mozilla Firefox (and set it to be the default web browser), avast! anti-virus (to protect the PC), and OpenOffice.org with the JRE. It comes with a 60 day trial version of Microsoft Office, but who needs that when OpenOffice.org is free and should suffice. The system is quite snappy, and while the guy at the store told me that Windows 7 Starter Edition will not allow me to run more than 3 applications at a time, it works fine for me. In fact, the only thing that seems annoying is that you can’t change the desktop background – Microsoft is intentionally crippling their software for netbooks. From what I understand, a dual monitor setup will not work either (useful to have an external monitor on a netbook), but I did not try this.

I can confirm that Ubuntu works pretty well on this machine – I tested it when I got home, using the LiveCD and it seemed to “just work”. More information available at the laptop testing team HP Mini 311 on the Ubuntu wiki. A forum post to help with suspend/resume magic.

In conclusion, I didn’t get a laptop, but a netbook. But a netbook with an amazing screen size, a resolution that exceeds my expectations, a good graphics card, and an external DVD writer. Windows 7 Starter does not come with Aero, and I wrote a little README file informing the new owner that it might be better to just install Linux and she’ll be better for it at the end of her three year university course :-)

Related posts:

  1. Netbook Tweaks at BarCampKL
  2. Netbook shopping
  3. Parallels Workstation Quick Review


February 05, 2010

links for 2010-02-05

Summary of recent MySQL releases

Even though things have been a tad bit turbulent around here in the recent weeks, our engineers did not rest and churned out an impressive number of updates and new releases of the MySQL Server and related products.

Here's a quick summary of what we released this year so far (in chronological order):

Kudos to the developers! Source and binaries can be downloaded from the usual place. Enjoy! We welcome your feedback and bug reports.

MariaDB 5.1.42 released!

Dear MariaDB users,

MariaDB 5.1.42, a new branch of the MySQL database which includes all major open source storage engines, myriad bug fixes, and many community patches, has been released. We are very proud to have made our first final release, and we encourage you to test it out and use it on your systems.

For an overview of what’s new in MariaDB 5.1.42, please check out the release notes.

For information on installing MariaDB 5.1.42 on new servers or upgrading to MariaDB 5.1.42 from previous releases, please check out the installation guide.

MariaDB is available in source and binary form for a variety of platforms and is available from the download pages.

It is also our pleasure to announce that we have a partnership with Webyog to offer their tools for trial and at a discounted rate if purchased within 30 days. Find out more at: Download – SQLyog MySQL Fronted, MONyog MySQL Monitoring Tool or via the software partner downloads.

We welcome and appreciate your feedback, bug reports, bug fixes, patches, and participation on our mailing list. Find out more about working with the community.

Enjoy!

Related posts:

  1. MySQL on Leopard OS X 10.5 PrefPane fixed!
  2. MySQL with yaSSL vulnerability
  3. MySQL Connector/PHP for MySQL 5.0.24 and PHP 5.1.5 released


February 04, 2010

Bases de Datos Grid y Paralelas

por Carolina Palacios.  

Compañeros estas son las direcciones para que descargen el documento y las presentaciones de la exposicion de Base de Datos que trata de Grid y Paralelas, esperamos que les guste y les sirva de mucha ayuda en su futuro.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/26369350/Base-de-Datos-Grid-y-Paralelas

http://www.scribd.com/doc/26369362/Base-de-Datos-Grid-y-Paralelas2

BASES DE DATOS DIFUSAS Y MULTIMEDIA

por Juan Gabriel Maldonado Gonzalez.  

sonrisaAqui estan las los documentos de bases de datos difusa y multimedia revisen compañeros grax
Ahi les dejo la direccion esta el archivo pdf y la presentacion respectivamente:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25987925

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25987919

3 Questions with Zenoss CEO Bill Karpovich

This past weekend at OpsCamp, DTO Solutions President and sponsor of Control Tier, Damon Edwards took the opportunity to do a impromptu interview with Bill Karpovich CEO of Zenoss on the Dev2Ops Blog.

 

Damon asks three questions, see what Bill had to say:

 

Defective by Design delivers iPad anti-DRM petition with 5,000 signatures to Jobs -- more coming

The first 5,000 names have been printed on a four-foot tall "tablet" and shipped to Cupertino. Defective by Design will send a new tablet for every 5,000 signatures.

OpsCamp RoundUp – What’s Next for Cloud Computing and IT Operations

OpsCamp - Cloud Computing Operations and Systems Management

So what do you do on a cold winter’s Saturday in Austin? Well if you are interested in Cloud Computing and IT operations you go to OpsCamp. This past Saturday was the first of what we hope to be many OpsCamps, held in an unconference format, to discuss ideas around next generation technologies and strategies for IT Operations.

The OpsCamp crowd was an eclectic crew of systems administrators, open source software developers, traditional software people, and service providers who came together to figure out how to address the needs of IT operations and the tools they use to administer virtual/cloud systems.

One Theme – Everything Old is New Again

I sat in on quite a few conversations most centered around two old themes: Monitoring and Configuration Management. While the problems are similar the landscape is changing. The use of the term devops was very prevalent noting that systems administrators are often required to have some degree of scripting and software development skills to adequately do their job. Effective systems administration goes beyond keeping servers running but the automation of tedious process to increase productivity. In the monitoring arena concerns centered around the amount of data we collect and how to make that actionable to assure consistent service levels.

Lightning Talks

The event started out with a word from the sponsors who had five minutes to talk about their products and services or otherwise woo the crowd. The main sponsors each took their shot at defining their interests in the cloud and how they could help during five minuted lightning talks. Presenters included Erik Dahl (CTO of Zenoss), Brett Piatt (Technical Alliance Manager at Rackspace Hosting) and Luke Kanies (Founder of Puppet and Reductive Labs).

Thanks to the other sponsors Bitnami, Opscode, Spiceworks and Redmonk who also helped make the event happen.

The Unpanel

Rather than having a meticulously planned agenda OpsCamp is interactive. During the Unpanel members of the audience got on stage and talked about what they thought would be interesting topics to discuss this included OpsCode CTO  Adam Jacob, Zenoss CTO Erik Dahl, Puppet founder, Luke Kanies, Travis Campbell from the University of Texas, Systems Administrator Matt Lawrence, Damon Edwards — President of DTO Solutions, Andrew Schafer and moderator extraordinaire — John M. Willis. This led to an interactive session with the rest of the OpsCamp attendees to address the following questions:

  • What is DevOps?
  • What is monitoring?
  • How do you monitor/manage/apps/systems that use multiple environments
  • Should I be listening to events or actively monitoring systems?
  • Have you thought about monitoring from the cloud into your data center?
  • What are the new things that need to be monitored?

The panel discussion was very interesting as well as the audience inputs. The session runs about 30 minutes but is pretty interesting to get the takes on cloud computing challenges from some exceptionally bright people.

OpsCamp Unsessions

The OpsCamp Session Board

Sessions

After quite a bit of discussion the sessions were decided on the following sessions:

  • Agent Evolution – Do we need agents for management and if so are they going to be heavy, tedious and burdensome as the agents we have come to know and love.
  • The Evolving Role of the Sysadmin
  • Monitoring for the Cloud or Service Level Assurance
  • Toolchains for Clouds
  • Vendor “schmoozing” to talk about the products the vendors had to offer for cloud computing

The Organizers

Even though the conference was an unconference I think a big nod needs to go to my fellow organizers (or my co-conspirators) who worked together virtually from all over the country to pull of the event. Many thanks go to Damon Edwards (DTO Solutions and part of the Control Tier project),  John M. Willis (cloud guru from OpsCode) and Dave Nielsen (Founder of CloudCamp),

Videos and Pics

Damon has some videos from the day with Luke Kanies of Puppet and Reductive Labs and Bill Karpovich, CEO of Zenoss on the Dev2ops blog. We also have a bunch of pictures from the event in the OpsCamp Flickr group.I created an OpsCamp Twitter list for those of you looking for some folks who are smart on cloud computing and devops.

Keep your eye on OpsCamp.com for future events. I believe this one was one of many to be held around the world.

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Liberate the music, part two


In just a couple of days, our LoCo Team is celebrating its third anniversary.

It’s quite refreshing to see the way we’ve evolved over the years, from a small and local LUG-ish organization to a broader free software community where we build new relationships every day with similar communities and work with some interesting projects.

One of these new and interesting initiatives is the collaboration between our community and the free culture movement. It all started with some informal meetings with a couple of local bands previous to the 2008 Software Freedom Day event.

Today, we see the first results of this collaboration with the release of the first album of a Nicaraguan artist under a Creative Commons.

Orgánico is the name of Cecilia Ferrer’s album, available for free from the Jamendo and Rocknica websites. The album includes nine songs, of which two are in English, and the sound is a fascinating combination of rock, pop and electronic beats.

I’m more of a classic-rock-heavy-metal-junkie-kind-of-guy, but I must say I really enjoyed this album. The vocals are great and the mixture of Latin American and European rhythms is awesome. If you haven’t heard of Cecilia Ferrer yet, please go to Jamendo or Rocknica and download the album.

February 02, 2010

Analyst Relations

If you are involved in analyst relations you will find this funny.

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Basic rules for FOSS Localization

I have been spending some time reviewing a few FOSS educational software translations over the last months. Localization is a commitment if you want to do a good job; badly localized software leads to poor experience (people simply won’t use the software) and gives the wrong message that FOSS applications are just bad software. So if you thought localization was just pure translation, then you need to think again! Hopefully my experience will help more people to start a localization effort well prepared and be proud of the work they did.

Cultural adaptation and knowing who that software was written for are paramount in the process. I’ve put up a few rules together hoping it will help newcomers, if I missed anything please feel free to add yours in the comment section!

  1. Know your audience (the people using the software) and pick words that they can easily understand
  2. Have some knowledge in software terminology (if not, web search is your buddy)
  3. Be familiar with the software (try it out before translating it and don’t hesitate to use that software when you are doing the translation)
  4. Be more than fluent in the target language and good enough in the original language (not the other way round)
  5. Don’t be afraid to change the meaning in order to fit cultural differences (e.g. for Rur-ple, we picked a meaningful Chinese robot name rather than doing a phonetic conversion: names must have meaning in Chinese for people and more specifically children to remember)
  6. Use the same terms across the whole software (either by proof reading or with the help of localization tools like Poedit and OmegaT)
  7. Have someone good enough in both languages to review your work and hopefully familiar with the software (he needs to use the software not just read the text)
  8. Fixes, typo corrections and improvements from the source language need to be fed back to the original project in order to help improve the overall quality of the software and all its translation
  9. Keep track of changes and reasons behind so that can be useful for other languages
  10. Have the passion and the time to commit to do a good work :)

Blogging on ZDNet Asia

Following the steps of Michael and Peter I’ve just started to blog on ZDNet Asia yesterday. My writings there will be a lot more “journalistic” than my random stories over here and covering Linux and Open Source in China, and not what I personally get involved with. Most likely I will also add the feed to the BLUG Planet but only once I’m done writing a feed filter that removes the add in the default feed. If there are any specific topic that you would like to be covered just leave a comment at either place.

February 01, 2010

Liberate the music, part one


Building a free society doesn’t only require free software. It’s also important to have universal access to knowledge in the form of free and open content, content that can be freely distributed, shared and build upon.

Free culture is essential for a free society. Cultural works should not be restricted by patents, unfair copyright laws and big monopolies.

This month, ‘Libera la Música‘, a group of artists, creators and free software advocates, started a campaign on the social website Facebook for liberating Nicaraguan music.

The target of this first campaign is aimed at Carlos Mejía Godoy, a national icon, and one of the most significant musicians in the history of Nicaraguan and Latin American folk music.

According to a spokesperson of the group, the purpose of this campaign is:

“to raise awareness within the Nicaraguan society about the importance of free culture and to start the debate about the need to reform the actual copyright laws in our country.”

If you’re a Facebook user, please consider support this initiative by joining the group and inviting your friends. You can also put a button on your website here.

Updates

Hi all, This will be a short update explaining my disappearance from the blogging world, some thoughts on recent events and the way forward. About 3 months back, my system went kaput. The hdd especially. While I’m trying to source a working 80 GB Samsung it has been proving not a nice experience. I also have [...]

January 31, 2010

Fellowship Treffen Stuttgart – Freie Software in der Bildung

In den letzten Monaten gab es leider keine Treffen der Fellowship-Gruppe Stuttgart. Das wollen wir im Jahr 2010 wieder ändern! Daher möchte wir euch am Donnerstag, den 11. Februar zum Fellowship-Treffen in Stuttgart einladen. Wir werden uns in Sophies Brauhaus ab 20 Uhr treffen.


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An diesem Tag wird auch Thomas Jensch, Koordinator des Edu-Teams der FSFE, anwesend sein. Thomas wird über den aktuellen Stand des Edu-Teams, geplante Aktivitäten und allgemein über Freie Software in der Bildung berichten. Wenn Ihr euch für das Thema interessiert oder schon selber Erfahrung mit Freier Software in der Bildung gesammelt habt, dann ist dieses Treffen genau das richtige für euch. Gerne dürft Ihr auch Freunde und Bekannte mitbringen die sich allgemein für Freie Software oder gezielt für Freie Software in der Bildung interessieren.

Wenn darüber hinaus noch etwas Zeit bleibt, dann würde ich die Gelegenheit gerne nutzen um mit euch über den Neustart eines regelmäßigen Fellowship-Treffen in Stuttgart zu sprechen. Was sind eure Interessen? Was erwartet bzw. erhofft Ihr euch von einem regelmäßigen Fellowship-Treffen in Stuttgart? usw.

Thomas und ich freuen uns schon darauf euch am Donnerstag, den 11. Februar in Stuttgart zu treffen.

Um einen ausreichend großen Tisch reservieren zu können, würde ich mich über eine kurze Rückmeldung freuen!

OpenBravo Menu

Reviewing OpenBravo menu to be able customized it your company needs.

  • General Setup

This menu tree system allow you to create your company setup a.k.a client, Username, changing Roles and creating your company Department.

  • Master Data Management

This menu tree system allow to configure and create your customer data as well as setting up your vendor/supplier, Product/Services, including the Price list.

  • Procurement Management

This menu tree system allow you to create requisition for the different department going to requisition to order.

  • Warehouse Management

This menu tree system allow to to input your Materials or you can use this system to do the inventory system.

  • Production Management
  • Sales Management

This menu tree system allow to do Quotation for your customer , Sales Order and Print the Charge Invoice. It also allow you to generated a sales report using this menu.

  • Financial Management

The Finanacial Menu tree is more on Accounting like the accounting receivable, Chart of accounts, and more.

Initial Configuration of OpenBravo

It’s been 3 days reviewing openbravo flow including it’s function. If  you are new to openbravo you will be having  a hard time configuring it out which will suite to your company needs. I list some two(2) important things that you have to keep in mind to be able to setup openbravo correctly.

Understanding Roles on OpenBravo

Roles are a way of grouping users together according to what parts of the system they are allowed to work with.You could set up a Role for use by the sales organisation that allowed access only to the Sales Management module and relevant reports. Whenever a new member of the sales team joined the organisation you could then allocated that role to them without having to configure each new user individually.

A user can have more than one Role, but each user can only log in under one role at any one time. For example, if a user has a Sales role and a Purchasing role, they could not log in under both roles at the same time. When you log into Openbravo ERP for the first time, the systems administrator role is already set up to enable you to configure the system.

You can change user by clicking on the top left user icon.

Setting up a client A.K.A. Company

The first stage in setting up basic data is to create a client. The Initial Client Setup process helps you complete all the steps in the correct order. When you set up a client you must specify which accounting schema the system will use. In this step you will need an accounting file depends on your country.

  1. Download the accounting file for your country and save it to a location on the computer where Openbravo ERP is installed.
  2. Log into Openbravo ERP under the System Administrator role.
  3. From the menu, select General Setup > Client > Initial Client Setup. The Initial Client Setup window appears.
  4. In the Client field, type your client name. This is usually the name of your company.
  5. In the Organization field, type the name of one of your company’s organizations, for example “MyCompany Paris” or “MyCompany Sales”. You can add other organizations later.
  6. From the Currency menu, select your company’s local currency.
  7. In the Client Username specify a user name for the Client Admin account.
  8. In the Organization Username field specify a user name for the Organization Admin account.
  9. From the Country drop-down list, select the country where the client is located.
  10. In the City field type the city where the client is located.
  11. In the Accounting Dimensions section, click Browse…. The File Upload box appears.
  12. In the File Upload box, navigate to the accounts file you downloaded in step 1.
  13. Click OK to close the File Upload box and return to Openbravo ERP.
  14. When you are happy with the information you have entered, click OK to create the client.
  15. When the process is complete a confirmation message appears, listing the database tables that have been created.
  16. Select the Information tab.
  17. If you plan to use the Warehouse module, clear the Allow Negative Stock checkbox. If you plan to use the Warehouse module, select Allow Negative Stock.
  18. Click Save.

January 30, 2010

Freie Software – Mehr als nur ein Entwicklungsmodell

SOFa-LogoFreie Software – Mehr als nur ein Entwicklungsmodell, dass war der Titel meines Vortrags auf der diesjährigen Stuttgart Open Fair (eine Parallelveranstaltung zum Weltsozialforum) im Rahmen des Workshops “Gemeingüter zwischen traditionellem Wissen und neuartigen Produktionsweisen”.

Der Workshop war gut besucht und es ergaben sich während und nach dem Vortrag noch interessante Diskussionen. Die Folien zu meinem Vortrag findet man hier.

Ich habe zum ersten mal einen anderen Ansatz versucht und meine Folien hauptsächlich mit Bildern gestaltet, welche das aktuelle Thema optisch unterstreichen sollten. Nach ersten Rückmeldungen kam dies Art der Präsentation und der Vortrag im allgemeinen gut an.

Da die Folien, durch weniger Text und mehr Bildern, diesmal nicht ganz so aussagekräftig sind, möchte ich an dieser Stelle eine kurze Zusammenfassung des Vortrags geben:

Angefangen habe ich mit der Freie-Software-Definition, um dem sehr gemischten Publikum eine kleine Einführung in Freie Software zu geben. Anschließend habe ich versucht zu veranschaulichen, wie sehr unser Leben heute von Software durchdrungen ist. Eine Interessante Zahl die ich in dem Zusammenhang aus einem Vortrag von Georg Greve habe: Der Mensch interagiert im Durschnitt pro Tag 300 mal mit Software. Eine erstaunliche Zahl, wie ich finde.
Ausgehend von der Erkenntnis, wie sehr unser Leben heute von Software durchdrungen ist und wie viele unserer täglichen Handlungen von Software abhängig sind habe ich gesellschaftlichen Implikationen von Software, wie Chancengleichheit und Demokratie, angeschnitten. Den Bereich Chancengleichheit habe ich auf zwei Arten veranschaulicht. Als erstes Beispiel diente Freie Software in der Bildung, durch dessen Einsatz alle Schüler die gleichen Chancen im Unterricht haben. Das zweite Beispiel bezog sich auf Entwicklungsländer, denen Freie Software die Möglichkeit bietet am Wissen der Industriestaaten zu lernen um eigenes Wissen und eine eigene Industrie aufzubauen. Zum Bereich Demokratie habe ich ausgeführt, wie Freie Software es ermöglicht die Regeln (“Gesetze”) der Informationsgesellschaft zu verstehen und diese als Gesellschaft zu kontrollieren und zu beeinflussen.
Abschließend wurden mögliche Entwicklungsmodelle, Geschäftsmodelle auf der Basis von Freier Software beschrieben.

Der Vortrag ging gut 30 Minuten und wurde von anregenden Diskussionen begleitet. Abschließend lässt sich sagen, dass es eine interessante Veranstaltung war, der Workshop hat sehr viel Spaß gemacht und das gemischte Publikum wirkte sehr interessiert.

January 28, 2010

Fellows: Elect your GA representative in February

During the whole of February 2010, FSFE's Fellows will be able to elect their second representative in FSFE's General Assembly. The winner of the election will help FSFE's strategic decision making body plan the future of the organisation, and will join Torsten Grote who occupies the first Fellowship seat since earlier last year. Both Fellowship representatives are full members of the General Assembly for a term of two years, and have all the rights and obligations of other members.

January 27, 2010

calcas del gultij


LLEVELAS A 10 PESOS o 1 Dolar jeje

es para sacar fondos y demas causas Pro-Software Libre

GNOME.Asia Summit 2010 – Call for Host

As part of the GNOME.Asia Summit Committee, I would like to post the Call for Host of the GNOME.Asia Summit 2010 here and let all the communities in Asia know that we are looking for potential host this year. Please find below the announcement and don’t hesitate to pass the message along!

Dear GNOME friends,

We are call for the host of GNOME.Asia Summit 2010 now !

GNOME.Asia Summit is the yearly GNOME Users and Developers Asian Conference. The event focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop, and also covers applications and the development platform tools. It brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, developers, foundation leaders, governments and businesses to discuss both the present technology and future developments.

GNOME.Asia Summit was held in Beijing, China during 2008 and in Ho-Chi-Minh City, Vietnam during 2009. We would like to continue finding new national locations as we spread GNOME throughout Asia, and we are looking for local organizers to rise to the challenge of organizing an excellent GNOME event. The GNOME.Asia committee will assist in the process, but there is a definitive need for individuals to be actively involved and committed to the planning and delivery of the event.

You can learn more about GNOME.Asia Summit at our official website: http://gnome.asia

The following two links are “must read items” for organizing the GNOME.Asia Summit:

If you are interested in hosting the summit please submit a formal proposal to the GNOME.Asia Committee at asia-summit-list [at] gnome.org. The deadline for proposals is 31st March 2010. You are encouraged to ask questions before writing the formal proposal.

GNOME.Asia is much like a few trees just planted and we want to grow a forest in Asia. We are looking for local organizers in any Asian country with the desire to take on and succeed in the challenges of organizing an excellent GNOME event. We know that you will need all the time you can get to prepare a proposal but we hope we have inspired you to get started.

We are looking forward to hear from you on or before 31st March 2010.

Sincerely,

GNOME.Asia Summit committee

Votación pidiendo a Youtube que use Theora

Youtube está ofreciendo una alternativa a los vídeos que requieren el plugin de Flash.

Esta alternativa es ofrecer vídeos usando el tag “video” de html5 (soportado por Firefox 3.5, Opera, Safari, Chrome, …).

Pero lo que Youtube propone es utilizar el formato H264 para codificar los vídeos, este formato está patentado y por eso en algunos países es ilegal utilizar la librería libre para poder verlos. Para empeorar las cosas Firefox no soporta este formato por lo que estos vídeos solo pueden ser vistos en navegadores propietarios (Chrome, Safari y Opera).

Por todo esto se ha lanzado una votación en el sitio de sugerencias de google pidiendo que utilicen el formato libre OGG/Theora soportado de forma nativa por Firefox.

Por otro lado DailyMotion ya ofrece vídeos en OGG/Theora.

Fuentes:

January 26, 2010

New phone number

Some of you might have received a SMS from me this morning, I have switched mobile provider and therefore have a new number. I’ll keep the old one for another month during the transition period. Why did I switch? Well the main reason is that I am getting about 10 to 20 SMS and 1-3 MMS spam a day with China Mobile. Being a “Diamond member” (the highest membership level at China Mobile) I did call them a week ago to ask to solve the problem (there are many many technical solutions they could implement) but the only two things they could tell me is that they got an award for fighting spam (???) and that I should install a software on my phone to do that. Note that I started to get spam from day one with them. I suspect their staff are just selling customer data for a few bucks. I still told the customer representative I gave them a week to address the issue or else I would switch carrier. Nothing has happened, so here I come China Unicom. On top of not getting spam (at least at the beginning) I’ll get the pleasure to enjoy 3G on my phone (as China Mobile only supports the Chinese 3G standard on overpriced handsets made only for the Chinese market) and flat rate calling all over China.

I won’t post my new number here, but for those of you who know me, do not hesitate to either send me an sms or drop me an email to get the new number.

January 22, 2010

linux.conf.au 2010 – Day 5: more open gov & hacking for children

I was a little late getting in this morning due to a headache and feeling like I’d been hit by a truck, so unfortunately this meant I missed giving my lightning talk. For those who were interested, I’ll be blogging the content next week.

I met up with Glyn Moody, Stephen Schmid and Julian Carver for a casual chat about open government which was really interesting. We spoke about Open data, which Glyn saw as low hanging fruit. We also spoke about other types of projects happening around transparency in government and technology procurement. It’s interesting to me, because there is a lot of rhetoric around open datoa, citizen engagement and making government more transparent, but there isn’t a lot of discussion about how the current processes of technology procurement may actually inhibit open government initiatives.

Steve has been working for 2 1/2 years on developing the Open Technology Foundation strategy along with some of the other clever folk at the South Australian Office of the CIO, and they are now in the process of putting the plan into action. The Open Technology Foundation will be a great support mechanism for government in pursuing open data, standards, technology and methodologies, so check it out.

After that I continued chatting to Julian for while, particularly about policy development which was great given his experience. We discussed how policy development can mean a lot of different things, and how successful policies usually involve not only logical points but also an understanding of broader social and political context. As we were chatting he came up with an interesting idea. He said that the development of policy could be compared to code development, and perhaps we could purposefully apply the processes of code development to policy development. It’s an interesting thought that needs more consideration before further blogging :)

After a lovely ladies lunch at a great vegetarian place on Cuba St, I got ready for Rusty’s talk.

Rusty always gives very entertaining talks, and this was no exception. It was great not only for it’s humour factor, but because so many of our geek peers are having children (and Jeff and I look forward to having children someday) so getting Rusty’s experience in trying to introduce his young girl to programming was fantastic!

It was wonderful to see video of Rusty’s child (who is now around two years old now) using the different wrist bracelets and software Rusty developed for her. After many experiments with writing software she might like, Rusty hooked up a drum machine to an application he wrote, and it was an interesting experiment because when she hit the drums on the outside she got the best physical feedback (sound) and when she hit it in the middle she got software feedback (more eyes on the screen), which wasn’t nearly as satisfying or understandable for her. :) So at this point he decided to simplify:

  • he went with the best wristband design
  • he wrote two very simple programmes that are fun to use, one to smear paint and one to bounce a ball around the screen

This has been quite successful, so nice work Rusty, particularly for being the world’s first kernel developer focused on the pre-school market. :)

Favourite saying of the speech about introducing children to programming -> “Brainwash early, brainwash often”.

And as for what I eluded to yesterday, I played the part of a 2 yr old child for Rusty’s talk to demonstrate his awesome user design hacking for children. It was a lot of fun! :)

As a side note, I really want Rusty’s shirt, it said “Video games ruined my life, good thing I have two extra lives. <3 <3”.

I had a great discussion with Nat Torkington, again about open government where we brainstormed what government does, is meant to do, and what it would look like if it was designed by geeks.

We talked about open data, and how there are many stages to achieving openness. In the first instance, it is just about getting the data publicly accessible in useful formats and with permissive licences. The second stage is automation of the data (so it is machine readable and continually updated), then interactability wherein the APIs to the data is all open so that people can create systems thatfully interact with the systems and thus the data. Finally achieving read/write public data means that government data can be updated by citizens.

We also spoke about trust, and how trust is beginning to trump statements made regardless of the logic or verifiability, because many people will believe a statement from a trusted source even if they can’t verify it. Access to data is one thing that can help with verifiability, however often data by itself is not enough and data needs to be presented in an understandable and if possible interactive way for people to get the best outcomes.

In terms of interacting with government directly, using open API’s would lower the cost of business transactions and ultimately service delivery for government as well as potentially making goverment better at partnering with others. This would be particularly useful in emergencies as a great example.

We also had a bit of a thought experiment about how would we build a government department from scratch. More on that idea in a later blog post I think. :)

The conference closing was great. Lots of love and thanks all round. They announced the competition outcomes, and the QR code commpetition was nicely explained by Glynn. :)

Gopal (T3rminat0r) was the runner up for the photography competition with this, which is an amazing shot, and Andy Fitzsimon said we should all set it as our backgrounds for “at least two months” :)

WGTN!

Mike Beattie took the great winning photo:

Mike Beattie's winning photo, a lucky shot he says :)

linux.conf.au 2011 was announced to be in Brisbane! Hooray!

I didn’t get to the Penguin Dinner, which was a real shame but I wasn’t feeling well and had to stay home and sleep a bit more.

Other cool stuff I saw today:

Some linux.conf.au media coverage I’ve enjoyed from this week so far:

Angus Kidman

Computer World — Stephen Bell

CIO — Rodney Gedda

Linuxworld — Trevor Clarke

Tech Eye — Nick Farrell

Computerworld — Georgina Swan

Computerworld — Kathryn Edwards

There’s a bunch more, I’ll try to do update the media list tomorrow, right now I need to go sleep some more.

January 19, 2010

Haití - Información recibida

Una conversación telefónica de Ramón Santoyo, XE1KK, con Hugo Ramón HI8VRS, confirmó que el team del RC Dominicano HI8RCD, compuesto por 8 radioaficionados, ha regresado a la ciudad fronteriza de Jimani en República Dominicana.

El convoy que los trasladaba, y que incluía a otras personas, fue asaltado recibiendo disparos que causaron varios heridos y 1 persona perdió la vida.

El grupo de radioaficionados salió ileso del ataque, debiendo volver a la frontera sin escolta reportando que la situación era extremadamente insegura.

Pudieron dejar instalada una repetidora de VHF que cubre ambas capitales, HI y HH, que está siendo usada por la Cruz Roja y la Defensa Civil ya que no hay comunicaciones viables en la zona.

Fuente: Lista de mails opinion-lu.

January 13, 2010

Software con nombre de frutas y verduras




En un día de inspiración extrema (???) se me ocurrió ver qué nombres de frutas y verduras habían sido usados en relación a programas de computadoras:
Y en SourceForge solamente:
  • Carrot2: clustering engine (Open Source).
  • Small Potato: juego de ajedrez (Open Source).
  • PotatoVM: máquina virtual de Squeak hecha en Java (Open Source).
  • Hot Potato: juego open source.
  • Tomato IDE: Entorno de desarrollo experimental (Open Source).
  • Tomato Firmware: firmware alternativo para routers WRT54G y otros basados en chipset Broadcom (Open Source).
  • libonion: Librería en C++ para el manejo de WebDAV (Open Source).
  • Strawberry: librería para el manejo de tags ID3 en archivos MP3 (Open Source).
  • Grape: software para el estudio de demostraciónes lógicas (Open Source).
  • Orange HRM: software de manejo de recursos humanos (Open Source).
 Hay más, pero me cansé de buscar.

    January 12, 2010

    Rechtliche Themen 2010 von irights.info

    es gibt zwar keine ganz direkte Verbindung zu Freier Software, dachte
    mir aber, dass es trotzdem hier in meinen Blog passt:

    Ausblick 2010 von irights.info mit Themen von Adwords, Vorratsdatenspeicherung, Netzsperrengesetz, GEZ für Computer, Reform des TMG (hier kam FS zumindest vor), Änderungen im Datenschutzrecht, …

    (Quelle: Irights.info).

    Von unserer (FSFE) Seite wird dieses Jahr natürlich wieder die FTF um rechtlicher Themen Freier Software kümmern.


    Matthias Kirschner
    Join FSFE’s Fellowship and protect your freedom!

    Your help needed for pdfreaders photograph

    We are looking for a photograph which we can use to promote PDFreaders.org in an upcomming activity. We had the idea of one of this street signs (e.g. at highways) were the government or the European Union are advertising a project (e.g. this bridge is sponsered by the EU and XY).

    We want to modify it, so we have something like:

    “To drive on that highway you need a [car manufacturer]. You can do a gratis test drive at your local [car manufacturer] dealer. Your government.”

    That is like the Adobe advertisement on many websites from the public adminstration.

    We would need a high quality picture of one of those signs, the right for us to modify it, so we can use it on our websites and give the press the right so they can use it however they like. So if you are able to sent us a photograph (either made by yourself, a friend of you, or you find it on the internet with the necessary rights for us), please sent it to pdfreaders at fsfeurope.org. Looking forward to your help.

    PS: You can already help us a lot by linking to PDFreaders when you offer PDFs on your website. E.g. by using one of our pdfreaders graphics Stian made.


    Matthias Kirschner
    Join FSFE’s Fellowship and protect your freedom!

    Update while enjoying this round around the sun we like to call 2010


    I’ve decided to keep this blog totally technical for the sake of keeping things contextual (yes I am thinking of you planet readers.) If you want to follow my personal blog (where the fun is) and tweets please follow me here.

    For the rest of you my usual  update on FLOSS related activities:

    • Have been testing the Nokia N900 extensively, but have not had time for posting the results. Thanks for your patience! :) I will come back to you and answer all the questions I got.
    • Met some fantastic people from the Catalan LoCo Team in Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain -Thank you for the beer and the inter-cultural exchange in Castillian (what people call “Spanish”.) I really like travelling and meeting fellow Ubunter@s around. Face-to-face interfacing makes a community stronger! It really is useful to talk to new people and mutually exchange experience on LoCo activities. Hope to be able to show up at the next UDS in Europe and meet more community members

    Well besides that I have been working with some FLOSS projects as of lately. Earlier I’ve had the pleasure to work with projects such as:

    Lately I’ve lucky enough to work in the mercantile side of things for:

    • Bifrost – a FLOSS printout management solution (follow-me-printing) that has a  server, a SW/HW client with card reader support that works with any PostScript supporting printer. Bifrost 1.2 was just released – Get it while it’s hot!
    • Multiframe –  Thin client Administration solution. It can manage many different thin clinet models as well as turning any computer into a thin client!
    • Varnish –  Basically what you are going to use as reverse HTTP accelerator (web caching) in your next project (or your existing site). It will blow away your current Squid setup, I promise: 10-20 times better performance in the same hardware!!?? – Probably the reason why Twitter uses it. But they are not alone since many media/newspaper sites worldwide are using it too and I’ve seen many combinations being worked on: Escenic, Drupal and eZ Publish integration with the project being the most prominent.

    These project are really cool and I am happy I will be spending a great deal of my time working with them this year.

    I am probably going to Stockholm, Sweden at the end of this month. More information on that to follow.

    For my next post I am seeking to give you an update on:

    • Nokia N900 and how much it rocks!
    • News on SpreadUbuntu and what is up (or not) with the Ubuntu Marketing Team.
    • Hopefully some test results of the work that has been done regarding the Debian/Ubuntu packaging of our beloved and mono-based iFolder. I want my own DropBox/UbuntuOne now!

    Thanks for reading – Stay tuned!

    January 09, 2010

    Exploit.PDF-9669 Ubuntu

    Tengo Ubuntu Dapper y esto me funciono:

    edite el archivo:

    /var/lib/clamav/daily.inc

    y edite la linea que contenia “Exploit.PDF-9669

    luego

    sudo /etc/init.d/clamav-daemon restart

    January 04, 2010

    4-Handed Pits Rules (card game)

    Today I played a fun, four-handed version of Pits. Here's what we changed relative to the only written rules I know about.

    1. drop all spades and the deuce of clubs (so only 40 cards remain, four of which are wild)

    2. Scoring:

      1. 1st place wins 3 points, gives least desired card (face up) to 4th place in next hand

      2. 2nd place wins 2 points

      3. 3rd place wins 0 points, but gets to deal and lead the next hand

      4. 4th place wins 1 point, gives highest single card (face up) to 1st place in next hand



    3. play to 26 points

    4. we played with equal jokers (because otherwise it feels like you should also order the deuces)



    The advantage given to the 1st-place finisher by taking the highest card from the 4th-place finisher in the next hand isn't as pattern-forming as I expected. Three of the four of us finished 1st several times, and the 4th person got 2nd once.

    (Thanks to Tim Hunt for introducing me to 6-handed Pits.)

    January 02, 2010

    The End Of Faith: Preliminarily, meh.

    I'm reading Sam Harris' The End Of Faith because a friend recommended it to me as a moving book. I'm only 23 pages into the book, and I have dwindling hopes for any real argumentation to follow that may substantiate any aspects of the so-far endless string of assertions. Here's an easily isolateable assertion that makes me fear the book will have no real argument:

    The only reason anyone is "moderate" in matters of faith these days is that he has assimilated some of the fruits of the last two thousand years of human thought (democratic politics, scientific advancement on every front, concern for human rights, an end to cultural and geographic isolation, etc.). The doors leading out of scriptural literalism do not open from the inside. The moderation we see among nonfundamentalists is not some sign that faith itself has evolved; it is, rather, the product of the many hammer blows of modernity that have exposed certain tenets of faith to doubt. (Harris, Sam. The End Of Faith. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. New York, NY. 2004. p. 18-19.) [emphasis original]

    This statement would be embarrassing to its author, were he familiar with the last 2500 (or so) years of human thought about Judeo-Christian scripture. Augustine was interpreting Christian scripture non-literally in the fourth and fifth centuries (a 10-second google search finds reference to this in Augustine through the ages: an encyclopedia. (Fitzgerald, Allan and Cavadini, John C. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Grand Rapids, Michigan. 1999. p. 367.)) But even before Augustine, scripture is seen to take itself non-literally (in at least some sense -- though what it means to take something "literally" is not always very obvious). For examples, we need look no further than the Skeptic's Annotated Bible:

    1. "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." God says that if Adam eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then the day that he does so, he will die. But later Adam eats the forbidden fruit (3:6) and yet lives for another 930 years (5:5). 2:17

    2. God promises to make Isaac's descendants as numerous as "the stars of heaven", which, of course, never happened. The Jews have always been, and will always be, a small minority. 26:4


    If Genesis 5:5 doesn't take Genesis 3:6 literally (in at least a certain sense), then Harris' assertion is almost as groundless as it could possibly be. Judeo-Christian scripture has never been taken entirely literally, so it can hardly be the case that modernism has at last come to our rescue and knocked some sense into all those otherwise exclusively literalist believers.


    I will cheerfully add an assertion here that Harris and the Skeptic's Annotated Bible are both making the mistake of criticizing without any apparent regard whatsoever to how Hebrews and Christians (at least) have historically viewed scripture. It is not difficult to conclude that an opponent's view is ludicrous if you apply all of your own presuppositions to it while ignoring those of your opponent. In fact, I'm inclined to think that creationists of the 6-24-hour-day camp far too often take such an approach with regard to science.


    Instead of ignorantly railing against the beliefs of others, we should all strive to understand one another and carry on respectful discussions. This goal became easier for me when I read Harris' acknowledgments at the end of The End Of Faith. "I began writing this book on September 12, 2001..." (p.323) I can empathize with Harris -- this book is clearly a cathartic work for him, and I can respect that even while I see that his seemingly-extensive research unfortunately did not apparently include anything to bring him understanding of or respect for his opponents.


    But, as I mentioned, I'm only on page 23. Maybe he'll surprise me with thoughtfulness somewhere in the remaining 204 pages -- I hope he does.

    December 24, 2009

    Carta por la innovación, la creatividad y el acceso al conocimiento

    Una amplia coalición de ciudadanos, usuarios, consumidores, organizaciones, artistas, hackers, miembros del movimiento por la cultura libre, economistas, abogados, profesores, estudiantes, investigadores, científicos, activistas, trabajadores, desempleados, emprendedores y creadores provenientes de más de 20 países invita a toda la ciudadanía a que haga suya la siguiente carta, dirigida a todos los gobiernos, multinacionales e instituciones con el objetivo de que la comprendan e implementen urgentemente:

    Introducción

    La sociedad de la información y el nuevo contexto digital han supuesto una revolución en la forma de crear conocimiento y cultura, y, sobre todo, en la forma de acceder a ellos. Ciudadanos/as, artistas y consumidores/as han dejado de ser sujetos pasivos y aislados/as frente a la industria de producción y distribución de contenidos. Ahora cada persona colabora, participa y decide.

    La tecnología, como puente, permite que las ideas y el conocimiento fluyan; acabando así con muchas de las barreras geográficas y tecnológicas que impedían compartir; proporcionando, además, nuevas herramientas educativas y propiciando la aparición de nuevas fórmulas de organización sociales, económicas y políticas. Esta revolución es comparable a la que provocó la imprenta.

    A pesar de esto, la industria del entretenimiento, la mayoría de los proveedores de servicios de comunicaciones y los centros de poder siguen basando sus beneficios y su autoridad en el control de los contenidos, de las herramientas y de los canales de distribución, manteniendo una economía de la escasez. Y todo esto violando los derechos de los/as ciudadanos/as a la educación, al acceso a la información, a la cultura, a la ciencia y la tecnología, la libertad de expresión, la inviolabilidad de las comunicaciones y de la privacidad. La protección de intereses privados no debería permitirse cuando produce un atraso en el desarrollo de la sociedad en general, sin tener en cuenta el interés público.   

    No todas las instituciones, estructuras y convenciones del sistema actual sobrevivirán si no son capaces de adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos. Las que sobrevivan se verán alteradas y redefinidas por la nueva realidad, y es posible que para ello necesiten esquemas de funcionamiento totalmente distintos.

    Leer el resto de la carta.

    December 23, 2009

    Brindemos con Ubuntu Cola

    Ubuntu Cola Si, Ubuntu ahora tiene su propia gaseosa! Tomate una Ubuntu bien fria! http://www.ubuntu-trading.com/our-fairtrade-cola this->getRelated(10); 10/04/2009 — Cinco años de Ubuntu (2) 29/05/2008 — KDE 4.1 Beta1 (0) 22/05/2008 — Debian Panamá (1) 22/05/2008 — Bazaar es parte de GNU (0)

    Our Christmas Gift to Nature

    '

    Silang, Cavite, 18th of December – the 8liens decided to give back to nature.

    The 8liens had their lunch in Leslie's at Tagaytay City. We had bowls of delicious food before our perspiring yet fulfilling activity. From there, we travelled a couple of minutes to IIRR (International Institute of Rural Reconstruction), an organization dedicated to overcoming poverty, where we plan to hold our tree-planting activity. We were welcomed there by a beautifully volumed trees and shrubs, and Ms. Maridel Alberto.

    Ms. Alberto gave us a quick Q&A of their place and informed us that our presence is a blessing since a lot of their trees were uprooted during the hurricane Pepeng. She then introduced us to Mang Buboy who gave us tools and a total of 16 seedlings to plant.

    After planting, the group decided to stay a little longer and play a quick ball game. It was fun, but it made us realize that all the sitting at the office made us already breathe heavy after 5 or so step when running... but we still enjoyed it.

    On our way back to the office, we were greeted by heavy traffic due to the Christmas rush and arrived at the office a good 3 hours after.

    Every one that weren't ready with their poems and songs (for our Kringle) rushed to their desks to do a quick typing and some printing. If was fun explaining why we give certain gifts to our monitos or monitas.

    At the end of the day, we were all tired to the gut but ...satisfied with the food ...happy with the gift giving …is pleased with helping out mother earth and giving for our grandchildren.

    '

    December 07, 2009

    Back from SAPO Codebits in Lisbon - a summary

    Last week, my colleagues Giuseppe, Kai and myself attended the SAPO Codebits event in Lisbon, Portugal. Codebits is an annual, invite-only hacking event, which went on for three days. The venue they chose this year was the "Cordoaria", a former rope factory located in the Belém district, close to the 25 de Abril Bridge (which is an impressive sight!). I have been told that the Cordoaria is the longest building in Portugal and I have no doubts about that! The building is so long that the crew used bicycles to get from one end to the other. I've taken a number of pictures from the event as well as from Lisbon itself, you can find them in this flickr set.

    The organizers described this year's event as follows:

    3 days. 24 hours a day. 600 attendees. Talks. Workshops. Lots of food and beverages. 24 hour programming/hacking competition. Quizz Show. Rock Band Contest. Lots of gaming consoles. More food. More beverages. More coding. Sleeping areas. More fun. An unforgettable experience.

    I wholeheartedly agree, we had a great time! The conference started with sessions and presentations on a wide range of topics on the first two days. Afterwards, a 24-hour programming contest was held. I was invited to give two talks, one being my all-time favourite about "MySQL High Availability solutions" (slides, video), the other one was titled "Why you should be using a distributed version control system (DVCS) for your project" (video, slides). Both went quite well and the feedback I received was pretty positive. Giuseppe talked about "MySQL Schema Migration" (slides, video) and gave an "Introduction to Gearman" (video). Kai's talk was titled "Think before you develop" (video) and gave a nice roundup of tips and best practices for setting up and developing new web projects.

    The Codebits session schedule was filled with amazing and interesting talks in four parallel tracks. Sometimes it was hard to choose – some other talks I attended and enjoyed:

    Walter gave a lockpicking workshop after his presentation, which I attended as well. I was quite impressed (and a bit shocked) to find out how easy many locks can be opened this way! Later that evening there even was a live band named "Pornophonique" playing (one guy with a guitar, the other one using an Nintendo Game Boy for making music), but I missed that show as I was too busy opening more locks... Fortunately the concert and most of the sessions were recorded on video (in excellent quality) and are already available from the SAPO video pages. Kudos for this speedy service!

    But this just matches my overall conclusion of this event: very well organized, great speakers and venue. Thanks to the organizers for having us, we really enjoyed our stay!

    November 28, 2009

    Building a Scorecard for Open Source

    Perching Gull

    In my previous posts, I've drawn an analogy between open source software and organic food, hinting that in both cases the rush to create a working brand lost some of the essence of the vision. I've suggested that having businesses identify "open source" purely on the basis of one "input" - using an OSI-approved license - is no longer adequate, because the success of the open source approach has led so many different companies to want to exploit the name. The need is clear; so many companies want to describe themselves as "open source businesses" that debates about "open-core" and "open source business models" were dominant at Open World Forum.

    To address this, I'm proposing the Open Source Initiative go beyond the Open Source Definition and the Free Software Definition to devise some sort of a Software Freedom Definition which articulates a holistic vision of software freedom against which businesses can be benchmarked. I propose also creating a self-certified score-card which companies can complete to indicate the approach they are taking to promote software freedom as part of their business model - maybe "the Open Source Audit". I'd then expect abuses to be policed by the community at large with final arbitration from OSI.

    What would be included in the two? My initial thoughts are that it should include 7-10 elements, each of which have a "yes/no" answer and each of which should be backed by a more detailed definition to make clear whether the answer is yes or no. Sample questions might include:

    • Is the license OSI-approved?
    • Is the copyright under diverse control?
    • Is the community governance open?
    • Are external interfaces and formats standards compliant?
    • Does your community operate under a patent peace arrangement?
    • Are trademarks community controlled?
    • ...
    and so on. Suppliers could then state "This product achieves 4 stars on the 10-point Open Source Audit" as they self-certify. In addition, procurement policies could then state they required a minimum number of stars for products and services they procure. And the only companies that could claim to be "an open source business" would have all products scoring 10/10 - probably very, very few. A focus on software freedom - the code, rather than the company - is the answer to the issue.

    [Also posted on my OSI blog. You can also watch the talk.]

    November 25, 2009

    My FIRST Encounter with the 8liens

    '

    My FIRST Encounter with the 8liens
    First day at OJT

    By: Jellie Fearl Mariano

    It was a Monday morning, I woke up as early as I can just to be on time for my very first day on-the-job training.  It was great that my friend and I passed the IQ exam at 8Layer when we applied as trainees.  We arrived at the REMCO Tower as early as 8:00 in the morning. The guard told us that nobody's in the 8Layer's office yet and that it was still closed.  The first 8lien we met was Ate Roz.  She told us that they have no work for that day because they will be going to Pangasinan to visit Our Lady of Manaoag.  As it is, i was Shocked.  Then they told us that since it was our first day, we will be joining them for their trip.  Then the day goes...
      
    It was my first time to go to Pangasinan and Manaoag.  My first day as a trainee really became an unexpected one and I do enjoyed the trip.

    Although my friend and I we're still adjusting with the new environment and faces,  I tried my best to put a smile on my lips so that I will be able to win them and be close to them as well.
      
    Adjusting to them was easy since even at the onset of our trip they are naturally very jolly and fun to be with.

    We arrived at Pangasinan. We lighted our candles as we thanked and prayed to God and Mama Mary for Their guidance, support, and forgiveness.  The place was very solemn and it was the best place to talk with our Almighty Father and Our Lady of Manaoag.

    I was not able to buy something for myself as a remembrance but Ms Deng bought us rosaries for the trip... :)  But the greatest remembrance was here in my heart because I will never forget the First day I've ever met 8liens and to be in Manaoag...

    On our way home, we ate at a seafood restaurant, Matutina's Annex 3. The food tasted really good plus we all had funny moments to share.
     
    The very tiring whole day with the 8liens was overall a great experience.  Even though I know we we're all exhausted during the trip still they never forget to make everyone laugh and smile.  It was an honor and opportunity to be a part of 8Layer technologies as their trainee.  I am looking forward to learn a lot more things from them even if it's going to be hard as a newbie... :)

    As early as now, I want to thank all of them for being nice to me and to Ariane as well.  I see their relationship not just an officemates but a family.  Even though their company is far from my place, I don't have any regrets to grab the opportunity and to pursue my training there.

    TIA!:)

    Pilgrimage@Manaoag Pictures

    By: Ariane Rabuya

    Yesterday, November 23, 2009 was my first day at 8Layer Technologies as a trainee, sobrang aga namen pumasok ng kasama ko.. and i was sort of scared and shy to go with them since it is also our first time to meet them. Very shy ako nung day na yun... but it was a very unforgettable day.. because that day,  first time ko na mag OJT at first time ko rin maka join agad ang 8liens to go visit Manaoag. Yun kasi agad yung na feel ko. I never thought na ganun yung pag-iistima nila sa amin ng kasama ko... Very great na makapunta sa mga lugar na hindi ko pa napupuntahan and saw that it is truly very nice.  Lalo na nung nakita ko yung Manaoag Church..  which is very popular naman talaga.  I know na tourist spot din yung place. I'm very glad that I have the chance to experience visiting a place that I've never gone to.

    Hindi ko din kaya alam kung anu ang sasabihin ko sa parents ko nung time na yun. Kaya I felt nervous and excited at the same time, and pressured too. Kasi nagbibiro yung mga boss namin. Pero hindi ko naman masyado pinansin kasi most of them are all funny and cracks jokes almost all the time.  Nasasakyan ko yung jokes nila at nakakatuwa naman talaga silang kasama. Parang super magkakakilala na kami, so konti na lang yung hiya ko kapag kasama sila.  At least now I know naman na pag time na ng training namin hindi na kami masyadong ilang sa kanilang lahat. Cheerful kasi most ng 8liens e, but because all of them was new to me hindi ko mashare sa kanila yung totoong ako and most of the time always lang akong text and text and text ..

    I really enjoyed their company at lalo na pag every time na nasa van kame kasi puro tawanan. Sabagay, kami lang kasi ng friend ko yung madalas na magkausap kapag nanamasyal kame. Hindi pa kasi kami kumportable makipagbiruan sa kanila. Sometimes nga I get paranoid kasi baka isipin nila maarte kame.. but I just tried my best naman for making good relations with them. They seem to have a strict face but I was wrong. I really enjoyed the experience.

    '

    November 24, 2009

    Delilah

    Delilah, delilah, oh my, oh my, oh my - you’re irresistible You make me smile when I’m just about to cry You bring me hope, you make me laugh - you like it You get away with murder, so innocent But when you throw a moody you’re all claws and you bite - That’s alright! Delilah, delilah, oh my, oh my, [...]

    November 17, 2009

    Fedora 12 (Codinome Constantine)

    Acaba de ser lançado o Constantine, que é o codinome escolhido para a versão 12 da distribuição Gnu/Linux Fedora. Como sempre, o Fedora 12 nos oferece o que há de mais novo no mundo do software livre, em um conjunto fácil de instalar, usar e administrar.

    Há muito o que contar, assim segue nesse link um pequeno relato do que você encontrará ao utilizar a nova versão do Fedora.

    Faça já o seu Download

    Divirtam-se!

    November 14, 2009

    A Software Freedom Scorecard

    I spoke this morning at the South Tyrol Free Software Conference in Bolzano, Italy. My subject was the idea of a "software freedom scorecard", a list of indicators for the strength of software freedom in an open source project or product, about which I wrote recently. The slides are available for download.

    I also refer to reptiles, and that's a reference to another blog post.

    November 08, 2009

    Drupal Sprint,ISP’s,new mirror and Ubuntu 9.10

    Hi all, This post would attempt to share all the recent and not-so recent happenings and which affect everybody, some more than others for sure. First of all would like to thank all the lovely people for their various offers of using web-space to try out drupal or wordpress or whatever. Sadly had to decline as [...]

    November 06, 2009

    Drupal Sprint India 2009 Follow-up

    Here are some good blog posts reviewing Drupal Sprint India held in Pune on Oct 30-31. Looks like it was useful and fun for those who participated. A Review of Drupal Sprint India 2009 DSI 2009 Day 1: #dsiday1 DSI 2009 Day 2: #dsiday2 Learn Drupal techniques from the contributors Photos from DSI 2009