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New job

Published on September 2, 2007 in Jobs. 1 Comment

VerticalOne logo

I can now speak of this: Friday, 31 of August was my last day working for Agap2 at IBM. Starting tomorrow I’m starting a new project at VerticalOne as a Senior Consultant in Open Source technologies.

Who says work can’t be fun :D

FreeBSD: DTrace is still a possibility

Published on August 27, 2007 in FreeBSD. 0 Comments

FreeBSD with DTrace

After failing to convince Sun to solve the license problems that have been preventing the DTrace hooks from being added to the FreeBSD kernel, John Birrel says he’s changing his approach and is starting the port from scratch.

Can’t wait to see DTrace working on FreeBSD :)

links for 2007-08-27

Published on August 27, 2007 in del.icio.us. 1 Comment

Judge rules Novell as the rightfull owner of the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights

Published on August 12, 2007 in Linux. 0 Comments

Everyone knows by now but here are my 2 cents on this subject:

This last Friday was a good day to Novell and Linux.

Federal Court Judge Dave Kimball issued a ruling stating among other things but most importantly “that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights”.

This pretty much eliminates SCO’s threat on it’s allegations of copyright infringement of Unix by the Linux community.

Additionally, the Court decided that SCO owes Novell some money made for the licensing deals with Sun and Microsoft. There goes SCO’s cash reserves.

Last but not least, Judge Kimball states this ruling “significantly impacts the claims and counterclaims asserted” in the SCO vs IBM case.

I’m eagerly awaiting on how this one ends ;-)

SCO is expected to appeal nonetheless, but a dead end appeal I’m afraid. Well, I’m not, really hopping to hear the fat lady singing :-D

Now, what happens to SCO’s Unix licensees? According to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols Sun should be running to a telephone and callling Novell trying to make a deal. Humm, I don’t see things that bad for Sun. Sure, Sun is a direct competitor on Novell’s Linux with Solaris and OpenSolaris, not on licenses per se but on support contracts. But Sun is gaining momentum in the marketplace with it’s Open Source initiative and I think Novell pretty much knows what the Open Source Community feels and does when Open Source is attacked in any way, that must be really clear and fresh before thinking on enforcing it’s IP against Sun.

Microsoft on the other hand has been close with Novell recently so there too I don’t see anything really happening. Still, now there’s more leverage on Linux’s side against those alleged claims of Linux infrigment of Microsoft’s Intellectual property.

On a side note, I’m wondering if Apple’s decision to go with BSD as base to Mac OSX was just technical. What do you think?

Image from Bill Stearns’ web site.

links for 2007-08-10

Published on August 10, 2007 in del.icio.us. 0 Comments

links for 2007-08-03

Published on August 3, 2007 in del.icio.us. 0 Comments

links for 2007-08-01

Published on August 1, 2007 in del.icio.us. 0 Comments

Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2.0 (Beta)

Published on August 1, 2007 in Mac. 0 Comments

Today Microsoft released the Beta version of its Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac, dubbed v2.0 .This release includes the following new features:

  • Universal Binary

    • Runs natively on both Intel-based and PowerPC-based Macs.

  • Remote Desktop Protocol 6.0

    • Provides better compatibility with Windows Vista, improved security features, and many other improvements.

  • Multiple Sessions

    • Lets you connect to multiple Windows-based computers at the same time.

  • Improved User Experience

    • Provides a true Mac experience and improved usability.

  • Improved Customization Options

    • Lets you change application preferences, including keyboard shortcuts, while you are running a session. Changes take effect the next time that you connect.

  • Dynamic Screen Resizing

    • Lets you resize your session window or switch to full-screen mode during a session.

  • Improved Printing Support

    • Supports all configured printers on your Mac. No longer limited to PostScript printers.

    This new version is now a Universal Binary and uses the latest Remote Desktop 6.0 protocol enabling better Vista support.
    Another nice feature is the support for several running sessions.

    Download available here.

    Portugal says “Yes with comments” to OOXML

    Published on July 31, 2007 in lobby. 0 Comments

    What a bad day…

    About my machine running FreeBSD

    Published on July 30, 2007 in FreeBSD. 0 Comments

    On my previous post about moving my blog I said I would talk more about the FreeBSD box.

    It’s one of 3 machines I have running FreeBSD, the only one running 6.2 RELEASE, the other two are running CURRENT.
    This machine is only currently hosting this blog but will soon replace my Linksys WRT54GL as a router.
    Because of heat, power and space savings I’ve been using the Linksys WRT54GL as a router and switch. It was a bad decision for two reasons:
    I bought a Mac which has a Gigabit interface as well as my storage machine. I bought a SMC SMCGS8 8 port Gigabit Switch to remedy that.
    The other problem is that the WRT54GL can’t handle lots of traffic on my 11~12 mbit downstream ADSL because the router is the PPPoE client, not the modem.

    I still wanted a low power, low noise but more powerfull machine and happened to get just that from a friend: it’s a 800MHz Via C3 Ezra with 256MB RAM and a 10GB Seagate. The cpu is fanless, only the low wattage power supply has a fan that is most quiet.
    It has a RealTek 8139 10/100BaseTX builtin and I added an Intel 82550 Pro/100 Ethernet.

    Here’s the dmesg:

    Copyright (c) 1992-2007 The FreeBSD Project.
    Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
    The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
    FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
    FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p4 #0: Thu Apr 26 17:40:53 UTC 2007
    root@i386-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
    Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
    CPU: VIA C3 Ezra (797.97-MHz 686-class CPU)
    Origin = "CentaurHauls" Id = 0x678 Stepping = 8
    Features=0x803035
    real memory = 268369920 (255 MB)
    avail memory = 253091840 (241 MB)
    kbd1 at kbdmux0
    ath_hal: 0.9.17.2 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
    acpi0: on motherboard
    acpi0: Power Button (fixed)
    Timecounter “ACPI-safe” frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000
    acpi_timer0: <24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz> port 0×4008-0×400b on acpi0
    cpu0: on acpi0
    acpi_throttle0: on cpu0
    acpi_button0: on acpi0
    pcib0: port 0xcf8-0xcff,0×4000-0×407f,0×4080-0×40ff,0×5000-0×500f,0×6000-0×607f on acpi0
    pci0: on pcib0
    agp0: mem 0xe0000000-0xe3ffffff at device 0.0 on pci0
    pcib1: at device 1.0 on pci0
    pci1: on pcib1
    isab0: at device 7.0 on pci0
    isa0: on isab0
    atapci0: port 0×1f0-0×1f7,0×3f6,0×170-0×177,0×376,0xd000-0xd00f at device 7.1 on pci0
    ata0: on atapci0
    ata1: on atapci0
    uhci0: port 0xd400-0xd41f irq 5 at device 7.2 on pci0
    uhci0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
    usb0: on uhci0
    usb0: USB revision 1.0
    uhub0: VIA UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
    uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
    uhci1: port 0xd800-0xd81f irq 5 at device 7.3 on pci0
    uhci1: [GIANT-LOCKED]
    usb1: on uhci1
    usb1: USB revision 1.0
    uhub1: VIA UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
    uhub1: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
    pci0: at device 7.4 (no driver attached)
    fxp0: port 0xdc00-0xdc3f mem 0xe6931000-0xe6931fff,0xe6900000-0xe691ffff irq 10 at device 8.0 on pci0
    miibus0: on fxp0
    inphy0: on miibus0
    inphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
    fxp0: Ethernet address: 00:02:b3:xx:xx:xx
    rl0: port 0xe000-0xe0ff mem 0xe6930000-0xe69300ff irq 11 at device 10.0 on pci0
    miibus1: on rl0
    rlphy0: on miibus1
    rlphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
    rl0: Ethernet address: 00:30:00:xx:xx:xx
    pci0: at device 11.0 (no driver attached)
    pci0: at device 13.0 (no driver attached)
    sio0: <16550A-compatible COM port> port 0×3f8-0×3ff irq 4 flags 0×10 on acpi0
    sio0: type 16550A
    atkbdc0: port 0×60,0×64 irq 1 on acpi0
    atkbd0: irq 1 on atkbdc0
    kbd0 at atkbd0
    atkbd0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
    pmtimer0 on isa0
    orm0: at iomem 0xc0000-0xc7fff,0xc8000-0xcbfff on isa0
    ppc0: parallel port not found.
    sc0: at flags 0×100 on isa0
    sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
    sio1: configured irq 3 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
    sio1: port may not be enabled
    vga0: at port 0×3c0-0×3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
    ukbd0: vendor 0×0430 product 0×0005, rev 1.00/1.01, addr 2, iclass 3/1
    kbd2 at ukbd0
    Timecounter “TSC” frequency 797969267 Hz quality 800
    Timecounters tick every 1.000 msec
    ad0: 9768MB at ata0-master UDMA100