Planeta Ubuntu-AU

Who Speaks For You?

2008-09-26T22:37:47+00:00

Sitting here with a rotten head cold I was reading this impressive post by Matt Bottrell on Jim Zemlins comments regarding Sun, Linux and Windows. It started me thinking (or it could have been the coffee, don't know). Who speaks for you in the community?

We have a plethora of organisations that purport to speak "for the community". They range from grassroots orgs like Linux Australia (an organisation I personally believe works as closely as it can with the community at large rather than just it's own membership, but I could be biased here.), to orgs such as the FSF and the Linux Foundation, of which Jim Zemlin is the Executive Director. All of these orgs claim to be speaking for the community as if it's some sort of monolithic entity, which it really, really isn't.

I've been thinking about this question a bit lately, especially with the relaunch of the show. I don't want to pretend that I'm speaking for the community, mainly I'm asking questions that I myself want to have answered and making statements that are based on my own personal beliefs. If I have people asking me to find out stuff, I will mention that (not who so don't worry your identity is safe) but that's as far as it goes.

Anyway, enough of the deep thought, had a great time last night with Shane and Dave on Friday Night Tech, it's nice not being the one asking the questions.

Radio Appearance

2008-09-26T05:22:14+00:00

If you're in the Lismore area then tune into local community radio station 2ncr tonight. I'm going to be joining the crew on Friday Night Tech to shoot the breeze about the show, Open Source and anything else that comes to mind. The show starts at 10:00pm so listen in.

For those of you who don't live around Lismore Shane and co have been releasing episodes of FNT as podcasts for a while now, so you should be able to see how we go :)

We Won An Award

2008-09-25T22:24:37+00:00

Well our client did using our services, so pardon me while I bask in reflected glory :)

Zope and Plone XMLRPC

2008-09-24T00:24:02+00:00

Dear Lazyweb,

I'm looking for some doco on how to manage Plone via XMLRPC. Specifically I want to be able to create, edit and delete Plone sites. Unfortunately my google foo is lacking in this department so any pointers would be most appreciated.

512MB of RAM A Working Vista Does Not Make

2008-09-22T11:23:44+00:00

Aside from the Collaboration and new media stuff we also do PC Cleanups and Repairs as part of our business. Mostly it's word of mouth stuff, not huge but it's enough.

One thing I have seen more than enough of in my time doing this job is the so called "Vista Ready" budget laptop. That's the el-cheapo laptop available from $[MAJOR RETAILER] with el-cheapo specs, including 512MB of RAM. This they then decided to stick Vista on.

I'm sorry but that's border line selling of defective goods. Vista does not run in any effective way with only 512MB of RAM. It's slow to boot, slow to open windows and slow to operate. As an example, I received a laptop today in this situation. I've got it sitting next to me now, it's been trying to install a Java update for the past half an hour, and that's with all the fancy GUI bling crap turned off.

This is not doing anyone any good. It's going to tick off the customers, give the retailer a bad name ("You sold me a dud") and cause numerous migraines to the people who get called in because "my brand new laptop is running slow".

Sigh.

Exam Timetable

2008-09-22T01:24:02+00:00

31/10/08 - English
3/11/08 - Further Mathematics Exam 1
5/11/08 - Further Mathematics Exam 2
7/11/08 - Mathematical Methods Exam 1
10/11/08 - Mathematical Methods Exam 2
12/11/08 - Physics
14/11/08 - Business Management
18/11/08 - Text and Traditions

The End

Its an update!

2008-09-21T04:36:48+00:00

I’m blogging. I don’t really know why I am blogging. I have nothing of interest to blog about really.

Its pretty exciting. I’m on my last holidays as a highschool student and I’m meant to be studying but instead I’m updating my blog.

What to blog about…. I’ve been thinking about doing a study time table… I should probably do that today.

I NOTICED SOMETHING THE OTHER DAY. I had finished a maths test and I had some paper left over to do my working. So in my boredom I started writing out the Fibonacci sequence.

1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610.. etc and I went back and looked at 144. I noticed that its the 12th number in the Fibonacci Sequence and ; The position was the squareroot of the number. This blew my mind in a “wow, I wonder if anyone else has noticed this before and how many other numbers this works for” kind of way. I haven’t checked it for any other numbers yet, but if anyone knows if 144 is the only number this works for (apart from F(1) = 1, of course) let me know!

Not much else is up really. Except I have exams coming up at the end of October and Trial Exams the first week back next term (6th October). OH HOW EXCITING!

OSOTA 2008-09-16 Is Out

2008-09-16T11:09:36+00:00

We've just released Open Source On The Air - 2008-09-16 a week early, for more information about why, head over to the blag

Before I go I would just like to mention one thing. There is a certain large distro that I have been trying to get into contact with concerning events that occured a few weeks ago. I've sent a number of emails both to the distro people and to the parent company, however I have received absolutely nothing back. I was going to mention it in this episode however with the rush, it simply slipped my mind.

So if anyone out there has a contact who can talk about these events (package manager sounds very delicious and can do many Revs Per Minute) could they please contact me? I've got people asking me if I know what's going on and the longer time goes on the more people are asking.

Adding the Blag

2008-09-15T05:03:31+00:00

Okay I've added a new section to the OSOTA site, the Show Blag. It's mix between a blog and a bragging section where we'll be putting all sorts of bits and pieces about the show and the stories we cover.

Now here is a reminder for anyone involved with a Free and Open Source Software project, we are offering advertising space for your projects within the show. This means if you can come up with a cool, funky or just different radio type ad that fills either a 15 or 30 second slot, then we want to hear about it.

You can either head over to the "In Episode Advertising" forum at OSOTA (registration required)or shoot us an email via our contact form.