Colin Charles Agenda

Here comes a combined rant, from the random tabs opened in Firefox, about Malaysia.

Bloggers and the law
A Barisan National representative has mentioned that the same laws apply to those of newspapers and journals, even in the cyber world. I do agree that slander and libel should be avoided on the Internet, and getting sued for that, is probably sensible. However, censorship like in printed media, should be avoided (and as far as I remember, the MSC promise was that there will be no censorship of the Internet). I’ve been silent about the Jeff Ooi/Rocky case, because plagiarism is not something that is easily proven. Did Jeff and Rocky incorrectly slander Brendan?

The New Economic Policy
I don’t consider the NEP new, because its been around for over thirty years. Malaysia is probably the only nation that helps the majority, to become incompetent. Yes, maybe that is a strong word, but there’s no real other description for it - housing discounts, education preference, job discrimination, sleeping partners, gains without merit and the list goes on. However, there are calls within UMNO to get rid of the NEP, which is excellent. Tun Musa Hitam states that “there was a need to have a change in mindset to draw investors to the country.” No interests in cronyism, nepotism, the NEP. Yes! I quote the article, again:

In the last few decades of the NEP, the country used to have an Ali Baba way of doing business where Ali would give his name and Baba would do all the work.  

“As time went on, Ali and Baba became equal and Ali was able to deliver as much as Baba. Now, there are even Alis who are using the Babas not as sleeping partners but as equals,” he quipped.

Will we see change soon? Will people in Malaysia be recognized on merit? Not by their race, the strings that they can pull, and so forth? One can only hope, or succumb to the brain drain that is already happening.

Copycats
What is with Malaysia? A long time ago, there was a Friendster spin-off, called Kawanster. Now, there’s a Digg clone? Aizat has a pretty good analysis of this. He asks if this is the best Malaysia can do - copying, or apeing other products? I’m beginning to wonder, myself.

WiMax
Malaysia should have rocking Internet access soon, I do hope. No more tied down to Streamyx, but WiMax access for everyone. The Star reports:

The four winners are REDTone-CNX Broadband Sdn Bhd,
Packet One Networks (M) Sdn Bhd (formerly known as MIB Comm Sdn Bhd),
Asiaspace Dotcom Sdn Bhd and Bizsurf (M) Sdn Bhd (a unit of YTL-e
Solutions Bhd).

Those are the companies to be watching, when it comes to improving broadband in Malaysia.

Chevna
The Linux distribution du jour, for Malaysians? (yes, bandwidth limit exceeded now). These were the TrianceOS folk, now selling Ubuntu for between RM39.95-49.95. From what I gather, they use Ubuntu mainstream repositories, add to sources.list a few more repositories (like mediaubuntu, beryl, wine, etc.), and they also have a Chevna repository at http://www.chevna.com/chevna. Is this an act we should support? I mean, Ubuntu + a sources.list that’s sexy, isn’t something that I think is worth much. But lifetime e-support? For RM50? I believe they’re going to encounter problems - even basing it off an LTS release, it probably doesn’t make sense to support something for life. And what about hardware issues?

It remains to be seen what they gather over just selling support for Ubuntu per se (I’d say, RM50/year, for Ubuntu support might make sense). And the next LTS release from Ubuntu, will send out free media. If anyone has tried Chevna yet, please do post your comments - I’m interested in giving it a twirl, the moment they fix their bandwidth issues.

Technorati Tags: malaysia, bloggers, law, new economic policy, nep, copycats, digg, wimax, chevna, ubuntu, linux, distribution, politics

It is. Look what gems I found today:

• Ubuntu Feisty will have a cool command-not-found package. It will tell you where to find said application, and how to install it. Look at the examples in Alan Pope’s blog entry. (apparently, this is in Edgy)
• Fluendo has got some amazing codecs, and its worth supporting them by buying it. Fedora 7, instead of complaining of a missing codec everytime you try to play something, will have a codec buddy, according to Chris Blizzard.

All this means great things for Linux users. And new Linux users. Think about how easy all this will be, for the average home user? They follow something online, they hit up the command line, and they get helped. Even better if they don’t have to hit up the command line, just pop the DVD in, Totem sees it, it doesn’t have the correct codec, and voila, codec buddy helps you go to the Fluendo store, selecting exactly what you need. Have credit card handy, and you’re ready to watch your content.

Keeping in mind, that your mother will not want to know the difference between Windows Media or MPEG2. She’ll just want it to work! (In fact, after being spoiled by OS X for over 1.5 years, I too just want things to work.) Of course now, I do hope that both the Linux community distribution behemoths share these cool features (or should I say, adapt from each other).

Technorati Tags: end user, linux, friendly, command-not-found, codec buddy, fluendo, codecs, usability

It’s been a while since I properly dabbled in Fedora/PPC, so today I decided to change that. ginny is the iBook G4/1.33GHz that I purchased last year, and didn’t get to make much use of it the moment the Powerbook came along. Well, today I grabbed the FC-5 DVD and decided to give it an install.

Since I last fiddled with things, I no longer have hermione so there goes my last Airport device. I am now expecting Airport Extreme to actually work.

First things first, my trackpad didn’t just automatically work in the installer - I ended up plugging in a USB mouse. I then proceeded to remove all Linux partitions (I had 4.92 still installed), and the bootstrap partition got created.

The mouse worked once the installation was complete. The one thing that didn’t work was sound. And of course, the wireless networking.

To add to the spring cleaning goodness of the day, the quad-G5 got a new 250GB SATA disk (a Seagate for $117). It also got a BENQ FP71G+ 17″ LCD monitor, my first; I’m liking it, so I think this is time for a “goodbye CRT”. And it seems I got another one.

albus my main desktop that ran Fedora Core 2 for the longest time needed an update. Today, it got a “new” 80GB disk and is now all modern. I however do seem to be noticing some screen corruption with Xorg, that I didn’t notice with FC-2 (green or other colored dots on the screen via the Radeon 7000 thats inside). The only real difference is the driver has changed from “radeon” to “ati”. Screen corruption seemed to be fixed by not using the KVM and cleaning the dust from the video card (though I might place it back on the KVM soon).

I finally got a 240V power adapter, that pumps 5V DC and gives me 2A from Jaycar, so my NSLU2 works now. Remember not to plug in what you get from the USA, because then it just goes “poof”. Its not a regular power supply, in where it does switching voltage, which you’ll really only notice post-”poof”-ing. I do feel rather silly buying this in the States, as its almost as cheap here in Australia.

I tried to test Ubuntu PowerPC. On the G5, I encountered it just hanging (ubuntu#56342) and on the iMac DV SE, X wouldn’t work either. I’ve tried video=ofonly, to no avail. Thats okay, because Fedora Core 5 has been placed on the G5 just as well. Fan control seems to be broken. I eventually got Dapper (6.06.1) on the iMac, thanks to the power of blogs (really, Google).

I dusted off the N770, and installed the new Maemo 2.0 Internet 2006 Tablet edition (probably worth reading the update guide - make sure you have the 2.0 Flasher). While I was at it, I set up scratchbox again.

In the sbox environment, if you need to install something, remember to use fakeroot (just pre-pend it to the command you’re running).

I must admit that I’m quite excited with the GTalk functionality. Holding the 770’s speaker to my ear, the microphone is just where my mouth is. Rumor has it (upon opening it up) that the mic is exactly the same as the one used in mobile phones that Nokia make. The quality of the audio is actually surprisingly good - I’m quite happy with the fact that I now have a VoIP WiFi phone. The other good thing about GTalk is that I can be connected on OS X, Linux, as well as my 770 - I like the idea of having multiple presences. If only more people used GTalk (as opposed to MSN)! (reach me at ccharles@gmail.com)

All the telephony options become even more interesting with Gizmo Project and their recent release of the 770 ARM client. I’ve had an account with the Gizmo Project almost since they started offering a Linux and an OS X client (I think the latter came first). I’ve hardly made much use of it, mainly because a lot of the folk I know are still connected to Skype. SkypeOut is also something I use from time-to-time, but now, it seems that the Gizmo equivalent is also not too bad. SIgning up with them gives you a little free credit, and I still had it after all this time, so a test call via the Nokia 770 proved to be useful.

My mother, some 4,500 miles away from me heard me loud and clear. Again, I’m hooked, and wish more people were on the Gizmo Project. Best part about it is you don’t actually need to even fire up the client, you can use standard SIP phone software, like Ekiga, to get things working. I don’t know if this works for dialing out to non-Gizmo Project users, but it’s on my to-do list to give it a go. Another boon is the fact that I can be logged in via OS X, Linux, and on the 770 - again, multiple presences at work. If only more people used the Gizmo Project (as opposed to Skype)! (reach me at colincharles)

One complaint that I have with the Gizmo Project is that you need to install not just one file, but three - it forces Bonjour on you (even if you have howl, it doesn’t seem to care), and you need a separate sound library (that can either be OSS or ALSA based). I guess this is where Skype wins with the one-file installer.

The other complaint is that when making a Gizmo-to-Gizmo call, the interface seems clunky enough to not allow me to pick up the phone call! On OS X its Growl, I click the answer interface and it doesn’t work. On Linux, its the same deal. On the 770, I pick it up and nothing happens. I seem to have problems making Gizmo-to-Gizmo calls, anyone had any success?

After visiting the Canadian embassy to get myself a visa yesterday (yes, I’m going to Ottawa Linux Symposium (OLS) - see you there?) I decided to take a trip to Low Yat, and the surrounding area to take a gander at computer hardware out there.

I ended up picking up a bunch of disks and external casings, and a USB webcam (cheapest Logitech, I wonder if it’ll work with Linux - RM80 down, the salesman looked at me funny when I said Linux, but I have faith). Then I decided to scour the place for Microsoft Windows XP Starter Edition. To my dismay, I found it for sale, nowhere.

The cheapest I was going to get was a RM300 copy of Windows XP Home. However, most of the retailers were quite happy to point me to the RM5 pirated copy of Windows XP Professional.

These pirate shops also sell Fedora Core 1, Ubuntu PowerPC edition, and more, for RM15/CD. I wonder why Linux costs more than Windows?

It brings me back to thinking about Software Freedom Day (maybe last year or the year before) where Aizat, Khairil and Ditesh stood at Low Yat and distributed free CDs, that were Ubuntu based. After all, Canonical do ship it for free, why not give it away for free?

Malaysians love free gifts, and a Live CD, that can be installed and distributed, for free, just sounds like a winner.

I was just reading a text on effective communications, and there was something interesting I noted. With different values and backgrounds all over the world, a lot of things happen (use of colloquisms, etc.) with regards to people understanding each other. When there’s face-to-face meetings, there’s also non-verbal communication to keep note of.

It turns out in South Africa, they call it Ubuntu (we’re much more familiar with its “humanity for others” meaning by now, for sure). They value collective efforts in solving issues that impact the members of the community. And if you’re ever face-to-face with a South African, limited eye contact often shows respect and humility (this is similar with Japan, its polite). In the Western world though, we need eye-contact for confidence purposes, and to show that we’re sincere.

Its also worthy to note (yes, this post had a point) that on the MySQL 5.0 downloads page, there exists Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) downloads. Its the first time there are DEBs there.

Sure, its best to just sudo pat-get install mysql-server, but that also effectively means MySQL has recognized DEBs, and with Ubuntu at that. Its LTS as well!

Knoppix 5.0.1 available:
It looks quite nice, although some of the packages are very up to date and others are quite old. MySQL comes with 5.0.21, so there’s probably no distribution with a more recent MySQL version at the moment.

No Markus, Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper actually comes with 5.0.21 just as well. On June 1. And with their new Casper system, the CD you download is actually a LiveCD and an Install CD all rolled into one! 5.0.22 is a security release, for what its worth…

On another partition, I popped Ubuntu 5.10 on the Thinkpad R51. I figured I need to eat some of my own dogfood, and give it more use. Here are some notes:

• Installation went smoothly, installing side-by-side with FreeBSD. It however, didn’t write to GRUB that FreeBSD actually exists, and use that as an option for booting. It also, didn’t give me an option (or I missed it?) to say if I didn’t want it to install the bootloader. Anyways, in /boot/grub/menu.lst, add:

title FreeBSD
root (hd0,0,a)
kernel /boot/loader

• My WiFi (ipw2100) actually just works. Ubuntu includes the firmware it’d seem, which explains why RMS doesn’t think Ubuntu is free software.
• 96.9MB of updates were waiting for me the moment I logged into GNOME. The kernel update broke around 50%, but I was amazed to see it resume the download from there. Is this some dpkg/apt cleverness that we could use in rpm/yum?
• I tried to install something (gforge-*), and apt barfed. I presume this is how people mentioned RPM hell and what not… There exists APT hell too, folk.