Every mother loves her baby, every baby is valued and Mr Rudd should value all babies equally. We should not live in Australia where Mr Rudd thinks that some babies are more valuable than others. It’s very, very important that Mr Rudd understand that every mother loves her baby and this should be an Australia where all babies are equal. — Brendan Nelson, single-handedly raising the level of political discourse in Australia
(Blogging this in absolute surprise that the clip wasn’t already available on YouTube! Had to find and upload it myself. Lazyweb, where are you?)
Good news for anyone who comes within a mile of patent law! Okay, so it might not be such great news for anyone who, under legal advice, should avoid coming within a mile of patents in the first place…
… but this may just be the first step towards a more open process here in Australia. It’s a good sign that things are changing for the better, at the very least. Rock on!
The Federal government and patent agency IP Australia have launched a new open, online database featuring almost 20 years’ worth of the country’s patent application records, in a bid to make it easier for inventors to check if someone else has already had their light bulb moment.
The AusPat database, launched this week as part of a joint initiative between the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) and IP Australia, will allow researchers and the innovation industry to crosscheck patent applications with records dating back as far as 1979.
A few days ago I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS on my LinodeVM (the machine which hosts this blog). I had upgraded to 7.10 a while back, so it was unlikely to be much of a challenge… But it was great to see another very smooth upgrade, without any manual workarounds required at all.
While the packages were downloading, I noticed a few coming from universe, but fewer than I had expected. I try not to use universe stuff on my mission-critical server, but some things are just too good to live without. Perhaps they’re candidates for main inclusion?
So, here’s some of the universe stuff I can’t live without on my server, excluding supporting libraries:
collectd: Totally awesome “just works” system information collection and graphing tool. No more dicking around with nightmare configuration of Cacti and friends — collectd comes with a bunch of useful and sensible plugins that are ready-to-go for common graphing tasks. collectd has a vote of confidence from the Red Hat Emerging Technology folks, so you know it’s good.
libapache2-redirtoservname: Convenience module for making sure you’re always redirecting to the primary domain name for your websites — with only one line in your VirtualHost configuration. Here’s how easy it is to use:
ServerName bethesignal.org
ServerAlias www.bethesignal.org perkypants.org www.perkypants.org
RedirectToServerName On
Apparently, the delightfully simple /etc/iftab is no longer used, replaced with the ugly and fiercely undelightful /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules. See, you can even tell from the name of the file that you’re not going to like it.
Surely udev could read and do something useful with /etc/iftab, even if it only provides a fraction of the functionality? Ubuntu successfully migrates the configuration, which is plenty good, but… ew.
I’d kick myself for becoming a “this is progress?! in my day…” curmudgeon, but this is a matter of protecting simplicity rather than pointless defense of “the old ways”.
Here’s /etc/iftab:
# This file assigns persistent names to network interfaces.
# See iftab(5) for syntax.
eth0 mac 00:15:c5:4a:71:98 arp 1
eth1 mac 00:18:de:03:3e:0d arp 1
While this is /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules:
# This file maintains persistent names for network interfaces.
# See udev(7) for syntax.
#
# Entries are automatically added by the 75-persistent-net-generator.rules
# file; however you are also free to add your own entries.
# PCI device 0x14e4:0x1600 (tg3)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="00:15:c5:4a:71:98", ATTR{type}=="1", NAME="eth0"
# PCI device 0x8086:0x4222 (ipw3945)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="00:18:de:03:3e:0d", ATTR{type}=="1", NAME="eth1"
“Results of Australia’s first large-scale Open Source community census have been released to the public. [The report] gives voice to the business potentials, patterns and concerns of a previously mute sector of the IT industry.”
“Australian senator, Karen Lundy, believes US software ‘lock-in’ reduces both competition and technology innovation, thereby hurting the Australian technology market.” — They always get our names wrong! Senator KATE Lundy’s comments noted in the USA.
“The developers of GTK are preparing for a major overhaul that aims to resolve many of the framework’s most significant deficiencies and add next-generation features that will increase flexibility and simplify development.” — Great summary from Ryan.
“Mr Rudd’s hardline approach comes amid Opposition claims that he is too close to China.” — Our newly minted opposition just can’t catch a break, no matter what they try.
“Marieke Hardy’s blog, Reasons You Will Hate Me, has taken out the gong for best Australia/New Zealand blog at the international Bloggies.” — Breakfast radio, First Tuesday Book Club, loud-left, foul-mouthed, alabaster wordsmith. What’s not to like?
“This report simply misses the mark. It’s watered down and mostly wrong, but has a ring of truthiness to it. Gartner realizes that open source is increasingly dominating, but fails to recognize by how much and how quickly.” — Who watches the watchmen?
“The NSW Department of Education has put Microsoft on notice after it agreed to extend its software licensing agreement for just one year instead of renegotiating a new three-year contract.” — Prepares to deploy OpenOffice.org on 41000 PCs by end of 2008
“You’ve heard about Linux. It powers everything from servers to mobile phones, can be found in schools, governments, industry and homes, and a good chunk of the internet’s infrastructure is powered by it.” — Local consumer magazine CHOICE pimping Ubunt
Time for a little perspective on the Open Source industry in Australia… Yesterday, the ABS shipped some findings about digital game development companies:
At end June 2007, there were 45 businesses in Australia involved in the provision of digital game development services. These businesses employed over 1,400 people and generated a total income of $136.9m which represented an average of $3m per business.
Total expenses incurred for the same period were $128.5m. Almost two-thirds of this amount was attributable to labour costs ($83.8m).
During 2006-07 digital game development services businesses recorded an operating profit before tax of $8.5m, and an operating profit margin of 6.2%.
“There should be an insistence now at the policy level on open standards, thereby limiting the capture proprietary software companies have had in the past,” [Senator Lundy] said.
“Sydney-based open source research firm Waugh Partners has published a version of its Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report as a freely-distributable PDF file under a Creative Commons licence.”
“At last week’s Open 2020 Summit we had a video address from the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd. I noticed that the MPEG file for this was much smaller than the videos of the conference presentations.” — Kevin compresses well, I do not.
“Senator Kate Lundy hosted a pre-2020 Summit event in Canberra last week to generate ideas on how open source technology, open standards and open access to information might transform the way government departments and the business world operate.”
“Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner believes hundreds of millions of dollars can be saved by improving systems guiding government procurement of services, particularly in information technology.”
“Ubuntu Linux was the only system left unscathed in a multi-platform hacking competition last week, but does that mean it is more secure?” — Clearly no one wanted to take home the Sony VAIO! I also made somewhat more serious comments.
“Waugh said a major aim of the survey was to correct misconceptions about the nature of open source development and its use in commercial environments. ‘We need real numbers so our industry has something to stand behind.’”
“The Australian open source industry generates AU$500 million of revenue every year, according to the inaugural Australian Open Source Industry and Community Census, released today at the NSW Trade and Investment Centre.”
“The report […] claims the argument that open source is not well-supported is a ‘misconception’. But according to the CIO’s of Australia’s three largest government departments […] support is a very real concern.” — Seriously misleading headline.
“The research shows that these companies are well-equipped to service public and private sector clients and provide high levels of support,” Mr Waugh said.
But it wasn’t just that. I also wondered how much we kicked Perl’s arse. Or, put more diplomatically… I wondered what the difference might be between two large, mature FLOSS projects.
Of course, GNOME and Perl have very different structures, requirements and constituents, and there’s simply no point making comparisons with Apache’s… consortium of projects.
More seriously, I really liked the visualisation, interface and rich querying capabilities. The attention to detail to these issues makes MarkMail the #1 mail archive site I’ve seen.
