Samba Disapproves of Microsoft-Novell Deal

November 13th, 2006 • General

Using patents as competitive tools in the free software world is not acceptable.

Samba’s argument is very well put. Novell’s deal is only short-term, it won’t be long until its competitors catch up and start playing the patent game too.

Software patents are tiny drops from law hell.

Firefox 2.0 Browse By Name

November 13th, 2006 • 3 comments General

This might be old news since Google introduced its Browse By Name feature a couple of years ago.

Firefox 2.0 now defaults to “Browse By Name”, as opposed to “I’m Feeling Lucky” in older versions. Previously, when you wrote something in the address bar, Firefox used to get you the first result from Google, just as if you pressed the I’m Feeling Lucky button. Instead, now Google checks its result and it’ll either redirect you to a site—if it’s sure it has the best match—or give you the results page.

If you’d like to change Firefox’s default configuration, type about:config in the address bar, look for keyword.URL and replace it with your favorite:

• I’m Feeling Luck:
  http://google.com/search?ie=utf-8&btnI=&q=
• Browse By Name:
  http://google.com/search?ie=utf-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
• Google Search:
  http://google.com/search?ie=utf-8&q=

You could omit UTF-8 part and search for warez in China, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Microsoft, Novell and Linux

November 8th, 2006 • General

I’m not going to to point you to thousands of links, there’s been enough media coverage on [Microsoft][1] and [Novell's][1] deal. I’ll just link you to [Groklaw's][3] collection of others’ reactions. I think it’s amazing how both these companies could work it out. Microsoft and Novell are long-time rivals, since the days of NetWare.

In a nut shell, the deal breaks down to three parts:

• Neither company will sue over patents.
• Improved office formats’ interoperability.

• Promise to protect SuSE Linux developers from patent suits.

  Read more »

A Scary PHP Release Note

November 3rd, 2006 • 6 comments General

All users of PHP, especially those using earlier PHP 5 releases are advised to upgrade to this release as soon as possible. This release also obsoletes the 5.1 branch of PHP. (emphasis mine)

It sends a slight chill down my spine when a minor release obsoletes an older, also minor, release.

What they’re saying here is: “We have tested this enough. Trust us with your valuable production server.” Of course a few days later you hear: “Oops, we made a little mistake there, please trust us with 5.2.1. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

And then everybody wonders why people move to Rails.

1st Reboot

November 2nd, 2006 • 3 comments General

“Trust the bulb my friend, it will show you the way…” were wiseman’s last words, then he gently rested his head over a torn piece of cloth.