The World of a Penguin

The Swedish news site IDG.se writes that Adobe has joined Linux Foundation. Linux Foundation has also sent a press release . I hope this means that Adobe had come to the concussion that their Linux implementation is crap and that they need to optimize it and make an 64-bit release available. It would also be nice if they provide us Linux users with a Shockwave player. I have not too much hope since Adobe does not mention that they have joined Linux Foundation on their site . Why is Adobe flashplayer crap on Linux today? Well take a look on the CPU-usage when you viewing a page with Flash content. For now am I using Gnash instead to play flash content on my Ubuntu machines.

Donkey, my new computer , is up and running with Ubuntu Hardy Heron. The computer is named Donkey. Everything seems working soothly and fine. The computer is fast. I am now able to run Compiz for the first time. The new Gnome gives a fresh new feeling. The only bad thing in the Ubuntu beta is that some of my firefox-plugins does not work, yet. I have done some optimization of the memory settings in bios. According to memtest gave it about 4% of performance boost.

Today did my parts that I ordered other day for my new computer arrived. At the same time did my copy of Donald Knuths "The Art of Computer Programming" arrive. It's heavy. I have started assemble the computer by removing the old parts from the case. I have decided to install the beta of Ubuntu Hardy Heron 64-bit edition right away. Why wait? And now to something completely different... Last two days have I attended a course in PostGIS . PostGIS is an addition to PostgreSQL to get spatial capabilities, which is used for geographical systems. Teacher for the course was one of the developers of PostGIS, Mark Cave-Ayland, and one of the Postgres developer, Magnus Hagander. I am more and more impressed of Postgres and PostGIS capabilities the more I learn about it. Another fun thing I have observed is that my colleagues have begun to buy computers, wipe out Windows, and install Linux, often the Ubuntu taste. We will soon conquer the world.

Or to be more corrects; parts to build a new computer. My idea is to have one desktop computer and one cheap small laptop like EeePC . I ordered: A new silent power supply Motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 AMD 770 chipset AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.5GHz 4GB RAM PC6400 CL4 DVD burner Dual-layer ATI HD 2600 Pro graphics card I will use an old box and old screen I already has. My priority was to get something not to expensive that is upgradeable to some extent. The motherboard can have 16GB of memory. I hope this will work smoothly with Ubuntu Linux.

It is my duty to inform you all that Pluto, my dear MSI S271 Laptop with Ubuntu has past away after an accident earlier this week . My attempt to bring Pluto to life has failed. He can't get any new power. I had hoped that his life should not end so fast.

Monday evening I accidentally dropped my laptop on the floor. At a first glance everything worked. But yesterday I observed that I was running on battery and that it did not charged. I checked the power adapter and it worked. First I run a new backup before further investigations. Afterwards I started unassemble the laptop. When I finally saw the power connector the positive poles sold were broken. When I dropped the laptop the power connector must have taken the hit. Today I started glue the plastic parts of the connector. Later I will solder the connector. I can only hope it will work. Wish me luck! Until the laptop is fixed I have to use my wifes laptop Piglet which also uses Ubuntu.

Hereby I nominate ant to the challenge of most stupid build environment. Why? Its function for tar files together does not preserve the rights on the files as all normal tar-programs does. If it were on windows I can understand it, but not on Linux/Ubuntu. Theres a work around where one can say that this file has these rights and those files has some other rights. But why make it so complicated? Well there is some kind of motivation for it; Java does not support file permissions. This is the big drawback with write once, run everywhere. One cannot take advantage of different Operating systems features. By the way... The world has been a better place, at least according to all Vista fans. M$ start shipping SP1. I am sad for them their world only gets better less than ones a year. Mine and all other ubunteros world gets better every six month.

In the February issue of Communication of the ACM there is an article about a site for peer reviewing Patents. The site is caller Peer to Patent . The idea with the site is to give the sites community a chance to point out prior art and other relevant information about new patent applications. To get the details about the process the site has an instruction video and tutorial. Behind the site stands New York Law School. I thinkthe idea of the site is very good and it will hopefully increase the quality of granted patents. I guess the inspiration to the community is partly is from the Open Source community.