• LinuxDevices.com:: DeLaval Voluntary Milking System
• LinuxDevices.com:: Linux well-represented at DARPA robot vehicle challenge
• LinuxDevices.com:: Flocks of unmanned aircraft form Bluetooth Linux clusters
• PCLinuxOnline.com:: PC Linux OS [yet another Linux]

   "IBM is opening of the AIX Collaboration Center (ACC). 
    Through a two-year, $200 million investment, IBM will 
    use the center -- based in Austin, Texas -- to collaborate 
    with customers, developers, independent software vendors 
    (ISVs), and academics to drive innovation around AIX 
    technology; and to develop, test and adopt new applications 
    and middleware for the AIX operating system."

• IBM.com:: IBM Launches Collaboration Center for UNIX
• IBM.com:: AIX Collaboration Center

[Extra] Speaking of Unix... Peter H. Salus reports "Ken Thompson retired to California" and "Phil Winterbottom is CTO at Entrisphere." Note: Thompson is a Fellow at Entrisphere. I wonder what they are doing? Another note: Rob Pike along with other former Bell Labs CS researchers are working for Google, Inc. Unix was created in 1969 by Department 1127 at AT&T Bell Labs.

UnixReview.com:: Dept. 1127: going, Going, GONE!

Linux.Slashdot.org:: Torvalds Says 'Use KDE'

[Extra] MisterOrange.com:: Top 10 System Administrator Truths

   "What was most surprising to us was probably the top 
    two reasons given for deploying Linux on the desktop.  
    It's not TCO (total cost of ownership), or security, 
    or lack of license fees. It was 'employees requesting 
    Linux (user demand)' and because 'my competitors have 
    successfully deployed Linux.'"

DesktopLinux.com:: OSDL shares Desktop Linux survey results

On 2 December 2005, Novell issued a press release stating "SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server was named Best Enterprise Server Distribution at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in Frankfurt, Germany, in November. With 53 percent of the vote from a 200-member international jury, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server beat Red Hat Enterprise Linux (37 percent) and Mandriva (8 percent) to earn the sixth-annual Linux New Media award for best enterprise Linux."

[side-bar] "Mandriva, originally known as Mandrakesoft, is the result of the merger of several open source pioneers such as Mandrakesoft in France, Conectiva in Brazil, Edge IT in France and Lycoris in the US."

Dartmouth.edu:: Dartmouth collaborates with Sun Microsystems to develop secure technology

[Extra] OpenSolaris.org:: Home Page

	"Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux and the maintainer 
	 of the development kernel, is cracking down on developers 
	 that add last-minute changes to the kernel."

	"The kernel development team recently set a policy that new 
	 features must be added to the next version of the kernel during 
	 the two weeks after the release of the previous version."

ZDNet.co.uk:: Torvalds gets tough on kernel coders

Undeadly.org:: OpenBSD's 10th Birthday

I was curious about the domain Undeadly.org and discovered that it was the homepage for the OpenBSD Journal.

   "Since joining Novell, I've remained convinced that we 
    have a tremendous opportunity to provide leadership in 
    the market as organizations around the globe embrace 
    open standards and open source as a way to improve 
    their operating results."

In a separate press release, Novell said they were reducing total headcount by approximately 600 positions, more than 10% of Novell's worldwide workforce.

Novell.com:: Home Page

   "Novell insiders say the company plans to announce a 
    major restructuring on Oct. 31 that will include layoffs 
    of at least 20% of the 5,800-person workforce. Blum Capital 
    is expected to wage a proxy battle for several seats on the 
    board. The deadline for proxy measures is Oct. 27 and the 
    entire board is up for reelection next April."

The following about Novell's CEO Jack Messman, if true, is bad.

   "Yet former Novell managers say he has an autocratic, top-down 
    management style that conflicts with the collaborative spirit 
    of Linux and the open-source movement."

One of the main advantages for a company to use Linux (and other open source software) is vendor independence. If Novell fails in the Linux business, then Red Hat has the potential to become the Microsoft of Linux world. Thus, I agree with the following assessment.

   "A wild card is the support from computer makers Hewlett-Packard, 
    Dell and IBM. "There's a huge benefit to having two [Linux] suppliers. 
    Customers have choice," says Scott Handy, IBM's vice-president of 
    worldwide Linux. The three giants might push business Novell's way."

Yahoo.BusinessWeek.com:: Cold Realities For Novell

[Extra] On 24 October 2005, NOVL shares were trading at $7.43 giving the company a $2.84 billion stock market value. Novell's price-to-sales ratio (PSR) was 2.41. RHAT RHAT shares were trading at $21.50 giving the company a $3.8 billion stock market value. Red Hat's PSR was 16.2.

• LinuxClusterInstitute.org:: Linux Cluster Institute
• LinuxHPC.org:: Linux High Performance Computing and Linux Clusters
• IBM.com:: High-performance Linux clustering, Part 1: Clustering fundamentals

I may try to attend the LCI HPC Revolution 2006 conference being held during the first week of May, 2006, in Norman, Oklahoma.

Chris Green, "Microsoft's local Unix Interoperability and High Performance Computing specialist, will update the conference on his company's 'Unix and open source-related activities, including their efforts to provide a POSIX environment in Windows, and to integrate Windows and Unix systems.'"

POSIX lives!

ZDNet.com.au:: Microsoft to keynote Unix conference

Here is quote from Linus Torvalds.

   "A 'spec' is close to useless. I have _never_ seen a spec 
    that was both big enough to be useful _and_ accurate. And 
    I have seen _lots_ of total crap work that was based on specs. 
    It's _the_ single worst way to write software, because it by 
    definition means that the software was written to match theory, 
    not reality."

I've always warned: Beware of the one-line specification.

   "Specs are a basis for _talking_about_ things. But they are 
    _not_ a basis for implementing software."

My experience has been that you can review a 'spec' forever and still not know 100% what it is you are to program.

KernelTrap.org:: Linus On Specifications

The Google search results included a hyperlink to Stanford.edu:: KnowOS: A Knowledge Operating System.

A brief description of KnowOS from Stanford University.

   "Whereas Unix and Windows are operating systems for ASCII 
    strings and files, and there are operating systems for tables 
    (such as Oracle), a Knowledge Operating System (or "KnowOS") 
    is an operating systems for knowledge!"

In 2005, Unix is around 35 years in age. Unix lives today thanks in part to Free Software and Open Source. The Unix philosophy can be summarized in three bullet-list items and one of those items is to work with plain-old-text as much as possible. In 2005, text is hot.

More from Stanford.edu about KnowOS.

   "The central idea of a knowledge operating system is that 
    knowledge -- that is, arbitrarily complex, interconnected, 
    semi-structured data of all types -- is omnipresent. This 
    knowledge is immediately and easily available to both users 
    and programs at all times."

IBM.com:: IBM Linux Portal - Linux at IBM

Linspire (TM) is a "full-featured operating system like Microsoft Windows XP or Apple Mac OSX. Linspire combines the power, stability and cost-savings of Linux with a familiar, easy-to-use desktop environment." The Linspire motto is: "The world's easiest desktop Linux!" Linspire is based upon FLOSS, but it is not free; in other words, you have to buy it.

Somebody created a project called Freespire, which some people thought was a free version of Linspire. But... Freespire is not Linspire. To help allay the confusion, Freespire is being renamed Squiggle.

As a side-effect of the "Freespire is not Linspire confusion," Linspire, Inc. is temporarily offering a free digital copy of Linspire.

Freespire.org

• Linux.com:: Meet your local LUG
• GDT::Links:: Local Computing User Groups
• PLUG.Phoenix.Az.US:: Penguins in the Desert
• XUsers.org:: XUsers - The Mac OS X Users Group

   "The high-level findings show that there is no universal 
    clear-cut TCO basis to compel the corporate masses to do 
    a wholesale switch from Windows to Linux as there is for 
    a migration from Unix to Linux. And there is no indication 
    that users are replacing Windows with Linux."

TCO is "Total Cost of Ownership."

   "Although many people claim that Linux is well on its way to 
    replacing Unix, the reality is that Linux is Unix: a particular 
    stream within a much wider community whose traditions and ideas 
    both surround and extend those found in the Linux group."

As of 2005, Unix is about 35 years in age and in this case it is accurate to say Unix is about 35 years old.

    "Today, the best known Unix variants are Linux, the BSDs, 
     and Solaris."

I don't know how many Linux distributions there are except for the fact that this are too many. There is less than a handful of BSDs. There are two forms of Solaris: proprietary and open.

   "As a result, the examples in Kernighan and Ritchie's 1978 
    The C Programming Language work today, Kernighan and Pike's 
    1984 The Unix Programming Environment applies about equally 
    well to Linux, netBSD, and Solaris, and binaries made for 
    the first 64-bit UltraSPARCS 10 years ago will run, unchanged, 
    on Sun's next-generation Niagara hardware."

Two classic computing books mentioned.

   "If you work with Red Hat the enemy isn't Sun; and if you work with 
    OS X the enemy isn't Linux. For any Unix, the enemy is Microsoft."

A quote that Microsoft haters would appreciate.

ZDNet.com:: The unity of Unix

   $ rm all-Tempe-pictures/
   rm: remove directory `all-Tempe-pictures/'? y
   rm: cannot remove directory `all-Tempe-pictures/': Is a directory

   $ rmdir all-Tempe-pictures/
   rmdir: `all-Tempe-pictures/': Not a directory

[Extra] RedHat is not a BSD company, but the BSDs remains a Unix choice for many computer users. Live Linux CDs are popular and that may be coming true for FreeBSD also. {NewsForge.com:: A FreeBSD Live CD }

   "It's terrible.  Everyone is using it, and they don't realize 
    how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it 
    and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is 
    garbage and we should fix it.'" 

   "Linux has never been about quality. There are so many parts 
    of the system that are just these cheap little hacks, and it 
    happens to run."

   "They have the same rapid development cycle, which leads to crap."

   "Linux people do what they do because they hate Microsoft. 
    We do what we do because we love Unix."

The last time I taught the Introductory Unix class at SCC, the students learned using an OpenBSD system.

Forbes.com:: Is Linux For Losers?

Controlling source code is probably one of the most important aspects of an open source project. After all, it all about The Code. Forbes.com posted an article in which they claim Linux development is being delayed due to a change in its source code control system from BitKeeper to Linus Torvald's git. I admit to slight discomfort when source code control is given to a quickly homegrown source code control system; therefore, I agree with how Forbes.com titled their article: "A Setback For Linux." {Forbes.com:: A Setback For Linux } [31 May 2005, top]

Andrew Tridgell, rsync author and Samba co-lead, reverse engineered Bitkeeper and Torvalds says this action has "destabilized the product" Torvalds uses to manage the Linux source code. Bitkeeper is making some changes that is forcing Torvalds to switch tools and Torvalds has indicated he will write his own.

"So I think open source tends to become technically better 
 over time (but it does take time), but I don't think it's 
 a moral imperative." -- Linus Torvalds

 "There are times when Linus Torvalds can be a real idiot, 
  and this is one of these times." -- Bruce Perens

[Extra] MadPenguin.org is devoted to Linux, but they have taken a look at Solaris 10 and posted a review to their website. Many are calling Sun's OpenSolaris a "closed open source" system. {MadPenguin.org:: First Look At Solaris 10 }

   $ ly 1900 1957 1984 2000 2004 2012 2038
   1900 is not a leap year
   1957 is not a leap year
   1984 is a leap year and it falls on a Wednesday
   2000 is a leap year and it falls on a Tuesday
   2004 is a leap year and it falls on a Sunday
   2012 is a leap year and it falls on a Wednesday
   2038 is not a leap year

All is well except the Unix 'cal' command does not work with 5-digit years.

ly.bash

   ls -l $filename | grep -q "^-rw-------"   # line 1
   [ $? -eq 0 ] && mv $filename $newdir

The command works, but wanted to replace line #1 with a single command eliminating the pipe. Initially, I thought the 'test' command would be sufficient, but it's not.

I wrote a C program named printmod that allows the command to read as follows.

   [ "600" = `printmod $filename` ] && mv $filename $newdir

This shell script moves all files having "600" permissions to a new directory.

	cal 2 $year | sed -e '1d' | grep -q 29

The command-line worked fine until I tested to see if year 10000 was a leap year. The command-line failed because the 'cal' command only works up to year 9999.

One benefit of FLOSS is we get source code and we have the freedom to change a program if it doesn't do what we need it to do. It should be noted, however, that changing code is often easier said than done. I took a peek at cal.c to see if I wanted to modify it so it works beyond year 9999, but such a delta is going to be easier said than done. Here is one copy of cal.c that was found on the WWW.

[Extra::Linux, Inc. Has Competition]
Sun Microsystems announced that the source code for Solaris 10 will be made available under the OSI (Open Source Initiative) approved Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL). {Sun.com:: Sun Announces Open Source License for Solaris Operating System } {OpenSolaris.org}

I wore a Linux/Windows t-shirt to the Great Basin. In Tooele, Utah, I was getting an Albertson's card and the customer service person commented about my shirt. I asked them if they understood it and they answered "No," but their son knew stuff about it. Later, while checking into the Hotel Nevada in Ely, somebody said my t-shirt was cute. I asked if they understood it; they said "No," but their son uses Linux.

On the return trip and wore a Unix shirt that has a beer theme. The baggage screener found the shirt interesting and started talking about Novell. He was considering buying stock in the company and I told him I was a shareholder.

Some good Linux t-shirts can be found at ThinkGeek :: Tshirts.