MESSAGE
| DATE | 2007-02-21 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] [newsletter@linuxjournal.com: Linux Journal Weekly Newsletter - February 21]
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----- Forwarded message from Linux Journal News Notes -----
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Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 04:32:00 -0600
From: Linux Journal News Notes
To: lj-announce-at-ssc.com
Subject: Linux Journal Weekly Newsletter - February 21
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Linux Journal Weekly News Notes -- February 21, 2007
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Hello and welcome to the February 21st, 2007 edition of Linux Journal Weekly
News Notes. We're glad you're here. This week's fun kicks off with Doc
Searls positing ways to fuse old-fashioned relationships with hi-tech and
get a better world. He's followed by Glyn Moody scolding the BBC for using
Windows DRM and Nick Petreley scolding the suits at Novell and Microsoft for
blowing what could have been a great, geek-initiated cooperation deal. On a
more practical note, Bruce Byfield shows us how to use the various options
in OpenOffice.org Writer.
Picking up on Nick's article, we have an archive article from 2003 about
when Novell scarfed up SUSE. Remember that? The article will jog your
memory. We also have some great tech tips for you, as well as a Linux
Incognito story on how a utility in India uses Linux to power its billing
systems. Smart company!
Thanks for your support!
James Gray and The Linux Journal Editorial Team
jgray-at-linuxjournal.com
FEATURED LINKS
Building a Relationship Economy by Doc Searls
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000182
Doc talks about how to join pre-industrial style relationships with the
technologies from our post-industrial economy in order to add value to it.
Save the BBC from Windows DRM! by Glyn Moody
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000183
The BBC is contemplating the use of Windows DRM to control how its on-demand
content is viewed. This means one must use Windows Media Player 10 (egad!),
leaving the Linux and Macintosh folks poop-out-of-luck. Glyn encourages all
of us to take the appropriate action to stop it.
Is There a Secret Story Behind the Novell/Microsoft Deal? by Nicholas Petreley
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000184
Nick has a source who confirms that the Novel-Microsoft deal started off
with well-meaning IT guys from both companies and ended up being usurped and
exploited by the companies' suits. The result is a disastrous agreement.
Configuring OpenOffice.org Writer by Bruce Byfield
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000185
Bruce makes sense of OO.org's options, many of which are in unintuitive
places. If you know what you are doing, the tools are powerful.
New E-Newsletter: Off the Shelf
http://www.linuxjournal.com/ots-newsletter
Last month we started Off the Shelf, our newest e-newsletter here at Linux
Journal. This twice-monthly newsletter will keep you on the cutting edge of
developments on the Linux and Open Source products and projects that our
editors find new, note-worthy, time-saving, great deals or just plain cool.
Click on the above link to sign up!
SHAMELESS PLUG
Are you currently receiving Linux Journal? If not, did you know that you
could get it for as low as $1.88 per issue?
Click here http://www.linuxjournal.com/subscriptions to subscribe or find
out more details.
THE BRAIN TRUST: READERS SHARE THEIR EXPERTISE
This contribution comes from Rappin' Billy in Washington, USA:
[Editor's note: this is in response to a reader's question three weeks ago
about mounting /tmp to a swap partition. Thanks to all who responded!]
You could always do it the other way around, of course. You could create a
swap file in /tmp. Since Pierre has so much swap space, he could simply boot
off his favorite media type and turn his swap partition into ext2. If he
doesn't clear out /tmp at each boot, this would be a speedy option. If he
does clear /tmp upon reboot, he'll have to wait while the swap file gets
created, made and mounted. But then he's got a good solution to efficiently
using his swap space.
The mkswap(8) man page provides a template for creating a (mere) 64M swap
file. Remember when that was enough?!:
# dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/swapfile bs=1024 count=65536
The next step is to run mkswap(8) on that file:
# mkswap /tmp/swapfile
Then use it:
# swapon /tmp/swapfile
If you have a suggestion about this issue, or if you have a short technical
tip to share with other readers, please send it to jgray-at-linuxjournal.com.
If we publish your tip, you'll get a free t-shirt!
FROM THE ARCHIVES
View from the Trenches: Good-bye SUSE? by Glenn Stone (2003)
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7234
In a few short years, Novell sure has created a lot of waves in the Linux
Community, both for better and for worse. The key act that brought Novell
heavily into the Linux space was its acquisition of SUSE. If you want to get
a feel for what things were like at the time of acquisition, check out this
article.
LINUX INCOGNITO: THERE'S LINUX INSIDE!
This contribution comes from Bharathi in Chennai, India:
Last month, when I went to TNEB (Tamil Nadu Electricity Board) Office to pay
the electricity bill. I saw a new notice board saying "Pay your bill at any
counter", and the bill collector is using a new computer with an LCD Monitor
instead of the old bill book.
I just went inside the office to ask "What is the OS used in that
computer?". It was Linux!!. Officers are interacting with a remote/local
server thru the Mozilla Web browser. The server is running the software from
the BEST (Billing of Energy Services by TNEB) Project.
Our readers want to hear about your interesting experiences uncovering Linux
in an unexpected or innovative situation. Email them to me at
jgray-at-linuxjournal.com. If your contribution is selected for
publication, we'll send you a t-shirt!
DOT ORG OF THE WEEK
This submission comes from Michael, from somewhere in cyberspace:
I have a submission for Dot-Org of the week:
You've probably all heard about the OpenMoko project, the Open Source
cellphone/smartphone platform. Well today, the OpenMoko development website
www.openmoko.org went live, and it is incredible, including: Documentation
for the hardware and the software; instructions on how to set up the
toolchain and the development environment; how the bootloader works; how to
build a kernel; all the sourcecode, via svn; the application framework; a
wiki; Bugzilla.
It's amazing.
I've spent all evening reading the documentation. Even though the team
claims it is not finished, it is more detailed than many (all) finished
documents I have ever read. Therefore I nominate openmoko.org.
http://www.openmoko.org/
Do you know of an organization or person making a unique contribution to the
Linux community despite not getting paid for it? If so, we'd like to share
information about them with our readers. Send your recommendation, along
with why the organization/people are worthy of recognition, to
jgray-at-linuxjournal.com.
TECH TIP: What did I call that script?
This week's tech tip comes from our intrepid,
always-thinking-and-making-my-life-easier Webmaster, Keith Daniels.
The idea behind shell scripts is wonderful. Write a script once and reuse it
every time you need it -- without having to redo all the work it took to
figure out how to do it in the first place. The problem is, in real life, it
doesn't work like that! After a few days or weeks, you can't remember:
* That you wrote the script.
* What you named it (if you do remember creating something similar).
* Exactly what it does.
* How to use it.
So you either write an new script from scratch and mess with it until it
works or if you vaguely remember that you did something like this before,
you look in your home bin/ directory to see if any of those cryptic script
names ring a bell. Since your bin/ directory is full of files that you never
got around to deleting and all those strange names rapidly fog your brain --
you usually give up and just do it one command at a time on the command
line.
Sound familiar? Here is what I did to solve the problem.
If you have lots of scripts this will require a few hours of work, but it
will save you so much time over the next few weeks that it will really be
worth it.
First all, your scripts will need a new header which you will need to
include in every script you create from here on out. This is an outline of
the header I use:
#!/bin/bash
# ~/bin/{name of script} {Description of what the script does}
# Notes: {things like you have to be root to run it or things to watch out for}
# Usage: {script name} {argument #1} {argument #2} {argument #3} etc...
...
...
{script commands go here}
Next you create a script to search for keywords, anywhere in a script, and
output the above header for those that match. This will allow you to quickly
find those forgotten scripts. Here is the search script that I use (with the
new style header):
#!/bin/sh
# ~/bin/scripts Look for keywords in scripts in /home/keith/bin/ and output \
the headers of matching scripts
# Notes: Special symbols do not need to be escaped. Change fgrep to grep if \
you want to use regular expressions.
# Usage: scripts
if [$1]; then
clear
fgrep -l "$1" ~/bin/* | xargs head -n 4
else
echo ''
echo ' Error - No keywords given'
echo ''
echo ' Looks for keywords in scripts and outputs the headers of matching scrip
ts'
echo ' Must be modified to use regular expressions.'
echo ' Special symbols do not need to be escaped'
echo ''
echo ' USAGE: scripts '
echo ''
exit 1
fi
Here is how the script works.
First it clears the screen, so that past searches don't clutter up the
screen and confuse you. Then fgrep searches every file in your home bin/
directory for the keyword. When a match is found, fgrep pipes the script's
filename (-l option) to xargs. Then xargs passes the file names, one at a
time, to head which prints out the first four lines ( -n 4 option) of each
file.
This is very easy to use and very fast. If you don't see what you want, you
can quickly try different keywords. This way you can rapidly tell if any of
the scripts you already have, will do what you want or if they are close
enough to be easily modified to do what you want.
You don't have to use the code that runs when you forget to use a keyword,
but I find that the info screen is helpful when your short term memory isn't
all that good... The two lines starting with clear and fgrep are all you
need for the script to work. Have fun modifying this to suit your specific
problem.
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----- End forwarded message -----
--
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Interesting Stuff
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://fairuse.nylxs.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
"Yeah - I write Free Software...so SUE ME"
"The tremendous problem we face is that we are becoming sharecroppers to our own cultural heritage -- we need the ability to participate in our own society."
"> I'm an engineer. I choose the best tool for the job, politics be damned.<
You must be a stupid engineer then, because politcs and technology have been attacted at the hip since the 1st dynasty in Ancient Egypt. I guess you missed that one."
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