Category: General

General thoughts and ideas

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Reasons for starting open source project

Well I dont know how to write a good english essay, let alone write an inspiring one. But the story I want to present below is quite related to start a good and decent open source project that will definitely pay off.

Take a lesson from the Matchbox project which was published on Newsforge a couple of days ago. The project only started as innocent attempt by some guy name Matthew Allum, trying to use windows manager in devices which use small display screen. The main reason he created Matchbox was that there are no windows manager that can work on small display (240×320), FYI, the KDE window manager barely works in 640×480 display.

Matchbox screenshot

He later made a practice of publicizing the project on handhelds.org; he published the project on his page there and was well-known in the Linux on handhelds community. He garnered several speaking positions at big conferences like FOSDEM, Usenix, and Python, where he worked to dispel what he called the “myth of slow X.”

Months and months passed, his work unsuspectedly got recognized by one of the phone maker giants. His work on Matchbox caught Nokia eyes which offers him funding to continue his research on producing windows manager on their handheld device. So he did accept his offer and founded OpenedHand, a company whose sole purpose was to help Nokia to build windows manager for N770 Internet Table.

Matchbox window manager

Now, the relationship between Nokia and Allum extends beyond his work on the window manager. “It got to the point where I could suggest new modules and they’d say, ‘go for it.'” Nokia has provided enough work to OpenedHand that it now employs four full-time developers, and it is hiring more.

There are other inspiring works that have been huge success, yet started at a humble open source project. Works that just first started as “scratching an itch” by developers.

For examples of other open source works which was hugely recognize is the infamous Linus Tovarlds and it’s Linux Kernel, Phil Katz with pkzip, Bram Cohen with BitTorrent and many more!

How about you? when will you start your own open source project?

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PLKN will have Guns, hooray for trigger happy kids!!

Yes, that’s right, PLKN the Malaysian National Service will have Guns as part of their training. According to Vice Minister of Defense, the reason for the use of guns in PLKN is to increase the inner-strength and patriotism spirit in participants.

Guess they found out what attracted most youths this days, GUNS!! My house is already full of excitement of trigger happy boys after they learn about the news…. We can expect the numbers of willing participants to join PLKN will increase after MLKN implemented the module…

Way to go to PLKN, you are getting cool now !!

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Richard Stallman admits his income is from speeches

I always wonder how Richard M. Stallman continues his daily lives without a real job since 1984. He always preach that software should be free (as in freedom) in nature, people shouldn’t impose license fee on software, etc.

And I occasionally come across his articles on how he devoted his life for GNU operating system, promoting Free Software Movement, directing the Free Software Foundation and how he was doing all of that unpaid.

But today, he openly admits to TuxJournal Webzine that his income are from speeches that he delivers.

Aside from working, I like to read, eat delicious food, listen to music (I was just in Bulgaria and got a lot of nice records of Bulgarian folk dance music). I am paid for some of my speeches–not all–and that is where my income comes from.

Now, my questions are seems to be answered by RMS himself. Wonder what would I do for a living if i’m in his shoes… I’m not fluent in public speeches and always goofed-up on stage… hmm… I wonder…

Source : TuxJournal

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Yahoo Avatar now supports Mozilla Firefox !

Get Firefox!

Great news everybody, Yahoo Avatar now supports Mozilla Firefox!
Now you can customize your Yahoo Avatar comfortably within your own favorite browser without the need to fire up Internet Explorer.

This marks significant progress with spread firefox program, with Yahoo Avatar now fully supports Mozilla Firefox. Users are now less dependent to malware-prone Internet Explorer and adopts to a newer,faster and safer open source solutions such as Mozilla Firefox.

Hope that Yahoo will stay on this track and enhance their Yahoo Messenger version for Free and open-source version of Unix-based system such as GNU/Linux and *BSD. Or better yet, publicize their Yahoo Messenger protocol so it could be much more better supported on those platform

References :
1. CNet – news.com.com
2. ZDNet News
3. Yahoo! Avatars website

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Yahoo Mail Website Hick-ups !!!

Nothing actually happened today so I lazily start up my yahoo messenger after i got home from a tiresome ride around the town to shop things that i need. As the yahoo messenger popped-up, It shows most of my friends are offline with a few labelled as “idle”…

After a short while, i got a “pow” sound from my shiny new Yahoo Messenger 7 Beta “You got 1 unread message”. “Who could be emailing me to my yahoo account? Another spam?”, I clicked on Yahoo Messenger’s cute email icon, and i’ve been ushered to Yahoo mail website…..

i have hard time to get my eyes up, suddenly i noticed this :

Yahoo Mail typo !!

Please concentrate your eyes in these lines, specificly for the first and third line.

? You are using 1% of your 1.0GB MB limit
? Go to Inbox or Check Other Mail
? Yahoo! Mail gives you 1.0GB MB for free!

Apparently somebody at yahoo.com forgot to clean up the MB (notice the “1.0GB MB limit” line )after yahoo have succesfully upgraded it’s account limit to 1GB. I hope that yahoo.com is going to fix this thing soon, because this cosmetic mistake is really noticable when you are using any type of browser that is “not fully supported by Yahoo” like Netscape 4.8.

Note : I really dont use Netscape 4.8, i accidently switched my Mozilla Firefox user-agent to Netscape 4.8, some coincidence huh?

p/s : i did not fake up the screenshot… :p

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DIY Linux Embedded Devices


TV Set-Top mp3 players
Embedded devices have become a hot topic these days. Day after day we have been surrounded with these devices whether we have notices it or not. For example, how many are you got PS2 or an Xbox in your home? how many of you own Nokia phones with Symbian OS running inside it? or a Motorola phone running Linux as it’s OS?

As the technology advances, more and more of these devices have become accessible in our daily life. And now, with the availability of open source tools and application (as well as the kernel) you can also create your own embedded devices on your own, providing you have the guts and strong interest to do it!

DIY TV Set Top Mp3 Player

You can create Linux-based embeded devices to do anything that you wished for, for example as a tv set-top mp3 player, a game console, internet station, webcam recorder, cctv controller, streaming server etc.

a bike which runs Unix!

Dont throw your old Pentium pc away, turn it into something useful! With Linux you can make many things possible. For example, with a single Pentium P133 pc, you can turn it into an mp3 streaming server, a firewall box, internet router, etc.

There are a lot of website now around the internet that features the usefulness of the Linux and Open source technology in building and embedded system.

Resources :
1. A motocycle which runs FreeBSD
2. Linux Toys website, a good place to start
3. Creating IPCOP firewall/Gateway
4. The Clock Project
5. Embedded Devices which runs Linux
6. Lots of Mini-itx projects
7. Linux-based Webserver and MP3 player on floppy