Britian's new Internet Law should be a warning for us...

Cory Doctorow has a quick note about the new Law in the UK over at Boing Boing.  As he normally does it's a great read that explains how it's supposed to work.  Basically it is one of the most distributing laws I have seen yet supported by the RIAA and other media companies.  Why is this a Linux thing?  It's not specifically a Linux thing.  It's an internet thing.  So if you loose your connection to the internet because someone thinks the Linux ISO you are downloading was a movie instead all they need to do is say you are doing it.  They don't need any real data to back up the accusation.  All they have to do is accuse you three times and you can be banned for life at your home address for life.  The person enforcing this new law dose not need to any due process and they can set the fine at whatever level they think is right.

These rules are coming to a state or federal government near you.  Look out especially the three strikes stuff.  No law should every exist without a due process.  Stopping dumb laws is everyone's responsibility.

Linux Consultants = Maytag Repair People

The Tech Republic has one of the most awesome articles I have read in a long time.  The main theme of the article is that Linux Consultants, unlike Windows Consultants, are like Maytag repair people.  As a former consultant supporting both Linux and other *nix versions I have to say this is so true.  My largest problem was convincing my remotely hosted customers was getting them to upgrade the hardware they were on and doing major updates to the Linux and the LAMP stack.  While this is amazing for customers it means that Linux consultants have to have larger groups of customers and can take on larger numbers of customers than their Windows counterparts.

Windows Admin's try not to be haters.....Linux admins just have it better on this front.  The article is well written and funny and a fun way to start off your Friday.(or any day for that matter)

Episode 12 - Goggle Wave, Motorola Droid, and Change Management

1) Introduction

We talk about our first impressions of Google Wave

Brian talks about life with his newest toy the Motorola Droid

2) News

How Google uses Linux and Modifies the Kernel...

The EU doesn't understand how OpenSource works and is slowing if not killing the purchase of Sun by Oracle because of it.

This week also marked the release of Ubuntu 9.10/Karmic Koola  which Brian installed without a single problem.  Really nice job team.  Oh and it boots a lot quicker.

3) Change Management

4) Conclusion

E-Mail us at podcast@linuxinstall.net

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This episode can be found here and runs 1 hour 13 minutes 9 Seconds.

(Yeah it's a long one but we talked about Wave and Droid for a good 30 minutes at the beginning  of the show.)

EU will kill the Oracle purchase of Sun over MySQL

There are a bunch of articles on the web discussing this topic.  Most are saying, and I agree, that the EU commissioners just don't get Open Source.  Here are some of the articles I looked at today about the topic:

• The H-Open Site
• CNET
• The Wall Street Journal

According to a Form 8-K filled with the SEC Sun states that the EU's Issue is with Sun's ownership of MySQL.  They are concerned that this will represent and give strength to Oracle and may lead to a Monopoly.  Most companies support more than one Database.  Where I work we have MS SQL and DB2.(even our PeoplSoft is running on DB2 for now.)  In the Open Source Ranks the issues with Sun buying MySQL have been a topic of discussion for some time.  So the purchase of Sun by Oracle just sped up people's time lines if they were even going to bother to migrate. 

Why shouldn't you care?  Well there are several other Major Open Source Databases in wide use.  PostgreSQL, SQLite, Berkley DB and Couch DB are all open source projects ready to take over different segments of the MySQL Market.  So do you need it? No.  Why does the EU think there is a problem?  Lack of education or a chance to mess with an American company or two.

I hope they don't dragg this out to long.  Having been in this type of situation in my past I know this is nerve racking enough when you know you have been bought.  When there is uncertainty of even that basic fact it has to be amazingly stressful.  Good Luck to all of you out there.

Ever wonder how Google uses Linux?

Check out this article on LWN.net.  The author, Jonathan Corbet, describes how Google is customizing the Linux Kernel.  One of the most interesting facts was "Google runs something like 5000 threads on systems with 16-32 cores. "  Pretty incredible when you see the big issues they have to over come to give us all are searches in less than a few seconds.  A neat article to remind most of us just how much we could be doing with the kernel if we really wanted to.