While browsing the blog of a fellow penguin lover, I noticed his latest post. Apparently Best Buy is offering Linux on laptops now. Links and images are posted over on Vincent’s post.

I’m embarking on a little Flex development, but I ran into a snag installing the Flex Builder into my *very* stock Fedora 8 system. I found a link to some comments here in follow up comment to the author of the post.

Apparently (and I’m not an Eclipse expert), the problem stems from Fedora’s choice of “Eclipse Europa”, rather than “Eclipse Classic”.

Problems:

• The install says “Choose an existing Eclipse 3.3 or higher root folder to be extended with the Flex Builder Plug-ins”



• An error message is displayed when you select the correct folder

The installation proceeds fine from that point, but the Flex project isn’t available in Eclipse. As it turns out, you need to copy some files by hand:

cd ~/Adobe_Flex_Builder_Linux/
cd com.adobe.flexbuilder.update.site
sudo cp features/* /usr/share/eclipse/features/
sudo cp plugins/* /usr/share/eclipse/plugins/


And that’s all there is to it - you’ll have access to the Flex Projects in Eclipse. I’ll update this post if I find any problems with this method of patching the installation

Update: 13-Apr-2008

The above works great for *creating* a flex application, but it will not compile. There is an error generated that says:


Flex 0.0 (1): Flex SDK location "/home/.../configuration/org.eclipse.osgi/bundles/159/1/.cp/devsdks/moxie" does not exist.


I struggled and struggled to find the elusive “moxie” plugin. Alas, It was not found on my computer, or in any of the jar files. It turns out you need to download the “Adobe Flex SDK” from the “Stable Builds” section of (Adobe Wiki link):
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+3

1. Download the file
2. unzip it into a directory
3. In Eclipse, Window->Preferences->Flex->Installed Flex SDKs->Add the directory you just created
4. Delete the other installed SDKs for moxie (Flex 0.0)
5. Enjoy!

I hope this helps someone
If you want to test to see if your installation works, add the following between the mx:Application tags in a Flex project


<mx:Canvas width="100%" height="100%">
<mx:Label text="Hello World"/>
</mx:Canvas>


How to predict and prepare for layoffs
(Originally prepared for BALU Barcamp/LUGFest ‘07)

What?

This post deals with identifying the organizational behaviors that *may* lead to layoffs. This post may be a wake up call for some. Hopefully, most in the audience will breath a sigh of relief that their current employer doesn’t have these traits.

These traits were observed from within the development / IT arm of various companies, so that is the point of view expressed. Many of the items below are valid regardless of the size or ownership of the company. I’ve just observed them in these contexts.
Read the rest of this entry »

Developed countries, and corporate America specifically, are pushing mountains of electronic waste (E-Waste) on developing countries. As the push for better and better performance, newer hardware with higher capacities continues, the discarded machines are being illegally unloaded on developing countries.

In 1989, the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was adopted in Basel, Switzerland (the Basel Convention). The Basel Convention originally banned only hazardous waste exports to Antarctica, but has since (in 1992) succeeded in a ban of hazardous waste exports from developed countries to developing countries. In 1992, the amount of electronic waste, while significant, wasn’t nearly at the level that it is today.

Prestigious news organizations have covered the trend. This BBC article from 1996 lists some staggering numbers: “50 million tonnes of old PCs are thrown away each year” - “500 tonnes coming in daily” (to Nigeria) - “Children risk their health stripping components from the old PCs”.

So, if it’s illegal to export hazardous waste to developing countries, how does all of this “junk” get out of the developed countries? Apparently, there are unscrupulous agents who list the hardware as “used computers”. This guise of “used computers”, which implies that the hardware is useful, gives them a convenient loophole to dump the junk on developing countries. There’s no infrastructure in place in the USA, and probably not in Europe either, to *really* classify each and every system as past it’s useful life or not.

E-Cycling events are happening all over the USA. Many of these events yield multiple truckloads of castoff hardware - CPUs, monitors, disk drives, keyboards, etc - mostly from individuals. The volunteers in these events typically try to cherry pick the useful systems for non-profit and charity organizations before they make it onto the truck. While this recycling of useful systems helps the non-profits and charities, it insures that the percentage of useful systems on the truck is diminished. Nearly all of these systems will find there way onto a cargo ship to a developing country.

As the IT infrastructure turnover in America fuels “Web 2.0″, ERP and large database deployments, the same loading docks that accept the new hardware usher the old hardware out the door. The trucks take the castoff equipment away, not to new, green recycling centers that capture the raw materials and protect the environment, but to waiting cargo containers with destinations like Africa and Asia. The cocktail of toxins contained in this cargo will most likely remain there, contaminating ground water and food supplies for years to come. Corporate America is generally careful to remove storage devices from the computers to protect their precious data, but seldom does anyone ever consider the deadly toxins that still remain in the box.

When the hardware arrives at it’s destination, it’s sometimes scavenged for useful parts. But, this scavenging is not overseen by the EPA, it’s done by children and the poor, who need the $2 a day to pay for basic necessities. This $2 a day is a high price to pay for the increased risk of cancer and heavy metal poisoning that the toxins in these machine will cause. The list of toxins associated with old computers is long, and contains substances that have long since been controlled in America:

• Lead in cathode ray tube and solder
• Arsenic in older cathode ray tubes
• Antimony trioxide as flame retardant
• Polybrominated flame retardants in plastic casings, cables and circuit boards
• Selenium in circuit boards as power supply rectifier
• Cadmium in circuit boards and semiconductors
• Chromium in steel as corrosion protection
• Cobalt in steel for structure and magnetivity
• Mercury in switches and housing

We won’t allow these toxins in our landfills, but don’t mind at all sending them to a developing country.

The next time you think about upgrading your computer, think about keeping it around for a few more months. Odds are, you just need web browsing and office applications. Avoid the “CPU envy” feeling when your friends upgrade. *Don’t* upgrade just because your Windows installation is hopelessly infected - find a local Linux enthusiast and have her load one of the more user friendly distributions. You’ll have similar applications, a more robust operating system, and you’ll be keeping a machine out of the landfill. When you do decide to upgrade, check out ecycling.com for information on how to responsibly discard your old computer.

A couple of weeks ago, I had occasion to buy an industry specific reference book. In typical impulse mode, I called my local bookstore Books-A-Million, and inquired about the book. I’m a big fan of Books-A-Million, mainly because they’re an Alabama company, and I live in Alabama. I like spending my money close to home, and have as much of it stay in the local economy as possible. Here’s the paraphrased dialog:

Me> I’m looking for a book, and I have the ISBN number can you look it up?
Salesperson> Sure - what’s the ISBN?
Me> 0-7-6-4-1-3-2-6-3-6
Salesperson> I show we have two on the shelf. Let me check for you
Me> (Puzzled) - I’ll just come down there and get it. Thanks.
Salesperson> Let me check for you. Sometimes they are not in stock. Let me check for you.
Me> (Puzzled) Sure.

Salesperson> I can’t find it on the shelf. Shall I order it for you?
Me> No. I’ll keep looking. I’d really like it today
<Hangup>

This exchange was repeated 5 times that day, with various Books-A-Million stores, with the same results until one of the stores found the book on the shelf.

In the midst of this search, I dialed the local Barnes and Noble, looking for the same book. This exchange was much shorter, since the inventory system showed they didn’t have the book. Total time: less than 1 minute.

Which store has systems that help? Obviously Barnes and Noble. Books-A-Million has an inventory system that is very ineffective, and is probably a harbinger of ill times ahead. Consider the following points:

• Books-A-Million has to dispatch a representative to check to see if a book is on the shelf when a customer calls. That costs money. In our case, probably $2 per store for Books-A-Million, and $.20 for Barnes and Noble
• Books-A-Million is most likely overstating their inventory. When creditors hear that their loans are less secured than they originally thought, they won’t be happy
• There may be a theft or shrinkage problem at Books-A-Million
• Companies or employees that are being hired to perform inventory may be causing more harm than good. Two weeks before I searched for this book, at least one of the stores had performed inventory. I know because I was there on the Sunday morning that they were taking inventory

In any case, Books-A-Million has a potentially serious problem with their inventory system, and needs to have it checked. This system isn’t helping at all, and is causing harm. It’s most likely causing employee problems, since the employees can’t rely on it. It’s certainly costing them money. I appreciate the willingness of the store personnel to check the shelves for me, but I’d rather them save us both time by having an effective and reliable inventory system. Once they have that, they can provide the information online, and I can find the closest book to my house and go pick it up, without bothering anyone.

My resume is on the web. Most of the time, however, I’ve asked the ‘bots to leave it out of the index. Recently, though, I’ve allowed the ‘bots to index my resume, and it’s generated a bit of harvesting action. Here’s the snippet from the weblog Actual Link Here:

210.245.110.78 - - [17/Sep/2007:02:56:34 -0400]
“GET /MyResume.html HTTP/1.1″ 200 4592 “http://www.google.com.vn/search?q=inurl:cv+%7C+
inurl:resume+%7C+inurl:vitae+%7C+intitle:cv+%7C+
intitle:resume+%7C+intitle:vitae)
+(%22Java+developer%22+%7C+%22C%2B%2B+developer%22)+
(C%2B%2B+%7C+Java+%7C+J2EE)+
(Linux+%7C+Unix)+-usa+-india+-C%23+-.Net+-PhD+-Ph.D+-CA+
-NY&hl=vi&start=80&sa=N”
“Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; InfoPath.1)”

Which translated means:

210.245.110.78

This is the IP Address of the requestor. DNSStuff.com reports that this IP address is from Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam). This is consistent with the Google site used for the search (www.google.com.vn)

[17/Sep/2007:02:56:34 -0400]

The date of the search

200

The webserver response. 200 is success

4592

This is the size of the document - my resume is only 4592 bytes. There’s an associated stylesheet, and that’s fetched right after the resume.

referrer field

The remaining information is the referrer field. This is how you tell what document the user was on when they clicked a link.

http://www.google.com.vn

This is the Google site in Vietnam. Looks like our visitor was from Vietnam.

/search

This is the search url - nothing special here

inurl:cv

Specifies a search where the URL fetched has “cv” in it.

+%7C+

the “+” symbol represents a space in URL encoding and the %7C is a “|” (bar) symbol. This construct means the previous search term is “or’d” with the next search term.

inurl:resume |

Specifies a search where the URL fetched has “resume” in it.

inurl:vitae |

Specifies a search where the URL fetched has “resume” in it.

intitle:cv |

Specifies a search where the title of the document fetched has “cv” in it.

intitle:resume |

Specifies a search where the title of the document fetched has “resume” in it.

intitle:vitae

Specifies a search where the title of the document fetched has “vitae” in it.

("Java developer" | "C++ developer")

Document text contains “Java Developer” or “C++ developer”

(C++ | Java | J2EE)

Document text contains “C++” or “Java” or “J2EE”

(Linux | Unix)

Document text contains “Linux” or “Unix”

-usa -india -C# -.Net -PhD -Ph.D -CA -NY

Documents without the words usa, india, C#, .NET, PHD, Ph.D, CA and NY

So, as you can see, the headhunters (at least the Vietnamese ones), are very proficient in Google searches. If you want to type in the text to the Google search box, here’s the text you’ll need:

inurl:cv | inurl:resume | inurl:vitae | intitle:cv | intitle:resume | intitle:vitae) (”Java developer” | “C++ developer”) (C++ | Java | J2EE) (Linux | Unix) -usa -india -C# -.Net -PhD -Ph.D -CA -NY

Enjoy, and now you’ll recognize the resume harvesters when they drive by your site.

I’m a member of a local Linux users group. Most of the members have Linux installed at home, and are happily learning how to use it, develop for it, or deploy it in a corporate environment. The reality of today’s computing environment is that there are still many Unix (AIX/HPUX/Solaris, etc) machines installed or scheduled to be installed, that require administration. Unix big iron pays the bills in may enterprise shops, and while Linux may get you in the door, Unix will keep the paychecks coming.

The barrier to entry for large Unix environments has the potential to be very high. Contemporary hardware is expensive, and the operating system and software are equally expensive. New System Administrators need access to the Unix OS to at least gain some knowledge about it’s quirks and capabilities. HPUX admins need to know SAM, AIX admins need to know SMIT. Everyone needs to know how to partition logical and physical volumes on their Unix systems.

Luckily, most of the large Unix vendors have test drive programs that allow access to many of their products over the internet, or even in the comfort of your own home. These are usually just a registration form away, and can provide access to OS, compilers, configuration, web servers and a host of other software. Below find links and capabilities of the programs offered by the large Unix vendors.

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Think about it - when I navigate over to Digg and my processor utilization jumps to 100% because of the video advertisement, I’m burning more electricity than if there were a discreet text advertisement.

In addition to “lap warming”, this must be contributing to global warming as much as anything else (due to electricity usage). Flash advertisements seem to be the worst CPU offenders, especially those that have animated cursor tracking like the Sony advertisement on digg.com

Maybe it’s because I’m using Linux or maybe it’s Firefox - either way I’ll be looking around for a flash video / flash advertisement blocker later today.

From the article: “Today I’m launching ajaxWindows - a complete virtual PC you can experience using only a browser from any web connected computer. If you would like to see it in action, check out the online demo or the video. Remember that everything you see is happening within a web browser.”

Will ajaxWindows.com herald a new era? Internet access is mostly ubiquitous now, and has enabled such technologies as web-based E-Mail, project management, social networking and IM. When using VMWare sessions, I *really* like the fact that session state is saved perfectly when I stop the virtual machine, and ajaxWindows promises similar functionality.

The logistics of the service are more easily implemented, since they’re leveraging existing online services, such as gmail and MP3tunes, which should reduce the space requirements for the ajaxWindows.com site.

The adoption of this as the computer, rather than simply yet another service, will depend on two things:

Security

Will there be a significant breach of security, compromising credentials for the services configured in ajaxWindows? I personally am uncomfortable storing my credentials in a centralized place without significant safeguards in place. While my MP3tunes information is not confidential, my G-Mail account has lots of information that I want to keep private. I’m sure the script-kiddies and botnets are amassing forces right now to attempt the compromise of confidential user information.

Developer API

The Facebook phenomenon has proved that a great developer API will speed platform adoption. I’d be delighted to be able to provide an application platform to users using the ajaxWindows OS. If (see above) security is acceptable, users could be encouraged to use ajaxWindows to access personal banking, retirement information, healthcare information etc, without installation of fat applications on multiple platforms.

As soon as the site comes back up, I’ll log in and give it a test drive. I’ll be particularly interested in the security and API, since I think that’s what will drive large scale adoption.

Update: If you go to ajaxWindows.com, you see:

Thank you for
visiting ajaxwindows.com

We are currently experiencing massive amounts of user registrations
and traffic.

Please check back with us in an hour.

Thanks for your interest, The Ajax13 Team

Looks like there’s a ton of interest in an “Internet OS”. I played around with the site a bit before it went down, and noticed a few things:

• Many of the applications open in your own browser
• Java is used for the synchronization process - make sure your JVM is up to date
• You’ll be strongly encouraged to give them your gmail credentials (yuck!)
• There is a full set of office application - interestingly there’s a PowerPoint-style application
• There are lots of applications that I just didn’t have a chance to play with - maybe in a day or so when the traffic dies down

Good luck - I hope you get in and get an account.

read more | digg story

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been running Linux on my work laptop. I’m a C++ (among other things) developer, so the tools on Linux are in most cases more mature than the tools on Windows. A constant source of angst was the cisco VPN software that I was forced to use. This software had several problems:

• Kernel Dependent - needs re-compilation after every new kernel release
• Restricted access - You, or a friendly IT person, must have access to a password protected Cisco site to download the software
• Slow to update - The source for the VPN software doesn’t track the kernel source and tool chain changes closely. This means you’ll need to be able to make a few code changes to support a new kernel or compiler occasionally
• PCF file requirements - Again, the friendly IT person has to provide a profile so that you can use the vpn client

Recently, however, I found the NetworkManager-vpnc package for Fedora. It’s an awesome package that automates almost every aspect of VPN connection. Some of the benefits are:

• Packages for your favorite distribution - no more re-compilation
• Integration with NetworkManager - yay!
• Integration with the Gnome Keyring
• BEST - Split tunneling, whether IT allows it or not

Simply install the NetworkManager-vpnc for your distribution, enter the group password and your login credentials, and voila!

If you don’t know the group password, you can discover it by using this handy website:

cisco vpnclient password decoder

I hope this helps - Happy VPN!

dhw