Pere Benavent

Repair Manifesto

2009-06-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

Things are changing... maybe we don't how deep, how fast... But let's go to the point.

It seems that car companies are one of most important keys to get out of the crisis, honestly, I don't understand how a single product could be such an important one. Sure I don't understand the depthness of the question... Now, there're a lot of credit facilities if you you want to buy a brand new car.

I feel quite concerned about ecological issues, so it's time to remind to all us this:

Oracle wins, IBM losses

2009-04-26T22:30:00.000-07:00

The most important thing was: who was going to retain the control over java?... in short, IBM has let passed by a great chance.

How this has happened, there were this steps:

IBM offers an insuficient amount of money uppon Sun
Sun looks for some other candidate
IBM brokes negotiation when they know Sun is looking for someone else
...tic tac... a couple of days/weeks without news
Oracle take the chance and buy Sun

So IBM has losse a great chance to keep control over java and now Oracle has to merge new bussines -such a hardware or OS-

There're more questions, what is going to happen with MySQL, with OID versus Directory Server from Sun? How hardware is going to be managed from Oracle? ... and you may keep on with all those questions, but comming back to my main thought:
Oracle: 1 | IBM: 0

Some thoughts about IBM plans to buy Sun

2009-03-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

This days there's some buzz about IBM plans to buy SUN, it really doesn't affect a poor boy such me but just for fun I was thinking about it.

The golden egg is Java. I have no idea about how many chances offers to IBM to get Java under its umbrella, you simply consider that one of the main IBM products is its WebSphere. You may also think about how competitors will stay by a Java under IBM controls while they also has its owns Java servers.

Minors things to consider:

Eclipse, now with IBM and no code suite in Sun to compete with,
MySql, bought by Sun, how MySql stays under this new map?
Solaris, with an OpenSolaris and a commercial Solaris, how it remains in IBM's portfolio, side by side with Aix, AS ...
Oracle data base, and others software products runs over Solaris, how does it end with Solaris under IBM control?

Ultra notebook with Linux

2009-03-05T21:46:00.000-08:00

You're not trendy if haven't a ultra-notebook or you don't know what is it. Well, if you doesn't know what it is, don't worry; it's a evolution from the original OLPC project that has evolved 'till becomes the latest gadget you may buy.

There's something very good in the idea; most of people doesn't need an expensive pc to get connected, browse the Internet and use the minimal amount of applications we all really need (browser, mail, chat). A minimal unexpensive and portable laptop may cover all that needs. I agree with the idea.

Differents hardware vendors offers their solutions, but in the beginning they all come with Windoes XP. It really was a breathe for Windows XP and a damnation for Vista. There were a player yet to come; Linux.

Fedora has done some stuff for this, but it surprises me that a little work from Argentina has achieve a success: Tuquito in Chile (stand for Tucuman, their original city). This school has forget what virus and lack of memory means.

It's easy to find detailed benchmarks about how a distro runs on that hardware, I've already found pages about how others distros runs in that ultra notebooks, but what I've found for the very first time is a normal story about non technical users using it, in a real situation, and look: their are kids in a school. It sounds great.

Importance of holding a degree

2009-02-15T22:04:00.000-08:00

There're a couple of guys from Red Hat working at my office, no one of them has a degree... yet. Since they both are almost degreed, one of them waiting for validation between to differents degrees and the other one waiting for Bologna plan to be implanted, but that's another story.

The fact is that a company such a Red Hat hires people attending their competence not their qualifications. As long as I knew is the first time I see something like this. Most companies uses academics qualifications as a first filter to eliminate candidates, them they keep some of them and they start to look for some other curriculum, such a certifications (Oracle, Cisco, RHCE, or whatever).

So, does it has any sense being degreed? Interesting for someone who is working and studing at the same time. By now, although I don't agree is useful if you're thinking in job market. But for sure, you don't have to miss the main goal; if you achieve a degree without being competent in any area (database admin, free software admin, java programming, whatever) you're also out.

He amat la Mort

2009-02-08T14:30:00.000-08:00

This post goes in my mother tongue:

He amat la Mort perquè ella m'ha fet amar molt més

I've got a Mac

2009-01-18T10:37:00.000-08:00

Finally I've got a Mac... yes I know it is not free software since it comes with MacOS but (remember there's allways a but) it offers me the chance to test other quite good OS and also install on it Fedora.

I keep you updated...

Gnome little sucess

2008-12-03T23:01:00.000-08:00

A very good friend of mine has gave a chance to Gnome... He always was using KDE and he always thought that Gnome sucks, because it was too simple, everything too tiny, poor look...

But a sensible person may change their mind and so had happened. Santi -a.k.a NoP- now is surprised with Gnome. Most important thing is that Santi is a friend but it has to be told that he also is a very well known Linux guru among Linux spanish newsgroups. He also mantains a very high level page about Spectrum (really friky!) named Speccy.

No prejudice leave us live a little more free, it doesn't?

Media center for Linux

2008-11-15T09:33:00.000-08:00

I've acquired a little hardware box in order to be my next media center. For sure it's going to be with Linux so I've look around to see what's most mature software.
Almost everybody talks about this software:

Xmbc: and I've seen running on a older Xbox ... it's simply amazing how fast it is: wow, but get mad if it doesn't fit your needs
Entertainer: a very Gnome solution, it looks fine and it is a full Linux plus this soft, but as far as I look for there's no Fedora package for it and I fear it does not support every single codec as mplayer does it
Elisa: by the moment one of my favourites since it has its own package for Fedora and its website and the whole project looks serious. It's a plus being a package over my distro and the only but is that it has no TV view posibility on the other hand it has Flickr and Youtube plugins. Elisa has also good documentation.
MythTV: it was the first recommended by a colleague but it has no support for directories -everything has to be on a single directory and also I've read it is not a good option for absolute beginners, and my media center has to be used by everybody at home.

I've try to install a simple Fedora on my hardware unsuccessfully, it seems that SATA support requires to change some option in the bios and besides I terrible fail trying to install a normal Fedora on a 64 bits hardware. So a little bit disappointed with myself I decided to wait 'till today 24 of November since it's Fedora 10 launching... it looks nice

I'm going to wait until the weekend and have a try on Fedora 10 + Elisa + Sata emulation on bios... too many things on the same time. I hope all flows smoothly.

What packages do I have installed in Fedora?

2008-10-05T02:48:00.000-07:00

There're easy things to do that I forget how to do it... For instance, I know that I may get a whole package list if I type: rpm -qa on my console screen. I know that I may get information about packages by typing
rpm -qi package_name
or by typing
yum info package_name

Since I'm experiencing some issues with my Eclipse installation I was comparing my version with recommended version from UOC, so I wanna know what software do I have installed that starts with eclipse* pattern... how can we do it? My old-fashioned way was to type
rpm -qa | grep eclipse
but there's a more cool way, after a read a little bit from your manual page you may type something like
yum list installed eclipse*
So don't forget to read man pages buddys.

Chrome means javascript

2008-09-28T22:05:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know it's a little bit excessive 'cause there're more things inside Chrome browser, but just in order to catch your attention it's a good title.

Recently, I've seen in one of my feeds a graph showing language programs on the rise or more used right now. Two things to highlight:

php is loosing percent of use: It just makes me think... up to you, easy language, fast & durty, but now, if you wanna use it for a medium up to big project you can't go out of a framework, so may it happens that programmers prefers to customize apps or cms instead of wrote out all that code?
javascript is going up and so it keeps: there's no flash or silerlight catching up javascript, again a short tought about it. There's no browser without javascript support, no plugins needed so just embed your code and that's all. Finally, Google uses browsers as a universal client for a new server-client arquitecture, where they wrote in javascript for almost every browser and they uses python or whatever for server

So, make javascript faster it's a strategy for Google's TWD. There's only a leak, Linux and Mac versions :-)

Google, Chrome and support to Mozilla foundation

2008-09-11T03:36:00.000-07:00

Via an article published at spanish slashdot I read a spanish translation to an article comparing webkit and Gecko.

This has been the latest buzz in the web... most interesting things for me are two:

what's new and what isn't in Chrome and
what's going to happen with Mozilla foundation since they keep a collaboration agreement with Google

Is not new; using object oriented programming, isolation tabs by using object orientation and asign for every single tab a different memory area, every tab doesn't affect to others...

About what's new and what isn't in my opinion new things are: Gears integration, virtual machine for javascript, safe browsing and interface aproach (with new start page... also the new comic for show us what is all about...) and finally the whole approach putting new and not new things all together.

Mozilla ang Google has renewed 'till November 2011 their agreement (in spanish here), Mozilla gets 85% of its money from this agreement and that is a too important part of the cake. So... what's going to happen with Mozilla foundation? I really don't know and I don't like to supose anything, but I think that Chrome and Firefox follows differents goals.

The question still remains, if Google will keep on supporting other browser with different target. They both share one very important thing, make the Internet more compatible, open, and fully standard.

Rawstudio opens orf from Olympus E-510

2008-09-10T11:07:00.000-07:00

Yes it does it

I've been looking for a program that lets me open .orf files from my Olympus E-510 and since I use Fedora I rule out from official software from Olympus. I keep on using their official software for firmware updates, but just for it.

So Rawstudio definitely opens .orf (which is the name for raw's in Olympus cameras) but it goes better if I right click on the file and then I choose rawstudio. You may have check for your camera compatibility at rawstudio compatibility list

I can manipulate the file and if broke something I may reset each value to their original setting.

I also know there's RawTherapee and I wanna try it out too. RawTherapee offers a users guide in spanish... it sounds great for an absolute beginner in raw processing.

About studying computing and salary

2008-07-31T02:17:00.000-07:00

I've talk with a nice guy who's working in a call center. He's working and studying Computing Engineering at the same time... and he's studying almost the same speciality that I'm studying.

It makes think about why to keep on studying. If that nice guy ends his degree right now he would came to the IT market and if he would be hired as a IT degree he will earns as much as he earns now as a call center operator. Sad.

Don't get confuse. I firmly support the study. But it's a pity that someone with a high degree has to start from a so unfair salary. On the other hand, when he takes experience enough and improve his salary, unfortunately, he still paid under his preparation or skills...
There's no Fog Creek Software or Google company alike in Spain as far as I know...

So, what's the sense in studying a degree in computing? You may is pointless if you're thinking in achieve a good salary. But there're people who studied 'cause they like it. Is it a vocational job so? I don't think so. And if someone starts as a vocational it may end up in some different positions, burned out after a couple of years.
In my opinion you has few options:

Being vocational worker while you can
Start up your own bussines
Work with FOSS and get paid for it

Fedora problems with dvd-slideshow and how to solve them

2008-07-30T01:29:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from our holidays in Florence... nice city by the way, very nice in deep.

Since I've carried my DSLR Olympus E-510 with me I've done several photos, now I'm involved in the post production job

I wanna some photo slideshow that keeps amused my family on the TV so I search some software for Linux and I found that (in my opinion) most mature and proper software seems to be dvd-slideshow and it has just one but; there's no GUI for more complicated command line options, it really doesn't matters to me but may to you.

Installation and dependecy problems resolutions are not complicated in Fedora. The only thing I've to take care is to specify -p and -mp2 options in command line. The first one, -p is for generate PAL video output and the second one -mp2 is for generate mp2 audio since it crashes if try to let it with mp3 by default although I got the propers codecs installed.

Object Oriented Programming passed

2008-07-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

Finally I received a phone message with my subject note... and it has been passed with the minimum note to pass it but done.

Now time to try a little relax and plan how its going to be the next semester. Probably I choose two subject for the next six moths instead of follow just one subject. Maybe I'll choose English III plus Information Engineering... don't know really, I've got to meditate on this a little bit...

HAL problem dissapears and NetworkManager is ok

2008-06-11T21:44:00.000-07:00

So in short the title explains everything. Now, I must admit I don't like the idea of using NetworkManager instead of command line. Command line makes me feel with more control and lets me learn more. Nowadays this simple applet is simple and useful, shows me wifi networks, it let me choose what network I wanna use... so I surrender to it

Meanwhile HAL problems has dissapears probably 'cause there's no conflict in having exclusivity access to network devices or so I think.

I have reduce the stack of daemons running at boot time by switching off bluetooth, rpc related daemons and ip6tables. I love chkconfig command line.

Soon I'll push off cube-beryl related software since my graphich card (an old fashioned Svage S3 my laptop is from 2002 and I'm still surprise for that) doesn't support this short of effects.

Fedora 9 just installed

2008-06-03T03:10:00.000-07:00

As I wrote here a couple of weeks ago I've installed Fedora 9 at my laptop.

I've used for the very first time a different method. My laptop (buyed 04/11/2002) is unable to boot from a DVD, I allways have been using the set of CDs but now I downloaded a ISO that allows you to install from the network. This is not new for Debian fans.

So if you look for Fedora-9-i386-netinst.iso you'll find it has only 144Mb, for sure you're gonna need a quite good internet conection. It tooks me around 3 hours to finish the whole process, including type of installation (Workstation, development or webserver), packages selection and download and so on.

Once the boring part was finished then comes the amusing process... as long as I keep my personal home filesystem untouched this part is easier.

By now I've done a couple of customizations quite usual among Fedora's users:

Livna repos: download livna rpm...
1. got to http://rpm.livna.org/rlowiki/
2. pick up http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm and install it
3. type yum update and install mplayer (I used for see movies, many people prefers vlc software, both of them are a good option) by typing yum install mplaer
4. do the same for ffmpeg (I used it for convert video files); yum install ffmpeg
Flash plugin for Firefox: download flash-plugin-9.0.124.0-release.i386.rpm from Adobe's site and install typing rpm -i flash-plugin-9.0.124.0-release.i386.rpm
Solve some problems with HAL daemon... Pablo has told me that hal doesn't get very well if you use both network and Network-Managed daemons so he tolds me to use the second one or at least one of them, but not both at the same time... I keep myself on tune it accurately

There're more thong to be told but that's enough for now. Soon a second part, 'till then have a look to http://hacktux.com/fedora it keeps a lot of tricks that you were thinking of.

Going on with my OOP subject at university

2008-05-18T03:26:00.000-07:00

I've checked right now my last mark on OOP at UOC and feel very satisfied with it.

I thought my last exercise its going to be a C+ and I've got a B finally so great work for me! that makes me keep on trying with the latest exercise we got now 'cause it may helps a lot to pass the final exam since they uses this exercises to get an average in order to calculate the final mark.

I know how to prototype models, draw UML diagrams, how to translate the problem to the paper... but I feel myself terrible unexperienced in java coding. I hope it will less important the final coding than the -in my opinion- core knowledge which is Object Oriented aproach. Let's see how it finally ends...

ArgoUML

2008-04-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

This days I'm studying OOP at the UOC. We need to draw UML diagrams, this University feels confortable with Free Software and what do you think they recomend for that task? They recomend us ArgoUML which is a nice tool.

ArgoUML has been wrote in Java and one of the most interesting things is that you may get your code in different languages, java, php ... (don't remember if more languages are supported), it supports UML standard diagrams, and finally it runs quite well on my 512Mb RAM laptop.

Red Hat Fan

2008-04-26T09:28:00.000-07:00

I've been using Red Hat distributions since Red Hat 6.2 (more or less) and from then upgrading up to Fedora, passing through all Fedora's...

From different reasons I experienced a quite important problem with Fedora 8 and don't have any time to solve it. I decide give a chance to Debian (pure stable Debian, not Ubuntu or so) 'cause is a very interesting option, now is easy to install and with a lot of advantages (regular updates, security, zillions of packages...)

And I have to say that on my laptop (an old one) it runs faster than Fedora. I know it was going to be that way since Debian compile packages with less dependencies and that make them lighter in terms of memory consuming. But also everything is so different to almost any other distro that it's really annoying. I deeply respect Debian, nothing would be the same without that distro, but I rather prefer using Fedora/Red Hat/CentOS (great choice CentOS it isnt?) for three main reasons:

I'm used to them
they are more familiar in enterprise environments
they're too Linux and FLOSS

But... you know, there's always a but I have to admit that I'm a Red Hat Fan. So as soon as I finish with the subject (Object Oriented Programming) I'm studying at UOC I'll return to Fedora. It would exciting.

Java sucks? Maybe, but less

2008-03-30T22:49:00.000-07:00

I rembember that I've wrote opinions such as Java Sucks and so on. That was my starting point for a long time. Quique, who is a nice person and also a Java coder (yes, both possibilities are compatible) told me that my opinion was forge in suffering very bad code in Java. Now I'm force to write in Java for Objected Orientation Programming subject at my University on-line degree. So, as I was suspecting from a long time, Quique was right. It's very easy write in Java (nice) and it's really a powerfull combination JDK + Eclipse. The truth is that there're very bad programmers all around, or probably, unreasonable customers demanding aplication modifcations constantly that modifies the design and the performance of the whole thing. I'm also still believing that programmers job is absolutely devalued and underpaid here in Spain.

aTunes for your iPod

2008-02-25T22:05:00.000-08:00

I was writting few days ago about alternatives for iTunes software. Nothing against Apple or any other company, just a pro Linux position: I prefer FLOSS software and I prefer run it on GNU/Linux. That's all.

So thanks to Sourceforge mail-list I've found iTunes, I don't find it in my former research so have a look on it 'cause it for three main reasons:

multi-platform since it is written in Java (requires java 6, uses swing for interfaces, if you wanna collaborate to the project they told us they uses Eclipse, and if you may have a look at the sources, you know, free software is like that)
it plays mp4 files, among others, in fact, they have choose the easy way, they relay on software installed on your system
user interface its very iTunes alike so faster learning curve

Last but not least, they got releases since last year and those releases are delivered on regular basis. That releases rhythm and the fact they have joined some other audio player projects makes me perceive aTunes as an interesant software to consider.
Juanjo, I hope this would help you!

What iPod manager choose for Linux?

2008-02-21T00:18:00.000-08:00

This days I'm planning to use free software to manage my iPod instead of iTunes. So, which application should I choose?

Before choose one of them let's rebember what I said before; if I may find the same software across different distributions or even the same software across Linux and MS, this is a clear advantage for me.

I've found this choices:

gtkPod
- fairly mature software
- no new libraries needed, as long as it's a gnome app
amarok
- it's a kde software, and I prefer not to run more libraries than gtk in order to keep my so limited memory free
- it's a mature solution
Banshee
- developed with mono, so it requires an extra runtime
- plays AAC formats but I don't know they manage the whole license stuff
- in their page does not appear nothing related with the iPod's
Yamipod
- it seems to be the most iTunes similar solution
- non free software
- quite odd instalation
- screenshots and features looks fine
Rhythmbox:
- may require added software for tag edition
- it seems no so mature software, very early versions at the moment

Does any of them support m4p format?... Banshee does it, and Yamipod seems to be able to do it, but Yamipod is not free software.

Everytime I've tested some software with my iPod, iTunes does not recognized later I have to attached again to my iTunes... nasty thing. Best solution would be if Apple relases a Linux version. You may sign a petition to port iTunes to Linux

From Fedora to Debian

2008-02-14T02:36:00.000-08:00

I upgraded from Fedora 7 to Fedora 8 without problems... 'till the day mplayer doesn't run anymore. A very competent guy from Red Hat who's working at our office told me to use livna repos ... I told him about how upset I feel about livna repos vs. freshrpms repos, they both does not run very well together

I believe him and I try livna repos... then begins the show: hal-daemons stops, autorun needs hal-daemon... and don't want to remember that hell. I know what to do: to get disable livna, also freshrpms, uninstall and reinstall hal-daemon (just in case it helps) and so on,...

Since I have been a Red Hat devoted users since Red Hat 7.2 (passing through all Red Hats 8.0, 9s, and Fedoras) I thought some other distro deserves a chance... so I keep my home and I install Debian. I also keep a server running CentOS, if you don't know it, try it.
I'll post more in a not too distant future but my first impression is that everything is clean, well organized, a little bit more fast, and quite different, I mean, there's no /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ or apache configuration file is under /etc/apache2/... and also their start up script is different but, time to learn, which is always good to keep us alive