Christopher J. Buckley

So, just after I recommended an Apple MacBook to my colleague, I saw to my horror that a small hair-line fracture has developed. The picture below is identical to the crack that has developed on mine.

I did some research and it appears I am late to the game in experiencing this fault (my macbook was purchased third quarter of 2006); countless other people have described the exact same crack in the MacBook’s. So, I called Apple. They confirmed that this is a known design flaw in earlier MacBook’s and that I can take it to an authorised service centre for a free-of-charge out of warranty repair. I have contacted a repair centre, and will update my blog with the outcome (free positive publicity!).

I would say I prefer my IBM Thinkpad (x60), but frankly I don’t! The damn thing is burning the skin on my palms. Again, a known issue. This website documents the problem.

I will stick with the MacBook a while longer - I hope!

UPDATE: I dropped my Macbook off for repair on Tuesday (remind me to take the A22 to Croydon, not the congested A23..) so all looks fine so far. Congrats to Apple.
UPDATE II: I collected my MacBook this evening from Amsys in Kenley, Surrey. It looks good as new, as a result of a new top case being fitted. My personal thanks to the staff at Amsys and Apple who dealt with this out of warranty repair (at no cost to myself) in an excellent manner.

Today the Farnborough Airshow kicked off here in Hampshire. Last week we were treated to the A380 circling - it is almost quiet - i hope we get to see it again this week. I’ll be uploading my pictures here throughout the week.
 

Mediaportal is an XBMC-esque media centre for use on Windows. Recently, i have been suffering stability and ergonomic problems with it, due to the MS Media Centre Remote Control not working correctly with RC1. If you are having similar issues, they are all fixed by installing this replacement driver.

I recently took the Red Hat RH436 Enterprise Clustering and Storage course. This was an excellent course; well presented and documented. I would recommend it to anyone looking to further their knowledge regarding storage (LVM, Fibre, iSCSI) and clustered filesytems (Global File System) and how Red Hat’s virtualisation solutions allow for a ready HA environment.

I am pleased to report I passed this course.

This Friday I took my RHCE. Whilst I cannot talk about the exam (an NDA forbids this), it lasted a whole day and was a very interesting experience. At the end of the day, my results were e-mailed through to me - PASS! Overall, both the exam and the means to which it was carried out is extremely impressive.

My certificate can be validated on Red Hat’s training section. Now, to attempt the courses that make up the RHCA.. !

Just a brief post, I’ve uploaded new pictures to flickr of Virginia Water - I had no idea this place existed, it is right opposite Wentworth Gold Course, as well as a sunny-day trip to the beautiful Sandbanks, Poole and Corfe Castle.
 

Here you can view the very beautiful Virginia Water. One day, I may find the energy to walk around the whole lake!
 

To commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the Open Source Definition, its author Bruce Perens (former Debian Project Leader and noted Free-Software developer) has written a very worthwhile essay explaining the current state of Open Source and outlining the next decade for the Open Source movement.

Notable pieces from Bruce’s essay are outlined herein:

And that brings me to our first mistake: for a time, there was a conflict between Open Source and Free Software evangelism. My intent has always been for Open Source to simply be another way of talking about Free Software, tailored to the ears of business people, and that it would eventually lead them to a greater appreciation of Richard Stallman’s arguments. This has come to pass, and I hope you’ll continue to make it so. One only had to witness the attendance of the GPL 3 committees to see that the importance of FSF’s work was appreciated by the largest of corporations.

For me, this is the single most important message to make people aware of: Open Source is a ‘business-friendly’ term to spread the philosophy and principles of Free-Software. The GNU foundation does tremendous work in enabling, and preserving, software freedom’s for users. It is of great sadness to me that people I talk to are at times completely unaware of the term ‘Free-Software’, instead thinking that this software is ‘Free as in no-cost’, rather than ‘Free as in Freedom’. Richard Stallman is owed an extremely large debt for his vision in creating the FSF and ensuring software freedom’s for all.

In contrast, we have not yet achieved the penetration that we might have desired on user desktop systems, at least if you don’t count the fact that Free Software provides a large part of Apple’s MacOS today, and critical elements of Microsoft Windows as well. Both companies have been forced to develop strategies to live with us, some of them less comfortable than others. Today we are seeing much of the value of software move from the desktop to the network, an area in which we are already entrenched. This can only lead to the expansion of Open Source on the systems in individual user’s hands.

This is a very realistic point: GNU+Linux penetration on the desktop is growing daily; users are realising that proprietary software and vendor lock-in is something that they no longer have to be part of - they can possess software freedom with GNU+Linux - primarily first on Server, but now on Desktop. The next decade will be pivotal in ensuring GNU+Linux on the Desktop penetrates to the masses.

One recent phenomenon has been the appearance of government officials openly on the stage at conferences concerning Free Software. Of late, it’s my turn to speak when the minister has finished his greeting, and they are always announcing some national government initiative concerning Open Source. OK, I speak outside of the U.S. a lot, but even in the U.S. we are seeing Linux (and presumably the GNU system)

Free-Software is here to stay: it is used both by Enterprises and Governments. Ignore the FUD from Proprietary vendors who tell you that Free and Open Source Software bears a heavier risk than using proprietary software.
Remember also, when you are using a ‘Linux’ machine, you are more than likely using the GNU System, be your distribution from Red Hat, Debian, Mandriva, Gentoo, Slackware et al. Go and tell people about the GNU System!

Microsoft remains a problem, as the bastion of the old way of thinking about software, and as the epitome of the old school of dirty corporate fighting. Their current strategy seems to be to poison us with money, most recently by making patent agreements with a number of Linux distributions. These agreements go against the spirit of the software licenses used by our developers, and were perhaps intended to dissuade developers from contributing their work. To this end, Microsoft poured more money into Novell last year than Novell’s annual profit - indeed Novell would have had no annual profit without Microsoft.

A very articulate observation from Perens.

Perens closes by stating that:

So, you can see that the future will present its challenges for Open Source. We could never have forecast how big we would become during Decade Zero of Open Source. But we’ve built tremendous strength, to the point that we can consider much larger tasks. Join us now, as we enter Decade One.

Please do take time to read the original article located at Perens’ personal website.

This is a fantastic piece of filming - talk about being in the right place at the right time! You can find the complete footage here. The pilot and ground control were the epitome of calm and professional.

NB: Notice Concorde in the background 2 minutes in!