Google provides printable versions of classic books on Internet

"Google made classic literary works available for free download in printable format on Wednesday as part of its controversial quest to make the world's books available online.

No longer copyrighted works such as Dante Alighieri's "Inferno" and Victor Hugo's "Marion de Lorme," can be printed out at the Google Book Search website, according to the company. "

Yahoo! on Mobiles

DRM is always going to be a problem

How can one implement DRM when the very medium of transmission was always meant to be FREE ?

Putting 'Special Skills' to (Volunteer) Work

Walk into fluid's New York City studio, and you'll see the firm's 20 employees hard at work on music and editorial post-production projects for companies including eBay, FedEx and Sony. The firm's workload generates more than $6 million in annual sales.


But on any given day, Fluid's employees might also be doing pro bono work to help a nonprofit organization. The company's pro bono projects have included producing post-9/11 public service announcements for the New York City mayor's office and working on ads for the Alzheimer's Foundation. "Our skill set allows us to do all kinds of promotions, ads and things like that," says co-founder David Shapiro, 55.

Asia Warms Up to Intellectual Property Rights - IP

"During a panel discussion at the inaugural Global Forum on IP Monday, industry experts generally agree that Asian businesses do recognize the importance of IP as they compete in the global landscape."

China: The Next Software Center?

Leonard Liu has spent most of his career working for some of the premier tech companies in the U.S. and Taiwan. He's been a top executive at IBM (IBM) and Acer and has also been in charge of Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, the world's leading semiconductor packaging company. After accumulating so much experience in the hardware business, now Liu has his sights on the software industry.

SalesForce CRM

One sure-fire way for a tech company to generate excitement is to link up with Web search king Google (GOOG). Salesforce.com (CRM), the high-profile seller of on-demand services, hardly needs the Google glow, but it's getting it anyway. On Aug. 22, Chief Executive Marc Benioff is set to announce a new service, Salesforce for Google AdWords, that combines his company's easy-to-use interface with Google's powerful advertising engine.

Open Warfare in Open Source - GPL

Disagreements over what should be included in the free software license's next version have pitted the movement's leaders against each other

Friendster: Poised for a Comeback

Comebacks can be hard to stage—though not impossible. Just ask George Foreman, Bill Clinton, or the folks at Volkswagen who resurrected the Rabbit. Investors are betting $10 million that social networking site Friendster.com can join such ranks

Google Goes for the Suite Spot

Village Phone initiative

I am a program officer at the Grameen Technology Center, a Seattle-based initiative of Grameen Foundation. Based in Washington, D.C., Grameen fights global poverty by using microfinance and information technology to make operations more efficient and enhance income-generating opportunities for the poor.

TV over mobile phones

Leveraging Debt

As leveraged buyouts soar, the buyers are borrowing more and more money, raising the risk of default. To some, it's a bubble in the making

Mozilla Goes Mainstream

It was the summer of 2004, and a group of 10 techies huddled together in an office in Mountain View, Calif., facing a daunting task. They had embarked on an ambitious effort to create a Web browser that could go mano-a-mano with Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Apple to Pay $100 Million to End Creative Dispute

"`Creative was very fortunate to have been granted this early patent and we just wanted to move beyond and get back to innovating without several years of protracted litigation that would have cost as much as settlement."


Not sure if Creative is lucky one in this scenario, but yes a protracted lawsuit will hurt Creative more than Apple.

But who would have eventually laughed last had it gone all the way, given Apples recent woes with the options, one can only wonder.

Novell Red Hat simmerin' over Xen

Hmmm, my take, Xen is compelling enough to stand on its own, even if Novell or Red Hat does'nt take it up, someone else will. Let the commercial distros forget that fact at their own peril ;)

Xen is already moving with VMware...

an excerpt:

""With the help of IBM, we made a technology breakthrough that accommodates both," Crosby said in an interview Thursday. The two companies sat down together to work through the problem during the recent Linux Symposium, held in late July in Ottawa, Canada. Jack Lo, VMware's senior director of R&D, agrees. A group got together at the Symposium "to put together an interface to the Linux kernel. There's been a lot of activity" to reach agreement, he said."

Oooh... did I notice a 3 letter acronym that look reaaaally familiar.....

Document Object Model

The main link is the W3C specification for DOM1.

Two other links are here:


DOM2

Wikipedia

Brainjar.com
- Brainjar offers a rather painless intro

LinuxWorld wraps up

"Another LinuxWorld Conference & Expo has come and gone. More than 10,000 attendees and 175 exhibitors passed through the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The show ended yesterday after a shorter schedule of talks and exhibits, including a session by kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman. Here's our final report, including more video goodness."

Your Brain Boots Up Like a Computer

"Like a computer booting up its operating system before running more complicated programs, the nitric oxide triggers certain functions that set the stage for more complex brain operations, according to a new study."

Hard Knocks,Age Transform a Web pioneer

"Marc Andreessen, once the golden boy on the cutting edge of the go-go Internet economy, has gone retro.

The young brain behind Netscape Communications Corp. -- which popularized the modern-day Internet browser and helped launch the frenzied dot-com boom of the late 1990s -- has spent the past several years engaged in an old-fashioned pursuit: rebuilding a traditional software company, Opsware Inc., and trying to make it profitable."

Sony refused peer-to-peer patents

"Sony cannot patent inventions in the UK that remove the anonymity of the peer-to-peer (P2P) user experience and put social networking at the heart of file-sharing."

Apple Denies Wi-Fi Flaw, Researchers Confirm

silicon speed - transistors

"To achieve the speed gain, researchers at the University of Southampton added fluorine to the silicon devices."

GPS Map Viewer for the PSP

"Deniska has released a GPS Map Viewer for the PSP. The program uses imagery from Google Maps, which currently has pretty good coverage of North America, Western Europe, Australia, Japan. There's also a video on YouTube."

This is what Zune looks like

"If you’ve been wondering how the Zune’s user interface will compare with the iPod’s, we have some real answers for you this morning: the similarities are significant, but Microsoft has made a number of changes that range from cool to not so cool."

Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack Responds

"The Fedora Project, as many of you know, is a partnership between Red Hat and the OSS community. The highest level of decision-making within Fedora is the Fedora Project Board, a group that is empowered to make the decisions about Fedora policy, to set priorities, and to hold the rest of the Fedora sub-projects accountable for what they are doing. The Fedora Board has nine members, five of whom are Red Hat employees, and four of whom are community members. That breakdown is not set in stone -- that's just what we started with. It is my hope that down the road, the majority of the Board will be Fedora's community leaders."

Military research aims to develop self-configuring, secure wireless nets

"Academic concepts such as artificial intelligence and Tim Berners-Lee's 'Semantic Web,' combined with technologies such as the Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET), cognitive radio, and peer-to-peer networking, would provide the nuts and bolts of such a network. Although the project is intended for soldiers in the field, the resulting advances could trickle down to end users. 'Military networks are going to converge as closely as we can to civil technologies,' says Preston Marshall, the program manager of DARPA's Advanced Technology Office."

USB flash drives get to work

"USB flash drives have evolved from their initial use as marketing tchotchkes to devices capable of addressing corporate needs ranging from mobile computing platforms to files stores with encryption and biometrics protection."

Of Junk and Spunk

"For a slew of new entrepreneurs, garbage is not just a matter of personal opinion, it is, ahem, their business. In other words, they're creating new companies out of other people's junk."

The state of online music - itunes

All this business stuff about music... phooey!


There are free music out there, like the days of the bards in taverns.

These days musicians are like courtseans in opera houses.

Gadget LUST in Japan

"Yes, they're a bit on the weird side, but together they spend about $3.5 billion a year on anime DVDs, manga, robotic toys, IT gadgets, and other stuff"

More patent action

"The federal court decision requires EchoStar to pay roughly $90 million in damages as well as to stop selling DVRs that the court had earlier ruled violated patents held by TiVo (TIVO). What's more, the ruling also requires EchoStar to turn off existing DVR service within 30 days. Although EchoStar has won a federal appeals court injunction against the award, it still faces the specter of Dish having to turn off as many as 4 million DVRs, figures Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Craig E. Moffett. That would make EchoStar customers easy pickings for satellite competitor DirecTV or cable."

Apple says no forced labour at China plants

Well, now we know! =D


Googled for Verite


Will probably look more at it later.

Maybe the readers can verify if Verite is good?


Another article regarding this issue

Google Video: No Tube of Plenty

heh I have not seen this yet ... =P


you can catch it here.

$100 laptops to debut with Thai kids

""The One Laptop per Child association and its chairman, MIT Media Labs's Nicholas Negroponte, unvelied a working model of their $100 laptop at the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX) show, and the little laptop that might was a hit. It's got a version of Fedora Linux, is rugged, and each unit will work as part of a wireless mesh automatically. From the article: "However, as Negroponte put it in his address, One Laptop per Child isn't all about the laptops. The main goal is to tap into the ability of every child to toss away a manual and figure out how to make gadgets work on their own, thus helping children help themselves to learn." eWEEK.com also has photos.""


Slashdot

Digitizing video signals might violate the DMCA

"Could it become illegal to digitize analog signals? The District Court for the Southern District of New York has come perilously close to saying yes."

Search and its implications

"The Proceedings of the National Academies of Science isn't the place you'd typically go for a discussion of PageRanks and surfing behavior. But the emergent complexity of the web provides the raw material for studies ranging from network dynamics to social psychology. A study released online in advance of publication looks into how the influence of search engines is affecting the accessibility of online information. The authors are examining fears that search engines will create a situation where a self-reinforcing cycle of popularity will create an Internet in which a limited number of information sources predominate: "[S]earch engines bias the traffic of users according to their page ranking strategies, and it has been argued that they create a vicious cycle that amplifies the dominance of established and already popular sites. This bias could lead to a dangerous monopoly of information.""

ipod and Linux

"“The question I get asked most about Linux by people under 30 is ‘will it work with my iPod?’” said Eric Raymond, a celebrated figure in the open-source movement who penned the popular book The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

For Windows and OS X fans, such questions don’t enter the discussion. But the runaway popularity of iPods, iTunes, and digital media on PCs and devices has forced the open-source community to consider the wave of expectations for multimedia."

Hmmm lamoe?

Wireless Works Wonders in Tibet

"Across the border from Chinese-occupied Tibet, the tech infrastructure in this high mountain village is a mess.

But a former Silicon Valley dot-commer and members of the underground security group Cult of the Dead Cow are working with local Tibetan exiles to change that using recycled hardware, solar power, open-source software and nerd ingenuity.


The volunteers are building a low-cost wireless mesh network to provide cheap, reliable data and telephony to community organizations."

In South Korea, online rumors can hit hard

Is this what te future holds?

IBM takes potshots at OpenSolaris

"OpenSolaris isn't a true open-source project, but rather a "facade," because Sun Microsystems doesn't share control of it with outsiders, executives from rival IBM say."


I never doubted it...

Apple Chases Pod for iPod's Sake Lame?

"Apple Computer is seriously targeting use of the word "Pod" in an attempt to protect infringement of its popular iPod trademark.

According to reports, Apple has sent "cease-and-desist" letters to companies that are using in any way, "Pod" as part of their names or products. So far, letters have been received by two companies, including Mach5products which makes Profit Pod, and the other company named TightPod. "

Etch Debian

related links


Link

Hoosier Daddy? In Indiana Schools, It's Linux

"How's this for back-to-school fashion: More than 20,000 Indiana students are now Linux-enabled under a state grant program to roll out low-cost, easy-to-manage workstations, which are running various flavors of the open-source operating system."

Patent review goes Wiki

Linux based HandyPC

Our $100 laptops will run on human power

One Laptop per child, I thought this article had enough information to deserve a post of its own =)

A Crusade to Connect Children - One Laptop per Child

"It will be easy to operate as well as inexpensive, offering schoolchildren of modest means a way to join the Internet age. But recently, OLPC suffered a big setback when an Indian government official criticized Negroponte's group and said India, for one, wasn't interested in what OLPC had to offer "

How sad is this?


But still the end of the article is heartening:


"Argentina has signed a memorandum of understanding with OLPC, he says. Brazil has put money for OLPC machines into its budget for next year. And leaders in Thailand and Nigeria are committed to the project, he adds. "Those four, Brazil, Nigeria, Thailand, and Argentina, feel pretty real to me, blogosphere or not," he writes. "


This is their main site.


This is their current cost.

Waging the War Against Click Fraud

Well... I agree it is a problem, but as always the advertises are no angels and really they are probably trying to squeeze as much out as possible.

Ethanol Fueled Cars

!!! There is hope for the environment and GM is pushing it??

Google Code Jam 2006 is on !!!!

165,000 Grand prize.


nuff said.


Registration ends on September 5th.


Find out more in the link.

Google Search AJAX

Well I have finally gotten round to adding the AJAX search toolbar to my blog. huffalum-tech.blogspot.com

Its rather cool. =) But it is a little unstable at the moment, does anyone know why? I also embed meebo, would that be a problem?

Anyways just to answer some queries, if you see only a "clear" link.

It is likely that you have not gotten for yourself an application key from google.

Read the following for more info:



gOOGLE ajax sEARCH blOG


Google AJAX search examples


Good related article from tech2all

Get your AJAX search Key


The reason I have placed a link to activate the AJAX, is that loading it in the header seems to interact with the meebo loading and making my FIrefox crash (or any other browser for that matter, I have tried IE, Opera).

Now it can load as per normal and I activate the search if I need it, I will probably try to do something similar to the meebo widget.

However the AJAX widget is still behaving strangly, say if i activate it and then go to another site and then click on the "back" button of the browser, FF will crash.

I think it is a javascript problem, very likely a variable is becoming null or something.

If anyone can point me to a debug tool or suggest what may be wrong please let me know!

Adding Google Map to your Site

Requires some prior knowledge, about using google APIs though

Browser Sync - a really good idea? by Google

I guess it is like delicious?

Google search stats by volume

A closed mind about an open world

"Over the past 15 years, a group of scholars has finally persuaded economists to believe something non-economists find obvious: “behavioural economics” shows that people do not act as economic theory predicts."

GIMP file format !!!!!

"The GIMP finally has a documented file specification. The free image editor has long been criticized over the fact that its native image format XCF was not publicly documented. Recently the issue came to a head, sparked unintentionally by discussions over the proposed OpenRaster graphics interchange format. Once the argument cooled off, however, an independent developer decided to tackle the problem head on -- to the benefit of all."

Everything you always wanted to know about Linux distros

"Well, maybe not everything, but I will give the authors of the Wikipedia article, Comparison of Linux Distributions, credit for a good try. In this article, you'll find multiple tables of more than 50 different Linux distributions."

The ODF debate: A real world view

An excerpt:


"What exactly is meant by document portability? Does it mean that a document created in one application can be viewed using a different application on another operating system? Does it mean that the document can be viewed and edited within another application on the same or another OS platform? Or does it simply mean that you can be sure that the document you create today can be read in the future using proprietary products from the same software vendor?"

VMware, XenSource Join Virtualization Forces For Linux

Sounds good looks good!

Memory Market

But NAND-type flash memory chips are becoming an ever-more economical solution for certain types of storage. Take Apple's iPod for instance: The 40- and 60-GB models that support video require hard drives, while the slimmer iPod nano uses flash memory.

Awakening in Bihar

Every April, some 230,000 Indian youths sharpen their pencils and sit for the intensely competitive entrance exam to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) -- the seven prestigious schools that train India's top-notch engineers and entrepreneurs. After the grueling six-hour test, only 5,000 students are offered a place in the IITs. Most come from middle-class backgrounds and prepare for the exams through private coaching. But in the past few years, a small group of desperately poor, talented students have made it into the IITs, thanks to the Ramanujan School of Mathematics.

Search Engines Censured for Censorship

Activists want Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft to do more to disclose to Chinese users how and why their searches are being censored

Is Microsoft wetting its pants? ... Again?

"It is astounding that we can find anything at all on the Internet -- it contains 20 billion pages," says Dumais, who carries the title of principal researcher and is one of the dozens of Microsoft researches focused on search technology.


That is why Google is great, that is why we google for things.

Oh more than that, lemme clue you in, Google DOES things for people. THINK more about the people, rather than about how to take and you will realise more.


Dumais figures that major improvements in search technology are only a few years out. Getting people to stop saying Google when they mean search, however, may take a lot longer.

Not unless its open sourced, nice try, but you have tried that, haven't done that, and are lookin' really silly if I made a T-shirt of ya.

Windows Vista: Doomed In The Corporate World

Word on the street is that many businesses are simply not interested in Vista. The Seattle PI ran a recent piece that explains how many companies have decided early on that they are not really interested in dealing with the likelihood of a fresh set of Windows Updates.

Linux initial RAM disk (initrd) overview

The Linux® initial RAM disk (initrd) is a temporary root file system that is mounted during system boot to support the two-state boot process. The initrd contains various executables and drivers that permit the real root file system to be mounted, after which the initrd RAM disk is unmounted and its memory freed. In many embedded Linux systems, the initrd is the final root file system. This article explores the initial RAM disk for Linux 2.6, including its creation and use in the Linux kernel.

Linux memory usage explained

Since ps shows all memory mapped to a process, it's memory usage numbers are misleadingly high. This article explains why that '14 MB' editor isn't quite the big memory hog it would appear to be.

Depending on how you look at it, ps is not reporting the real memory usage of processes. What it is really doing is showing how much real memory each process would take up if it were the only process running. Of course, a typical Linux machine has several dozen processes running at any given time, which means that the VSZ and RSS numbers reported by ps are almost definitely "wrong". In order to understand why, it is necessary to learn how Linux handles shared libraries in programs.

Linux File System Inodes Overview

Inode stores basic information about a regular file, directory, or other file system object. The inode number is a unique integer assigned to the device upon which it is stored. All files are hard links to inodes. Whenever a program refers to a file by name, the system conceptually uses the filename to search for the corresponding inode. Many computer programs often give i-node numbers to designate a file. Popular disk integrity checking utilities fsck or pfiles command may serve here as examples.

Active Directory and Linux

This article discusses the use of Microsoft's Active Directory as an authentication service for Linux systems. Although Linux has a perfectly good directory based authentication system (OpenLDAP), it may be desirable on some sites to authenticate Linux users against a Microsoft Windows 2000 server.

The short life and hard times of a Linux virus

There are several reasons for the non-issue of the Linux virus. Most of those reasons a Linux user would already be familiar with, but there is one, all important, reason that a student of evolution or zoology would also appreciate.

Open Source Takes on Telecom

"Without realizing it at the time, Spencer was at the forefront of a movement to bring open source to telecom. By 2001, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)—the technology that routes voice calls over data networks—had started to take off. And it became clear to Spencer that the market was ready for open-source telecom systems. So, he changed the focus of his company to the Asterisk switch and in 2002 renamed the company Digium."

Wireless Security

Real World problems

Dynamic DNS Setup Singapore Singtel Singnet

Note: to fully understand this you probably need to map out the values, take your time it is rather complex.

The main problem seems to be that Singtel blocks port 80, hence requiring a port reforwarding. That plus the IP seems to change at times even though I do not disconnect, that will have to be solve some other way I guess =)

In any case I finally manage to get live server going.

Now if you do not want to go through this trouble, you will be fine with just a domain name, a dynamic dns service and a dial up line (dial up IP does not change)... though that may not necessarily be true since Singnet does some strange thing with the IPs, people normally see a 165.x.x.x and a 2xx.x.x.x I think it is due to same NAT thing.

of course by the time you read this, the IPs will be invalid ;)


[log:060809]

my current setup:

Under IP addresses
PPPoE_1

219.74.136.45/32

Auto

napt

eth0

169.254.141.11/16

Auto

none

eth0

192.168.1.1/24

User

none

loop

127.0.0.1/8

Auto

none



NAPT:


1

Stat

192.168.1.101:8080 //- inside

219.74.136.45:8080 //- outside

tcp

TIME_WAIT


DHCP:

nothing



DNS:


1

fenton

192.168.1.101

2

oscog

192.168.1.101

3

www

192.168.1.101



no-ip setup:

Host: IP / URL Action:
oscog.com
oscog.com 169.254.141.11 [IP] Modify
ftp.oscog.com 219.74.109.166 [IP] Modify | Delete
mail.oscog.com 219.74.109.166 [IP] Modify | Delete
www.oscog.com 219.74.136.45:8080 Modify | Stats | Delete



Note that for the lan connection on fenton. TCP/IP DNS is set to 192.168.1.1

not the Singnet 165.21.83.88

What happens is now I cannot see the alcatel name server when I type : oscog.com

in fact for some reason FF will prepend www, i.e. www.oscog.com

And then it will not resolve.

However if I type www.oscog.com in FF it will not resolve as well.

Typing www.oscog.com:8080 will resolve to my test page.


typing oscog.com:8080 will resolve to www.oscog.com:8080 and resolve

however typing oscog.com:8080 will not work on an external computer, indicating that this effect is due to my internal setup


Typing www.oscog.com on an external computer will resolve to 219.74.136.45:8080

typing fenton:8080 works

127.0.0.1 does not work 127.0.0.1:8080 works

(this is because apache is listening on 8080)


I will now set my primary NS to 165.21.83.88


now typing oscog.com resolves to my local Alcatel modem

strangely www.oscog.com does not work on fenton, but it does on the external computer









[/log:060809]

[log:060807]

This is a report on the DNS setup of oscog.com


I am writing this as I am unfamiliar with networking and would like to get better.


At this moment in time I have manage to make oscog.com live on the Internet.


The only problem is that it means my alcatel modem is "live" on the Internet.

Yeah my nameserver is exposed great plan huh. Anyways thats why this is not in a blog yet =)


So current status:

When I type "oscog.com"

I see my alcatel nameserver.

When I type "www.oscog.com" the server is unreachable.

Current Interface PPPoE_1
IP address/Netmask 121.6.238.129/32
Primary DNS 165.21.100.88
Secondary DNS 165.21.83.88


Interestingly DHCP lease is as follows:
lease = 1
Client ID = 01:00:0F:66:57:5F:FE
Address = 192.168.1.100 not 101 interesing

While my NATP is as follows:

Inside:

192.168.1.101:8080

Outside:

121.6.238.129:1444


2

Temp

Inside:
192.168.1.101:8080

Outside
unspecified:1444


So my NATP may have been miscoinfigure all the while???


DNS is as follows:


1

fenton

192.168.1.101

2

www

192.168.1.101

3

oscog

192.168.1.101




IP addresses:



PPPoE_1

121.6.238.129/32

Auto

napt

eth0

169.254.141.11/16

Auto

none

eth0

192.168.1.1/24

User

none

loop

127.0.0.1/8

Auto

none

NO-IP configuration:


oscog.com = 169.254.141.11 as DNS





Note to self:

configuration has been setup.

Tested with reboot (i.e. IP will change)

Need to add in NAPT, update no-ip and we are set

Note that internal IP should be 192.168.x.xxx while external IP should be the one seen by the public, i.e. usually 2xx.x.x.x
not the 165.x.x.x one.

However no-ip should be configured with the 165.x.x.x as Nameserver but for port redirection use the 2xx.x.x.x

apache and NAPT are currently set to listen at port xxxx


[/log:060807]

Top Legal FAQs for Inventors

Good info, esp for open source ppl! I think =P


Testing:

oscog
Shit Yahoo!

ICANN you can't?

Heh interesting to follow the trials and tribulations of ICANN and how if ever US will really reliquish control to a neutral body.