I was just reading a very interesting article from Jeremy Allison of the samba team called The Land of "Nothing for free". A very interesting quote

My panel was rather uncontroversial, Microsoft, Bruce Perens and myself being on our best behavior. The only sparks that flew where when Microsoft made it abundantly clear that they would use their patent portfolio to prevent the spread of GPL software. Section seven of the GPL (the implicit patent grant of the license) now looks like the most prescient writing Richard Stallman has ever done. If you're not familiar with it I'd suggest you read it and understand why using the GPL to protect your Free Software is so important.

The article is old, but do check it out.

Originally posted Sun, 23 Nov 2003

Doc Searls has posted his notes on Apachecon in his SuitWatch - November 20 (link gone, check the page on archive.org ). Though his newsletter does not cover the technical (read juicy) details iscussed at the con, he has included a list of blogs which have discussed Apachecon in full.

He has an interesting quote in his newsletter about Microsoft.

consider what Don Norman once said "Microsoft is a conversational black hole. Drop the subject into the middle of a room and it sucks everybody into a useless place from which no light can escape."

I totally agree with him on that. I have spent countless hours discussing Microsoft with my friends on what s wrong with them. Too much bandwidth has been spent on discussing Microsoft. One day I finally decided that the moment someone mentions Microsoft, I will go into IGNORE THE POOR FELLOW MODE.

However at Apachecon, Microsoft had no mass there.

Yet Microsoft has no mass here. It's more like a literal black hole--a subject that doesn't come up. When it does, it fizzles pretty fast. Here's one conversation I overheard:
"Did you hear anything about Bill Gates' speech on Sunday?"
"No."
That was it. End of discussion.

Defined tags for this entry: microsoft

A anti-spyware tool is becoming a necessary add on for windows machine now. The other necessary add on is certainly an antivirus. Any AV suite can bring a PC to its knees. Whenever I see a AV doing a full system scan, my heart goes out to the poor IDE drive. With MS entering the anti-spyware and antivirus department, I cannot keep thinking "first create the problem AND then charge money to pretend to solve it." ... nice strategy

Hmm... if anyone near Mayur Vihar (Delhi) wants to migrate to Linux, you know where to ask

Yesterday, I had to give an introduction to the LAMP stack to a group of trainees. My energy was mostly focused on the MySQL and PHP part. I had gone to the workshop with some source code examples and no slides. I am convinced that this is the best way to present talks to a group of developers i.e. using a white board and source code. Though I will not say that the trainees were hanging on to my every word, they asked question and I did not see anyone fall off to sleep . I introduced them to DBDesigener, phpmyadmin, and Adodb.

It also helped that I used these tools in most of the work I do and knew them quite well. I was able to show them how they will be using them in Real Life.

Today I was looking at the MSN sandbox to download Lookout Email Search Tool. Lookout has been receiving quite good review for searching your Outlook mailbox. Here is how it was described

You can use Lookout to search your:

• Email messages
• Contacts
• [snip]
• ... Very soul (okay, not true)

ery uncharacteristic of M$, usually the element of play is missing in their site. If you go visiting, have a look at their new search . It gives quite good result. Not sure how much of their algorithm will be implemented in the final release... it is good till it lasts.