Monday, February 16, 2009

Red Hat and Microsoft to partner on virtualisation

An interesting post by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols reports on the partnership between Red Hat and Microsoft. Yup, after much scorn has been poured on Novell's decision to be on friendly terms with "the Great Satan", it will be interesting to see over the next few days what the community has to say on this.

Granted there was not agreements on patents, but to the more zealous members of the Free/Open Source world, any good feelings towards Microsoft is deemed a capital crime.

On a saner note, this agreement aptly demonstrates that Linux is no longer merely a hobbyist's plaything and it's mainstream now.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Fedora 10 SELinux User Guide in PDF

Finally, the SELinux guide in a single easily printable format. From the blurb in the intro it seems it was written for those without prior SELinux know-how. Yay!

You can get it from here

Thanks to a post by Murray McAllister via Planet Fedora.Link

Death of Democracy in Perak

What would you call an MP who decided to defect to the other side mainly because of a car? Sounds too crazy to be true right? A former office clerk who made it good and became a MP and the Assistant Speaker of the State Assembly because of the faith of the rakyat placed on her. And so that seems pales in comparison with a Camry. This only shows the shallowness of the person. Note - I do not mean to sound demeaning to the many hardworking folks out there, it is just that a promotion from one who is a mere cubicle dweller (like me) to the powers that be is a huge step however you see it.

Also we have the official son-in-law who calls for the stripping of Datuk Nizar's citizenship. Well he can call for anything (teh-tariks, roti-telur tambah bawang etc.) but at least Datuk Nizar did not get to become the Chief Minister via the bedroom.

Also, the said bedroom to boardroom individual incited his less-than-intelligent "pak-turuts" (yes-men or women or anything in between) to use violence (because in the good old days of yore, they can just lob off your head if you go against the Ruler) against the duly elected representative of the State Assembly should they attempt to ignore the orders of the said official son-in-law that the duly elected State representatives attempt to report in.

By the way, what is all this about Hidup Melayu? Aren't my Malay brethrens flourishing? Or are they insinuating that us non-Malays are prosecuting the Malays? Since when it is only a Malay issue? Democracy is everyone's issue. Does Perak belongs only to these self proclaimed defenders of the Malay rights? Since when does this has anything to do with race? Sheesh. Talk more, do help yourselves to dig a deeper grave. This Ah Beng will tell with his vote. Nationalists/racists sentiments are so last century. It is however pleasing to see, from a scientific perspective, living fossils in action.

It seems now that the official son-in-law has also roped in the state police to do his bidding. While true the police are just enforcing the edict of the Sultan, the fact that the official son-in-law has timed his rally or pow-wows to make it look as if they are "ordering" the police chief around.

Lamers!

However, although I do not agree with Tuanku's decision, as a Perakian I will not derhaka to my Sultan, no matter what His decision is. Datuk Nizar perhaps had miscalculated this when he said "Patik mohon derhaka".

One of the things perhaps the Pakatan Rakyat people must learn is this, get some PR gurus for the love of God! Or at least stay quiet and act like adults and stop playground arguments. Doing what seems to be the right thing may not be the best. This "derhaka" fiasco is one.

You guys are just giving the ruling regime ammunation. Sheesh.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Thoughts of late

Politics
Of late I have been troubled by the political turmoil in my home state of Perak. Sadder still is the obvious underhanded tactics of the ruling regime deployed to gain a slight majority in order to launch a coup of the State Assembly.

Whatever little respect I might have for BN is now gone. Poof! I may not be a bigshot. Just a Joe in the street. But I am a Joe who can vote. And with my limited clairvoyant skills, I predict that currency induced defections will not stop in Perak.

Linux and Free Software
RHEL 5.3 promises to bring a lot of goodies. Centos 5.3 is still in active development, but for those who cannot wait to see what are new, download Startcom Linux. Startcom Linux is a rebuild of the Source RPMs of RHEL with enabled multimedia features. I tried Startcom sometime back and it was rock solid. Unfortunately as it is based on RHEL (and Fedora Core 6), there were issues with my wifi dongle (a Zydas 1211 chipset) and while it perfomed admirably it was just no good for me.

Ardour, the venerable Free/Open Source audio workstation suite is closing its doors. Its project lead Paul Davis is now looking for a job after Ardour's longtime sponsor SAE decided to suspend its support indefinitely. Although I am not into AV stuff, I have read enough about it to know that it is a damn shame to lose such a valuable asset of the Free/Open Source universe.

Also the Free Software Magazine has just published its last issue.

And of course Microsoft is up to its tricks again in scaring another dumb company into paying into its protection racket.

And also, apparently Microsoft is afraid of Ubuntu Linux.

Zionism and such
The Gazan invasion by Israel was tragedy. Thousands of people lost their homes and many hundreds lost their lives. Who among us hasn't been touched by the Palestinians' plight? Sadly thugs who professed solidarity with the noble Palestinians chanted anti-Jewish slogans and performed many disgraceful acts against the Jewish people.

However, Zionism and the Jewish people are different. Zionism is a nationalistic political ideology that hides behind the facade of Judaism. It is like calling all Chinese communists or all Germans Nazis. How lame is that?

Also not all Palestinians are Muslims. No less than 10% are of the Christian faith. But lo, from the press one gets the feeling that it is a purely Jews vs Muslims conflict.

An interesting article (in Malay) is written by Hishamuddin Rais here detailing the differences between the ideology Zionism and the Jewish people. Now for those who read Malay, I will advice an open minded attitude if you should want to read it.

When I was in college, most of my teachers were from the Middle East. One of them, is from Palestine. I have heard much about the bad blood between the Jews and Palestinians from the local media and was intrigued enough to ask about that. I was as thick and politically insensitive as that!

What he told me was this; he has nothing against the Jews, fact was he has a few Jewish friends. What he and his brethren hate are the Zionists. Note the differences. Nobody likes an army that, whether it's a foreign one or one of our own; when they throw their weight around with fully loaded guns.

I am not pro-Jewish or anything. Heck I don't even know anyone's Jewish. We now live in the 21st century, but yet the ugly spectre of racism still haunts us. We have thousands of years of arts, philosophy and even the belief in a divine deity that love all humans, but yet there are many among us who would judge others based on their skin colour, religious beliefs or just look different.

Perhaps even with all the progress we humans have achieved and all the clever inventions we prided ourselves with, we are no different than the first ignorant peasant who decided to hate the guy in front of him just because he looked different.