Take a Look at MarketingFix.com

I see that John of Inluminent fame is starting MarketingFix.  It's "independent e-marketing news (until we sell out)".  There's lots and lots of good stuff here.  Recommended.

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How Few Colors Would You Like with Your Linux Sir?

I've been wanting to replace my Thinkpad X20 laptop for like forever now and since Xmas is drawing near I was actually considering it.  My current lust is for a Dell C400 but when I checked out Linux for Laptops, I saw this:

Summary: The C400 works well with GNU/Linux, but to use high-resolution graphics with more than 256 colours you either need to fiddle with your XFree86 installation and two related Linux kernel modules or purchase a proprietary X server (which has it's own buglets, that you can't fix). Detailed instructions for installing XFree86 are provided below.

Laptops affected by the I830 with XFree86 problem: This page also summarises the problems with Intel's i830 graphics chipset under XFree86 with some laptops. These problems are known to affect the Dell Latitude C400, Dell Latitude X200(?), Dell Inspiron 2600, some models of the Sony PCG R505 series, the Asus S1 series (problem seems to be solved with BIOS rev 0201) and the Asus L1400, and the HP omnibook XT 6050. If you are not interested in the C400, but only in the XFree86 issues with the Intel i830 graphics chipset, proceed to the challenge section. There may be even more i830-based notebooks that have this problem, watch out for an XFree message saying

No matching modes found in 
the configuration file. Only 
the following modes are supported 
by the bios in this bpp: 640x480

Laptops that are equipped with the newer I845 chipset have the same problem. [ Go ]

Crap.  Smooth move Intel.  Good call.  It looks like it's either buy the Xig option or seriously hack around in XFree 86.  And the reports of fixes are sporadic and inconsistent (seems to work here and not there type of thing).  I think I'll pass and stick with something that may be old but still works.  Oh and lest anyone tell me "But OS-X doesn't have this problem ...".  Yes I know.  I spent the past two nights working on the couch on an iBook but the keyboard still continues to suck green toads.  And the less than wise choices in terms of ALT+TAB support and lack of colors in Terminal don't impress me  (yeah I know about termGL). 

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IBM Linux versus Microsoft .NET

An interesting account of this over on the Boston Diaries.

This was thankfully the last round of a rather pointless debate—the Microsoft guy kept claiming to be too technical to answer any questions about pricing or licensing or anything (although he did say he didn't like subscription model of RedHat tech support—this from Microsoft? Who is trying to force a subscription model on software?) and apparently the IBM guy was here in an “unofficial” capacity and did not know Linux all that well (he lost the TCO argument to Microsoft! How sad is that?). [ Go ]

It sounds like IBM sent a very, very, very clue free individual to this.  "RSH" Sheesh.

Oh and "SAN" means "Storage Area Network" not "System Area Network" and there is a difference between a SAN and a LAN.

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If You'd Like More Scott .... (And I don't know why you would)

I put my main writing page back up on the FuzzyGroup web site.  This page has much, but not all, of my pre-blog writing.  [ Go ]

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Programming with Pear : A Short, Basic Tutorial

If you haven't worked with the Pear database abstraction class then you really should.   Now I know that everyone says that and we often don't bother -- "too hard", "it's a pain", etc.  It's really not.  Here's how I learned how to do it and what I recommend. 

1. Write a simple PHP app to do nothing more than list the contents of a table using the MySQL native functions.
2. Go through and convert it line by line to the Pear equivalents.

Here are the examples ...

==> Read Story <==

Note: This is less of a tutorial and more of paired examples.  Still at least I found it very useful since it clearly points out the difference between Pear and non-Pear database coding in PHP.  And, yes Virgina, the # of lines of code is about the same.

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Cool.  PHP Everywhere Liked an Article of Mine

I know that some of you php folk reading this probably saw it already on PHP Everywhere but "Picking a Real World Release Date" is not just PHP specific.  [ Go ]

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Deny, Deny, Deny

I see that Alan Greenspan made this statement recently:

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Wednesday that, although business conditions have temporarily hit "a soft patch," nothing is fundamentally wrong with the nation's economy. [ Go ]

I'd actually both agree and disagree with him here.  Yes there is nothing "fundamentally wrong" with the U.S. economy.  But it's a lot worse than a soft patch.  And, while I'm mostly focused on technology, as I talk to others outside tech, it's very clear that this is a cross sector problem.  Sigh.  Greenspan either doesn't get it or doesn't want to admit it. 

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