M$: The FUD company

I don't know if I will ever we able to change my impression of Microsoft (Majji said that), but it seems more and more inevitable with the regular FUD tactics by this company. Today I read this article at slashdot and my inner-self hinted me that the study must be supported(Funded) by Microsoft (and it turns out it is). The articles describes a test in which they proved Windows Server 2003 outperforming Apache and Redhat Linux. This tests validity has not been questioned till nowbut the history is an interesting read.

I do regularly follow news about all the get the fact crap and FUD that M$ continues to spread spending $'s in it. I have never come across a NON MS funded report praising M$ perfomance over Linux Server. Did I also hear that SCO case was somehow related to this company? Grow Up M$! try making better software, you can refer to Linux's or other software's open source code for that :-) don't spend time in doing BC. You know IBM is gonna start the reverse process, if you don't stop.

I don't really think except of money anything would make a person work for such a company, and as better companies come up people are leaving from this company.
And I know this question gonna come, so let me answer in advance. I won't consider applying to M$ for a JOB. There are much better companies to apply for now.

RPMBuild using a source rpm

Disclaimer: This is just description of what I did for my purpose and what worked for me, if you need actual documentation see here. Anyways correction over some wrong understanding of the process are most welcome.

Digikam developers told me that FC3 was a 'broken distro' with regards to KDE development. Their basic suggestion is to change the distro for development to Suse, Mandrake(iva), Gentoo, Debian etc. The problem in KDE developement in FC3 is that the debug message like kdDebug and kdprintf (?) were patched up by FC3 KDE packagers to disable console printing. This will of course create lot of problem to the developers.

When I asked for an easier solution of this kdDebug problem( I was hopeful that changing some .h file in kde includes might help as changing the kdemacros.h did in case of visibility="visible" bug of kde 3.3.0-5), but it was not that simple. Renchi told me that I can get it to work by downloading source rpms of kdelibs removing the kdDebug patch and building those rpms. For an instant I felt why shouldn't I better install some other distro itself as all this seems to be very risky, in the sense of updating KDELibs which must be very important for KDE.

Finally I had to do what Renchi suggested, I downloaded the src rpm from rpmfind and proceeded as follows(mostly taking help of Renchi on IRC):[ I refer to rpm as kdelib.src.rpm ignoring the actual version number]
$ rpm2cpio kdelib.src.rpm > kdelibs.src.cpio
$ mkdir kdelib; cd kdelib;
$ mv kdelibs.src.cpio kdelib
$ cpio -i < kdelibs.src.cpio
#this unpacked the archive in to a bunch of .diff .patch and a single tar.bz2 file
Then edited kdelib.spec file to comment the line containing
#Patch2: kdelibs-3.0.0-ndebug.patch
and later a set of lines refering to Patch2 in a if else condition.
#%if %{debug} == 0
#%patch2 -p1 -b .debug
#%endif

Now I didn't go through much of what the documentation on site said as I was in hurry. I did.
$ cd ..
$ cp kdelib/* /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES;
$ cd kdelib
$ rpmbuild -ba kdelib.spec
and then things happened for some 2.5 hours or so on my decent hardware(Athlon 2800, 512 MB RAM). Finally I had 3 kdelibs.rpm(basic, devel and debug) ready in /usr/src/redhat/RPMS
I just installed them using the command

$ rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/kdelibs*.rpm
Thats all, I now have kdDebug working on my system.

My Review for Motorola A768i

I recently purchased Motorola A768i phone. I wanted to use it for some time before I gave a review so now the time may be perfect, I have used it for around 2 weeks.
[update: The volume issue is solved, the side keys do change volume, thanks vishnu, although I had learnt that already from the manual.]
To make is easy to read I categorize the review in to these categories.

(holding it like those TOI images;-))
Design & Hardware:
Merits:

• I liked the design mostly. Considering the device has a weight of 120 grams, its packed quite well in to a slim body.
• The flip works well. It automatically switches off the phone display on closing it.
• The display screen size is quite good for most practicle purposes.
• One of the side buttons allow you to see the time/battery/signal strength keeping the flip closed. That is a cool nature.
  
• The loudspeaker functionality is great.
• The memory(58 MB user space) look sufficient for most practicle purposes.

Demerits:

• The worst thing with this phone is the BATTERY. It drains out very fast.
• I feel the hard reboot key is not suitably places at there are chance of it getting pressed accidenly when kept in your pocket.
• Although I haven't felt the need of a key pad. I read somewhere that application requiring key board input are not usable with this phone.
• The camera looks excessively bad in quality. Not only its resolution is small (320x240) the photos look dark( for some unknown reasons). For any photography freak this sucks.

Software:
Merits:

• This phone host Linux which was one great reason for me to buy it. I wanted a Linux PDA for long.
• Supports Linux/JAVA applications. ( I have tried neither of them)
• Bluetooth/Ir/USBLAN based sharing are great feature for sending data to and fro from PC to phone and phone to phones.
• Music formats supported are : amr and mp3 (default player), Video Formats supported are: 3gp
• Moreover you can set any music file as ringtone. So you can save money you had to spent for downloading ringtones from your service provider.
  
• Full screen display is supported with video. and Audio player works well even after flip is closed(this is intitutive but even then it is good).
• Some usefull apps like File manager, Calender, Alarm, Notepad, and most importantly Pixcel browser are provided. Picsel browser may not have a very intitutive GUI but the functionalities are great, I can easily read HTML files with western-characters.
• Contact book is more or less good.
  
• Multitasking works well, you can open many apps at same time. You can note down something while talking to someone on the same phone!!!

Demerits:

• The default media player application is not good. Real player should have been a great replacement.
• Again Real Media format support would have been great.
• I am not sure but sometimes I feel the speakers don't work well. (something is buggy will verify and write it in details),

Overall I am satisfied with my cellphone, except for its battery. I would like to see motorola improving its reputation in terms of battery power.

Samsung Miniket.. A Nice Device to have with

The Device is one of the coollest one I have seen. Any computer geek would simply love to have this one. Don't know about others.



Well what's to great.
1) Diskless Camcoder (720x480 resolution video up to 1 Hr)
2) Digital Camera (800x600 shots, 10X zoom)
3) MP3 Player
4) Storage Device (USB connectivity and 256MB/512MB/1GB space options)
5) Webcam
6) Voice Recorder

And the greatest thing...
UCLinux in the backend.

For details: http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7933085076.html

Sony too entering Linux devices market?

From Slashdot:
PlayStation 3 HDD to ship with Linux!

Gamespot.com is reporting that Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, has disclosed in an interview that PlayStation 3 will natively run Linux. In fact, it will come bundled with it, if you purchase the HDD peripheral.

Now my wishes seems to be coming true. Why not a combination of a Cell processor(2-3 TFlops) with a mobile device running Linux inside. That should be the best smartphone+pda I can imagine. Should sony put more technology and make something as good as PSP(playstation portable) , but with size bit reduced and phone technology embedded, wont it be a killer device.

Waiting for an annoucement of Sony's entry to Linux PDA/Phones market.