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Issue 98

From Issue #98
June 2002

Jun 01, 2002  By Various
 in
LJ Index, Stop the Presses and more.
We're wondering howmany haikus it will takebefore this is over

Our nominee for Free Software of the Week is www.oblomovka.com/code/haiku/haiku. It's a Python script that lets you find accidental haiku in any text file, as we did in the LDP HOWTOs way back in 2000. One Linux mailing list contained these:

Well, Junkbuster won't let me view it. I'm sure it'sfascinating, though.

I would rather chewmy leg off than use Netscapeweb servers again.

Solaris weeniesand retards: /opt/foo should be/usr/lib/foo dammit.

Orinoco hasby far the best range, and avery nice driver.

Bush's passion forliterary works was sparkedat an early age.

You'll believe us. Youhave no choice. INTERACTIVECOMPUTER SERVICE.

Nielsen has nevercreated a beautifuldesign in his life.

A section in thecathedral bar areais reserved for us.

Even Richard Stallman is a (haiku) poet and doesn't know it. From the gnu.org site, this haiku about the economic harm of proprietary software:

One person gains one dollar by destroying twodollars' worth of wealth.

Our nominee for Free Software of the Month is “mencal—a menstruation calendar—a program looking like the Linux program cal. The difference is that in mencal some days are colored red”: mencal.kyberdigi.cz/english.html.

—Don Marti

High Definition Linux

:What's the best looking Linux you've ever seen? Well, if you're among the shrinking number of people who haven't been stunned by HDTV, you may have already seen it. Acrodyne Industries (www.acrodyne.com), the television transmitter division of Sinclair Broadcasting, has a history of industry firsts, and the latest is embedding Linux in their latest transmitters.

Andrew Domonkos, principal systems software engineer with AI, says,

We are the first in our industry to introduce a television transmitter system using Linux as its operating system. Our-top-of-the-line HDTV transmitter series, the Quantum, uses an industrial PC running Red Hat Linux in a network server configuration. We chose Linux for both its reliability as well as its networking potential. Running anything else would be unacceptable; when a TV broadcaster goes off the air due to a system controller problem, the loss in revenue can be tremendous.

A paper by Acrodyne's Marc Polovick explains:

Linux (which is internet synonymous) is a UNIX-based OS and provided a valued starting point to this requirement. It was the intent of the Quantum designers to use UNIX as it was designed to be used, in a distributed processing “server/client” environment, a real-time/object-oriented data driven system architecture. A user-friendly GUI is provided and displayed through one large LCD display device. This intuitive graphics-based interface has been designed to be mimicked and provide secure “remote anywhere” monitoring capabilities that are network accessible in almost every network environment.

Quantum's User-Friendly GUI

At the receiving end, Linux has become a common operating system in set-top boxes as well. In fact, National Semiconductor recently created Linux4.TV, “Where open-source Linux meets interactive television”--for engineers working on products that use the company's Geode SC1200 integrated processor and SP1SC10 development platform.

More proof that Linux just keeps looking better.

—Doc Searls

LJ Index—June 2002

  1. Percentage of record label audits found to have underpaid artists: 99.99

  2. Thousands of cases from which the above numbers were derived: 9

  3. Number of cases in the same group in which the artist was overpaid by the label: 1

  4. Millions of dollars required to produce a hit record: .5

  5. Number of families followed in a 17-year study of TV and violence: 707

  6. Range of chance that those watching seven or more hours per week of TV in their formative years would later commit a violent act: 16-116

  7. Billions of dollars grossed by Sony in record sales: 4.6

  8. Billions of dollars grossed by Sony in electronics sales: 40

  9. Percentage of profit margin of the record industry in 1994: 30

  10. Range in percentage of profit margin of the record industry in 2002: 8-10

  11. Percentage of the American population using the Internet in September 2001: 54

  12. Millions of Americans using the Internet in September 2001: 143

  13. Percentage of American children aged 5 to 17 using computers at home and school: 90

  14. Percentage of American teenagers using the Internet: 75

  15. Thousands of dollars Winnebago Industries expected to pay for a Microsoft Corp. Exchange upgrade: 150

  16. Thousands of dollars paid by Winnebago for a Linux e-mail system, mostly by upgrading the company IBM mainframe: 26

  17. Percentage of mainframe MIPS configured for Linux among all shipped by IBM in Q4 2001: 11

  18. Size in square kilometers of the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica at the end of 2001: 3,250

  19. Weight in billions of tons of the Larsen B ice shelf at the end of 2001: 500

  20. Average temperature (Celsius) increase at the Larsen B ice shelf over the past 50 years: 2.5

  21. Years over which the Larsen B ice shelf is known to have been stable: 1,800

  22. Months it took in 2002 for the Larsen B ice shelf to disintegrate from warming: 2

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