foss – Modpress

Hvorfor avisers iPad-udgaver flopper og altid vil floppe

Som Felix Salmon skriver på Reuters.com i anledning af Murdoch-imperiets store iPad-satsning The Daily og dens tidlige død:

When the iPad was first announced, there were lots of dreams about what it could achieve, and how rich its content could be. But in hindsight, it’s notable how many of the dreamers came from the world of print. Web people tended to be much less excited about the iPad than print people were, maybe because they knew they already had something better. The web, for instance, doesn’t need to traffic in discrete “issues” — if you subscribe to the New York Times, you can read any story you like, going back decades. Whereas if you subscribe to a publication on a tablet, you can read only one issue at a time.

When the iPad launched, it allowed people to do things they could never do with a print publication: watch videos, say. But at the same time the experience was still inferior to what you could get on the web, which iterates and improves incrementally every day. The iPad then stayed still — the technology behind iPad publications is basically the same as it was two years ago — even as the web, in its manner, predictably got better and better.

One of the things that confused me, when The Daily launched, was the way in which it failed to leverage the wealth of rich and valuable content available within News Corp. You couldn’t watch episodes of The Simpsons, you couldn’t get access to amazing footage from Avatar, you couldn’t read exclusive extracts from HarperCollins books. Murdoch was happy to spend a large eight-figure sum on building custom-made content for the new publication; he even shelled out for a Superbowl ad. But he never managed to use The Daily as a means of bringing his company’s already-existing content to life in new ways for a new platform, and I suspect that iPad constraints are part of the reason.

Fordi en låst, “kureret” platform i sidste ende aldrig vil kunne konkurrere med et helt åbent system, hvor alle kan lave mere eller mindre, hvad de har lyst til. Folk har ingen grund til at vælge den lukkede og begrænsede iPad-avis, når avisernes almindelige hjemmesider allerede har langt bedre tilbud.

Via Boing Boing.

Overophedning af bærbar med Ubuntu 11.04

Jeg har en i grunden ret god bærbar computer (en Acer Aspire S740), der dog det sidste halve års tid har lidt under, at den bliver ganske umanerligt varm. Batteriet holder heller ikke længere så lang tid, som det burde. I nogle måneder har jeg troet, at det var fordi der samles støv ved blæseren, så den ikke ventilerer ordentligt. Men så kom jeg til at zappe ind på OMGUbuntu, hvor det fremgår, at det handler om en fejl i den måde, hvorpå Linux-kernen håndterer strømstyringen for Intel-CPU’er og indbyggede Intel-grafikkort:

As of kernel 2.6.38 up until 3.1 (still present) there has been a problem of power regression but besides this I had slight problem with overheating. Regarding overheating in beginning I tried reporting bugs, tried different Thinkfan configurations, blamed proprietary software such as Adobe Flash for spiking up CPU temperature, however this problem was somewhat solved. After numerous battery calibrations and as these didn’t work in the end for battery life getting poorer with each day, I just blamed the factor that notebook was getting pretty old (~3 years).

Then the consumer woke up inside of me and I thought it was time to get new notebook. I laid my eyes upon ThinkPad X1 thing of beauty except one mayor drawback, its price. I did some reading on X1 and interesting enough, X300 comes with Core Duo 2 L7100 but overheating + power regression was still present even on latest Intel Core I* series. Reading this killed the consumer and woke up the hacker side.

Den korte og ikke-tekniske forklaring er, at der i Ubuntu 11.04 blev introduceret en fejl i kernens måde at håndtere strømstyring for Intel-CPU’er. Denne fejl betyder, at computeren bruger for meget strøm og derfor bliver for varm. Dette betyder selvfølgelig også, at batteriet holder kortere tid pr. opladning. Men hvad kan man gøre ved det?

Det korte svar er, at der er lavet en rettelse i Linux-kernen, som formentlig vil komme med i Ubuntu 12.04, og som løser problemet.

Det lidt længere og mere tekniske svar er, at man kan tvinge kernen til at styre strømmen korrekt ved at introducere nogle parametre til kernen i opstartsmenuen. Hvis du har Ubuntu 11.04 og du har en bærbar med dette problem, kan du gøre som følger:

Åbn en terminal og åbn filen “/etc/default/grub” i din favorit-editor:
```
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
```
Erstat den linje, der begynder med GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT med denne:
```
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1"
```
Det, som denne linje gør, er at tvinge systemet til at bruge strømstyring (pcie_aspm=force) og får grafikkortet til at bruge mindre strøm.
Når du har gjort dette og har gemt filen, kan du i terminalen skrive:
```
sudo update-grub
```

Alt. hvad du nu behøver at gøre er at genstarte, og problemet med overophedning vil være løst. På min egen computer faldt det gennemsnitlige strømforbrug i “tomgang” (blank skærm som pauseskærm) fra ca. 17W til ca. 12W, hvilket er en reduktion på mere end 30%. Her et par timer efter mærkes det meget tydeligt: Computeren er overhovedet ikke varm. Og ja, det er lidt en skam at man som forbruger stadig er nødt til at forholde sig til den slags, men det har meget at gøre med den fart, hvormed GNU/Linux-systemerne og især Linux-kernen bevæger sig i disse år.

Fri software vs Open Source – hvad er forskellen?

Ikke mine ord, men læs denne artikel af Luis Falcón:

You write Free Software because you want to contribute to the community. It’s an act of social activism. It’s about sharing and helping out.

This April I got a mail from Chris Larsen, a doctor working in Rwanda, where he was asking OpenERP the scripts to upgrade to 6.x, since they needed to have the latest Medical version. The response he got was that the scripts were not publicly available anymore. If they wanted to upgrade, they would have to pay a support contract to OpenERP. This is the typical example of a vendor lock-in. They change the rules (even the license) and then the user becomes their prisoner.

That very same day I started the implementation of GNU Health (previously called “medical”) in the Tryton platform. Believe me, this was frustrating and it meant a lot of work, but I had to guarantee the future for the health centers.

That effort paid off. Today Health (GNU Health) is an official GNU package (health.gnu.org), the United Nations University has adopted it, and everyday health centers are downloading it from the GNU official site. Obviously, the GNU Health version that today is an official GNU package runs under Tryton, a community-based project.

I just got an email today that a health center in RDC ( Democratic Republic of Congo ) after testing the functionality, will be using GNU Health under Tryton.

Open Source has become the refuge for some speculators, who apply digital lock-ins, by, for example, not releasing the upgrade scripts. This is not fair. It’s not ethical. It’s not thinking about the community. It’s being selfish and greedy. Lastly, it’s not respecting the underlying software.

OpenERP and Tryton need Python, Postgresql and GNU/Linux. If Python or Postgresql would impose a support contract fee to be able to upgrade, they would not exist. So, none of us have the right to break the evolution chain.

So, a word of advice . Make sure you use Free Software. This is more than just a license. They should be community-based projects.

Link: Free Software versus Open Source (via Linux-News).

Arduino – the free hardware revolution

Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD from gnd on Vimeo.

En Arduino er en mikroprocessor, som har den egenskab, at den er usædvanligt nem at komme i gang med. Den er også 100% fri og åben hardware i den forstand, at specifikationerne er helt åbne, og du kan designe din helt egen variant, hvis du har lyst. Folk har brugt Arduinoer til at bygge robotter, blinkende lamper til tøj, 3D-printere, musikinstrumenter og meget mere.

Herunder ses for eksempel en Lilypad, der primært er beregnet til at sy på tøj:

LilyPad

Du kan finde en liste af Arduino-relaterede projekter her. Det er en teknologi med mange kreative muligheder, som det også fremgår af filmen.

PS: Hvis du bor i Aarhus-området og er interesseret i at lege med Arduino, bilder jeg mig ind, at der stadig er nogen ude i OSAA, som man kan betale for, efterhånden som man bruger dem. Tag ud til et af Hack Aarhus‘ møder en tirsdag kl. 17.00 og tal med folk om, hvordan du kommer i gang.