JDPFu.com 2013

Every year or so, it is a good idea to check the WiFi networks around your home to see if your neighbors have decided to setup their WiFi on top of yours. Often, these wizard setups just pick a channel and use it without any regard for how many other access points are already on that channel or whether a channel overlaps others in use. In any WiFi location, having more than 1 access point on a channel - or even the nearby channels of the radio spectrum will reduce your bandwidth and will probably lead to dropped connections.

In the USA, there are 11 channels for 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networks to use. However, only 3 of those channels do not overlap, 1, 6, and 11. That means choosing any channel besides one of those three is to be avoided. In my neighborhood of single family homes with USA average sized lawns, I see 9 WiFi networks from my home office, one of them is mine. Here is a table created by a wireless router Wireless Site Survey function:

Oracle is effectively killing some of the most important, fantastic, open source and FLOSS tools that we’ve come to depend upon. This is really sad for the FOSS world. It will not be long before these currently open tools disappear because Oracle can’t directly make any money from supporting them. Let me explain.

Oracle is the New Evil Empire

Oracle has never been very friendly to FOSS or FLOSS, but since buying Sun Microsystems, they have effectively killed some of the most important projects.

The Almost Dead List – Some Already DEAD

• OpenSolaris
• ZFS
• MySQL
• InnoDB
• Java
• OpenJDK
• NetBeans
• VirtualBox
• Oracle VM
• GlassFish
• OpenOffice

Here’s a list of FOSS from Oracle that will probably be only useful for historical purposes soon. Most of the leaders for these projects that Oracle got with the Sun purchase have left Oracle after trying to fit into the new corporate culture. Full disclosure: I’ve owned Oracle AND Sun Microsystems stock over the years. Since the Sun purchase, I sold ORCL and haven’t owned any shares on over a year.

If you are currently using any of those tools, you need to make strategic plans for alternates. Oracle *will be killing them off. Some will be saved by creating new FLOSS projected based on the last open license version.

Alternatives for Some

• ZFS – BTRFS
• MySQL – Postgres
• Java – Ruby or C++ (or any number of lesser known languages like D for F#)
• VirtualBox – KVM or VMware Player
• OpenOffice – LibreOffice

Or you can just plan to purchase the right to use the tools at Enterprise Software Costs. Not cheap.

I’m not actively using most of the software listed above except VirtualBox, OpenOffice and MySQL. For those, I have alternatives, but like almost everyone else, change isn’t easy until it is forced on us.

I’m not anti-corporations, but Oracle has not been a good steward and I have no reason to believe they will change. Just look at the handling of the OpenSolaris shutdown. I was a member of a local OpenSolaris UG. The leader was a well known and respected former Sun Systems Engineer, currently working for Oracle. I miss the UG. Oracle has proven they cannot be completely trusted. They are willing to change the rules.

Without the GPL, BSD and similar FOSS licenses, we’d be completely screwed. Now is a good time to donate to the EFF or FSF. A $20 donation will go a long way.

Here’s a link to the Mega List of Set Top Media Playback Devices in google docs.

Many thanks to Tekzilla’s Veronica Belmont for starting this list and to the crowd for filling in the details. There is so much data inside that it cannot be copy/pasted from google-docs. File—Save As …. is required. It really isn’t that extensive … the cells are A1 … T73 when I looked today.

Devices currently listed include:

• Roku HD, XD, XD|S
• WD TV Live HD, WD TV Live Plus HD
• Tivo Series 3 HD/HD XL
• HD Fox T2
• Boxee Box
• Popbox
• Nintendo Wii with Homebrew channel & apps: www.wiibrew.org
• Popcorn Hour A-110
• Popcorn Hour C-200
• Logitech Revue
• Xbox 360 (Slim)
• PS3 (Slim)
• HDI Dune
• Apple TV 2nd Generation
• TiVo Premier XL
• Apple Mac Mini 2010 (HDMI)
• Sony Network Media Player With Wi-Fi
• Xtreamer

MediaGate and other similar competitors are missing. Software-based media players can’t be included, so Windows7 Media Center, Linux MediaTomb, MythTV and other similar tools aren’t listed either.

Seems that taking this data and making a search-able web DB would be fairly trivial. For example, I want only 1080p and netflix devices – don’t show any others. Hummm.

Today I visited the skype.com website to get a newer version of Skype for my Nokia N800. The download page has been removed for that and the N810 devices. The N900 has a download, but I don’t want to risk it.

As long as Skype on the N800 continues to work, I’m not too worried. Just like many people, I’m unhappy with my telecom provider.

• They are too costly. They think they compete with AT&T on price, not Vonage or some other $9/month VoIP services
• Calls are dropped mid-sentence
• Connectivity disappears weekly

Came across an interface that displays a list of cable and broadcast channels for your area by zipcode.

It lists cable QAM and ATSC channels.

I was checking to see when a HD-HomeRun CableCARD tuner that was promised to be on sale in May 2010 would finally become available. Seems it isn’t shipping yet. Last report was the device was going to CableLabs for testing. That was July 14th.

There is a competitor CableCARD tuner card from Ceton, that started shipping this month. It is a quad-tuner for any cable system in the USA. It is too pricey for me at $399.

Each of us use a computer for various reasons. Some just want a system that works, without any hassle. Most of us want to run specific software, work with specific file types, connect with everyone else, and possibly just do what the people around us are doing to be the same.

I’ll be as honest as I can and put the reasons in order.

Below are a few incidents that I’m personally aware of which impacted a few different projects. Some are from my personal desktop to production dispatching systems with 20K+ users to some that impacted a space shuttle launch data.

People like Top 10 Lists, but I could think of only 9 near disasters. Perhaps something interesting will happen this week? ;)

Ooops – beep, beep, beep ….

I’ve been interested in saving some money on home phone service since around 2001 when I dropped the babybell service for a VoIP solution. Over the years, I’ve switched providers and ended up with the cable company phone service to get the best quality for the buck. Now they’ve raised the prices and I’m looking again. I’m not interested in Vonage at $25/month when a $3/month plan will cover me. Further, I already own the necessary equipment to get this all working. You may already own the equipment too.

It always seemed that a $3/month SkypeOut account could be linked to a PBX (Asterisk/FOSS) to make this happen. A few months ago, I asked about this on Lifehacker, but didn’t get any acceptable answers.

How to Ask a Smart Question.

After reading a 2 pg rant from a new Linux user complaining that his questions were not being answered, I did a little googling and found a post on how to ask a smart question. I added a link here mainly so I could review it later, when I needed to ask a smart question.

If you work in media or IT, you’ve probably already heard about ACTA, Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

If not, here’s a summary to get you up to speed on it. Hopefully, you’ll contact your Senator, Congress-person and President and let them know you don’t like attempts to bypass your existing methods to pass laws.