Regardless of the OS I’m using, I spend the majority of my time ssh’d to some linux server somewhere around the globe. Recently I’ve switched from using Ubuntu as my client-side OS and am now using a MacBook Pro. I have small Mac keyboard and a magic mouse.

I hope fring and skype work this out. It is not good for the users when companies such as Skype don’t play well with others. Think “What Would Google Do?” Google wants users to come to their service through any means. Regardless of how we use Skype, Skype is still benefiting from the use.

This Oracle TechCast which comes to us from an “undisclosed location” in Silcon Valley, offers us assurance that Oracle is committed to maintaining the free, open source, GPL’d community edition of MySQL. They have recently released version 5.5 and state that they are hiring within Oracle and will surpass Sun’s investment into the MySQL project. [...]

During my twenty-five or so years of technology consulting, I’ve witnessed many in-house software development projects. Large or small, too often companies tend to believe their needs are too special for any sort of off-the-shelf solution. The true stumbling block tends to fall into the category of “we’ve always done it this way”. Outdated processes and an unwillingness to change force overworked IT staff to build an in-house solution where feature creep is rampant and the project never meets expectations. At the same time, development costs skyrocket far beyond the cost of even the most expensive off-the-shelf alternative. If a close open source alternative exists, those same developers could work within the community to enhance the project and submit code back to the project for inclusion and benefit both the company and the community.

I have been a user of Synergy for several years. I first learned about Synergy on an episode of Hak5. It is very simple to set up whether the server or client OS is Linux, Mac or Windows. For the Systems Engineer, it is a godsend. As a Synergy user, I am very excited to read that the project has been picked back up and we will begin seeing new features.

I once thought of someday seeing an Adroid on the iPhone. Today, it has become a reality. Dev-Team member David Wong (aka Planetbeing) has finally ported the Android Operating System on the iPhone 2G.

There is no question that the h.264 standard is not “free”. A group known as MPEG_LA holds the patent and according to Wikipedia, it is free for end users to use until December 31, 2015.

As the Free Software Foundation states, it may be more widely published and implemented as a standard than flash, but it is no more “free”. I am most curious to know if Apple stands to gain financially from bullying the entire Internet community into using H.264 rather than flash?