Mailbag
This month's answers created by:
[ Sayantini Ghosh, Amit Kumar Saha, Ben Okopnik, Dave Richardson, Kapil Hari Paranjape, René Pfeiffer, Neil Youngman, Rick Moen ]...and you, our readers!
Gazette Matters
lang="utf-8" makes Firefox use an ugly font
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
Sat, 17 May 2008 13:13:14 -0400
----- Forwarded message from Benno Schulenberg <bensberg@justemail.net> -----
Date: Sat, 17 May 2008 14:56:19 +0200 From: Benno Schulenberg <bensberg@justemail.net> Subject: lang="utf-8" makes Firefox use an ugly font To: editor@linuxgazette.net
Hello editor,
In the source of many of the HTML pages of the Linux Gazette, the <HTML> tag contains 'lang="utf-8" xml:lang="utf-8"'. This has the effect of making Firefox think that this is some exotic language, and it falls back to a simple, smaller, uglier, unaliased font. For example on https://linuxgazette.net/150/index.html .
On https://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ the W3 suggests that the <HTML> tag contain 'xml:lang="en" lang="en"'. When I replace the existing attributes with these, then the page gets shown fine for me.
(The possible reason that only I see this problem is that I've set Firefox to always use my chosen font, and ignore the fonts of the website. This works fine on almost all Web sites. Only on Japanese sites and on Linux Gazette do I still get this ugly unaliased font.)
Regards,
Benno
----- End forwarded message -----
[ Thread continues here (6 messages/7.75kB) ]
Linux Gazette Indonesia
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
Thu, 15 May 2008 14:54:15 -0400
----- Forwarded message from "Triyan W. Nugroho" <triyan.wn@gmail.com> -----
Date: Fri, 16 May 2008 02:21:54 +0800 From: "Triyan W. Nugroho" <triyan.wn@gmail.com> To: editor@linuxgazette.net Subject: Linux Gazette IndonesiaHi guys,
I would like to announce that Linux Gazette Indonesia has been moved to its new home, https://linuxgazette.ailabs.web.id.
This project is still low in progress, and still considered as a personal project, which is updated only in my spare time. Anyone who is interested to join, please let me know. I will be very happy to proofread and publish your translation.
I hope this little contribution will give benefit to the community, especially for Indonesian people right here.
Best regards,
Triyan W. Nugroho
Linux Gazette Indonesia
----- End forwarded message -----
[ Thread continues here (2 messages/2.25kB) ]
Our Mailbag
Using Ubuntu 8.04 on Notebook?
Amit k. Saha [amitsaha.in at gmail.com]
Sun, 18 May 2008 14:51:36 +0530
Hello all,
I have installed Ubuntu 8.04 (32-bit) beta on my 32-bit notebook and Ubuntu 8.04 (64-bit) on a friend's 64-bit laptop. I am using Acer laptops.
In both cases, using the touchpad to click (single/double-click) is pretty troublesome, and needs a rather "hard" hit on the pad. I have tried setting the mouse preferences similar to the one on Ubuntu 7.04 (which I use), but to no avail.
Any hints?
Regards, Amit
-- Amit Kumar Saha
[ Thread continues here (3 messages/3.46kB) ]
"Open Invention Network"
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
Sun, 25 May 2008 09:11:08 -0400
Forwarding this exchange between Rick and myself, with his explicit permission - an interesting bit of info on the Licensing Wars.
Rick Moen wrote:> Quoting Ben Okopnik (ben@linuxmafia.com): > > > Hey, Rick - > > > > I've just been contacted by these people: > > > > https://www.openinventionnetwork.com/ > > > > They want to write something for us. [ ... ] What's your take on this? > > They're legit. I think the main reason they smell funny is that their > main assets -- the reason for their existence, a set of software patents > -- inherently smells funny. > > Back in the 1990s, there was a firm called Commerce One, which through > acquisitions picked up a bunch of patents related to online > communications, mostly business-to-business and e-commerce stuff. They > filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004, and the court approved a sale > of the patent portfolio to a subsidiary of Novell. > > My impression is that Novell at that point woke up and said "We just > acquired what?" They really didn't want to become patent barons, and > saw from the SCO fiasco that they wanted to keep clear of, and > preferably disarm, the more scumsucking elements of the "intellectual > property" ranching business. So, they talked with IBM, Philips, Red > Hat, and Sony, and got them all to pitch in patents and money to launch > Open Invention Network to hold contributed patents (including the > Commerce One portfolio) and licence them royalty-free to any firm that > in return promises patent peace towards Linux and a list of > Linux-related codebases (Apache, Eclipse, Evolution, Fedora Directory > Server, Firefox, GIMP, GNOME, KDE, Mono, Mozilla, MySQL, Nautilus, > OpenLDAP, OpenOffice.org, Open-Xchange, Perl, PostgreSQL, Python, Samba, > SELinux, Sendmail, and Thunderbird). > > There's not a lot that stands absolutely in the way of them turning > evil, but it's reassuring that Red Hat's Mark Webbink approves of them > highly. See: https://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2006/04/14/#oin > > I hate to lose my cynic credentials, but I'd say you should eagerly > invite an article submission! >
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * https://LinuxGazette.NET *
[ Thread continues here (3 messages/8.08kB) ]
Interesting presentation about the economics of Open Source
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
Sun, 4 May 2008 22:41:40 -0400
https://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/247
First I've ever heard of Yochai Benkler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yochai_Benkler); fascinating perspective, and a really good answer to the perennial "but where's the money in that stuff?" Heady wine for anyone desperately trying to get a clue about where we're going with this stuff, too.
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * https://LinuxGazette.NET *
Recent Debian SSH vulnerability
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
Fri, 16 May 2008 20:27:48 -0400
Yeah, it's all the news now, so I figured I'd kick in my bit. 
As those of you on staff are aware, we use SSH keyauth for our staff
accounts. I've been running some checks for weak keys (for any of you
that want to check your own,
https://security.debian.org/project/extra/dowkd/dowkd.pl.gz is a
detector), and - whoops! We had a few in the list. Gone now, of course.
(Amit, please revise your keys and send them to me.
We now return you to your scheduled programming.
-- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * https://LinuxGazette.NET *
[ Thread continues here (15 messages/19.78kB) ]
Networking Problem on Hardy Heron
Deividson Okopnik [deivid.okop at gmail.com]
Sat, 17 May 2008 11:34:55 -0300
Anyone tried Hardy Heron (Ubuntu) yet?
I just installed Hardy on my new machine, first Linux distro on that machine, and I couldn't get my network to work. I dual-boot (with XP) and, on WinXP, it's working OK. My network is pretty simple - each machine has its own static IP (no DHCP). On Hardy, I configured the IP via the network config (the same IP I use on that machine for Windows XP), but nothing works. I can't ping other machines on the network, other machines can't ping me, and Hardy is not asking for any driver or anything.
Any clue on what could I check to try to solve that problem?
[ Thread continues here (10 messages/13.21kB) ]
Followup: Sendmail and capacity
Jim Jackson [jj at franjam.org.uk]
Thu, 1 May 2008 12:21:25 +0100 (BST)
[[[ This is a followup to a discussion in issue 150. https://linuxgazette.net/150/misc/lg/sendmail_and_capacity.html -- Kat ]]]
> I strongly suspect that it was a case of "Works Fine For Me".
And in similar vein, how many Web sites load and look OK when demo'd on a LAN but suck to high heaven when accessed over ADSL, never mind a dialup connection! But you can't legislate against stupidity.
