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Linux

LinuxWorld Conference & Expo 2008

This year, 2008, I decided to register and go to LinuxWorld. It is in August and my kids are not at school so it was easy to manage. Also, I had to go to the French consulate to get a birth certificate for my daughter. In other words, I had the chance to do two things at once!

I found it quite interesting to hear that many people were not too excited about the event. Many of the people walking around are like me: they themselves sell their own Linux solution. In other words, they are not going to be customers. I had the chance to talk with Roger Levi, the Vice President of the Open Platform ...

AJAX, CSS, HTML, XML, SOAP, LAMP… and now Web 2.0?

Dear reader,

Yes. With all these terms, it is quite easy to get lost.

As a developer, my skills are quite extensive. I started with Logo, learned assembly language, BASIC, C, C++… and all these other languages in between, those that most people pass by such as Ada, Eiffel, Icon… And the languages you kind of have to learn because you’re in it: Bourne Shell, configuration files for 100 different software, Makefile, etc.

And once you know all of these languages, you think you’re done. Well… Not quite!

The web has got it’s own set of languages! It

Is the Open Source costing us money?

More and more, enterprises make use of Open Source software. Why is this a good idea for your company as well?

Many people are scared to do the move. The result is very costly. When you use proprietary software, each time you need an upgrade, you need to pay for it. And in most cases, it is not just once, but a number of times equal to the number of computers you own or the number of staff that use the software. A $200 software may sound really cheap. But if you have 1000 staff, it makes it $200,000.

This is of course very good business for the vendors. However, many small companies just ...

GRUB error 16

Today I had a problem with one of our computers. It did not want to boot. The boot loader is called GRUB. Most Linux distributions now use GRUB which is much more advanced than LILO and some other boot loaders.

GRUB is great for several reasons:

Order Made!® has its own website

After a couple of months, we finally released the Order Made! website.Order Made! Demo Page

Order Made! is an online system for ordering food from restaurants. This isn’t new, others have done it before, however, Order Made! uses our Instant Cart technology. This means: it is very fast! So fast, that customers will return to the ordering page over and over again. All the better for the restaurant owners using Order Made!

And it is not just fast, it is also very easy to use. Customers can order an item by clicking on it. Voilà! For the few items that require you to select a specific ingredient ...

Turn Watcher 1.3 is out!

Made to Order Software Corporation is proud to announce the 1.3 release of Turn Watcher, an Initiative and Effects Tracker... and more!

Version 1.3 includes many bug fixes making the interface run faster especially with a large number of combatants.

Also, we added support to display a second window with the characters and monsters. Window that you can show to your users on a second monitor! The Heads Up Display or HUD is a window with limited viewing so you can show what you choose to show to your players.

Turn Watcher is supported on all of the following systems:

  • Microsoft Windows ...

Microsoft: Vista Worries Cause Businesses to Consider Macs and Linux

 

Eweek reports:

“A recent survey shows that 44 percent of businesses are considering Mac OS and Linux rather than switching to Vista.”

We are seeing the barbarians at the gate now, and the MS empire begins to show its first signs of crumbling. And it’s been a long time coming, I’m afraid. It goes to show you how ineffective the US anti-trust laws are, and how the free market is self-regulating.

It seems that Microsoft is very out of touch of what their customers really want, and is full steam ahead using its outdated business model of forced upgrading. Looks ...

Server Switch!

For the last few days, Doug and I have been working on switching from our old server to our new server. The new one is with JohnCompanies.com that offers VPS (Virtual Private Servers). It was a nice surprise, the computer we have access to has 8 processors running at 3Ghz (”proven” by the Linux Bogomips computation: 5985.31) And so far, I’ve seen about 0.8% of one processor being used. The rest is 100% idle most of the time!

Cross-platform software development and engineering

Well, It certainly seems that Dell and HP are defining the trend of the future by offering their computers with Linux pre-installed. For software developers to catch up to this trend, .NET and other mono-platform development tools will not cut it! Retooling of code is inevitable so when you are faced with this crossroads do not spend the time and money on a band aid. Check out molib and sandbox and learn how your software development efforts can go cross platform once and for all! Save expensive development hours, improve the quality of your code, and make your code base more safe and secure. ...

Turn Watcher 1.2 is out!

Made to Order Software Corporation is proud to announce the 1.2 release of Turn Watcher, an Initiative and Effects Tracker...and more!

Version 1.2 now supports spell and other effect tracking. A optional new window appears at the bottom of the main window that allows you to add, edit and remove effects for the currently highlighted combatant. When an effect expires on the current combatant's turn, you are alerted and asked if you wish to delete the expired effect.

You may also add effects to multiple characters at once by highlighting them, then clicking the "A" button. ...