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I screwed up the dns for geekwolf.com and geekwitch.com, which are supposed to go here…

It’s been fixed, and hopefully the domains will be back online within a few hours.

Nortel Strong Arms Open Source Vendor

Nortel Strong Arms Open Source Vendor

I was going to comment on this when the story first came out, but thought I would wait for this to inevitably happen. My company has an annex running on Asterisk (which Fonality’s system is based on) now, and we will likely be switching to it company-wide within the next year. While our current system isn’t Nortel, like its predecessor- it’s a closed-source proprietary system with terrible technical support that was discontinued by the manufacturer almost as soon as we bought it. There is no way in hell we would buy another proprietary phone system again.

With the exception of some hardware issues, not directly related to it, Asterisk is a dream come true for a lot of corporate IT/Telecom. departments. It is also running in a lot of geeks’ homes now (including mine). Frankly- if you’ve ever dealt with proprietary systems, and the limited configuration, logging, and reporting software available for them- Asterisk is a breeze. The great thing is- even if we buy an out-of-the-box system like Fonality’s PBXtra, if we aren’t happy with it- there are dozens of other vendors (along with my ability to just build a home-grown Asterisk system on a commodity server) that will work with the existing VoIP phones and equipment. That’s powerful stuff, especially for a company concerned about budget.

A Linux computer in every garage?

A Linux computer in every garage?

I’ve thought of something like this for many years, both as a way to improve safety, and as a means to provide “last mile” Internet access everywhere. Imagine if the on-board computers, linked wirelessly to each other, were also linked to the Internet via “ground stations” or other wireless technology? They would create a mobile grid/mesh network that would reach pretty much everywhere. Even in rural areas- the car at one farm would connect to the car at another nearby, which would connect to another, and so-on, and so-on and eventually they would connect somewhere with Internet access. Or- it would connect temporarily to a car going down a nearby highway, which would connect to a car in front of it (or behind it)… I think you can see the possibilities…

Of course- throw in VoIP technology and you would immediately eliminate cellular companies (at least for voice service- their Internet service would probably be key to this working).

I will say this in any case- I would much rather have a Linux computer running a key system in my car than Windows. I can just imagine coasting to a stop on a remote freeway because my car needs to be rebooted.

» Five crucial things the Linux community doesn’t understand about the average computer user

» Five crucial things the Linux community doesn’t understand about the average computer user | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com

I agree with a lot of what he says. As an avid Linux server user for many years, who converted to Desktop Linux (Ubuntu) about a half-year ago- I’ve been trying to look at Linux without a veil of geekdom. There is no doubt that Linux has improved very dramatically over the last couple of years from a user standpoint, but it definitely still needs a lot of polish before it becomes something one would want to see on Grandma’s computer, for example. My technical support guy at the office decided to try out Ubuntu this past week. He doesn’t have nearly as much experience as I do, but I thought he could handle it. He couldn’t. Granted he was installing it on a laptop, which gives even Windows a hard time, but still- it was almost a nightmare for me trying to talk him through it. The average user won’t Google for solutions to problems, won’t RTFM, and asking them to do something at a command prompt is almost like asking them to cut off a hand.

Windows (and especially Vista) SUCKS as far as I’m concerned for their reliability and security and their ability to do things I don’t want them to do on MY computer, while not allowing me to do what I DO want. But- even with all of their downfalls and problems- they are still more “idiot proof” than Linux.

Another problem I mentioned is laptops. Laptops always have proprietary hardware on them and are almost always an installation challenge for Linux. Chances are- if you somehow manage to get your laptops audio to work- you won’t be able to get its video or network card to. I won’t go into the hell of trying to get multiple monitors to work right. I also won’t go into trying to get WPA to work, even if you can get a wireless card to. This is more of a problem now because more and more people are moving to laptops as their prices drop and they discover how convenient they can be. As the article mentioned- hardware manufacturers need to get behind Linux and actually support it for Linux to gain widespread acceptance.