Of special note was our keynote speaker. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd voiced his support for our mission, extending deductible gift recipient status to all donations made to us. Also in attendance was the Assistant Treasurer and other representatives of state and federal government.

Myself and other members of the OLPC Australia team were fortunate enough to meet with Kevin before the official proceedings commenced. He took the time to converse individually with each of us. I related my experiences in Dhalinybuy, where every child has their own computer on the Internet. This ratio of 1:1 access is almost unheard of even in city schools. I was pleased to see one of our anecdotes make it into his address, not very long after our conversation.

It’s an indescribable feeling knowing that you’re on the radar of the highest political office in the land. We are a small team and have a long way to go, but I firmly believe that we are on track to empower remote communities across Australia.

©2010 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

For those who don’t know yet, in March I started full-time as the Technical Co-ordinator at One Laptop per Child Australia. This basically means that I manage the technology surrounding the XO laptops, XS server and so on.

We are in East Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, this week for OLPC deployments, as well as training in Yirrkala School and the Yirrkala Homelands Learning Centres (HLCs).

There are eight HLCs in all, spread over a wide area. The closest one is close to two hour’s drive away from Yirrkala, almost entirely on dirt road. Yirrkala itself is quite remote - about 13 hours drive (again, almost entirely on dirt) from Darwin. It’s generally easier to fly to these locations (which takes at least four hops if you’re coming from Sydney), especially right now as a tropical cyclone (which barely missed us a month ago when we were out this way) destroyed many of the roads.

In collaboration with the University of Western Sydney (UWS), and with some assistance from the Northern Territory Department of Education and Training (NTDET), we have formed teams and spread out over the eight HLCs to work with children, teachers, schools and communities.

I’ll have to go into my work at Yirrkala School at a later time, but here at the HLCs we have managed some impressive feats, if I do say so myself! For instance:

• this is to the best of my knowledge the world’s first deployment of the new XO-1.5 devices, and we’re doing it across all eight HLCs at once
• children can write in their own language, as we installed Yolngu Matha fonts
• we have taught teachers and students to create their own e-books using Scratch, using pictures they take with the camera and content we loaded onto the XOs beforehand

In addition, I worked with Ian Cunningham from NTDET to produce an inexpensive and simple means to deploy wireless access points to these remote communities. These are Linksys WRT-54GL devices flashed with DD-WRT. We configured each such that they will just work when plugged in. The HLCs that have satellite Internet can have their access points managed from anywhere on the NT Schools network.

I left our setup to the UWS students (none of whom are technical) on my team, and they were able to successfully set up the access point and create a workable area for the XOs to be charged.

Most of the HLCs have their electricity supplied entirely by local generators, which are normally rationed to run at night. Dhalinybuy school has its own smaller generator. This is enough for the basics, but insufficient for the four desktop PCs that they have. Consequently, these computers are rarely used, and the teachers tell me that they are too difficult to manage anyway. Being battery powered and far more power efficient, XOs are far more suitable.

We have successfully deployed XOs to every school-age child in Dhalinybuy. I’m still out here, so I don’t yet know the status of the other HLCs. I am, however, confident that they are operational, given the ease at which we got things going here.

Through the access point, every XO (and hence every child) can collaborate and share their activities in Sugar. This also facilitates an Internet connection for all the XOs, through the NT Schools network. They are now open to a wider world of information and communication.

©2010 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

linux.conf.au this year was in Wellington, New Zealand. It just keeps getting better! It’s always great meeting people you otherwise only know online. I was especially impressed by the OLPC NZ team.

Immediately following linux.conf.au, I jumped on a plane to Christchurch to embark on a week-long tour of the South Island. Long story short, it was the time of my life! I made some amazing friends. I also saw and did incredible things, including:

• awe-inspiring views of glaciers, glacially-formed landscapes, turquoise-coloured rivers and lakes, beautiful skies and more
• helihike: a helicopter trip onto a glacier, then hiking on it
• a night on a boat on Milford Sound, probably the most beautiful place on Earth
• every extreme activity I could get my hands on, including:
  • three bungy jumps (thrillogy combo): Kawarau Bridge (43 metres), Nevis (134m) and Ledge (47m)
  • two swings: two of the scariest jump styles — Backwards and Gimp Boy Goes to Hollywood
  • a 15,000ft skydive
  • the Triple Challenge: a Shotover jet boat ride, followed by a helicopter transfer to rafting on the Shotover river
    
  • a wilderness safari along the Dart River, including walks through forests and a scenic jet boat ride

I have most of my photos online now:

• 2010-01-24 New Zealand holiday, Day 1, pt 1
• 2010-01-24 New Zealand Holiday, Day 1, pt 2
• 2010-01-25 New Zealand Holiday, Day 2, pt 1
• 2010-01-25 New Zealand Holiday, Day 2, pt 2
• 2010-01-26 New Zealand Holiday, Day 3, pt 1
• 2010-01-26 New Zealand Holiday, Day 3, pt 2
• 2010-01-26 New Zealand Holiday, Day 3, pt 3
• 2010-01-27 New Zealand Holiday, Day 4, pt 1
• 2010-01-27 New Zealand Holiday, Day 4, pt 2
• 2010-01-27 New Zealand Holiday, Day 4, pt 3

I think what surprised me most was how adventurous I can be when I’m not in my ‘natural habitat’. I’m not normally a thrillseeker at all, but in NZ I made the decision to take a holiday from myself as well as from work and home. I even made a concerted effort to not touch computers at all. My phone was offline for most of the trip (I was using it as a camera). I never thought that being cut-off could feel so liberating.

©2010 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

“Here we go with another round of Linux Today reader comments. Let’s start off with an issue that has been on my mind: Vendors who boast of the their Linux-based devices, but they only support Windows and Mac clients. It’s a step in the right direction, but would supporting Linux clients be so difficult?”

There are two major mistakes that are often made in considering this question:

• that all “Linux” systems are the same
• that by using Linux in one place, it only makes sense that you support other “Linux” systems

We need to remember that the only thing most of these devices share with a desktop “Linux” system (or even with each other) is the kernel (i.e. the precise definition of “Linux”). The userland is different, and there’s a lot of their own proprietary stuff on it too. Even the hardware (such as CPU architecture) is often wildly different. I think people have grown to think it’s all the same since we call it all “Linux”, but it’s not.

Because of this practical conundrum (as totally distinct from any philosophical or other arguments), I have some sympathy for those who prefer to call the system we use on our desktop and server systems “GNU/Linux”.

Argue all you want about its accuracy, but the fact is that it is far more accurate than merely using the kernel name as nomenclature for the entire OS. It specifies a userland that with the kernel comprises a workable operating system. Come up with a better name if that makes you feel more comfortable.

This opens up a whole can of worms. If I’m an applications or device developer and I announce “Linux support”, what do I mean? Will it work on my mobile phone? On my television? Probably not. Chances are it refers to particular versions of particular distributions for a particular architecture.

If I produce a device that is based on “Linux”, what relation does that have to other “Linux” systems? None. It’s not just devices: another major culprit is Web services. Linux runs most of the Internet, but many online services are not compatible with desktop Linux systems.

The reasons for this are simple:

• correlation does not imply causation
• the small market size of desktop Linux users

The first point relates to what I said earlier, that there’s no connection between the use of Linux on servers and devices versus its use on desktop computers. The usefulness of Linux on servers and devices is firmly recognised in many sectors.

The same cannot be said for desktop systems, despite what we may wish. If it costs a developer more to support a tiny market, they are probably not going to do it. That’s just business. Companies that choose to support desktop Linux often do so for other reasons, such as to foster a developer/fan base or tap into a very specific set of users.

So everyone, I share your frustrations that many so-called “Linux”-based devices/services don’t interface with my computers, but I keep in mind the points made above.

LotD: NSW Police: Don’t use Windows for internet banking (iTnews)

©2010 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

A downside of vrms is that it can only look at packages installed via the OS packaging system. I know I have the Adobe Flash Plug-in installed (manually) as well. Nevertheless, the result isn’t too bad, and I think I could do without all of those proprietary packages if I wanted.

On my main workstation at home

yama@unicron:~$ vrms
              Non-free packages installed on unicron

fglrx-modaliases          Identifiers supported by the ATI graphics driver
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.28 modules helper script
nvidia-173-modaliases     Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
nvidia-180-kernel-source  NVIDIA binary kernel module source
nvidia-180-libvdpau       Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix
nvidia-180-modaliases     Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
nvidia-71-modaliases      Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
nvidia-96-modaliases      Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
nvidia-glx-180            NVIDIA binary Xorg driver
rar                       Archiver for .rar files
sun-java6-bin             Sun Java(TM) Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 (architecture
sun-java6-jre             Sun Java(TM) Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 (architecture
tangerine-icon-theme      Tangerine Icon theme
unrar                     Unarchiver for .rar files (non-free version)
  Reason: Modifications problematic

   Non-free packages with status other than installed on unicron

nvidia-glx-177            ( dei)  NVIDIA binary Xorg driver

               Contrib packages installed on unicron

msttcorefonts             transitional dummy package
nvidia-common             Find obsolete NVIDIA drivers
nvidia-settings           Tool of configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver
ttf-mscorefonts-installer Installer for Microsoft TrueType core fonts

  15 non-free packages, 0.7% of 2039 installed packages.
  4 contrib packages, 0.2% of 2039 installed packages.

On my home server

yama@ark:~$ vrms
                Non-free packages installed on ark

human-icon-theme          Human Icon theme
linux-generic             Complete Generic Linux kernel
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules helper script
linux-restricted-modules- Restricted Linux modules for generic kernels
tangerine-icon-theme      Tangerine Icon theme
tango-icon-theme          Tango Icon theme
  Reason: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License

     Non-free packages with status other than installed on ark

linux-restricted-modules- ( dei)  Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64
linux-restricted-modules- ( dei)  Non-free Linux 2.6.24 modules on x86/x86_64

  15 non-free packages, 1.1% of 1350 installed packages.

©2010 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

I’ll be honest and admit that I’m a fan of the US version of the show. The ‘geeks’ feel like humorous caricatures of some of my own traits, and I suppose I find bimbo stupidity funny in a way (although at other times I just roll my eyes).

However, I dislike that the outcome of each series is that the geeks bend over backwards to learn to be ‘cool’ while the bimbos simply ‘learn’ to tolerate the geeks. On the episodes that visit the contestants a few months after their tenure at ‘the mansion’, the geeks have clearly changed themselves but the bimbos have mostly reverted to their previous state.

I’m probably biased, but it seems lop-sided. It reinforces the view (at least in Western cultures) that it’s okay to be an idiot but conversely it is unacceptable to be socially awkward.

We see this position pushed across popular media. The other prime offender at the moment that I can think of is the sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. In that show, a bimbo with loose values is portrayed as ‘normal’ while a group of intelligent males are openly ridiculed.

Again, I’ll admit that I watch that show from time to time, and I do find it entertaining. I have the capacity to laugh at myself and traits that I can identify with. At the same time, it still irks me that this is what people are being fed, not just by this programme but by the mass media in general.

What does the FOSS community think?

©2010 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

Convincing a company to save energy can be difficult, but knowing that this also enhances security can be a winning argument.

©2010 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

I managed to get the JDK version working on Fedora 11 and CentOS 5.3. Here’s the process.

1. Firstly, download the JRE or JDK from Sun. You’ll need to get version 1.6 Update 12 or above. I got the RPM version.
2. Run the install script to extract the bundle. On the RPM version, this automatically installs it to your system if you run the script as root.
3. Execute this in a terminal:

   # ln -s /usr/java/default/jre/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins

   This part took me a while to work out, as I was looking for a file called libjavaplugin_oji.so, the name of the x86_32 version.

4. Restart Firefox and type about:plugins in the location bar to check if the new plug-in has been accepted.
5. Enable the plug-in: Edit ? Preferences ? Content tab ? tick Enable Java
6. You can test your plug-in at java.com and javatester.org

©2010 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

It’s a good feeling knowing that you work for a company that actually cares about open source and open standards. For example, we sponsored the Government 2.0 event in Canberra last week.

For the sake of posterity, I’ll reproduce the interview here:

Meet The Team — Sridhar Dhanapalan

We are more than a consulting company - we are a great team! In this section we will be introducing one member of our team in each newsletter.

What do you do at BizCubed?

I make sure that our Support subscribers are receiving legendary service. We like to be an open company, and so knowledge sharing is important to us. I write a lot of documentation on our wiki for the benefit of the Pentaho community.

Internally, I ensure that our team is properly enabled with any information or infrastructure that they need. I take care of our servers and deployments. I also do the occasional development of BI solutions. It’s a varied role — I never have a reason to be bored!

What attracts you to open source BI?

It seems incongruous that while we demand transparency from, for instance, our political systems and financial institutions, they rely on software that is opaque.

Processes and organisations cannot be thoroughly audited if the software that drives them is closed. I also believe that in using open source and open standards, you are showing respect for your users and customers. Your users can see what you see; touch what you touch. They can inspect and interrogate to their heart’s content, and even make their own modifications if they so wish. They may not opt to exercise those rights, but ultimately it’s their choice and not their vendor’s.

What were you doing before joining BizCubed?

I’ve been using computers since the early 1980s, and I discovered open source just over ten years ago. I’ve been fortunate enough to make a career out of it. I have a background in network engineering, satellite communications, systems administration and good ol’ fashioned tech support.

I completed university with a Science degree majoring in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, which I feel gave me an appreciation for the intersection of technology and society. I think there should be more attention paid to this in ICT, and it’s an area I often encounter in the field of BI.

Do you work with any projects other than Pentaho?

I’ve been very active in the open source community over the past ten years. For the first half of this decade, I was an administrator, editor and author at what was at the time the largest Mandrake (now Mandriva) Linux community Web site.

I’m currently the president of the Sydney Linux Users Group and also on the Linux Australia Council. Through those, I organise and co-ordinate meetings and events for the Australian Linux community. Other than that, I’m involved in the Ubuntu community, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the Grameen Foundation and a few other projects.

What do you do in your spare time?

My open source contributions take up the bulk of my non-work hours. I read a lot of news and current affairs, and I’ve been known to go on Wikipedia binges. Other than that, I spend time with family and friends.

©2010 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

©2010 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.