Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
ActiveState?s quality assured TclPro toolkit for Linux, Solaris and Windows enables programmers to remotely and visually debug Tcl; deploy Tcl programs as ready to run executables; obfuscate code; and check syntax to spot errors.
“ActiveState?s delighted to step in where Scriptics/Ajuba left off. ASPN Tcl fills the need for productive and secure editing, debugging and deploying of Tcl in the enterprise,? said Dick Hardt, Founder & CEO, ActiveState. ?ActiveState?s extensive Tcl tools, resources and support we provide make Tcl programming safe and easy, which is key for customers of ours like Cisco with thousands of Tcl developers.?
Key ASPN Tcl features:
“Tcl has proven to be the best scripting language for our automated testing environment for over a decade now. The number of Tcl users has grown from a few engineers to over thousands within our organization,? Hemang Lavana, Software Engineer, Cisco Systems. ?ActiveState has successfully managed to fill Scriptics/Ajuba?s spot of providing Tcl support. I?ve been very impressed with the current distribution of ActiveTcl and look forward to your future Tcl-based products.”
“I’m excited to be reviving the popular TclPro toolset, which along with
the advanced Komodo IDE is the most extensive Tcl development environment available,” said Jeff Hobbs, Tcl Tech Lead, ActiveState. “These tools greatly enhanced Tcl programmer’s productivity, whether in the enterprise space or in a one person shop.”
Other ActiveState Tcl initiatives comprise hosting of the primary Tcl community website. ActiveState also provides support for Tcl applications and internals on a wide range of platforms with the TclClinic on a per-incident basis, as a prepaid support contract, or through ActiveState’s TclDirect. Future plans include Visual Tcl, a Tcl plugin to Microsoft?s Visual Studio .NET.
ASPN Tcl is being offered at a special introductory price of $50 off for the first year for $445 until January 15, 2002. The regular price is $495. It is an annual service that includes all updates for one year, plus online, searchable access to cookbooks, technical references, sample code, and more.
About ActiveState:
ActiveState is the leading provider of open source based programming products and services for cross-platform development. ActiveState’s key technologies are Perl, the Internet’s most popular programming language; Python and Tcl, user-friendly scripting languages; PHP, the dynamic Web programming language; and XSLT, the XML transformation language. The ActiveState Programmer Network (ASPN) offers these technologies with the latest information and productivity tools, empowering programmers with the freedom to work with their preferred language and development environment.
Media & Analyst Contacts:
Lori Pike, ActiveState
604.808.6655
ActiveState, ASPN, Komodo, and Visual Tcl are trademarks of ActiveState
Corp. All other company names herein may be trademarks of their
respective owners.
© ActiveState Corporation 2001.”
Author: JT Smith
They’re now questioning wether the kit should be released in other places. They have set a poll site for
Europe and US. Please send your vote if you find it interesting.
There’s also a project to port Debian GNU/Linux to the PS2 platform. What would you think of a cheap
PS2 box running a complete Debian system?”
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Why is Red Hat Software picking on a bunch of low-rent CD salesmen
about their use of the term “Red Hat” on the disks they are peddling?
It is Red Hat’s collection of code, although UnixCD and CheapBytes may have every right to peddle it. However, Red Hat has a good reason for complaining. It’s the same
reason that the company has made a business of selling something you supposedly
can get for free. Here’s a hint: Red Hat’s success has almost nothing
to do with the software.
A few years ago, I said a lot of mean things about Red Hat. I suggested
that commercializing Open Source software was an inherently silly idea,
and its investors were very silly people. That may have been true
about nearly all the other vendors in the Linux environment, but it is
time to recognize that Red Hat has made a real business out of the
platform. The way the company has done it shows how good management can build a brand.
Let’s be frank. There’s nothing all that special about Red Hat’s
technology. It’s Linux, the same powerful, clunky, indestructible code base
you can find on the Web in a lot of places if you’re patient and willing
to look. While the company has done a tremendous amount of work
extending that code to such an unlikely system as an IBM mainframe, there are
plenty of other developers who have done the same thing. It isn’t Red Hat
software that makes the company and its product so valuable.
It is Red Hat’s brand that sets the company apart.
Branding is what the Red Hat business is all about. It may be
about the purest example of just how far a brand can take you. It is
certainly the best example of brand building in the Open Source community — if not in the entire software marketplace. Branding may be the one reason that Red Hat continues to keep its head
above water financially, even while the rest of the industry is drowning.
How much is a brand worth? Sony will tell you it is nearly the entire
worth of their company. So will Philips
Electronics, as will Coca
Cola (.pdf file).
But how do you build a brand and make into a key asset?
Building a brand isn’t easy to do, and most “formulas”
for creating a brand are nonsense. Buying a brand doesn’t work either.
Ask the
investors in Pets.com.
The only way you can build a brand is to earn it, and that’s what Red
Hat has done. The company’s process is simplicity itself. It’s also hard.
First rule of brand-building: Be true to your vision.
Nearly every would-be Open Source company announced that it was
going to make money by selling services associated with Open Source. As far
as I can tell, the only firm that has really executed this plan
has been Red Hat. It put together a services
and training program that isn’t embarrassing.
Red Hat has a systems
integration and consulting team that can talk to the CTO or the suits without
embarrassing themselves, and the company has built a credible contract engineering team.
And Red Hat still sells software.
Had you looked, you would have found something similar in the business
plan of every Linux corporate wannabe that rode a wave of
irrational exuberance in the late ’90s. However, what other company
stuck with their plan and waited for the market to mature?
Second rule: Do your job.
Most software companies do a pretty poor job of developing products.
Many match that poor product with levels of support that are downright
infuriating. While Red Hat gets mixed marks from the user community, it beats
poor support (Microsoft) or no support (the average Open Source
project). When the company first began to bully some small distributors, it
said, “We want users to understand what they are entitled to [when they deal
with Red Hat] — a difference of service and support levels.” That
doesn’t sound unfair.”
Third rule: Pick your friends well.
Of all the happy circumstances Red Hat has encountered, few are as
happy as Big Blue’s loud public embrace of Open Source. Not only has IBM
given credibility to the Linux platform, judicious positioning by Red
Hat made it seem as if Red Hat was IBM’s preferred vendor.
Fourth rule: Make your name synonymous with the product.
This can be a risky strategy as anyone familiar with the story of Thomas Crapper can
tell you. However, Red Hat has to be happy that so many software
developers have specified Red Hat Linux as opposed to “POSIX-compliant Linux”
as their preferred platform.
Fifth rule: Pick your enemies well.
Microsoft’s inability to refrain from the most infantile corporate
behavior imaginable has allowed Red Hat to position itself as the alternate
voice of reason. It’s a role that Sun’s Scott MacNealy can’t play. Larry
Ellison doesn’t look the part. But whenever Matt Szulik takes the
stand at a federal hearing, it re-enforces the perception that his
company is the primary alternative to the bullies of Redmond.
Sixth rule: Make yourself the alternate choice.
That has been the principal success of Red Hat as 2001 draws to a
close. Red Hat, more than Apple, or AOL — or any other vendor — has become the
alternate choice, a safe choice for corporate buyers and a recognized
name in the marketplace. And for a firm that I thought would disappear
a long time ago, that’s a pretty good place to be.
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Mandrake in the News ---------------------------------------- ExtremeTech.com -- Linux: The Time is Now! The technology website "ExtremeTech" reviews four Linux distributions and concludes: "We can't end the review without mentioning that Mandrake Linux 8.1 was the easiest to install, maintain, and use of all the distros tried... We can say there is indeed something lacking from Mandrake: problems. It is as powerful as any distribution on the market, and offers the very same choices as the other distros, with one more added: facility of use. Of the four distros we have used to research and produce this article, Mandrake 8.1 remains in each of our PC's as our primary operating system." A very thorough review covers the following topics: Key New Features; Initial Installation Steps; Partitioning; Packages; What Next?; Closing Thoughts. http://www.extremetech.com/article/0,3396,s%253D1027%2526a%253D19919,00.asp -- NewsForge.com -- Mandrake 8.1 Gaming Edition opens Linux to more games, more users. The NewsForge website hosts a review & discussion of the Mandrake 8.1 Gamer's Edition: "If you are maintaining a dual boot system just to run The Sims, or any other game on the TransGaming fully supported list, you no longer are doing so by necessity. Mandrake 8.1 Gaming Edition delivers on the first game in its promise to bring a greater number of first-rate games to the Linux desktop. At a retail of $69 USD, and a street price around 15% less than that, it is an excellent value only slightly more expensive than The Sims for Windows alone. The installation was easy, complete, and well polished overall, making it accessible to new and experienced users alike." http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/12/11/2337252 What's Cooking at MandrakeSoft? ---------------------------------------- Hot topics from last week's Cooker mailing list include discussions about: 1) Unsupported action listdir in Konqueror2. Silvan Pagan said that he had seen many references but no fixes for: "Click the floppy icon, the drive mounts, then Konq. opens and pops up an "unsupported action listDir" box and barfs." Richard Wenninger later solves the problem. 2) Tux. Oden Eriksson asked if the patches he submitted for the Tux webserver were going to be accepted. Oden replied that it could be built as a module, but Vincent summed up the main concern: "But, even then, what if this starts a trend? Do we expect to see an FTP server, dns server, a proxy server, in the kernel next? Scares me." 3) Samba upgrade disables samba at boottime. Alexander Skwar reported that after he upgraded to the newest Samba RPM, it had disabled Samba from starting at bootup. Sylvestre Tabur pasted the section of the spec file "/sbin/chkconfig --level 35 smb on" which should take care of that. 4) PCMCIA network install failure. Robert Fox reported that a pcmcia net install failed and provided a little info on what he did and what he saw. Read the Cooker Mailing List Archives at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=mandrake-cooker&r=1&w=2 Business Case of the Week ---------------------------------------- Horizon IS charter school: Complete ISP services for 7000 students, and more! A California public school makes extensive use of Mandrake Linux resulting in higher productivity and immense savings: "Our school also provides Internet connection for our students. In fact, we are our own ISP with a OC3 backbone connection to the net. We handle dialup Internet services, email, FTP, student web sites, company web site, web-based calendars and databases, video-conferencing, as well as web office suites, for approximately 7000 students." http://www.mandrakebizcases.com/article.php?sid=237 Every "bizcase" counts; please share your story by submitting it to MandrakeBizcases.com http://www.mandrakebizcases.com/submit.php Software Updates ---------------------------------------- openssh -- fixes local vulnerabilty passwd -- fixes lack of md5 support View the entire list at: http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/security/ Top Stories from MandrakeForum ---------------------------------------- Workarounds for common printing problems in ML 8.1. MandrakeSoft printing guru Till Kampeter provides solutions for two printing problems in Mandrake 8.1: 1. Printerdrake can completely freeze the system (depending on your motherboard). 2. Some printers which worked well in Mandrake Linux 8.0 produce inferior output, or fail to work in 8.1. http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1485?=en Using A Digital USB Camera With Mandrake Linux. In this article, Tom describes how he uses his shiny new Canon PowerShot A20 digital camera with Mandrake 8.1; many readers also discuss their experiences with digital cameras in Linux. http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1476?=en Windows XP - the end of the road? The new WindowsXP license seems to be pushing users away from Microsoft; will they flock to Linux? An interesting column here. http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1475?=en Cooker: supermount is back! This hot story is from Denis: "It's still too early for a full-scale celebration, but this is so good to miss, at least as a "rumour": I talked with our QA guys about rpmDrake today, and they mentioned that supermount has been tested, and worked fine in latest Cooker kernels." &mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 Configuration Quickie: The Basic Firewall. Tom describes how to configure the "Bastille" desktop firewall. http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1467 Read these and other stories at: http://www.MandrakeForum.com/
Category:
