Grover Ponders

I am about to begin on a new project. This project is a migration of an existing, large application from Cold Fusion running on a Windows server with the SQL Server 2000 database server to a LAMP server. Yep, I get to convert the application to a LAMP application.

SlashDot has an article up highlighting how Associated Press is using the American DMCA against other web sites. If you assume the DMCA makes sense (which is getting harder and harder to do for me), then this might be reasonable. But I do have a question here...

I've been working some with OpenVPN and am trying to get some automated tasks running the moment my laptop connects to my VPN network. Unfortunately, testing this is rather hard when all the open WiFi network connections nearby use the same IP subnet as my internal network (192.16.0.x). So it was time to change to a non-normal subnet.

I came across a post today in one of the mailing lists I frequent where the user asked "Why would anyone pay for something at is based on Open Source". This question comes up many many times in various projects and in various forms.

I did post a reply to the message, hopefully helping to educate, but thought the question was worthy of deeper exploration.

What is Open Source

I recently had a project that needed to do a whole lot of number crunching, and then create a PDF to present those numbers and a line chart as well. This presented two problems for me - how to create a PDF from code, and how to create a chart for use within that PDF. I can say that I have had some success and wish to share with you the process. I'll talk about the PDF side of things in this article, and post another soon with details on how I handled the chart. But an overview of the chart solution is included below.

The Internet has changed the world. There are people who MUST have Internet access every day. There are businesses that would not exist without it. News and information is disseminated faster over the net than ove traditional channels like Television or Newspapers. People increasingly use the Internet to communicate with friends and family, do their jobs, shop, or even learn.

This weekend my web server was suddenly not accessible. But not just the webserver - I couldn't connect to the box directly at all, so all the other services (like the virtual machine that was running email) were also down. The culprit turns out to be the hard drive. After a couple of forced reboots, the box came back, but reported some SATA errors. It's running right now, though I no longer trust that drive. I have a replacement drive ready to go, but decided this was THE opportunity to do up my server the way I've been meaning to.

SlashDot and ComputerWorld are reporting that Microsoft has submitted the next version of Windows to the AntiTrust regulators for review. There will be lots of commenting on this action - and Microsoft is hoping to help "prove" that it is sincere in embracing this whole "competition" thing, and "Open Source" community.

I'm having a restless night and felt the urge to jot down some of what was going through my mind. For a change, this is a non-technical post. I tried to be brief, but well, here:

I am sitting here restless
feeling the need to be doing something,
lacking the focus to determine what.

Thoughts of reflection flowing through my mind
As I try to find something to distract me
long enough to fall asleep again.

Regrets of the past and present,
wondering if the right choices were made,
where I would be if another path were followed.

Lost or abandoned loves,
what could have been,

I have recently met a new friend who happens to be a DJ for The World Net Radio. I had the opportunity to see this friend set up for a DJ session and what it took to make the radio station work. But my friend is not a Linux user (yet), so I was seeing things from the Windows perspective. Tonight I decided to see if this could be done from a Linux perspective. I've had moderate success, so will detail what I've found seeing as the documents out there are a little sparse on details.

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