Coredump

Getting the NIC's MAC address: ifconfig ethx | awk '/HWaddr/ {print $NF}' To enumerate all MAC addresses, just replace ethx with -a .

Subscribe to the Pinoy Farmers' Internet's news feeds , brought to you by IceRocket Free RSS Builder . Update : The IceRocket RSS is deprecated for a new feed, coming soon directly from the PFI.

Trying out IceRocket , where "every search is a direct hit." Or so it says. It is primarily a blog search engine, relying mostly on feeds and syndication to crawl contents in the blogosphere. It offers other search services as well: for web pages, images, news, even phone pics and multimedia. What I like about it is that it provides other services such as showing blog trends (good for getting metrics on *hot* blog topics), an RSS builder (a poor man's syndication) and tagging ala-Technorati. I haven't compared its hits with that of, say, Google blog search or Technorati.

From the ubuntu-ph mailing list : 01:18 Seveas: zakame, you're up next, please prepare your 3-line intro while we wait for elmos vote [SNIP] 01:29 Seveas: I'm leaning towards a +1 01:31 Kamion: +1 for zakame as far as I'm concerned after reading through some of the links and list archives 01:32 dholbach: yeah, based on motu/bug activity, i'll give +1 too 01:32 smurf: +1 from me, likewise 01:32 tseng: +1 for #-motu 01:33 Seveas: ok, zakame welcome aboard! 01:33 Seveas: and make ogra happy with edubuntu ;) 01:34 zakame: maraming salamat sa inyong lahat! :D 01:34 Seveas: zakame, assuming that you're not cursing: thanks! 01:34 dholbach: hihi :) Congratulations, Zak ! :)

Following 43 Folders' advice on having a personal status page , I created one at PeanutButterWiki . Update : I've since moved my wiki to my Metawire account . (I'll still be using PBWiki. ;)) I've also put up a status page here in my new blog.

Lately, I've been wondering why I blog. Then, Dilbert's blog came along, and now I know why. He ever so eloquently sums it up as follows: When I see news stories about people all over the world who are experiencing hardships, I worry about them, and I rack my brain wondering how I can make a difference. So I decided to start my own blog. That way I won't have time to think about other people. People who are trying to decide whether to create a blog or not go through a thought process much like this: The world sure needs more of ME. Maybe I'll shout more often so that people nearby can experience the joy of knowing my thoughts. No, wait, shouting looks too crazy. I know - I'll write down my daily thoughts and badger people to read them. If only there was a description for this process that doesn't involve the words egomaniac or unnecessary. What? It's called a blog? I'm there! The blogger's philosophy goes something like this: Everything that I think...

And a memory hog at that? Considering the benchmarking test performed by ZDNet's George Ou here and here , the numbers look bad for OO.o. Why is this so? Ou points to unoptimized code, and Sun's propensity for bloat. At first glance, this looks like typical MS FUD, but if one looks closer, one realizes that this is a prevailing problem not only for open source but also for proprietary software as well. Yesterday, I presented before the Institute's operations committee a brief overview of OO.o, and its similarities to MS Office. I pointed to the fact that shifting will be less painful because of the similar interface, and the (hopefully) seamless rendering of MS documents formats in OO.o. The presentation went well, and the results of our recent migration to OO.o has so far been encouraging. But will performance be an issue for our users? I hope not. Given the fact that they've been using it for two weeks now without complaint (except for a few questions about keyboard ...

Warning: don't try these at home. :D These and more, over at TechRepublic .

Mirror a web site: wget -m -k -K -E http://web.site.address/ -o /path/to/logfile

It's official: the Philippine Rice Research Institute has finally issued a policy for adopting open source. The adoption will mainly be for units that can't afford the licensing costs of proprietary software. While the policy leaves the choice to the particular unit, it encourages and promotes the use of open source software that has similar, if not superior, functionality compared with proprietary ones. For now, the shift will be in the office productivity suites, with almost 95% of desktop workstations already migrated from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org . Soon, it will move on to the desktop OS. A few units have already been installed with Ubuntu or Bayanihan Linux. The tech support staff has set up a lab environment to test interoperability with the existing predominantly MS environment, and results have been encouraging, so far. The policy was borne out of the Institute's thrust to look for alternatives to costly solutions in line with the government's cost-...

Another foil to all that Web X.X thingies.

"With so many places to tag so many things, how could one person keep track of it all?" Well, enter Supr.c.ilio.us , the "World's First Social Social Tagging Site Tagging Site". Their top tag is, uh, "tagging" . :P

I found a copy of The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court by Bob Woodward ( All the President's Men ) and Scott Armstrong in a second-hand-books sale. It's a bit outdated — it portrays the Warren Court in the 1970s during the Nixon era — but it makes for an interesting read of landmark Supreme Court decisions of those days. Written in Woodward's classic journalistic style ala- All the Presidents' Men , it relies heavily on "background" sources that can at times sound too much like office gossip. The sourcing is understandable, though, since the US Supreme Court has a long tradition of not showing its hand, of making its decision processes a secret. In the introduction, the writers say that no other institution has controlled the way they are viewed by the public. IANAL, but this makes for a pretty interesting read. Besides, for Php50, this one's a steal.

The Philippine Linux Users Group (PLUG) has a new set of officers . The new set is an interesting lineup of old hands and new faces, with a broad range of advocacies. The regions were represented as well, just in time for PLUG's goal of becoming the umbrella organization of LUGs nationwide. Here's hoping that the new board maintains and surpasses the momentum and enthusiasm of the present one.

In a recent conversation at the company cafeteria, the talk shifted to how difficult it is to use OpenOffice.org over Microsoft Word. Some colleagues were complaining that the time it takes them to learn the ropes is eating into their "productivity" (read: less coffee trips to the pantry). One co-worker commented, "'Buti na lang, libre." ("It's a good thing it's free.") I asked, smirking, "Which one, the coffee or the software?" I would have launched into a "free-beer-and-free-speech" tirade, were it not for the yummy lunch we're having, but just the same, I told them that the software being free doesn't just mean the bottomline. Of course, there would be migration issues, but don't blame OpenOffice.org (and other free and/or open source software {FOSS}) for that — blame Microsoft for creating, nay, subverting standards and locking them in so they'd only work in MS products. "Besides," I said, ...

But it's for rice research, no strings. I hope. :) The Philippine Rice Research Institute received an USD800,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which will be used for the development of rice with higher amounts of beta-carotene, vitamin E, iron, and even protein. Read more here .

Sorry, either that or wet my pants. Why? Because of THIS! is why. Gawd, wished I was a jueteng lord...

Yesterday, I attended a top-level review meeting for our project. In attendance, too, were heads of our partner agencies and institutions. The talk, which was free-flowing after the agenda was exhausted, came to the current "crisis" in some agencies regarding software licenses. Some top honchos opined that they could not handle the costs of additional licenses. One guy who actually talked with the government e-procurement service said that even at the 30% discount of Microsoft products, the overall cost is still to much of a burden for them. My boss said that we use a mix of open source and proprietary (legally acquired, of course) software for the project, and we will continue to do so. Another agency has been advocating the use of open source, and was willing to provide training and assistance in migration issues. I felt a bit frustrated when some of the agency heads argued that migration was just too much work for them. Someone smirked that one cannot teach an old dog new ...

A funny post I read over at the PH-Cyberview Yahoo! group has this: We need a network consultant who will do an estimated 2 weeks worth of work reconfiguring our network. Then we shall sign him up on a per-call basis for future maintenance work. The job includes: downgrading our network from having Microsoft/Linux servers to just a simple Linux server network To which someone replied : If you are *upgrading* your network totally to Linux, e-mail me if you need help. I am not much help in downgrading networks. B-)