Firefox in BSD, CBS goes with Silverlight 2.0

Firefox in BSD has some serious Javascript issues. I know others have these issues on other platforms, but I use Firefox at work in Vista and at home in Linux all the time, with zero problems.  The only problem with doing testing with these Acer Travelmates is that they are utter garbage. The mouse is erratic no matter what the OS (I’ve tried XP, Linux Mint, Debian and PC BSD).  The VGA out works as often as it doesn’t (actually, that may be giving them too much credit…I’m not sure I’ve ever seen VGA out work on one of these).

Now, I’d think about installing BSD in VirtualBox, but my main machine is running Jaunty and VirtualBox isn’t wanting to work (hey, it’s still in alpha…or is it beta now?  Whatever, it’s not done).

So, the who NCAA.com stuff with CBS is a clusterf*ck.  To *maybe* get it to work in Linux you must first install Subversion.  Then, you must get the latest version of Mono (the version in the repos will not work).  Then, you have to install a pre-alpha version of Moonlight.  Now, this could be fixed a couple ways.

1) Use something cross platform.  Flash is the obvious choice, but an ogg-vorbis stream would be a much better solution.

2) Microsoft could release a Silverlight version for Linux.

So, this Moonlight thing is a work in progress.  I’ll update here when I come to some sort of conclusion.  If you want up-to-date info, you can follow me at identi.ca.

Madison Open Technology Group

The name has not been set yet, but I figured I should go ahead and blog about it and my relationship to it.

I am starting this organization in response to what I see as a gap in the Madison, WI area and indeed a gap everywhere.  Linux User Groups are the general champions of FOSS, but there’s a load of FOSS being pronounced for non-FOSS platforms and things like open standards and formats don’t really fall well into the scope of a LUG.  At UNC-Chapel Hill, Cristobal Palmer and I, with the help of Paul Jones and Kevin Otte, started the Carolina Open Source Initiative, which sought to be a broad organization doing many things, but particularly helping Windows users (the bulk of the campus community) move to FOSS; Firefox, GIMP, Pidgin, OOo, whatever.  We had the pipedream that maybe they’d become Linux users.

There are plenty of good things for openness that can happen on closed platforms such as Apple or Windows.  Apple could start support .ogg for instance and MS Office is already supposed to support odt in their next version (though maybe I dreamed that since I can’t find a citation for it at the moment).

So, as some of you may know, I work at a proprietary software company.  Clearly I keep my work and my personal life separate on this count, but I do want to point out a couple things.

1) My employer is spearheading patient access to medical information (with doctor approval).  You might not personally care, but I find it hard to believe you could argue this is a bad thing, unless you are paranoid.

2) My employer is spearheading open standards for cross communication of data across systems.  Meaning that if you are allergic to X to the point it will kill you and you are going to hospital Y 1000 miles from where you live, hospital Y can get the needed information from hospital Z in your home town.  I can’t see how you could argue that this is a bad thing, unless you are ultra sensitive to security issues.

When I get a name finalized I’ll post it and the facebook group that will be made for it.

EDIT: Here’s the facebook group – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=37858132400