Question for Bill: Like Linux and open source software, which has been widely embraced by less affluent nations because of its lack of pricetag and low barrier to entry?

In a Wall Street Journal interview, Microsoft Chairman Gates – who will give up his day-to-day duties at Microsoft this summer – cited the increasing disparity between the rich and poor as evidence of a failing capitalism and called upon business to make profits while also improving the “lives for those who don’t fully benefit from market forces,” Gates will say, according to the Journal.

Question for Bill: Does he mean companies like Canonical, whose popular Ubuntu Linux distribution got its start in Africa and is now spreading like wildfire?
Is he referring to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) foundation, spearheaded by MIT’s Negroponte, whose $100 laptop runs XO, a free and open source operating system?

Is Gates ia secret admirer of open source? After all, he is the world’s richest man whose company found guilty of monopolistic practices, very restrictive in its licensing practices and not known for its benevolence. Even today, Microsoft, which until fairly recently denounced the concept of open source software, is pushing the most premium (and most expensive) editions of its latest Windows operating system to the paying masses. Businesses can’t even get Vista Enterprise unless they pay into its Software Assurance maintenance plan.

The Free Software Foundation and many other open source backers like Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen – hold that software is a utility that must be kept open to prevent corporate ownership of information. This is essential to slowing the growing economic disparity between nations and people. The General Public License is just that — a license which protects and conveys software rights to the general public. It’s true that Microsoft has backed off its campaign against open source and has agreed to make its software at least interoperable with Linux. But its software is still proprietary.

Still, there’s no doubt that Gates has donated a massive sum from the Microsoft bank to help curb world diseases and his $33 billion foundation — founded with his wife, Melinda — will do more good works. I wouldn’t expect Microsoft to start pitching Linux and open source software but it is noteworthy that Gates was the key driver of the PC revolution, which introduced the concept of low cost personal computing to the masses. It’s not like IBM was paving the road ahead in those early days.

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‘She decided to mess up everything for everybody,” Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office spokesman Ken Jefferson told reporters. “She just sabotaged the entire business, thinking she was going to get axed.’

It didn’t take Steven Hutchins, owner of the architectural firm that bears his name, much time to figure out who’d done it — Cooley was the only other person who had full access to the files.

Police arrested Cooley Monday evening and charged her with causing greater than $1,000 damage to computer files, a felony. She was bailed out the following afternoon.”

Most small businesses I consult with these days don’t put enough effort into their disaster recovery plans or even consider it a necessity. As a small business owner myself I completely understand the need to keeps costs down however; disaster recovery is a serious issue and should never be taken lightly. With the cost of 500g storage devices going for $200-$300 from your local CompUSA there is no reason why companies don’t have even the simplest of disaster recovery plans implemented.

If you would like more information on how a disaster recovery plan can help you and your business contact The Tek, LLC at 877-4-TheTek or visit our website at http://thetek.net.

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“Digg’s promotional algorithm ensures that the most popular content dugg by a diverse, unique group of diggers reaches the home page. Our goal is to give each person a fair chance of getting their submission promoted to the home page. Since Digg began more than three years ago, we’ve constantly been making tweaks to the promotional algorithm and will continue to do so. Most of our additions go unnoticed, and others take a few days to normalize as we watch them run live on the site. We spend a lot of time analyzing the data and improving the system.”

These people have even been so bold as to come out with an outright “Open Letter To Digg” that is intended to TELL DIGG how to run their own site. An overview of the main points found in this open letter are as follows:

• Lack Of Digg Communication: These “Top Users” these Digg elites think that digg reports to them, that Digg is somehow accountable to the user community.Look if 10% or more of the front page articles are controlled by 20-30 people that is a big problem and I comment Digg for “fixing” their algorithm. I attended this so-called “Live Protest” of Digg.com and they believe they are so important that Digg will go away with out them.
• Unexplained Banning Of Digg Users if your account is being banned chances are you are violating the TOS of the website DIGG.com which allows you the privileged of posting on their website. If you sit arround and ONLY digg your friend’s posts there is a problem, if new users must bow down and kiss your behind just to get a front page ranking there is a problem.
• Manual Editing the last concern of these so-called “top diggers” is that Digg.com has employed manual editors who are deranking their submissions because Digg has something against them.

Its amazing that these people think they built digg.com, here is a reality check you DID not build digg. If I am not mistaken Kevin Rose built Digg.com. There is a reality here you must accept, if MOST webmasters feel that they are unable to receive a front page digg because of “illegal” rings like yours then there is a problem. Digg needs to expand the webmaster base that can submit articles and still hope to hit the front page.

So in conclusion,  there are other important websites besides yours, there is other VERY important information to be read on Digg.com besides yours. This community desperately needs to reach out to the general webmaster community and offer a fair opportunity to all, new and old Digg users alike.

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Needless to say, the opportunity is huge. According to the Dell’Oro Group [PDF], 35 million small businesses worldwide are expected to adopt VoIP calling over the next three years. Fonality brings to the table an easy-to-use, directly installable product. Dell brings its market reach and brand. It’s a good deal for Dell. It could be the making of Fonality.

Again, look at the math:

An IDC analysis pegs Dell at more than 28% market share in the United States SMB market, or roughly seven million of the US’ 25 million SMBs. This deal immediately helps to put Fonality in front of Dell’s SMB customer base, as well as new accounts into which it’s selling.

That’s huge.

Dell didn’t choose Fonality because it’s built on open source, however, as Chris Lyman, Fonality’s CEO, notes on his blog. Rather, Dell was looking for three things. The product:

1. Must be high in value
2. Must be super easy to use
3. Must run on Dell

The other big reason Chris cites for Dell’s choice of Fonality is its hybrid-hosted model. Regardless of the reason, it’s a huge coup for Fonality. Kudos!

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“An autodialer is an electronic device that can automatically dial telephone numbers to communicate between any two points in the telephone, mobile phone and pager networks. Once the call has been established (through the telephone exchange) the autodialer will announce verbal messages or transmit digital data (like SMS messages) to the called party ”

Voice Broadcasting and Predictive Dialing has, up untill now, been a technology reserved for largest telemarketing companies or large fortune 500 companies due to the cost of hardware, software, long distance calling, and digital circuits. With the advent of VoIP and many open-source applications utilizing VoIP almost any company large or small can tap into this effective marketing method.

Asterisk The Opensource PBX is the greatest open source VoIP pbx available on the market today, it is highly scalable and with the right resource can deliver millions of calls each day. Many open-source applications utilize Asterisk for the actual dialing function of the autodialer, with an easy to use “Manager” interface 3rd party applications can deliver commands directly to the PBX.

Gnudialer is one of the most popular open-source predictive dialers on the market. They have made great strides in designing an amazing application that includes the features of any commercial application such as DNC scrubbin and great answering machine detection. With the right modifications this open-source predictive dialer can turn into a high call volume VoIP autodialer capable of making over 300 concurrent calls!

Vicidial is the other most popular open-source predictive dialer. There is great debate about which one of these applications is superior, a debate that will probably never be solves. Each application really is designed to fit a different type of client and a different type of audience. Vicidial has an amazing web interface however it is much more complicate to install and has a larger learning curve for its agents.

Price Benefit

By using VoIP companies are able to literally save thousands of dollars each and every month. Lets look at a simple 100 line predictive dialer system and break down the price:

Traditional Predictive Dialer:

• Predictive Dialer Software / Hardware = $20,000
• Install And Configuration = $10,000
• 4 x T-1 Lines = $2,000 per month
• Long Distance Calling = $10,000 per month

VoIP Predictive Dialer:

• Predictive Dialer Software / Hardware = $FREE
• Install And Configuration = $10,000
• 1 DSL Line = $60 month
• Long Distance Calling = $2,000

For more information on how a VoIP predictive dialer could save you money call The Tek at 877-4-TheTek

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The advantages of this configuration are:

• A controlled environment — Users can’t change or even use their workstations. Breaks are going to be hardware only.
• A reinstall of the Linux workstation is virtually hardware independent and very fast — The hardware must be on the Hardware Compatibility List for Linux and the image itself has a small footprint (~300 MB).
• No cost for the client operating system — Linux is free.
• One central location to update applications and services — The server contains all of the applications and services.
• The workstations are very fast.

And best of all, you are using Linux everywhere. See the “Licensing and TCO” sidebar.

Installing Linux on a System

I used Red Hat 7.1 for this setup and I’ve been very pleased with it. Here is how I configured my system.

To begin, I did the installation with a 500-MB root filesystem and a 64-MB swap filesystem. You can probably get away with less, especially if you have a 540-MB drive or smaller. I have successfully pared my packages down to a 260-MB installation with a 32-MB swap.

Hardware

You can use anything that is compatible with Linux, but here are my suggestions:

• 32-MB RAM
• A 4MB+ Video Card
• 500-MB Hard Drive
• 10/100 NIC

Minimally, I recommend:

• Classic X window interface (twm)
• Networked workstation
• Development tools,
• kudzu
• ssh

I also recommend using the Select Individual Packages for installing and get rid of packages that you don’t really need, like Sendmail, etc. We’re simply creating a light client OS with just enough utilities to work, but we can include a few extras (like ssh) so that an administrator can get to the client box to make necessary changes. There’s no magic list of requirements, but as long as you have a twm interface and network connectivity, you are pretty much there. I slimmed down the installation so that I could put it on CD-ROM.

rdesktop

rdesktop is an open source client for UNIX/Linux systems that provides connectivity to a Windows terminal server. rdesktop was created by Matt Chapman and is released under the GPL. See the rdesktop home page at:

http://www.rdesktop.org

You can also download rdesktop through Source Forge:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/rdesktop/rdesktop-1.1.0.tar.gz

For this article, I used rdesktop version RDP 5.0. I run rdesktop in full screen mode with the following syntax: rdesktop -f <terminal server>. If you want to run rdesktop in a window, you can use: rdesktop -g 800×600 <terminal server>. I strongly suggest using the rdesktop -f <terminal server> syntax if you are configuring client terminals where the Terminal server is their only desktop. The user will never know that they aren’t using a Windows 2000 computer. To begin, download the source code and run make or make the executable on another computer and transfer it (if you didn’t install the Development Tools on Install). Put rdesktop in your path. Once rdesktop is installed, you can run it by typing:

rdesktop <terminal server>

where <terminal server> is the alias, DNS name, or IP address for the Terminal Server. There are no specific configuration issues with rdesktop, it is simply an RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) client.

AutoLogin

I use Autologin so that the user does not have to login to the Linux terminal. For all practical purposes, the user thinks that they are on a Windows computer. The computer powers on, boots up, and the user is presented with the Terminal Server login as soon as the boot process is finished. Autologin takes away the user’s ability to interact until presented with the Terminal server login screen. Autologin further facilitates the idea that the user is using a generic computer and requires nothing from them.

This also facilitates the ability of IT personnel to create a single installation for all users. If a computer goes bad, there is no reason to worry about passwords on the workstation because there is no need for any. With Autologin, IT personnel can deliver any computer to any user without intervention. As long as the computer boots up and gets to a Terminal server login, the user has a usable desktop. Generic logins like this also allow larger organizations to utilize workstations for multiple users with no need to worry about profiles, downloaded programs, etc. The login that is bypassed is the Linux login. No security is compromised by setting up this way as the workstation is not used in any way. Your security begins with the Windows Terminal Server login.

ftp://ftp.linux-easy.com/pub/linux-easy/i386/autologin-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm

Download and install with rpm -i autologin-1.0.0-1.i386.rpm. Create a user that you want to automatically log in. Use an actual user of the system or a generic one like I do, called “username”, and give it a password.

The following is from the Autologin package README file:

How is it configured?

=====================

Create the file /etc/sysconfig/autologin, containing the following settings:

USER=[username]

    Start the session as the user specified here.

    This setting is mandatory. If omitted, autologin will not run.

    If autologin was compiled with –enable-paranoid, autologin will

    not run if the user specified has UID or GID 0.

EXEC=[script or program]

    The script or program listed here will be executed as the user

    specified above. If this setting is omitted, /usr/X11R6/bin/startx

    will be used.

AUTOLOGIN={yes,no}

    You can use this setting to turn off autologin even if it is

    installed and the config file exists and is considered safe.

    If this setting is omitted, “yes” is assumed.

/etc/sysconfig/autologin must not be writable by anyone but root. If it

is, it is detected as a possible cracking attempt and autologin will

not run.

Do I need to do anything else?

==============================

Yes - you need to have runlevel 5 start autologin. Starting from the

initscripts 5.15 package, Red Hat Linux does this for you.

If you are running a prior version or a different OS, simply replace

the call to kdm, gdm or xdm with a call to autologin, or better yet, to

a script that calls autologin and falls back to [kgx]dm if autologin fails.

My /etc/sysconfig/autologin looks like:

USER=username

AUTOLOGIN=yes

The username that you enter will show up in the User box on the Terminal Server.

Autologin User Home Directory

I use .xinitrc to have twm start automatically once my user has logged in. This also auto-starts rdesktop. “Server” is the name alias in /etc/hosts.

.xinitrc

/usr/local/bin/rdesktop -f server &

twm

This is an excerpt from my user’s .twmrc file, where the left-click menu is defined. I took out all options that I didn’t want the user to have and only provided the ability to reconnect if the he or she disconnects or is disconnected by not logging in quickly enough. You may want to leave in the ability to reboot.

.twmrc

#

# And a menu with the usual things

#

menu "defops"

{

"Menu" f.title

""       f.nop

"Reconnect"       f.exec “/usr/local/bin/rdesktop -f server &”

""       f.nop

}

I have had good luck with desktop sizes from 640×400 to 1024×678, but have only been able to use 16-bit color depth. I suggest that using at least a 4-MB video card so that your video doesn’t “swim” or flash.

Configuring the Client Computer

It’s unlikely that you will have the same hardware on every computer on which you install this image, so I developed a configure script that walks an installer through the configuration. This script is placed in root’s home directory and is named “configure”. Make it executable with chmod 755 configure, then run it (./configure). The script assumes that you are using Red Hat Linux, and you must modify it for any other distribution:

#!/bin/sh

echo "Do you want to setup a server to connect to?"

read YN

if [ $YN = "y" ] || [ $YN = "Y" ]

then

echo "What is the IP Address of the Server this client will be connecting to?"

read IPADDR

echo "$IPADDR server" >> /etc/hosts

echo " " >> /etc/hosts

fi

echo "Do you want to run kudzu now?"

read YN

if [ $YN = "y" ] || [ $YN = "Y" ]

then

kudzu

fi

echo "Do you want to run netconfig now?"

read YN

if [ $YN = "y" ] || [ $YN = "Y" ]

then

netconfig

fi

echo "Do you want to run Xconfigurator now?"

read YN

if [ $YN = "y" ] || [ $YN = "Y" ]

then

Xconfigurator

else

echo "You are done!"

fi

The first time you boot up after installing everything, you may see your X window interface flash several times and then die with some message such as “respawning too fast, will attempt again in 5 minutes”. This means that the /etc/hosts file points to a terminal server that doesn’t yet exist, or you have the incorrect IP address listed.

To fix this, you can do a “Ctrl-Alt-F2″ to get a CLI prompt, log in, and correct the problem. You can then kill -HUP (PID of twm) and then should get a terminal server login prompt with the user’s name already in the username slot.

I named this installation Hessix, but feel free to offer suggestions for a really cool name. Have fun, send me your success stories, and of course, give me some credit somewhere.

The Future

I would really like to set up a light client to do a broadcast for a list of both UNIX and Windows terminal servers, so that you get the list upon boot up and can connect to any of the choices. A bootable ISO CD-ROM would be nice for the light client as well, using the detect package to detect all hardware on boot so that even a hard drive is not needed. I’d like to have a Linux server with WINE, which would truly contain all of the applications that my client uses and allow me to minimize the need for other software.

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The biggest problem we all face when generating backlinks is how to get quality, content related authority “follow” backlinks. Most good authority sites and blogs these days are using the annoying “nofollow” tag to prevent spammers. So if we can’t drop our links on blogs and we can’t drop our links on about.com or wikipedia how can we generate valueable nofollow authority backlinks?

Simply we are going to target Online Forums and NO we are not going to use Xrummer or even post in these forums. There are literally thousands of online forums ranging in topic from pets to linux support to car repairs, imagine if you could somehow leverage the authority of these online forums for your own benefit?

Well the answer is quite simple, all you need to use a search term such as inurl:profile.php?mode=register using Google as you can see over 2,000,000 sites show up. Now all you need to do is simply create an account and add your link to your profile and signature. Not only is this a simple way to generate authority backlinks, but these profiles will even rank for competitive keywords.

Looking for proof of concept? On the first page of results for the popular search phrase “Buy Viagra” has a forum profile on http://forums.ugo.com

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If you are reading this you probably already have a reason that you would like to learn Linux. This article will specifically focus on those who want to learn Linux for professional or career advancement. This article is focused on those who have limited to no experience with Linux and know the professional and career benefits learning such an amazing operating system can have.

Why Not Ubuntu or Debian?

Contrary to popular belief Ubuntu and Debian are not as popular as people think, although there is a lot of online hype about these distributions and they are great for the hobbyist they are not the best choice for those who wish to gain experience on a Linux distribution that is widely used in the enterprise.

If we take a look at Dell and IBM for instance they specifically support RedHat Enterprise Linux. Having personally worked for IBM, Oracle, Qwest Communications and CSG Systems I know first hand that these companies purchase hardware from Dell and IBM and specifically choose RedHat Enterprise Linux for their Linux servers.

So with a price tag ranging from $350-$8,000  for RedHat Enterprise you could easily go broke setting up a few small servers to learn on. So what do you do? How can you possibly learn this operating system and give your self the experience you need to shine in any enterprise environment?

Why Fedora Core?

Well for those that don’t currently know Fedora is an open-source RedHat sponsored community Linux distribution. Fedora as stated on the RedHat website is

“Community integration and rapid innovation vs, compatibility. Because Fedora’s main objective is to get new technology into the hands of interested users, compatibility is at times a secondary consideration. Fedora applications are more likely to require recompilation and sometimes source code adaptation to keep up with changing interfaces.

We go to great lengths to preserve compatibility in Red Hat Enterprise Linux updates. At times, this can lead to difficult decisions–preserving compatibility can preclude the incorporation of desirable new features.”

What this means for you is that as you learn on Fedora you can almost guarantee that you will feel very comfortable working with RedHat enterprise Linux in almost corporate environment and be able to answer technical Linux questions in just about any interview. Since RedHat provides the direction for the Fedora Project you can guarantee and expect that Fedora will provide the perfect learning ground for RedHat Enterprise Linux.

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