Salah paham pengertian "Free Software": Kasus Job Posting di Jobsdb

Berhubung lagi berburu kerjaan ( :D ), saya jadi sering buka berbagai situs lowongan pekerjaan, diantaranya yang saya baca tadi pagi adalah JobsDB. Meskipun merasa saya nggak selevel untuk bisa masuk sebagai Territory Manager, saya toh tetep iseng aja buka lowongan untuk Territory Manager - West Java. Wah disitu saya membaca hal yang mengasyikkan ( :D ) diantara beberapa key responsibilites:

Be responsive to all competitive threats from NCS (Non-Commercial Software) movement, in particular Linux and StarOffice and ensure proactive plan to combat this threat in all accounts

Disitu dikatakan deskripsi perusahaan sebagai berikut:

Our client is an excellent company to work with, as it is one of the biggest names in IT industry worldwide

Hmm .. wah ada beberapa hal yang perlu dibicarakan disini:

1. Bagaimana mungkin perusahaan dengan nama terbesar di dunia IT tidak memahami perbedaan software komersial dengan software bebas? Atau memang mau menyesatkan dengan membuat istilah NCS (Non Commercial Software) untuk software-software yang jelas komersial? Lihat di FAQ dari StarOffice: ... StarOffice 8 software is a commercial product built on the open source code of OpenOffice.org.... Setahu saya, setiap key responsibilities, diambil dari client yang memerlukan pegawai jadi mestinya ini bukan dari Monroe Consulting. Tidak ada juga yang mewajibkan Linux harus gratisan.
   
2. Barangkali mereka harus belajar membedakan arti dari free software (di Indonesia diterjemahkan sebagai "software bebas"). URL berikut ini bisa digunakan untuk mempelajari pengertiannya: The Free Software Definition dan Debian - What Does Free Mean?. Software bebas sama sekali tidak berkaitan dengan harga, tidak harus non commercial.
3. Barangkali penyesatan istilah dari Free Software menjadi Non Commercial Software bisa jadi merupakan siasat bisnis untuk mengurangi respek dari kalangan bisnis terhadap eksistensi berbagai software bebas.
4. Kalau memahami pengertian software bebas saja tidak mampu, bagaimana mungkin bisa menerima key responsibility untuk "combat this threat in all accounts"? Now, that is really really bad.
5. Ternyata eksistensi software bebas semakin ditakuti. Hahaha ... Saran saya sih, jangan mencampur adukkan masalah harga dengan kebebasan. Jadinya ya keblinger gitu.
   

Now, can you guess the company name? :-D

Instalasi MilaX ke USB Flash

Baru-baru ini saya download MilaX, distro mini berbasis OpenSolaris. Mulanya saya mengira mudah untuk install di USB karena ada script yang dibuat oleh Anil Gulecha. Meskipun demikian, setelah dilihat-lihat, ternyata script yang bersangkutan mengandung banyak tools dari Solaris, jadi saya nggak bisa menggunakannya di mesin Linux saya.

Hmm ... ok, jadi saya harus googling dulu. Owaladalah, ternyata nggak ada blas info tentang itu (am I too stupid for Google or what?).

Jadi saya harus punya mesin Solaris? Huh ... lha ya jelas sulit deh. Mau menghapus ArchLinux, saya masih kepepet waktu untuk ngerjain suatu project development dengan Ruby on Rails, jadi mustahil deh. Untung saya ingat kalau saya juga punya Belenix 0.7, jadi saya akan install dari Belenix saja.

Dengan bantuan Belenix, ternyata instalasi MilaX benar-benar a piece of cake. Berikut ini adalah langkah-langkah instalasi dengan menggunakan script dari Anil Gulecha:

1. Boot live CD dari Belenix
2. Setelah masuk ke desktop, aktifkan terminal
3. Saya meletakkan usbcopy dan milax03.usb ke USB flashdisk lainnya, jadi saya copy dulu ke homedir jack (Belenix akan mengaktifkan secara otomatis USB flashdisk)
4. Setelah itu, umount USB flashdisk dari desktop XFCE tidak berhasil (lack of permission), jadi harus manual. Saya menggunakan pfexec umount /media/ClipDrive (karena secara otomatis di mount disitu) dari terminal.
5. Setelah itu masukkan USB flashdisk calon korban ( :-D ) yang akan diisi MilaX, jangan di mount. Jika otomatis di mount, harus di umount dulu dengan cara seperti langkah 4.
6. Jalankan script usbcopy seperti di bawah ini:

jack@belenix:~$ pfexec ./usbcopy milax03.usb
Found the following USB devices:
0: /dev/rdsk/c4t0d0p0 953.5 MB Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 1.00
Enter the number of your choice: 0

WARNING: All data on your USB storage will be lost.
Are you sure you want to install to
Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 1.00, 953 MB at /dev/rdsk/c4t0d0p0 ?(y/n) y
umount: warning: /dev/dsk/c4t0d0s0 not in mnttab
umount: /dev/dsk/c4t0d0s0 not mounted
Copying image to USB device
7744+0 records in
7744+0 records out
126877696 bytes (127 MB) copied, 57.9422 s, 2.2 MB/s

real 0m57.950s
user 0m0.011s
sys 0m0.304s
Installing grub to USB device /dev/rdsk/c4t0d0s0
Completed copy to USB
jack@belenix:~$



Setelah selesai, berarti siap untuk booting. Di mainboard Gigabyte saya, ada fasilitas untuk booting dari USB flash. Setting di BIOS dengan urutan pertama USB Zip dan voila... you are on MilaX!

Soal UTS - Administrasi Jaringan

Silahkan ambil soal UTS untuk mata kuliah administrasi jaringan.

New Ruport 1.6.0 Ruport::Renderer Causing Trouble when Using Documatic 0.1.0

When I updated my Ruport gem to 1.6.0, Rails can not be started. Here's the errors:

[bpdp@bpdp-archlinux bowencms]$ script/server start
=> Booting Mongrel (use 'script/server webrick' to force WEBrick)
=> Rails application starting on http://0.0.0.0:3000
=> Call with -d to detach
=> Ctrl-C to shutdown server
** Starting Mongrel listening at 0.0.0.0:3000
** Starting Rails with development environment...
** Rails loaded.
** Loading any Rails specific GemPlugins
Exiting
/home/bpdp/software/xrails-new/ruby/gems/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:263:in `load_missing_constant': uninitialized constant Ruport::Renderer (NameError)
      from /home/bpdp/software/xrails-new/ruby/gems/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:453:in `const_missing'
      from /home/bpdp/software/xrails-new/ruby/gems/gems/documatic-0.1.0/lib/documatic/formatter/open_document.rb:12
      from /home/bpdp/software/xrails-new/ruby//lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require'
      from /home/bpdp/software/xrails-new/ruby//lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require'
      from /home/bpdp/software/xrails-new/ruby/gems/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'
      from /home/bpdp/software/xrails-new/ruby/gems/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:342:in `new_constants_in'
      from /home/bpdp/software/xrails-new/ruby/gems/gems/activesupport-2.0.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:496:in `require'
      from /home/bpdp/software/xrails-new/ruby/gems/gems/documatic-0.1.0/lib/documatic/init.rb:3
       ... 30 levels...
      from /home/bpdp/software/xrails-new/ruby/gems/gems/rails-2.0.2/lib/commands/server.rb:39
      from /home/bpdp/software/xrails-new/ruby//lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `gem_original_require'
      from /home/bpdp/software/xrails-new/ruby//lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in `require'
      from script/server:3
[bpdp@bpdp-archlinux bowencms]$

The key to this error was this:

    uninitialized constant Ruport::Renderer

Curiously, I started to look at Ruport API 1.6.0 and found that there were no Renderer class anymore. It's been changed to Formatter. While Documatic 0.1.0 gem still use Renderer, this will cause server can not be started.

So, if you experienced this problem, remove Documatic 0.1.0 gem and reinstall it again when it's already changed properly.

What's so funny in IT?

Though I firstly hoped that this is only April's fool day joke, looks like it is not. More than one standard is really really anoying and tend to raise some questions. Why do we have more than one standard? What standard should we adopt?

On April 2nd 2008, ISO finally agree to adopt OOXML from Microsoft as ISO standard. You may take a look at NoOOXML.org web for more information.

Having many standard for one thing is really ridiculous. Looks like this is not a normal voting process. :)

Rails mass mailer

I've stumbled upon Rails ActionMailer. I never saw any other limitations about how many e-mails can be sent in one event. So I just confidently get all e-mail address and send it in one event as @bcc.

A month ago, an error always occured when sending emails. At the moment I don't pay attention with e-mails limitations so I began searching at the wrong place. Today I finally found that 80 e-mails probably is the limitations.

So, If you have an error when sending e-mails, pay attention to this. Maybe you need to separate into some event. In my case, I did a loop on e-mail address and sending e-mail on each loop.

Note: Some said that 100 is maximal limitations like http://www.myowndb.com/blog/?p=20 but I had no luck with that number.