The Case for MeeGo

(Cross-posted on Blog Inquirer Mind)

Nokia unveiled its latest smartphone, N9, at the "Nokia Connection 2011" summit on June 21 at Singapore.On a first look,it is everything you'd ever wanted from the company: a smartphone with a competitive spec sheet, and a touch-centric UI that looks futuristic.

The company had laid claims that is would be the only high-end smartphone line based on MeeGo,- which is an open source, Linux project which brings together the Moblin project, headed up by Intel, and Maemo, by Nokia, into a single open source activity.

Observers believe that Nokia is at crossroads as it has announced it is abandoning the Symbian platform in favour of Windows Mobile but had to take U-turn with announcement of the N9 handset powered by MeeGo which is another open source platform.

The compelling features touted by the manufacturer as being highlight of this handset are as follows:

- Polycarbonate material
- Carl zeiss lens 8mp camera
- Gorilla glass Display,
- HD playing capability upto 1080p,
- Dolby Sound Enhancement" etc.

The real story

But the real story behind this new gadget is the war between two platforms (Windows Mobile and MeeGo(or the larger open source bandwagon to be exact))on one side and two mobile giants (Nokia and Intel)on other.

Earlier, after release of Nokia N8,Nokia announced it would make Windows Phone 7 Nokia's primary mobile platform, not MeeGo. This halted a bold initiative to bring Linux to a new class of Nokia mobile devices.This had been deplored by scores of mobile enthusiasts and platform developers (especially from open source arena)as a behind the scene understanding between Nokia and Microsoft to put brakes on open-source based mobile OS's to emerge as a strong contender in market through Nokia handsets.

Moreover, Nokia at the corporate level had tried to use the wings of some negative reviews by tech gurus on MeeGo OS that is was yet to develop a viable development community. But after negative reviews from public and also the resignation of its technical head in this issue,Nokia had second thoughts and made a u-turn by this announcement that MeeGo shall be the primary OS for at least the upcoming high-end release from Nokia.

Another noted observation on the current market is that if Nokia completely turned to Propreitory OS, it would have to suffer stiff competition from MeeGo + Android on one hand and also possibility of losing its current market space to other giants which is already happening on a large scale.

The case of MeeGo

But the fact remains that MeeGo also continues to be a viable choice for device manufacturers looking to enter a competitive mobile market providing a clearly differentiated experience.Nokia hadn't expected such rave reviews from onlookers when it decided to go for Windows Mobile platform forever.Intel is actively behind MeeGo and QT and this company is going to go full throttle at the mobile space over the next few years. Maybe this has prompted Nokia who want to be another monopoly to thwart the emergence of another competitor in the market.

"The fundamentals fundamentally favor open source", said Jim Zemlin, Linux foundation director, at the Mobile World conference keynote at Singapore.The late reviews on features of new handset N9 is also positive as it sports video call facility which is not included even in latest iPhone version which claims to own the major player in smarphones.

If Intel wants MeeGo to be viable in its future, it is also needed that the platform should try to evolve as a robust one within a short span of time.The current situation though is changing soon though, as the fundamentals aren't completely horrible and the frameworks, community and ecosystem are quietly being built up for MeeGo.

The author doesn't claim that the information published in the post is authentic and is purely based on observations

Facebook comments : A farewell to anonymity ?

On April 2011, Facebook, the leading social networking site announced its new 'comment-box add-on' aimed at what it terms "more personalized chats on third-party sites".This has become a serious concern for those who believe in anonymous and frank discussions on the corners of the net.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/221106/facebook_beefs_up_comment_box_for_external_sites.html

Even though the new feature was aimed to make comments more relevant in social networking arena, the fact that facebook adds the personal info of users next to their posts and had added links to these third party sites and feeds in the posts have increased risks on privacy of the users who comment. All this is helpful to those interested in tying thier general online activities with Facebook. But consider the scenario if you 'don't want your comments on a site to be visible to your 500 facebook friends?'.It is suggested that in this case, by default, the "Post to Facebook" box underneath the comments widget in third-party sites should be checked.Even though your comments are hidden, the people on that site will still see your Facebook Profile picture and if they click, can access your profile.

Sometimes serious issues of free speech can be underlying like this observation where U.S. Senate Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin of Illinois asked Facebook Chief Executive Officer to allow users to choose anonymity, invoking the political situations in Egypt and Tunisia just a day before the former achieved freedom.The fact that many of the activists couldnt use anonymity as shield aided the state to crackdown on them.

Christopher "moot" Poole, the founder of Internet anonymity haven 4chan, thinks Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is wrong when it comes to online identities. Remaining unknown online frees people to blaze ahead with creative endeavors they might otherwise shy away from for fear of being embarrassed.

TechCrunch, which implemented Facebook Comments as an experiment last week, reports that while the total volume of comments is down significantly, the comment nastiness quotient is approaching zero -- except, apparently, for nasty comments about their new commenting system.In other words, people who might have left casual comments under the cloak of anonymity are choosing not to comment at all under the new system, turning TechCrunch into a sloppy space. This is the verification of the arguiment that the nature of commenting on the web needs to feel organic and fluid, just like it does in real life and should be anonymous if necessary.

But being such an extremely social company, Facebook's insistence that you have one identity across the web is both short-sighted and flawed, and people are starting to realize this. And i want to remind you if you are concerned about online security, switch over to anonymous browsing options and see how online anonymity can make your Facebook experience safe and secure.

Democratic Alliance for Knowledge Freedom

DAKF (Democratic Alliance for Knowledge Freedom) is a association of IT workers and IT users formed on 2008 Dec 21 at Naresh Pal Centre,Ernakulam dist', Kerala,India.It works to encourage and promote FOSS and knowledge freedom. DAKF is centred in Kerala and is very much interested in FOSS meets. It is definitely not an apolitical organization and joins political activism with a free movement for its immediate ends.


DAKF is getting into the mainstream of Kerala IT field by constituting its bodies in all districts of Kerala as well as any part of globe where malayalee IT personnel concentration is there.

Official website: http://dakf.in (Malayalam wiki engine-based)
An allied blog on relevant issues can be found at : http://vivaravicharam.blogspot.com

The stated objectives of DAKF are:

*   Freedom of knowledge
*   Spread of Free software and computing methods
*   Breaking the divide between haves and havenots in software and related services
*   Work with a social objective in Cyberspace
*   work for the progressive development of workers and professionals in the field of IT & ITES
*   Work to ensure that public money as well as government schemes in IT or related are implemented without corruption and to weed out  
     impediments on the way for its results.

Currently, 9 district committees at Kottayam, Kannur, Palakkad, Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam, Kasargod, Pathanamthitta & Alappuzha have been formed in Kerala and have commenced working on the above objectives.

Also some allied organisations work in tandem with the organization :

*   Appropriate Technology Promotion Society(ATPS) Reg. No. ER-419/2001 ,a registered society working on promotion of GPL-based software(Open
     Source)on technlogy and service fields
*   Open Software Solutions Industrial Co-operative Society Limited (OSSICS) No. S. IND. E-245), a conglomeration of IT professionals providing 
     software services and consulatation based on Open Software only
*   Free Software Industries Association, Kerala ,an association of software companies offering software and services in IT and ITES
*   IT @ KWA, an organization of Kerala Water Authority staff for the promotion of free software
*  Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT)
*   Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI)
*   Centre for Indian Trade Unions (CITU)

DAKF is working now on many fields, organizing FOSS meets statewide, educating the public and professionals on various issues relating to FOSS as well as software freedom, activism on issues given as its objectives, classes and meets for students and teachers, hands-on workshops, developments of new open software and platforms etc. It is also having a major role in promoting malayalam-based computing in the state of Kerala.

How to effectively recover lost/corrupted mysql data

One of the most difficult situations that a system/database administrator may comprehend is the loss of mysql table data or accidental dropping/overwriting of MySQL database being hosted in a production environment. In a recent study, it was revealed that even now, of the live servers being hosted worldwide, only about 30% employ effective backup/recovery methods that would assure data recovery at the worst case scenario.I had also gone through such a travail recently and found that about 65% of the data were permanently lost which could be recovered only through professional hands employing high-level data-carving/forensic tools.Anyway, i could be very much near the solutions even though it took 4-5 days to go through all possible options of recovery and finally recover data,and put in place, an alternative measure for future. I think
many people will be interested in such solutions:

The Golden Rule : The first thing to be done after any db is created is to be a good backup mechanism.Negligence in this would cost you money,time and most importantly, your reputation.

Step 1: Setting the stage

Firstly, if you are using the database as a backend of a web application and you suddenly find database crashed, but you feel that the data is still being displayed in the application fully or partially, dont waste even a moment and take an online db backup through mysqldump or a GUI backup tool like mysql administrator.Maybe the db crash had occurred and data still persists in the cache which can be extracted through mysqldump.

Another important thing you may look forward to at this juncture is if 'mysql binary logging' is enabled in the server.Certain data recovery operations require use of the binary log. After a backup has been restored, the events in the binary log that were recorded after the backup was made are re-executed. These events bring databases up to date from the point of the backup.Just check if following directive is given uncommented in your server's '/etc/my.cnf' configuration file:

log-bin = /var/log/mysql/bin.log

and the directory like the following one is created:

'/var/log/mysql/bin.xxxxxxx'  (where x maybe any number)

If both exists, we can infer that binary logging is enabled. Please use the following documentation for further proceding with recovery:

           http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/binary-log.html

If this doesn't work, before you attempt recovery on deleted data in any case, it is advisable to isolate the system from further access from network and from further human intervention.Unplug the system from network and using a proven disk imaging solution like Norton Ghost or DriveImage,take an image of entire hard-disk and restore in a system having identical configuration.Moreover, test the mysql server in this copy system if it has the running copy of the db's in the original system so that database dumps can be made and restored in original system.This can be your insurance on playing with and attempting various methods in the filesystem/DB in question.Never attempt recovery in the live system or otherwise, you may end up with a much difficult situation.

Step 2: Entry-level procedure

This should be followed next if the database in question is dropped and no identical database name had come into existence.This ensures recreating all the tables and form data in '/var/lib/mysql' folder(if it's a linux server) using simple file-recovery software. The most effective ones are:

• DiskInternals Partition Recovery
• R-Studio Corporate Edition
• File-Scavenger

Simply find in which linux partition, the '/var' directory resides and after imaging and restore, attempt recovery through a windows machine by connecting the imaged HDD(not that of live server) as slave.

Step 3: Advanced recovery methods

In case, the db being dropped was later created once again or overwritten with another schema, you cannot ensure recovery by above methods as the recovery software only detects the latest version of the form names and not which was overwritten.Then we should directly attempt database-specific tools as below:

If the database in question is using MyISAM format, the below link maybe of some help.(Also some commercial solutions are available for professional recovery).

• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/myisam-repair.html
  

But if the DB is using InnoDB format(most widely used in production environments)please go thru some of the methods below:

• Below link has some firsthand information as well as good documentation of InnoDB recovery toolavailable in 'sourceforge' which is an open projects repository.
  

        http://www.chriscalender.com/?tag=innodb-recovery-tool

• Another InnoDB recovery tool from Percona Ltd

        https://launchpad.net/percona-innodb-recovery-tool/+download

Above are one of the most accurate and to-the-point recovery procedures available for InnoDB

Step 4: Prevention is better next time

Now as recovery is made, lets not leave it here.The most essential and final step in such a scenario should be putting a backup/preventive mechanism in place.

• Most popular one is the Automysqlbackup script that takes daily/weekly/monthly backups of all mysql db's in a server and which has many customisable options.Please check it out here:
  

        http://sourceforge.net/projects/automysqlbackup/

• Mysql website has also listed out offcial backup procedures here:

        http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/backup-methods.html

• You could also employ tools like zmanda backup at some expense:

        http://www.zmanda.com/backup-mysql.html

• Finally,some real high-end geek stuff if you have time and resources for implementation ie, Replication

        http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/replication.html

Note: Please note that the above methods doesn't at all ensure 100% recovery of data and scenario may arise when any this cannot work with destroyed data at all.The author doesn't give any guarantee that the above are risk-free and should be attempted carefully and by experienced hands.