brain core

stupid spammer makes my day

2010-12-10T11:55:00.002+01:00

Received this in my mail:

Dear Paypal member, You have added xxxxx@yahoo.com as a new email address for your Paypal account. If you did not authorize this change, check with family members and others who may have access to your account first. If you still feel that an unauthorized person has changed your email, submit the form attached to your email in order to keep your original email and restore your Paypal account. If you are using Internet Explorer please allow ActiveX for scripts to perform all data transfers securely.

Uhhuh. No, I did not add xxxxx to my Paypal account and I'm certainly not going to open a HTML attachment concealed as a PDF with ActiveX scripting turned on. So. Had a good laugh at this spammer and threw the spam away.

kmail

2010-12-01T01:22:00.001+01:00

I really really hate this. Being a sourpuss again. Guys, what the hell are we doing to KDE nowadays, especially KDEPIM in it's latest beta incantation? No don't get me the you're-running-a-beta-so-shutup. This is really ludicrous! What happened to my fairly lightweight mail agent application? Why are we needing this nepomuk stuff again? Why do we need to run a full fledged database to just read mail? Do we really need that? Then please, explain to me why my laptop that used to be fairly OK a couple of years ago is rendered pretty useless as of late because we really really needed to put stuff into akonadi? As of now I tend to conclude that the whole plasma/nepomuk/akonadi thing is very very overengineered and plain-just-not-working. And I almost almost almost tend to think I should go back to Gnome (minor shudder) or Windows (major shudder) just to get a reasonable desktop. Come on guys. If we want to put KDE on the map, we need a lightweight performant outlook/thunderbird like PIM. Quit spoonfeeding me a Google Desktop clone I don't want. I know where my stuff is. Get cracking!

drivers

2010-10-27T00:00:00.001+02:00

Ehm. I don't know. OTOH, yes I do. Drivers are always a problem. Especially if they are more-or-less closesourced like the nVidia drivers. Anyway. Big trouble on one machine that would not want to start amarok. And on another machine a totally unwilling plasma crashing with a floating point error. In the end, the solution was to use the older nVidia driver. All is well now, after a couple of days that I wasn't happy. No music. Darn...

hidden cost of linux

2010-04-25T11:25:00.002+02:00

Has been a long time. But maybe I came up with something that makes my brain dump core again. Let's add a series about trade rag articles. Number one on the list, a front page blurb in Computable #10 of 2010 about research into Linux on the desktop in companies. If you're using a Windows server you're going to need CALs. OK. No big deal, that comes with the territory. Funny and wrong conclusion in the article: Linux has hidden cost because you need to pay for CALs if you're using it in an environment that uses Windows servers. Well. Seems to me that needing CALs for being able to use a Windows server product is actually an extra selling point for also using Linux on the server side as a way to reduce cost. Other than that, arguing that Linux incurs hidden cost when used together with Windows server products is ludicrous.

bilbo

2009-04-08T23:20:00.001+02:00

It may well be the name of a book character, but I finally discovered a suitable blog editor. Not perfect yet but hey I'm not complaining. Since a number of settings are in a SqLite database it wasn't that hard to horse around with some settings and make it maintain my three blogspot blogs. As far as I can see now I like it. It integrates well, it's easy to work with and it lets me write blogs incrementally... If you're using KDE4, I recommend it...

Update: bilbo changed its name -for obvious reasons - into blogilo. In the mean time it has been improved significantly!

peace of mind

2009-02-19T22:34:00.002+01:00

KDE.... Peace of mind...

64K should be enough

2009-02-04T09:02:00.002+01:00

They really never learn do they. Windows 7 Starter Edition allows you to run a maximum of three applications simultaneously.

kde4: kdesvn ported

2008-10-02T15:33:00.004+02:00

Yahoo, I was hoping they would. kdesvn is one of the browser extensions I often use since I'm a heavy SVN user. I hope openSUSE deploys it RSN!!! Update -- gets even better, there is a repository for it. And since I'm on it anyway, I'm trying to run version 1.2.1 to see what's up...

as-of-now

2008-09-29T15:35:00.001+02:00

If you want to comment, go ahead. I'll moderate it, and if you're rude, an asshole or are trolling, just go the same route you're comments go.

to planet or not to planet: aggregate blogspot

2008-09-26T10:04:00.002+02:00

I'm trying to get used to tagging posts so that for example non-KDE related posts are not showing up in KDE planet. If you're using blogspot it's possible to maintain a general blog and let the planet filter out the KDE related stuff by telling it to apply a filter. You can specify that filter in the feed's URL. For example, this blog uses:

http://braincore.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/kde

to planet or not to planet

2008-09-24T23:32:00.003+02:00

Yes I like the looks. Very KDE4 ;-) Can I whine a bit? It's narrow enough to be displayed on 640px wide screens. Hey. 640 should be enough for anyone. But, if you do use that display width, a scrollbar appears. Content is 640 wide indeed but somehow somewhere there's something that is 1103px wide... Still, is there room to make this planet adapt to viewport width? Within reasonable constraints?

kde4: nvidia

2008-09-11T18:09:00.003+02:00

Or should I post this as nvidia: kde4. I know it's not a KDE4 issue but yes, I've been bitten by the nVidia bug. As soon as the main window of OpenOffice is displayed in KDE4, parts of the screen are going haywire. Running the Qt3 qtconfig and turning off the blinking cursor solves the problem. Almost. It seems that in that case, the only thing that is corrupted is the pager widget... Can live with that. FWIW, I'm running OpenSUSE11 with KDE4.1 on a Dell Precision M90. Which has a Quadro FX 2500M on board. I wonder what happens if the mini windows aren't displayed in the pager...

kde4: switching

2008-09-10T22:59:00.004+02:00

I'm switching. Bad news from the OpenSUSE team maintaining KDE. They're phasing out 3 and I don't want to be caught having to switch at gunpoint. I'm not yet impressed. Yes, lots of glossy bling, but I still miss functionality. I'll see if I can blog a bit about my gripes or - who knows - positive surprises...

Update: It seems to me this post raises questions. I'm changing from KDE3 to KDE4. I think the announcement of the OpenSUSE team is bad news because there is IMHO much to do in KDE4 to get it where KDE3 is at the moment. Maybe not in terms of creating the core components but in terms of KDE4 plus all KDE applications.

oneliner

2008-08-22T11:23:00.005+02:00

Bash oneliner to convert all those pesky MP3's in a directory to a proper open format...

        for f in *.mp3; do 
            mpg321 "$f" -w - | oggenc -o "${f%.*}.ogg" -; 
        done;

Notice the subtle use of Bash pattern matching and manipulation...

yeah yeah yeah, come on guys, it's not about lossy and/or non-lossy conversion, it's about the funky pattern matching abilities in Bash. Do the words 'dirname' and 'basename' come to mind perhaps??? And how cool it is that you don't need them in a Bash script? And how much faster that is if you need to do a lot of files??? :-)

twitter

2008-08-19T23:42:00.003+02:00

For skype users, here's a tip I found. Add twitter4skype as a contact and send in a single message:

    /account (shift+return)
    yourtwitteraccountname (shift+return)
    yourtwitteraccountpassword (shift+return)

Done. Now you have a twitter client.

first use

2008-05-15T08:59:00.002+02:00

Linux Journal is polling when people first used Linux. I must shamefully admit that would be version 0.99pl13. No X. Just use consoles to program. Throw in curses for good measure. I must be getting old.

click drag WHAT?

2008-03-06T08:18:00.002+01:00

Uhm, how serious are we nowadays? It seems to me that the current sport for some KDE people is reacting with a couple of snooty remarks if someone snarks about a serious misfeature...

feed spam

2008-02-25T13:39:00.002+01:00

Bah. Anybody else getting annoyed about advertisements disguised as an RSS-article? Or Register articles telling you you can download a whitepaper but you have to register... What moron thought of that?

Sometimes I think there are people that do nothing elase than come up with ways to annoy others into NOT buying a product. Sheesh...

kde: close bugs

2007-12-11T09:09:00.000+01:00

My two cents. For all that say 'Aye, close all KDE3 bugs' I have at least one (rhetorical) question. Why should we close KDE3 bugs once KDE4 is made available? Does making KDE4 available for general use make all KDE3 users go away magically? I don't think so. Is it possible to disregard all KDE3 problems and wishes coming forward from this time on? I don't think so too.

I think I need to make my standpoint clear. The KDE project and its developers cannot drop KDE3 all of a sudden once KDE4 is available. It needs to state for how long it will support and maintain KDE3. As a consequence, one of the things that need to be maintained is the KDE3 bug collection.

However, I can imagine that maintaining 15000 bugs of all kind of ilk is undoable. As one measure, I think it's OK to close those bugs that have no activity for let's say 6 months. Or send out an email to the original poster to ask him or her whether the bug still is existing or that he or she since then moved on to another version. I think it is possible to make a serious dent in the number of bugs in different ways than 'just close them'...

kde4: politicking. game on.

2007-11-30T00:00:00.000+01:00

Troy. Good show trying to defend Aaron. I still think the way he reacted is unwarranted even if told I contributed my share in that respect by others. Since I'm aware of my bluntness I have a habit of trying to make sure my opinion is written as opinion, not universal thruth. Bad thing now is it looks as if I am a troll. As in 'if I kick you do I get your attention...' Oh well. On to business.

I think it's obvious that I'm not overly enthusiastic about the current state of affairs in terms of the KDE4 desktop a.k.a. Plasma. Why make so much of a point of it? Because as I said, it is by nature the pièce-de-resistance of KDE4. Every serious user of KDE applications is confronted with the drive to follow KDE into version 4 in the end. Why? Because there is no guarantee that the current KDE will be maintained and extended as it used to be some time ago. I think that from the moment applications could be ported to KDE4, a serious amount of energy and attention has been diverted from KDE3 to KDE4. In my humble opinion that movement has been showing in the state of affairs of several KDE applications alas. What it comes down to is that if a user wants to keep current in terms of application functionality, that user will need to migrate sooner or later to KDE4. And as soon as that user decides to do that, that user will be confronted with Plasma. Why? For the simple reason that there is no migration path to the functional equivalent of kicker/kdesktop/kmenu, not even one offering remotely similar functions. The unsuspecting user is all-of-a-sudden confronted with a totally different manner of conducting his desktop business. Think rearrange all his drawers, change the configuration of his chair, lower his desk 5 centimeters and hiding his pens-and-pencils kind of change. I think that is unacceptable. I think we have forgotten to provide a migration path for the less KDE-savvy amongst us and have fallen into the classic developer trap. We forgot to make the step of porting the old desktop before starting the new one. The effect of that oversight is what concerns me deeply.

For the trap of 'OK do you want to port xyz to KDE4' I will not fall. You know perfectly well as a marketeer that the KDE community does not solely consist of developers. It also consists of users with more than the average interest in the platform they are using. For the other trap 'Telling us developing KDE4 technology is a waste' I'm not falling either because in the first place the underlying technology in KDE4 is not only concerning the subject of diatribe, secondly, I think you cannot hold the position I said or implied that.

Let me conclude with this. I hope that in the end we have the collective wisdom to create a proper migration path from kicker/kmenu/kdesktop to Plasma that is palatable for the not-so-revolutionary and have the guts to postpone a KDE4.0 release until that is possible.

kde4: viva la revolucion?

2007-11-29T20:10:00.000+01:00

It's a pity to see that members of the KDE community are incapable of making a difference between the utterance 'I hate it' and 'It sucks'. I also think it is a pity that a very verbal and visible member of that community seems fit to dispense with politeness in his reaction. That Mr. Seigo is

tired of this shit

does not warrant his malignant rudeness.

There are at least a number of obeservations that can be made on the basis of the comments made by readers. That if I do not like it I should not use it. That there is loss of functionality when software is rewritten and that it will become better in time. That other people have a different opinion as to the usefullness of functions I do not like. That if I do not like it I should start to contribute.

The worst however is a

neat little reality check for all of you: for every one of you little bitter people i've run into probably 2-3 who are loving it.

Well, Aaron, just to return the favour, that implies that the radical departure in KDE4 from what the KDE userbase is accustomed to in KDE3 estranges at least one quarter of it.

New features. Shiny objects. All good and well, alas, 25% of the community that relies on KDE and the KDE desktop for doing their daily duties and being productive has been left in the cold for the simple reason that developers seemingly cannot be bothered by supporting a working solution in KDE4 but seem intent in scratching the new-is-better itch. Should they stick to KDE3? Even then they will get a bad deal. The largest part of improvements and additions to KDE are being done in KDE4.

I'm very afraid that the ship that is KDE will sink while its officers are having a party happily shouting 'Viva la Revolucion' from the bridge.

kde4: not particularly cheerful

2007-11-29T15:10:00.000+01:00

After making some room on my day-to-day-workhorse I finally decided to install KDE4, that is, the openSUSE buildservice version. Logged out. Logged in again but start a KDE4 session.

Let me say this. Even for a release candidate, I'm not particularly cheerful. Oh well, applications might be better than ever, granted. The piece de resistance however is the desktop. And honestly, I hate it. Oh goodie, desklets. Wow. Useless crap I tell you. Kicker bar or whatever it's called today? Useless. New K menu? I hate it, it's hard to navigate. Give me the old one anytime...

So please anyone, tell me, how is this an improvement over the current state of affairs in KDE3??? I'm not getting it.

de icaza is a revisionist

2007-10-07T10:38:00.000+02:00

Ofcourse is Mono threatened. Not only by Microsoft and their move to 'open' the .NET code, but also by a revisionist futurologist. Why? De Icaza thinks that the history of open-but-closed UNIX source code applies to the so-called opening of the .NET code by Microsoft. This history lesson does not apply. For the simple reason that those were different times and because the copyright on that code was not exercised for a long time and it was made in large parts available in a book.

Don't fall for this, people. If you still want to be able to contribute to open source software, don't take a license on the .NET code and do not have a peek at it. It will taint you, and also, Microsoft will probably know you by name. This stinks. I think it's the second attempt of Microsoft to taint the open source community through a high profile project called Mono. Reason enough for me not to have a serious look at it as a tool. Pity really...

opensuse 10.2 ooo upgrade

2007-09-26T13:59:00.000+02:00

Details bloody details, if you use smart to update the latest STABLE OpenOffice.org to version 2.3, it seems that OpenOffice is very broken. Until you realize that the OpenOffice packages for OpenSUSE are broken up in more pieces than they used to. Make sure that after you upgrade with smart, you also install:

OpenOffice_org-base
OpenOffice_org-calc
OpenOffice_org-draw
OpenOffice_org-filters
OpenOffice_org-impress
OpenOffice_org-mailmerge
OpenOffice_org-math
OpenOffice_org-writer

From then on, things are as they were before upgrading.

hook line sinker

2007-09-07T22:39:00.000+02:00

I expected as much. Miguel de Icaza catches flak about the poison pill hidden inside Moonlight. You know what? Where there is smoke there is fire. Miguel de Icaza deems it necessary to diminish some of his critics in such a way that I suspect that the critique is valid. Pity. Yet another one gone over to the dark side...

sold out

2007-09-05T22:41:00.000+02:00

Explain this to me please. Why would any selfrespecting developer touch Moonlight with a ten foot pole? And why oh why is someone like Miguel de Icaza selling out in such an ugly fashion? I mean, what does

Microsoft will make the codecs for video and audio available to users of Moonlight from their web site. The codecs will be binary codecs, and they will only be licensed for use with Moonlight on a web browser (sorry, those are the rules for the Media codecs[1]).

mean other than that you are losing your freedom? What is this? The man that founded Gnome because of licensing concerns over software used in KDE making lousy excuses for bowing to Microsoft rules? It's a bloody shame...

Don't believe people telling you Microsoft is supporting OSS. They do not. They are poisoning browsers with binary blobs restricting you in the use of those blobs. So, what's next? We all get to use Microsoft's browser because they disallow the use of those blobs in others?

google desktop hype

2007-06-28T11:56:00.000+02:00

Google Desktop for Linux? That's not true. Let me say it's a gross overstatement. OK, it is like GD for other platforms but mind you, although it works with Gnome and KDE, it is functional only if you restrict yourself to using Firefox as your browser and Thunderbird as your email client. Other browsers and/or email clients are not supported. So, yeah, it looks good from the outside but actually is restricted to a very narrow set of applications. What makes this overstatement so damaging is that it comes from a company that provides you a service. A service giving you information you might want to trust. So. Come on Google. This isn't worth it to be called Google Desktop for Linux. Let's call this Google Desktop for Firefox and Thunderbird, OK?

odd

2007-06-12T16:10:00.000+02:00

Coming to think of it... Safari on OS X, on Windows, why not KDE or Gnome?

bill

2007-05-14T16:09:00.000+02:00

Dear Microsoft, Please sent bill ASAP...

snicker...

2007-01-30T14:44:00.000+01:00

Vista is the abrreviation of 'Viruses, Instability, Spyware, Trojans, Adware'... w00t...

kde: sister

2006-12-28T21:59:00.000+01:00

Ah. Finally. Something happening. I assisted my younger sister in repairing her desktop. It turned out to be a memory error, very strange, that also played havoc on recognising the DVD player in her machine. Anyway. After having sorted that out this morning I installed a SUSE 10.1 boxed version on her PC. After some introduction, setting up her email and importing her old Outlook Express email files (she gave me a look of astonishment) and after assuring her that yes this is all legal yes I can install this all on your machine she sort of told me to go home and let her find out and tinker to see if she can get the hang of it...

Stay tuned...

booooring

2006-12-15T09:45:00.000+01:00

This must be the most boring blog in the universe. I mean, it's like silent for months... Well, lots of personal things are happening. Lots of work need to be done that is not computer related... To sum it up: lots of distraction.

kde: flash

2006-10-19T12:23:00.000+02:00

Just downloaded flash player 9 beta and tried it. First impression is that it seems to work under KDE 3.5.5/SUSE 10.1. I made a backup copy of the flashplayer files in /usr/lib/browser-plugins, then moved the shared object there and set the x-bit.

suse: no mo no

2006-10-08T12:49:00.000+02:00

OK shoot me. I've been trying to find a repository to get Mono up to par, but I CANNOT FIND IT... Call me stupid but can someone... anyone... point me to this for SuSE 10.1, preferably something I can integrate in smart...

update... I found the download-stable link on the go-mono site previously, however, accessing repodata yields a 403 Forbidden...

update... Oooh! You want to know WHY I want to have a current version. Just to be able to have the tools running properly and to experiment with it... To learn something... And yes I know that ZEN updater is written in it. Beagle likewise. So? I want to experiment with mono, not with zen.

lol: shameless plug

2006-09-30T04:05:00.000+02:00

Hah. Since I seem to keep this blog more or less geared towards technical matters/rants/observations, I started another one. Just to tell stories, share my adventures, amazements, rages and joys...

Have fun.

yay: bios update

2006-09-24T21:00:00.000+02:00

If you own a Dell, you probably wonder how to do a BIOS upgrade if you do not have Windows installed on your laptop. They do not advertise with it, but Dell in fact provides a solution to do just that. If you are having a look at the Dell Linux Projects page you will find the biosdisk project down the page.

The project provides means to generate disk images that can be used to boot from. It is also possible to let it install a boot image and make modifications to the GRUB menu. Download the project files and install them. Then download the BIOS upgrade executable and execute

biosdisk --install YOUR_BIOS_UPGRADE.EXE

The next time you reboot, select the added boot item from the list and you will see that you are booting FreeDOS. From there you can execute the BIOS upgrade. If you reboot again, a subsequent

biosdisk --uninstall YOUR_BIOS_UPGRADE.EXE

will remove the superfluous files and the boot entry again.

yay: sauerbraten

2006-09-10T00:41:00.000+02:00

No, not as in food. As in Sauerbraten the game. If you're into first person shooters, you might want to explore this. If only to frag your friends and co-workers once in a while without having to pirate a commercial game...

lol: dumb and dumberer

2006-09-09T23:27:00.000+02:00

Oh boy. I used to be annoyed at this kind of stupidity, but nowadays I merely have a chuckle. I mean. How dumb can you be. Come on, guys. Counting bugreports and using the totals as a proper metric for how secure a piece of software is in comparison to another piece of software that is functionally equivalent is without merit. Next time, write a proper report and categorise the bugs in terms of impact and also tell me what the churn is - how fast bugs are fixed over a period of time.

Creating software is people business. I'm far more interested in how much attention the organisation that produces a piece of software I use is paying to let me do what I need to do. Software security is not a function of bugs per product per timeperiod. Off the cuff, I'd say that an impact weighted average bughours per timeperiod is a much better metric for software security because it gives an indication of how grave the errors are and how fast they are fixed over some period of time.

wtf: kill kill kill

2006-09-09T03:12:00.000+02:00

Articles like the one by Frank J. Ohlhorst of CRN seem to be recurring theme. You know. The corporate strategy consultant type rebrand the lot type of thing. Kill our beloved penguin, rename our applications. For what? To be taken more seriously in the corporate world? To blend in with all the rest? Hardly a good move I think from a branding point-of-view. I mean, sure, GIMP elicits the reaction 'What?' but only once. YaST? Same thing. But only once. The strength of the so-called funny cutesy names is that they do stick out and are remembered. Better than the umpteenth variation of XXXWriter or XXXPresenter.

I say this. Let's be different. Keep sticking out. Let's use the cutesy funny geeky properties to show that OSS is different. After all, it is...

kde: suse oops...

2006-09-03T12:15:00.000+02:00

For those that regularly update KDE from the latest-and-greatest, it seems the last update of kdelibs (kdelibs3-3.5.4-45.1) breaks KDE startup. When a little dialog pops up telling you it cannot start kdeinit, check if line 332 in /usr/X11R6/bin/kde reads:

LD_BIND_NOW=true start_kdeinit --new-startup +kcminit_startup

If that is the case, remove the start_ part in front of kdeinit so that it reads:

LD_BIND_NOW=true kdeinit --new-startup +kcminit_startup

Cheers.

update --- Stephan Binner points out that my analysis is incorrect. The problem is that a kdebase3 package that became available too early is causing this. Once other packages have caught up, the problem will go away.

update --- it's fixed now. How's that for fix it fast.

wtf: smart key

2006-08-12T00:17:00.000+02:00

Uhoh. Ran into trouble upgrading my machine with smart. It complained about being unable to retrieve keys from mit.pgp.edu. And indeed, it times out, I checked by opening this URL in konqueror. Tough luck? What I usually do in this case is to hunt around the net a bit. And came along a remark about showing which keyserver is using:

smart config --show keyserver

does the trick. Upon perusal of the commandline help, I remedied the situation by instructing smart to use a different keyserver:

smart config --set keyserver=your.preferred.hkp.supporting.key.server

and subsequently ran smart upgrade again. Problem solved.

wow: ancient youtuber

2006-08-11T23:41:00.000+02:00

OMG. I have a lot of respect for this old person. He's ranting and rambling on youtube. Can you imagine having a grandpa like this???

lol: whacky tux

2006-08-05T18:39:00.000+02:00

Sometimes people think of you when they encounter stuff on the net...

lol: whacky ringtone

2006-08-04T20:06:00.000+02:00

Hahahaha. A colleague gave me a ringtone that's just like the lady announcer on Dutch railway stations announcing that 'this gentleman is going to have a phone conversation'. Which she repeats, just to make sure! :-)

xkb: dell precision m90

2006-07-30T12:15:00.000+02:00

So, you also own one of them and really want to know how to get the softkeys working. Not even that hard as it turns out. X has a little program called xev which basically is an event lister. Start it in a console window and start moving your mouse around and pressing keys. Now, when pressing a softkey the interesting part is the keycode. Write them down, then look the keycodes up in xkb/keycodes/xfree86 to retrieve the symbol to use. Add them to xkb/symbols/inet like this:

// Laptop/notebook Dell Precision M90
partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "precisionm90" {
    key <I24>   {       [ XF86AudioStop         ]       };
    key <I19>   {       [ XF86AudioNext         ]       };
    key <I10>   {       [ XF86AudioPrev         ]       };
    key <I20>   {       [ XF86AudioMute         ]       };
    key <I22>   {       [ XF86AudioPlay, XF86AudioPause ] };
    key <I2E>   {       [ XF86AudioLowerVolume  ]       };
    key <I30>   {       [ XF86AudioRaiseVolume  ]       };
    key <I32>   {       [ XF86HomePage          ]       };
};

When done, also add the necessary entries to xkb/rules/base.lst, xkb/rules/base, xkb/rules/base.xml and xkb/symbols.dir.

When done, modify the keyboard section in xorg.conf to include the stanza:

Option "XkbModel" "precisionm90"

and restart X. From that moment on, you're able to use the softkeys in Amarok or other programs that let you modify keyboard shortcuts.

update --- not that hard. I have two things to say here. Hard? Yes. Easy? That too.

You really need to know your stuff to get it going. On the other hand, it does not need a big effort to know how to do this. But there is one thing one needs to keep in mind. I read an article about 'Windows Prisoner Syndrome' today which is - I think - indicative for the mindset of a lot of people lambasting Linux or X or whatever application or software component on 'our' side of the equation.

If you want to use a computer without resorting to that what is spoonfed to you, one really needs to open the mind to what a computer really is and how to accomplish the things you want or need. It is a tool. It is necessary to learn how to use it. And - last but but not least - you may rest assured that a lot of people are finding out things for you that eventually integrate into the easy way to let the tool do what you want. THAT is the purpose of this post. I'm explaining to you how you can accomplish using Dell Precision M90 softkeys right now. And yes, I did mail the xkb maintainer with that little piece of wisdom I gained from experimentation with this computer. Not to mention the fact that I hope I contribute a tiny little bit to everyones feeling that contributing to this is a good thing.

kde: oldies

2006-07-02T17:02:00.000+02:00

Alright. I admit. Although I still do not belong in the group of those that have more common sense than hair. The amount of hair I have is adequate, thank you.

Still, I couldn't resist to subscribe to kde-oldies, KDE over 30's mailing list.

kde: google earth

2006-06-19T19:21:00.000+02:00

The nice thing about an open source community is that there are always people that are better informed than a lowly blog writer struggling with Google Earth and KDE! In fact, Kevin Krammer pointed out that setting the BROWSER environment variable to kfmclient exec is sufficient to handle any URI or MIME type. That reduces my little hack to:

# Set BROWSER variable if not already set.
# This is a hack to be able to handle the URI's coming from Google Earth
# Original idea: Kevin Krammer
if [ "${BROWSER}" = "" ]; then
    BROWSER="kfmclient exec"
    export BROWSER
fi

Thanks Kevin! Enjoy everyone!

kde: placemarker mimetypes

2006-06-18T17:13:00.001+02:00

After hacking Google Earth to use kmailservice, the next task is making MIME-types for it. Enjoy!

The .kmz mimetype goes into vnd.google-earth.kmz.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=Google Earth Placemarker
Hidden=false
Icon=/usr/googleearth/googleearth-icon.png
MimeType=application/vnd.google-earth.kmz
Patterns=*.kmz
Type=MimeType
X-KDE-AutoEmbed=false

The .kml mimetype goes into vnd.google-earth.kml+xml.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=Google Earth Placemarker
Hidden=false
Icon=/usr/googleearth/googleearth-icon.png
MimeType=application/vnd.google-earth.kml+xml
Patterns=*.kml
Type=MimeType
X-KDE-AutoEmbed=false
X-KDE-IsAlso=text/xml

kde: sending placemarkers

2006-06-18T17:13:00.000+02:00

Now that I played around with Google Earth and didn't like the fact it isn't integrated with KDE, I started spelunking a bit to see if I could get emailing placemarkers from Google Earth to work. In fact, that turned out to be quite easy.

In the README file the fact it uses the BROWSER environment variable to determine which browser to use to open a mailto link. And it mentions the fact that it does not look for kfmclient per default when that environment variable is not set. So, I experimented a bit with that but wasn't happy with the blank Konqueror window, then thought of kmailservice. Bingo.

Adding the following to the googleearth script does the trick

if [ "${BROWSE}" = "" ]; then
    BROWSER="kmailservice"
    export BROWSER
fi

Update -- Well, this does work, but... Alas, Google Earth also uses the BROWSER setting to open help pages. Back to the drawing board...

Update -- OK, I studied one of the scripts that Google provides to do mail handling through a browser and came up with:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use warnings;
use strict;

die("USAGE: $0 \n") if (scalar @ARGV != 1);
my $mailexe = "kmailservice";
my $browser = "kfmclient openProfile 'webbrowsing'";
my $mailto = $ARGV[0];
my $cmdline = "$mailexe";

# check to see if there is a mailto in it

if (substr($mailto, 0, 6) eq "mailto")
{
    $cmdline = $mailexe . ' "' . $mailto . '"';
}
else
{
    # let kfmclient deal with it
    $cmdline = $browser . ' ' .  $mailto;
}

$cmdline .= ' &';  # background it.

system($cmdline);

Put that in a place in the PATH, then instruct the googleearth startup shell to use that as a browser. If you pass it an URL that starts with mailto it will forward the request to kmailservice, otherwise it will open Konqueror in webbrowsing mode. Enjoy.

yay: google earth

2006-06-15T00:59:00.002+02:00

Saw it coming by in appsie . A mention of Google Earth Beta. Based on Qt. No. Not open source software. But still a nice to have. It's a beta, but from the looks of it is is functional.

Yet another nail in the coffin of those-that-shall-not-be-mentioned. Although at least one person scoffed the poster of the mention of GE for publishing non-OSS non-KDE software on appsie. Still. It does integrates properly with KDE. A good job I'd say...

oss: geronimooooooo

2006-06-15T00:59:00.001+02:00

I'm very interested in Java application servers and tried out Geronimo on SUSE10.1 today. While doing that, I noticed that KDE was acting up. In the end it turns out that if you start Geronimo, it decides to steal /var/tmp for itself, recursively chowning it to geronimo.geronimo. That effectively hoses your KDE cache directory.

To solve it, I created a geronimo subdirectory in /var/tmp and pointed the temp directory of Geronimo to it. Problem solved.

oss: mail down

2006-06-15T00:59:00.000+02:00

Oops. I found out that combining Amavis and Postfix and AppArmor is a bit too ironclad on SUSE10.1, that is, until you fix the AppArmor profile for Postfix.

It turned out outgoing mail was held in the queue because one of Postfix processes was prohibited from creating a pid-file which it uses to regulate the communication with Amavis.

So. Google to the rescue. After some searching I found out that I needed to patch /etc/apparmor.d/usr.lib.postfix.smtpd by adding the following to it

  /var/spool/postfix/pid/inet.127.0.0.1:10025   rw,
  /var/spool/postfix/pid/inet.[127.0.0.1]:10025 rw,
  /var/spool/postfix/pid/inet.localhost:10025   rw,

After that, the 20-something mails went through channels...

Update --- see here for the bug in the Novell bugzilla.

oss: install speed

2006-06-12T19:33:00.000+02:00

Having installed SUSE from scratch followed by installing XP in a VMWare virtual machine, I'm getting the sneaky suspicion that the former is much faster than the latter. I know I'm pretty adept at putting SUSE on a machine after some years of regularly doing so, but that also goes for putting Windows on a machine.

Anyway, SUSE took about 25 minutes I think to get a machine that is useable. And you should allow for the fact that that includes the necessary productivity software. Compared to that, installing XP was a real drag which actually took longer to accomplish sans productivity software. Then the runaround started. Getting virus protection. Getting all the little tools to keep assorted fools - including Microsoft - from getting their grubby fingers from your machine...

Update -- I can hear you shouting 'NO FAIR'. No. Not fair. I was upfront about using a VM. Let's say we cut that figure in half for a naked machine. Installing Windows then might take as long as installing a Linux distro. With what result? A barely functional machine. Then the runaround of download-install-reboot begins...

lol: seriously overdoing it

2006-06-10T21:04:00.000+02:00

OK OK OK. I admit. I seriously overdid the laptop thing. I mean, buying a Precision M90 with the works isn't exactly as qualifying for a prize in the 'I need this laptop for work' category. Other than that, having a 17 inch screen with WUXGA resolution is really very very nice. I already love this thing to pieces :-)

That said - and keep in mind my preference for SUSE - I was really amazed at how simple it was to install Linux on this thing. First I tried the latest kubuntu to see what would happen. Just works. It's not even funny or interesting anymore to put Linux on a laptop. Then, chuck in the SUSE 10.1 DVD, boot from it, select what you want to install and go. The only thing necessary is adjusting the screen resolution. And if you want to use the native nVidia driver, installing it. Other than that, no sweat. After booting, no tickmarks other than installing a bunch of software and updating KDE to the latest and greatest were left...

wtf: pee ooh-d

2006-06-04T22:18:00.000+02:00

You know what really p****s me off? If somebody or something decides to radically change the way to do business all of a sudden. Last perp: the SUSE guys. KDE supplementary. Unsupported, yes, I know. No need to remind me. But why kill it? Suddenly yanking the rug under people's feet is an absolute NONO in the software world. And still. Gone it is.

Now, if they started with the new repository stuff in 10.1, OK, no problem with that, provided the new solution is better than the old one. But retroactively changing it for old versions is evil.

That said, from the looks of it, putting a colon in a file path seems to trip up rsync somehow (unless I did not yet find a solution). The gwdg rsync server keeps maintaining the position that the service is unavailable as soon as I want to retreive files from the new KDE: repository on their OpenSUSE mirror... :-(

update --- OK, Not killed. But by moving it to a new structure they broke my stuff. Bad. Thanks for lurchi pointing out that the colon can be replaced by a '?'-wildcard to make rsyncing work again...

kde: emm emm emm

2006-05-25T15:57:00.000+02:00

In order to make this a real media effort, I'll do my bit of blogging about the KDE Multimedia Meeting also. Yes, I already did the first practical chore for the KDE Multimedia Meeting. Hauled my ass to Amsterdam to pick up a server and assorted hardware. Use of the server is Novell's sponsorship. We're planning to use it as an icecream box. Heh! Let's see how much BTU it can provide this weekend. We could use the heat.

Tonight is dedicated to picking up people from the train station in Breda. I volunteered to pick up Alexandre, who will arrive last, so, it's going to be late probably...

I was amazed at the amount of traffic on the road today going south on the A2. Luckily I needed to go to the north, but decided to take a detour over Rotterdam on the way back. Clear sailing with the exception of the A13 between 's-Gravenhage and Delft. There was a traffic jam on the first part of the A13? Why? Bad weather makes people go to Ikea instead of the beach :-)

lol: slacker

2006-05-16T14:14:00.000+02:00

Woah. Did I really NOT blog for two weeks? Seems so. Been very busy with working and I'm not at home during the week. Plus no internet in the evening. That leaves slacking, resting, looking at the tube and recently doing some artsy stuff again...

lol: worm

2006-04-28T11:24:00.000+02:00

Working somewhere else now. Always nice to meet interesting people. Robin for example. Who has an infectious sense of humor. Have a look here if you dare...

oss: nothing of interest

2006-04-09T11:36:00.000+02:00

I stumbled on this:

What open source is not:
Open source is not a marketing toy.
Open source is not a way to get people to visit your site or to push your legacy tools.
Open source is not just choosing one of the OSI approved licenses.
These are not the reason why people trust in open source applications.
The reason is that peer review results in superior code.
In code that is flexible that we can integrate as needed.
Code we can poke and discuss.
Code we trust because we know technical reasons are the single most important steering guideline.
This process is why we think it is worth our time to provide free QA, support and advocacy for open source applications.

Now, applied to Port25 and the Microsoft Open Source Lab I think we can safely assume that Microsoft does not get it. It is a nice spit-and-polish collection of blogs from people at Microsoft that work in that lab. If you read through the comments it seems to me it serves as the tuttletaylor of open source.

Now, will this serve as the olive branch as some trade rags want to interpret it? I don't think so. Read for yourself:

The lab provides Microsoft with deeper insight into the world of open source software, and it helps the company improve how Microsoft products work with open source software.

And:

"Licensing restrictions permitting we analyze and benchmark open source software in areas where Microsoft competes or has an interest," says Hilf. "We share those results with other teams at Microsoft, who use the data to determine how we can improve our own products."

So. What is this port25 thing? Nothing but a marketing tool. Smoke and mirrors for the trade rags. A me-too generator. Can we expect something back? Yes we can. More competition. Does it improve on open source? No it does not. In fact, it has nothing to do with open source at all. For what it's worth, they could easily call it the MSFOOSL: Microsoft Freeloading On Open Source Lab.

Carry on folks. Nothing of interest to be seen here...

lol: lies damned lies statistics

2006-04-07T22:04:00.000+02:00

How stupid can you be? Microsoft makes a huge amount of noise about having gained almost 5% of marketshare in the webserver market. Impressive? Read this article and tell me. Tell me please, 5% of what? 5% of my body mass? 5% of my brainfarts? Are they telling us they have had an installfest in April? Read the article carefully. Among others, it says:

The shift is driven by changes at domain registrar Go Daddy, which has just migrated more than 3.5 million hostnames from Linux to Windows.

Hostnames you say? Have a look at the graphs. Reread the quote. Now tell me, how many servers do you need to serve up a page telling you you can buy a domainname from Go Daddy for 3.5 million hostnames redirected there by their nameserver?

Other approach. From the graphics, you can see that there are 25 million active servers. Let's assume every server serves 100 websites. That leaves 250000 servers. Of which 5% is 12500 servers. Are you seriously believing that there is a registrar actually buying that many licenses and installs and deploys them in one month? Naaah. Didn't think so.

So, next time, Netcraft, tell me 5% of what. And Microsoft, enjoy your marketshare. I betcha you didn't make much money on that gain, eh? After all, 5% of nothing doesn't amount to much, isn't it?

lol: driek the gadgetfreak

2006-04-06T20:02:00.000+02:00

Hoot! Driek the Gadgetfreak is a creation of Wim de Bie, well known Dutch media and theater personality and nowadays full time blogger for VPRO, one of our non-commercial TV/radiostations. Driek laments in one of his blog entries (Dutch):

Is nothing sacred anymore? Are we going to toss all our values overboard?

Then he goes on telling us how he worked his ass of to buy a new MacBookPro. Guess what? He's returning it to the shop. His love for it is over. Why? Because he thinks his MacBookPro isn't elite anymore. The happyfewness of it is gone. Because nowadays, you can <cringes/> run Windows on it. After telling us how he leaves a flabbergasted Apple salesman after returning his machine, he signs of with

Driek de Gadgetfreak, Appledeserter

:-)

lol: hits

2006-04-06T14:58:00.000+02:00

You know you should not make bets. Especially not the kind that involves trading a threesome against wearing an 'I am an idiot' t-shirt. It's a good thing they did not agree to do this every two million hits because I think it might get old real fast...

oss: will ms get it

2006-04-06T12:06:00.000+02:00

Microsoft has created a website to highlight their open-source activities and offerings. MS will present it at Linuxworld today and is not yet accessible as we speak so I must be honest and say that I myself did not see it yet.

That said, I am already thinking that they don't understand. Why? Because in my humble opinion, a lot of people in the trade are very wary about Microsofts intentions and inherently distrust the company.

I think that open-source is not only a matter of freedom and quality of what is offered. It is also a matter of openness and trust. As it stands, the freedom and the quality of their offerings can be assessed by those who want to use it. Wether the entity offering open-source is accessible is something that should be experienced. But wether the entity is trustworthy is very dependent on its own behaviour. I think it is needless to say that Microsoft is so severely lacking in that respect that I think their initiatives in the open-source arena are pretty much doomed - even before actually having seen the website and the products they offer.

lol: fools redux

2006-04-01T01:22:00.000+02:00

It's that time of year again. Let's see if I can make a list of jokes and pranks.

The hockey club my son is member of is going to ask spectators to pay for admission tickets.
Pavel Janik is going to work for Microsoft.
Open Source Dress for Success University
Google acquires moon landing rights
/. redesigns to be more attractive to the less active demographic. Linus loves it! That fact picked up on /. LKML /.-ed...
China buys Google
Top level domain for Frysians, a nice gag where even the www.sidn.fy worked for some internet providers
Google Romance
My desktop OS: OpenVMS and CDE
HVD Alliance
Vista screenshots leaked
Bill Gates buys OpenOffice project
Windows Hasta-la-Vista

Contributed:

OpenSSH expoited
Linus goes to Debian
Microsoft Buy VLC
Duke Nukem Forever has been rewritten as an Ajax application
New Mac® miniTower with two Intel Core Duo processors and one Motorola Dual-core PowerPC G5 processor inside the box.

OK I think that's about it, without the bloody obviouus ones. One chuckle though for someone mentioning SQL on Rails on /.

Funny to see that no one makes April Fool's jokes about SCO. Well, it's not funny any more what they're doing, it's painfull. Funniest I think is OSDSU. Best executed I think is the .fy toplevel domain joke. Kudoos.

kde: three - five - two

2006-03-31T16:57:00.000+02:00

In order to update KDE on my SuSE Linux 10 boxes to the latest and greatest I regularly use rsync to sync a local copy of the necessary files on ftp.gwdg.de. It's a cron job that runs every night and mails me the outcome. That's how I notice that SuSE had readied new versions in supplementary. I'm using rsync because I need to upgrade four computers in total, and why waste bandwidth if I can sync once and use the result to update all four computers.

Sometimes it takes some time before all the necessary files are generated and mirrored to GWDG, but I can tell you it's now in a state that you can use YaST to upgrade to the new KDE 3.5.2 version.

For it, I use the procedure outlined by Novell. I'm using the KDE, GNOME and PACKMAN items from the list at the bottom of that page. Additionaly, I also have an installation source pointing to the 'misc' repository on GWDG.

For those interested, here's the script. Crude but effective.

#!/bin/sh
#==============================================================
SUPPBASE=ftp.gwdg.de/SuSE/ftp.suse.com/suse/i386/supplementary
PACKBASE=packman.inode.at/packman

DASHES="======================================================="

echo $DASHES
echo "Syncing KDE"
echo $DASHES
rsync -rltvz --delete rsync://$SUPPBASE/KDE/update_for_10.0/ /srv/suse/supp10/KDE

echo $DASHES
echo "Syncing GNOME"
echo $DASHES
rsync -rltvz --delete rsync://$SUPPBASE/GNOME/update_for_10.0/ /srv/suse/supp10/GNOME

echo $DASHES
echo "Syncing misc"
echo $DASHES
rsync -rltvz --delete rsync://$SUPPBASE/misc/update_for_10.0/ /srv/suse/supp10/misc

echo $DASHES
echo "Syncing PackMan"
echo $DASHES
rsync -rltvz --delete rsync://$PACKBASE/suse/10.0/ /srv/suse/pack10
#

Enjoy.

log: physics is cool

2006-03-27T00:56:00.000+02:00

Time for a new tag? The 'log' tag is for stuff I encounter and find inspiring, curious or worthy of critic or mention.

This time it's my watch. You know. Analog watch. With the stuff on the hands that light up at night. Now, I'm familiar with the physics of luminescence. Two-step decay of electron excitation. But guess what? If you want to see it happening in bright light, take your watch with you when you are lying under a solarium... you know... to get a tan in winter. Lots of excitation and decay going on. So much in fact that one can see the luminescent parts of the watch light up under it. So cool...

Thinking of it, I wonder how good a watch is at detecting ultraviolet light, since that is obviously the reason for the brightness of the luminescent parts of the watch... Hmmm...

kde: ccmake icecream

2006-03-19T17:59:00.000+01:00

OK, I think I'm getting my mind wrapped around cmake a bit now. Actually, the process is

ccmake --> cmake --> make

where ccmake creates CMakefiles which cmake uses to create Makefiles that make uses to create the necessary output. That is why I did not understand why setting the CC an CXX environment variables on the commandline with cmake like:

# This will not work
CC=/opt/icecream/bin/gcc CXX=/opt/icecream/bin/g++ cmake .

did not work.

Bill Hoffman was so kind to point out to me that it is possible to generate CMakefiles that refer to the icecream front-end binaries by specifying the environment variables on the ccmake commmand line like this:

# But this will!
CC=/opt/icecream/bin/gcc CXX=/opt/icecream/bin/g++ ccmake .

This might open other possibilities to influence the particular choices ccmake makes. For example it's possible to have different builds in the same codetree, for example:

mkdir gcc-linux
cd gcc-linux
ccmake ..

versus

mkdir xxx-linux
cd xxx-linux
CC=xxx CXX=x++ ccmake ..

where xxx and x++ are for example crosscompilers. Other examples come to mind, for example a debug and a release build.

kde: cmake icecream

2006-03-17T02:50:00.000+01:00

Here it is. My first attempts to use icecream with cmake. Please enlighten me if I am getting this all wrong, but in the end, this was how I could convince cmake to use icecream to compile kdelibs from trunk.

The trick is to find out what cmake variable to set when cmaking the Makefiles. From inspecting the files

  CMakeDetermineCCompiler.cmake
  CMakeDetermineCXXCompiler.cmake

in /usr/share/cmake/Modules I found out that you can tell cmake to use a particular compiler by specifying a value for

  CMAKE_GENERATOR_CC
  CMAKE_GENERATOR_CXX

An alternative is to set the CC and CXX environment variables.

In the end, it turns out that invoking cmake as:

  cmake -DCMAKE_GENERATOR_CC=/opt/icecream/bin/gcc 
        -DCMAKE_GENERATOR_CXX=/opt/icecream/bin/g++ 
        -DCMAKE_QMAKE_EXECUTABLE=/usr/bin/qmake .

was the way to convince cmake to use the icecream frontend binaries.

lol: riaa troll

2006-03-11T02:24:00.000+01:00

I'm evil. I just wanted to say I turned two Mozart operas into Ogg files on my PC so I can listen to them when I'm happily hacking away on my PC, which is in my... My what actually? Garage turned into office in need of finishing... Oh well. My little hideaway :-)

lol: windows live

2006-03-11T02:17:00.000+01:00

Oh this is always a hoot. Try out Windows Live in Konqi. Naaah. Dead as a doornail. ECMAScript errors too. Enter Firefox. OK. Seems to work. But hey, why do I see all that crap on the page? Takes eons to load this shit. OK. Seen it. Sucks. Move on everybody. Nothing going on here...

lol: what's your price

2006-03-01T15:02:00.000+01:00

Well, I could have imagined this, but it goes to show that some people think they can charge you an arm and a leg for something you can get for free and still get f****d...

I mean, first you have to pay 199 dollars and then what? Loose your virginity to get some work done?

But somehow I can't seem to get rid of the impression that at least one of them thinks this is a brilliant idea :-)

Oh, and FWIW, I did check on snopes this time for a bit but could not find anything.

kde: fixing html

2006-02-11T21:31:00.000+01:00

Thank goodness for Konqueror. It has proven itself as quite finnicky - which I think is a good thing, but it also can be fitted with a tool that allows you to have a look at the DOM-tree of the document currently shown in the browser. It is located in the Tools menu under 'Show DOM tree'. If you use it you will notice that if you click on an element in the tree, the corresponding part of the webpage is highlighted.

But that is not all. The DOM-tree viewer can come in quite handy in diagnosing HTML problems. It is possible to click an element that is troublesome and change its attributes. It's also possible to add and/or remove elements on the fly. If you're done editing things in the DOM tree viewer, click the redisplay button and you'll see that the webpage is rendered again as per the changes you have made.

As a matter of fact, I think that this tool can be invaluable in fixing hard-to-find errors in HTML pages. It certainly beats pouring over the document source.

At this point, the only thing you need to know it how to turn it on. Make sure you install the relevant part of kdeaddons. The SuSE10 distro has put them in kdeaddons3-konqueror, but this can vary per distro and how you install KDE. Then open 'Configure Extensions' from the Settings-menu. Click on the tools tab, turn on 'Dom Tree Viewer', click 'OK' From then on, this handy tool should be available in the Tools-menu.

lol: groundhog day

2006-02-01T03:13:00.000+01:00

I could not resist sharing this with you all. This year, Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address fall in the same week. As Air America Radio pointed out:

It is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involves a groundhog.

Ouch!

kde: kpilot on pills

2006-01-26T18:11:00.000+01:00

LOL. And not so LOL. Skiing is fun, almost crippling yourself in the process is not so fun, I think. But luckily, the death of [ade] is greatly exagerated.

Since it seemed he was happily hacking on kpilot and sebas has handed him a laptop and a cable, and he refers to the pink pills being good, now we're going to see some psychedelic coding I'm sure...

I bet all of us wish him a speedy recovery. Get well soon, Adriaan!

lol: nethack monster

2006-01-26T11:20:00.000+01:00

 #   |.
###n#+.
     |.

Hmmmm...

If I were a NetHack monster, I would be a water nymph. Life is more about what you get out of it, than what you put in. That elven cloak really matches your eyes, you know.

Oh well. What nethack monster are you?

wtf: not expected to understand this

2006-01-25T18:47:00.000+01:00

Remember that part of UNIX folklore? Well, as of today, Microsoft teaches us that it cannot explain in 12000 pages how their server protocols works and throws us a source code license while at the same time telling us that 'the source code is the documentation'. Puhlease! Quoting Brad Smith, Microsofts General Counsel:

The Windows source code is the ultimate documentation of Windows Server technologies. With this step our goal is to resolve all questions about the sufficiency of our technical documentation.

This is a real hoot. Of such proportion that it isn't actually funny. Microsoft has produced 12000 pages of documentation until now. An expert picked from a list of experts proposed by Microsoft has deemed that documentation as insufficient. Now they add the source code to it. Hell. They even add 500 hours of support! If you sign the license, that is.

Will that make it better? Ofcourse not. If 12000 pages of documentation cannot explain a bunch of server protocols, any amount of source code and any amount of support will not make it clear either. As a matter of fact, if 12000 pages of documentation cannot explain to you how it works, I don't even have to see the source code in the first place because I can almost guarantee you that it is a horrible mess. Does it answer the question of the sufficiency of their technical documentation? Sure it does.

Besides. Should you be tempted to take a license on it and pay the fee and use the information available, you can bet your silly ass you are making yourself vulnerable to a copyright infringement lawsuit. Does SCO versus IBM ring a bell?

If you ask me, it's the regular smoke and mirrors thing coming out of Redmond. Besides that, having to sign and pay for a license to be able to consult 12000 pages of insufficient documentation that needs to be augmented with the source code to be able to understand what is going on isn't exactly making the protocol specifications accessible, isn't it? Let me quote GrokLaw here:

Let me get this straight. The EU Commission orders Microsoft to hand over clear documentation. They hand over documentation, but it's incomprehensible, so no one can follow it. The EU Commission threatens to fine Microsoft $2.4 million every day until it complies, so instead of complying, Microsoft throws some code on the table and says, figure it out yourself. No documentation. For a fee. Have I got that right?

Yes, PJ, I think you've got that right.

lol: more good news

2006-01-24T16:06:00.000+01:00

Since Jos piqued my interest with the factoid that googlefighting windows versus linux is a win for linux, I tried googlefighting gnome versus kde...

And the winner is..... <drumroll>... kde!!! By a landslide.

update -- OK. OK. Don't take this too seriously. On the other hand, it made me have a closer look at googlefighting, and it seems there is something funny going on there. I retried the Linux-Windows googlefight and it comes up with a different result if you press the fight button for the second time...

oss: there we go again

2006-01-16T12:30:00.000+01:00

Uh oh. Do politicians ever learn something? Nooooo. Here we go again. A consultation by the European Commission running until March 31 this year on how to improve the patent system. Well. We're going to have to do this all over again...

lol: best blond joke ever

2006-01-16T10:34:00.000+01:00

I've read many, and not all of them are exactly funny, but I think this is the best blond joke ever that I encountered so far... You'd better remove liquids from your vicinity before reading it.

kde: new year

2006-01-14T22:39:00.000+01:00

The Dutch KDE people organize a party/meeting every year to celebrate the new year and have a good excuse to get together and meet in person. This year we held the meeting in Lent (near Nijmegen) again. Quite a few people and a mix of users, translators and developers. Kicked off at 1300 with coffee. Presentations by Sebas and Bram. Discussed the multimedia meeting to be held in The Netherlands in May 2006, looked back at 2005 and looked ahead to 2006. MWG held a meeting in between. Then, a beer and pizza or Chinese food. After that, socializing and having some fun. Wrapped up the meeting between nine and ten in the evening. Had a very good time.

hmm: quiz

2006-01-13T22:48:00.000+01:00

OK. You got my attention Boudewijn. Let's see how I do...

You scored as Mathematics. You should be a Math major! Like Pythagoras, you are analytical, rational, and when are always ready to tackle the problem head-on!

Mathematics 92%, Engineering 83%, Philosophy 75%, Chemistry 67%, Art 67%, English 67%, Dance 67%, Theater 58%, Linguistics 50%, Journalism 42%, Sociology 42%, Psychology 25%, Anthropology 25%, Biology 25%.

Hmmm. Reasonably but not entirely accurate. But fun to see what turns up...

oss: testbed xmail

2006-01-12T17:13:00.000+01:00

I am really really disappointed at some of the efforts of our government regarding OSS. I encountered a testbed XMaiL, a testbed to store email and attachments in such a way that they can be retrieved and accessed during the time they need to be preserved. Good. Interesting. And on top of that, those that give me the opportunity to download and examine it hope that this will be incorporated in email software. So, I downloaded it and looked inside the zipfile I downloaded.

My head exploded.

This must be one of the most shortsighted and stupid moves in the direction of open standards and digital longevity and accesibility that are sponsored by the Dutch government to date. Why? Well:

the code is Visual Basic and C#
Client system NT4SP6 or W2KSP1
XP isn't tested
Client needs Outlook2K in an Exchange environment

Do I need to go on? I realize it is a testbed. But what use is a testbed if it cannot be used by everyone. And what use is a testbed if I need to shell out a considerable amount of money and effort to actually use it.

lol: hellomoto

2006-01-11T13:39:00.000+01:00

So. Finally it arrived yesterday. I was a bit apprehensive after having used Nokias for a long time. Actually, it is a nice phone. Small, flat, nice design. The keyboard is better than I expected it to be. And the boys would looooove to have one too :-)

It definitely has something flowerpowery whacky trait to it. The startup screen for example. And it's the first phone I own that has a camera in it. Good for some fun.

I already had some success with it attaching it to KDE with kmobiletools, which is nice, but I still have to solve a little permission problem on the dynamically created device when I attach the phone to my PC with the USB cable. If you do, it also starts recharging the battery. Nice! What's more, the cable seems to be pretty standard. It's exactly the same cable that is used by the camera I have...

hmm: buying online

2006-01-05T12:03:00.000+01:00

OK. Lost my job and lost the mobile phone number that came with it. And I could not take the number with me either.

So, let's surf the internet and order a mobile phone subscription coming with one of those snazzy thin Motorola phones.

Score to date:

a confirmation email telling me my order will be carried out
an email telling me my order is cancelled
a phone call asking why
two hours to install, test and configure hylafax
a working hylafax installation
A PDF containing pictures of my ID and a recent bank statement
7 failed attempts to fax them a copy of an ID and a recent bank statement
another call telling them that their fax is out of order
an email address I wrote down incorrectly
a bounced email
another call to get the correct email address
an email with a PDF document attached with a picture of my ID and the bank statement
an answer confirming my order will be carried out
a letter asking me for ID and a recent bank statement which I am ignoring
a letter confirming my order

No phone yet, but I hope for the best. So much for being too lazy to get my butt of a chair and go to a shop, buy one, take it home and turn it on...

update -- Yeah! It arrived. Now I can go and spam all my friends I have a new mobile number...

hmm: happy new year everybody

2006-01-01T00:00:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year everyone. I hope we all can start doing the right thing this year. Be tolerant, truthfull, peacefull and productive. Make our world a good place to live in.

lol: congress tackles tech issues

2005-12-27T21:35:00.000+01:00

w00t! The US Congress is going to tackle tech issues in 2006. Well, trust them to make it even worse than it already is. And besides, didn't the FTC ensure us that the CANSPAM Act is a success? OK. I guess this is going to mean:

internet speed limits
email stamps
network traffic lights
digital highway police

and sundry braindead solutions...

oss: what's in a name

2005-12-27T20:44:00.000+01:00

O goodie! Must be a slow time in te biz. I mean, yeah, let's all make an issue about application names in Linux. The author goes on a rant that the names used for applications in Linux are weird and confusing. Three things. It does not take long to realize that the names the author mentions as logical are BOOOOORING. Second, the author seems to overlook the teensy weensy problem of trademarks. But third, and this is what bothers me the most, it's blatantly obvious that the author does not look any further than his cultural nose is long. The so-called point he is making is very much determined by the language he uses. And it's obvious that there is a Windows background that comes into play. I mean, if the name is logical, would you expect to be able to edit graphics with Photoshop? I'd guess this would be a program to buy photos to be honest. And Nero would obviously be a dictatorial program to burn down the city you live in, right?

In the end, the whole point is moot. After all, what is a name more than a symbol to use in communicating something to another person. I mean, if I would tell you a lot about X nobody would be very much interested or have appropriate context if they didn't know what I mean by X, would it?

wtf: difficulty or opportunity?

2005-12-22T00:49:00.000+01:00

Heard it officially today. My employer went tits-up. End-of-story. Finito. Article 11. Bankrupt.

So. Anyone, I'm old, I'm expensive, and I'm having a lot of miles on the tires. Last-but-not-least, I am up for grabs. So. Make me an offer I can't refuse. Have smarts - will travel. Preferably in a KDE and/or Linux related job.

For those that are interested, here's my one page curriculum vitae and here is a list of relevant data and a list of projects I contributed towards. Make me happy!!!

oss: object lesson

2005-12-14T03:17:00.000+01:00

This is a bit of a follow-up on the previous post. Actually, reading through the thread, there is a message from Linus that is in my opinion very insightfull. I'll post it here in full for you all to enjoy.

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005, Christopher Blizzard wrote:
> I suspect that what you see as a raging hatred for user configuration is
> instead just a symptom of what we consider important in GNOME. We are
> willing to prioritize "working well out of the box" and "consistent and
> easy to use" over user configuration. So that particular set of
> features just never bubbles up to the top. As near as I can tell it
> just is a question of priorities.
I don't understand why you and Havoc seem to be of the opinion that working well out of the box and having good defaults is in any way something I argue against.
I absolutely don't. I think it's very important that defaults should be sane, and the "out of the box" experience should be what a user can be expected to, well, expect. I was kidding about "focus-follows-mouse" being the only true window focus method: click-to-focus does actually make sense as a default, because it's what a lot of users are brought up to expect.
Similarly, I do actually agree with people who say that KDE is cluttered. The KDE menu system is overwhelming. But that's a totally separate issue from the notion of capabilities. You can decide to have a uncluttered desktop that is still capable. I believe we've seen that with some of the distros that do use KDE, eg Linspire.
So you can have your cake and eat it too. It's not an either-or thing.
> That doesn't mean that we don't need to fix printing, and the printing
> dialog - we still do. But it means that fixing printing is probably
> going to take a higher priority than adding new features to the window
> manager. :)
I really don't care about the mouse thing. It's the reason I hate using gnome, but hey, I've got alternatives.
The reason I exploded is that (a) I've been watching this desktop thing because I got added to the mailing list by mistake and (b) the gnome disregard for flexibility has been grating me for a long time.
To me, open source is about flexibility. And no, I'm not talking about people re-compiling their applications and making changes to them. The fact that the source code is open is in some ways both the least important and the most important part: it's the least important in the sense that in practice, very few people actually change source code, and even those that do tend to be very focused on one particular project (or even just a small part of a project).
So the source being open is - on average - not important to people directly. Even major developers only work on a small part of the whole stack at a time, they don't go around changing all the programs they use to suit them.
But indirectly, the thing that open source really excels at, is the flexibility it offers thanks to having lots of users, and lots of users whose needs get _heard_. THAT is the core of open source. You've got different kinds of people that get attached to a project. It's not a corporate mono-culture, because people from different backgrounds can get together and work on it without going through the corporate mind-wash.
And to me, gnome is killing itself as an open source project, because it ends up dismissing exactly that thing. Having strict UI rules ("The HID says so-and-so") that are really a religion that you're not allowed to question. The whole notion that things are supposed to be done just one way is antithetical to what makes open source successful in the first place.
I think the KDE development process has been a lot more "lively", and I think a lot of the reason for that has been that they haven't allowed the "interface nazi" kind of stifling of what people feel they need to do. Read the recent KDE-3.5 release announcement with the "visual guide to new features", and you can feel the energy. Sure, they have three different kinds of desktop choosers. So what? You don't have to use them. But the capabilities are there if you want to.
And I think that's important. It's important, because that developer energy, in the end, is what get things done. And as a side effect, you will automatically end up with a system that understands that defaults may be good, but that different people have different needs and views. Because you had a very diverse group of people that worked on it.
So developers are more energized, and I think users are also automatically happier. They may not even realize why, but I believe it's to a large part because their needs are taken care of - not necessarily because they ask for it, but because the developers themselves are more varied and thus tends to have more different needs, and often took care of the different needs of the user base to some degree automatically.
This, btw, is also why a "enterprise desktop" should never be allowed to drive development. It is, by definition, boring and same-old, same-old.
And if you don't see the parallels with "enterprise UNIX" and "Linux" here, I think you're blind. The thing is, Linux (the kernel) got better than just about any enterprise Unix kernel not by trying to develop itself for the enterprise, but by allowing and encouraging different kinds of people to all scratch their own itch.
Yeah, the whole development process is a bit more chaotic, and maybe a bit more "cluttered" and even scary, but the end result is BETTER. And yes, Linux (the kernel) has a million drivers that the "serious guys" don't care for. But that wild and crazy thing is exactly what made Linux a success in the first place.

> In any case, this is a different question that hasn't been asked here,
> and one that I think people are stumbling over and that is "what are the
> effects of design decisions on the size of an open source-based
> community where choice is more important than design focus?" I suspect
> that given that question I would expect that the KDE community would be
> larger, but less focused on a single vision.
I agree - I think this is part of it. But see above. I think it's a small part of a much bigger issue.

> > But the fact that users and developers don't know does NOT mean that
> > customization is bad. Quite the reverse. It means that defaults make
> > sense, but since you don't know what they'll be doing, you should always
> > strive to have ways to let them make the choice when they have some
> > reason the default doesn't agree with them.
>
> I kind of agree with this statement, but I think it's overused to
> justify all kinds of nonsense and avoid good system integration.
The thing is, developers shouldn't see themselves as system integrators. If they do, they just limit the end result.
This is a hierarchy. You don't put the developers at the top of the heap, the same way you never put developers face-to-face with your customers. That would just scare the customers away.
You let developers be developers. Encourage a bit of crazyness, because the best developers are a bit crazy. It's ok. Let them do things that you don't think necessarily always make sense for the user, because that not only makes them happy, it's also how sometimes you get the really great things that _do_ make sense after all.
And encourage them to make things configurable, so that the system integrators and distributors can then make it all come together as a more unified whole. Maybe it won't be totally unified, but what you win from allowing people to be people more than makes up for it.
Thinking that developers should also have to be aware or care about the crazy UI HID notion of the day is just stupid. It just alienates developers. And don't tell me that Gnome as a project hasn't alienated a lot of developers, because some of them have been emailing me privately as a result of this flamewar.

Linus

Now, I think I can safely say that we have seen examples of corporatism in open source projects go totally wrong before. The Mambo-Joomla split for example. The Nessus case as another example. A threatening fork in Gnome not so long ago. Anyway, I think that the point Linus is making here that there are two things that will make an OSS project prosper:

users are heared and catered to
developers are having fun catering to their users

In fact, I am of the humble opinion that OSS corporatism should be geared towards leveraging the contribution of all its developers. Developers in the very broad sense of the word. Not only the code-monkeys slaving away at their keyboards, but also the informed and active user, the company mecenas, the technical writers, the translators, everybody that somehow somewhere contributes his or her effort regardless of standing or merit or cultural background. Yes it's a good thing to focus the various efforts in working groups. At the same time we all should be aware of the hindrance that creates for new contributors. And yes, maybe it's a good thing to fight the 'dark side' on its own turf and bring the battle to them. However, we must never ever ever forget what is making OSS tick. Developers. People scratching their itch. Users. People that have the vision that everybody should be allowed access to the form of information that is predominant in this day and age. We must not forget that that is what the OSS community is fighting for. And that is exactly why I am so disappointed with the obviously detrimental corporatism that is displayed by the Gnome project. The main stakeholders seem to think that the proverbial user can be caught in HID guidelines. That we are wise enough to determine the wants and needs of the user. To me, that is plain and obvious hubris.

Be aware. The user does not exist. We are persons. And please keep in mind that we are just that. Persons. Individuals.

kde: if it's good enough for him...

2005-12-14T00:12:00.000+01:00

Typical Linus move. There is only one way that he can be honest, and that is in a blunt way. But he has a point. Actually, in his message he specifically states:

I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.

Needless to say, at least several Gnomies threw a sissy fit. Which might be construed as an indication that Linus actually is hitting a sore spot. And some of them drag out some old cow about becoming the standard. Or try a twist of history as far as I can see:

They all use the GNOME-based GTK graphics toolkit.

Ehh? Sorry? What was that about Gnome being GTK based? Come on.

Anyway. Wasn't this whole OSS thing about freedom of choice among others? When are the Gnomies done with that holier-than-thou we-are-the-coming-standard desktop on Linux? It's getting old and it annoys me. That's not something Gnome should foster and be proud about as an OSS project. Don't get carried away with distromakers saying that they standardize on some desktop. Because it is sales that count in the end. And if their desktop does not sell, they will be most happy to switch and standardize on the next desktop-du-jour. Last-but-not-least it's not like a good neighbour should behave. From that point of view, how much cooperation will you get in the long run if you want to be interoperable with other Linux desktops?

On a more personal note, I agree with Linus. Making it too simple reduces Gnome to being unusable. The oversimplification of Gnome, and my personal opinion that it looks hideous and not in the least the good work of KDE developers already made me decide to switch to Krita for my graphics work - not that my graphics work is of any consequence, but anyway. And on a broader note - I really like having almost the same functionality in a File-Open dialog as in my filemanager. Not to mention that its Gnome counterpart seriously gets on my nerves every time I have the misfortune of being confronted with it.

That said, the corollary also holds. A UI can also be too complex to be usable. As for that matter, I think that a lot of desktops can learn a lot from KDE and its efforts to make KDE a usable desktop experience - including the folks in Redmond. I think KDE is a pretty good desktop that can cater to a lot of people with different needs. It has good integration, lots of extensibility and - in combination with KOffice - makes a well rounded offering.

sgi: purple is up

2005-12-12T01:51:00.000+01:00

Hear ye hear ye! Purple is up. Last Friday I received the goodies I ordered from Ian Mapleson. This guy is a true packaging genius. Look at the pictures. I can personally vouch for Ian indeed creating packages just like those. They're brilliant!

So, I reluctantly applied a knife to those works of art and unpacked the goodies. Out came a CDROM on a sled. Open purple, just gently shove it in, done. Next, a harddisk that needed to be mounted on one of the sleds I salvaged from my systems. That posed a problem. Incompatible connectors! How come? Because I failed to unpack the smallest subpackage from the box. DOH! So, after unpacking that it finally hit me. I must say that the resulting configuration is indeed quite a narrow fit, but I managed to install it. Followed Ian's final advise about OSLoadFilename, booted the machine, and hey, presto, one working Irix installation.

I didn't even start to explore all the goodies that are on there, but mind you, it has a running Windows 95 installation on it. Quite eerie to see this. Not to mention the fact that GL screensavers really are ripping along the screen with this type of hardware. You probably won't see the likes of that on a regular PC.

I must say that the combined package is very complete. I need to do some adjustments to integrate it fully into my home network, but first I need to explore more.

Last but not least, there is something I'd like to see on Linux workstations that would make a nice addition to it. Irix has an option to start your workstation at a designated time when you shut it down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't shut down a UNIX workstation, I know. Still. From first impressions, this system is pretty complete and almost has all amenities you expect from a current Linux system. Very very nice for a system originating from last century!!!

So. Next in line is teal. This machine will probably be turned into some kind of Tivo-like system. So, stay tuned...

wtf: conspiracy anyone

2005-12-07T18:56:00.000+01:00

Uhm, what do you think? Is this hardware keylogger thing for real? What triggers me is the letter he received from the DHS after trying to find out why this particular piece of hardware is in that particular laptop. Where there's smoke there's fire. On the other hand, responding this way might well be a more general policy...

I'm unsure.

update -- Note to self:

I should check snopes next time
I should check snopes next time
I should check snopes next time
I should check snopes next time
I should check snopes next time
I should check snopes next time
I should check snopes next time

On the other hand, this blog isn't exactly a news source. It's just my brain dumping core. Sometimes literally so :-)

cpp: blame your tools IV

2005-12-03T20:28:00.000+01:00

Last sequel. Then I'll hold my tongue on this subject. lemoncheesecake posited:

The current situation we are in where around 30% of program patches are fixing buffer overflows is ridiculous. Just telling everyone to watch out for buffer overflows and take more care just isn't going to work and indeed doesn't work and experienced programmers everywhere still manage to create them. I'm not saying everyone should switch to Java, but seeing as this would effectively drop buffer overflow patches to 0% I cannot see how you can argue that it isn't a better approach.

One type of vulnerability is indeed buffer overflow. At its heart is the use of functions that do unchecked buffer manipulation. strcpy and related functions and handwritten equivalents are the culprits. Another type of security vulnerabilities are denial of service attacks. Feed the recipient so much nonsense that it crashes.

My whole point is that someone that knows C or C++ or any other language is familiar with the dangers of unchecked buffer manipulation and unchecked input consumption. Any programmer or software engineer or designer worth his/her salt knows that and will design around that. Maybe even by not using functionality that does unchecked buffer manipulation. The difference being one single character. This is common knowledge.

If you want to be fair, pin the blame on the programmer. Not on the tool. If C++ is the tool of choice, get familiar with it and do the right thing. Use the routines in the standard C++ library for buffer manipulation. Use the std::string class. That is what they are there for.

Saying that a different choice of tool will solve a lot of problems is oversimplification at best and in my humble opinion "laughable".

Update -- OK, y'all. If you want to reduce "blaming tools is laughable" to "use a tool that cannot cause overflows" you all are right. That's not the point. The point is that blaming the tool you use for the errors you yourself introduce is laughable. If you want to comment, comment on that. If you want to rant about the comparative benefit of language X versus language Y, go elsewhere. Yes, you might be right insofar that not being able to make certain kinds of errors is preferable. Supporting that in a tool or language is one way of doing that. Defining and enforcing coding standards is another one. Proper design is a third one. However, regarding Java or any other tool than C++ as a panacea is a fallacy. Why? Because it is programmers that make errors, not tools. I'm done.

cpp: blame your tools III

2005-12-03T14:05:00.000+01:00

Looks like this is expanding into a discussion between me and Thomas. Step by step then. Thomas says:

I'm actually not opposing your conclusion, bad craftmanship certainly is the cause of many errors.
I just feel that its not the only thing, far from it. Chose Java for your project and all of a sudden buffer overflows are a thing of the past. Impossible to happen from then on. In other words; choose your tool OR take longer to learn how to do it properly.

Well, maybe. He is correct in stating that certain languages have certain features that come in handy or would be beneficial from a certain viewpoint. If some languages take longer to learn or are easier to master, I'm unsure about that. Is Java simpler to learn than C++? I don't think so. Both have their idiosyncracies. Developing a craft takes time. Learning the proper way takes time. And that is - for a certain part - independent of the language of choice.

Thomas then continues with:

After all, the expert is the person who made all the mistakes at least ones in his life already.

Nice. Remember me of the pain :-) Correct. Count the old bruises... Finally, he concludes with:

Therefore making newbees choose a language that gives less proverbial rope to hang yourself makes sense from the perspective of security.

Ah. Now it turns into a discussion on preferred style of teaching the uninitiated. As a parent I believe more in experience than in rules. I'm more a parent that believes in "pick up, dry their tears, explain" than "don't do that dear, it's dangerous". Telling a child that something is dangerous almost always will lead to children actually seeing for themself if their parents told it the truth. Having said that, I think it's unwise not to give a newbie something far more powerfull than they can handle. Give them the opportunity to make errors in an environment where that can safely be done. And at the same time, keep in mind that a newbie is not the person to choose when you want someone to create a security-sensitive part of a piece of software.

Would Java be a good teaching language then? We've seen other teaching languages. What about BASIC and Pascal? All of those languages more or less shield the user from certain types of housekeeping that actually would confront the student with how things are done at a lower level. So, no, I don't think it's a good idea to teach students - or newbies - only Java. Or BASIC. Or Pascal.

cpp: blame your tools II

2005-12-02T18:34:00.000+01:00

A couple of points before I start. When I mention Java, I mean the language including the runtime libraries. Same with C or C++. The language including the RTL.

Got two reactions until now. One of them is Shyru saying

But isn't a language better which does make it difficult to code security holes in the first place? Is that not better? In my opinion it is better.

Another is Thomas Zander saying (among other things)

Fact is that about all the most made bugs that cause security problems can not be made in Java. No discussion there. Thats a fact.

Yes, Java might be a better language because it's harder to make certain programming errors. It's also worse because it's better at hiding those errors, if any. Worse even, you might be lulled into a false sense of security. In some cases even Java is the wrong choice. But is it a better language to program in a more secure way as opposed to C or C++? I don't think so.

A software program is not flat. That is, a properly designed software program is not flat. It is in most cases layered. Why? Because layering makes it possible to distribute responsibilities and enables parallel design and implementation. It enables leveraging the particular aptitude of the different persons contributing to it. So, yes, in a flat world this would be a discussion of what is a better hammer to drive a nail.

That said, I think my conclusion is obvious. Security issues or rather vulnerabilities that can lead to security issues in software is not a matter of the tools chosen for the job. It is a matter of bad design. And bad design elicits bad programming. And both are a sign of bad craftmanship.

Last but not least, from the language point of view, we are talking about security issues in a very narrow sense. Erik Poll specifically mentions buffer overruns. If there are so many that they are exploitable, how is that possible? Why would there be buffer overruns in software if it was not for someone using the wrong kind of functions? Again. Programmers, software engineers and designers alike should know the strengths and weaknesses of their tools. They should know what to expect from them and what not to expect. Craftmanship is what makes the difference, not the choice of tool.

If one looks at security issues in a broader sense not even a program created with a 'safer' language like Java or C# is impervious to - for example - exposing unwanted detail...

cpp: blame your tools

2005-12-02T14:45:00.000+01:00

Two articles in the Dutch traderag Computable with large titels that C and C++ are the cause of a lot of security problems. Erik Poll - researcher at the Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen - blames standard errors in the C++-method are the root cause of a lot of security errors. And he says a lot of programmers aren't even aware of those problems. He tells us he hopes that Microsoft will alleviate these problems because they are stimulating education in the software security area. And last-but-not-least he tells us we all could do much better if we all started programming in Java and C#.

This is laughable. Blame the language. Blame the tools. Blame everything except what should be blamed here. What is to blame here is the unfounded expectation that once we learn to program in a language, we are software engineers. We're not. What is to blame here is the unfounded opinion that programming or software engineering is a science. It is not.

Programming, software engineering and software design is a craft. And a craft must be learned by doing. By using and learning to know the tools of the trade. By figuring out what is good and what is bad from experience and from being taught. By realizing that a bad product is not the result of bad tools but the result of bad craftmanship.

And let me be candid here. I don't have a lot of trust in Microsoft stimulating education. After all, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I think I smell a rat. Quite a coincidence that Mr. Poll happens to be in the software security research and mentions Microsoft's educational activities in this area...

kde: acl support

2005-12-01T10:46:00.000+01:00

I wouldn't have known if somebody told me. KDE 3.5 almost silently introduces POSIX file access control lists (ACL) to kio_file and the file properties editing interface. In order to find out what one can do with it, have a look at this document of Andreas Grünbacher from SuSE. A very interesting read.

wtf: is this xml

2005-11-26T08:55:00.000+01:00

Ooookeeee. Just read an article on Groklaw comparing Microsofts XML format for documents to ODF. Now, as a programmer, how long ago did you learn not to use variable names that are meaningless?

<w:p>
 <w:r>
  <w:t>This is a </w:t>
 </w:r>
 <w:r>
  <w:rPr>
   <w:b />
  </w:rPr>
  <w:t>very basic</w:t>
 </w:r>
 <w:r>
  <w:t> document </w:t>
 </w:r>
</w:p>

This is pathetic. This is not a document format, it's a mess.

wtf: snow

2005-11-25T20:10:00.000+01:00

Well. The whole country grinds to a halt at the moment. Snow. What fun. Now, if this was snow falling on dry ground while it's freezing a couple of degrees, OK. Then at least the kids can have some fun in the weekend. But this is a mess. It's good snow that is falling but it's turning in a soggy dirty slippery mess. Travel time increases five fold. So does the cumulative size of traffic jams in The Netherlands.

kde: 3.5rc1 make that 3.5

2005-11-21T22:39:00.000+01:00

Ok. Saw it hit the mirrors. So. Plunge in head first.

No major problems. From the outside it looks a little different. Some icons changed. On superficial inspection, nothing much is changed. This version does feel speedier though. That's a plus. Here's a list of random remarks of what I encounter during the first period of using KDE 3.5.

I like the kicker cosmetics, especially the option to lock the panels.
The dialog shown when adding applets to the kicker is not an improvement. Looks like superkaramba. Not good. Too big. I need to scroll the hell out of my middle finger...
Wallet has one major improvement. Being able to search entries.
Kewl animation in Konqueror when it's loading pages!
Is it me or are the console fonts in konsole gone?
Spotted a passive popup when.... a popup is blocked. Apart from the good feeling it gives when that happens... a popup signalling a blocked popup :-)
Whoa! Applications stay on the desktop where they are started!
superrrrrkaramba!!!
Definitely go-faster-stripes
Ad blocking!

Look here for a list...