Sunday, December 27, 2009

Microsoft bitten by it's own Sins

Recently, Microsoft have an increasing frequency of being hounded down by other companies in law suits pertaining to patents. Microsoft once did such things... going on a 'Witch Hunt' to hunt down competitors using law suits, patents and technologies. Now, it's having a taste of it's own medicine being hounded down by others.

Read: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/12/microsoft-barred-from-selling-word-has-plan-for-workaround.ars

Self proclaimed righteousness

There have always been self righteous people who try to be hypocritical and refuse the Rights of Freedom to others. We have seen these sort of scenarios in the Past and in the Present and it would continue into the Future.

Governments, agencies, ISPs, organizations, have introduced means and ways to remove Freedom from the people. Some organizations like Comcast supports 'Deep Packet Inspection',throttling user's network traffic and forging fake data packets. Many countries require anyone to reveal their passwords when asked by authorities and setup 'Great Walls' to ban Free access to contents on the Web. They use the name of Justice, proclaiming to fight supposed crime and bring supposed 'Justice'.

The Web was once a Free place but now it's Freedom have been removed. People resort to use tools like proxies, encryption, password protection, anonymous identity... to protect themselves and gain access to contents on the Web.

There are people who wish that the Freedom be removed so that they can commercialize from the removal of Freedom.

We do we need to promote such restrictions of Freedom ? Was it really for Justice ?

Think about it....

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Lately, what's going on ?

So here's what's going on lately:
  • My main laptop running linux mint 7 may have died ?
  • PasswordStore 0.1S-1 released
My main laptop running linux mint 7 may have died ?

Yes, my main laptop either is dead or the screen burnt out. When I power it on, the LEDs are OK, the CD tray is able to open... but the screen is totally blank. No boot messages ... nothing on the screen. i suspect it's either the screen down or it's dead.

How did it happened, it happened when i tried to use the upgrade tool for Linux Mint to upgrade from version 7 to 8. Some problems during the upgrade did occur but it managed to supposedly upgrade. Then I have some problems and did a couple of power cycles and there you go... a burnt screen or a dead laptop. Morale of story, Linux Mint is great but it's upgrade tool isn't really so good this time. I used the upgrade tool to upgrade from 6 to 7 with no problems but somehow 7 to 8.... it gave problems. Those folks at Linux Mint, you need to create a better upgrade tool (yes, those folks did warn of the usage of the upgrade tool).

Even with a supposedly dead laptop, I still enjoyed Linux Mint. no doubts, it's one of the best OS out there. I like Linux Mint and even now, I am using Ubuntu on my another backup machine which came in handy. Ubuntu 9.10 is great but I really want to go back to Linux Mint. When I have the time, I might either get a new machine as my main machine or if the old laptop is still reparable, I would repair it and load in whatever latest version of Linux Mint is out there.

Folks at Linux Mint, please do well and carry on the good work... I am looking forward to use Linux Mint again.

PasswordStore 0.1S-1 released
Yes, I released 0.1S with a mod so it becomes 0.1S-1. I noticed that it's pretty irritating not to be able to do a search in your database for some password profiles and you have to keep scrolling to find whatever required place your password is needed. It's irritating me and so I thought it needs a mod to have some search capabilities to stop the irritation and there you are... a simple search capable PasswordStore that searches your username and required place for clues on what you are trying to look for. Do note that you can only search one parameter where putting spaces or ',' symbols wouldn't have any effect.

For techies the search is powered by an SQL statement using the LIKE and OR functions and the '%' wild card.

The next release would be a password change function and maybe an improved search to accept multiple parameters specified by using spaces or ','.

That's all for now...

Friday, December 18, 2009

Microsoft's Browser Ballot Approved by EU

Read: http://www.osnews.com/story/22636/EU_Approves_Browser_Ballot

Good job Microsoft, for this time. One right thing done.... the browser ballot (finally approved by EU).

Hopefully Microsoft would do more right things next time and not disappoint consumers , authorities and developers.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

Failed to install Chrome Beta (Linux)

Google have recently announced a beta official Chrome browser for Linux (and Mac too). I thought I should take a look at how well done it is. I downloaded the beta's 32 bit deb file (Ubuntu/Debian installer) for my Linux Mint 7 (base on Ubuntu Intrepid) and it quickly threw an error saying that the installer is either corrupted or my permissions couldn't open it. I set the permissions to allow execution but it still couldn't run the insaller with the same error. Good job Google.... releasing something that makes me become more disappointed with Chrome. Chrome is going to be the next worse browser after IE in my mind since I have so much bad experiences using Chrome (crashes ... badly made installers ... etc). Firefox is still better than Chrome and Arora (a webkit based browser) I found is better than Chrome (in my opinion) for now.

Here's my browser ranking according to browsers I have used:
  1. Firefox (Best)
  2. Arora
  3. Opera
  4. Chrome
  5. IE (Worst)

Monday, November 30, 2009

norbt

I was reading my RSS feeds recently (which I have not accessed for weeks due to being busy) and 'norbt' caught my attention. norbt , as described on it's webpage, is a webpage containing encrypted text and you need a key / answer to decrypt it like how you do encryptions. norbt's webpage is: https://norbt.com/.

It's a cool piece of technology. How relevant is it... it depends. I personally would use logins and servlets with HTTPS if I want users to access confidential or secret data. But if I want a quick encrypted page to be up, maybe I would consider using norbt.

Friday, November 6, 2009

SSL v4 / TLS v2 ?

SSL/TLS are being fixed. So I guess soon we would see v4 of SSL and v2 of TLS ? The problem is said to be in the protocol so a fix in the protocol is needed.

Read: http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/11/https-ssl-attack-vector-discovered-fix-is-on-the-way.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

Let's hope such bugs don't occur. Imagine what happens if some attacker or even terrorists manage to use the weaknesses in these 'secure' protocol and bring critical national and worldwide infrastructutres to it's knees before anyone can fix it.

The solution: always do regular evaluation on security for those who don't do it and always make 200% sure your IT stuff are really secure and robust.

LHC Shut Down Again ? By Baguette-Dropping Bird

Read: http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/11/06/0824213/LHC-Shut-Down-Again-mdash-By-Baguette-Dropping-Bird

Maybe the universe doesn't want us to find out about the true secrets of the world ? Imagine if everyone of us knew it, everyone could use it... then we would not be walking... we would be levitating... we would not need to live by the laws of this universe. Why are we here in the first place if we can defy the laws of this world ? Doesn't that defy our very existance ?

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Is online transactions safe ?

In computing history, there are many attacks against online transactions. There are failures and successes. Those who succeed made huge headlines and those failed are mostly hidden away or just fade off. Online transactions have always been very vulnerable because you have no way of knowing who you might be doing a transaction with. What if someone managed to spoof off their identity ?

Whether it is human error or computing error causing transactions online to fail, online transactions are always dangerous because of many unknown danger factors like trying to confirm the identity of the person you are doing transactions with and how trustworthy the other entity is. Is the other entity secure too besides yourself ? Are you actually secured...

Recently, a loophole in SSL/TLS have been found since September 2009. Imagine how many attacks could have occured using the loophole up till now, nothing have been published to seal the loophole.

Read: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/05/serious_ssl_bug/

This is big and very serious. I have never trusted online transactions. They are flawed. Imagine you use a service provider as your middle man and 'he' betrays your trust... you are definitely 'finished'.

I personally still think that online transactions are a danger to highlyu confidential stuff. I do rather personally communicate and meet the person in person than do it over the Net.

A bad hair day...

I guess I am having a bad hair day or whatever... since I am just whining all day and criticizing everything since somehow nothing can really appeal to me today.

I thought I would play around with the policy tool on my new and shiny Ubuntu 9.10 but the GUI just sucks. It's AWT... it's ugly, badly designed and sucks.

Apple's playing cat and mouse games with hackers who hack apple stuff and release stuff like jailbreaks for iPhones and Hackintosh. Why don't they stop their own trouble of playing cat to catch those mice, just charge them in court with lawsuits (something similar to pirate bay) and get the public to hate Apple for a while since their 'beloved heroes' are sued but hey, that saves them all the trouble playing 'cat'. Just let some people hate you for a while but you do save your own ass playing 'cat' right and whoever tries to do hackings on Apple, just sue them. That's what the court is for. Oh... and sue Palm too for trying to spoof off it's USB to attempt fooling iTunes... Just sue everyone whose against Apple. It do make life far easier and give those lawyers some money to earn..

Some music industries keep blaming P2P for the bad sales of their records but all they can think of is playing head on battle. They aren't creative enough to use other ways of dealing with the issue and also are good at making a bad name for themselves.

Yeah... I guess I am really having a bad hair day judging by those post above I made.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

I have no idea what Google Wave is for ?

Now there's the Google Wave hype but many have expressed uncertainty of the use of Google Wave (Wave). Is it an evolution of email ? A mashup ? A chat ? Or a messed up ? Yes, I literally meant it ... a messed up.

Even for myself, I have no idea what Wave for. Google... you have been trying to get your hands too full , poking your nose into too many things. Originally, you are just interested in search engine, next, you have Chrome , Chrome OS , Android and what not ?

Now, you (Google) have created a Frankenstein, Google Wave. A chat that's not a chat , an email that's also not an email , a collaboration tool that doesn't actually fit into that category ...etc... What's Wave ? Wave is ....errhhhh.... and is that your answer you are going to give in conferences and others who want to find out what Wave is ?

Sorry, but Google, you are really really screwing things up yourself... you are tripping yourself up again. Go and figure out how to explain to us what Wave is...

Sunday, October 11, 2009

PasswordStore

I have attempted to create a password manager and this project, PasswordStore, is a casual password manager software project.

Look out for the latest release at: http://cid-5dddb088a8f2c7bc.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Public%20Folder/PasswordStore

You would notice that the file numbers are by dates e.g. 11102009 which means 11th October 2009. It goes by DDMMYYYY format. In it, it might contain release numbers since I may make multiple releases per day.

How do you run them ? Unzip them and just double click on the 'PasswordStore.jar' file and it would run for most system with Sun Java JVM installed (Java 1.6 required !).

Saturday, October 10, 2009

System Rescue CD 1.3.1 and Installing things on Linux

Finally, System Rescue CD have a proper GUI when used in graphical mode (startx). This is something I am so relieved about. Finally it's using at least an Xfce interface. Whenever I am using the old System Rescue CD, the mouse clicks are pretty much 'retarded' since it is a bit hard to interact and the GUI just sucks. With an Xfce interface, there's a good and competent windows manager with a usable GUI. It has the latest Firefox 3.5 and what's better than using the latest stuff on System Rescue CD with a usable interface ?

It's always difficult to install stuff on linux especially for those who aren't 'geeky'. Imagine you have found a software you wanted for your Linux machine and you want to install it but after uncompressing that 'tar.gz' package, to your horror, you have to go to command line / console to run some esoteric './configure' or 'make install' commands and these commands show errors. So you become disappointed when it just doesn't work. Why don't developers add a tool to execute those 'tar.gz' with 'make installs' rather than you doing the uncompressing and other stupid stuff. Why not built into those advance package and software mangers the capability of not only executing those 'RPMs ' and 'DEBs' but also the capability of executing those make installable 'tar.gz' ?

Friday, October 2, 2009

PasswordStore

I have been stopping work on my dbDir database directory software lately since it's mostly stable and I wanted a bit of rest from that topic for a while. Yes, I am behind dateline that I have set for myself on dbDir but hey.... do wait and it might be worth it for you.

I have been frustrated that I do have to login to my encrypted database (AES encryption) to add in, update or view my personal passwords which I have stored in it. Now I have quickly made a front end to access the database but it's half done (no backup or restore functions or logging). But it's something at least easier than logging into database.

I call this password frontend manager as PasswordStore.

All you need to do upon the first start is just login as usual (just think of a username and password and login like nothing happened) and it automatically setup the database and system. Have fun using it. ;P

Oh.. and all you need to do is unzip the file to somewhere or anywhere you want and you are off to go.

Explore PasswordStore by yourself and you would notice how amazingly simple and intuitive it is.

Download here.

Is Google really committed to the Free and Open cause ?

Read the following links...
  • http://androidandme.com/2009/09/hacks/cyanogenmod-in-trouble/
  • http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/09/09/29/1510232/Android-Modder-Tries-To-Outmaneuver-Google
  • http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~r/arstechnica/index/~3/OglawbQqucQ/android-community-aims-to-replace-googles-proprietary-bits.ars
You can find more on the Android modder. His news and what happened to him is now famous in the Free and Open community.

It seems like Google is totally not committed to the Free Cyanogenmod a cease and desist order instead of aiding him in his modding works. Well... maybe Google wanted to hop onto the Free and Open community just because it's a good opportunity to become 'powerful' ?

I personally see that Google is just another hypocrite after what they have done to Cyanogenmod.

Friday, September 18, 2009

MS trolling again...

Read "http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/09/week-in-microsoft-trolling-other-oses-for-fun-and-profit.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss".

Yes... Microsoft is out trying to 'scare little kids' again. Don't be fooled by what Microsoft say but rather, think again, who doesn't like to scare others into buying their stuff, tell long tales about the bad things of other products and hoping more people would come to them ?

The world is about cutting each other's throat and this is humanity ... crude and cruel !

But all hopes are not lost... some kindness still exist.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Anti - RIAA !

Watch: "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmjyMnKWTrM".

These RIAA people are really so nasty and are committing crimes... why aren't the world doing something to punish them ?

Friday, August 7, 2009

Microsoft patent storing docs in XML

Read "http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/08/microsoft-granted-patent-on-xml-word-processing-files.ars".

Imagine how much implication this patent can cause ? I think it's time for some international organization to yank Microsoft back to court and add another charge on Microsoft for this kind of manipulative moves.

By creating a patent for storing docs in xml, it literally is used as a spear to kill of competitors like OpenOffice's ODF format which does the same thing and it's trying to undermine the open source community because ODF is one of the famous symbols of the efforts of the open source community.

I think it's time Microsoft should be given a very hard and serious slapping for creating such an evil patent and the USPTO should wake up and not just blindly give patents. Such misuse of patent power by organizations like Microsoft who is well known for manipulating technology through it's powers should not be given to them.

Does USPTO ever consider the effects of giving patents or just give patents because someone's gonna pay you whatever amount you specify for the patent and you get to earn some good money and that's all you care ?

I really wonder if such patent offices really consider the impact of their actions !

Thursday, August 6, 2009

OpenOffice Ribbon-like UI

Refer to the link "http://lifehacker.com/5331438/openofficeorg-screenshots-preview-a-ribbon+like-toolbar".

"This is not how OpenOffice should go..." as many OpenOffice users and supporters would criticise the latest OpenOffice Impress screenshot. This is the same comment I would use for the latest screenshot. Ribbon-like UI is for MS Office and let's leave the sucky and hard to navigate Ribbon-like UI for MS Office. I have tried MS Office a few times and the UI just sucks and is hard to understand and navigate.

While MS Office tries to make itself more unique, it also makes it's UI more unfriendly. Would it be better if you have the traditional menu bars and tool bars where everyone is accustomed to or the latest supposedly revolutionary Ribbon UI ? I prefer the more conservative and traditional yet easy to use menu bars and tool bars. Yes, it's outdated but it's been in use for so long and everyone is accustomed to it already.

Another danger of the Ribbon UI is that you have no idea what patents or stupid copyright stuff Microsoft have for it. You never know until it bites hard and bad.

So why not let's go to the traditional UI and don't ever touch the Ribbon UI because Ribbon UI is for Microsoft use as we have no idea what patents and hidden or open agenda Microsoft have installed and we have no idea what is out there waiting for us to walk into it's traps.

Anyway, from a GUI design point of view, Ribbon is unintuitive and sucks. Imagine you have such a huge 'Paste' , 'Copy' and 'Cut' button... like as though the user is a total idiot. The bar for containing the Ribbon UI takes up so much of screen space, I rather dedicate these space for a small button with a simple icon and then put a tool tip text to it. You can put stuff inside the right-click menu as well and it's more effective as people are used to right-clicking and expecting to see a list of options drop out from a menu.

The problem with most software is that the top menu bar, tool bar ...etc... are just hogging up space and the workflow is always disruptive. How does it become disruptive. Imagine you are typing and you have to move your mouse and look through some menus or tabs for some options or tools to use. Why not design something like an intelligent tool bar where as you type, certain valid options like bolding of changing text size is available and appears in a small translucent menu beneath the text. In Java, this can be done using a glass pane. Can you imagine having a bold tool for text available when you are trying to insert an image or a sound or video file in your document (i.e OO.o Impress) ? As you run into different scenarios, the menu would update itself showing you the possible options you can use rather than flooding the menu and tool bar with every thing. This is a better and more intelligent design isn't it ? Yes it requires better processing powers on the machine but these days, technology are advance and so are the processing powers with processor cores like Core 2 Duo ...etc...

I think we shouldn't try to ape someone's design blindly like OO.o(OpenOffice.org) did. We should use rationality instead of trying to ape MS's Ribbon UI.

Official Chrome for Linux ? Starcraft 2 ?

We have always been hearing Chrome improvements here and there and the only way to install an official Chrome is via the Windows Installer provided and the non-official way to get Chrome is via some builds you have to figure out how to do it.

I am personally getting very very tired of waiting for an official version of Chrome for Linux so I would simply pass Chrome and continue Firefox or something else. Chrome is definitely good in features but hey, you are making users and enthusiast waiting too long for an official release... even a basic 0.1 stable for Chrome ? My personal opinion for myself as a Linux user... it's not worth the wait even though there are unofficial builds (and they are not stable at all).

About Starcraft 2... they just shifted the estimated release date to 2010. We all are suspecting that there's something really going wrong in the development of Starcraft 2 that's causing all the waiting and shifting of the release date. Maybe the developers aren't interested in Starcraft 2 at all judging by the slack efforts in promoting Starcraft 2 and the many years we have to wait and many failed datelines. There is something definitely wrong with Starcraft 2 to my opinion from my observation and I think now I would just give up on waiting for Starcraft 2 and play other games. Blizzard seems to have more interest in WoW 3 , DOTA ...etc... then Starcraft 2 and it took them about a decade or more to figure out that it's time to move from Starcraft to Starcraft 2. I guess I would personally consider Starcraft 2 a 'dead' one. I wouldn't be surprise if Blizzard suddenly just announce that Starcraft is 'dead' and move on ? Well this is my guess and point of view for now.

To Blizzard, good luck for trying so hard on appearing interested to Starcraft 2. I find the Battle Report Blizzard released so far a good try but they are using all the 'old stuff' we already know that might appear in SC2.

Two failed products here ... in my point of view ... Chrome and SC 2.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

OpenJDK's Swing, Sun JVM, Extreme Open Source

Just a while ago, I tried to use the apt-get to install Maven2 into my LinuxMint 6 machine to try out the hype with Java devs on Maven and I was given a surprise when it installed OpenJDK 6 too. I found out about the installed OpenJDK 6 when I tried to launch my Makagiga app and the Swing looks.... ok.... honestly... it's badly rendered !!!

So now what I am saying is that Swing in OpenJDK sucks ! It's not up to scratch... it's not even good at all. I would prefer Sun Java JVM since it's free too but those who are extremist in the Open Source thing... (I am a supporter of open source too but not to the extremes of conducting strikes and stuff....) and I would suggest Sun to just give up on trying to make it's JVM a secret but to open up the entire Sun JVM. What good or profit would Sun get from keeping it's JVM codes a secret ?

To dispose other rivals trying to make better VMs ? Look at Ruby ! There are many Ruby VMs and the competitions are very productive and healthy and look at Sun ... refusing Apache Harmony some test kit for it's VMs or give a lousy or bad kit ? Who knows... But up till now, Sun have always ill treated Apache Harmony and ironically Sun supposedly is a contributor in Apache projects !!!

Hey Sun, time for a wake up call ... Don't think you are high and almighty like Microsoft because you made and own most of Java's share. It's time you stop following Microsoft, completely provide proper and unbias test kits for free and ease of availability and downloads, completely open up without delay the codes to the Sun JVM (anyway you are into open source OpenJDK so what's wrong with just completely opening your official VM ?).

I really hope there's an international enforcement on Open Source where all codes created are open source in nature and there isn't propriotery codes anymore. This such law if exist would force all developers to open up their codes and share it.

I know FOSS would love this international law to force all codes to be open source, but there are powers behind the scene manipulating governments like puppets to ensure that such law would never be voted for as an international or local law.

For now, just open source the stupid Sun JVM. Why make an open source JVM when you could just open up your Sun JVM and change it's license to GNU GPL ? It would save the need for some weird badly made OpenJDK !

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Getting Things Gnome !

I just stumbled upon this software for the Gnome Desktop called Getting Things Gnome !. It's a task organizer. I installed it on my Linux Mint 6 Universal.

You can get it at: http://gtg.fritalk.com/

I used this initially just a while ago and this stuff is good. I got my Linux mintMenu to start up this baby when I login so I can look through my task/to do list. This baby organizes things well too and you can add sub task here and there and it allows you some choices how you dispay the tasks and sub-tasks.

I would be testing and using this and see how it works.

That's all for now.

Convert MKV to iPod MP4

Recently, I decided to use my backup Win Vista Home Basic's iTunes to load anime I have into my iPod. Most anime are served out in MKV H264 format and I used KigoConverter to convert MKV to Custom MP4 (iPod uses this). What I noticed is that by doing so, the scipts containing the english translations are omitted and I am left to listen and watch the animes on my iPod without any translations and this can be hard on those who have no idea about Japanese language.

I noticed that AVI videos when converted to MP4 have their translations retained and you can watch them properly.... hmmm... I am wondering why did the translations scripts not be added to the custom MP4. Does anyone have any answers ?

Thursday, July 9, 2009

How to sell your stuff well and be famous

I was reading a blog by Bruce Schneier on some Homomorphic Encryption breakthrough that IBM claimed. Read: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/07/homomorphic_enc.html .

As it is, all you need to do to fool the general public is to present some 'geeky' stuff with terms, create some weird ,unproven or statistics that would not occur in one's lifetime and a very good PR machine and you can fool the general public. Most people don't care about the tech details and when they hear the hype about some new bogus security, they literally buy into it. When more than enough people have bought into the illusion, even the efforts of experts trying to caution people would fall on deaf ears and the public would generally love to label and denounce these experts.

This is how you can use the blinded public and make them believe you. The only time these bogus stuff really fall apart is when it takes such a big hit that some important stuff falls apart, this is when the blinded public would awake to the reality of their 'dream'.

So, you can fool the public but you cannot fool them forever until something drastic takes place.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

HTML 5 VIdeo

Since no one could agree on what video format should HTML 5's video tag support, why not allow it to support all the common ones like (mp4,avi,ogg...) and then to specify the type it is using like ? Or maybe why not force all html5 compliant browsers to support all the common video format using the ffmpeg codec libraries...etc.

This question about supporting video format is all about politics and saving one's own skin and making money rather than about the users. If you can put your own video format to be supported, you would be the standard and everyone follows you. Patent rules , copyrights ...etc... all the ugly side of human selfish nature emerges so seamlessly that it makes anyone feel revolting.

Or maybe why not just drop the support for html 5's video tag forever because there would always be disagreement for these stuff.

What I recommend to support is just to totally drop the idea of a video tag and wait until everyone can agree on or some open source patent and royalty free and good quality video format can be created...then can we think about adding the video tag.

On a second thought, why don't W3C or some ISO choose a standard video format or even create one if there isn't and create video converters ? This is a long way around a problem but nevertheless , it would allow the html 5's video tag to be used and the converters allow users to convert this 'new' video format to any other video format they like?

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Fundamentals of Computing: Insecure

I was contemplating on the futile efforts of DRMs and encoding to try to hide secrets. I would consider these technologies rather a failure in terms of security. You try to protect music or video using DRMs and not far in future, a hacker or a community of hackers or some companies create ways to circumvent or even 'destroy' your techniques. Same for encoding, you just try to replace words with weird characters. The real good deal is not encoding to hide secrets but to use solid proven encryption to really secure secrets.

The insecurity of DRMs are that data can be manipulated or should I say, insecurity in everything because you can manipulate all data as computers aren't really built for secure computing which if that happened, alot of apps cannot work. Since you can manipulate any data via programming ...etc... you could simply manipulate DRM data and encoding data too. The computing powers for a mere laptop these days are at least a Core 2 Duo so the computing powers these days are really powerful and you can do lots of stuff.

I think it's useless to encode stuff or use DRMs. If you want to really protect stuff, use solid encryption technology on a secure chipset or hardware. This is the best you could do.

Human corruption

I got this feed from Ars technica while reading using my Google reader...

Are "deleted" photos really gone from Facebook? Not always

companion photo for Are "deleted" photos really gone from Facebook? Not always

In an age where your boss, coworkers, parents, and even (*gasp*) grandparents are finally joining social networks, we are all more aware than ever that we had better keep things relatively clean. And if you were someone who joined MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, or a number of other sites years ago, you may have more cleaning up to do than usual—after all, back then, you were probably young(er) and dumb(er), posting silly pics of your drunken escapades or questionable updates regarding your unusual interest in English cucumbers.

If you delete questionable images of yourself, you may be in the clear—or you may not, depending on the social network. As it turns out, some social networks delete your images right away while others hold onto them even after claiming they've been deleted. This was the discovery made by researchers at Cambridge University last month when they found that images deleted from social media sites are often left on the server, ripe for anyone to embed elsewhere or link up.

We put this finding to the test and found that some of the most popular sites on the Internet do, in fact, keep images on their servers after you delete them. On May 21, 2009, we deleted photos from four of the networks most used by the Ars staff and readership and monitored them for six weeks. The four networks we checked were Flickr, Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook.

Click here to read the rest of this article
Wow... Facebook , MySpace ....etc... are such 'dishonest' sites. Imagine you posted some ahem... pictures and you regretted it and want to delete it, the pictures aren't deleted from the hosting servers but just marked as 'not there' or something similar... it would be easy to look through their server caches or whatever ways available and still find the pictures. These social sites are simply a breach in security because they don't follow by the rules of human morality but by the rules of making money , getting more people to join them ....etc.

And there I thought I have had enough of reading news where companies play dirty...here's another feed from Slashdot this time...

Microsoft Changing Users' Default Search Engine

BabyDuckHat writes "Cnet's Dennis O'Reilly caught 'Windows Search Helper' trying to change his default Firefox search from Google to Bing. This isn't the first time the software company has been caught quietly changing user's preferences to benefit its own products."

I hope human society would not just improve technologically but also improve morally and spiritually thus striking a balance and evolving further. if you noticed, the more technologically advance, the more morally corrupted (in many cases). Let's hope it isn't true though.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Rants: Browsers and Stupid SAF Stuff

Well, here goes the usual rantings again and it's generally about what is happening to web browsers that I personally feel and also about the stupidly and badly designed SAF POS terminals in cookhouses.

Web browser
Well, web browsers are generally growing and becoming more bulky and stuffed up with all too many stuff it shouldn't have. A browser is simply a tool to browse web pages and display contents, rather than the millions of external plugins and tools (etc... Last.fm plugins, Opera Unite features ...etc...) which all major web browsers, including MSIE/IE have.

Hey, can't we just get back to the usual web browser that meets the ACID standards rather than all too much junk? It always takes a bit of a time to startup a browser (regardless of the browser type) because simply, it has lots of stuff to load these days compared to those of olde.

So those designning browsers, it's best to keep it light because that's what people really want (not just me).

SAF Cookhouse POS terminals
I have used the cookhouse POS terminals to scan my identity before getting my food for months and I am totally not impressed by the crappy design. It's just too rough around the edges, buggy and totally inefficient in many circumstances.

For those SAF agents prowling the internet to look out for blog postings, I would keep this particular rant rather abstract because I am sure some paranoid agents might want to come after me if I put the rant in too much detail. Don't worry, there's no pictures going to be included and nothing that leaks any secrets or breech any rules on the Official Secrets Act.

Firstly, the POS terminal for the usual user and the admin user is just crap. I know it's SAF stuff but hey, can't there be at least some efforts in the all too plain GUI design ? Next, when the 'ID card' gets scanned and you are choosing some options or doing something, when someone barge in and scan their 'ID' too, the system gets confused and interrupted.

The system can become rather lag when all the POS terminals are in use... so make it more robust. The admin console is not easy to use, you have to select a virtual keyboard (because it has no keyboard physcially), choose the type of food you are eating , select this and that... for the admin terminal for those who didn't bring their 'ID' to scan and need to type in details on their own. How about making all these little gui interaction more smooth than the current one that breaks any user work flow? Maybe an embedded virtual keyboard should be activated and present all the time rather than having to press a button to call it up?

When a person already entered into the system, let's say for lunch, I have already scanned my 'ID' and took my lunch but someone enters my 'ID' again for lunch, I guess the system is going to get into trouble, else why would someone try to stop us? Ok... this situation is not clear since I can't talk too much about it so go and get guessing.

Mass entry of users have to be done manually and very taxing, why isn't there an easier way like a gui to select all from a name list ?

I think that's as much as I can say for the SAF POS terminal.

That's all for this post.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

H2 simplicity

The H2 database start off is purely brainless. You just click on the H2.jar or something like that and you are off, it launches an internal server (web and servlet server and database server) and your default web browser just pops up a web servlet for you to connect to your database and you are in. You manipulate tables and data using the servlets and forms. I love the pure simplicity and brainlessness of using H2.

The build of H2 jars can be a bit complex since you need to setup JAVA_HOME and paths here and there but these are the fault of Sun Java because they don't automatically provide these setups and leave users hanging there and to figure out for themselves. Otherwise, when all thes eenvironment values are up, the building of different H2 jarfiles for different uses are purely brainless too. Just open a console and 'cd' to the 'bin' folder and type 'build xxx' where xxx is whatever kind of jar you want to build. Simple isn't it ?

If you like consoles to access databases, H2 also provides console (main jar rather than the rebuild jarSmall version). The console is as simple as just 'java -jar h2.jar' . What else can you expect ?

Look at other databases... do they provide such simplicity and luxury ? Java DB aka Derby ... I wanted to learn how to use it but just a glance at the manuals and it put me off...

Overly complex and untidy documentations. Looks of setups here and there, console without any GUI... not simple to use in general. Derby really need to do something to make it's manuals easy to use. I know some have gotten use to the doc in Derby but how about beginners ? Given the choice of H2 and Derby, I think people would prefer H2.

I am not bias towards H2, but the fact is H2 clearly won hands down by it's simple, brainless , usability. When I started to find a java database, H2 and Derby are the options I have. But I move towards H2 and consequently use H2 as my default database whether for storing data or for using them in my software products since it's so easy to handle compared to Derby.

H2 have consistently always try to be considerate to it's users by making it easy to use and that is the very strength of H2.

If you don't believe, try downloading the latest H2 database and use it and also download a Derby and use it. Within seconds after you install or unzip H2, the next thing up and running is a H2 ... or maybe let's leave it for you to experiment and see for yourselves.

manutil 0.1.1 and my first git experience

Well, two things to rant today, firstly about a short intro to manutil 0.1.1 and then about my first experience using git connecting to the sourceforge git version control I am using for my new project, dbDir.

manutil 0.1.1
Finally, manutil for Makagiga have moved itself out of 0.1 alpha to 0.1.1 as I have deemed it ready to move forward. A thing I added into 0.1.1 is the function to open HTML help manuals (help manuals written in HTML files) to provide more diversity to how developers want their help files to present themselves and the format. It opens these HTML help files in an internal HTML browser built into the latest makagiga versions (3.5 and 3.6 version). It uses the cobra engine used by the Lobo Web browser project. The rendering is admittingly pretty off because the cobra engine isn't really mature yet but that's the best engine that could be found in the open source written in Java to be used. All else of manutil works fine as they should. Give feed backs about manutil 0.1.1 to kdt, the creator of makagiga or me. I have given manutil a custom icon too. It's a bit rough around the edge but this is the first version. Better ones would come in the next versions when I get time to experiment more graphic effects for the icon desgin.

My first experience using Git
I have created a new project called dbDir in sourceforge and set git as my default version control.It wasn't easy nor straightforward. Since I am using Linux, you don't really expect any GUI unlike the Windows version but I tried the Windows' version of git using the GUI and it is equally not easy to understand how to use. Simply, the documentations in Git pretty much isn't good. I had to figure out what I have to do to connect my already created Git repo in my machine to sf.net's one and upload my first commit of codes.

I finally got already it a bit by reading a blog post at http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/git-fatal-no-matching-remote-head/ .

Git, like SVN , is not easy to understand when you just started because you don't know how to start it and how to approach and what the codes or even the manuals are talking. They are either too cryptic or abstract but when you got it, you can move on. So for developers of git and SVN and other softwares, make sure the user (presuming they are noobs) have to understand and find it easy to navigate and how to start off. A good example that fulfil the above 'easy to start off' is the H2 database. I would make a new post to talk about the pure brainlessness of H2, it's strenght.

SO back to Git, I have to 'cd' to my directory containing my codes , use 'git init' and I tried to 'git clone' the url sf.net provided me for my personal access to my git in sf.net and it throws some weird error of whatever remote headers. I had to play around and add files to the git on my machine and do a commit and then go one round to edit some git config and connect again upload and push the uploads. I have forgotten much of the steps but finally it worked. It shows the complexity developers just like to put into the use. Why not something simple ?

Git , seems simpler to use after you have set it up... so, good for it.

That's all for now, folks.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Rant: Hypocritism

After the Judges smacked Pirates Bay, Mininova started scrambling like rats scurrying for hideouts , trying hard to appease copyright hardliners and do whatever it takes to filter their stuff. So good bye, Mininova...

All these stuff about justice, I felt it's pure hypocritism at large. Sorry, I am no fan for patents and stuff like that. I felt these are purely hypocritism.

That's all for now.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Rant: LinuxMint , iPod , Areca Backup

Here's another of my long rants again. Finally, my WinXP have crashed here and there and thrown me all sorts of stupid errors till I decided to migrate to Linux platform and of all the distros in Linux, I chose LinuxMint. I would explain why in a short while.

LinuxMint
So the reason for LinuxMint and not the typical Ubuntu , OpenSuSE or Fedora is simply, when I visit LinuxMint and I see the screenshots, they caught my eyes right away. The 'Menu' or what Windows call 'Start' is more comprehensive and easier to use then the usual ones in the typical Linux distros.. or should I say, in the Gnome desktop environment. LinuxMint did try to tweak softwares and environments with their own style according to their motto:" From Freedom came Elegance". The 'Menu' , the panels , the Openoffice.... all these were tweaked in a way or another. The looks are clean , simple yet it empowers users. I have not seen Ubuntu , OpenSuSE or Fedora come to this extend to my knowledge and experience (or maybe I am too ignorant or outdated ?) with such elegance , empowerment and simplicity ... all merging together.

What I am looking for to replace my problematic Windows XP is an elegant , simple and easy to use and navigate Linux distro. LinuxMint just presents itself better than any distros (Ubuntu 8.10 , Fedora 8 and 9, OpenSuSE 11) did. Anyway, I managed to migrate to Windows XP after little struggle and I am currently comfortable here in LinuxMint (Felicia, version 6). It doesn't screw my system , hardwares (as I observe) and doesn't do anything stupid. Anyway, LinuxMint managed to prolong the lifespan of my HP machine...else , I might have to throw my HP machine(5 yrs old) out and replace it if I didn't turn to Linux.

iPod 5th Gen
I finally got an iPod. Yes, I am outdated and this is my first time getting one. The Rhythmbox music player in my LinuxMint managed to connect with my iPod and I was happy I could play with it rather smoothly. See.... you don't really need some iTunes...but you might need it to upload videos into your iPod since Rhythmbox only sync audio related stuff. I would find a solution for the video anyway later. I tried playing 'parachute' , a game in the iPod and I can tell that the click wheel iPod uses as a control is a bad choice. My finger keep slipping out of the wheel and when i try to coordinate using two hands , one controlling the wheel and the other controlling the main button, both hands got in the way. My hand isn't so big as I am averagely built. Anyway, I guess I am a sore loser in games and keep finding something to blame ? Lol.

Areca backup
I used Areca backup from Sourceforge to backup my files and folders before moving from WinXP to Linux in an external hard disk. When I got to the Linux version of Areca, I have to change the path to Linux file paths. Can't Areca do it automatically or ask the user for permission to do so ? Does Areca have a cross platform way of specifying file paths ? That would be better. Anyway, I can't blame them for not doing it. Hey, this is an open source free software where people create softwares for free and give it to you so what better can you expect ?

The worst thing I encountered while trying to recover the backup files and folders in LinuxMint is that the version I used on WinXP is Areca version 6 (I already had Areca for sometime) and the Linux version is version 7 which I just got recently. Because of the difference in the versions, version 7.x cannot read backups made by anything earlier than version 7 so I have to recover the files in another Windows machine using the Windows version of Areca (version 6) and then copy all the files directly into the external hard disk and transfer it into LinuxMint. I should have just copy files and folders directly rather than using Areca to backup.

Anyway, I am finding other ways to backup which is cross platform. Something must be out there more efficient than Areca I guess.

Well...this is a quick end to my loads of rant.

To summarize, the migration and recovery of my files and folders weren't really too smooth but at least nothing much too bad crop up.

See you next time.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Rants: Chrome , iTunes GUI , iPod

Here's another rant I have ... and it's been a long time since I have ranted here...

Let's start with Chrome ... yes ... Google Chrome. I was wondering when the official Linux version of Chrome would be out which is stable and official for Linux to use. The current Chromes running on Linux OSes are either hacked versions , unofficials or simply running on Wine. I hope an official and also stable version of Chrome for Linux to be out soon since I am moving from Windows OS to Linux as my Windows XP OS have been crashing so often and I have always wanted to work in a Linux enviroment.

iPod and iTunes. I have been tinkering with a hand-me-down iPod my brother used and decided to pass to me. It's a iPod Classic and should be version 5 if I am not wrong. I don't like to install a iTunes on my Win XP as my 60 GB hard disk is nearly full and I don't want another thing to come in to eat into my precious space. Actually, the real reason is that I am not very keen in using iTunes as I have experienced system crashes caused by malfunctioning iTunes and it leaves a very bad 'after taste'. You can count it as 'I don't like you' rather than a 'phobia' since I did actually got down to use 'iTunes' sometimes but I don't touch it until necessary. I prefer open source powered or should I say 'freedom-powered... oh so hippie' softwares and this is not what iTunes is made for. I see iTunes as a jail box. Anyway, no offense and let's not get into it anyway but rather the main point... my personal experience.

I tried navigating in iTunes and it's just darn confusing. Sometimes right click works on certain portions of the GUI and sometimes not. I hope this is iron out. The messages can be confusing. Other than that, I have to compliment the simplistic and clean looks. I tried to access the iTunes store to search for some podcast and I needed sometime to get used to it. It needs to put more controls for users to use because I felt that the controls it have a too abstract.

Since this is my first time 'owning' an iPod, I would say that it's quite a good one but using a circular knob as a control can be not easy to get used to. I am trying to figure out how to re-play a song and make it repeat and how to shuffle it. I tried playing Solitare and Parachute games using the circular control and it's not very smooth to my touch or maybe I am not used to it. The too simple and too little control have a weakness... it keeps people guessing , especially beginners , on how to operate it. It took me sometime to learn how to operate iPod.

Overall, iPod and iTunes... or should I say ... Apple design... is simple , which I like, but sometimes, you need to give yours more control options too. A balance between the infamous simple designs of Apple should also provide users with more control.

That's all for my rant for now.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

The Browser I Want...

Here some specifications of the browser I want ...

  • Compatible with standards and able to pass the ACID 3 test. (Every browser dev wants that right ?)
  • Light weight and doesn't hog up RAM
  • Clean interface with tab browsing. (Minimalistic as well...)
  • Browser command line to control browser actions
  • Doesn't have complicated effects and eye candies like Safari 4's Top Sites ... etc...
  • Can read/write basic text files and XML
  • If a page in a tab fails , it doesn't hang the browser but just kills the particular tab.
  • Don't need to install. Like a Jar file, everything is simply self contained in a way so that I can have one of this browser in my handy thumbdrive and run it from my device.
  • Profile , bookmarks ....plugins syncing function and backup.
  • Download manager in browser that can perform download acceleration like a download accelerator or may...in simple... a download accelerator embedded in a download manager.
  • Supports Windows , Linux , Mac and BSD.
It's just so simple.... i don't want any of those 'cool' eye candies. I don't need them in fact. I only use like 40% of what I have in my FF3 currently or even lesser. I don't even bother much about it. I find it funny why a browser can't perform download acceleration and have to rely on plugins to link to other download acceleration softwares in the computer to do it. I think there's one plugin in firefox that can do that...but hey.... just 1 plugin. Why not give one by default to the user rather than letting them have to search for a plugin to do so ?

The browser command line seems fun but hey, it's not there to be just fun. It brings a whole new way to control your browser other than having too many GUIs and buttons hogging up your browser window until all that it renders is a small fraction of the website and you have to friviously keep scrolling to read the stupid website you are trying to read. I like how the Mozilla Bespin project implemented their command line and that's what I call 'cool'....real stuff.

Ah...anyway, I guess these lots of ranting are just going unheard but hey...I am bored so I rant.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Usable, FOSS Compliant Backup Tool

I think most of the OS backup tool are not FOSS compliant and definitely NOT FREE. Let's face the facts... we aren't all rich people or rich companies or organizations and the economy is bad. Who wants to buy those expensive and commercial OS backup tool like Acronis ...etc.

So some would suggest just totally forget about backup and wish for all sorts of good luck that their machines don't crash ? Ok, maybe it could work... but sometimes things just go crashing ?

Many of those free and open source OS backup tools are either incomplete , alphas , betas , not tested , not ready , shitty , command line /prompt / console / terminal , highly complicated , alien languaged ... bad GUI ...

I think it's time someone out there make a good and totally usable , free , open source , GNU FOSS approved OS backup tool to backup Windows and POSIX / UNIX systems.

Someone must really take a first step out and play 'Robin Hood' just to get the ball rolling first.

Friday, January 30, 2009

What happened to Firefox ?

I have been a long time user and supporter of Firefox but there are many occassions where Firefox would simply crash for unknown reason and shut itself down with crash reporters , restoe sessions...whatever but some crashes , even when you open with a restored session , would just keep crashing and crashing and crashing. Now, the same thing happened when I tried to access the BSS Subs website that subs anime videos and Firefox keeps crashing.

Hey, this is Firefox 3.0.5 guys ? Been in business for a long time isn't it and many review just love to praise how quick , fast , good Firefox is but I doubt because I always have my Firefox crash UNGRACEFULLY !!! many times.

Mozilla , time to get up and stop sleeping and make something that crashes gracefully rather than something than kills the entire browser just because one of the tabs is 'spoilt'. Why not just kill the very tab that is 'spoilt' rather than closing the entire browser ? Doesn't it sound Google Chrome like ? Yes it does and that's the idea I like but Chrome also gave me a good amount of bad headaches and ungraceful crashes by simply hanging itself rather than the supposedly all so good Chrome...but hey..maybe I am wrong because I have not used Chrome for ages since the last version 1s and till 1.whatever beta.

I wonder what is so good about Firefox when there's so much error and crashes and lag occuring on mine.... I don't see the difference between a supposed buggy and stupid IE and a Firefox that love to crash , hang , lag and all the nonsense ... except that Firefox is Open Source and Micrososft's IE isn't.

Both are shit products.

The thing that have never failed me... even once... is simply Opera browser. Some reviews call it slow but I don't mind when it does fail me once so far. No crashes... no lags...nothing from Opera.

Good to go Opera :P

So Firefox... you do better buck up and pull up your socks or else you would end up like IE... and same goes for Chrome.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Linux , XP , OS X , BSD or OpenSolaris

Well, my Win XP have been aging and so is my machine. I am looking for a suitable and stable OS to finally take over my XP box. I have tried variants of Linux distros (OpenSUSE , Fedora , Ubuntu) and now going to try LinuxMint. I am deciding whether to stay with XP or use one of the Linux distors out there.

The Linux distros I tried were amazing. But the one weak point that doomed all Linux distros are package manage / installation. Imagine where you enter a world where you have to use a command line to do installation by runing 'make' , 'make install' , './configure' commands while OS X and Windows just require you to double click and relax. Yes , there are GUI installers and you have the RPMs where you double click and scratch your head because I have seen many RPMs not showing you the process or telling you that it's being activated and is installing whatever things it is doing. Some RPMs would at least announce to you that it have installed this and that but mostly you wouldn't know what is going on... way to go RPMS... with the lousy usability for noobs.

Now , you have apt-get and yum where 'they' said that you just do some command like 'apt-get install wine' or 'yum -i wine' or something like that. Yes , it's simple because you just state whatever you want and somehow it 'magically' gives you but you have no control of exactly whatever you want. For installers , they would allow you to choose what you want to install ..etc... like asking if you want the source code given as well... no , yum and apt-get doesn't do that. No options... just install.

The worse thing about Linux is that there is so many variations of packages or installers... it literally confuses you. Another weak point is that the huge variation of Linux just sucks because you may have a software compiled for Gentoo and Ubuntu distros of Linux but you have none for a Fedora user and what if the Fedora user is also a noob like me who doesn't exactly know much about the technical stuff of Linux ? Linux really need a 'all-fit-one' installer or it would may loose potential users like ME :P .

So of all the ranting , now lets proceed to rant about XP. Yes, I am not using Vista because Vista is a notorious bloated troublemaker for any machine and I have heard enough to keep my distance with Vista. For now , XP is the most stable available and Win 7 is coming out but that would be sometime the end of this year and the huge variation of 'distros' of Win 7 Microsoft is planning for Win 7 is making me abit doubtful to getting myself to use Win 7 because.... it's one freaking Windows 7 so why make so shitty 'Home edition' , 'Basic' ...etc... Just give us a Win 7 and whatever software you want to give us , just put it together in the CD/DVD or on the MS website so we can do it ourselves and download or load it up for installation rather than having some preinstalled stuff pre-empting that we would want to use it. Xp is pretty bloated too to be absolutely honest. I can literally switch on my XP box and go to the fridge and walk one round the entire house and get back and it's still loading.

Now, let's get to OS X and hopefully no angry mac lovers would decide to DDOS my blogspot until it's brought to it's knees...

Mac ... it's definitely a work of tech-art mixture. Nice GUI , nice effects , very simple... but the simplicity is too simple , it just doesn't give you much to choose. I want a micture of simplicity with a fair amount of my control over what the system is ! Anyway, Mac is simply giving me the vibes of 'exclusive only'. It's up to you to interpret my words as good or bad but I have no idea if it's good or bad too... so don't ask me. I always have the feeling that Mac is 'cold'... I am not sure why but I would stay from Mac since I always get a 'cold' feeling from it. Ubuntu Linux is the opposite , it gives that warm fuzzy but not too overwhelming feeling. I like that. So Mac have to reach and listen more to others... this is what I thought.

BSD .... I am alien to it and it's alien to me. There's not much installers or software for BSD and it's very sure for the geeks only. I guess you would have to scratch your head and type on keyboards into command lines so often that your mouse would be really useless most of the time ? I maybe wrong because I AM alien to BSD and so is it to me.

Finally, Solaris/OpenSolaris. I did install and test out OpenSolaris and it's pretty good. I like the power of the ZFS where you can scroll some scroller and it brings you 'back in time' to view old copies of your file/folders of how they look like.... but OpenSolaris is too new...too new to be fully stable for my use.

Of all... here's what I would choose and most of them are based on how stable , how usable and how well accessible installation is.

Fedora - well... it's because there's that Yum and RPM combination and many RPMs out there have the word 'distro - fedora'. So I would be sure to know that there's lots of RPMs made for fedora. Yes , there's lots of Ubuntu installers like '.deb' files and what you know but look around you, RPMs are pretty much 'alive' out there. It's pretty usable all thanks to Gnome desktop or else Fedora would simply exist as a command line thing without GUI or at most basic rough looking GUI. Stability of Fedora is pretty doutbful because I have Fedora crash on me a few times and have difficutly installing it's installers. What a waste of potential for Fedora. If Fedora doesn't make the basics right like the installer CDs ... it just would be good.

Ubuntu - Nice work of trying to improve. Nice GUI customized with the warm colours. Very easy to navigate around and work with but...why do I need to use apt-get and aptitude most of the time in command lines ? Yes , the package manager is nice thing to have. Anyway, it inherits the problem of all Linux systems , a centralized package installer.

OpenSUSE - Makes lots of improvement in terms of GUI and effect. Inherits the 'great installation problem' of all Linux systems. Configuring yum repos are a pain in the ass... same goes for the repos for YAST. Make it easier can you , Novell ?

LinuxMint - Trying out now... no comment ...maybe the same 'great installation problem' too ? Hey, the download speed for the ISO file is so artificial and controlled... can you guys be a bit more generous rather than allowing arond 30KBps ...which means I need around 6 hours ? You need to attract users...you know ?

XP - Bloated ... bloated...bloated...and bogged down by unnecessary apps. Windows... always a system with a huge targetting cross on it because...most viruses and whatever so malicious are made just for YOU ! Windows just naturally attract the worse of viruses and malicious stuff because ... even the military of many countries are using it , I guess ?

OS X - No money for your whatever iBook it might be ! I am not so rich to afford one... and I want to reuse my box/machine.

OpenSolaris - Good potential...but you have gotta to be more mature and stable first... so grow up .. little boy :P .

Hmmmm... none of them actually fits what I want... since there's always a believe that there's no such thing as 'perfection'. Well...it's true but I gotta choose one .... maybe I would finally decide after looking into LinuxMint and I may like it from the interesting looks of the screenshots....or maybe another huge 'Linux Disappointment' ?

Firefox's awesome bar ...

I have been using Firefox 3 since the very day it was released and one thing I like and hate at the same time is the 'awesome bar'. Below is a list of my like and hates of the awesome bar...

Awesome/Like :
  • It just drops you the entire list of possible websites whenever you type something in
  • Mostly accurate 'predictions' of what you want to access
Poor/Hate :
  • It just makes the entire firefox slow because whenever you use the awesomeness, it needs to access a database of records and load them into the awesome bar and plus... you may suddenly decide to 'delete' what you type and add something else... so what happened was whenever I use the awesome bar... firefox would be a bit laggy and slow and eats up quite a bit of memory.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Git , a solution for me

I have tried to search for ways to host a project without needing to apply for this project membership or creating projects in project hosting webs like SF.net , Freshmeat ...etc... but I doubt so. So i thought of hosting a version control server but hey, I need to somehow pay some money or have my own equipments so no... I don't want to fork out money. I thought a client/server way of hosting my codes in it is just not worth it and so I was reading slashdot.com today and there , I saw the word 'git' and decide to watch the video on Youtube about Linus's speech on the 'git' he made. It's what I wanted... serverless system and it's more than serverless..it's sort of p2p and can make branches and merges and joins which is a headache in svn and cvs something simple and make it look so simple to be stupid. The sppech sounds impressive so I'm gonna try out git (I found a window's version of git released by Google since what Linus's released were *nix system's).

i would add more here after my experiments with git...

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Makagiga 3.0

Makagiga (A Java platform allowing plugins and widgets to be scripted) version 3.0 is out.

I played around and here are my evaluations.

A03 Look and Feel: I love how simple and clean A03's looks are. It makes Makagiga look very clean and neat. Simple and interactive.

To Do widget: Finally after using Notes widget to type out messy TO DO list , finally, there's a To Do widget where you can put it conveniently on your Makagiga desktop and make your To Do list looks need. It has a very simple and uncomplicated look but it packs quite a few powerful features. You can set the date and time for the task to be completed by double clicking to generate a date then right click on it and it would have a popup with a full calender chooser just to name one.

Plugin window: Looks always improve and so does it. It always gets better and more tidy.

In general, the improvements are not very drastic but they are worth it to make your Makagiga look better.

What I feel is that Makagiga is always growing and since it's a geenral platform , it has many potentials but it also lacks a central goal which is good because a general platform allows it to be very versatile but that bad thing is it has no goal but overall... Makagiga is suppose to be a general platform for others to make use of so it is moving in that direction well.

The manutil plugin would be completed soon for testing... so hopefully it makes it through and be uploaded for use.