Andy Andy Andy!

I just saw this and thought it was hilarious. But then I came across a few remakes by some amateurs. They butchered it! All of them are sitting in front of their computers facing their webcam. It doesn't have the same feel at all.

REDLisp is online

REDLisp is now online[1] and I've created it as a new project on Freshmeat, Google Project Hosting and I am now also posting about REDLisp development in the REDLisp Dev Blog. Hopefully I can get Jared to post on the Dev Blog as well. He has some interesting thoughts about Artificial Intelligence, LISP and programming languages in general. And look at that shiny logo![2]

I'm also going to commit to finishing xParse, that C++ XML parser I was working on in February. I'm also going to convert GNUFilter to Python and PyGTK because the C++ code is just so horrible to look at. That's a problem I've had for the last few years: I pick up a software project then drop it as soon as it gets really tough or boring (usually a month or two later)...not a good way to live.

[1] I uploaded version 0.50g though I'm currently at 0.50h. This is because of the bugs I introduced when trying to re-work the load, eval and parsing functions, but it will be available on the Google SVN for the brave few.
[2] The logo was created by Tony Granberg who occasionally writes for NewsForge and other sites.

Blogger beta

I love what Google has done with Blogger. The new template editor is fantastic and I wish all of those teenager-infested social networking sites had them. If they did I bet we wouldn't have to look at so many eye sores on the Internet.

Anyway, it's a nice editor with some AJAX thrown in. You can click and drag the positions of the "x Comments" "TIME" and the "Labels" stuff. You can also edit those so they say, "x People Commented on This Post". I think the best feature is the instant preview you get when editing the colours and fonts of the blog. It's great stuff.

Another MySpace Problem

I was reading The Register, a UK technology site, and I stumbled upon this. Apparently, MySpace refuses to pay royalties to artists and as the article says "while composers get rewarded when music is played in hotel lobbies, clothes shops and pubs, they don't get a penny from it being played, and endlessly replayed, over MySpace's network."

MySpace, with its parent company Intermix Media, were bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. which owns such media companies as FOX News, Harper Collins and the New York Post, for half a billion dollars. MySpace consumes a lot of bandwidth and has ads plastered everywhere. They can afford to pay a few of the more popular artists at the very least.
The following shows what heartless bastards work at MySpace.

Asked by moderator Jim Griffin why MySpace shouldn't make some kind of contribution - she replied that bands could get on their bikes and look for other revenue sources.

The great thing about MySpace, she said, was that so many bands took business back under their own initiative.

"People love to go to your show and buy your T-shirt," she said.

What if the band doesn't want to, or can't afford to perform, came back the response. The question was sidestepped.

MySpace is supposed to be the alternate revenue stream! Why the hell would any artist use MySpace?

"We provide hundreds of millions of dollars of technology investment for new artists. It takes money to build a website."

That brought splutters from the panel. Former EMI exec Ted Cohen replied that this was an argument others could make.

"You say 'We want your music for free, and here's some technology?' Microsoft could say that!"
Oh, but we don't want it for free, she replied.

Judging from the look of MySpace and all of the HTML "hacks" that users have to use to make their profiles look a little less ugly, they're failing in terms of providing a great product.

They're a marketing site, just like the radio and TV are and they should be subject to the same royalty arrangements that music TV channels and radio stations have. Who cares how many people listen to your damn song if you can't make a single cent? Exactly like MySpace and YouTube...Who cares how many people visit those websites if they can't make a cent?


A short post I know, the next one will be longer.

A few Free Software "concerns"

On the last post, the final comment was from Jeremy Boyd and it questioned why Linux was good and it spread a bit of FUD around too.

the most of that open source software can be installed on a windowsmachine two. and while open source is good, i believe sometimes they gotoo far with allowing just anyone to add to the code, because then youget something like Open Office, where it is so bloated with un-neededcode, that the performance is shot. MSoffice on the other hand, nobloat, and not functions lost. Linux unless you get one of theself-setup distros, just blows to set up, becuase you have to read.Windows 95-2003 all you do is pop the cd in and walk away. while itstill takes a couple hours, it doesn't take a couple hours of reading.

Andhow do you figure that linux is secure? Just because there are few hackattempts on it. If it were the market leader, it would be hackedconstantly. And what is to say hidden deep inside that Open-SourcedDistrobution that you use, there isn't a trojan or something of thelike? You dont know there isn't, and because it is built in, nothingyou do can get it out

I agree that the performance of OpenOffice is garbage, but that's why we have other office suites available such as KOffice (sorry, only for KDE) and AbiWord. Both of those start in less than a few seconds. There is bloat in Microsoft Office too, especially in the case of the .doc and .ppt files. On average, OpenDocument Format (.odt) files are half the size of Word Document (.doc) files and are not tied to a single office suite because of their use of XML[1].

To address the concern about Linux being hard to install unless you have a "self-setup distro", it's hard to agree since I've installed Linux easily more than four times[2]. The reason you have to read during a Linux install is because you can actually choose the software packages you want installed. For example, you can choose to install Apache, MySQL and PHP when installing most Linux distros. Windows doesn't have this option and never will. I think it's a win when the user actually has to know a bit about their computer, especially if they're going to be using it on a daily basis, and it's a one-time install unlike with Windows where if you get a virus, you pretty much have to re-install because they're nearly impossible to remove.

Linux is secure because it has many many people using it and a lot of developers. If there is a bug, someone will find it, report it and it will be fixed very very quickly. The security of Linux isn't really an issue when you're forced to create a regular user account and you have to manually log in as root to make changes to the system. Windows differs because it will let you use the system without creating a second, lower-privileged account which is a horrible horrible mistake that leads to many problems such as Trojans, viruses, spyware, etc.

Becoming market leader would make Linux even more secure as more companies as more pressure would be applied to developers to keep their distros safe. This is already true at Novell where they've contributed to Linux by creating XGL. Don't forget that IBM, HP and Google use Linux. IBM even told their employees to switch to Firefox. If that's not an endorsement of free and open source software, I don't know what is.

Finally, and this is stupidly easy to rebut, a free or open source distro has its source code and file structure available for anyone to look at. And because it's free or open source, you could dig out the Trojan. As Eric S. Raymond once said, with enough eyes all bugs are shallow and this is why the free and open source software is good for everyone[3].

[1] I checked one of Boyd's blogs and apparently he's created Objective XMLand I have to wonder why he would rather use Microsoft Office whichstill uses the inferior .doc format over the OpenDocument XML format.

[2] My first distro was Slackware 10.1 and then my next was Arch. I've installed Arch three times, and Slackware three times, one of those being a 486 install.

[3] I've emailed back and forth with a few free/open source software developers and the response I've gotten was always helpful. I've emailed the developer(s) of apfloat, KLiveJournal and some FLTK-based file manager and it's always helped.

technorati tags:free, open source

Blogged with Flock

WIndows and then XGL!

BBC NEWS | Technology | Anti-piracy tool confuses users

What's happening there is that people who have used Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage are getting screwed over and being told that their copy is pirated. I don't use Windows XP and this remind me why...

According to the article,

The tool was downloaded as part of a wave of security updates Microsoft offered to users. It it is not installed Windows XP will periodically remind people to download and run the program.

Nagging users isn't a good idea. They'll just click the window away into oblivion and never update. That's what I do all the time with Mcafee Virus Scan whenever I have the misfortune of booting into Windows 2000. My cousin does the same thing with Norton Antivirus. Which is another great reason to stop using Windows...All the cash and time you spend on spyware/viruses can be saved if you try a Linux distro like Ubuntu or Knoppix.

Oh! I booted the Kororaa Xgl Live CD and it's fantastic! I love how you can have a screensaver running right over your desktop. Having the Matrix "code" scrolling down while you're working on something is pretty sweet. And the window transparency is amazing. I think this kicks the crap out of Windows XP and whenever Windows Vista comes out, it'll kick the crap out of that too. Can Mac OS X do the transparent window thing? Apparently it can do the rotating cube thing, but that's only for "Fast User Switching" which sounds a bit stupid to me because how often do people switch users on a computer? Logging in as root hardly calls for a fast user switch and a rotate of ye olde 3d cube.

So the standings in the OS Wars are: Linux 3 - Mac 1 - Windows 0. And now to fix my resume and check out the Flock Browser Beta.

technorati tags:windows, mac, linux

Blogged with Flock

SoulSeek: Give me Freedom

Someone on the SoulSeek forums asked a few questions about making their own open-source SoulSeek client.

The first reply stated that he can create one for anything but Windows. The reason being that

"The only reason 3rd party clients are allowed at all is to let people on other operating systems use slsk. 3rd party clients in general cause problems unless they are written very well as the developers don't have access to the protocol information and they have to hack it out."

The message is that Soulseek and the protocol are both closed and top secret so to speak.

who's security? certainly not mine as sys-admin who gets to watch all those bug-ridden 3rd party client cause problems on his network.

That's the problem with a proprietary, closed protocol such as Soulseek. Other people who wish to create clients, or maybe create better servers, are left out to dry. They must make due with half-assed protocol documentation because the SoulSeek people want to maintain control.

It clearly states in their Rules page that users are "encouraged" to use the official Windows client and clients for other platforms will be tolerated.

Users may not decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or otherwise reduce the software to a human readable form. Users may not modify, adapt, translate, rent, lease, loan, resell for profit, distribute, or otherwise assign or transfer the software, or create derivitive works based upon the software or any part thereof. [From Rules page]

Whatever happened to sharing? They are purposely crippling all other clients.

The programmer who asked about this, Synt4XX_3rr0R, seems like a smart guy. He listed most of the advantages of an open source client; The security, the ability to make it international, and the ability to extend the client. While there exist open source clients (written in Python for the most), they are unofficial and have been re-inventing the wheel when it comes to the protocol.

Synt4XX says that, "Personally, I know that the standart windows client is not very safe, I found several weaknesses .." and sierracat replies, "umm standard procedure in the software world is to report those bugs to the developers, either via the bugzilla or private email if it is a large security risk." That's another problem for closed source. The people using the software have to wait for the developers to fix the bugs. With open source, a developer could jump in and create a bug fix. Synt4XX himself could do it instead of saying there are problems.

Next, sierracat replies to Synt4XX's other point, "Opening the source of my client would allow to improve it more efficiently version by version ... (bug corrections, security improvements etc ...)" with one word: debatable. And I'm going to reply with: debatable my ass. Why is it that many companies are open-sourcing their software? Obviously there must be some advantage. The major databases in use, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL and BerkeleyDB, are open source and this begs the question...why not SoulSeek?

I say, let's boycott these bastards who have no sense of community until they let the code and the protocol information flow freely. I mean, what kind of a client says you need to uninstall other software before using it??

The boycott of SoulSeek has begun! Users for a free Internet, UNITE!

Note: I know that a boycott may not work, but it's still worth a shot. Send soulseek an email telling them to free the source here

WTF? Piracy? Apple?!

This is interesting.

Somebody has the balls to call what the French are doing piracy. As a pirate I am offended. You can't call those cheese-eating, wine-drinking surrender monkeys pirates!

"Last week, the French National Assembly approved a bill that would force online music vendors to make their music compatible with any music player." I see no problem with that! No one in their right mind would see a problem with that. If you, the consumer, are forced to use one music store (iTunes Music Store) with one audio player (iTunes) with one device (iPod), I daresay you would be pissed at the lack of choice.

I'm a Linux user so I have a different perspective than others. The iTunes player does NOT work on Linux and most likely never will. Therefore, the iTunes Music Store canNOT be used and I canNOT get any music from them. If there was a music store that worked on Linux (natively, no emulated shit) and that worked with the iPod (or any other music player) you'd be able to get geeks to buy music instead of pirating it. The problem is that of convenience.

I see Apple as the RIAA [Recording Industry of America]. Everyone's a pirate to them because they're a monopoly.

This [FairPlay] makes Apple's ubiquitous iPod incompatible with music downloaded from any site other than iTunes, and songs downloaded from iTunes incompatible with other players.

The result is Apple's whopping 70 percent share of the market for digital music downloads.

I fucking wonder why they have 70 percent! Reason one: Idiot people fall for their genious marketing and buy the iPod because it looks cool. Reason two: You buy an iPod, you're using the iTunes Music Store and if you use the iTunes Music Store, you're using an iPod. We don't see this happen with any other music store or music player.

I'm going to finish with this rant by saying those surrender monkeys are doing a good deed for the consumer. I think I might stop calling them surrender monkeys just because of it...Nah.

DFA sucks.

They suck period. It's bad for a band when remixes of their stuff sound better than the original. I just watched this video and I'm fracking astounded that people can listen to them. I may get blasted for having listened to some gangster nerd rap or for listening to 8-bit, but this stuff is crap, along with 90-something-% of "indie" (read independent college rock). And in case people say I didn't check out all their stuff, bullshit. Here are a few more videos found on Google Video. Finest Canadian export my fracking ass. There is no fine Canadian export when it comes to music right now, and that's what I'm sticking to.

In other news, I've released GNUFilter (finally!) and KonSort will be up tomorrow. My xml parser will also be updated.

Battlestar Galactica is one of the greatest science fiction that I've seen in a long time.

my girl, the princess

I've just tried KLiveJournal and it's not too bad aside from a few minor problems, like it won't let me post and the toolbars don't show, and I have to re-define the keyboard shortcuts. Otherwise, it's not a bad program. The code could look a little tidier somehow, maybe with a few comments in key places. But I like it and the fact that the author actually responded to my email and created a fix for it is nice too.

On to my programming news. I'm still in the process of cleaning up xParse (the lightweight C++ xml parser) and the cool thing that I'm adding today is a template function. I know that won't mean anything to a lot of you, but it's pretty damned important in the scheme of xParse. It should make adding elements easier for people and thus boost the use of it. My biggest problems when parsing are; multi-line data, and multiple begin/close tags on a single line. The latter I can work around using a loop, but the former is a bit more work and requires a clean-up of the parse function.

And on to other things...Check out Legal Torrents. I know that some of them are semi-crappy (some of the music for example), but some of it is pretty good, like the 8-bit music. Over 100 tracks of sweet gameboy music. Just great music. Anyway, I'm too tired and whipped (by C++) to write anything of note to regular (l)users.

Good night, and good luck.