The inquirer writes that HP makes $25 million out of Debian in EMEA alone!
I'm just shocked!
Oh: see some of you guys and girls at fosdem.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Slow times
While the next debian release is being prepared it is not a good idea to upload new packages, so I'm trying to use the holiday to 'look across the fence'. For starters I've gotten me an iMac and so far I like Mac OS X. It is an immense improvement over Windows and a pretty good alternative to KDE from my point of view. I'm still a bit lost with accelerators and in-program window movement but it is nice to have another environment to play with.
And on that machine I'll try to play with sbcl, openmcl and f-script. But so far I'm been busy using iMovie to convert our DV tapes into DVD's.
And on that machine I'll try to play with sbcl, openmcl and f-script. But so far I'm been busy using iMovie to convert our DV tapes into DVD's.
Monday, December 11, 2006
A brilliant ad
Today I saw a new Belgacom ad for their isp 'skynet': two romantic souls are communicating with email, and 'he' tries to find romantic music. So off he goes to the 'skynet itunes music shop' and searches the list of songs. Then he replies that he cannot select a fitting song from the long, long list. She (I presume) replies that she can, and sends a romantic song.
Let me repeat that last point: she attached an song to the email. Besides the fact that the itunes shop doesn't give you an mp3 (what most people expect), this is also blatant illegal sharing of music unless they went through the whole 'authorise that computer to play my songs' song and dance, which is unlikely given the 'becoming an item' setting.
Just brilliant: seeding the population with expectations that the DRM will never allow them to actually do.
Let me repeat that last point: she attached an song to the email. Besides the fact that the itunes shop doesn't give you an mp3 (what most people expect), this is also blatant illegal sharing of music unless they went through the whole 'authorise that computer to play my songs' song and dance, which is unlikely given the 'becoming an item' setting.
Just brilliant: seeding the population with expectations that the DRM will never allow them to actually do.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
misrouted: goto 1
I've had a little setback with misrouted: it turns out that my original idea of how the universe of CP objects work (ie we have item and containers) turns out to be deeply wrong.
While parsing some complex rulebase with the old implementation it turns out that the objects are divided in 3 classes: items, containers and container-of-listable-items (ideas on naming are welcome). This is because you can have a network, which is a collection, that can contain a group, also previously a collection, in a different way then that the group contains the network: all members of the group are in the network versus a custom method looking if all possible ip's in the network are in the group. Also the trivial method I used the last method kind of broke down when it tried to expand a /8 network into ip's. :-S
So this means surgery at a pretty deep level in the class hierarchy and the old program could just about handle it, but the scars run deep. So misrouted is being rewritten to use the new setup. The good news it that I've thought of a more complex, but not O((N_rules**4)**N_firewalls**2) method of simulating the effects of a rulebase on traffic.
While parsing some complex rulebase with the old implementation it turns out that the objects are divided in 3 classes: items, containers and container-of-listable-items (ideas on naming are welcome). This is because you can have a network, which is a collection, that can contain a group, also previously a collection, in a different way then that the group contains the network: all members of the group are in the network versus a custom method looking if all possible ip's in the network are in the group. Also the trivial method I used the last method kind of broke down when it tried to expand a /8 network into ip's. :-S
So this means surgery at a pretty deep level in the class hierarchy and the old program could just about handle it, but the scars run deep. So misrouted is being rewritten to use the new setup. The good news it that I've thought of a more complex, but not O((N_rules**4)**N_firewalls**2) method of simulating the effects of a rulebase on traffic.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
on blobs
I notice that the binary blob discussion is again on lwns front page. Recently I got a new portable from work and this gave me some new insight. In short: binary-only drivers are so bad people will buy other hardware.
The machine (a Lenovo Z61m) uses a X1400 ATI chip, so I have to use the ATI binary-only driver. Well. I'm trying to use it.
The amount of grief I'm getting from it would convince even billg himself that opensource drivers are mandatory in an opensource system. Strange errors pop up and you're just lost, googling only gives you forums where other poor users are trying to make it all work. Due to the dynamic nature of xorg and kernel development the driver will never 'catch up' and problems will keep popping up. And there is little I can do except complain to the responsible person and urge him to buy the Intel only portable next time.
If this keeps on Intel will just sweep the Linux hacker's market, and with it the heart and minds of a lot of people. My next machine will be an Intel, the first one in years, because I cannot get an AMD with a open graphics card, and I think I won't be alone in this.
The machine (a Lenovo Z61m) uses a X1400 ATI chip, so I have to use the ATI binary-only driver. Well. I'm trying to use it.
The amount of grief I'm getting from it would convince even billg himself that opensource drivers are mandatory in an opensource system. Strange errors pop up and you're just lost, googling only gives you forums where other poor users are trying to make it all work. Due to the dynamic nature of xorg and kernel development the driver will never 'catch up' and problems will keep popping up. And there is little I can do except complain to the responsible person and urge him to buy the Intel only portable next time.
If this keeps on Intel will just sweep the Linux hacker's market, and with it the heart and minds of a lot of people. My next machine will be an Intel, the first one in years, because I cannot get an AMD with a open graphics card, and I think I won't be alone in this.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
A deja-vu moment
Here I was reading up on how to install software on the PVR box we bought (a dream 7025). I find the developers information corner and read the ipkg documentation. Talk about a deja-vu. I feel I'm going to get along just fine with ipkg creation.
In other news I've uploaded a new version of slime to main. Yeah. Many thanks to Luca, Marco and the other slime developers!
In other news I've uploaded a new version of slime to main. Yeah. Many thanks to Luca, Marco and the other slime developers!
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
on GR's
While I battle FTBFS problems with my packages I barely notice the -tank and GR emails flying past, so when I see GR I always think it means GR. Which is something positive, healthy and nice to do, unlike following debian-vote/debian-legal. It must be the effect of my 'think positive' project :-).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
