Haz's Blog

Cool hardware!

Posted by Haz on 5 April, 2009 None comments

Just stumbled upon these: http://us.fixstars.com/products/gigaaccel/

How cool do those babies look? Somehow I don’t see them working properly on a Windows machine (like ever!) but who knows. Yellow Dog Linux, seems to be the only one so far that supports them. Which makes sense, since both are made (or endorsed) by the same company.

After seeing those, I came up with a wacky idea. Why no one has thought of it yet is beyond me (although they might have, but haven’t implemented or don’t ever plan to implement it). Why don’t they make dedicated cards like this, solely for use by an operating system??

Like I said, it’s a wacky idea – but just imagine how fast our computer would seem! What we need are dedicated cards we can slot in that has some form of fast built-in storage for installing an operating system (O/S) onto it (or for anything really!). If you think about it, and a wise tutor (who may be reading) taught me this, the only bottle-neck in a system is the connection between HDD/RAM/CPU. HDD (Hard Disk Drive) being the slowest of them all. A CPU will sit waiting to do more instructions while the HDD and RAM try to catch up.

If we could install the O/S and its applications onto a dedicated card, everything would be super fast. I’m not saying get rid of HDD’s altogether, but they should be used for the purpose they were intended for – storing data. In a Linux system for example, you could have the whole “/” or “root directory” onto the dedicated card, and then have your “/home” directory assigned to a partition on your HDD. So when you store your documents, downloads or music into your “/home” directory it will take the same amount of time to read and write the data as now. But when you turn on your system, it’ll boot in seconds and the applications load times will be cut in half!

If any companies or developers are reading this, don’t forget where you read the idea. ;) I would like to be appraised for it at least, even if it is just my name written in the paper’s for creating the idea and/or £1 per card sold.

P.S. I’m bored of commenting java code, and doing testing >_< (cousework for uni).

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Who said Open-Source developers don’t get paid?

Posted by Haz on 4 April, 2009 None comments

Wonderful quote from Linus Torvalds himself recently (found here):

How is life at the moment? Are you enjoying work at the Linux Foundation in Portland, Ore.?

I’m all happy with my life. The reason I come to Linux.conf.au is it is summer here and freezing in Portland. My job is the same, and I do the kernel and nobody tells me what to do and they pay me for it, which is just the way I like it.

Just goes to show you that despite everyone who tells you that Linux or Open-Source developers don’t get paid for their work – their wrong. You just have to have an interesting project that shows some future value, and you will get paid for your work. Just thought I’d get the myth clarified.

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Quick tip for WinXP users…

Posted by Haz on 3 April, 2009 None comments

Here’s a quick tip for Windows XP users, mainly because I’ve noticed a few posts on random forums about “Explorer.exe” crashing whilst working with several windows/applications/etc… well here’s how you can stop all of them closing on you in the event of a crash. By making windows open the desktop and taskbar in a seperate process to your folders. Please note: If you don’t feel comfortable using RegEdit, manually adding entries, or worried it might not work for you – then I sugguest you don’t continue.

Click Start -> Run, and then type in “regedit” (without quotes). Alternatatively you can hold the winkey and tap r (winkey+r).
In the tree to the left, browse to: “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer”. Then create a new DWORD value (by right clicking in a blank area to the right and picking DWORD), call it “DesktopProcess” (without quotes) with a value of 1.
Again in the left tree go to: “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced”. Then make a DWORD value with “SeparateProcess” and a value of 1.
Either log-out or restart, and the effects should take place.

I remember back in my Windows days when I was working with multiple folders, and suddenly one crashes because of tying to create too many thumbnails, or too many files in the folder and it gets too overloaded… and in the end the whole thing crashes, and you think to yourself “Damn! Which folders did I have open again? Where’d that icon go in the taskbar? Doh! I’m going to have to restart now! Stupid thing!” My fix should hopefully reduce those moments. :)

Alternatively, if you don’t feel you can trust yourself with the registry editor. You can download this .reg file I made, which is basically a txt file which automatically adds those entries for you. All you have to do is double click. If you don’t trust me, open the .reg in notepad and you’ll see for yourself. Also if you google “DesktopProcess” or “SeperateProcess”, you’ll see thousands of websites with the same thing – its a handy feature in windows, which should be easier to add then using the regedit, but thats Microsoft for ya.

Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

What does Open-Source truely mean?

Posted by Haz on 31 March, 2009 2 comments

Well, I’ve been trying to look into it and this one quote is by far the best one I’ve seen on the matter (found here comment number 25):

Re: BUT..
by Xanthir, FCD – Apr 23rd, 2008 @ 1:11pm

Incorrect. The GPL states that you must release the source code to people you distribute the program to. If you never distribute it, you never have to share the source, and your improvements remain your own.

However, if you make an improvement to some GPLed code and then use that in your product that you sell, you *do* have to release the source code with it (along with your improvements). As noted by a previous respondent, that’s THE feature of GPL. GPL is a viral license that infects anything that touches it. The point is to eventually make virtually everything GPL, so that we return to the early state of computing where anyone could change any program they had to do what they wished.

This is why the Open-Source model is always overlooked! Everyone thinks, just because as part of the GPL you MUST release the source code, that Open-Sourced must be bad!

This is wrong and should be clarified to the media right now! Yes, you must release the code along with your compiled version, but that isn’t a bad thing. You only have to distribute the code to the audience that your distributing it to – I might be wrong on this statement though, but bare with me.

If, say, your creating some code for a business (bank) and by disclosing your work to the public could be a risk to people’s privacy (in this case money). Now, recreating the wheel is terrible. I know, I’ve tried to recreate code that’s already been out there for years and its hard work! Specially when doing it from scratch. Using the GPL as the licence, I could use Open-Source code, improve it and then sell my changes to the bank (but obviously provide my code with it). Since the program will not be used outside of the bank’s building, that code never needs to be released publicly – but any code that the bank doesn’t mind disclosing, could be sent out back to the community. For example I fixed a bug that people have been trying to work on for months, this could be then sent back and help the community forward.

Where do you see the bad side in this? If the bank later needs to adjust the code further, sure they could hire someone else – which could be bad – but aren’t they more likely going to trust the man who made it originally? Won’t his services, if they thought it was good enough, worth re-hiring for alterations? But on the other hand, it also means they can get a new set of eyes to improve their software further, and life would continue, bug fixes and code the bank again doesn’t mind disclosing could be sent back out to the community… etc… etc… life goes on, people are getting paid for their hard work, etc…

If someone thinks this is the wrong thinking towards the GPL, please do bring it to my attention, but as far as I’m aware this is what the GPL was made for, to make code viral and spread to everyone.

Edit:
Wow, I couldn’t of put this any better. It seems I am right in my thinking above. Read the quote found here, he uses references from the actual GPL licence website.

Edit, Edit:
Some news on a French police organisation that has switched from Windows to Linux (ubuntu no less). ;)

– Everyday I like the Open-Source community more and more. :)
Haz

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Songbird?

Posted by Haz on 28 March, 2009 None comments

Has anyone tried any of the other software developments based on Mozilla technologies? I’ve just resently tested Songbird, and I must say it’s pretty awesome! It’s like having the best qualities of iTunes (which I hate with a passion, but it does have some great feats.) and WinAMP, mixed in with some of Mozilla’s great initiative. Also, there’s Mozilla Ubiquity – the addon that should rock the world of browsing, but I’ll get onto that later.

Songbird, is a media player – with addons! Bold statement Haz, I hear you say, but don’t we already have that? Do plugins mean nothing to you? Well yes, I know that, but still… power to the open-source! Besides, you forget I’ve converted to the dark side! Linux!

As standard on ubuntu, it has 2 media players (Movie Player, and Rhythmbox Music Player). Neither apeal to me much. I had to apt-get install VLC straight away for watching movies, and I’ve stuck with Rhythmbox Music Player for music – it lets me play music from Last.fm, and manages music with a library. Songbird seems to be a treat to the eyes (and the ears), it also brings something I thought was not possible… Firefox (or at least the gecko engine) browser integeration, and all things music all in one app.

I’ll put it into context, I didn’t think Ronald Jenkees would be a highly know artist. I mean he’s a YouTube guy who made his own album and distributes it himself via his site (and now amazon.com as MP3 downloads). But sure enough, his album was regnoised in the mashTape addon section at the bottom:

Now before you say hey that’s cheating, that isn’t in-built into the software!, technically it isn’t. I left everything as default during the install (not really an install on linux, but I digress), so unless you unticked it… you’ll have it as standard.

Anywho! As I was saying, mashTape! At first glance, it seems to pull information from the internet based on the currently playing artist/song. It shows information about the artist from [Last.fm | MusicBrainz | Freebase], Lists reviews from [Amazon], News from [Digg | Google News | Hype Machine | MTV Music News], Photos from [Flickr] and Videos from [MTV Music Videos | Yahoo Music | YouTube]. Those are default values obviously, configuratable in the Preferances. Also, bare in mind that I assume it pulls information from sources that has data which is why I’ve used | character, in programming you might know this as being the OR operator and this is why I’ve used it.

I’m currently looking into addons, because at the end of the day thats why you get an application with addon (or plugin) support. To customise it to your liking. Ones that have caught my attension so far are: Now Playing List (for the right panel) and FireTray (a system tray extension for linux). Themes? Oh yes please! I wish Foxkeh was ported to Songbird, but alas it isn’t yet (or maybe I haven’t looked hard enough yet). Either way, much everyone’s favourite browser, there’ll be something to tickle everyone’s fancy. Below is a picture of the addon manager in preferences:

One cool addon that also comes with Songbird by default is called “Concert”, and guess what that might do? Yep, it lists upcoming concerts based on artists in your library. Brilliant! Even more exciting is the fact that if you leave it to just show concerts based on your library, it shows the number of upcoming concerts in brackets, so you’ll always know if something new is happening! Sadly, I have only one artist in my library so it showed me this message:

BUT on the upside, you can set it to show all concerts coming soon in your area:

Okay, onto the next topic: Ubiquity for Firefox (addon).

If you haven’t heard about it already, well then you should click the link and watch the videos. It’s basically trying to make browsing more intuitive, more language based, and being able to display/use/manipulate data the way you want it. Rather then me rant on, watch the videos and you’ll see for yourself. :)

I’ve known about Ubiquity for about a year, but they’ve finally made a prototype of it! If your interested, give it a try. Head on down to the Mozilla Addon page for Ubiquity. I’ve currently installed it myself, and need to restart my browser to try it. So this is me signing off, and I hope you enjoy my findings/review. :)

Songbird Images:

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