Far Beyond the Edge of Reason

A brief update...

2009-09-28T16:49:00.003+01:00

I haven't posted on here for a while as I've been busy at work and on my course, so I thought I'd just share some good news I've had in the last couple of months.

First of all, it now looks like I will be able to take voluntary redundancy from my existing customer services role next year, although it's not yet certain. I'm looking to leave about 7 months down the line, and not only will this mean I get to leave this rather dull job, but I will also go with a big fat redundancy cheque, in excess of £10,000! I don't know the exact amount - apparently it's based on months and years worked there, which would make it £10,500 as at December, so it will be more than that if I leave end of April, and I also get to take some free shares I was given that I would otherwise have had to leave in. I might also get pay in lieu of any holiday I'm owed at the time, and the whole thing is tax free, so it could work out considerably more. Put it this way, it's around a year's salary for me, and I'm pretty confident I could get a new office job quickly, probably paying more.

But that's not the plan, which is where my second news comes up. This morning I did the final exam for my CIW Foundations course. I'm pleased to report that I passed, with a score of 77 correct out of 85 (around 90.5%), which is pretty good as the pass mark is 54 out of 85, and it's multiple choice. This now means that I just have to register this online and they'll send me the certificate, and I will then be a CIW Associate!

So now I have a recognised IT qualification, my desire to become a web developer is now one step closer. As I've got plenty of time till my preferred redundancy date comes up, I figured it's worth doing another course so I've emailed the college and asked them to send me details on the three that I'm most interested in (Java, C# and C++). At this point I'm leaning towards Java as the impression I've gotten in the past is that Java is essential if you don't really want to go the Microsoft route (I'd much rather work on Linux/Unix or OS X), and is still useful if you do as C# is similar enough that it's easy to adapt to. I think C++ might be a bit too demanding, and while I don't mind C# as a language I reckon any course that focuses on C# is bound to use either Visual C# Express Edition or a trial of Visual Studio. These are pretty good tools but I'd much rather be able to use Vim for everything (or if I have to use an IDE, one that supports vi keybindings), together with an appropriate compiler and debugger as I find this way works better for me (although I am pretty fond of MonoDevelop as this gives you a killer combination of vi keybindings and Intellisense-style autocompletion).

Shame they don't offer a Python or PHP qualification, but hey, I can always do that later if I want. I'm now thinking that I'll start looking for something in February to have lined up for when I leave my existing job, so it would be good to have gotten a decent amount done on getting another qualification, one that involves actual programming. There are plenty of vacancies on offer all the time, but I really need experience with server-side web programming to be able to do them.

Here's hoping it all works out OK and in a year's time I'm doing a much more fun and better paid job!

Learning to speed-read

2009-08-10T20:04:00.002+01:00

Sounds like this might be worthwhile if, like me, you have squillions of books lying around that you've never gotten round to reading. I'm going to give this a go to see if it makes any difference - I'm a pretty fast reader to start with though.

Scammers are morons...

2009-03-28T20:37:00.003Z

Check out this very dumb spam email that was sent to, of all places, the Debian Hurd mailing list, and received a suitably chastening response. I mean, seriously, Linux has a reputation for being geeky, Debian has a reputation among Linux distros for being geeky and the Hurd port is no doubt even geekier (I'm on the mailing list, but only really because I'm interested in the idea of the Hurd and I would like to be able to play with it once I have sufficient skills). Who is dumb enough to think that people on this mailing list will not realise this is a scam? Not to mention the nature of it:

Dear Webmail Account User,

This message is from the webmail administrator/
IT support center to all webmail account users. We are
currently upgrading the data base and e-mail center due tO
unusual activities identified in our email system.
Therefore, We are deleting all unidentified Webmail Accounts
to upgrade and create space for new ones.

You are required to verify your webmail account by
confirming your Webmail identity. This will prevent your
Webmail account from termination during this exercise.

In order to confirm your Webmail identity, you are to
provide the following data below;

First Name:
Last Name:
Username/ID:
Password:


*Important*
Please provide all these information completely and correctly
otherwise due to security reasons we may have to deactivate
your webmail account temporarily.

If anyone falls for that one they probably shouldn't be allowed near a computer ever again! I guess it goes to show that most online scammers are in fact utterly stupid people who bank on there being someone even stupider to fall for it.

Kill Bill in One Minute

2009-03-22T19:18:00.001Z

I loved this video! Check it out!

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

INX

2009-03-21T14:22:00.002Z

I stumbled across an incredibly useful tool the other day, which I thought I'd share with you. INX is a custom Ubuntu respin that lacks an X window server. In other words, it's a command line only system.
Now, this may at first make you think "meh, what can that do?", but INX sets out to prove you wrong by letting you do virtually everything you can do from a GUI! Including browse the web graphically, read email, listen to internet radio even watch videos!
INX is two things: First of all, it's a great demonstration of just how much you can actually do from the command line. Second, it's a great learning aid. It includes loads of tutorials on how to use the command line. I learned a load of things from one go, including how to use GNU Screen.
If you're even remotely serious about learning to use Linux properly, I highly recommend grabbing a copy from the link above!

Programs wanted for old-style chips

2009-03-21T12:40:00.001Z

Interesting idea, but seems strange to use 8-bit processors when it would probably be easier to use a more modern x86 CPU that was coming to the end of its lifetime - older Intel chips can be had pretty cheap, and this would let them use the variety of free software available such as Linux. Why reinvent the wheel?

read more | digg story

Musings on learning Python

2009-03-15T16:16:00.003Z

I realised that I hadn't posted for a while and I also hadn't mentioned how I was doing learning Python, so I thought I'd best write a new post.

Well, I've been using Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, 2nd Edition, and I've skimmed through it once to familiarise myself with the syntax and am now working through it a second time, but this time I'm making sure I pass all the exercises before I move on. I did have a significant setback during this time because I had to spend two and a half months working on Network Technology Foundations, the final module for my CIW Associate course (got 19 out of 21 on the test though! Just waiting to hear from my tutor about doing the final exam, though), but I finished that in mid-February. So, in the period from mid-October to start of December, and then again from mid-February onwards, I've been spending a little time every day learning Python. Now I can devote a bit more time to it, I think I'm making a fair amount of progress.

And how do I find it? Well, I already have reasonable knowledge of HTML/XHTML, and did a little bit of programming in BASIC on my Amstrad CPC when I was a kid, and I'm already reasonably familiar with the bash shell (though I haven't really done any shell scripting), so I wasn't a complete novice. From my experience, and from attempting a few other languages (Perl and Java, mainly), I've found that Python is the first language that I really feel I can make progress with. I've already surpassed my meagre BASIC knowledge, and I feel it's doing me good because unlike with BASIC, Python encourages good programming practices such as indentation, which will no doubt do me good when I choose to learn another language.

I've heard in the past that Python just seems to "fit your brain" better than other languages, and my experience bears this out. I can already follow the flow of pretty much any Python program pretty well, and I was really pleased the other day when I found a listing in a magazine for a game written in Python and I understood every line perfectly. I still haven't gotten very far with learning object-oriented programming, but that will come with time.

I've also tinkered with C a tiny bit, and learning Python has meant that I find it easier to understand what's going on in C, which is great. One of the things that drew me to Python was the fact that it was relatively easy, but at the same time was a full-featured, modern programming language, not some kid's teaching language, so I could learn the basic concepts behind programming using Python, such as object-oriented programming, then apply the principles I'd learned to more demanding languages, as I've always heard that once you know a few languages it's easy to learn another. I've already found that if I look at a program in pretty much any language now it's possible to get some idea of what's going on.

As a very welcome side-effect, my skills with Vim have increased tremendously, and combined with the fact that I can now touch-type, when you compare how long it took me to enter a BASIC program as a kid to how long it now takes me to enter a Python program of roughly equal length, there's no comparison. The downside of this is that at work when typing letters (I work in a customer services role), I keep reaching for j to move down, the Vim key bindings are burned so far into my brain!

I'm going to continue learning more Python, but I'm getting a little bored with my current Python book so I will finish this read through and move on to something else. I have Apress's Beginning Game Development with Python and Pygame, The Definitive Guide to Django and Practical Django Projects, as well as O'Reilly's Learning Python and Programming Python, so that means I've got plenty to learn about Python. I find reading several different tutorials about a subject gives you a more balanced view of it, and there's also plenty of tutorials online about Python so there's loads of scope to learn more.

I have some idea of the path I'd like to take with learning to program after I'm reasonably skilled with Python. I'm interested in learning to program the iPhone and iPod Touch, and now I have a MacBook that's a possibility that's open to me (note that this is pretty much for fun, I'm not one of these people who thinks they're going to write an iPhone app that everyone will buy, after all a year or so ago everyone was thinking the same about Facebook apps and now most people are pretty bored of them), so I've got Apress's Learn C on the Mac, Learn Objective-C on the Mac and Beginning iPhone Development. I wanted to learn C at some point anyway, partly because it's useful to learn it for other languages, and partly because it's pretty much required for any kind of serious Linux or Unix programming, so if I learn that (or, at least enough to get by), then learn Objective-C, then that'll stand me in good stead for learning how to use Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.

I also plan to learn Java and/or C# at some point since both languages are in demand, and I may do this after I finish my current course as the people I'm studying with offer courses in both of these.

OK, that's quite a lot on my plate, I know, but hey, ambition counts for a lot!

The Teenager Audio Test

2009-02-25T19:55:00.003Z

Apparently people over 25 can't normally hear this, but I could at 30, and it was irritating! Pointless, but fun - see if you still have the hearing of a teenager!

Created by Train Horns

2009-02-11T19:59:00.000Z

I really like today's Dilbert:

Enjoy!

Ubuntu causes girl to drop out of college? Errr...

2009-01-15T20:32:00.002Z

I expect by now most of you will have seen this article, about a young woman who bought a new Dell laptop, but for some reason got it with Ubuntu preinstalled, and was complaining that it had forced her to drop out of college.

My first thought was how? Dell's website doesn't exactly make show Ubuntu prominently, you really have to go searching round for it to find it. Also, it has a pretty big disclaimer saying that if you buy one of these computers, you won't be getting it with Windows. Dell certainly don't sneak it onto your computer.

Second, it's certainly not Ubuntu's or Dell's fault. If she'd bought a Mac, for example, the Verizon setup CD probably wouldn't work on that either - even now Macs aren't always well supported.

I don't really blame the girl, although she REALLY should have asked for help earlier, and not gone to the TV station! If she'd logged into the Ubuntu Forums plenty of people would have been willing to help. Hell, I would have been willing to help someone in that position myself, it's certainly not a terribly hard issue!

That girl represents the overwhelming majority of people who use computers for just surfing the net, emailing and writing a few documents. Ubuntu can perform very well in that role, however most Internet Service Providers are still very Windows-centric. I'm sure many Mac users experience these kinds of issues too. So getting broadband working using ISP-provided hardware and software in anything other than Windows can be an uphill struggle.

I guess the issue really here is more about ISP's than end users or operating systems. I truly despise the setup CD's used by most ISP's. Why install software you don't need to use? It's not hard to configure a broadband connection if someone just gives you the information you need.
Here's what I think ISP's need to do:

Ditch those stupid USB DSL modems most ISP's use. On Windows you normally need to install a driver to use them, whereas Linux and Macs will generally either work straight away with them or won't work. A much better option is something that connects via Ethernet. As a general rule, it won't require any drivers to work on any OS you wish. More and more broadband packages include a wireless router, so just make this a decent Ethernet one rather than a USB one. If they don't need to install a driver, that's a whole step in the process gone, like that! Could cut down on tech support calls in one stroke.
Ditch the automated configuration software and use a web interface. These are generally just as user-friendly, but don't require you to install anything. My D-Link wireless router has a web interface and I can configure it on my MacBook, or one of my Linux machines if I wish. If the ISP provides the router, make it one with a web interface, and have the setup instructions concentrate on that router, but provide information that's sufficient to cover any router. Also, what if people are going to be using the connection primarily with something other than a computer, such as a PlayStation 3? This way, no matter whether they use Windows, a Mac, Ubuntu, Slackware, Solaris, FreeBSD or a PS3, they can get online.
Get rid of automated setup CD's for Internet connections. Every remotely user-friendly OS, Ubuntu included, has its own wizard for setting up an Internet connection. Give people the information they need to do it, and let them do it. I really think one of the reasons people have problems with computers is over-zealous hardware and software suppliers trying their best to hide every last little detail, even filling in a few numbers and ticking a few boxes.

I'm all for making things easy to use, but end users should not be spoon-fed. It makes more sense to me to give people the information they need and let them get on with it. Configuring a router via a web interface if you have all the information you need on a sheet of paper is no harder than filling in a form online, which anyone with half a brain can do. If you can join Facebook, you can configure your router if someone gives you the information you need.

Instead people get told to put in the CD, run it and attach the modem. They expect it to work straight away, and if it doesn't are lost, because every last detail has been hidden from them so they don't know where to turn next. If they have input those details themselves, they can go back and see if they have entered something wrongly.

I appreciate there are many people who don't want to learn the technical details. Fine, I don't want to force them to learn. But we should be trusting people to input a few details on their own, rather than pushing everything out of sight.

Unix commands work in Google!

2009-01-14T21:54:00.002Z

Holy crap! Did you know you can use some Unix commands in Google? I just Googled the following:

ubuntu | grep icewm

and got a load of responses about Ubuntu, all mentioning IceWM! Now that is a SERIOUSLY useful tool, which I will be making very heavy use of indeed! Wonder what other Unix commands work in Google?

A review of OpenSolaris 2008.11

2009-01-11T18:05:00.006Z

I'm always willing to try new operating systems, and naturally it's a plus if they're free and open source. I like the Unix environment in general, and find that it better suits my needs than Windows.

So I guess it was inevitable that I was going to give OpenSolaris a try at some point. For the uninitiated, it's an open source operating system based on Sun's Solaris operating system, which is itself a version of Unix.

OpenSolaris feels very similar to popular Linux distros such as Ubuntu - it boots from the CD into a Gnome desktop with all the same applications as you'd expect to see in Ubuntu - Firefox, Thunderbird and Pidgin. OpenOffice isn't included by default, but is available from the repositories. This similarity is no accident - Sun hired Ian Murdock, founder of Debian, to help them create an official OpenSolaris distribution.

OpenSolaris's implementation of the Gnome desktop has to be the best I have ever seen. Check out this screenshot:

This shows the default theme, Nimbus. I prefer Dark Nimbus:

Compared to Ubuntu, the fonts that come by default are nicer, and no need to worry if you're brown-phobic too! It also includes Compiz by default.

As yet, OpenSolaris only offers the Gnome desktop. Not great if you prefer KDE like I do, but it does mean the whole thing is geared towards one desktop, making it a bit more uniform than most Linux distros - you won't find KDE apps that stand out like a sore thumb!

One downside is that compared to most Linux distros, OpenSolaris can be rather leisurely. It took several minutes to boot up in Virtualbox, and while the installer was no harder than Ubuntu's to use, it took a LOT longer. Installing new software was also very slow.

The graphical package manager is very similar to Ubuntu's Synaptic, and won't cause problems for anyone who's used to the idea of package management. However, OpenSolaris doesn't seem to have the sort of simple update manager that Ubuntu has.

One aspect that would no doubt come in very handy is the new Time Slider feature. Reminiscent of Apple's Time Machine, this feature allows you to automate backups in a simple user-friendly fashion. Sun's ZFS filesystem is undoubtedly extraordinarily powerful, and Time Slider makes it easy for the average user to use it.

This is Unix, so naturally there's a shell. While there was apparently a controversy over their selection of the bash shell, as used in Linux and OS X, over the Korn shell which is more often used in Solaris, I feel they made the right decision. Since bash will be familiar to people who use Linux or OS X, the two most prominent *nixes, it makes sense for them to adopt this.

I think for many people, OpenSolaris may be the open source operating system they have been waiting for. Some people do complain about the fact that there's no one company behind Linux and they get confused by the different distros. If so, OpenSolaris may well be the answer to their prayers. While there are other OpenSolaris "distros" such as Belenix, OpenSolaris is the official distribution. It offers an end-user experience that compares favourably with modern Linux distros. Also, the fact that it only supports Gnome so far means that it's consistent, although I personally would prefer to have the option of using KDE instead.

Also, Solaris is one of a number of operating systems that have been certified as real Unix. While as far as I know OpenSolaris has not been certified as this, it's based on the same code base as Solaris. So if you like your desktop Unix, but don't want to pay the premium for a Mac, you may want to consider this.

Sun have announced plans to offer OpenSolaris preinstalled on some Toshiba laptops. This is nothing short of astonishing considering how long people have waited for preinstalled Linux, and I guess that really shows how much difference one company's unwavering support can make.

If you're in the market for an open source operating system, OpenSolaris is well worth a try. This is only the second release, and it's really shaping up well. It still needs better driver support, and it could do with being faster, but I like what I've seen so far, and I look forward to following the fortunes of OpenSolaris over the next few years.

Why the Budget All-in-One Desktop Will (NOT!) Fail

2009-01-10T11:56:00.003Z

I just read an interesting post on Wired about the phenomenon of all-in-one desktop computers, built with laptop or netbook components (for example the Asus Eee Top). They point out that budget devices such as netbooks do well in poor economic conditions, and that compartmentalisation has proven acceptable in many Apple devices. However, they then go on to claim that these devices will fail because they're not mobile. Huh?

These devices aren't intended to be mobile! They're intended to be cheap and cheerful desktops that nonetheless look good. The fact is, great as netbooks are, you would NOT want to use one as your primary computer, unless you used it for only a few minutes a day. For a price that's not much more than a netbook, these devices offer a full-sized screen and keyboard. And I don't know about anyone else, but I find I'm often more productive on a desktop than a laptop for tasks that require you to spend long lengths of time typing, such as coding. An ergonomic desktop will always be more effective for that kind of task than a laptop which is designed for mobility.

Furthermore, they're missing the point. These are affordable, stylish devices for the ordinary user, rather than the type of user who reads Wired. They don't actually need to be that powerful. Here's what the ordinary user tends to use their computer for:

Web browsing (typically Facebook or another social network, eBay, maybe Flickr etc, and sometimes buy something online)
Email
Instant messaging
Writing letters
Sync their iPod

And that's pretty much it. These machines will perform fine for this kind of task. Ultimately they are designed for people who use their computer primarily as a portal to the Internet.

I suspect the Wired writer may have fallen into the "power user trap". Just because a power user wouldn't necessarily find it a good deal doesn't mean everyone else would feel the same way. These are ideal computers for the following uses:

A child's computer (I believe strongly that children should have their own computer if possible, it encourages them to tinker with it in a way you wouldn't want them to do if they had to share the family computer)
For elderly relatives.
People who just want to surf the net etc
A first computer for almost anyone

They compared it to the iMac. Well, that's a far more expensive computer, so you'd expect it to have a lot more features. No-one would consider these as an alternative to the iMac, nor would they consider the iMac as an alternative to these.

In fact, I've been considering buying some kind of small form factor desktop myself, because I really don't have the room for a full-sized desktop, but I really could do with that kind of productivity boost. I have had back problems caused by using a laptop in the past, and also have occasionally suffered from RSI, so a desktop might work better for me as my main computer. I'm not much of a PC gamer, and I prefer Linux to Windows or OS X so I can get by with a machine that isn't very powerful - just use a minimal window manager like Fluxbox.

There's several options - one of these net-tops like an Eee Top, a Mini-ITX machine (has the advantage that it comes without an OS so I could just install a Linux distro of my choice), an Eee Box, or a Mac Mini. If Apple had actually updated the Mac Mini like they were rumoured to have done then I might well have gone for that as I already have a mouse and keyboard I could use, I'd just need to buy a display for it (although I strongly suspect that a Mac Mini refresh is on the cards at some point later this year, maybe when Snow Leopard is released, and if I hadn't got a desktop by that point a refreshed Mini with Snow Leopard would be a strong contender). So either the Mini-ITX or Eee Box might work well for me.

So, in my opinion the phenomenon of the budget All-in-one desktop will not fail, because it's targeted at ordinary users, and it's often hard for power users to appreciate what people like that want.

Tempted by Android...

2008-12-31T19:10:00.003Z

I had the occasion to have a play with a colleague's T-Mobile G1 today, and all I can say it this:

WOW!!!!!!!

Excuse the somewhat childish overuse of caps and exclamation marks, but I really had to get the point across!

I have a 32GB iPod Touch and have also tried other people's iPhones, so I have a fair idea of how the iPhone compares to the G1. And quite frankly, I think that Android is going to utterly annihilate the iPhone.

Believe me, I don't say this lightly. I'm certainly not an Apple fanboy, by any means, but I do like my iPod Touch. It's polished, it works pretty well, and the apps I've used so far have been pretty cool.

However, the iPhone and iPod Touch have plenty of flaws too. I don't like the iTunes music store - I think it's a bit of a rip-off for downloading music compared to Amazon's MP3 store, which is cheaper and DRM-free.

At present, Apple may have more apps already available, but I feel that longer-term, Android is likely to attract more developers. Here's what I find restrictive about the iPhone and iPod Touch for software development:

You can ONLY develops apps for them on a Mac, using XCode.
Apps are written in Objective-C, a programming language with little support outside the Mac community.
You have to be in the Developer Program which costs $99 (OK, it's not much, but it's still a barrier to development - after all, what if people in the developing world wanted to develop apps?)
You need Apple's approval to make your app available - this has been discouraging developers who have seen their apps being rejected for vague reasons, and these are the people you really don't want to piss off as they are the lifeblood of any software community.

Now, compare this with Android:

You can develop apps on Windows, Mac or Linux, with Eclipse being the main development environment, although others are supported.
Apps are written in Java, probably the most popular programming language in the world, with a massive existing developer base, and already widely used on mobile platforms.
No requirement to join a developer program.
No need to have Google approve your app - Android Market has no restrictions on apps, unless they are outright dangerous (OK, someone will say that makes them potentially dangerous - I'd answer that Android is Linux-based so it should be pretty rock-solid, and Java apps run in a Java VM so they are sandboxed, so I think that's probably safe enough as long as they sort out the notorious bug where it would run text commands as root...)

So in my opinion, Android has the potential to attract a LOT more developers than the iPhone. Add to that the fact that there are a large number of handset manufacturers that have signed up to the Open Handset Alliance, including well-known manufacturers such as Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, LG and Samsung, all of whom will have an interest in contributing to the pool of applications available, and I would expect Android's developer community to quickly expand over the next couple of years, until it dwarfs the iPhone developer community.

A lot of people have said that the G1 doesn't stand up to the iPhone on various counts. OK, that's fair enough, but they miss and important point - the G1 isn't Android, it's the first Android phone, and is largely for developers and early adopters. There will be others, and some of those are courtesy of manufacturers that really know their stuff. I love Motorola phones, so I might consider getting an Android-based Motorola device.

From what I hear, the Cupcake branch of Android is making staggering progress. Thanks to its being entirely an open-source project, Android can very likely develop faster than the iPhone OS can. In a year or two, I would expect Android to have outpaced the iPhone OS. If you compare Android now to the iPhone OS when it was released, I'm pretty sure Android is superior. The Android of a year hence will no doubt have seen a lot more development, and crucially, a LOT more real-world use, and will therefore no doubt be a completely different beast.

Having seen it in action now I'm sorely tempted to get a G1, and I'm only inclined to wait because of the promise of even better in the future. I've mentioned that I'm currently learning Python, and I have plans to learn another language after that. I've considered Objective-C as creating an iPhone app, even if I didn't make it available, might be an interesting challenge, but now I'm thinking that learning Java and creating Android apps might be more interesting.

Finally, just like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Real UNIX my ****!

2008-12-11T18:51:00.003Z

I've heard that writers write about whatever gets caught in their filters, so usually they tend to write about things that piss them off. That must apply to blog authors, because I've got a real bee in my bonnet about this issue.

According to Wikipedia the current OS's which are licensed to use the UNIX trademark are AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris, Tru64, A/UX, Mac OS X Leopard (on Intel only), and part of z/OS.

Now, I don't know about IRIX, Tru64, A/UX and z/OS, but as I understand it AIX, HP-UX and Solaris are derived from AT&T's original UNIX source code, as IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun respectively licensed this from AT&T, so they include code from the original UNIX.

Now BSD was created at University of California, Berkeley, using AT&T's original UNIX source code. Later, in the early 90's, all the code that was licensed from AT&T was reimplemented. Therefore, as I understand it, BSD contains none of the original UNIX source code, and operating systems like FreeBSD and NetBSD can't call themselves UNIX for that reason.

OK, so that explains to my satisfaction why AIX, HP-UX and Solaris are real UNIX, and I assume the same applies for IRIX, Tru64, A/UX and z/OS. But OS X?

Unless I've got my wires crossed somewhere, OS X contains none of the original AT&T UNIX source code:

The XNU kernel consists of the Mach microkernel, which was developed as a replacement for the BSD kernel, together with userland tools taken from FreeBSD4.4. So, as I see it, no AT&T source code here.
The shell used in Leopard is bash. Many of the other tools used are also the GNU versions as used in GNU/Linux and GNU/Open Solaris.
I believe the X Window Server used is a fork of Xfree86.

So, correct me if I'm wrong by all means, but I can't see that OS X contains any of the original UNIX source code. If so, surely it's not really got any more innate right to call itself real UNIX than Linux has?

So far as I can see, UNIX certification means that it's been certified as being POSIX-compliant by the owner of the UNIX trademark. Well, that really doesn't mean that much, does it? To the best of my knowledge, this would just mean you'd pay The Open Group to certify it as being real UNIX. Is there any reason why any Linux vendor couldn't pay this fee and have their distro certified as being real UNIX? I really don't think this would be a good use of their money, but I see no good reason why this couldn't be done.

So, dear lazyweb, here are my questions:

1) What actual benefits are there to an OS being certified as real UNIX?
2) Does OS X Leopard contain any of the original UNIX source code?
3) If not, what right does it actually have to call itself real UNIX?

Seriously, I'm not trolling here, I just cannot see that Leopard has any more right to call itself real UNIX than Linux does on the basis of the source code. And if it's based on certification, then what's to stop a Linux distro vendor from having their OS certified as being real UNIX?

Linux - Stop holding our kids back

2008-12-10T11:28:00.001Z

This is one article that genuinely made me angry - it's worrisome how ignorant the teacher mentioned is.

read more | digg story

Are Macs designed for the left-handed?

2008-12-03T15:55:00.004Z

I had a bit of a bizarre revelation this afternoon, which I'd like to share. I own a total of four laptop computers:

A Dell Inspiron 1150 running Kubuntu Hardy
A Philips X58 dual-booting Vista and Ubuntu Intrepid
An Asus Eee PC 2G Surf running the default Xandros
An early 2008 MacBook

Now, the Dell has two USB sockets at the back, the Eee has two on the left and one on the right, the Philips has two on the left and two on the right. So with these machines you can easily have the mouse on the left or right-hand side.

The MacBook is different. It has all the USB and other sockets on the left-hand side, so you have to plug in your mouse on the left. If you want to use a mouse on the right-hand side it effectively shortens the length of the wire. Also, the touchpad has only one button, so there's no right or left button in the same way.

So that begs the question - Are Macs designed specifically for people who are left handed?

Think about it - the ration of right-to-left handedness is about 90:10, similar to the proportion of Mac users to users of other PC's (yes, Macs are PC's!). Macs have a reputation for being used by creative people and creativity comes from the right hemisphere of the brain, which is linked to the left side of the body, meaning that creative people are more likely to be left handed. So if creative people are more likely to be left handed, it follows that they are more likely to prefer a computer designed for them.

Now, I'm right-handed, and I'm also a good example of a left-brained logical type, and while I quite like OS X (I do think it's better than Windows), I prefer Linux. Linux is more likely to appeal to the right-handed, left-brained people who like getting lost in technical details simply because you can get lost in the technical details, but also most people run it on hardware other than Macs, and like I said above, my impression is that most PC's are designed more with the right-handed in mind.

It also explains why some people absolutely rave about Macs, and plenty of others (myself included) are ambivalent about them (although I am actually writing this post on my MacBook, naturally as it's what I had to hand when I first noticed this!) and can't understand what the fuss is all about. If you were left-handed, wouldn't you prefer a computer designed specifically for you, to the point that you'd never want to go back?

It wouldn't surprise me if a survey were to find out that the majority of Mac users were left handed, and I'd be curious to know if such a survey has ever been done. Any thoughts, anyone?

Pownce is closing - a call for the code to be open sourced!

2008-12-01T22:42:00.004Z

I was very sorry to learn today that Pownce is closing. It's a good service, and I will be sad to see it go. Although it was never as popular as Twitter, it did offer far more powerful features.
I went and logged in and people were discussing alternatives (I like Rejaw as a Pownce alternative), and someone mentioned open source microblogging software such as Laconi.ca, or perhaps a Drupal module. This gave me an idea.
Pownce was apparently created using Django (for the uninitiated, it's a web development framework similar to Ruby on Rails, but based on Python instead of Ruby). It runs on a standard LAMP stack (although with Python instead of PHP, as stated above), which is entirely open source.
Now, bearing in mind that both Python and Django are open source, and from what I read of the acquisition, it was mainly to get the people, could Pownce be open sourced?
If this was possible, it would be a great way for interested parties to set up their own version of Pownce. So far as I can see, there's no proprietary software involved that they might need to hang on to.
I'm therefore going to post this on Digg, as that would be a good way to get some feedback on what people think, and attract more attention.
So, Kevin Rose, how about it? Any chance you could open-source Pownce?

Dead Parrot sketch ancestor found

2008-11-13T19:04:00.001Z

An ancestor of Monty Python's famous Dead Parrot comedy sketch has been found in a joke book dating back to Greece in the 4th Century.

read more | digg story

My suggestion to Dell

2008-11-11T21:51:00.003Z

Following my post about encouraging people to learn to program, I've posted the idea I had about including development tools and guides in PDF format on Dell's IdeaStorm website. If you like the idea, please promote it!

The IT Crowd

2008-11-08T19:18:00.003Z

I'm a huge fan of the geektastic Channel 4 comedy series The IT Crowd, so I was really pleased to find this link today, confirming that it's returning to our screens in the UK at the end of November. For those who haven't yet discovered it, I urge you to check out this link for a taster of this hilarious sitcom (unfortunately it's no longer possible to embed this clip).

But I was even more pleased to find this spoof website for Reynholm Industries, the company which is the setting for the series. With a little searching around, you can find a way to log into the company's Intranet and download wallpapers and images from the series(I won't spoil the surprise by telling you where to find the login details, you'll have to find them yourself!). Top marks for this brilliant comedy website!

Getting a new PC...

2008-10-29T20:46:00.004Z

My sister told me today that the IT department at her employers have a load of old desktop PC's they no longer need, so they're going to be installing Ubuntu on them and selling them on for about £5 each. I'm guessing that they have some kind of licensing deal with Microsoft that means they get to use as many copies of Windows as they like, but if they sell them on they have to remove it, so they probably can't keep Windows on them.

I'm actually quite impressed with this, for several reasons:

It means perfectly good hardware can be reused and made available to someone else. In contrast, my own employers, who shall remain nameless, apparently have a deal with a company to break up all their computers and dispose of them, which I think is a staggering waste, and this is a BIG company that's in the FTSE.
People can get a working computer that's perfectly good for surfing the web, emailing and basic office tasks, for a pittance. It'd be ideal for people's kids or elderly relatives, neither of whom will care that much whether it runs Windows or not.
It's probably actually cheaper to do this as it must cost money to have them disposed of.
Plus, it exposes Linux to people who otherwise wouldn't try it.

She's asked if I wanted one, so naturally I said yes! So she'll try and get me one.

I see little point in sticking with the Ubuntu install already with it, as I run Ubuntu on one computer already and Kubuntu on another. So what to run on it? I have several candidates in mind:

Sidux
Xubuntu
Damn Small Linux (I've grown to love DSL in the last few months)
Slackware
Gentoo
Linux From Scratch (it'd be a hell of a challenge though!)
PC-BSD
FreeBSD
Debian
Linux Mint Fluxbox CE
Or I could use Ubuntu Mini Remix to create my own remaster based on Ubuntu, but using a lightweight window manager. I've done this in the past to try to create something that worked better on my Eee PC (unfortunately it didn't work out too well!), but the end result was perfectly useable. I'm actually very keen on the one I created purely for the fun of making it look as 1337 as possible (it's basically Fluxbox with the Matrix theme, a black GTK theme, and an abstract green-and-black background). I'm also interested in trying out some more window managers - I like IceWM a lot, I also like Fluxbox, I'm interested in trying FVWM, FVWM-Crystal and FVWM-95, and I may give some of the tiling window managers like awesome and Xmonad a try.

I'll have to wait and see how powerful the machine is before I can decide what to put on it, although if it's running Ubuntu OK it should be able to handle most Linux distros. That's assuming they haven't all gone!

I've never actually owned a desktop before. All my computers right now are laptops (a Dell Inspiron, a Philips X58, an Asus Eee PC 2G Surf, and a Santa Rosa MacBook), and much as I love them all, certain things, such as coding, are really better done from a desktop. It's a simple matter of ergonomics. So I'm looking forward to having a desktop computer of my own because I anticipate that it should improve my productivity.

IT Guy vs Dumb Employees Video

2008-10-25T11:54:00.000+01:00

I couldn't help laughing at this great video! Check it out!

IT Guy Vs Dumb Employees - Watch more Entertainment

Encouraging the programmers of the future

2008-10-24T19:52:00.003+01:00

I found this interesting article on the BBC News website today about the British gaming industry, and how the UK has long been punching above its weight in the gaming industry. This has always been put down to the generation who grew up with BBC Micro's, ZX-81's, and so on. These computers generally had a BASIC interpreter build in, and you'd have to use that to run programs from tape or disk.

Thanks to these native, inexpensive computers, the UK was for years a strong player in the gaming market. Programmers cut their teeth by entering listings from a magazine, progressing to writing their own games. OK, the machines were arguably harder to use than a modern machine, but they were well documented, and there was more of a culture of programming with them - if you wanted to use one, you had to learn at least a few commands.

Now, contrast it with this article from earlier in the year, which makes for somewhat more depressing reading. Few people are learning about programming, and schools are concentrating on teaching kids how to use Word and Excel. No wonder so many people are reluctant to even consider switching to OpenOffice!

I'm nearly 30, and got my first computer (an Amstrad CPC 6128) aged around nine or ten, so I consider myself to be at the very tail end of the generation that grew up around the first home computers. Like many others, I worked my way through the tutorial in the phone-book sized manual to build an address book application, and spent hours typing in and debugging games from magazines. Being a kid at the time, I was regularly distracted from it, but I got to be OK at it.

The 90's were arguably a bad time for the computer industry in many ways, despite the fact that the Internet appeared during this decade. Commodore went under, Apple only survived by the skin of their teeth, and within the space of a few years, Windows came to dominate the desktop. Pretty much everyone else disappeared.

While Windows undoubtedly did a lot to make computers more accessible (much as I hate to admit it, as I am a Linux user!), it also relegated them to being something used for writing letters, making spreadsheets, and later, surfing the web. To a certain extent, it made a computer into a black box, as people weren't interested in learning to code.

At the same time, the games consoles began to draw much of the gaming market away from home computers. While some genres (RTS, for example), have long been strong on the home computer, and remain so, others switched almost wholesale to the console. Platform games such as the Mario and Sonic games are a good example of this. So people who in the past would have bought computers for gaming and got into programming later were rarer.

Nowadays, if you buy a Windows PC, you certainly don't get encouraged in any way to get coding. There's no guide of any kind included, nor do you get a BASIC interpreter (or any other interpreter, for that matter). Modern PC magazines don't seem to do anything to encourage people to learn to program, and I find that a little sad.

With a Windows computer, it seems to me that you actually have to be interested in coding to start with, and to know that you're interested in it, to be able to get to use it as a programming platform. By this, I mean it gives no encouragement whatsoever in learning to program in any language. Microsoft don't include any kind of programming tools at all as far as I can see.

The frustrating part is that they already have a pretty decent tool in the shape of Visual Studio Express Edition. OK, I'd rather people learn an open-source language than be tied to Windows, but I'd much rather see people encouraged to get programming in the first place. Why couldn't Microsoft include at least one of the Visual Studio Express Edition IDE's (I expect they'd probably go for Visual Basic, although that wouldn't be my first choice), and a manual (in print or pdf format), with every copy of Windows? They could place a link on the desktop that says "Start learning to program!", and let people's curiosity take over naturally. If people don't want it, they can delete it, and that's fine. As it is now, you have to go looking for it on the Microsoft website. They should be encouraging people to learn about their software and develop better applications for it.

I think that in many ways, Apple have done better in this respect. By including the Xcode IDE with every copy of OS X, they've provided a powerful tool with their computers. Also, OS X is at heart a form of Unix, making it well suited for programming. However, the fact that Xcode isn't preinstalled does mean it's not there by default, making it less likely that people will try it out of curiosity. Also, although Xcode does have loads of documentation with it, it doesn't include any kind of "beginners guide", it seems to be all for people who are already programmers. They could definitely do more to encourage people to start learning to program. I also think that OS X's polish counts against it in this case, as it means you never have to delve into the terminal to accomplish every day tasks. So again, I feel that like Windows, OS X does little to encourage people to learn how to program.

Another thing with both Apple and Microsoft is that they do emphasise IDE's over text editors. I've had a brief try at using Visual Studio Express Edition, and tinkered with Xcode, and I subscribe strongly to the view that an IDE is the last thing you want to use when you start programming. Learning a brand new and extremely complex application at the same time as learning to program is a bit too much for most people, whereas anyone can use a basic text editor. Even a more complex one, such as Vim (my personal favourite), is far easier to use than most IDE's. There's no doubt that IDE's offer a lot of features to experienced users, but they can be extremely overwhelming when someone takes their first steps in programming.

This is one of the things I like about Linux over OS X and Windows. While these days you don't actually have to use the terminal for everyday tasks in a modern distro like Ubuntu, there's a strong culture of doing so and you're encouraged to use it in solving problems. I think part of this is because the main support is through forums, and it's easier for someone to post a command for you to paste into the terminal than to say "Click this, then this, then this...". Also, the bash shell is a lot more powerful than its Windows counterpart. By and large, while there may be a learning curve, using bash is often the quickest and most convenient way to accomplish a task, and it doesn't take long for this to become clear. From using bash and changing settings by editing text files, it's not a great leap to then go on to write shell scripts or to learn to code using Perl or Python. Most distros also include a lot of documentation for the included languages. Also, languages used in Linux are almost invariably ones that can be written with a simple text editor rather than forcing someone to learn to use an IDE, which I feel makes them more accessible.

However, I still feel even Linux can do more to encourage people to learn to program. The last thing I'd want to do is to force people to learn to program when they don't want to, but I do think we should be taking more steps to encourage new programmers. Maybe just a nice handy pdf file in your /home directory called "Learn to Program" will be enough.

Having recently taken my first few steps in learning Python, I'm enjoying learning it tremendously. It's probably a more powerful language than BASIC, but I find it just as easy to get started with. Having had a go at Perl and Java in the past, and finding these a bit of a struggle for a first language, I was pleasantly surprised by Python. So it would make an ideal language to include with a new computer. OS X and most Linux distros include Python already, and I see no reason why Microsoft couldn't distribute a copy with Windows. Just add a pdf guide or two and sit back. If for some reason they didn't want to use Python, we're certainly not short of other good languages for beginners either.

How else can we get people interested in learning to code? What languages should we push? Should we encourage them to use an IDE, or go with a text editor like Vim? All answers welcome!

My project for this weekend...

2008-10-10T18:43:00.003+01:00

I have a little project I've decided on for this weekend. I've previously set out to learn a programming language from scratch (most notably Perl, PHP and Java), and failed! I do have a fair grasp of HTML and XHTML now, though, so I'm pretty confident I can learn an actual programming language given half a chance.
I've long heard that Python is very easy to learn and today I read a passage where a programmer said he was able to learn Python in a weekend through just online tutorials. I've found these to be patchy at times so I invested in a new book, and I'm going to make a concerted effort to learn Python from scratch this weekend.
OK, I may not be able to get through the whole thing, but I reckon I should be able to make a lot of progress. I'm particularly interested in learning to use Django to create web apps as I'm planning a new career in web development.
Wish me luck!