Beta Living by Chris Duckett
Living on the fringes of the software world is an exercise in character building - when you compile your entire system or think that GIMP is a useful image editing tool, it's best to have a sense of humour. Chris Duckett tries to maintain his as he dives into the darkened depths of 'mainstream-be-damned' software development.
Mar 17
IE9's H.264 vote killed Ogg
In a split decision by the judges, the winner of the W3C/WHATWG (World Wide Web Consortium/Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) video codec consensus is H.264, taking home the future of video playback on the internet while loser Ogg goes home with nothing but thoughts of what might have been. Until now, it was H.264 cheerleaders Apple and Google up against the Ogg pushers Mozilla [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Tags: h.264, ogg, opera, browser, open source, mozilla, microsoft
Sep 29
Non-professional Oracle wrestling
The latest and greatest version of the Oracle database, 11g Release 2, was made available recently and as the resident technical person around here, it fell to me to take it for a spin. Little did I realise the hell that I had just walked into. I will admit that two of the following mistakes are my fault entirely and could easily be fixed, but the third and final one is enough to drive anyone mad. Mistake [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 5 comments
Tags: listeners, servers, asus, lenovo, oracle, database, java, linux
Sep 15
Microsoft creates open source foundation
Microsoft has created the non-profit CodePlex Foundation to target increased communication between open source communities and software companies. Citing an under representation of commercial software companies and their employees in open source, the CodePlex Foundation aims to work with particular projects to bridge the gap between open source and commercial worlds. The Redmond giant has contributed [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 3 comments
Tags: codeplex, foundation, open source, microsoft
Sep 14
No paper, no promotion
It comes as no surprise to learn that HR people use IT certifications to choose between candidates when hiring, but in some organisations it can also inhibit career advancement. "I think they limit themselves in terms of career progression, payment, and promotion," says David Hanrahan, general manager of Microsoft solutions at Dimension Data told me recently. "It becomes a challenge to continue [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 1 comment
Tags: promotion, certification, dimension data, hiring, jobs
Aug 10
Data as an asset
Is data a business asset for your company or simply a by-product of conducting business? Paul Stewart, Australian Red Cross Blood Service business intelligence and enterprise data manager, says that one of the key things of any organisation is that its data is its biggest asset. (And with a title like that, who can be surprised?) "What you can derive about your customers that you didn't know [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 3 comments
Tags: red cross, information, data, australia
Jul 09
Is Google asking for antitrust?
Google has announced a new Chrome Operating System, designed for the web and with a browser baked directly into it — so much so that the entire OS is named after it. But the search giant should watch out: this decision seems designed to attract antitrust attention. Imagine the furore if Microsoft announced Internet Explorer OS. Antitrust naysayers would drop from the rafters for the chance [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 2 comments
Tags: chrome os, windows 7, chrome, internet explorer, browser, microsoft, google
Jun 26
Microsoft misses the Outlook point
Ask designers which mail program is the bane of their existence, and you'll find that Outlook tops the list. The reason why the most popular email reader is also the most painful is simple: it uses Word to render HTML emails — and Word does a very poor rendering job. Continuing a decision made in 2007 to render HTML with Word in Outlook, Microsoft confirmed that Outlook 2010 will also use Word. [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 3 comments
Tags: exchange, word, renderer, outlook, html, email, microsoft
Jun 12
If PHP then goto is the future
Few things can spark more religious fervour amongst programmers than the mention of a goto statement. PHP has stepped into the middle of the firefight by announcing that it will be implementing goto functionality in version 5.3. There is plenty of discussion surrounding PHP's decision, with PHP founder Rasmus Lerdorf defending the move, stating it is no different than breaking to a label and that [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 2 comments
Tags: goto, statement, kernel, c, php, programming, code, linux
May 22
OSDC 2009 opens call for papers
It's a long-standing policy that if you contribute to a conference, you receive free entry. The easiest way to contribute is to do a talk, and until the end of June you can set that up by responding to OSDC 2009's call for papers. This year's Open Source Developers' Conference (OSDC) returns to Brisbane between 25-27 November and covers all things open source with a traditional focus on Perl, [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Tags: conference, osdc, developers, open source
Nov 05
Theora, Firefox reach milestones
The Xiph.org Foundation has released version 1.0 of Theora, the major open source video codec. Upcoming versions of Firefox and Opera will be supporting Theora as part of the HTML5 video tag. Theora has been in development for six years after beginning in 2001 as an open source project and originating as a proprietary, patented codec. Xiph.org also maintains Vorbis and FLAC codec as part of [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 3 comments
Oct 31
Microsoft's PDC Potpourri
While not game-breaking in their own right, these little titbits complete the picture from Microsoft's recent PDC conference at Los Angeles. Compatibility: the rule that Microsoft is using for Windows 7 compatibility is: "If it works on Vista, it works on Windows 7". Compatibility is easier to use than in previous Windows versions. Rather than open the properties and play with a compatibility [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Oct 28
Windows Azure: New windows, same tools
Microsoft was at pains to stress that it will be creating an environment that developers feel familiar towards for Windows Azure development. A slide of some of the services Microsoft plans to offer on top of Windows Azure.(Credit: Robert Vamosi/CNET News) During the announcement of Windows Azure at PDC's opening keynote, developers were shown the process of writing an Azure "Hello World!" application. [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 6 comments
Tags: c#, ec2, azure, windows azure, amazon, windows, microsoft
Oct 09
The good and truly awful celluloid depictions of computers
Ever wonder why your lawyer uncle leaves the room whenever you turn over to Boston Legal? Or why your forensic science cousin can't stand crime drama? You know the answer: it’s the horrid trivialisation and dumbing down of an occupation to make it appear entertaining. Sometimes it is so unbelievable that it actually hurts and yelling at the screen is the only outlet. Below is a list of the [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 1 comment
Tags: csi, computers, list, good, bad, nausea, film, hal, ip, vb, gui, wargames, hackers
Oct 02
.NET looks to REST
With news that REST will play a big part in the next version of the .NET Framework, it is timely to take a look at ADO.NET. As Scott Hanselman, Microsoft senior product manager for developer divisions told Builder AU at the recent Tech.Ed conference: ADO.NET is not a replacement for any WS-* services, and can be used side-by-side with existing communication infrastructure. For the exceedingly [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Sep 18
Chrome DNS shortcut revealed
The Chromium Blog has detailed one of the shortcuts that Google Chrome uses to enhance the browsing experience: DNS prefetching. When a user visits a website in Chrome, the browser will scan for unvisited domain names and will automatically resolve them to an IP address. Google claims that on average this process saves the user about 250ms. As for how the users' view this feature, the blog [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Aug 27
Safari gets Gears
Google's Gears product has expanded its reach to the Safari browser. It's the bit on the end of the user string that's the interesting part. Gears in Safari is go!The announcement was made in a post to the Gears user group, with the warning that the software is likely to be buggy and most definitely is beta in nature. Since its release in May last year, Gears has supported only Internet Explorer [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Tags: offline, webkit, internet explorer, opera, gears, safari, firefox, google
Aug 25
Going the extra step but not the extra mile
I've always been a big fan of going the extra mile with error messages, it's a good way to show that you actually care about the product to take the time to customise it even when things are amiss -- and yes, things will go wrong, you will not create the perfect application. The most recognised example would be the custom 404s that appear all over the Web. A good 404 can impress the user and take [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 5 comments
Tags: photosynth, errors, 404, customisation, mac, microsoft, linux
Jul 07
LCA09 Calls, OpenMoko and a little Gentoo
Here is a little weekend roundup of Linux related news that may have slipped under your radar. Tuz -- yet another great mascot(Credit: marchsouth.org)It's scary to think that the next Linux.conf.au is only six months away, but that is the case and the call for papers as being put out. If you've got an amazing linux or open source talk you are dying to get out then give it a go. There's also the [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 1 comment
Jun 19
Miss out on Google Developer Day? Fear not.
Yesterday in Sydney, Google Developer Day took place in the lovely surrounds of Wharf 8. But if you couldn't make it to the passenger terminal cum conference centre with the high scary fences, then fear not. A great majority (and then some) of the content covered yesterday can be found in the video and slides from Google I/O. Builder AU's coverage of the event will appear shortly, but in the [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Tags: sydney, conference, google
Jun 04
WebKit's SquirrelFish canes Tamarin
The next generation of Javascript interpreter for WebKit, called SquirrelFish, has been announced and is already beating the competition from Mozilla and Adobe's Tamarin project.The SquirrelFish mascot, so that's what one looks like Graphs from Charles Ying's blog show SquirrelFish beating a vanilla Tamarin implementation by 1.9 times. In the official announcement of SquirrelFish is a graph [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Tags: webkit, javascript, mozilla, adobe
May 28
Google decides to dominate javascript libraries
With each passing day Google begins to look more and more like a Trapper Keeper. The latest move for the Web behemoth is to store commonly used javascript libraries with Google AJAX Libraries API. The premise is that many sites serve the same common javascript libraries -- prototype, jQuery, MooTools, script.aculo.us and dojo -- and performance would increase if these libraries were served from [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 1 comment
May 27
Confessions of an accessibility sadist
Inside my emerge.log lie some fateful lines that changed the way I interacted with my user interface: 1199579150: >>> emerge (3 of 15) x11-drivers/xf86-input-evdev-1.2.0 to /Innocuous enough on its own to most people -- but that Sunday morning emerge would remove the horizontal axis from my mouse. It's hard to believe that I managed to use my Gentoo box at all, let alone for five months! (I was not [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 3 comments
Tags: mouse, keyboard, accessibility, gentoo, google
May 22
Sending the Inbox into receivership
If you've got an e-mail inbox with thousands of e-mails just sitting there, chances are you are living inside your inbox and that you are a slave to mail notifications. To overcome this problem and get on top of your e-mail rather than vice versa, here are a couple of techniques. The first and most drastic is to declare e-mail bankruptcy. Delete everything, make a clean break with the past and [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Tags: inbox, organisation, e-mail, junk, overload
May 14
Assumption-based Hacking 101
High-level thinking leads to assumptions, and assumptions are the mother of all mistakes -- consequently the best place to find a security hole is in a place where the programmer has made an incorrect assumption. Such a case came across my desk yesterday, one bad assumption has led to a site that has more holes than a cheese grater. The programmer obviously assumed that any authentication would [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Tags: mistakes, assumption, hacking, internet, security
May 12
Google Developer Day yet to fill
Past experience would suggest that if Google restricts access then people will clamour for it -- remember GMail invites back in the day? It is therefore surprising that places for Google's Sydney Developer Day have not been snapped up. Under 150 places remain for the one-day conference featuring Google's full arsenal of developer APIs -- OpenSocial, Android, Maps, YouTube, Gears -- which takes [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Tags: alan noble, maps, conference, google
Apr 09
Quick Tip: Forwarding X11 to OS X
Every now and then I feel the need to spark up an application from my Linux machine and view it on my Mac laptop. The process is quite simple -- I just always forget it and end up trawling through search results for it. Prerequisites:X11 for Mac -- this package provides an X server for the Mac, while not completely integrated into the desktop it's "good enough".1 Linux box with an X server installedFirst [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Apr 09
AppEngine: Google's Python boost
Google announced its AppEngine yesterday and I just had to take a look. My initial impressions for this service are that it is going to be very good for rapid prototyping and creating toy applications. Paying for storage and IP space is something I do not do as I cannot be bothered to find a decent deal nor can I justify the cost for ideas that I find interesting for only a day or two. AppEngine [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 1 comment
Apr 01
Idiot Watch link of the day
It's April Fools again, that means thanks to time differences that we have two days to disregard what appears to be big news stories. One of the traditional homes of the well thought April Fools joke is Google. This year they've locally released a technology called "gDay with MATE" that can bring you search results from the future. Not a bad joke, and here is the page that tells you the truth. [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Tags: april fools, mate, google
Mar 28
Daylight saving changes are standard procedure
Stop the presses and inform the emergency agencies, the eastern state governments have extended daylight savings and there is nothing we or Microsoft can do about it. Duck and Cover! Sensationalist hacks are calling this a mini-Y2K -- they are more correct than they realise. Once again nothing will happen and life will continue, your calendaring will not implode and civilisation will continue. What [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 2 comments
Mar 18
Schmidt happens in Sydney
The scene was set: harbour views from the Sydney Opera House and Eric Schmidt , the Chairman and CEO of Google, was about to front the throng of media assembled. What could Google possibly be announcing that would warrant the attention of the CEO? Perth public transit timetabling coming to Google Transit, a partnership with Optus, and a movement of Google's Australian headquarters turned out [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Mar 07
IE8 tripping on Acid2
Here's how it's gone down: first, the IE8 team announced that the browser would pass the Acid2 test; then came the caveat that it would do so only if a new meta tag was inserted into pages; then it did pass the Acid2 test by default; and now comes the revelation that IE8 will not pass the Acid2 test by default. I seem to remember IE8 beta 1 passing the Acid2 test ( Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 2 comments
Tags: internet explorer, ie8, acid2, bugs
Feb 21
Do Vista users come from XP?
The old wives tale goes that most people in the "real world" will buy every second version of Windows. The theory being that those who used Windows 98 moved to Vista. Presumably leaving Windows 95 users to move to Windows ME? I have no idea how this is meant to work when there were two branches of the Windows line of 9x and NT. Using this idea as a basis, leads us the conclusion that people [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 1 comment
Tags: windows xp, windows 2000, windows nt, windows vista, windows, vista
Feb 06
The typical Linux conference geezer
As an optional part of LCA registration this year, delegates were asked to pick their distribution, shell and editor of choice. This information was then printed on the badge, presumably to either avoid or facilitate flame wars. Here are this year's stats: Distro Ubuntu -- 254 Debian -- 156 Fedora -- 59 Gentoo -- 50 No doubt about the popularity of Ubuntu nowadays. It is interesting [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Tags: distributions, debian, emacs, bash, lca2008, ubuntu, gentoo, linux
Feb 04
Linux lovefest wraps up in Melbourne and flies south
As the Linux.conf.au 2008 wrapped up in Melbourne last week it was time to reflect on the highlights of the last few days. What was hot and what was not? Hot: |>Anthony Baxter of Google gave the Friday keynote on the upcoming 3.0 release of Python. There was little new knowledge in there for people that have been keeping tabs on Python, but good showmanship can still be entertaining and the talk [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Jan 31
Melbourne clichés: Things of stone and code
It's fair to say that the weather in Melbourne has changed as often as speaker's laptops have failed -- and I'd expect nothing less. The highlight of today was the chat that we had with Linus Torvalds. Torvalds said that the "Linus does not scale" problems were a thing of the past but that there maybe a problem with Andrew Morton not scaling. Other topics covered were Linux's increasing focus [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 1 comment
Tags: melbourne, soc, lca2008, kernel, linus, samba, tridge, google, linux
Jan 30
Linux.conf.au hits top gear
The public holidays and mini-conferences are over -- it was time to move into the conference proper. Bruce Schneier, international security guru at large, gave a damning opening keynote on security and along the way told the sold out audience that security cost justifications are complete bullshit. Schneier described the IT security market as a lemon market and drew parallels between it and the [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Jan 03
Getting extensions working in Firefox 3
After installing a beta of Firefox, typically all the extensions will fail and the user is prompted to check for an update. However, not wanting to believe that I couldn't use Greasemonkey with Firefox 3 -- it turns out that there is a way to get your favourite extensions working again. And it is incredibly simple. Following the instructions in this comment thread will get your extensions back. To [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 2 comments
Tags: extensions, firefox, beta
Dec 06
Apple shipping the Mark Webber of hard drives
Any Australian with an interest in Formula 1 would know the exploits of Mark Webber. The boy from Queenbeayan can always pull out a mechanical failure or a random incident whenever he is in a good position -- I'm thinking especially of the Japanese GP this year -- which resulted in his nickname "the DNF man". (If you have no idea who Webber is, watch this "highlights" package. I recommend [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 2 comments
Tags: hard drive, mark webber, mac, failure, apple
Nov 30
Silverlight 1.1 becomes 2.0
As covered earlier this week, even Microsoft were confused by their own versioning for Vista -- and the news is that they are at their old naming tricks again. At the time Silverlight was launched, it came in an inital 1.0 beta version but there was also a v1.1 in the works. Now because of the sheer gigantic implications of the feature set in Silverlight v1.1, it demands that it be named Silverlight [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Tags: marketing, silverlight, microsoft
Nov 14
Clusters bucking Microsoft's desktop dominance
I doubt that Windows is the first operating system that one would think of when building a supercomputer. With the release of the latest TOP500 supercomputer list it's clear that I am not alone in this perception. The total number of systems using Windows is 6 and charting that data by performance is even more damning -- Windows gets heaped into the "Others" column. Obviously wanting to improve [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Tags: cluster, supercomputers, hpc, microsoft
Nov 05
Google embraces and extends Facebook apps
With less effort than negotiating for a 1.6% stake in Facebook, has Google simply outmanoeuvred everybody? With the likes of LinkedIn, MySpace, and Salesforce onside with Google's new OpenSocial platform it certainly packs a punch to potential competitors before it's really even entered the ring. If Microsoft released a social networking application platform (SNAP) that locked out the up and coming [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Oct 26
Del.icio.us for the rest of us
One thing you can say about the people that make Opera, they never fail to innovate. I can cast my mind back to the days when Opera was small and lightning quick, downloads were handled sensibly and resumable (why do we still wait for this in the big browsers?), mouse gestures and tabs were brand new and it had yet to have the entire kitchen sink and the stove thrown in. Today the company from Oslo [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Oct 25
When simplifying becomes patronising
A new version of gimp came out today, and I gleefully headed over to the gimp downloads page this morning to see what support there was for OS X. None, nothing, not a crumb, jack all. All I can see is various options for installing it on various Linux distros. That's no good for me, it's compiling on Gentoo already, I want to know if I can finally have a proper gimp.app 2.4 version. Perhaps [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 2 comments
Tags: gimp, javascript, assumption
Oct 04
Adobe returns Silverlight's serve
At the end of September it was debatable whether Flash or Silverlight was a better solution -- by the end of the first days in October it is clear that Flash is once again the undisputed champion. It has been an exciting opening 72 hours of October for the Adobe faithful at the annual MAX conference, where all the big announcements have been made. One of the technical hills that Silverlight advocates [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 1 comment
Sep 25
So you want to buy Facebook?
Microsoft is the latest company to go a-courting Facebook, that worldwide office productivity menace, with the intent of purchasing a 5% stake for half a billion dollars. That puts the Facebook evaluation at $10 billion, although Reuters says that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has the company's valuation at a cool $15 billion. $500 million is an awful lot of money for a small stake in a Web [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 1 comment
Sep 06
How Microsoft dealt with GPLv3
The news of Silverlight 1.0 being released allows some insight in the way that Microsoft will work with GPLv3. In simple terms, Microsoft will not work with GPLv3. That is the line that they have drawn, and their rhetoric and actions now show this to be so. The easiest way for Microsoft to avoid the snare of the Free Software Foundation is to step around GPLv3 and leave it to their partners. [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 9 comments
Tags: gplv3, moonlight, silverlight, novell, microsoft, linux
Aug 27
How to make a brand homeopathic
There was once a time when the word Java was used another person knew what you were talking about. It was either the language, the island or the coffee -- it was hard to take either of those three definitions out of context. Then the marketing masterminds at Sun decided to make up for lost time after past diddy-daddling with Java had only resulted in confusing people with crazy version numbers. [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 0 comments
Aug 06
OS X + NFSv4 == SSHFS + open bitterness
Has anyone, who isn't a die-hard Darwin fanatic, ever tried to recompile their kernel in OS X? If you answered yes then you are among a rare breed of user indeed. Congratulations, I hope that you were better for the experience, and that it worked. Meanwhile any sort of reality distortion field that I may have been previously emersed in is well and truly gone. The cause was NFSv4 and a touch of [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 5 comments
Tags: nfs, fuse, apple, open source, osx
Jul 18
Who really owns your open source code?
In the wake of Apple's purchase of CUPS, there is a simple lesson to take away -- if you are a developer committed to open source and you wish for your contributions to always remain open, do not reassign copyright to an external party. As the new holder of copyright to all CUPS code, Apple is able to re-license and add non-open functionality into CUPS if it so wishes. This situation is not unheard [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 4 comments
Tags: licensing, cups, apple, fsf, open source
Jul 06
US Navy stole my Internet
It's a typical Thursday afternoon and suddenly your Internet connection goes down. That's not good. As they have innumerable times before, a sysadmin calls up the ISP to file a fault and returns with this information: "Our Internet provider has informed us that the issues were are experiencing with our primary Internet link are being caused by the arrival of the US Navy’s air craft carrier Kitty [...] Read more »
-- posted by Chris Duckett | 34 comments
Tags: kitty hawk, lame, excuses, internet
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