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I shall be in Cambyshire on or around the 16th. Still unknown how long I shall be staying. Anybody want a pint?
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, June 18th, 2009
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I currently use GTK from C when I want to write a GUI application. Unfortunately, GTK is a hideous monstrosity written in C by people who don't like C. I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with it. What else is there? I don't think my requirements are all that demanding;- Usable from C.
- Does not use a terrifying maze of macros in order to pretend to be C++.
- Integrates well with FreeDesktop standards (ie, if you put a GTK and a Qt application next to each other, they look similar enough these days at a glace; using the same colours, etc.)
For bonus points:- Extant Lua bindings
- Can just recompile and get Windows and OS X applications
- Comes with a moon on a stick
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So, this "Verified by VISA" system, or "LloydsTSB Safe Click" or whatever. It now appears that many retailers now require its use in order to complete your transaction. Here are a few problems with it;
- The Verified by VISA form is hidden in an IFRAME embedded into the retailer's site, making it hard for non-technical people to verify who they are giving what details to,
- The domain hosting the site that hosts this form, and its management interface, does not contain VISA or Lloyds in its host name,
- The SSL certificate used for this form is of the type anybody can buy for a tenner with no requirement to prove who you are,
- Asks for information the bank does not have (such as my mother's maiden name),
- Cannot be opted out of online without first signing up and providing all that data to a site of uncertain ownership,
- All the usual problems of involving two different organisations in payments, such as even more weak links,
- Asks for just the sort of information to make it a fruadster's wet dream.
Still, the nice chap on the 'phone told me it was secured by 128 bit SSL. Woo for that. Apparently if I bitch loudly enough in a branch, they can do something about this. Sigh. Who consults banks on security, and where do they live?
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When I popped out to buy cow juice this morning, I saw a very large black Rolls Royce wafting down the road, with a very large black man in it, wearing very large gold chains, very large sun glasses, and smoking a very large cigar. The bizarre and unexpected bit was that he was playing Vivaldi very loudly.
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
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My day today so far;- Irreparably fuck the telephone system.
- Spend 3 hours rushing to finish commissioning its replacement that I'd hoped to have done over a course of a week, not 3 hours.
- Booked tickets to go and see Watchmen in IMAX.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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| Time: | 11:11 am. |
| Music: | Lately - Skunk Anansie. |
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I love Wikipedia;Witchell, along with Sue Lawley, then became the first newsreader of the BBC Six O'Clock News when that programme was launched in 1984, now called the BBC News at Six. In 1988, the Six O'Clock News studio was famously invaded during a live broadcast by a female group protesting against Britain's Section 28 (a law against the promotion of homosexuality in schools). Witchell famously grappled with the protestors and is said to have sat on one woman, provoking the memorable frontpage headline in the Daily Mirror, "Beeb man sits on lesbian".
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Friday, February 13th, 2009
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Wooyay. Finally, real hardware! See pics here and here. Gareth now no longer has any hair having made these. Also, top tip of the day: Don't tell pick and place robots to place things outside the area of the PCB. It makes them cry.
Now to write the software!
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Comments: Read 16 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
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I just got a letter from Gerald Kaufman MP thanking me for my letter of support on his speech on the Gaza situation.
Unfortunately, I sent no such letter.
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, January 18th, 2009
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I have discovered the second great joke the Chinese are playing on the West.
The first, of course, is the invention and use of boxes that shrink once their contents is removed, destroying any possibility of returning them back into them.
The second, as I discovered this evening, is that the Fish and Chips takeaways they operate do not use grease-proof paper to wrap their goods. No. They use grease-repellent salt-and-vinegar-absorbent paper.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
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In this age of Daily Mail and Express readers, what should we call child grooming products?
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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Friday, August 29th, 2008
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In the past two weeks, I have managed to cut the pad of my left index finger to the point of bleeding profusely no less than 4 times. Each time, I have no idea how it happened and had not been handling any sharp objects for some time by the time I noticed.
Today's laceration had a window of opportunity of about 3 minutes. I washed my hands and noticed no problem. By the time I got upstairs and started typing, my finger felt sticky: it was bleeding.
What's most odd is that they're always clean cuts. Boggle.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, August 25th, 2008
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Here is a tarball of the sources CnM put up here in RAR format. It is 223MB. There is also an extracted set so you can download individual bits from here.
It looks pretty complete (including things they didn't need to) - although I am unconvinced about the precise versions they've shipped.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Friday, August 15th, 2008
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Maplin are currently selling a MIPS clone-based subnotebook with Linux for 170 quid. It is imported by CnM Lifestyle Products (a trading name of KMS Components), based in Cardiff. The box contains no mention of the GPL, or an offer to provide source. It contains, among others, the following GPLed software:- Linux 2.4
- BusyBox
- AbiWord
- Gnumeric
- Xine
- Sylpheed
- GPE/Matchbox/etc
- GQView
- Many other things...
The GPL is only mentioned in passing on this device, and I cannot find the full text anywhere.
Additionally, it uses the Firefox logo (which I believe to be a trademark) for an unofficial build (pre-Firefox 2.0 'Bon Echo'), the Internet Explorer logo, and the Microsoft Core Fonts collection modified from how they were initially released to the public.
The device's copyright infringement appears to know no bounds. I have contacted both KMS and Maplin. Maplin fobbed me off with "It's not our problem - talk to the manufacturer. And anyway, surely the manufacturer as acquired all the required rights?". They said they'd ring me back once they've done some hunting, but I suspect the likelyhood of that happening is close to zero.
KMS also tried to shift blame to the manufacturer (they're just the importer), and I didn't actually seem to make any progress in explaining to either company that they're infringing the copyrights of thousands of people, and are likely infringing the copyright of other organizations like Mozilla and Microsoft. Neither had any source to offer me.
If you think it is likely that some of your copyrighted material is being used in the miniBook, and object to their violation of the GPL, please give them a ring. Having checked, I don't actually have any - although somebody has offered to assign me copyright to some of their contributions to Linux 2.4 that do appear there should things become difficult.
A file system listing is available from here should you want to use it to spot if you recognise anything as yours. Leave a comment if you want me to check something specific.
Update: We've made up the right type of (tiny) connector to get the serial console on this device. This is what's seen at boot so Linux 2.4 copyright holders can see more about what's in it.
Update 2: CnM have put an offer up on their website for source code. Of course, not entirely fulfilling their obligations, and it only includes the licence text for the GPL, not MIT, BSD and any of the others involved. Oh, and it doesn't deal with the possible issue of infringing Microsoft's copyrights at all. Still, progress.
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Comments: Read 24 or Add Your Own.
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| Subject: | last.fm |
| Time: | 11:27 pm. |
| Mood: |  aggravated. | | Music: | Love's Got A Hold On My Heart by Steps. |
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I am doubtful of last.fm's quality of tagging and suggestion, having just got this out of it:Love's Got A Hold On My Heart by Steps from Step One (Tracks tagged Industrial)
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Went into Manchester. Walked six miles around Manchester. Went into Bang & Olfusen shop. Discovered that all their speakers suck. (You have to be within about 5 degrees of their tweeter otherwise it sounds like there's no tweeter at all.) Eyes watered at price of said speakers. Went to Whittard's, and discovered that Russian Caravan tea is less than half the price from Algerian Coffee Stores. Went to Debenhams to buy a coffee filter machine. Failed to do so, because they only stock crap ones. Went to House of Fraiser and spent 50 quid on a coffee filter machine (down from 95 quid) because it isn't shit. Went home. Brewed fantastic coffee. Went to pub to celebrate no longer having a job.
All fun.
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
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So, things I have done today:- Had a meeting with the senior lecturer in CS at MMU about the Google Summer of Code, in the hope of getting him to help promote it to students. He's enthusiastic about it, which is great.
- Spoke to the head of IT at MMU about them providing bandwidth and co-location for equipment for our project over the summer for GSoC. The man from IT, he say yes.
- Spoke to a RISC OS hardware manufacturer about using some of their kit as an open access box (co-located at MMU) for students working on NetSurf (as all platform agnostic code has to work on RISC OS). Yay, they say yes.
- Investigate setting up a wiki for the NetSurf project during GSoC to help catalogue progress, information and documentation (like RISC OS limitations they won't have thought about).
Busy busy busy!
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
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So, NetSurf, a small, lightweight, CSS-capable web browser I'm quite heavily involved in has been accepted into the Google Summer of Code 2008 which is quite prodigious. Over 500 projects applied, and only 175 got accepted. This is great news. If anybody knows any students who want to get paid over the summer to work on open source projects, please tell them about NetSurf!
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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nunfetishist's journal
mischievous.
disappointed.
bouncy.
