Why FOSS won’t win against MS

Monday, March 7th, 2005

Now here’s a real insightful comment on one of the things that’s wrong with FOSS (Free Open Source Software).

Programming playground

Monday, February 28th, 2005

I’ve added a new section called Playground to the Projects page. It’s where I’ll be stashing all experiments I do for various things like CSS, PHP, DHTML, Javascript, Soap, XMLHttpRequest stuff, etc.

Sylpheed-claws killfile

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005

I read a couple of newsgroups using Sylpheed-claws, but sometimes there are annoying trolls that irritate me to no end. I’ve often spent a couple of minutes finding out if sylpheed had a killfile. A killfile is file with a bunch of (regular expression) rules that are applied to messages in newsgroups. You can use it to automatically delete/hide/etc messages.

So far I didn’t have any luck with killfiling in Sylpheed. Of course sylpheed has filters, but those didn’t work on newsgroups. Or at least the ‘hide’ action didn’t work.

Today I finally found out the correct way to killfile cross-posts in newsgroups. Trolls often cross-post to different newsgroups to maximize the annoyance. To automatically hide cross-posts in Sylpheed, you don’t use a real killfile. Instead, do the following:

• Create a new processing rule.
• For the Condition, enter

  header "Newsgroups" regexpcase ","

• Set the Action to

  hide

Next time you enter the newsgroup folder, cross-posts will automatically be removed.

Sylpheed-claws really needs better documentation by the way. It was quite hard to find out how the processing rules worked. First I tried to filter on the ‘Newsgroups’ matchtype, but this was incorrect apparently. I had to filter on the ‘Header’ matchtype with a Header name value of ‘Newsgroups’. Counterintuitive if you ask me.

How to kill linux.

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005

How to Kill Linux.

My god, this Dvorak guy is dumb!.

While you’re at it, check out his article on Microsoft’s marketing:

The word on Microsoft is that it’s a copycat with great marketing. The company, however, likes to toss around the term “innovation” and rarely brags about its marketing. And nobody accepts the company’s view of itself but me. I argue that Microsoft is a technology-centric company with incredibly poor marketing. So poor that it cannot even convince the pundits that it is anything but a me-too developer.

Is this guy high or something? Microsoft has excellent marketing. It doesn’t even try to convince people that it isn’t a copy-cat company. Often enough Microsoft have said their strategy is embrace and extend. EMBRACE and extend. E M B R A C E. That means ‘steal’, Dvorak!

Just goes to show that even though someone has a big name doesn’t necessary mean he has brains.

Proms v0.11 enters testing stage

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005

Proms v0.11 has entered the testing stage. In the next week I will be testing all new features and doing some serious bug hunting (and fixing). After that the new version will be released. About time too. The last version was released over a year ago.

Bug priorities

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005

Suppose there are two bugs in an application you’re writing:

One is a bug that is in everybody’s face. All of the testers have noticed it, and it has already been reported numerous times. The real end-users are bound to find it. However, it is a trivial bug and the behaviour it causes is easily circumvented by the user, once (s)he knows how. It causes no loss of data, but is merely a bug in the interfacing

The other is a bug in a rather obscure part of the application. The real end-users are not quite as likely to find the bug as with bug numero uno. In fact, none of the testers have yet found it, but you know it is there. This bug, however, is not as trivial and can cause a loss of entered data. Also, it can not easily be circumvented.

Which one to fix?

Well, both of course. But which one has the higher priority? Suppose there is only time to fix one of the two?

This may not seem like an important dicision, but I think it is. The decision you make will affect what users will think of the application in a profound way. Let’s look at some possible responses from users using the application:

Bug one: “Wow, this is an ugly interfacing bug! Golly, couldn’t they be bothered fixing something this obvious and trivial or what?”

Bug two: “Hmm, here I am in this obscure powerful part of the application and I’ve found a bug. Then again, I’m doing some pretty tricky and advanced stuff here which I’d normally only use once a month, so a bug here isn’t that strange”.

The funny thing is that the above two responses are how I would react as a user, but not how I’d react as a programmer. Loss of data seems much more severe then some easily avoided interfacing bug. But as a user I’d rather see bug one fixed.

Of course, this will not hold true for all data-loss bugs. In this case, bug one merely causes user-entered data not to be processed, which means they’ve just wasted about thirty seconds entering data. If, however, the bug were to cause a more severe data-loss (deleting data, for instance), to hell with what the user will think of the interfacing bug. ;-)

So, my lesson for the day is: When prioritizing bugs take in account the user experience and don’t just follow a programmer’s perspective.

World Press Photo 1957

Friday, February 18th, 2005

World Press Photo 1957:

Douglas Martin, USA, The Associated Press.

Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, 4 September 1957. Dorothy Counts, one of the first black students to enter the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School.

Probably one of the most courageous persons in the world.

Nethack farming bot

Thursday, February 17th, 2005

Benjamin Schieder wrote a bot that automates the process of farming in Nethack:

Or, to be even more precise, it does the job of pudding farming for you.
It even feeds itself when hungry. It sacrifices pudding corpses and
prays to your god. It removes scrolls of scare monster from the altar.
It stops on critical encounters, like petrification, becoming weak or dying.
More information here

I’m curious on how the Nethack community reacts to this news. And if the DevTeam will now do something about farming or not.

‘You Have No Right To Complain’

Thursday, February 17th, 2005

Today’s Dilbert cartoon made me relive all those moments during the last elections here in the Netherlands.

It’s actually becoming the standard way people react when I say I don’t vote: “But vorting is important! You’ve been given the right, the privilige to vote, and you should use it. And if you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain either!”.

They think they have the right to take away my right to complain? Ha! In their dreams. Self-rigious bastards. Why can’t I complain because I’ve not voted? Why? Give me one good reason!

Democracy as we know it is a sham, which is why I refuse to participate in it. The government does as it damn well pleases and couldn’t give a shit about what the people want. “It’s in your own best interests”, they say. Yah, right.

But what of those people that do vote? Let’s look at what they’re actually doing. They participate in a system in which they give their consent to a party to decide what’s best for them. Suppose John Doe goes out to buy some snacks? I tell him “Hey John, bring some for me!” “Well, ” says John, “What do you want?” “Oh, I’ll trust you to know what I’d like”, so he brings me back something I don’t like at all. Am I now in a position to complain? No, I’m not.

Ergo, people who vote do not have the right to complain! They have given that right away the moment they decided to participate in the system of democracy.

People who refuse to participate in that system (me) because they believe it is flawed have all the right to complain. They have chosen not to give that right away and let some other body decide for them.

I dare anybody who can give me one good, argumented, logically sound reason why people who haven’t voted don’t have the right to complain, to email me.

New default style

Thursday, February 10th, 2005

As you can see (If you’ve been here before), I’ve changed the default style. Hope you like it.