So Long, Sanity

As you can see with my WishList's update, I've already got Scarling.'s "So Long, Scarecrow" (the day before yesterday), and John 5's "Songs for Sanity".

On Scarling.'s release, I have to say I was really surprised, since this CD is quite different from "Sweet Heart Dealer". Which came out to be good: it's more mellow and less agreessive, has nothing of "Jack off Jill", and you don't get those aggressive voices I like in songs suck as "Black Horse, Riding Star" from the previous album, but you get a really more mature album: both technicly and lyricly. Darker then ever, this is a 5 starts album.

But then, we have Songs for Sanity. This album has 12 tracks of this awsome guitar player, John 5. If you are a guitar player or a guitar lover, stop reading this and go fetch this album. Now. Are you still here? This album has Steve Vai appearence. Yes, fanboy, go and fetch it. Now, for those not so "guitar-fans", this is a great album with a BIG MISTAKE. OK, John 5 does lot's of appearences in lot's of other bands CD's, he has his own rock band (Loser, which I don't like), and still this "John 5" projecto, where he puts all his music he does by himself: his one-man-band. So far so good, and I realise that this is lot's of work already, but the big mistake he does is to have one "one-man-band" instead of two. Because you have two albums in one in the "Songs for Sanity": an heavy metal album, with 7 tracks (1, 2, 4, 8, 7, 11, 12) and one non-metal album with 5 tracks (the others). Which makes a non-guitar fan think seriously before buying the album (or not). I really think that Songs of Sanity Metal tracks are awsome, and I would buy the 7-songs CD by itself, but I just don't like the other five tracks. And I'm sure there are people out there with the opposite oppinion. Worse, if the next album comes in the same vein, I won't buy it without listening to all of it. I would rather that that seven tracks in one CD that have all these: making me skip some tracks is the same as making me listen to this CD fewer times than I would if I was only getting the seven metal tracks.

Well, and now that I've ranted about my new musical aquisitions, I'll stop and start eagering for the new Mindless Self Indulgence CD, which import is already in Lisbon, so I guess I'll have it soon...

Coding and Drugs

Here's a funny and great article about the effects of several drugs in your coding. This article compares simple "coding" with "coding under caffeine", "coding under nicottine", "coding under alcohol", "coding under THC (cannabis and such)" and "coding in a non-stressful enviroment with a good night of sleep". I agree with his results, but most of the times you can't control your coding enviroment and having good nights of sleep isn't geeky at all... So I continue to think that one coffee every 4 hours is perfect. Now, I just have to reduce my caffeine dosis...

Robin

Robin is a "Remote Operating System Built in Netscape"... Completely in XUL, this is quite awsome!

Planet to have a release candidate

I'm happy to see that Planet is going to have a release candidate real soon, specially because the so-called "nightly snapshot" is from the 1st of October, 2004...

Fixing Planet

Erich: with python 2.3 it still happens... Anyway, thanks for the fix (I've just applied it on Planet Noori)... I've also sent an e-mail to Planet's Mailing List talking about the issue...

Regarding <br />, W3C tells that nowadays all tags must be closed, so <br > just isn't valid HTML.

NecroSlaughter

NecroSlaughter is the name of one of Devastator's band, being the other two Mordor (a metal band where I am singer and drummer) and ColdBlooded, a Black Metal band. NecroSlaughter doesn't have any releases yet, but, while Devastator is getting his way to get a singer and a drummer for this band, he already has some material that will be released in NecroSlaughter's first demo. I'm happy to be one of the three persons that have a pre-release version on two tracks and - wow - NecroSlaughter is already my favourite Death Metal band! If you're a Metal fan, keep tuned and check out for this upcoming band, because NecroSlaughter is really good!

Jack off Jill

I've just ordered Jack off Jill's complete discography (see my wishlist for details). Since Jack off Jill ended because of (between other things) they were sick of the record industry, I thought I wouldn't want to give money to the ones who made the band end, so I decided to get all their music illegally, which I did. Since Jessicka (Jack off Jill's singer) now has all the rights of their music, so the money will go to her and not to their old publisher, I'll be happy to have the original stuff, supporting Jessicka and her new band, Scarling..

Bashing (again) Sony

Still on Sony sucking real bad, seems that the rootkit is downloaded even if users reject the EULA...

Remember HackerNews?

Do you still rebember HackerNews? That were from L0pht? Those who made L0pht Crack? And then, do you remember L0pht being aquired by @stake?

Symantec recently acquired @stake, which is more bad news. And, to proove it, Symantec is now refusing to sell LC5 (the Windows password cracking tool, previously from @stake) to anyone outside of the USA and Canada, claiming new Homeland Security laws.

Read the full story here.

Fedora

[root@noori ~]# yum upgrade
Setting up Upgrade Process
Setting up repositories
Reading repository metadata in from local files
No Packages marked for Update/Obsoletion

top - 15:01:34 up 17 days, 4:43, 20 users, load average: 0.01, 0.14, 0.34
2938 root 15 0 338m 295m 3656 S 5.0 29.5 343:55.51 X

[root@noori ~]# bc
bc 1.06
Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type `warranty'.
343 / 24
14

So, it seems that I have my Fedora desktop machine all updated, with an uptime of 14 days for X. It's the bigger X uptime I've managed in a Fedora box so far, and it seems that it won't pass that, since:

• I can't open new apps using kdelibs
• Stuff that uses mozplugger crash mozilla
• This stuff was caused by several "yum upgrade"'s. It's easily fixed with an X reboot

The question is: what if I want to have a stable machine, without having to fucking restart my graphical enviroment every two fucking weeks?

Fucking morons...

PS -> Yes, if you're asking yourself, I'm an happy Debian user.

The 14 Worst Corporate Evildoers

Alternet has an article describing the 14 worst corporate evildoers, and why. The list has:

1. Caterpillar
2. Chevron
3. Coca-Cola
4. Dow Chemical
5. DynCorp
6. Ford Motor Company
7. KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root): A Subsidiary of Halliburton Corporation
8. Lockheed Martin
9. Monsanto
10. Nestle USA
11. Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International (a.k.a. The Altria Group Inc.)
12. Pfizer
13. Suez-Lyonnaise Des Eaux (SLDE)
14. Wal-Mart

Planet Noori updated

Seems that Planeta Asterisco's RSS feed isn't easy parsable, so I've replaced that feed with WeBreakStuff's blog to Planet Noori.

Planet Noori

I've just created Planet Noori.

For those willing to know, Planet Noori is a news website that agregates news from a wide range of places, from this blog to Planet Debian.

I'm still only aggregating news from fifteen different sources, but if you like it and want me to add more sources, please tell me which ones and I'll add them... I still want to add some more myself.

Eminem Music Used As U.S. Torture Device?

A human rights group is alleging the United States operated a secret prison near Afghanistan's capital as recently as last year.

The group claims that music by Eminem and Dr. Dre were used as instruments of torture.

I think that this is just insane.

Dumb. dumb, DUMB!

The dumbest person, ever.

An alleged child porn offender in Germany turned himself in to the police after mistaking an e-mail he received from a computer worm for an official warning that he was under investigation, authorities said on Tuesday.

Of course that the "official warning" was the Sober worm...

Netvibes

Well, I still think that a Galaxy would be awsome, but since there's none, and because I don't have time to start creating my own Planet, I've started using this great Web 2.0 WebApp, NetVibes.

NetVibes is something like Google IG, except that it works woth all the feeds I wanted, unlike Google IG, and it has more configurability, more stuff you can do, and is more user friendly.

So, I've created a personalized webpage, setted it as my Mozilla's Home, and am now an happy user of it for my top 14 feeders. Unfortunately if I add more it would lack browseability, and I had more to add... Damn, I really ned to setup a Planet :-P

Spare time

Do you have:

• Some spare time


• a Flash enabled browser


• some headphones or any other type of sound system

?

Then, you need to click here... Laughing is healthy! :-)

PearLyrics: surprising good news

I told you earlier about PearLyrics, a program that grabs on the web the lyrics for the musics you're listening to, and how Warner/Chappell Music Limited made his developer cease to distribute and develop his program.

But now...

The goal of Warner/Chappell's prior letter to pearworks was to gain assurance that pearLyrics operated according to those principles. However, in both tone and substance, that letter was an inappropriate manner in which to convey that inquiry. Warner/Chappell apologizes to Walter Ritter and pearworks.

Our solution will adhere to our shared belief that songwriters must be fairly compensated for their work and that legitimate web sites with accurate lyrics must not be undermined by unlicensed web sites.

We look forward to working together, and to helping to advance the evolution of the music industry cooperatively for the benefit of consumers and artists alike.

This MIGHT be good news, PearLyrics MIGHT be able to be developed and freely distributed as it was. But this can be other things too, so let's wait and see... I'm slightly afraid that this will mean a better PearLyrics, but a non-free one. And that would really suck.

Thormentor

I've just noticed that Thormentor added a link from his blog to mine... Well, thanks! Thormentor is a good friend of mine, but now that I'm working and living in Lisbon, I don't spend much time with him,... But, Thormentor, I miss our polotical discussions! :-) And for the others, if you're Portuguese you might want to check out his blog, I like it as much as to bookmark it on my daily visits now...

Fuck Christmas

Fuck Christmas is a link you should visit, read, and learn. There's no much to comment on it, the plain truth is there... Here's a quote, but please read it all...

At what point did a basic understanding of the separation of church and state become a fucking war on religion? And how did we get to the point where you can call an organization set up to defend our civil liberties “Terrorists” on national television and no one fires your ass? Enough. Fuck all of you lying little shitheads who wish the world was out to get you so you could play the poor oppressed victims. Wake up assholes — you’re the cowboys, not the fucking Indians.

[...]

Let’s back up even fucking further, shall we? Can anyone tell me how old Christmas is? Anyone? Two thousand years, give or take, right? Gee, who’s been reading their No Child Left Behind History Textbooks? Try fucking four thousand years. Huh. Twice as fucking long as your little baby king has been around. How could that possibly be, unless. . . waitaminute. . .

Christmas isn’t fucking Christian. Ok, now we’re talking.

That’s right, that Yuletide cheer you’re spreading? What exactly do you think Yule is? It's the fucking Pagan celebration of solstice. And those “Christmas” traditions? They’re not just like Pagan rituals, they fucking are Pagan rituals. Way before your Jesus got all magical with the bread and fishes, the Romans were celebrating the birth of Mithra on . . . guess? Go on – guess. December fucking twenty fifth. What a weird coincidence. Practically the whole thing is ripped off from the fucking Druids and the Romans. Twelve days? Check. Exchanging gifts? Check. Mistletoe? Check. And you’d better fucking believe that those decorated trees that Gibson and Co. are so bent out of shape over are as Pagan as the Rune and Crystal Shack at Pentagramfest 2005. You might as well be building miniature fucking Stonehenges in your den.

And don’t you read your own goddamn Bibles? Jesus was born when? In the middle of winter? Lot of Shepherds out watching their flocks around that time of year in Bethlehem? No, because they’d be freezing their fucking asses off. Tell you what – y’all go figure out which one of the different Bible stories about the birth of Baby Jesus® you want to believe, and then we’ll argue about whether it fucking happened like that or not.

Christians just stole a bunch of traditions from other cultures, slapped them together, stuck a fucking tinfoil star on top and called it the Most Important Holiday of the Year. Modern American Christmas makes Michael Jackson look positively organic.

But you boys at FOX still freak out every year about how everyone's out to get your special trees. This is really the most important thing you have to talk about? Whether Target says Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas? Here’s a brainstorm: there’s a fucking war on. Our soldiers are out there dying while you guys do your 14th live feed of the day from WalMart to show us what good little consumers we are. What Would Jesus Do? He’d jump over that newsdesk and kick your ass for that shit. Are you sure you want to hang your journalism credentials on a story about what some guy calls a tree?

Well we’ve fucking had it. You want to play bullshit games and scream about how God’s fucking judgment is gonna come raining down on us if we don't start watching our vocabulary? Go right the fuck ahead. But let me clue you in on something: fire and brimstone ain’t no deterrent for us. We’re not going to hell, assholes, we’re fucking in hell. We live with you.

And fuck Easter too, you fertility–rite–celebrating, whiny, self-righteous, don’t–know–the– history–of–your–own–religion assholes. Fuck off.

Linux 2.6.15-rc6 is out

Linus announced 2.6.15-rc6, finally, and hopes that the final 2.6.15 is out still in 2005.

Unfortunately, this version still lacks the ACPI fix it needs...

2,000-year-old Mayan mural

They didn't want to believe in the old writtings, they said it was talling us religious myths, not history.

But now, an archaeologist stumbled on 2,000-year-old Mayan beautifull mural:

Quoting The Guardian:
The main nine-metre (30ft) wall of the mural shows the son of the Corn God creating the Mayan mythical and physical world. In one scene he offers up a fish and establishes the watery underworld, in another he sacrifices a deer and creates the earth. In a third he floats in the air holding out a turkey to make the sky, while in a fourth he is surrounded by the blooming flowers of paradise. Other sections depict the Corn God's birth, death and resurrection, and establish the principle of divine kingship with the Corn God crowning himself, and the first human king claiming his earthly crown from the surrounding deities.

"It's the equivalent for the Maya of the Biblical account of Genesis, but it's more than that because it provides a link between the gods of creation and the Maya kings," archaeologist Francisco Estrada-Belli of Vanderbilt University, who was not involved in the find, told the Los Angeles Times.

Mr Saturno said he guessed the chamber may have functioned as a rehearsal room where Mayan kings could learn the mythology for public ceremonies. The discovery nearby of a royal burial site dated to 150BC fuels the idea that Maya civilisation evolved much earlier.

OpenDocument and Open XML

So, Microsoft thinks that having two standards to the same thing is better than having one. Sorry, but I totally disagree.

Having choice on implementations is good. But having more standards doesn't give you more choices nor competition: as a matter of fact it will only create "bad competition": you'll put competition between implementations, and the best implementation will choose the standard, which may not be the best implementation at all.

As denmarkw00t said, "what happens when two companies develope two pieces of software with identical functionality but one supports OpenStandardA and the other OpenStandardB? To the user, it appears to work and function the same, but then when said user moves from ProductA to ProductB or, lets say, sends a co-worker who uses ProductB an OpenStandardA document, what happens?"...

You should have several companies working on standards, yes, but have all them working for the same standard. And when one standard is considered a standard de facto, then everyone should be free to develop their implementation of that standard, and/or contribute for further versions of the standard. Now, that's valuable competition.

Google Music Search

Google has now another great feature, at least for me that I'm constantly looking for info on some bands (usually looking for the official website): Google Music Search. If you're looking for bands "revelant enough" to be possible that you're looking for a band, a simple query in Google will show you musical results in the begining of the query. If they're not, then you'll probably have to go to the Music Search. Until now, the only problem I've found is that still have a poor artists database, failing to recognize a string as the name of a band even in the title of the second result in a Google search is "string - string lyrics"...

Oh well, this is still great, and they claim that "we plan to expand it to classical music, worldwide artists, and lesser-known performers"... Let's wait and see.

PyGNUnet death and rebirth: FreeServices

So, the idea behing PyGNUnet was to create a set of libraries to make it easy for people to write net applications to run using GNUnet. Now, with the concept of FreeServices, that isn't needed anymore, since FreeServices is an application-independent solution without the need to modify existing protocols and software.

To know more about GNUnet read this, and to know more about FreeServices read this.

Well, this still leaves me with 13 software projects at hand...

Merankorii: Crash Promotion

So, next wednesday, in the Winter's Solistice (21st of December), the 2nd Merankorii's CD, Crash, is going to be released. To appraise you, reader of this site, here's a little promotion: the first ten orders that I recieve via e-mail of the CD will be freely distributed, and you only have to pay the shippent! Order NOW!

Starting at the 26th of December, the CD will be selled at "O Baú Encantado". a store located in "Lugar do Cerrado - Lamego".

I'm still looking for distributors and/or record companies, so if you're interested please contact me.

Portuguese Presidencial Elections (Part 2)

After thinking on whom to vote, I've noticed that pre-candidate Botelho Ribeiro is against the freedom of choice regarding abortion.

That said, I think I'll vote on Manuela Magno, if she gets to be a candidate.

Warner/Chappell Music Limited threats illegally

PearLyrics is a program that displays the lyrics of the currently-playing track in iTunes: it gets the lyrics from the ID3 tag in the MP3 file, or if they aren't in there, it searches for them on a few different web sites, and then saves them into the MP3s.

Or was.

The developer said:

As of December 6th, 2005 pearLyrics is no longer available due to a cease and desist letter from Warner/Chappell Music Limited. As a freeware developer I can not afford to risk a law suit against such a big company, although personally I don't see where pearLyrics should infringe any copyrights handled by them. After all pearLyrics only searches and accesses publicly available websites, displays, and, at the users wish, caches its content. Something that can easily be done with any combination of search engine and webbrowser too. Well, but I'm just a developer and not a lawyer.

I understand him, really. He just don't want to be messed and scared by such idiotic big Co's. But, as for myself, I think that someone should grab the latest available version of it, check it's license, and, if compliant with it's license, fork it and let their users keep on using it.

Actualy, in having the time for it I would do it myself.

If those Warner fuckers mess with the forkers, they sould say something like "there's nothing illegal on redirecting webcontents, if you think that those lyrics shouldn't be publicly available, sue the website owners".

PERIOD.

EU adopts Big Brother directive, ignores industry and civil society

The European Parliament today adopted a directive that will create the largest monitoring database in the world, tracking all communications within the EU. "From today, all EU citizens are to be tracked and monitored like common criminals," says Pieter Hintjens, president of the FFII.

The Data Retention Directive was passed by 378 votes to 197, following deals between the Council and the leaders of the two largest parties in Parliament, the EPP-ED (Conservatives) and the PSE (Socialists). The Rapporteur for the directive, Alexander Alvaro (Liberals) had his name removed from the report in protest.

Jonas Maebe of the FFII says: "Among other harsh measures, the directive mandates recording of the source and destination of all emails you send and every call you make, and your location and movement during mobile phone calls. Additionally, the directive says nothing about who has to pay for all this logging, which will significantly distort the internal telecommunications market."

"Moreover, the directive disregards how Internet protocols work. For example, tracking Internet telephony calls is generally impossible without closely watching the content of all data packets. The reason is that such connections are not necessarily set up via a central server which can perform the necessary logging. On top of that you have techniques like tunneling (VPN's) which make it simply impossible to look at the content", he adds.

The gathered data can be made available without special warrants, and without limit to certain types of crime. There will be no independent evaluation, and no extra privacy and no specific security safeguards. The data will be retained for periods ranging from 6 months up to any duration a member state can convince the Commission of.

Hartmut Pilch of the FFII says: "This outcome proves that we have to remain vigilant at all times and work on every relevant directive from the start. Even now, the planned IPRED2 directive, also unanimously condemned by industry and civil society, threatens to turn everyone caught by a patent into a criminal."

Working to an European ISP, my hint is that this won't be implemented, at least not anytime soon. More than all the other stuff it was said about the issue, I wonder who will give ISP's the storage power needed to such a stupid directive.

If you want to know more about this, take a look at FFII's Press Release.

musicunited.org are LIARS

So, RIAA supports musicunited.org, one site making publicity against "piracy". I have nothing against fighting piracy, and even think that instructing people not to steal is a good thing. But being against p2p networks just because you might use it for illegal purposes is the same thing that telling that knifes are evil because you can use it to commit murder. And that's what they say: their site is full of lies like:

The unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted music is JUST AS ILLEGAL AS SHOPLIFTING A CD.

This is wrong: The unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copyrighted music is illegal because it's copyright infringement; shoplifting a CD is illigal because it's robbery. Those are two quite different kinds of infringements, with quite diferent penalties for the infractors.
But this isn't the worse that you can read there:

Burning CD’s from peer-to-peer networks like KaZaA, Morpheus or Gnutella is against the law.

This is deadly false. If you download a Merankorii's CD from a P2P network and burn it, you're not commiting an illegality but making the artist more known, which he likes (and I assure it to you, since Merankorii is my musical project). OK, Merankorii's songs aren't copyrighted, so here's another example. In the same way, if you download from a P2P network this CD, which is copyrighted, you're doing what they want, and they'll enjoy it. OK, this time I didn't gave you music... So, you want copyrighted music? Well, if you download this copyrighted songs from ThanatoSchizO, or this copyrighted songs from Cranes from a P2P network and burn it, your're NOT DOING ANYTHING WRONG.

They say

The rules are very simple. Unless you own the copyright, it’s not yours to distribute.

But I say: "You're full of bullshit and lying in an attemp to cause fear on music consumers, which should be what you wanted to treat well and not decieve, if you want them as your clients."

And I could say all this directly to them, but they're surely afraid of people like me, since they don't have their e-mail address on the website. Well, they would probably lie about it too, so...

Portuguese Presidencial Elections

On the next 22nd of January, we'll have Presidencial Elections on Portugal. Being a nonpartisan, I'm really tending to vote on Manuela Magno or Botelho Ribeiro. Until now, this are the only pre-candidats that I feel confortable about, but I haven't read enough to get a good oppinion about any of the two, nor to choose one of them. Oh, and both still lack all the signatures needed to present themselves as candidats.

Use KDE, not Gnome

Seems the the Linux creator, Linus Torvalds, shares the same oppinion on Gnome as myself: Gnome developers think their users are stupid, and, doing so, only stupid people will use Gnome knowing that.

Here is Linus oppinion... And, if you're somewhat confused about all this, you might want to read this message too.

libextractor 0.5.8 released

libextractor is a library used to extract meta-data from files of arbitrary type. It is designed to use helper-libraries to perform the actual extraction, and to be trivially extendable by linking against external extractors for additional file types.

Version 0.5.8 of libextractor has been released. This release fixes a security problem in the PDF extractor.

Selva updated

Selva, my Portuguese Talker, has been updated to PyTalker v0.1.5, which means that you can now register yourself there!

PyTalker v0.1.5 finally out

For those thinking that, because I've created Mamnuts, I wasn't interested in keeping the development of PyTalker... You were damn wrong.

Version 0.1.5 of PyTalker is out, and you should feel free to try it...

After several months of having the project stalled, it's maintainers have no real time to develop it but me, which am now the Project Leader, Main Coder and Website maintainer.

This release adds user registration and autentication. Passwords are stored in plaintext at the moment, but v0.1.6 will have them encrypted as they should be and a .password command to change the password. Keep on checking, because v0.1.6 won't take as long (I hope) to be released as this version was...

For those clueless about what's PyTalker, PyTalker is a free open-source implementation of a talker environment, in the command-driven style of NUTS, and written in Object-Oriented Python.

BTW, making this post made me be really surprised to see that Wikipedia's talker description was quite improoved, and it's now quite better than it was... Great job!

Fight against the Dystopic EU

As I talked about earlier, on the 13th of December (next Tuesday) the European Parliament will vote on a Data Retention Directive, which is completely stupid.

So, if you agree with me and want to know what can you do to fight against such a stupid directive, you may want to read the Open Rights Group suggestions.

Shove that EULA up your ass

First Sony wrote illegal software.
Then, Sony buldled illegal software with an illegal EULA, in illegal CD's.
Then, Sony sold you those CD's telling you that it was "art".
Then, Sony got their ass kicked.
Then, Sony told you "we'll fix it".

Here's what they call a fix:


Insert the CD and you'll read a quite fuckabulastic piece of shit EULA:

Please note that uninstalling from your computer the XCP software and associated content protection files loaded from an XCP-protected CD will NOT delete or affect your use of any audio files that you have previously transferred from an XCP-protected CD. Such files remain subject to the digital rights management rules in the End User License Agreement: namely that you may rip the audio into the secure formats provided on the disc, move these tracks to compatible portable devices, and make up to three copies of each track on to CD-Rs.

Please be advised that this program is protected by all applicable intellectual property and unfair competition laws, including patent, copyright and trade secret laws, and that all uses, including reverse engineering, in violation thereof are prohibited.

Sony: shove that EULA up your ass.

So, we'll uninstall the software, except we're not really giving you back control over your computer and if you try to understand what we're actually doing, technologically, you're in violation of a bunch of scary made-up lawyerese crap.

Oh, BTW, YOUR FUCKING PATCH HAS THE SAME VULNERABILITY AS THE FUCKING CD!

Sony: you suck.

One more security hole in Sony's DRM

So, it seems that Sony's DRM has one more security hole!

Bahing Micro$oft

WARNING: In this post I bash Micro$osft, since they suck, and, besides, they really really suck. Oh, they SO suck!

• Microsoft has pushed back the beta Test of their upcoming Internet Explorer 7, which was expected to be released today.


• The XBox 360 apparently has heat issues and is crashing a lot for some users.


• Microsoft is losing quite some money with each XBox 360 unit sold - they are aggressively trying to obtain market share.


• "Vista" was stripped of all the interesting features, apparently all that is left is a prettier UI with tons of effects (and requring a DirectX 9 capable graphics board).


• "Windows Live" and "Office Live" (which are neither Windows nor Office) don't live up to their names either: They are just web-based add-ons, even supporting Firefox, and offering pretty much the same as Yahoo and other portals do as well as an online version of SharePoint.


• The new office version of Microsoft fancies again mostly a new UI, that will be very different and probably confuse users a lot (especially if they have to alternate between office versions); Microsoft also has the reputation of breaking it's own file format again and again; the new office will use an incompatible file format again. The UI also doesn't help people to give their documents a more semantic meaning (for efficient processing by automatic tools such as desktop search engines), but will be more visually-oriented than ever (i.e. styles such as "headline" which do add a semantic meaning are degraded as "quick styles", whereas the bold- and underline buttons are more prominent than ever - good bye, corporate design!)


• The WiFi network at Microsoft is now powered by Linux

Thanks Eric.

On France wanting to ban OSS

If you are French and against the proposal of France banning Open Source Software, please sign this petition.

The world as you see it sucks when...

...most of your last posts are bitching about something.

So, yeah, the world as I see it sucks really bad.

OK Go criticizes DRM and Sony

I dodn't know OK Go, and now that I'm listening to them with their audio stream in their website, I don't really like their sound... But I surely like their points of view: New York Times has piece on them, where they say stuff like

The truth is that the more a record gets listened to, the more successful it is. This is not just our megalomania, it's Marketing 101: the more times a song gets played, the more of a chance it has to catch the ear of someone new. It doesn't do us much good if people buy our records and promptly shelve them; we need them to fall in love with our songs and listen to them over and over. A record that you can't transfer to your iPod is a record you're less likely to listen to, less likely to get obsessed with and less likely to tell your friends about.

Quite interesting reading.

Cellphone bug

OK, this is by far the worst bug I've found on my Motorola C650 cellphone.

I've already found some, but on the other hand I really like the phone, and Motorola phones in general. But this... this... I've just got mad. I really thought that my cell phone was broken. Hey, Motorola, IF I WANTED TO REBOOT MY FUCKING CELLPHONE, I WOULD BUY SOMETHING WITH WINDOWS! Damn you!

So, it seems that, with this cellphone, once your mobile phone has all messages memory completely full, it stops recieving messages. Now, since he tells you you have memory full, what do you do? Delete some messages until the memory is far from full. Of course that, if you only do that, you end up with a big headache, and, if your week is already being a pain in the ass, you'll start feeling like shooting anyone, or everybody. Why? Because until you don't restart your cellphone (I don't have a fucking clue why), you won't be able to send or recieve messages. Furthermore, you'll loose all messages sent to you in that period. EVERY GODDAMNED MOTHERFUCKING MESSAGE!

I'm PISSED OFF. And I'll buy another cellphone soon.

This week officially sucks

This week officially sucks: and yes, I know it's only tuesday yet. But I can't think of anything good that happened until now, and the latest thing is that my cell phone is refusing to send or recieve SMS messages, and seems that I've missed some messages I just couldn't miss. DAMN, DAMN, DAMN!

Please, give me something good, now, or... or... just leave me alone.

SUCKS!

TOTAL Fan Service

This is totally fucking unbelivable. I was shocking while watching a video of the game, here's a screenshot:



This is a sreenshot taken from the greatest fucking genious way of fan service I've ever heard of. Really. It's not fanboys creating hentai to their favourite manga characters, no...

A doujin soft group calling themselves “Game Programming Study Club” has created the most Japanese fighting game EVER. 行殺! Spirits (”Line-Kill Spirits”) is a 3D fighting game that features little girls beating up on each other; nothing new there. The kicker, however, is that any damage you do to your opponent will slowly regenerate unless… wait for it… you take a picture of her panties. Yes. A fighting game where panty-shots are the core mechanic.

Oracle packages for Debian

Seems that xerakko is planning to do some Oracle .deb packages: I'm glad! For those wanting to install Oracle on Debian now, here's a almost painless HowTo. But it's painful to see that Oracle really is meant to run only on RedHat boxes... Having to do stuff like adding a file that says

Red Hat Linux release 2.1 (drupal)

just sucks.

Particles and Waves

So, it seems that Cranes' "Particles and Waves" CD edition with a Live DVD is being sold to Europe since the 1st of this month. And it is already sold out! Well, my wishlist is already updated, and since Amazon is selling it, I think It will be soon ordered...

For those who doesn't know how good Cranes is (and it IS really good ;-)), check their audio section with free, legal, mp3's.

Fujitsu Siemens

Well, I just have to say that I'm more and more happy with my decision to work to Sonaecom and NOT to Siemens.

Why?

Let's just take a look to the latest saga:
Mathew Garrett just poseted some examples of bad code and license violations.

He ends with:

Thanks, Fujitsu Siemens. You COPYRIGHT INFRINGING INCOMPETENT FUCKMONKIES.

I mean, christ.

CHRIST.

UNBELIEVABLE HOLY CHRIST ON A FUCKING BIG STICK.

I totally agree.

Dystopic EU

Folks from FFII say:

The EU is passing a "Big Brother" law to track every electronic communication, warns the FFII, an international information rights group based in Munich.

"Imagine a world in which the state follows everything you do. A world where computers watch every step you make. A world in which privacy is dead and the machines can track down every dissident in minutes. A world ruled by unelected agencies, working hand-in-hand with powerful commercial interests. A world in which citizens have no rights except to consume. Science fiction? The Age of the Machines? No, this is Europe, coming to you in 2006."

So warns Pieter Hintjens, president of the FFII. He says, "the EU is about to pass a directive to track every communication you make. This law makes the old Soviet spy states look like amateurs."

He continues "This law goes against our European traditions of civil liberty. It appears to break Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It will destroy small ISPs and raise prices. To enforce it, the EU will have to shut or monitor every cybercafe, web mail access, and wifi hotspot. Such a regime would be more authoritarian even than China. Even the US, after 9/11, does not have such oppressive laws. The EU does not need this law: it is a bad law, pushed through without respect for the democratic process."

Erik Josefsson of the FFII says: "We are entering into an era of 'I don't have time' legislation. With the expanded competence of the Commission (see consequences of the ECJ Judgement September 13, case c-176/03 Commission v. Council), the underarmed and weakened Parliament stands no chance to do its job properly. The 'sausage machine' is far too easy to abuse."

The Big Brother "data retention directive" makes Internet and telephony providers record "communications traffic data" for up to several years. These huge amounts of detailed personal data can be easily leaked, stolen, and abused. The forces - mainly the UK government - pushing the Big Brother law claim it will prevent terrorism. The FFII does not accept this simplistic argument. The real targets, it appears, are ordinary citizens, going about their daily business.

The FFII president points out, "almost everyone carries a mobile phone. With this law, your mobile phone and web browser becomes Big Brother's way of watching you. You will never be alone again. If you do not like this idea, contact your MEP today, urgently, and explain why it worries you. On 13 December 2005, personal privacy becomes history."

As usual, I totally agree with FFII's points of view on the issue. So, if you agree with it too, and want to do something about it by contacting your MEP, you might want to know how.

Mamnuts: Mamnuts 1.2 is out!

Mamnuts: Mamnuts 1.2 is out! For those who don't know, Mamnuts is a talker base.

GPLv3 news

So, the GPL v3 process officialy started, and it's Process Definition is being sanely debated.

The FSF will release the first discussion draft of the new license for comment at the International Public Conference for GPLv3 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on January 16 and 17, 2006.

Still on France banning OSS

As I've told earlier, the French Government is being lobbied to ban free software.

If you want to follow the issue, I've found where you can be updated on news and oppinions on the issue: the FSF Europe Mailing List.

Merankorii: On Artwork and Distribution

Merankorii: On Artwork and Distribution is a link to the latest news on my musical project Merankorii.

French Government Lobbied to Ban Free Software

From FSF France:

Friday November 18th, 2005, French Department of Culture, SNEP and SCPP have told Free Software authors: "You will be required to change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department" bill proposal pass in the Parliament.

It appears that publishing Free Software giving access to culture is about to become a counterfeiting criminal offence. Will SACEM sue France Télécom R&D research labs for having published Maay and Solipsis (P2P pieces of software used to exchange data)?

Up to this point, the rather technical debate surrounding the issues addressed by DADVSI bill (copyright and neighbouring rights in the information society) makes one ask: Just how much control do the Big Players in the field of culture want to seize? It now looks like years of quibbling have put an end to compromises.

What should have been the last meeting of CSPLA Sirinelli Commission turned into an arranged battle dealing with the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department" bill. EUCD.INFO cofounder Christophe Espern, representing Creative Commons France, had to argue for 13 hours to defend the right of Free Software to exist, but he lost the argument. The preliminary conclusions seem to regret that the bill "cannot be proposed by CSPLA in before the deadline." Maybe the new meeting scheduled today, November 25th, 2005, at 6:30pm, in the offices of the French Department of Culture, aims to impose the text ?

"Havoc is breaking loose," says Christophe Espern. "How can people possibly both pretend to defend culture and then want to ban the only software giving universal access to it? Actually, the contradiction may be only superficial: I think what they are truly after is the control of the public... culture is just a excuse."

Absurd as it may seem, the DADVSI bill will bring an indifferent public a surprise gift for Christmas nothing less than complete Orwellian control of digital culture.

We could avoid this disaster if the cabinet of Prime Minister started by declaring the DADVSI bill a non emergency issue. This would give the democratic debate a chance.

I think that this is completely nuts. Seems that this will be discussed at the 7th. More info about this on wikipedia.

Berlin Wall v2.0

Here's the explanation.

Wishlist update

In the right site of this site I have an allways updated list of things that I'll eventually going to buy. At this moment I have the top eight items ordered, and I've just changed the ninth and the tenth... All thanks to Pandora, where I've found out that Björk has a new CD, and make me know about Esthero, a new band that mixes Björk's tunes with Anja Garbarek's experimentalism... I found it good, let's hear more from them.

Pandora [Juke]box

I've just discovered Pandora, a music webcast site with a really nice idea: you feed the site with musical bands that you like and it uses genetic AI to find out bands that you'll probably like too. There's nothing really big to say about it, it's up to you to read the site and use it for a while to find out if you like it... But if I'm really like the concept, the application is quite heavy, and the site quite slow. Things that they hopefully will enhance. Oh, and they know lot's of music that I don't like, but they've only found musics that I like from Marilyn Manson... I'll wait for improovements from the IA.

Recomended.

Engeneer certificate

Finaly, I've got my Informatics Engeneer certificate, that rules "certified as an Informatic Engeneer, having concluded sucessfully his 5-years degree with a classification of 14 (in 20)."

So, thanks to all that helped me in some way to have the degree, and a great "fuck you" to those who tried to make me finish the degree with only 13 values in 20. I rule, you suck.

Wicca IS NOT Satanism

Hey, fuckers, when will you start doing your fucking damned job as journalists and learn about the stuff you're going to write about before actually publish an article?

I hate that on journalism. Carl Jones, editor of Law.com, wrote:

The lower appellate court opinion reveals the Wiccan group was exempted from paying sales tax on copies of the Bible and Quran, but forced to pay sales tax on the Satanic Bible and the Witches Bible.

How sare you to write an article with "Wiccan" on the title without even knowing that Wicca HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH Satanism or the Satanic Bible?

Sucker.

Merankorii: On Links and Crash

Merankorii is a Doom Poetry Musical project of mine... If you want to know it's latest news, read Merankorii: On Links and Crash.

Fight Software Patents

Copyright protects authors but doesn't hurt any honest person. Patents, in contrast, are 20-year monopolies that the government grants on broad and general ideas. Patents are potential weapons against all of us. If you want to know more about why we should fight against Sofware Patents, please read this.

If you click here and vote for "Campaign for Creativity", you're fighting against the software patents.

If you click here and vote for "Florian Mueller", you're fighting against the software patents.

What are you waiting for?

Tux gallery

Does this

makes you recall anyone?

Tux Factory has all kinds of Tux's you can imagine of...

Google Analytics will change

Folks from Google sent me an e-mail about Google Analytics:

This is a quick update to address some issues you may be seeing in your Google Analytics account and what we're doing to respond.

First, due to extremely high demand, we've temporarily limited the number of new signups as we increase capacity. This allows us to focus on our primary objective--to provide a great user experience for our existing users.

Next, here is current information on the most common questions we're receiving:

1. The 'Check Status' button is being reworked to check for properly installed tracking code. This should be fixed by the end of November.

2. The '+Add Profile' link has been temporarily removed until we increase capacity. We'll alert all current users when the feature is restored.

3. While we increase capacity, you may see longer than normal delays in data showing up in your reports. All data continues to be collected and no data has been lost.

For additional help with your Google Analytics account, we encourage you to browse or search our online Help Center here.

Thanks for your patience as we improve Google Analytics and add resources to ensure a high-quality service.

Link fix

The link I had to my paper about Aardvark was wrong... Thanks to subv3rsion that pointed it out to me, the link is now fixed.

Help Center Live 2.0.6 Released

Help Center Live is a Live Support tool written in PHP, using a MySql database, that allows visitors on a webste to hold a conversation in real time with a representative of the website. Help Center Live also allows other projects to be integrated as modules.

Help Center Live 2.0.6 has been released. It fixes the problems with WinApp's error code 24 bug and errors when viewing a ticket in osTicket.

If you still receive error code 24 after upgrading, set the config file value $conf['boot_client'] to false.

Visit it's website or read the announcement.

GNUnet 0.7.0a released

GNUnet is a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking that does not use any centralized or otherwise trusted services. A first service implemented on top of the networking layer allows anonymous censorship-resistant file-sharing. GNUnet uses a simple, excess-based economic model to allocate resources. Peers in GNUnet monitor each others behavior with respect to resource usage; peers that contribute to the network are rewarded with better service.

GNUnet 0.7.0a was released. This is a bugfix release for 0.7.0. Among other things, 0.7.0a fixes various crashes as well as connectivity, efficiency and routing issues. The new release supports MySQL 5.0 (in addition to MySQL 4.1 and SQlite).

More info and downloads on GNUnet's website.

Mamnuts: Mamnuts 1.1 is out!

Mamnuts is a bugless fully-featured talker base.

Mamnuts version 1.1 is just out.

Mamnuts: Mamnuts project created

After my last post, I had to create Mamnuts. Click the link to know why...

The "bad part" of this is that this makes me related to 14 software projects. This will by my prioritary one, but I guess I'll have to reduce that list...

Building a Talker

For those wanting to build a talker, there's a difficult choice to do: what development choices should I take? Should I build it from scratch or should I use a talker base?

I'm writting this 'cause Ironwood (God of the only Brazillian talker) made me think about this, when he said he was going to change his talkers code once again.

The main issue is, basicly, what's better yet easier to do. Building it from scratch takes a lot of time, which most people don't have. Noone will develop for years to launch his talker, so people doing this usually launches their talker with few features, which doesn't really attract users, and make people have a bad oppinion on that talker or even on talkers in general.

The existence of talker bases itself is a proof that they are useful: if someone wants to run a talker should choose which base to use instead of building one, like everyone who decides to have a mail server chooses one and uses it rather than writting one from scratch, based on the RFC's. Worse, there isn't a talker RFC yet!

So, which talker base should you use? ou have vaporware, abandonedware and only a few maintained talker bases. Ewtoo used to be the most popular base, but the most widely used was Playground 96, based on Ewtoo. There's Playground Plus, a branch from Playground 96 mainly with bugfixes, but the matter of fact is that, on Ewtoo and Ewtoo branches, the latest release is from 10/30/2002, EWToo.

Then you have NUTS and similars. I could talk about NUTS, Joot/Oot, Ncohafmuta, Amnuts, Moenuts, IFORMS, Avios OS, KTserv, KT code, TalkerOS, Slimepit, SouthWest, SCRUS, PHiNET, PyTalker... But to simplify, let's just say that, besides vaporware and abandonedware you have badforks, NUTS and PyTalker.

"Badforks" are forks of NUTS 3.3.3 or earlier that doesn't fix, yet, all it's bugs, even the well-known security-related ones. NUTS 3.3.3 development stopped in 1996, and Neil is now working on NUTS IV, which doesn't fit anymore on the definition of talker. Noone maintains NUTS, so choosing a "badfork" gives you the probability of having it's bugs fixed soon. What about PyTalker? Yes, being one of it's developers, I had to talk about it too. PyTalker is an effort to
turn this kind of writtings useless, building finaly a good talker. It is going in the good way, but you must have to ask yourself why the latest version isn't v1.0 but v0.1.4. Yes, it works but it doesn't have the features it has to compete with the other talkers. Unless you want to do some heavy coding, avoid it.

So, if we have to choose a badfork, what are our chances? Moenuts, stalled. RamTITS, stalled. Ncohafmuta, stalled. The choices? Only AmNUTS.

Let's examine AmNUTS: The latest stable version (2.2.1) is not stable, bugless nor secure. Then, we have 2.3.0 RC1, which is less stable than the CVS version. And then, we have AmNUTS CVS. Taking a look on Bugzilla, there are 12 bugs to be solved. From those, only 8 are bugs, the others are enhancements. So, if you want to build a talker, the best choice is to grab the CVS version of AmNUTS and fix eight bugs. Let's analyse them:

#3: The easy fix is to take out the .sreboot command;
#11: The easy fix is to take out the .kill command;
#23: The easy fix is to take out .xcom and .gcom commands;
#25: My understanding on this bug is that the bug is solved, but I'm waiting from Uzume's feedback on that;
#36: Revert "multi-line paste" changes. It will reduce usability but fix a security issue:
#38: The bug is probably fixed;
#42: It sucks, but it's not really a bug, only "lack of usability". You don't have to fix it;
#44: Changing "int" to "socklen_t" will probably fix the issue, but you'll have to live with the fact that it won't work in old systems.

Conclusion: someone should fork Amnuts to do this changes I've mentioned and build an out-of-the-box good solution to build a talker. Until then, do it by yourself.

PS -> This post lacks links, and I know I should add them. I'll do it later, if I get the time to do it...

Wishlist update

My wishlist (look at the right bar of this site) contains the top ten things I'm going to get (eventualy). I've updated it now, and the top eight things are already ordered. I won't order the other two because it they arrive all at the same time it will be a great "outch"...

WeBreakStuff is hiring

Fred created WeBreakStuff, and, until now, "WeBreakStuff" is "FredBreaksStuff". But now, "they" have this announcement:

Do you have design and development skills? WeBreakStuff is working with some of the most exciting companies and projects in the market today. We are looking for people with the right background and attitude to join us in the fun. We don’t believe in degrees or schools but quality work and the right mindset.

I'm glad that the announcement is now in black background instead of the initial green. So, do you break stuff?

Good news for web developers?

Seems to me that today we get good news for web developers, on a cooperation between Konqueror, Mozilla, Opera and... IE! The aim is to come up with future plans to combat the security risks posed by phishing, ageing encryption ciphers and inconsistent SSL Certificate practise. But, I hope, if all goes well in this cooperation, maybe they'll also cooperate on complying with Web Standards... Even if my worries are more on IE bugs, since I hope they're all solved when they release IE 7... It really sucks to stumble upon bugs like this.

SourceForge got a facelift

So, it seems that SourceForge got a facelift. This is supposed to increase usabillity to the website, but so far I've only found less usability and more commercial purpose. Well, at least they've updated MySQL from v3 to v4...

VLC developer on Sony's rootkit

As I've said earlier, Sebastian Porst and Matti Nikki found that Sony's rootkit contains parts of mpglib, LAME, faad2, VLC and other Open Source Software, breaking their licences...

Knowing that, Sam Hocevar, developer of VLC, decided to buy one of those CD's and check if they really have his code there.

The Talkers Tree

I've just updated "The Talkers Tree" document, where you can trace the history and development of talker bases. Talkers were born with Unaxcess, the first BBS to have a "talker" command. In paralel, there were MUD's and IRC. Soon, with the development of several kinds of MUD's and MOO's, the talkers appeared. The survivors of the talkers today are NUTS and NUTS based talkers. Unfortunately Neil (the author of NUTS) decided in 2003 to release "NUTS-IV" which doesn't fall into the concept of talkers anymore. Fortunately, there are still ideas of how to make talkers revive, prosper and evolute.

Site Update

As you can see, I've slightly updated this website. Lacking my own e-mail address was the thing that made me do it...

Intel and Debian

Seems that Intel is getting more focused on Linux... Intel's "Quick Start Kit" will now support Debian.

Portuguese Social Security sucks

Yep, since ever I have problems with the Portuguese Social Security. What's worse is that I don't know anyone who didn't have problems with them at any time... How is supposed to have a good economy when workers are fucked up by their state?

Seems that they have lost some documents related with my work at UniOne. Now, it seems that I'll have no problems or worries about that, but at first I was astounded to know that, and, specially, that they wanted me to send copies of those documents via fax to my next employers so they could send them to Social Security, even knowing that I now work somewhere else... What the fuck is this?

I just hope that I won't have more problems related to their incompetence...

Merankorii

I've updated Merankorii's website.

Bite me, Sony

Thanks cha0s for pointing me out this blog entry. It starts with:

Sony.
Sony has a rootkit.
The rootkit phones home.
Phoning home requires a DNS query.
DNS queries are cached.

Wanna read the rest? Click here!

Reading

When they talk about "geek books" or "nerd books", I read "interesting books". Having that in mind, I've checked Jack's Top 20 list and Jaldhar's Top 20 list. Conclusion: I've read only 7 of the first and 5 of the second. Damn, and I thought I was an heavy reader...

Merankorii

Merankorii's site has been updated just now.

Sony Update

If you want to be updated about the Sony issue, read this /. article. A sum up: Sony will take out those CD's from shells, but they still suck.

PDF Templating

Steinar: since your blog doesn't have any way to post comments, here's my reply... I've used PDF::Reuse for a similar purpose and it does just what you need and lots more. It has a nice and friendly way to use, so it will be a piece of cake suiting it to your needs. You can do stuff like

prText( x, y, 'sentence', 'alignment');

... Please tell me if it worked for you, and, if not, why.

libextractor v0.5.7 released

libextractor v0.5.7 has been released. This release eatures an updated German translation and improves support for the TAR and PDF formats. Mime-type detection for OLE2 streams was improved. The extract tool now returns an error code if files passed as arguments could not be accessed. A double-free problem under BSD was fixed.

For those who don't know, libextractor is a library used to extract meta-data from files of arbitrary type. It is designed to use helper-libraries to perform the actual extraction, and to be trivially extendable by linking against external extractors for additional file types.

Google Analytics

So, Google offers us now "Google Analytics", a service that "tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site." As the tech junkie that I am, I subscribed to it as soon as I knew about it and added it to this site, as you can see if you check out the source. My first insight is that it is slow as hell (and I work on an ISP, so don't tell me it's my networks fault) and it shows nothing of relevant: the data is useful but not in the way it is shown. I think that it will probably change over the time and this is has all it needs to turn into a really useful product. I'll check it again in a month or so and see if the data shown is more relevant, of if this is just another hype product...

Debian 3.2 beta 1 is out

Debian-Installer etch beta 1 is out, The feature I find most interesting is the kernel update (from 2.6.8 to 2.6.12), but I think most people will enjoy the new graphical installer. Be aware that, in the graphical installer, during the step "Finish installation", the installer will hang when trying to unmount all filesystems. You can work around this by switching to VT2 (using ctrl-alt-F2) and entering the command 'reboot'.

On Web 2.0

Ian has this nice writting that shows more or less my thoughts on what Web 2.0 will bring to us. Nice reading.

Patent laws about to change?

Hey people, I hate the patents as they are now, but changing to this is completely ridiculous. It's like all the ranting we did about software patents were completely ignored, and a new step is about to be made... In the completely wrong direction.

Sony retreats for now

It seems that Sony retreats for now and pulls their DRM'd CD software. You know what? "For now" isn't good enough. You know why the techniches you've used for "avoiding piracy" (yeah, right) are called malware?

Windows vs. Singularity

OK, so despite of Microsoft's main product is an "OS" called Windows, they're researching in other ways of "doing the job", and started another "OS" called Singularity. They claim that's only research, and I really hope it is, because Singularity is way worse than Windows. Yeah, it's possible to create something even more unstable.

Linux alliance

I despise Sony, I hate software patents and I surelly think that this is completely riddiculous.

Boycott Sony

I don't steal music, but I won't buy Sony stuff... But it seems that Fred thinks that Sony's music should be downloaded. I understand perfectly Fred: Sony SUCKS. I just think you've messed two things on your post: boycott Sony vs. downloading their stuff...

Marilyn Manson's 6th album

Seems that Marilyn Manson's 6th album (PT) is recorded. I wonder when will we know it's name...

Talking about the Kernel...

Speaking of which, this is the funniest from Linus for a long time. Finally, he's getting harder on the developers for stability's sake.

Best issue on Linux Kernel Ever

Damn, this is the best issue written about Linux Kernel ever. It explains why Linux rocks, why kernel space and user space are distinct, why Linux Kernel development is the way it is, and it explains it a way your mother would understand. Doc: thanks.

A Good Way To End (Part 2)

Following the same guidelines of other previous projects I had, it was decided today that Open Lusimed will cease it's development and instead make their contributions to a better sollution: FreeMED.

That makes me an happy contributor of 13 OSS projects. I just wish I had the time for all...

22C3

As requested, here's a post about 22C3, the upcoming hacker conference in Berlin.

The 22nd Chaos Communication Congress (22C3) is a four-day conference on technology, society and utopia. The Congress offers lectures and workshops on a multitude of topics including (but not limited to) information technology, IT-security, internet, cryptography and generally a critical-creative attitude towards technology and the discussion about the effects of technological advances on society.

The congress (sub-titled "Private Investigations") will be held from December 27th to 30th, 2005, in Berlin, Germany. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend it since I still can't take vacations time...

Web 2.0 frameworks

Since I intend to start a revamp on Open LusiMed and change it's code to something Web 2.0, and, being somewhat of a language agnostic, I google'd on every type of web 2.0 frameworks I've found. So, there's Django TurboGears, Rails, RIFE, Link and Catalyst. If you know of more, please tell me...

RIFE and Link are both Java-based, which is not good for Web 2.0. Django has one cool feature TurboGears hasn't, but TurboGears is more headed to be a stable framework than Django. Django's out. Melo convinced me that Rails is better than Catalyst, so...

There's TurboGears and Rails. Besides I don't liking the idea of everything being an object (the only thing I don't like about Ruby), it seems that Rails sucks on scaling. I'm somewhat tight in a decision between the two frameworks and I think that we only will know what's the best choice in a year or so. Although, it seems that using TurboGears has more advantages than using Rails.

Oh, and WASP just... sucks. I'll add further thoughts soon...

Defacement

I don't have a clue about what is the message here, since I don't know Turkish, but since they've defaced a Portuguese Government site and it seems to have some sort of political message, they should know that Portuguese people usually don't know Turkish... And have their message in English. Of course that this is probably just one script kiddie playing around...

Open Lusimed

Open Lusimed's website is up and running again. I'll soon be working both on the website and the roadmap for it.

Still on OSDL

Seems that there's a discussion on /. about if the binary Kernel Driver Layer is a good idea or not. And it seems that there are 10 types of people in the world, those who can see the big picture and those who can't.

OSDL (one more time)

For those who think that my rants are "only" about the violation of GPL, think twice.

RPM sucks

For those who still think that RPM's don't suck, just read this. And Matt, I don't know if you've tried yum, but if you didn't give it a try. RPM's still suck, but at least yum developers try to do the stuff apt does for ages...

Selva Update

Selva's website has been updated.

Merankorii update

Merankorii's website has been updated.

OSDL (again)

Still on OSDL, it seems they're not that evil, but evil enough to make Kroah not wanting to meet them again.

Evil We Are

They say "don't be evil", but they keep geting software patents...

Nice idea, expand its use

And so I've found randomplay, a command-line tool to play music files randomly, that has this great improovement on the way the random is not that random, but will make you sure that you listen all your music almost the same number of times... Great features, but I would like to see the idea implmented in other players, like the one I use...

Creative Commons content

So, there seems that now it's easier to find Creative Commons content. Great tool, specialy for finding free images, icons and stuff like that. Way to go Google!

I must learn...

...how to STFU;
...to quit using my cell phone while I'm drunk;
...that there are two kinds of friendship.

On binary kernel driver layer

The only thing I have to say is that OSDL can Kiss My Ass (TM). OK, they pay Linus, but they are also trying to violate flawlessly the GPL. Tsk tsk.

Hacker Publishes Oracle Proof-of-Concept Worm

"A worm that can attack Oracle Corp. databases has been posted to a security-related Internet mailing list, raising the specter of possible future worms with dangerous payloads.", says CSO.

Justice

Is it right for me to bring to you a little of my hell? Should I do it? I think it would be better for myself, but how about you? Is there justice in making you pass through a small portion of my hell?

Fifty

I have now fifty Marilyn Manson Audio CD's. Yes, 50. From 1989 to 2005 (even if the band supposedly begun in 1994) each year with at least one CD. Even tho, I'm not satisfied with my collection...

Oracle with free version

So, it seems that Oracle has now a free version of their database. Even with limitations, this seems to be real good news.

The limitations are:

• 4GB of data


• 1GB of RAM


• only one processor per server


• support is offered by way of an online forum for users

Let's see what will this mean in the marketshare with other free databases...

Macromedia can Kiss My Ass (TM)

Macromedia can Kiss My Ass (TM), and RTFM before trying to add PDF exportation to their products.

How does this fit with Macromedia's aquisition by Adobe?

GNUnet: 20.000 sentences translated in 28 months

The user-contributed translations of the GNUnet (and libextractor) webpages have just surpassed 20.000 sentences. The ability for users to provide translations was first added on June 5th 2003. Thanks to everyone who is or has been contributing!

Samhain

It's Samhain time, and I wish you a good one...

Whishlist update

As you can see, I've updated my wishlist: yesterday I bought Marilyn Manson's unauthorized biography DVD I wanted, and WOW, it is great. It's good to have an updated biography of him, specially an imparcial one as this is. Of course I would prefer if it was an Official biography, since it wouldn't have the mistakes one can find in this one... But it is great - just great.

So, I needed to update my wishlist, and as I was forward to do so, I've found that three days ago Saw 2's SoundTrack has been released... with a cover of Marilyn Manson's "Irresponsible Hate Anthem”. So, yes, that's my new 1st item in the wishlist...

On IE

I HATE MICRO$OFT.

Colaborative Editing

MJ Ray: if you think that emacs does the same (colaborative editing related) as editors like Gobby... You're sick.

Is it the 1st of April?

What kind of joke is this?

A good way to end

I've managed to end two OSS projects I had, and I'm really relieved about it. Both of them had better alternatives, both of them were co-maintained by someone who had less time for it that I do, and both of them had problems in their latest release. So, today Bonnie Suite and C-Abacus ended, but in a good way. Now I'll have more time to spend on my other projects, that are still too many...

MySQL 5.0: wow

The release description of MySQL 5.0 showed that it is supposedly a great improvement, and I was kinda excited with it. But - wow - yesterday it was added support for this latest version to GNUnet (only in the SVN version yet) and - damn! - content insertion in MySQL 5.0 is somewhat like SIX TIMES FASTER than on MySQL 4.1...

WOW!

Bonnie Suite

Two years after it should be done, Bonnie Suite finally has a web page. The problem is that there's still too much work to be done on it, Hellraiser doesn't touch it since 2003 and I don't really know if I want to do it. So, I've sent an e-mail to him to know if the project is still meant to continue. If he wants to, there's at least an 1.1 bug-fix release to be done, if he doesn't (and I more or less hope that that's the case), we'll use that website to recommend people to use Bonnie++ Experimental. Yeah, it has "Experimental" in it's name, and still is more usable than Bonnie Suite 1.0 as it is.

Bench++ for Linux CVS Repository

I've created a CVS Repository for my Bench++ for Linux project.

I... need... music...

As you can notice, my "Top 10 WishList" has slightly changed: I heard the first track of John 5's new album and, damn, it just rocks. Nothing like "Vertigo", which I completely dislike. And it seems that Mindless Self Indulgence just threw out a new CD: I didn't heard it but I know I want it...

Since I'm living in Lisbon I didn't heard news about my usual music supplier: he still mails me with newsletters and such, but isn't replying to my e-mails and orders. I'm getting quite frustrated about this: having tons of music ordered to him, if I have to change from supplier I have no way to get a list of all the things I have ordered... :-(

My portable CD player started reading bad my CD's some days ago, so I guess I'll have to buy another sooner or later... But, for now, I really feel in need of new music.

Heartache

One year after Catarina's death on a crash accident, my heart still hurts so painfully thinking about Her that it's hard to do anything out of my life. I miss Her.

When I first knew of Catarina's death I simply couldn't believe it. Then, I couldn't believe. Then, I couldn't cry. Then, I couldn't stop crying. Hours later my body started to calm down, only my head, my mind and my heart were aching. Seems that after an year the pain isn't gone, and I suppose it will never be.

Sorry to disappoint you Catarina.
I miss You.

Top 10 Wishlist

As you can see in the right bar, I now have a Top 10 Wishlist published on this site.

This "wishlist" isn't something like "I want you to buy me this" (even if I would be greatly appreciated if you did so ;-)) but more like a way to manage myself with my priorities and the things I want to buy.

Spam@Blogger

For the first time, two days after I have this blog, I felt the pain of spam@blogger. I really hate moderated comments, but maybe I'll have to change to that if this continues...

Re: Breezy Badger

Jaldhar: Excusing Debian by saying that "that is more to do with having a newer kernel" isn't good enough: if Debian's stable kernel is an older version than Ubuntu's stable kernel, it's not kernel's fault, it's Debian fault.

Maybe the Debian way of building kernel packages needs to be more agile, don't you think?

One more reason to use Gaim...

Google hired Gaim's main developer to add features on Gaim...

Good news for Merankorii?

I hadn't read it as extensively as I should, but I think that this is possibly good news for Merankorii...

[EDIT:] Damn, it seems not. I thought at the first glance that this would put an end of the Portuguese monopoly that SPA has... :-(

How Planets can help Open Source

If you still doubted that Planets can help the Open Source world, look at this post. To understand the meme thing, you must read Planet Debian...

Final tweak to my site

I just did the final (I hope) tweak to this site: I don't have a static page with my software and papers anymore: instead, I have the links on the easy-configurable right bar. Damn, I just remembered about the last tweak I have to do: put my picture up there. Shortly done.

What would be better than Blogger

Well, now that I'm into this Blogging thing, and because I think the new Google Reader has a lot to be worked upon, including turning itself into a public static page, I had this idea of what would be better than Blogger: Yawner.

With all this Planet things, that I find really useful, I still feel that's boring that I have to visit lot's of sites to keep me up updated. So, what would be the solution? Set-up a Yawns Planet myself, that would feed itself from the planets, blogs, news sites and everything feedable I read. It would also have to be fed by my own blog (that could be a secondary page and not my home page, that would start being my Planet).

It's easy, so why won't I do it? Well, if I didn't set'd up my blog by myself it's because I don't really want to spend the time needed to do it, and I don't have my own publicly available allways-online machine to host it. The same reason I thought of hosting this page at Blogger is that same that leads me to thinking that Google or anyone else could do a "Yawner": a service similar to Blogger, but to provide Planets and not Blogs. An Yawner could also supply itself a blog, which would be perfect.

The only issue I can find to this idea is that recursive feeds could be setted up. That could be painlessly solved by simply ckeck all Permalinks and make sure that no dup'ed permalink appears.

Any thoughts on why this might be a bad idea, since I don't find any?

Debian vs. Ubuntu

For those wondering why do I think that Official Debian packages are way better than Ubuntu or non-official ones, you might find this post interesting.

On planets

Wow, seems that the creation of planets as blog/rss aggregators is the new trend... And Debian has, now, it's third planet.

Welcome me to the blogging world

It's not a question of blogging, but a question of making it easy to maintain my website. So, from now on, my site is over and, instead of it, I have a blog. I hope I won't regret this...