Javability (Java, Zaurus, Linux, Live)

27.2.05 00:07 KDE 3.4 rc1 for Suse 9.2 released (

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You can find Suse 9.2 KDE 3.4.0-rc1 rpm on some mirrors.
If you have a PC free try them out. If not, you can have a look at KDE 3.4 screenshots or try the klax live CD.

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25.2.05 21:09 Word of the day: Gnosticism (

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Word of the day: Gnosticism
The word gnosticism comes from the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis (γνῶσις), referring to the idea that there is special, hidden mysticism (esoteric knowledge) that only a few possess.
Source: Wikipedia

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21:00 Word of the day: Phlogiston theory (

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Word of the day: Phlogiston theory
The theory states that all flammable materials contain phlogiston substance without color, odor, taste, or weight that is liberated in burning.
Source: Wikipedia

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20.2.05 11:50 WineTools: easy Windows software under Linux installation (

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WineTools is a menu driven installer for installing about 90 Windows programs with the Linux operating system using Wine.

Once installed (xdialog is needed), you can perform base setup (Arial, dcom, Internet Explorer), install Windows system Software (mfc, basic/C++ runtime, mdac, jet, Windows script...) and many supported software (MS Office, Photoshop, VirtualDub, QuickTime,
Winamp, DC+, TheBat, ...). Most of them are automatically downloaded and installed. Links for each application are created in $HOME/bin.

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11.2.05 19:26 Why browser statistics lie ... (

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Björn Jacke gives in his article "Why Browserstatistics lie ..." many technical background information about problems doign a web browser statistic from web server log files.
Wow. If only half of this is true, I doubt someone really use Internet Explorer.

It would be interesting to do a poll on IT experts and check 'other browser' percentage. I'm pretty sure the number of Internet Explorer users is below 25%. As I'm pretty sure only IT experts read this blog, just let your comment.

There is an interesting page on w3cschool above browser statistics, OS platform statistics, display (resolution, color), and JavaScript usage trends.

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11:40 Kavlon.org: Introduction to DVD backup. (

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Michael McGlothlin explains how to create shrinked copies of DVD's with Linux. In short:

Rip:
vobcopy -l

Exract movie and audio:
tcextract -i INPUT.vob -t vob -x mpeg2 > movie.m2v
tcextract -i INPUT.vob -t vob -x ac3 -a 0 > movie.ac3

Shrink:
tcrequant -i movie.m2v -o shrink.m2v -f 1.25

Recombine:
mplex -f 8 -o "movie%d.mpg" shrink.m2v movie.ac3

Generate DVD:
dvdauthor -o output -x dvd.xml

Burn:
growisofs -Z /dev/dvd -dvd-video output/

Detailled information and explaination can be found in the article.

Copyright ©2005 Michael McGlothlin. Content may be copied and distributed in full or part as long as this copyright notice is attached.

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10:04 Developers, developers, developers! (

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From Aaron J. Seigo thoughts about KDE on Windows: "The life blood of a platform are applications, and that applications spring forth from developers. Therefore the most valuable resource for a platform are active developers".

Replace platform by software company.

I blog this because I think there are too many companies out there which don't understand this. Full ack with Aaron, but I would like to point on last words: "active developers". Active is important in this sentence. What you need are motivated, well educated, open minded, passionate developers.

Update: not surprising that someone else who cares about product development management came the same day to the same conclusion than Aaron: "Too many celebrity CEOs believe they are doing a great job when they cut costs (frequently people) so that Wall Street reacts well. All too often, short-term stock price gains comes at the expense of the long-term growth of the company.".
Read also the last paragraph about CEO success.

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10.2.05 22:17 0xCAFEFEED, 0xDECAFBAD, 0xDEADBEAF ... (

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Once upon a time, when people did count bits and bytes, and protocols where a long sequence of bytes (ex ASN.1) and not textual (ex XML), developers added magic byte sequences for easier debugging of protocols.

History: C was very common in those days, and a common way of representing numbers in C is hexadecimal notation (For you poor Java guys out there who never saw a hexadecimal number: "Break a byte into two groups of 4 bits each: nnnn nnnn. Each group is called a nibble. A nibble with all low bits, 0000, is equal to 0. With all of its bits turned on, 1111, a nibble has a value of 15 (8 + 4 + 2 + 1). Thus, we are dealing with the 16 values from 0 through 15, and a base of 16. Just use digits for 0 through 9, and A through F for 10 through 15" (source).

As developers are funny people, they tried to build words from the 6 available letters. Adding those words between packets of your protocols made it both easy and funny for humans to read.

Here are few words I remember: DEADBEAF, DECAFBAD, CAFEFEED.

Which other words do you know build with A, B, C, D, E and F?

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9.2.05 21:41 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards 2004 results (

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LinuxQuestions.org announced this week the results of their annual Members Choice Awards. See here for all results.

And here is my prediction for 2005 (only those where I think changes will occur):

Distribution: Novel will be in the top 3
IDE of the year: 1) Eclipse , 2) kdevelop
Web development editor: 1) NVU, 2) Quanta, 3) Bluefish
Audio multimedia application: 1) amarok, 2) xmms, 3) audacity

And what do you think?

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7.2.05 18:42 Zaurus: Familiar 0.8.1 snapshots (

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Koen has released some Familiar 0.8.1 snapshots.

Test them and send your bugs to :

GPE bugs -> gpe@handhelds.org
Opie bugs -> ope@handhelds.org
all that's left -> familiar@handhelds.org

Reported bugs and fixes can be found here.

Changes can be found in bitkeeper openembedded changeset.

And don't forget to say thank to those guys (zecke, koen, schurig, CosmicPenguin, Hrw, Twiun, in no particular order and sorry for all I forgot) who do a wonderfull job, or better make a donation.

Have fun.

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6.2.05 22:05 Fun: Goolge non-sense page (

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Fun: Google nonsense oage.

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18:02 Bloglines and the dynamic web (

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Rumors says that bloglines has been bought by Ask Jeeves.

I didn't use bloglines so far, but it seems interesting: keep all your preferred blogs on server side and access them from anywhere (home, office, restaurant,.. ) and anyhow (laptop, PC, PDA, mobile phone...). Add and remove of blogs is easy, you can even select your blogs from a large list.

Web is becoming more and more dynamic as everybody is an information source (compared to few years ago where some content publisher offered content, and private information publishing was limited to web pages). Blogs have changed this completely in only 2 years. Now you need services like bloglines to manage this new kind of information. Searching is just too much static. The dynamic web is present and we are living this great adventure :D

My first steps with bloglines:

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5.2.05 15:11 My nerd level: High-Level Nerd. You are definitely MIT material, apply now!!!. (

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I am nerdier than 83% of all people. Are you nerdier? Click here to find out!

What's yours?

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4.2.05 23:06 Word of the day: Syncretism (

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Word of the day: Syncretism: syncretism is an attemp to merge several originaly discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an underlying unity.
Source: Wikiepdia

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22:58 Word of the day: Synarchie (

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Word of the day: Synachie means a goverment based on principles, in contradiction to anachie, a goverment without principles.
Source: wikipedia

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1.2.05 23:04 If only I had more time ... (

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There are many open source (and commercial) projects/products I would like to try, but work doesn't give me enough time.
However, this is just a reminder to myself to test the following projects:

AgentFX: fast competent 3D-engine. More features. Non commercial version is free.
Morena: Image Acquisition Framework for Java. It works both with Twain (windows, Mac OS) and Sane (all kind of Unix flavors).
EclipseME: Ok, I just have tested v0.7.0 few weeks ago, so I have a little bit time to try the last one.