http://computing.blogsome.com my personal thoughts Wed, 07 Nov 2007 17:11:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Quoting the Microsoft Service Agreement (which seems to be obligatory for those using Windows Live applications): 4. How You May Not Use the Service. In using the service, you may not: use the service in a way that harms us or our affiliates, resellers, distributors, and/or vendors (collectively, the "Microsoft parties"), or any customer ... http://computing.blogsome.com/2007/11/07/reasons-not-to-use-windows-live/ My Ogg player broke when I tried to install its software on my XP machine - it seems that the software tried to update the firmware (without asking me) and failed for some reason. A friend of mine is here for a visit and for fun, we plugged the stick in ... http://computing.blogsome.com/2007/10/19/vista-saved-my-usb-stick/ I just plugged my CBM1541 drive into the parallel port of my PC (with the appropriate adapter cable, of course), and it just worked. Even the very good CBM computer emulator suite VICE knows how to directly access it! Now I only have to copy those 200 floppies I have at ... http://computing.blogsome.com/2007/10/17/cbm4win-and-vice-rock/ I finally got a response to my inquiry about the Qt licensing exceptions for opensource licenses. I doesn’t look confidential, so here it is: We will try to add the CDDL, but it may need to wait for a later release. The next package is already going through testing, so ... http://computing.blogsome.com/2007/09/26/qt-and-cddl-follow-up/ I encountered some problems reading one audio CD into a flac file (I like to keep them in a one-file-per-cd format, with integrated cuesheet, etc) - not even good old trusty cdrdao on win32 managed to read it (but did just fine on DragonFly). Searching a bit, I found that the ... http://computing.blogsome.com/2007/09/12/windows-annoyance-pt-2/ After 8 Years of UNIX desktop (where not much changed - sure, glitzy-shiny features in the dozen, but still lacking in the usability and integration department), I bought a Windows license. No Operating System without some weird corners, so I think I’ll collect such issues here (while looking for solutions). Sooo… Episode ... http://computing.blogsome.com/2007/09/09/windows-annoyance-pt-1/ Yay for GNU Freedom. Recently I ran over a discussion where there were some concerns about the viability of using "binary blobs" in an implementation of the AES algorithm. Sure, there’s a table in it, 256 elements wide, with some weird numbers in it. What is that table? It’s an S-Box, ... http://computing.blogsome.com/2007/09/03/binary-blobs-gnu-fsf-and-s-boxes/ I continued work on hg2mtn (which managed to import the whole onnv-gate repository just fine, stats will come later), and except for one issue, I’m feature complete: while I track renames now, I have to synthesize directory renames. This will work by looking for each rename if the source directory ... http://computing.blogsome.com/2007/08/30/progress-on-hg2mtn/ Darren Reed’s thoughts on the opensolaris community buildup - very interesting read! It seems, that the "architects" came to similar conclusions already, given that the community/project stuff was reorganized a while ago. Unfortunately it’s still very rigid. Of course, it doesn’t matter to Project Independence - we won’t ask for a slot ... http://computing.blogsome.com/2007/08/27/communi-what/ Today I worked a lot on hg2mtn, a tool to import hg (mercurial) repositories into monotone. The result of it is a first release that’s barely useful, but contains all the logic necessary to do it - what’s missing is userinterface, stability and general niceness. http://computing.blogsome.com/2007/08/24/first-release-of-hg2mtn/