May 2008

Adobe lifts restrictions of flash specifications

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Thu, 2008-05-01

A few day ago, I reported how to work around a nasty bug in Ubuntu Hardy Heron related to Adobes Flash player.

Adobe today removed some license restrictions on it's flash related specification, which were formerly present to stop developers from creating flash player clones while using Adobes specifications.

The "Open Screen Project" covers in detail:

* Removing licenses from SWF (multimedia and vector-graphics)
* Removing licences from FLV/F4V (video)
* Offering device porting layer APIs for Flash Player
* Publishing specifications for the Flash Cast protocol
* Publishing specifications for the AMF protocol (exchange data with a database)

While it seems like a huge step towards an open source (and hopefully more stable) flash player, the concerning projects (swfdec and Gnash) are quite reserved with their statements.

While part of the Gnash developers still fear legal issues in general and especially patent issues, swfdec head Benjamin Otte states, that for his project "it means pretty much nothing. Swfdec already implements everything that is written down in that specifications".

Back in 2007, Rob Savoye expressed a comprehensible whish:

we'd love to see a public statement that Gnash developers won't be subject to a lawsuit.

I guess that a single statement regarding legal issues with open sourced flashplayers would had more impact for the open source community than the Open Screen Project currently has.

Ed Burnette posted a more detailed report on the background of Adobes decision: "Adobe opens up Flash, but leaves out Google and Apple".

Italy's tax payer data still available on the internet

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Fri, 2008-05-02

Earlier this week, Italy's posted returns for all 40 million Italians who paid taxes in 2005 on the internet.

Although the data was withdrawn after massive protests of consumer protection organisations, it seems it is still available on the net through filesharing systems.

It's quite easy to get data on the internet and it's quite impossible to remove them. So better think before publishing.

Overheard: Don't Trust Anybody over Fifty

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Fri, 2008-05-02


Customer: How much are money orders here?
Teller: Well, I see that you are over the age of fifty so it'll be free for you.
Customer: Ok, so can I have a money order for $260?
Teller: Ok, so do you want to pay that in cash or withdraw from your account?
Customer: Excuse me?
Teller: How do you want to provide the funds for the money order?
Customer: I thought you said it was free.
Teller: There is no fee for the money order but you still need to provide the funds for it.
Customer: Oh, well you should have made that clear.
Teller: Wow, I'm sorry.

--Commerce Bank, Jackson Heights

Overheard in New York: Don't Trust Anybody over Fifty

VirtualBox 1.6.0 released

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Mon, 2008-05-05

Sun finally released VirtualBox 1.6.0, the first major relase, since Sun acquired Innotek.

The most outstanding changes are:
+ support for Mac as host platform
+ support for Solaris as host platform
+ Ubuntu Hardy (8.04) is now officially supported
+ Seamless windowing for Linux and Solaris guests
- Sun obviously discontinued Debian and Ubuntu repositories (you won't find that in the release notes)

Since I was really keen to see the seamless mode in action, I installed a Debian Lenny (5.0) snapshot into VirtualBox.

I installed the VirtualBox Guest-Additions on both systems. It seems Debian Lenny has some problem loading the Virtualbox device drivers:

Fortunately, there's an easy workaround: Just switch to a terminal and start vboxadd by hand.

/etc/init.d/vboxadd start
/etc/init.d/gdm restart

After starting Debian Lenny with the Guest-Additions, I tried the seamless mode. Unfortunately, Lenny's panels exactly cover Ubuntu's panels:

When testing seamless mode with Windows, this did not happen. The Windows task bar always stays above the bottom panel. I tried to attenuate this behavior by replacing Lenny's panels with one very small panel with an enclosed menu and application switcher.

While this basically works quite well, there's a huge drawback: You can't move or delete your desktop icons any longer while running a seamless guest system. At least for me, this is a serious showstopper. Without being able to organize my desktop, I don't need any "seamless" integration at all. In fact, "seamless" is quite exaggerated. Besides clipboard compatibility, there's no integration at all. You just don't see the background image of your guest system.

Besides that, VirtualBox is a nice alternative to VMWare's free server, although I wished Sun would partner up with Canonical and get the "non-Open Source Edition" VirtualBox into Ubuntu's partner repository. Or even better: Just release the rest of the code as open source.

Firefox slowdown

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Tue, 2008-05-06

The last few days I noticed a massive slowdown of Firefox 3.0b5 on Ubuntu Hardy. I even started using Opera, since I thought it might be bigger problem.

As it turns out, my history kept data from the last 90 days. Combined with Firefox' new history search feature, it was nearly impossible to use the browser at all. I'm unsure whether I did change this value, or if it's a default setting for Firefox on Ubuntu. Fortunately, this issue is really easy to solve.

While searching for the reason of this behavior, I found a really good entry in Mozilla's knowledgebase. If you experience similar slowdowns, just have a look at this page.

Combine Youtube with Last.fm

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Tue, 2008-05-06

Tim Bormans created a small but very nice mashup of Youtube and Last.fm. Just enter your Last.fm username and you'll be presented a selection of Youtube videos according to your personal taste presented as your personal music television.

All time favorites: Firefox extensions

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Wed, 2008-05-07

Whenever I have to prepare a new Firefox installation, I tend to forget at least one of my all time favorite Firefox add-ons.

As a reference, I compiled a small list of my basic setup. You might find it useful:

* Adblock Plus
Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them.

* FireGestures
A customizable mouse gestures extension which enables you to execute various commands and user scripts with five types of gestures..

* It's all Text
Edit textareas using an external editor, because it's all text!
Right click on a textarea, select "It's All Text!" and edit the text in the editor of your choice.
Alternatively, click on the edit buttons added for your convenience. Right click on the edit buttons for even more options, including preferences.

* Google Reader Watcher
Checks your Google Reader for unread news

* Shareaholic
Found something awesome online and can’t wait to pass it on? Tired of copying and pasting endless URLs? Shareaholic allows you to share, bookmark and e-mail web pages quickly without leaving your browser.

* Firebug (currently beta for Firefox 3)
Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Don’t piss off your customers

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Wed, 2008-05-07

Open Flash Charts history:

And it’s really free?!
Yes. Once upon a time I had to deal with a company who sell flash charting components, their component had a bug that I needed fixing, so I emailed them about it asking when it’d be fixed. (Remember that I had paid real money for this software.) They were so incompetent, rude and obnoxious that after three or four weeks of emails I thought to myself “I could learn Flash and Actionscript and write my own charting component, release it as Open Source, host it on sourceforge and build up a community of helpful coders faster than they can fix a single bug.” And that is what I did. And that is why it is free. I guess the moral of the lesson is: don’t piss off your customers.

[Discovered by Thomas Vander Stichele: Free software at work]

Viral Marketing manual: An unsigned band from Manchaster

Submitted by Markus Thielmann on Sat, 2008-05-10

A small viral marketing manual for musicians:

1) Hire an experienced PR company: checked
2) Create a MySpace page: checked
3) Record a CD: checked
4) Claim you were unable to pay a descent camera team to film your music video. Claim you performed in front of CCTV cameras and got the material by requesting it under the Data Protection Act: checked
5) Post it to YouTube: checked
6) Notice nobody cares about it, get it reposted after a few months: checked

Make them believe!