Shame for Creative...

I have been a happy user of Creative Sound Blaster Live! Value card for a long while. I bought it in the Windows Me era, and it worked great there. In Windows 2000 the Creative software did not provide the full experience I had on Windows 98/Me. In Windows XP the card just goes with the drivers and no additional software is fully installed. So, I really experienced the gradual removal of features for an older product. And now for Vista, the current Creative drivers are really bad. So bashing a person for taking incentive in his own hands is even more bad from the PR point of view. Looks like the Creative will never learn how to live in the open source world... Since in that case the code would be already accessible, modifiable and redistributable. And the overall word for the Creative products would be even better. But they don't really want to do that.

In short: no more Creative sound cards for me for a good while. That's sure :(

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/174096756/m/896004731931/p/1

Sometimes the Internet breaks...

http://gigaom.com/2008/03/14/the-telia-cogent-spat-could-ruin-web-for-many/

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/03/you_cant_get_there_from_here_1.shtml

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2008/02/pakistan_hijacks_youtube_1.shtml

Customers and consumers - a difference

A Microsoft Slur in the OOXML Saga -- Who are their customers?

Years ago I read a columnist who talked about the difference between a customer and a consumer. The user of the software is the consumer. The person who makes the choice that gets the vendor money is the customer. Sometimes they are the same. But in a large organization they are often not, and a vendor will usually concentrate on the customer since that is where the money is. The consumer (user) is likely to suffer. Many of Microsoft's features/marketing in new versions of products make sense if you keep this distinction in mind. (And it's not just MS.)

Accessing SQL Server from Pocket PC emulator

* http://weblogs.asp.net/rfigueira/archive/2003/08/29/25752.aspx

* http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2293751&SiteID=1
* http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=709129&SiteID=1&mode=1
* http://netcf2.blogspot.com/2005/12/accessing-sql-server-express-from.html

* http://www.experts-exchange.com/Microsoft/Development/MS-SQL-Server/SQL-Server-2005/Q_22919038.html

Subversion over xinetd on Ubuntu for local development

I really like Subversion for using it in distributed manner, with several people involved in project. However, for simplest case I wanted to setup a Subverion server on my own computer to use exclusively for my own development project.

However, installing a 'subversion' package is definitely not enough for Ubuntu (where I experimented). I used the following resources:

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Subversion
  
• http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn-book.html#svn.serverconfig.svnserve
  
• http://blog.wilf.me.uk/articles/2006/10/04/ubuntu-xinetd-configuration-for-proftpd
  
• http://www.unix-girl.com/blog/archives/001486.html
  

After reading the docs I knew what I don't want:

• I don't intend to run Apache so repositories could be served via http and https protocols (no need to mess with htpasswd and installing SSL certificate, plus one less attack vector on the machine)
  
• I don't intend to run SSH server so svnserve could be invoked over svn+ssh protocol
  
• And I really don't want to start 'svnserve -d' manually every time I start development and want to grab some info or update the repository
  

Having some prior knowledge I decided to use 'xinetd' so the server could be started automatically, but only when needed. However, there's obviously no (direct) support for running subversion over xinetd in Ubuntu. So I followed the Ubuntu docs to a point, but then I experimented somewhat.

1. I added a 'subversion' group, using a specific group id (I used the same number as svn port):
   

   
   $ sudo addgroup --system --gid 3690 subversion
   

   
   
2. Next I and added 'www-data' and my account to this newly created group. Remember to substitute mylogin (and optionally repeat this step) for all real accounts that should be able to do check ins to repositories:
   

   
   $ sudo adduser www-data subversion
   $ sudo adduser mylogin subversion
   

   
   Note that logging out and logging back is required for this change to be effective.
   
   
3. Then I created the /home/svn directory:
   

   
   $ sudo mkdir /home/svn
   

   
   
4. I used 'svnadmin' to create the 'myproject' repository and applied the required rights, so the repository would not be read-only:
   

   
   $ cd /home/svn
   $ sudo svnadmin create myproject
   $ sudo chown -R www-data:subversion myproject
   $ sudo chmod -R g+rws myproject
   

   
   
5. I added the file: /etc/xinetd.d/svn
   

   
   # default: on
   # Subversion server
   
   service svn
   {
           socket_type     = stream
           protocol        = tcp
           user            = www-data
           wait            = no
           disable         = no
           server          = /usr/bin/svnserve
           server_args     = -i -r /home/svn
           port            = 3690
           only_from       = localhost
   }
   

   
   Note that only_from option in the above file locks the svn access to localhost, so if you don't want it just remove or comment out a line with this option.
   
   
6. I restarted the xinetd service.
   
   
7. Since then 'svn list svn://localhost/myproject' works, so there is a read-only access to the repository. Now only the write access should be configured.
   
   
8. I modified the file: repo/conf/svnserve.conf
   

   
   [general]
   password-db = userfile
   realm = repo developers
   
   # anonymous users aren't allowed
   anon-access = none
   
   # authenticated users can both read and write
   auth-access = write
   

   
   
9. I also created the file: repo/conf/userfile
   

   
   [users]
   bigdog = foopass
   smalldog = barpass
   

   
   

This is it. I declare victory!

Adobe Flex gaining ground in India; Java UI watch out!

http://www.oreillynet.com/onjava/blog/2008/03/adobe_flex_gaining_ground_in_i.html

Abdul Qabiz's Blog - India (an active Flex developer)
http://abdulqabiz.com/blog/

UTF-8 manual pages

This is the end of an era. No more will we need NROFF/COL hacks in the setup of manual viewer (the venerable "man" program):

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2008/02/msg00005.html

Welcome to the 21st century, man pages :)

Debian founder wants to 'reshape' OpenSolaris

http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62038656,00.htm

Similarities between Debian and Ubuntu

http://laserjock.wordpress.com/2008/03/07/long-time-no-blog/

Number of Ubuntu developers is surprisingly small:

our small size (109 total developers including Canonical employees)