GPL Enforcement

Don't Jump to Conclusions, But Do Report Violations:
http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2009/11/08/gpl-enforcement.html

A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance:
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/compliance-guide.html

Install languagepack in Windows 7 Professional

http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?/topic/25539-how-to-enable-mui-language-pack-in-windows-7-professional/

MUI można również zainstalować w wersji Professional znajdującej się
w MSDNAA, wystarczy:

W trybie administratora w CMD wpisać:
DISM /Online /Add-Package /PackagePath:(ścieżka do lp)

Następnie kolejną komendę:
bcdedit /set {current} locale pl-PL

oraz:
bcdboot %WinDir% /l pl-PL

potem w regedit:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\MUI\UILanguages
usunąć en-US

Restart systemu i mamy polską wersję RTM Pro.

Additional info:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/goglobal/ee461121.aspx
  
• http://www.free-download-blog.com/windows-7-mui-all-language-packs-download-links-official-32-bit-64-bit/
  

Defeat stupid quotes on web forum

Once in a while someone writes a smart (in his own opinion) rebuttal, but inside puts one of the stupid quotes. Here's how to cleverly defeat that:

"What's the point of this operating system?"

Say you and your wife decide to have another baby. After a lot of hard work, she gets pregnant. After nine difficult months and the troubles of childbirth, you bring a new beautiful little person into this world. You could not be happier. This is the best moment of your life.

Then imagine me walking in, and saying: "What's the point in yet another human being?"

Other annoying quotes are at the original site: http://www.osnews.com/story/21944/The_10_Most_Annoying_Things_in_Internet_Comments

Linux is for smart people

This is precious, so far I have never read such a nice post like this:

It's hard to convince Joe and Mary User to convert to Linux when the first things you hear from them are: "Where's my <insert stupid application here>?" "Why can't I just have <insert ridiculous thing here>?" or the ever-popular "This doesn't work like <insert overpriced application here>?" Honestly, it's enough to make me want to tell them to "just buy a Mac and stop calling me." Linux, after all, is for smart people and I really don't find any reason to "dumb it down" for the general population.

http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4605.html

Microsoft Office formats are insecure

http://blogs.computerworld.com/insecure_by_design_ms_office_formats

Analysis of Adobe RTMPE

A recently published analysis of RTMPE comes to the conclusion that, although the algorithm "provides end-to-end secrecy in exactly the same way that SSL provides end-to-end secrecy, it provides no security and uses no authentication of any kind." Nowhere is a secret key, a password or even a pass phrase required in order to decrypt the content: only a 32-byte hash value plus the size of the SWF file and publicly exchanged information, specifically the last 32 bytes of the first response from the streaming server, are involved.

Following this line of argument, it could be concluded that RTMPE is only a proprietary streaming protocol with encrypted transmission. It seems at least questionable whether Adobe could call this a circumvention of copy protection and thus be in a position to invoke the DMCA and prevent distribution of the software.

http://www.h-online.com/open/Adobe-acts-against-Flash-video-stream-recorder--/news/113370

Windows7 UAC whitelist: code-injection vulnerability (and more)

And when I thought the RC for Windows 7 is going to be a hit, it turns out that while running an administrative account, most of original Windows 7 .exe's auto-eleviate their rights by default, without asking user for a permission. Given that many people are accustomed to run on administrative accounts, this poses a security hole.

More: http://www.pretentiousname.com/misc/win7_uac_whitelist2.html

Enable Alt+Ctrl+Backspace in Jaunty Jackalope

Ubuntu 9.04 comes with updated X.org server, in which Ctrl+Alt+Backspace doesn't work anymore out of the box. Some silly users complained that this (correctly!) resets their sessions, when they accidentally press the aforementioned combination. Even though I used Linux for many years with success, I was NEVER able to press such extraordinary key combo accidentally.

Anyway, Ubuntu devs listened and Ctrl+Alt+Backspace is turned off by default, what a pity. To restore the normal (old?) behaviour you need to modify X.org settings:

1) Open the configuration file in Gedit:

    sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

2) At the end paste:

    Section "ServerFlags"
    Option "DontZap" "false"
    EndSection

3) Restart the system or just the X subsystem ("sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart" comes to mind) in order for Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to work again. To return to previous setting, remove or comment out added lines, or change "false" to "true" in "DontZap" flag.

Original tip (in Polish): http://www.ubucentrum.net/2009/05/jak-waczyc-skrot-ctrlaltdelete-w-ubuntu.html

No One Ever Got Fired For Using Microsoft

I dug out a nice writing by helios, from his old blog. Actually this is one of the best his posts that hook me up into reading them. And they are numerous...

http://blog.lobby4linux.com/index.php?/archives/83-No-One-Ever-Got-Fired-For-Using-Microsoft.-Yes-They-Did..html
(note: original site is inaccessible right now, the above link is provided by the Wayback Machine)

Find more interesting readings on the current Blog of helios.

pv (Pipe Viewer) in action!

Recently I needed to copy a 4GB of data to a 6GB partition (both of which were VirtualBox disks). Remembering my resolution to use pv program (pipe viewer) in such case, I used it this time while copying to see the progress of the whole process. I started with getting the expected size of copied data:

# fdisk -l -u

Disk /dev/sda: 4294 MB, 4294967296 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 522 cylinders, total 8388608 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x664a0e1b

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63     8369864     4184901    7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 6442 MB, 6442450944 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 783 cylinders, total 12582912 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

Next, after consulting the pv's manual, I used it as a filter between two dd programs (one for reading from the source and one for writing to the destination). I played a bit with pv's -B option (which specifies the size of internal buffer), but it turned out the default size was the best. Anyway, the progress I achieved looked like this:

# dd if=/dev/sda bs=4096 | pv -pterb -s 4294967296 -B 4096 | dd of=/dev/sdb bs=4096
35.5MB 0:00:20 [1.61MB/s] [>                         ]  0% ETA 0:41:38
8469+0 records in
8468+0 records out
34684928 bytes (35 MB) copied, 20.6268 s, 1.7 MB/s
8451+0 records in
8451+0 records out
34615296 bytes (35 MB) copied, 20.6437 s, 1.7 MB/s

Pretty neat IMHO, just what I wanted. Now I only need to remember the parameters for another use: "pterb" for progress, and "-s" for size...

Graphical vi Cheat Sheet and Tutorial

Finally I've found it again! It's here:
http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html

Well, actually, it's quite easy to find if one knows what to ask google about.

And I really like those pictures, they come as lessons (see below) and they finish with a final cheat sheet, ready for printing.

Lessons:

1.   2.   3.   4.

5.   6.   7.

Result (all lessons in one page):

Ironic view at software diagramming

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/16/verity_stob_software_diagramming/

Somewhat funny look at different diagramming techniques over the course of years. I suspect the author's experience cannot let him feel the 'real' power of UML to use it correctly. Although UML is far from perfect, it's the best we have now (similiar to what Churchill has said about democracy).

But anyway, there is a hidden gem in the above article, a link to an open-source State Machine Compiler: http://smc.sourceforge.net/

pv (Pipe Viewer)

http://www.debianadmin.com/pv-pipe-viewer-shell-pipeline-element-to-meter-data-passing-through.html

Sometimes there is a need to copy lots of data verbatim. In Linux the easiest way is to use dd command for it, or dd_rescue in case of errors. However, original dd has one drawback, namely it's not possible to know its progress until it finishes. Copying partition images with size in 30-40 GB range is boring, because the commands starts, disk LED is flashing, and nothing is displayed. The aforementioned pv has a lot of potential in my eyes, because it brings long awaited progress information.

Since I haven't copied big files using dd recently, I cannot predict whether it would work (most probably yes). But when the need arises, I'm definitely going to use pv in combination with dd to possibly get a nice progress info. :-)

How to customize NetBeans look and feel

A good overview of possible options for custom look and feel in NetBeans can be found here:

http://javahowto.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-customize-netbeans-look-and-feel.html

Apart from original tip concerning MetalLookAndFeel, the above is a nice source of ideas, which I like a lot. :-)

Logout Vista button required 43 people

I read this once but I lost the URL, and now I've found it! It's an old one, but a good one:

http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html

And the moral of this story? Weekly meetings, multiple layers of management and the end result which people still don't like much. Shame on you, Microsoft. :-(

Working arrow keys in VMWare Player

http://aldeby.org/blog/index.php/arrow-keys-not-working-with-vmware.html

That's a simple fix for VMWare, which doesn't recognize a changed method of handling keyboard keys in new XServer.

you may experience some problems with arrow keys, pg up/pg down and home/end keys with vmware 6.5 and Ubuntu Linux Intrepid 8.10.

a workaround for those problems is to create a file named config under .vmware folder in your home directory and fill it with the following text:

xkeymap.keycode.108 = 0x138 # Alt_R
xkeymap.keycode.106 = 0x135 # KP_Divide
xkeymap.keycode.104 = 0x11c # KP_Enter
xkeymap.keycode.111 = 0x148 # Up
xkeymap.keycode.116 = 0x150 # Down
xkeymap.keycode.113 = 0x14b # Left
xkeymap.keycode.114 = 0x14d # Right
xkeymap.keycode.105 = 0x11d # Control_R
xkeymap.keycode.118 = 0x152 # Insert
xkeymap.keycode.119 = 0x153 # Delete
xkeymap.keycode.110 = 0x147 # Home
xkeymap.keycode.115 = 0x14f # End
xkeymap.keycode.112 = 0x149 # Prior
xkeymap.keycode.117 = 0x151 # Next
xkeymap.keycode.78 = 0x46 # Scroll_Lock
xkeymap.keycode.127 = 0x100 # Pause
xkeymap.keycode.133 = 0x15b # Meta_L
xkeymap.keycode.134 = 0x15c # Meta_R
xkeymap.keycode.135 = 0x15d # Menu

Other solutions:

• http://bias9.blogspot.com/2008/10/keys-not-working-in-vmware.html
  

  
  This is an upstream bug in VMware’s code. If your keyboard is not functioning correctly in VMware, add this line to ~/.vmware/config (create file if necessary):
  

  xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true

  
  http://www.ultimalinux.com/wiki/VMware
  

  
  
• http://communities.vmware.com/message/918459
  
• http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1007439
  

Good news on ASP.NET MVC

Fine description of MVC pattern implementation in ASP.NET can be found on ScottGu's blog. This post accompanies the Release Candidate of ASP.NET MVC 1.0:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/01/27/asp-net-mvc-1-0-release-candidate-now-available.aspx

WTFPL - The ultimate free license

http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/
In a word: cute!

Debugging PHP with NetBeans and XDebug

A small tutorial from NetBeans' Knowledge Base:

http://www.netbeans.org/kb/docs/php/debugging.html