Updated: Never — Philip's Blog

Yes, it's that time of the year again. There is nothing newsworthy to report, so other things are being reported. This makes newspapers and their online equivalents all the more interesting to read!

Today, De Morgen reports on the untimely demise of a gentleman who decided to jump out of a window after reacting badly to a paddo dinner. Curiously, the man didn't expire immediately after learning that he couldn't fly. For some reason, the oxygen-supply in the ambulance exploded when the operators tried to use it to keep the man alive.

Interesting case of sensationalist reporting. I bet that if they'd reported on this as "a man who jumped out of a window died after an oxygen bottle intended to revive him exploded in the ambulance", a number of people would make noise about the maintenance of ambulances. Instead, many people will just write this off as "just another confused psilocybinophile" taking one trip too many.

Perhaps it's time to insist on warning labels "you cannot fly" being added to mushroom packaging?

This morning, I impulsively decided to take a detour via the barber on my way to work. I looked a bit too much like Hagar the Horrible of late.

Now waiting for the train in Haacht. Luckily, essid: default is here to make the waiting a bit more pleasant. I love it! Thank you, anonymous internet citizen. Feel free to use essid: welcome if ever you find yourself stranded near my home. :-)

I guess most people by now have read Kathy's latest blog post.

Usually, her posts are something to look forward to and to think happy thoughts about afterwards. This one made me want to scream.

I hope that the sick people who do things like that are "just" extreme cases of forgetting that they're dealing with human beings and not computers.

When I read things like this (and some amazingly annoying Usenet trolls), I really do wonder. And worry. What kind of sick mind does it take to abuse technology to so badly harm/annoy other people?

Bah

It has been a while since I've read my "ridiculous patents" mailbox. Life is too short to read all the email that finds its way there. Of all the silly software patents (well -- all software patents are silly, but some deserve prices) Securely providing advertising subsidized computer usage really scares me.

English translation: Microsoft will monitor users of their awful software in any way they can (including face recognition - yes, read the claims!) to determine if spam is being looked at with enough attention. If the user doesn't pay enough attention to the spam, they will be able to make you pay more attention by pretty much having the spam take over the computer.

I really don't understand how people can voluntarily buy software from a company that wants this kind of control over their lives. Are people becoming completely stupid or something?

Not only does their software suck in many ways (non-intuitive user interface, bug-ridden, leaky, bloaty,...) it also tries to take control over the life of the user.

No thanks. I rather like my freedom!

Christophe thinks I might have something interesting to say on this topic. I'm not exactly sure why he thinks that, however. :-)

I don't use all that much software which supports "plugins". When I need a graphical webbrowser for some reason, I like to use Mozilla Firefox. According to about:plugins, I have four plugins installed. Two of which appear to be put there by default.

• Dummy flash plugin

  Amazingly useful, this is. Many so-called "websites" these days appear to be polluted with a proprietary technology called "Flash", distributed under certain conditions to users of certain so-called "operating systems" by Adobe, formerly Macromedia. I don't believe in this technology. I do not agree with the conditions for using it. My operating system of choice (FreeBSD) is not among the systems "allowed" to use this technology.

  Unfortunately, by default, Mozilla Firefox insists I would enjoy the content of websites using this technology more if I were to agree to the conditions and download this plugin (which, as I mentioned, does not exist for my operating system of choice).

  Because rather a lot of websites seem to be getting polluted with "Flash", my browsing experience was often interrupted by this annoying, modal, completely blocking dialogue instructing me to go fetch the damned plugin or else... Until I found this amazing trick of using a "plugin" to register the MIME type used by "Flash" which places friendly white areas where the "Flash" would otherwise be rendered. Thus getting rid of the pesky dialogue.

  The plugin is in the FreeBSD ports tree, or on the author's site:

  http://www.gsoft.com.au/~doconnor/nullflash.html

• Java(TM) plugin

  This appears to be installed together with the Java Runtime Environment port. I do not believe in Java "applets", so I have disabled this plugin using the appropriate setting in Mozilla Firefox' "Preferences" box.

The other two plugins are "default plugin", which I assume is a default plugin and "demo print plugin for unix/linux", which I really don't have a clue about.

Another application I use supporting plugins is Gaim. Other than the Jabber plugin which is distributed with it by default, I use the Meanwhile plugin to communicate using the Lotus "Sametime" protocol at work. This allows me to limit my "use" (however you wish to define that) of my Microsoft "Windows" desktop machine to an absolute minimum. I really can't understand how people can live in a restricted pointy-click environment like that. I prefer to be productive instead.

I'm sure I use some other "pluginable" applications, but I don't think I consciously installed any plugins for them.

Since this appears to be a "chain blog" of sorts, I'd like to hear Grog's opinion on this matter.

Interesting experience at work this afternoon. I needed to reinvent a wheel (don't ask) and the quickest and easiest way to do it was using some "shareware" utility. Ordinarily, I am not a great fan of "shareware". I prefer my software to be free (as in freedom).

I didn't feel like reinventing a wheel to reinvent the wheel though, so I gave this thing a try. In the "nag" box, it mentioned that the software was under the GPL, and that I should feel free to download the sources...

...which I did...

The sources did not include a Makefile - clever - but they did include the algorithm for checking "registration keys". I suppose the 'most honest' thing to do, would have been to figure out the dependencies, write a Makefile, and build the thing without the key-checking logic. It seemed quicker to write a quick program to generate me a key, however. Which I did.

But now I don't know what to do to cleanse my conscience:

• Should I figure out dependencies and write a Makefile to build the sources with the key-checking logic removed?
• Should I send that patch to the author, licensed under the GPL?
• Should I publish my key generator under the GPL?

Funny situation. Tips on how to proceed ethically are welcome in my mailbox.

[Note: for what it's worth, the tool converted data in an Open, Standard format into a different mostly-open, definitely not Standard format of lower quality - not very interesting unless you have to work under manglement with a warped perception of reality and priorities]