Friday, October 02, 2009

Reykjavik Blog, Day Three

Hmm, lots happened today.

Headlines (for EVE players): Dominion will be released on 1st December, with Walking in Stations sometime after that. I posted a video of the teaser shown here to the EVE Markets site, forgetting that I pay for bandwidth :-S See http://fanfest.mmmetrics.co.uk/ for a decent summary of all the chatter. Oh, and someone who wasn't me mentioned EVE Markets in a dev round-table!

Headlines (for non-EVE players reading this because you know me): More internet spaceships stuff. Surviving mostly on chocolate covered raisins and orange juice, though I managed to sell a couple of beer tokens for 1000ISK so might be able to afford nutrition today! It's been cold and wet, or at least it was this morning when I last saw the outside world...

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Reykjavik Blog, Day Two

FanFest proper opened today.

I'm sat on the floor next to just about the only plug socket I could find in the FanFest venue - and yes, that is the Jita 4-4 undock point you can see through the 'window' - because there's free wifi here.

Didn't manage to get a slot in the frigate free-for-all tournament, but went to round-tables on the EVE server architecture and web development team. There is only one database server for the whole game... (Actually, there are two - one is a hot-standby machine - but the 30sec of unavailability that a switch takes is enough to kill the cluster anyway).

An (ahem) interesting presentation from those idiots at Goonswarm concluded events today as part of an alliance leaders' panel. EVE really is a cold, dark, harsh universe, and that's reflected in some of the playerbase...

I met CCP Applebabe today too! Finally shook hands with DV of EVE University. And, I was in the same room as StevieSG. Wow, I'm mixing it up with the stars here at "Jita 4-4"! Now, I should head off and find some food - it's only 8PM but it feels like it's been a long day. If only there were an easy way of getting or making a cup of tea here...

Tomorrow's expected highlights: talks on COSMOS (nicknamed 'Spacebook' by pilots), the API, the in-game browser and the economy; a preview of the next expansion, Dominion, and throughout the day the main PvP tournament. It's an even longer day tomorrow!

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Reykjavik Blog, Day One

Left my flat at 7.30 this morning, got to Gloucester Green and on the Airline coach at 8. Checked in at Heathrow by 10.30am - I was amused by the EVE banter going on in the queue. The poor an behind me lost his Absolution the previous evening. (But it's not all bad; his son salvaged the wreck in his Paladin.)

The flight itself was about three hours, end to end - I got a window seat above the wing so got a few nice pictures, as well as some video footage that's just begging to be used at the next Late Service I run visuals at... Very smooth flight, and any form of transport where the tea is complementary is a winner to me.

Got to the hotel at about 5.00, and I went for a wander around the city while I had the chance... Managed to get thoroughly lost, and did actually end up going in circles for a while before I worked out I'd been right the first first time... It's not warm here, but above freezing, so I'm fairly comfortable with the temperature walking around.

Grabbed some food from the Subway across the road. This hotel's a little stingy - there's not even a "welcome to the hotel" pack, let alone a kettle or even any toiletries - and the WiFi is costly, so I've had to make the choice to leave the "leet haxor" skills in the toolkit and will use the FanFest area's free WiFi tomorrow!

Tomorrow's expected highlights: Free-for-all PvP tournament, plus some round-table discussions on the EVE server cluster and web development. More photos, thoughts and news from Iceland as it happens (and as I find free WiFi hotspots and the time to type!)

Sunday, July 12, 2009

So, here's one for you...

It's time for me to upgrade my mobile phone contract. Three give a "14 day peace of mind guarantee", so if you're not happy with your new phone you can send it back within two weeks.

But wait: there's more...

"In order to be eligible to return your mobile under the 14 -Day Money Back Guarantee you must not have used your handset to make or receive calls or texts, take photos, or download content."

So, I'm supposed to make up my mind based on... the colour?

Peace of mind? I'm tempted to give them a piece of mine...

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

I just don't understand how they broke it so badly...

"I know what the security settings for this wireless network are. But, they don't quite match what they were last time. Rather than use the proper settings, or let you change them, I'm just going to POINT BLANK REFUSE to try and connect."

And, actually, "channel" does not equal "security settings".

This stuff made it past QA?

Monday, April 27, 2009

It may be a game of internet spaceships...

...but I'm still not going to turn against someone who has a great deal of my respect (even if I have more scepticism about others). The ships may be pretend but the players are real, and that's enough for me.

Indeed, internet spaceships does turn out to be serious business.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Spoilt

Yesterday I had to install drivers for my printer on a housemate's laptop. It took about an hour to find, download and install them (and even then somehow we managed to get an installer in Dutch and muddle through).

It made me realise just how spoilt Linux users are that things Just Work...

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Big news from EVE

In the early hours of this morning, news came from New Eden: the largest alliance in the game, the Band of Brothers (BoB), has disbanded.

Details are still mostly unconfirmed - but talk is that a director of BoB's executive corp turned rogue, and booted all of BoB's member corporations from the alliance (thus disbanding BoB).

Goonswarm thugs are said to be pleased with this outcome.


Discussion thread (well, one of many) on EVE-O forums: http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=990387

This is possibly the biggest event to ever happen in EVE. With BoB out of the way (finally!) the resulting free-for-all to claim their former space will prove crucial in deciding the future shape of 0.0 politics and warfare.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Journalism 101: How not to review software

I was unfortunate enough to come across this "review" of KDE 4.2 (release candidate) today. Written by "Jacob W. B. ", it is perhaps the worst attempt at journalism I have seen in quite some time, and I'd like to explain why I think so.

First, a disclaimer: I like KDE. I prefer it to Gnome. I'm using KDE 4 quite happily at home and soon at work too. Even so, I feel entirely justified in the remarks I'm about to make.

Let's leave aside the deficient grammar, punctuation and coherence of the article and start examining the content:
we think that lately the KDE team version by version have been taking large steps in the wrong direction. They have been doing a good job at making a Desktop Environment that feels almost invisible, but the general design of the Environment itself seems a little too much like a Vista (i.e. Widgets) and Mac (i.e. the theme) clone and this isn't what GNU/Linux was originally designed to be, a clone.
Version by version? "Lately", there has only been one new major version of KDE: that is the KDE 4.x series. Its predecessor KDE 3.5 has been around years. The minor releases after KDE 4.0 - surprisingly, 4.1 and 4.2 (due soon) - haven't exactly been "large steps" but continuing on the path started by 4.0.

The first sentence, then, can be summarised as: the author doesn't like KDE4 and that is the approach they will be taking for the rest of the review. The second sentence seems to contradict itself: either the KDE team have been doing a good job with KDE4's design, or they haven't. And, incidentally, I'd say the theme was more Vista-ish; the "widgets" idea has been on Mac for years, and was adopted by Vista. What's novel in KDE4 is that a widget can live on the desktop or on the panel or both - it's a new take on an existing paradigm.

As for "what GNU/Linux was designed to be" - providing a choice, and providing an open-source alternative to proprietary software - I see no features of KDE that prevent this from being the case. Just because something's been used in proprietary software, does not make it a bad idea, and does not mean it should be avoided if it's a good idea.

Personally, I wasn't sold on the whole KDE4 theme until I used it. My first impressions were "it looks too much like Vista, and what's the point of the Plasmoids (widgets)?" Since the 4.0 launch, there are plenty more themes available, as well as some genuinely useful Plasmoids - from the usuals like the Wastebin and Pager applets to RSS feeds and the Folder View applet, of which I use three.

Back to the review, which continues:
"The second problem we have with KDE is the fact that they are somewhat breaking away from the easy usability and user friendly design of the GNU operating system...for example KDE 4.2 would not run on a computer with an 800MHz processor, less than 64MB of video, and 128MB of memory, where GNOME easily would."
I'm sorry - since when did "user friendly design" equal "low system requirements"? I think perhaps the author is conflating two quite different issues. If you're trying to run KDE4 on a machine with those specs then you're doing it wrong. Might I suggest that, say, Xfce would run much more smoothly on that hardware - because it's supposed to? If my Eee PC can (just about) run KDE4 then I see no reason why the system requirements should be a cause for concern.

Now we get to the real killer - the reviewer doesn't like the letter K. Indeed, the letter K is evil and therefore KDE must be bad! I mean, at least he doesn't drag in a mention of the Ku Klux Klan at this point, right?

Ah, crap, he did.
The "K Desktop Environment" when native programs starting with the letter 'K', are listed read "KKK" KKKKK ... they sometimes even designed artwork for the system that makes it look intentional to say "KKK", as seen in the image below. And we know that's not the case. It just seems as if they take pride in the letter 'K'... Though GNOME does the same thing i.e. "GGG", but this way is better because anything to avoid the "Ku Klux Klan" name similarity and reference.
Aside from being written in something barely approximating English, that such a substantial section of a software review would be taken up with such drivel is quite astonishing. Not only that, but it's accompanied with an image labelled "KKK KDE artwork - KDE 4.2" that's actually taken from an earlier version of KDE. The image is irrelevant - the prose even more so!

Now somewhat incredulous, I continued reading.
"And the KDE Desktop Environment has always made programs look more integrated with the Desktop Environment than as separate programs, and this kind of behavior is more confusing and takes away more from the usability than it adds. Additionally, the KDE team have designed their own replacements for programs, so that they integrate better, nice, but when there is something already out there, it would probably be better-- particularly for compatibility reasons --to use it instead, and just modify, add and remove features."
I'm sorry, but I honestly can't decide what point the author is trying to make here. A consistent "look & feel" is supposed to be confusing?Maybe he just doesn't want to use programs so obviously endorsed by radical pro-white groups? Come to think of it, don't Gnome applications aim for a consistent look across them all - shared icon sets and so on? I'd be surprised if they didn't.

As for "their own replacements for programs" - if you don't like a particular program, don't use it. That's the choice that Linux gives you. I'd always found the Kubuntu default package manager, Adept, more intuitive to use than Ubuntu's, Synaptic - mostly because of it's quick-search bar. In Ubuntu 8.10, the version of Adept that shipped is, honestly, pretty dire. So I switched to Synaptic (the Gnome default, remember), which now has a quick-search feature. So what? If you don't like a program don't use it, use something else. The author is clearly used to his Gnome applications and wouldn't want to switch. The "compatibility reasons" mentioned seem to only exist in the author's own opinion - fine, but not in a review of this sort.
"But over all, it's not our favorite Desktop Environment, mainly because we believe more strongly in the philosophy of the GNU project, and the stability."
"But"? Wow, didn't see that one coming. That's a huge shock. Now let's translate the reasoning: "We don't like things that use Qt, because at one point in the past it wasn't released under an open-source license and that makes it inferior." As for stability - remember, he's reviewing a Release Candidate, not a final release - it might have been nice to back up the suggestion of KDE instability with, you know, some evidence? Even something anecdotal would have been nice.

Then, halfway down the page, we find this.
"Here is our review of the new KDE 4.2 release candidate..."
So what have I just wasted my life reading? I thought you'd already started that. Or maybe, in your opinion, it's a good plan to prepend any review with a rant on just how much you're going to hate the thing you're about to review.

OK, then. So, what's the headline story you can bring me from KDE4?
"First, now when you start any file operation, the progress will be displayed in a notification "bubble" that appears above the panel. "
Well, that isn't exactly how I would open my review of KDE 4.2. Not exactly going for the "Ooh, that's quite nice" here, are we?

The next few paragraphs read like someone who's read the KDE press release once or twice, detailing a couple of the things that were looked at between 4.1 and 4.2. Then, another inexplicable comment, when talking about the Folder View plasmoid:

"Users who prefer the conventional desktop icon paradigm can get equivalent functionality in KDE 4.2 by setting the Desktop Activity Type to "Folder View" ... But this doesn't seem to reduce processor or memory usage."

Should it? I see no reason to expect that switching between the two would have much effect on performance at all. To add that throwaway comment at the end just seems like a poorly-veiled attempt to suggest that KDE4 is a resource hog. I would like to know why the author doesn't just come out and say it, rather than drop unsubtle hints like this. If the reviewer isn't being honest about the reviewee, what's the review worth?

"Lastly" - as if an exhaustive list had been given! - "Lastly, the 24 hour clock is still a big problem, there isn't an easy way to set it to 12 hour mode, if at all."
System Settings -> Regional & Language -> Time & Dates. If you were that stuck, Jacob, you could have used Google.

And that's the end of the review. I came away still not quite believing the drivel of the first half of the article, and wondering if the author had actually spent more than five minutes in KDE to write it or not. Sadly, I have no evidence to suggest anything but "not".

Well done for making it to the end of this post - I realise it's a little longer than most of my posts are. I was disappointed that the original article was the second hit on Google for "fedora 10 kde 4.2" - I can only hope that people read a few other reviews before deciding if they want to give KDE a try or not.

Speaking of which - I did promise a KDE review here at some point. I think I've just found my excuse to write one.

Friday, January 16, 2009

Oh, really?

Maybe you thought I was just being anti-Microsoft when I suggested that running Windows on warships was a bad plan, back in December?

Really. I wasn't.

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Let's kill this myth: 64 > 32 after all

So why would you choose to install a 32-but Linux instead of a 64-bit Linux?

Flash player won't work
sudo aptitude install flashplugin-nonfree : It Just Works.

Java won't work
Yes, it will. I have Eclipse running quite happily (though am yet to run the Power MTR QA benchmark we set ourselves at work!)
Oh, maybe you meant the plugin? Well, if the GNU Java plugin didn't already float (double?) your 64-bit boat, then Sun have now released one too.

Wine doesn't work in 64-bit
I play the Windows binary version of EVE with premium (DX9) graphics content at entirely decent framerates. Again I say: It Just Works.

I like paying for RAM that my operating system can't see
Uh...

But there are loads of posts on the Interwebs about people not finding drivers for 64-bit...
...Windows. For Linux, if it's in the kernel tree, it's there (especially with the unification of the 32- and 64-bit architectures).

Coming soon: KDE 4.1, and why people are wrong about it.