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{ Monthly Archives } December 2006

Wireless drivers and Open Source

The Jem report has a great article describing the intracies and difficulties in why wireless drivers suck under Linux/FreeBSD and most other Free operating systems out there. A choice quote from an Atmel representative is extremely enlightening on why some companies are far more open to OSS drivers: You’ve only got three real chances for […]

Island off India claimed by Global warming?

At least the Independent seems to think so. While I don’t deny global warming it’d be nice if they had more information on how old these island have been above water…

gem install mysql failing on Ubuntu fix

The problem Did you try something stupid (and expect something hopeful) like: $ sudo gem install mysql Then get something beautiful like: ERROR: While executing gem … (RuntimeError) ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. Gem files will remain installed in /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.7 for inspection. Welcome to getting bit by the policy of the Debian packaging […]

Projector + Car + Tiger = cool

What happens when you combine a projector inside a car with an animated Tiger? You get some really cool effects on the road for one… Via Table of Malcontents

The birth of an island

Whoah…

Getting a ruby C extension to compile on Windows Part 2

In a previous post I mentioned how to get the Ruby C extension to compile under Windows using Visual Studio Express/Studio 2005. However, I left out an important part regarding manifests which have been part of the development process in VC++7 and above. Manifests are some XML representation of the bindings and and activation (whatever […]

Wirble: A ruby gem that gives tab-completion + syntax coloring to irb

Ruby Inside has a blog post on an add-on to irb that allows tab-completion and syntax coloring for irb. Way cool! The install instructions are simple as: Install Ruby Gems (You DO have this installed, right?) sudo gem install -y wirble Then add the following to $HOME/.irbrc require ‘rubygems’ require ‘wirble’ Wirble.init Wirble.colorize Then enjoy […]

Getting a Ruby C extension to compile on Windows

The Programming Ruby book is one of those must have references if you’re going to program Ruby. I still use it all the time when I’m looking up information on Ruby. One thing I’ve started playing with is getting a C extension to work with Ruby. Chapter 21 of Volume 2 of Programming Ruby gives […]

What would Knuth say in this situation…

The Free Software Foundation and Dogfood

Found this via LWN: By performing a simple Netcraft check, we can see the FSF servers running what GNU/Linux distro? Debian, of course! If the concept hasn’t violated your cortex just yet, I must remind you of this double standard of distribution selection. I spoke with Richard Stallman about this. He didn’t seem to be […]

Getting Mercurial Win32 to use SSH and vim right

I’ve been playing with Mercurial a bit recently as I wanted to get the hang of a Distributed Source Code Management (DSCM) tool better. I’ll save my reasoning for choosing Mercurial for another time. Let’s get to the troubleshooting part. Mercurial provides a Windows version and some instructions on getting it running for basic cases […]

Why software patents are a serious pain

ArsTechnica had a story on a company named BlackBoard acquiring a patent in relation to e-learning systems. Here’s a snippet: … a broad e-learning patent held by education and course management software company Blackboard. The patent, which was awarded in January of this year, covers “Internet-based education support system and methods” … Specifically, the patent […]

Getting a remote instance of Firefox running with a local instance

I needed to access some web-based interface on a machine that was accessible only through an isolated network. Luckily, X11 display forwarding makes this a trivial job. However, Firefox isn’t giving me any love. Normally, you would try to do something below to start a X11 forwarded session via ssh between a machine named client1 […]

Ars’s Final score for the Wii Review confusing

I read through Ars’s review on the Wii and I find their final score (an 8 out of 10) a little hard to understand just like this poster: quote: Originally posted by bluewire: Great review! I’m still befuddled by how the Zune got a 7 and the Wii got an 8. What a headscratcher… Personally, […]