Older blog entries for Killerbees (starting at number 192)

Penis seen from space II

I totally forgot to post this when I found it, whoever long ago that was.
In 2006 The sun spotted a penis from space.

Syndicated 2009-11-11 13:59:00 (Updated 2009-11-11 13:59:42) from Danny Angus

Looking through a glass onion

In recent days it seems as if the BBC have hired someone from the news desk of the Onion.

In the words of the famous saying I rolled on the floor and laughed my ass off when I read this gem:

Paperboy offered £6.93 redundancy

I got this piece of paper and I didn't really understand all the words.

Syndicated 2009-11-03 09:35:00 (Updated 2009-11-03 09:40:39) from Danny Angus

Exposed, the GPL's fatal flaw

Thanks to a tweet from @wrowe I read this post and this open letter fromRichard Stallman to the European Commission opposing Oracle's acquisition of MySQL (via their acquisition of SUN).

The thrust of the argument is that MySQL is currently licensed under the GPL.
The GPL denies anyone apart from the rights holder the right to sell the product or a derivative of it.
Therefore if Oracle become the rights holder they have an exclusive right to sell the product.
They are, for the same reason, under no obligation to feed their changes back into the open source code base, and have no commercial incentive to do so.
Likewise the opposite is true, Oracle's competitors will gain no commercial advantage from taking a fork of the GLP'ed code and developing it, because the GPL forbids anyone from selling that derivative or from distributing closed-source enhancements.

On the other hand the Apache License [sic], does allow companies and individuals to redistribute for profit, and to redistribute closed source product based on the open source code.

It would seem, then, that had MySQL been licensed under the Apache License Oracle's competitors (whoever they may turn out to be) could have competed from an equal position, by taking a fork of MySQL and developing it, or developing new products derived from it.

This is an approach taken by may, and these days, most of us will benefit in some way or other from products which have benignly licensed components within them.

Could this, then, be the long awaited moment when the aggressive social evangelism encapsulated in the GPL tests capitalism in the ultimate showdown?

I think that a lot of people have been waiting for that, but sadly for them it looks like their champion has taken a fatal hit in its Achilles heel.

Syndicated 2009-10-30 11:13:00 (Updated 2009-10-30 11:39:18) from Danny Angus

Wear it pink day


Today, Oct 30th is Wear it pink day, and to show our support we're all wearing it pink, as these photos show.
Thank god the photo's aren't any clearer!









Syndicated 2009-10-30 09:49:00 (Updated 2009-10-30 10:23:22) from Danny Angus

OMGWTF US MPG != IMP MPG

Kevin pointed out that my tweet which said:

According to national geographic this mth, "average american car gets 21 mpg". Omg, my 2L clio sport gets 31, and I drive like an idiot.".
is misleading.

According to this authority (picked at random from the net of nonsense and with no check by me) what we're saying is the US cars average 25.219946996999997 UK MPG. [1]

And my clio only gets 25.812901195923956 US MPG. Not so smug now, am I?

[1] How precise! But don't forget kids, as Uncle Danny never tires of saying, precision is not the same as accuracy.

Syndicated 2009-10-29 16:56:00 (Updated 2009-10-29 17:03:33) from Danny Angus

Android's Elephant in the room, and the its-not-an-iphone award

The elephant in the room for Android, from my point of view as a G1 user, is the woeful bluetooth support.
My previous phone, a w810i, supported a bewildering array of bluetooth uses, but the ones I found most useful were push/pull of my contacts and using the phone as a presentation tool.

Well hallelujah, android 2 platform highlights are saying that the new major version will contain

New BT profiles: Object Push Profile (OPP) and Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP)
OPP is the one I want for managing and exchanging contacts, PBAP is for integrating with my car. Although I have to say it does this already.

I'm also pleased to see that there are a number of usability improvements, in particular for the soft keyboard, which I can't really use very well because of my phat phingers, contacts, email, and a digital zoom on the camera.

Oh and in case you were wondering, I think the ring volume is too quiet, and the battery life sucks. But since those are hardware issues I guess that after a couple of months of living with it Android gets a big thumbs up from me, and so is the recipient of the its-not-an-iphone award.

Syndicated 2009-10-29 09:45:00 (Updated 2009-10-29 10:04:01) from Danny Angus

qr code

At work we already make good use of onscreen barcodes for use in fulfillment processes, but I hadn't really thought much about putting anything like it on here.

However inspired by google's logo the other day I realised that it might actually be useful to put a link code on my blog for phone users who may want to subscribe.

So thanks to this great site you can now subscribe to this blog by scanning the QR code below (also in the left margin).

Sadly for me it opens in the browser and doesn't get anywhere near a feed reader, but you may have more luck!

I guess I should do something work-related with this idea next..

qrcode

Syndicated 2009-10-10 17:02:00 (Updated 2009-10-10 17:10:07) from Danny Angus

Lucky Firefox!

Some folks were discussing the application of the "ribbon" to firefox the other day.
More on that here.

One thing that came out was the notion that the ribbon is a tool best suited to document production.

If that's the case, and I am in no position to doubt it, please can UI designers allow us to move it to the side.

The screenshot graphically demonstrates the problem I have on my 11" widescreen laptop. The ribbon eats valuable height for lunch, while two whole football pitches of space exist at the side of my document.

I could probably get more buttons into that space than I would ever need, and I'd get the height back.

Syndicated 2009-09-28 15:30:00 (Updated 2009-09-28 15:47:38) from Danny Angus

Stepping down

Today I indicated to the Apache James project management committee (PMC) my intention to step down after managing the process of electing a successor.

I'm very proud to be associated with The ASF and the James project, and even more proud still to have served as the project's second chairperson, and wish my successor all the luck in the world.

I also took the opportunity to stand down from the Jakarta PMC, another project I am immeasurably proud to be associated with, which I haven't contributed a meaningful iota to for a couple of years other than to clog up their decision making process a tiny bit.

So it seems like an appropriate moment to pause and reflect nostalgic-ly on the times shared, the problems solved, the achievements and the failures, friends made and lost, arguments lost and won, flame-wars, troll-baiting and so on.

But I can't be bothered with all that! And to be honest I'm looking forward to a refreshing lack of commitment, no more nagging guilt at not making enough time, and above all the chance to pick and choose how and when I contribute in an arbitrary and selfish way once again.

I hope that this means that I can spend what little time I do have poking about in code, (I have long envied those who have time to experiment in the labs), arguing with my peers and not trying too hard to keep up with mailing lists.

Syndicated 2009-09-24 20:33:00 (Updated 2009-09-24 20:51:27) from Danny Angus

Load Balancing Apache httpd 2

Yes.. hear it here last!
I've been telling everyone I meet about JimJag's stupendous presentation at Apachecon US 08, in which he showed us, in glorious detail, how to use mod_proxy properly and mod_proxy_balancer.

I was impressed, and so have those who've also seen the slides.

Now its your chance, I recommend reading Jim's slides here.

If you have real life experience of using mod_proxy_balancer, let us know if he oversold it, or if it rocks your world. I *still* haven't had time to use it in for real yet.

Syndicated 2009-09-15 22:18:00 (Updated 2009-09-15 22:30:07) from Danny Angus

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