Older blog entries for superuser (starting at number 30)

Mac's Expose

Having used it on Piera's eMac, I can say that I really don't find it useful. In the world of Virtual Desktops, Expose doesn't do much for me. I mean, seriously, if you have a disoragnised desk, than it probably makes sense, with little notes all over the place. This reminds me so much of "Where's Waldo". You know the book, the one where you have a thousand illustrations of people in an area, and you have one guy, Waldo, who you need to find.

Expose feels like that. Sure, when you only have a few windows open, it is probably nice. But ALT+TAB is so much faster. I can go back and forth without a problem. Expose might allow me to take a look at everything I have open, but I am only looking for one thing. And Expose doesn't know what I am looking for. With Virtual Desktops, I find it much easier to say "Hey, Email goes here on this desktop, generic web browsing here, development stuff here, graphic stuff here,..." and so on. I keep my life organized.

No doubt that Expose is a neat feature, it looks cool, and people probably use it. But as I see it, it's a Band-Aid on a larger problem. Window organization. Taskbars are the same thing. The computer can multitask, but the user is only ever actively using one application at a time.

No, really, that's it. Even if you are using a PHP IDE and checking the results in the browser, their is only ever one active application. You are writing in your IDE, and then switch to the browser. This makes a Virtual Desktop environment much more suited to getting stuff done. A virtual desktop allows you to setup "workshops", and in this workshop, you can get all your tools out ready to use. You are only ever going to use one tool at a time.

But with something like Expose (and as far as I know, Mac OSX doesn't have virtual desktops), it's like having one workshop, with all your tools laid out at once. You are only ever going to use one at a time, but now you have all your projects in one workshop. This means your life is much less organized, and you have just increased the number of choices you have to make whenever you want to switch tools.

And this coincides with something I saw on Daily Planet the other day: we have too many choices.

On a side note, Piera will probably beat me up for all of this. After all, she loves her Mac like any good Mac Addict does. And she freely admits her addiction.

Discovered my companies server IP addresses are blocked by Spamhaus for something I don't know anything about. These are my servers, and I am on these IP addresses. And everyone here knows I wouldn't spam. Anyways, sent them an email. Let's see how this goes.

hadess: The point of my post didn't meant to imply he was telling people to use Microsoft over Linux. Though I admit, maybe my choice of words wasn't all good.

However, that had little to do with the meaning of the rest of my post. Simply put: Whatever the Red Hat CEO says, whatever SuSE and Novell are up to, whatever Microsoft says doesn't make a difference to the whole scheme of things. Every where I was reading about these events, people were treating it like it was the end of the world, or bad omens.

They aren't. It's evolution. Things happen, businesses change focus.

If you think that everybody should be using Linux, you're an idiot who can't see the missing bits. Probably as stupid as that Windows user who downloads warez, and uses mIRC thinking he's l33t. Just about.

Now, where do I even make this suggestion? Would I like everyone to use Linux, or alternative OS's? Of course. That would be great. Do I think we are at a state where this is possible? No. Do I think it's going in that direction? Yes.

Please don't suggest I am saying something I don't, nor believe.

It seems that Novell buying SuSE, and Red Hat only doing enterprise stuff is causing a big storm. Of course, the fact that the Red Hat CEO is saying use Windows for the desktop doesn't go over well with your normal open source crowd.

But even still, people are acting like this is the end of the world. As if suddenly Linux has no more support on the desktop. I've been using Linux as my sole desktop OS for more than a year now, and I have found that I don't need support. Well, I don't need support as much as I didn't need support on Windows.

So Red Hat isn't supporting the home user anymore. Big deal. Unless I am mistaken, Microsoft doesn't provide support to home users. If you want to pay for it, you can, of course.

And then there is the big Novell buys SuSE stories that go around, people proclaiming it's the end of KDE, or that SuSE is dead because Novell will kill it off. You know, because SuSE was the only supporter of KDE. And because Novell is going to ax KDE. I mean, you know Novell bought SuSE just to destroy it, right? And that there are no other desktop linux choices out there.

People, get over it. This is all for the better. Now Red Hat released Fedora. This means I can burn copies and sell it, and call it Fedora. And it's an open source distro of the Red Hat OS. The development is opened up.

What's going on now with SuSE and Red Hat isn't bad. It's good. It's evolution.

Hrm...this seems pretty interesting, just trying GnomeBlog out with the Advogato API set to see if it works. Might just have to incorporate this into my own blog software.

deekayen
Regarding your little adventure with phpMyAdmin, you would be surprised at what an IP address can do if you confront an ISP with it. I once tracked a spammer on my forums to an ISP. They apparently caught the person, and several days later, I got an email from the offender apologizing. It never hurts to see if you can do anything. Cracking is indeed a crime, and script kiddies need to learn.
7 Jan 2003 (updated 7 Jan 2003 at 04:21 UTC) »

Testing my Diary Editor

And it works!!! Yay, I have a Python/Tkinter based Advogato Gui Diary Editor. Okay it may not be the first ( I really don't know, never looked), but it's my first real Python Gui app program, so cool.

Py

BTW, for those interested, I have picked up the first two issues of Py (and another 4 issues subscription), an "Independent Zine for Python Developers" quarterly. Both issues are short (16 pages), but filled with wholesome goodness. Something about the feel of "Dead Tree" makes it a pleasant read. The paper quality is newspaper style, and fits well with what it is. However, the quality is of the content is wonderful.

While this may be nothing new to Python developer's, it is a great resource. You can find more information at PyZine.com.

Work

Well, it's time to move on, somewhat. I will be having a third interview at the new company, and will most likely be picked up. More money, more opportunities, a company that allows it's programmers to use whatever OS and tools they want as long as they can do the job. That ain't half bad.

Advogato

Been looking at advogato lately, and notice their RPC server setup. Since I have been messing around with Python lately, I will probably throw together a GUI program that allows me to enter my diary entries without actually having to come here. That would be pretty cool. Other things could be added as well.

Maybe something that checks the recentlog every once in a while (6 hours?) for new updates, and checkes them to see if someone said anything about me. Might be a good tool.

Yes, I would open source it.

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