Javascript Tip Of The Day: “When Is A Width Not A Width?”
This is a bit of a gotcha for young players in the Javascript game. You have a web page with a DIV which you fill dynamically with, let's say, 5 IMG elements. How do you get the width of the DIV? You can try "document.getElementById('divId').width" but it will do you no good. The answer: use "document.getElementById('divId').offsetWidth". Here's a handy guide when it comes to DHTML element position and locations.
Linux Community Must Help Dell Sell Linux
The announcement that many people wanted to hear is imminent. Early rumours abound on various sites but possibly by the time you are reading this, Dell will have already made the official announcement that they are to ship Dell PC's with the Linux operating system - Ubuntu. This is the major breakthrough that Linux as a desktop OS has been waiting for. Now all Linux communities -be it Open Source, Free Software, Linux for home or business that is your cup of tea - must help Dell sell this dream.
The most obvious way to help is for bloggers or people with websites to display a prominent ad for Dell Linux boxes. Let's show Dell that by listening and embracing the Linux community that we can help them out. Each and everyone can be a partner to Dell and it is in everyone's interest that Linux market share grows. A bigger pie means that more hardware vendors will support Linux and having the Open Source desktop OS in the limelight will mean more development work for Open Source programmers. For consumers, it brings choice like they've never had before - the modern day Linux OS thoroughly outshines it competitors. I do not make this comment lightly. But this week I got my first glimpse at the 3D accelerated desktop for Linux - it is incredible! It leaves Vista for dead. And comparing the two side-by-side there is only one winner.
So let's help Dell sell Linux. I'm going to be emailing them after the official announcement to get my Dell Linux ad. Never has marketing been such a pleasure! And never has the Linux Desktop looked so good!
[digg=http://digg.com/linux_unix/Linux_Community_Must_Help_Dell_Sell_Linux ]
The Frogface Project Website Launched
We've tried to start this before and never quite finished it. You can check out the site at www.frogface.org. This time things went smoothly, however I had to struggle through my hangover on Saturday while I polished off the final details. A big kudos to Veedles who did a smashing job creating the images and logo for the site - and now that she is the queen of web design is gonna spruce the site up even more over the coming weeks!
The Frogface project is an effort to create a user friendly scuba dive logging application which runs on any computer. It's still not ready for everyday use so us developers will have to keep beavering away for a while. Things are going well recently as I escaped my horribly busy work schedule in order to get phase 1 of the project done. Ganesh is working on getting the menu's together over the coming weeks and I'm gonna try and get my head around beautifying the user interface and making it look real pretty. As they say, "There's more than one way to skin an app!"
Elephant Dream – Art House Animation Extraordinaire
Here's a superb 12 minute animation which features crisp industrial post-modern backdrops puncuated by expressively crafted chararcters; all done in Blender - an open source 3D modelling on the verge of the big time. It's a hefty download so you'll want a broadband connection, but it's worth the wait. Just sit back and simply enjoy these wonderful graphics by visiting the download section at http://orange.blender.org
Object Orientation and Javascript
Javascript is muck; don't let anyone tell you otherwise. But it's also unavoidable. My latest effort to write better JS code is to use inheritance when creating classes and objects. So before I forget, I'm posting these links - as they're pretty handy. Sounds like a lot of hassle for a bit of inheritance though!
Linux Sound Problem: Nvidia nForce 430 and Asus M2NPV-VM
This is just a quick post covering a sound problem I encountered when running OpenSuse 10.2 with Nvidia nForce 430 and Asus M2NPV-VM. The solution that worked for me is to open the /etc/modprobe.conf.local file and make sure it includes the 'options line below
#
# please add local extensions to this file
#options snd-hda-intel position_fix=1 model=3stack
This did the job nicely. I found the solution here, which has a lot more detail.
Installing the SMART Package Manager on OpenSuse 10.2 Linux
Easy installing of software is the make-or-break aspect of any operating system. This is no different with Linux. Far and away, in my humble opinion, the best tool for this (on an rpm based system) is SMART. This quick post just overviews the steps I took to get it installed on my machine, as some of the instructions deviated from the SMART on Suse wiki.
I went into Suse's main configuration tool called YAST and checked made sure that the following were installed as pre-requisites
* python-xml
* python-elementtree
* rpm-python
Then I went to the command line and typed
> su
> rpm -ihv http://ftp.skynet.be/pub/suser-guru/smart/10.2/i586/smart-latest.rpm
This did the hard work of installing smart which then asked a series of questions as to what sources to use for installing software (called channels). I said yes to everything except any channels with KDE in the title as the KDE channels can contain 'developmental' bleedin edge software which can destabilise your system (I wasn't sure if it was ok to say yes to the KDE-backports so I just err'ed on the side of caution and said no).
Then came the tricky bit - which is the reason I'm writing this blog post - installing a user interface for SMART. This is because when I followed the instructions on the 'SMART on Suse wiki' (ie. the above link) I typed
> smart install smart-gui
but got the error...
> Computing transaction... error: Can't install smart-gui 0.50-1 guru.suse102@i686: no package provides python-gtk
The fix for this is to install python-gtk the same way as the prerequisites (python-xml , python-elementtree, rpm-python) using YAST. I found this answer at the following forum thread. Once that's complete type the following
> smart install smart-gui
and agree to its demands. Here presto! You're done... and now have the easiest way to install software in town! To run SMART just type
>sux -c "smart --gui"
I was doing this on a 32 bit machine. If your architecture is different you might want to refer to the
SMART on Suse wiki, which also has a lot more detail on the powerful ways to configure and use this wonderful little program.
Blair Government Throws UK Programmer to the Dogs of US Justice
Gary McKinnon is a computer programmer who likes UFOs and rainy Sundays. Curiousity got the better of him so he went searching online for UFO conspiracy theorys and photos believing that the evidence to date suggests that US was hiding something Roswell style et al. Not exactly a profile of a notorious threat to national US security yet. His curiosity brought him to various US military networks which he then found were remarkably easy to access given that apparently the username and password were the same in several cases and security was incredibly lax. He managed to find some folders containing pictures of nice shiny UFO-like things and got excited as his dream of seeing became a reality. Heart pumping he clicking on one of the files. As them image began to slowly come up on his screen his dream was cut short - one of the administrators had noticed him in the system and promptly cut him out...
Needless to say, the US authorities were pretty pissed about the whole episode. The UFO equivalent of a trainspotter had managed to waltz around their systems like a kid in a candy store because aledgedly their administrators couldn't do their job properly. You would think that given the background to the case Gary would have been handed down a punishment apportionate to the crime - after all no one got hurt, no one was killed or maimed in the incident. It is alledged that some damage was done but Gary maintains that such allegations are false and in an article on .NET magazine outlines how the figures don't add up. Given the facts of the case to date and what Gary's motivations, it is unlikely that someone who wants to keep a low profile in a system to look around for information is going to go deleting files for the sake of damaging a system.
So instead being given a big slap on the wrists, some UK jail time or 400 hours community service cleaning viruses of peoples computers Gary is being threatened with - get this - extradition to the US, a 45 year prison sentence to be served on US soil only and, worst of all, a possible handover to the US military trails. This latter point wouldn't be good, not only against the backdrop of Guantanamo bay and big orange jump suits, but because of 'alledged threats by the US authorities in New Jersey to see Gary "fry", which could be a reference to the electric chair'. 'Currently, the US civil legal authorities are not calling for the death penalty (which would stop the extradition to the USA under United Kingdom and European Union law), but such a penalty is possible if the case gets hijacked by a US Military Tribunal, once Gary is physically in the power of the US authorities.' [http://freegary.org.uk/]
So our UFO trainspotter is in a bit of bother. It's sad then to hear yesterday that John Reid, UK home secretary, has given the green light to ship Gary McKinnon off to the US. He's already lost his job, girlfriend and has been in poor health in recent hearings as the stress of the case takes it's toll. He has never denied his actions and has taken responsibility for what he has done. He has already suffered enough. Will it really do any more good for the US to show how big and mighty it is by beating the soul out of this guy in order to show who's boss. It might be better to spend that energy on employing a few new system administrators who know how to put passwords on a system instead.
This opinion piece was based in part on the following BBC News item.
EMI Heralds a Revolution in Online Music
At last the fight against anti-consumer record labels crippling music purchased online is looking to be at an end. EMI have decided to make their songs sold on iTunes free of DRM (Digital Rights Management) - a technology which prevented users playing back their music on any device of their choice. This is probably one of the most important changes that could have happened in the delivery of online music and is set to transform the industry and reduce piracy. As EMI boss Eric Nicoli said,
"We have to trust our consumers. We have always argued that the best way to combat illegal traffic is to make legal content available at decent value and convenient."
The new tracks will cost about 30 cent more per track. But the advantages of this greatly outweigh the cost increase and the tracks will also be of higher quality. In addition, customers who have already bought tracks will be given the option to pay the difference in price to make their entire existing collection DRM free.
The move is set to put pressure on other labels to stop restricting consumers' freedom to choose how to enjoy the music they've purchased. A victory for choice, economics and anti-piracy in the music industry. This post is based on a news item on the BBC at the following link. So read more of the good news there. Here's to EMI taking a leading role in the music industry and setting the ball roling on the most important music issue today!