taking over the world...

40 minutes and counting...

...Andrew Tridgell, for all his hard work on Samba, the Linux kernel and rsync! (as well as that free BitKeeper client).

The finalists were Harmut Pilch for FFII and Theodore T'so for his work on the Linux kernel.

The FSF article and the Slashdot story.

...and school starts in less than a week. Crap.

Real World Stock Market is a (fake!) stock market game where you make money by buying and selling shares. Interesting concept, the site needs some promotion though - there are only 18 members at the moment, and stock market games aren't particularly fun when you only have 18 people playing occasionally. Have a look - I've asked the author if he could release the source under the GPL, so I'll post more if that happens.

Well the other night I had to install Windows 98 for someone - makes me remember one reason why I don't like Windows.

After completing the base install, I rebooted to find a VGA screen at 640x480, 4-bit colour. Then I decided to find the driver for the video card. That involved using the motherboard driver CD to install the network card drivers, then rebooting and setting up the network, then going to Windows Update and downloading it, and rebooting again, only to find that the video driver had crazy default settings, so changing that, then rebooting again, then downloading Internet Exploder 6, then rebooting, then applying the security patches, rebooting, etc...

In all, setting up Windoze 98, with IE6, Fx 1.5, Thunderbird 1.5 and OpenOffice.org 2.0.1, then defragging it took four hours and at least fifteen reboots. Setting up a Debian system could be done in less than an hour, and it would be much less annoying.

I'm now syndicated on Planet Linux Australia!

Andrew

The nominations for the 2006 LA ctte election closed early this morning. Voting opens next week. Andrew

Timing error with an email. Over 21,000 University of Alabama students collectively freak out. You'd think that a university wouldn't have a mailing list system like that. Andrew The digg story.

This is what I want for my birthday! ;) And it's powered by Linux! This is the whole page minus images. Andrew From: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3591350722.html Jan. 10, 2006 The first product based on IBM/Toshiba/Sony's Cell processor has shipped, reports Mercury Computer Systems. Mercury's Cell Technology Evaluation System (CTES) is a 470-pound behemoth with one or two dual-Cell blades running Linux. It targets defense, medical, and industrial inspection markets. The CTES system is available with one or two of Mercury's Dual Cell-based Blade units. Each Blade features two Cell processors clocked at 2.4GHz, and running Linux in SMP (symmetric multi-processing) mode. Each Blade also has 512MB of "XDR" SDRAM, a 40GB hard drive, and dual gigabit Ethernet interfaces (dual PCIe Infiniband HCA add-in cards will be available in Q2). The Blades run a net-bootable Yellow Dog Linux variant called "Y-HPC" that was developed by Terra Soft Solutions, one of Mercury's VARs (value-added resellers). The CTES system is housed in a 19-inch, 11U IBM Blade-Server chassis with a Web-based management module, dual gigabit Ethernet switches, and an "acoustic attenuation module." Additional components include a 17-inch flat-panel display with integrated keyboard and touchpad, 2000-Watt power supply, and an Intel Xeon-powered IBM xSeries 336 PC Server development and simulation system (a dual-PowerPC alternative will also be available) running RedHat Fedora Core 4 Linux. The system measures 34.4 x 20.5 x 24 inches, and weighs 470 pounds. On the software side, an included IBM SDK offers compilers and gdb's (GNU debuggers) for the Cell processor's PPE (Power processor elements) and SPE (synergistic processor elements), along with a Cell simulator, and PPE and SPE libraries that support 32-bit PPE applications. CTES additionally integrates a variety of Eclipse-integrated Mercury middleware, including its MultiCore Framework (MCF), aimed at managing the distribution of data across multiple computing elements working in tandem; its Scientific Algorithm Library (SAL); its Parallel Acceleration System (PAS); and its Trace Analysis Tool and Library (TATL). Randy Dean, Mercury's VP of business and technology development, stated, "Our customers have expressed high expectations with the implementation of the Cell Technology into their application development." Availability The CTES is available now to "early access" customers at an undisclosed price. Additional details can be found here.

Crack Attack! Just found this game on my system today. It's quite addictive and can get very very hard. It is sort of like Tetris, except the blocks come from the bottom. Your aim is to get rid of as many blocks as possible by swapping them with the one next to it. This would be a great subgame for Compets, except I think it uses OpenGL. I'll try anyway. Compets Anyway, more on Compets - I have so far got three responses from my SF ad for a C++ programmer, but still none for an artist/graphic designer. Currently I am still working out how to use the ParaGUI library callbacks and other things like that. Most of my effort is in the C++ GNU/Linux client and the PHP server. I have done 85-90% of the coding changes for the Splash Attack subgame and I am looking for an artist for the GFX and levels. The PHP server is based on a 'command factory' model from the book PHP Game Programming by Matt Rutledge. In the second-last chapter, he discusses making an MMO using commands that are all extensions of a base class called CCommand. This seems to work quite well and provides an easier way for recovery through a rollback system. So far I have got a system that allows you to sign up, then sends you an activation code through the email, and allows you to activate and log in. I have also got some graphics borrowed off CrystalSVG. The client is starting to come together. The ParaGUI library seems quite capable and reasonably easy to use. The XML layout files are very easy to use and you can then attach functions as callbacks. One question I have though - is there any easy way to detect a network connection through SDL_net? Because when the internet connection is down, the system 'freezes' up when it is really only waiting for a response from a server that doesn't exist. Andrew

Nominations for the Linux Australia Committee election will be closing in a few days. All Linux Australia members are able to nominate and vote in this election. Nominations close on the 11th and voting is open from the 18th through to midnight server time 24th/25th, just before the AGM at LCA Dunedin. Results will be available from the website at midnight server time 24th/25th January. All members can have their say! If you are a member remember to vote, and if you aren't, consider joining!

It has been released! MyCrapCMS 0.1! (with AJAX pages, the only even close to innovative thing in it).

HLGCMS won't be released tonight because I can't find my thumbdrive. Oh well :( Tomorrow maybe.

• Blob Wars : Metal Blob Solid
• um...not much else - I'm usually too busy coding games to play them

Tomorrow I will (hopefully) release version 0.1 of my LUG's CMS - HLGCMS. This CMS is *really really ground breaking* because it has, um... raw HTML pages... a login system that doesn't do much... and an experimental AJAX page system, which is the only cool thing in it.

Anyway, sometime tomorrow it will be available on my website - if you wanted a stupid CMS, you got one!

This is my new Google-powered blog which is somewhat better than Drupal's blog module. Not much to report as yet.