Martin @ Blog

According to AppleInsider the Mac mini is nearing end-of-life this month. The site reports that Apple resellers do not get new supply of the mini computer. I wonder if the Mac mini will dissappear completely from Apple’s product list, or that a replacement will be announced. The Mac mini is a nice computer for people to get familiar with Mac OS X without paying a premium price. The current models are quite fast and should be at least sufficient for most people who only use their computer for browsing the Internet, editting family pictures and doing some word processing. The first generation Mac mini’s, the ones with the G4 processor, were a little slow, but the current models have Core Duo processors, which are identical to the ones in the MacBook. Only time will tell, I guess.

‘Hello from Seattle’ is Microsoft’s alternative on the Zune to the ‘Designed by Apple in California’ that is printed on the packaging of Apple products. I think it is a bit of sad in a way an indicator that Microsoft is actually losing its leading position on the IT market. I don’t think it is a very good sign that you have to imitate (or react, depending on your view) this kind of gimmicks of the competitor.

Last weekend was quite busy. We went to the Efteling because the employer of my girlfriend was having a family day there. It was very nice, especially because the weather was exeptional good for this time of the year.

I also read today about a new mainbord from ASUS which incorporates a embedded Linux installation for configuring the system and also provides some functionality, such as Skype. I think it is a nice idea, but unfortunately, it is a little expensive with a price of 360 dollars. You can buy a complete system for that money.

Rikkert Koppes has created a library which enables some Web Forms 2.0 elements for existing browsers. Not all additions are implemented and some parts, like css pseudo classes, work a little different than in it will be in the ‘real’ WF2 implementtions, but it is a very nice start and I think it can definitely be useful in web applications (especially the various date controls).

It seems that Novell created a fork of OpenOffice.org. The cause of this action is the fact that the Sun Microsystems currently controls the entire development process of OpenOffice.org and requires contributers to transfer code ownership to Sun. Some of them, for example the creator of a linear solver for OO.o Calc refuses to do so. Novell now provides a version of OO.o which incorporate these patches. I’m not sure if this will benefit the development of OpenOffice.org in a significant and positive way. It is a shame that Sun is making all key decisions with regard to the future of OpenOffice.org and as such preventing the developer community introducing novel ideas.
I still think that OO.o is missing an opportunity by effectively building an MS Office clone instead of a Office suite which implement the same functionality in a better (or at least different) way.

I think this post is rather funny. I think it is also noteworthy that Microsoft is also the owner of a ISO standard proposal with the largest number of comments…

I noticed I did not mentioned yet that since a few weeks I own a Wii. My girlfriend gave me one for my graduation (which obviously made me very happy and was very sweet 🙂 ). Since I didn’t use a Wii before I got my own, I was eager to experience the machine. I had read about it on the internet, but my expectations were not very high, considering the fact that I saw some hypes before which where disappointing when I tried it my self. Howeve, Nintendo did a very good job with the Wii. Controlling the device using the Wii-mote (the wireless remote control) works very well. You can just point to your TV to control the cursor. Combined with the Nunchuk it enables innovative ways to play games, such as boxing by just do punch movements, and tennis by just make the movements one normally makes when trying to hit a tennis ball with a tennis racket.

Currently, I own four games:

Wii Sports

The game that ships by default with the Wii. It contains a number of small games, such as tennis, golf, baseball, bowling and boxing. It uses the possibilities of the Wii-mote to its full extend (of course) and is very entertaining. Especially with multiple players it is very nice

Extreme Truck

This is an arcade truck racing game. It was very cheap, but is nice to play. Controlling your car is done by using the Wii-mote like a steer. This makes it very natural to play, because most people have the tendency to move nonetheless to the direction the car should go to when playing it on another system. The Wii uses this motion to actual control the truck. The simulation is not very realistic, but that’s ok.

Scarface

A very nice game, but doesn’t use the controllers to their full extend. However, the Nunchuk makes it easier to play these kind of games compared to other consoles, I think.

Boogie

I didn’t play this game very much, but it seems nice.

I’m planning to buy some additional games. Resident Evil 4 should be very nice according to stories of other people. I also want to buy some Mario games, such as Mario Party 8 and Super Paper Mario. And of course the braintraining game Brain Academy Wii Edition.

ZDNet published an interview with Novell employee Michael Meeks, who is working on OpenOffice.org and Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. Intersting read, though not much news.

De actiegroep ‘wij vertouwen stemcomputers niet’ zal vermoedelijk verheugd zijn met het besluit van staatsecretaris Bijleveld om de goedkeuring voor stemcomputers in te trekken. Daarmee lijkt het einde van de huidige Nedap-stemcomputers ingeluid, wat naar mijn mening een goede zaak is. Een uitgebreide bespreking van het probleem heb ik eerder gegeven. Het plan is nu dat er nieuwe stemcomputers komen die de stem uit zal printen, waarna de uiteindelijke telling zal worden gedaan door een elektronische stemmenteller. In principe wordt de stemcomputer dan niet meer dan een heel geavanceerd rood potlood.

Getuige zijn website, geloof het bedrijf Nedap nog heilig in zijn machine en ziet geen enkel probleem:

Hoewel nooit aangetoond is dat Nedap stemmachines onbetrouwbaar zijn en in het Nationaal Kiezersonderzoek dat op 22 november 2006 door het CBS werd gepubliceerd, bleek dat maar liefst 84% van de respondenten ‘veel’ of ‘zeer veel’ vertrouwen had in de Nedap stemmachines, kunnen wij ons ook vinden in het door de commissie voorgestelde alternatief.

Ik denk niet dat ze veel andere keuze hebben dan zich ‘vinden in het advies’.

Overigens had NRC.Next een fout in zijn berichtgeving over dit onderwerp, aangezien de krant meldde dat Nedap de enige stemcomputerfabrikant in Nederland is. Dit is onjuist, aangezien de SDU ook stemcomputers maakt, die al eerder werden afgekeurd.

Op de superprofessionele website van Groenendaal, de producent van de software voor de stemcomputers, wordt de actiegroep ‘wij vertrouwen stemcomputers enthousiast ontvangen:

Hoera! We hebben er weer een actiegroep bij.

Maar maakt nog geen melding van de nieuwste ontwikkelingen in stemcomputerland.

This week, the WordPress development team released version 2.3 of WordPress. I did not upgrade yet, because I didn’t have the time yet. Because I’m not very enthusiastic on the source code of WordPress, I’m a little bit wary when upgrading WordPress to a new version, mainly because of the number of bugs that pop up in the weblog software. However, Jeff Waugh has documented his upgrade of WordPress to version 2.3 and did not fiind any problems. I will give it a try this weekend.

The most important change in version 2.3 of WordPress is the introduction of tags instead of categories. I think this is a good idea, since I already use the WordPress categories as tags.

Recently, I did some reading on new software releases. Last week, a new version of Gnome was released which was not unexpected, considering the fact that Gnome has the aim to release a new version every six months. Gnome 2.20 does not contain revolutionairy features, but has some nice improvements. One improvement I like is the notification that the e-mail client Evolutions give when it thinks the user forgets to add an attachement to an e-mail. When an e-mail contains words indicating that the mail should contain an attachment, the system gives an warning that the user possibly forgets to include the attachement.

Another useful improvement (not mentioned in the release notes) is the drag-and-drop functionality between File-roller and Nautilus. I think this kind of features are very important to get Gnome accepted by the general public.

A nice addition to the list of applications that are available for Gnome is Cheese, which is a clone of the Mac OS X application PhotoBooth.

MySQL 6

Earlier this month, MySQL AB, the company behind the open source database MySQL, has released the second alpha version of MySQL 6. This upcoming version of the database system contains a new storage engine, called Falcon. This engine’s aim is to replace InnoDB as default storage engine. The company which developed InnoDB was bought by Oracle in 2005 and I think MySQL don’t like the idea that its main product is based on a storage engine developed by one of its competitors. Falcon is developed by Jim Starkey which became an employee of MySQL when it bought Starkey’s company Netfrastructure.

Starkey has researched some important technologies for database engines. While he was working for DEC, he was the first to implement multi versioning concurrency control (MVCC) and triggers. These technologies were integrated in InterBase which later became the basis for the open source database engine Firebird.

Falcon has some nice features, such as an advanced caching system, support for ACID-transactions, and row-level replication. It would definately give MySQL a enterprise ready storage engine, but they first have to finish it. Currently, according to preliminary benchmarks, the performance of Falcon is worse compared to InnoDB when storing and retrieving BLOB-data. But the potention is definately there, considering the fact that Falcon is still under development. However, MySQL has the target to release the final version in 2008, which may be a little optimistic.

I wrote an article of Falcon for Tweakers.net (Dutch).

SCO has applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which means the company can reorganize without having to fear from its creditors. It is very intersting to read that Darl McBride, SCO’s CEO, now blames Linux for the bad financial position the company is in. As many Slashdot readers already points out, SCO – formarly known as Caldera, was a Linux distributer. But it stopped selling its Linux solutions when it decided to accuses Linux developers from ‘stealing’ code from Unix and use it in the Linux kernel. Until know, this claim is never proven. According to SCO, Linux distributors were aggressively targeting Unix vendors and as a result SCO is now almost bankrupt. I think this company gets what it deserves.