Matt Croydon::Postneo

Year: 2003

  • White Box Enterprise Linux

    Via PCLinuxOnline, White Box Enterprise Linux is derived from the open source SRPMs from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.

    What would motivate someone to undertake a project such as this?

    White Box Linux’s initial creation has been sponsored by the Beauregard Parish Public Library in DeRidder, LA USA out of self interest. We have several servers and over fifty workstations running Red Hat Linux and were left high and dry by their recent shift in business plan. Our choices were a difficult migration to another distribution or paying RedHat an annual fee greater than the amortized value of our hardware. So we chose a third path, made possible by the power of Open Source…. White Box Linux.

    Check out the notes section of the site for some interesting quirks between the SRPMs and RHEL.  Be considerate, download over BitTorrent, and keep it to yourself, mmkay?  At the very least don’t tell Slashdot! 🙂

  • LOAF Roundup

    I’m quite amused to find LOAF become a mini-meme this morning.  Here is a list of implementations that I have seen so far:

    There are also two graphics for you to choose from for your LOAF branding.  Where is that perfect LOAF implementation in Haskell?

  • Designing XHTML/HTML For Series 90

    There is a new download at Forum Nokia today: Developer Platform 2.0 for Series 90: Designing XHTML/HTML Content v1.0.  It supercedes a previous pdf file entitled Developer Platform 2.0 for Series 90: Designing Web Services.  The 7700 ships with a customized version of Opera 6.  The browser itself is designed to reasonably handle HTML 4.1, XHTML 1.0 and 1.1, WML, XHTML Mobile Profile and others.

    The phone will render a normal web page as best as it can in 640×320 or less pixels, but markup written in XHTML-MP and designed for a mobile phone would probably be ideal.  Of course, not all HTML-MP phones are created equal.  In order to deliver the best user experience, it might be best to sniff user agents and send 3650/6600/Series 60 users to one page and Series 90 users to another.

    This could get complex and out of hand quickly, but in many cases it could be worthwhile.  Of course you could also target a Series 90 specific site and write the XHTML-MP code optimized for the screen layout.  A mobile site tailored to 7700 users for instance, could easily go for a 7700 specific layout.  Keep in mind that your users might be coming in at 640×320 in fullscreen mode, or they might have as little as 480×217 free if they are browsing with both the command bar and toolbar shown.  I have a feeling that many users will spend a good bit of their time surfing in 480×217 mode or similar, as long as the site permits.  This way they have easy access to navigation buttons and it will also keep them in familiar gound with the surrounding UI.  Also note that you loose another 20 pixels if there is a scrollbar involved.

    So far XHTML-MP has not been covered very thoroughly in the blogosphere, technosphere, or the book world.  In the near future I hope to address some of that with some musings on XHTML-MP.

  • The 7700 Gets Noticed by Newsforge

    Newsforge covers the Nokia 7700:

    Nokia, the world’s largest mobile telephone maker, is getting awfully close to bringing a handheld, Internet-connected television to the consumer market. The Finland-based megacorporation has launched a new category of handheld product — called mobile media devices — which feature Nokia’s largest, most colorful display: a 640×320 touch-sensitive screen that renders as many as 65,536 colors. Nokia says these new devices, to hit the market in Q2 of 2004, offer plenty of new opportunity for Symbian, Java, and C++ developers and is now making SDKs available for free download.

    I’m really exited about the platform, so of course any good press is A Good Thing.  Since the story is on NewsForge, there is an open source/free beer spin to the story.  They mention the free (beer) SDKs that are available and note that Nokia is looking for more developers for the platform.

    I’m so there, but the more the merrier.

  • Buffer Overflow in Windows Workstation Service

    CERT CA-2003-28 points out a “Buffer Overflow in Windows Workstation Service.”

    Windows Update popped up in my taskbar earlier this evening.

    Time to reboot.

  • Where Did I Park my Plane?

    From the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

    A lot of neighborhoods don’t allow the owners to park Boeing 707s outside their homes, which is why actor John Travolta moved to Jumbolair, near Ocala.

    Nice digs.  I’ve been to Ocala before, which is probably the only reason that I am posting this.  The house/airport has some nice specs.

  • SmartFrog

    Steve pointed to SmartFrog this evening.  Here’s an example of what you might be able to do with it:

    For example, a JBoss plugin would let you declare all the system requirements -memory options, system requirements, and the plugin would get the hypervisor to alloc the appropriate system, then we’d generate jboss boot scripts that would set up the JVM right, run the system, etc, etc. The cool thing is its dynamicity -you can deploy to new machines in a snap.

    Sounds whacky cool.

  • Call In The Bomb Squad

    According to our local NBC affiliate, two packages that were “built to look like a bomb” were discovered in Aspen Hill, Maryland this afternoon.  That’s all of about 3-4 miles from where I’m typing right now.

    Hoorah!

  • User Linux Announced at the Desktop Linux Consortium Conference

    Wired News:

    The new version of Linux, called UserLinux, is being proposed by open-source sage Bruce Perens, who claims to have the backing of some of the world’s largest companies, across a number of business sectors. UserLinux, which will be paid for with multimillion-dollar donations from Perens’ corporate backers, will be free for unlimited use, and will be certified by large computer makers.

    More coverage can be found at NewsForge and Slashdot.  General coverage of the Desktop Linux Consortium Conference can be found at El Reg, ONLamp, NYTimes, CRN and others.

  • My $55 Bet on Symbian, Series 90, and the Nokia 7700

    If you had asked me six months ago what mobile OS would rule the world, I would have told you Symbian hands down, no questions.  Today the picture is a bit murkier.

    There are a ton of tiny and cheap CMDA phones that are coming on the market.  Sure, they can’t do what a 3650 or a P900 can do, but their feature lists are getting better and better.  On even the more modest phones you can usually expect downloadable ringers, wallpaper, and possibly even BREW/J2ME.  It may not be enough for me, but it’s sure enough for a lot of people.

    Another contender out there are the Smartphones of the Windows Mobile variety.  They rarely support Bluetooth and other things that I think of as essential, but the interface is slick!  I have a PocketPC 2002 device and having played around with the Motorola Smartphone, I can honestly say that the Windows Mobile interface is cleaner and easier to use than PocketPC.  It behaves as expected, and you’ve got your little pocket version of your favorite Windows apps.  Everything is there.  It feels familiar, yet it’s a phone.

    Do you remember Alice?  This is a song about Alice.

    So here’s the dirt on my bet on the Symbian horse.

    I bought myself a book this evening: Symbian OS C++ for Mobile Phones.  I stopped by my local Borders on the way to class and thumbed through the Hello World chapter.  It seemed to fill in a lot of the “huh?” gaps that the Series 90 Hello World.  It leans a bit toward developing for UIQ, but points out the differences and how you could change the code to develop for non-UIQ devices.  Instead of “this is how it is” the book tries to go in to “this is how it is, and why.”  There is definitely some funky embedded highly optimized C++ going on there, but too easy is no fun.

    I will definitely post the things that I am learning as I am learning them.

    With MIDP 2.0 in the wild, as well as extensions that allow access to the Bluetooth stack and multimedia/messaging components of the hardware, we are going to see some richer J2ME apps down the line.  We’re going to see them for Symbian and non-Symbian devices.  I still believe that the killer apps for Symbian platforms are going to come in native C++ form.  I believe that Series 90 is going to kick some butt and give the other Smartphones a run for their money.  The screen size is right, the user interface is slick, the possibilities are endless.

    So hopefully with kick butt J2ME apps, a revival of OPL, and some of the best native apps that you can sort of stick in your pocket, my money is on Symbian and Series 90.

  • Best. Craiglslist Post. Evar!

    This is awesome:

    toshiba 2805 computer laptop for sale:

    The keys have all been torn out. The monitor has been shattered after experiencing my fists and a several foot stomps; The laptop upon impact, after being thrown to the ground, permanently ejected the dvd/cd player . The dvd/cd player also disassmbled after the ejection. Several other unidentified pieces of the laptop parted during this incident. The harddrive crashed prior to this incident–However, I am keeping that in case I can retrieve the data.

    I am also offering a white trash bag as a free carrying case.

    (to the tune of Real Men of Genius)…We salute you, Mr. anon-19090957@craigslist.org, for saying what others dared not say…

  • CodeCon 2004 CFP

    Bram has released a call for paper for CodeCon 2004.

  • Blog-it

    Anil might be on to something.

  • Leona Naess/Badly Drawn Boy

    Leona Naess was awesome at the 9:30 club last night.  She played 4-5 songs from her new new cd and also played a few of the more popular songs from her other two albums (that I know of).  Badly Drawn Boy rocked too.

    I took the picture above with a Fuji disposable camera and scanned it on a Nikon Super Coolscan 8000ED for Edd.

  • How Much for that 7700 in the Window?

    I had not seen a price mentioned on the 7700 before, but in a piece by Reuters, I saw this:

    Nokia unveiled the 7700 model last week, a space-age looking device with a large touch-screen display that gives users the possibility to watch TV. The $572 device is due to hit the shops in the second quarter of next year.

    The piece is actually worth reading, as it deals with the neccesity of having a right to view television license in some countries.  $572 is actually less than I was expecting to see the 7700 debut at.  I’ve been looking into Series 90/7700 development and might be picking one of these up as soon as they are available.  It could be so much more painful.

    Has anyone seen confirmation of this general price range?

  • Leona Naess and Badly Drawn Boy

    I’m heading down to the 9:30 Club this evening to see Leona Naess and Badly Drawn Boy.  It should be a chill acoustic filled evening.  I won’t be taking my 3650 with me, so no moblogging for you.  Of course I’ll write it up tomorrow.

  • Russ Found a Pad!

    Congrats, Russ.  I’ll make note of your experiences with beds on the Bay Bridge:

    General Rule of Life: No matter *what* the IKEA guy says, you cannot drive over the Bay Bridge with a Queen sized bed strapped to your roof. You *will* end up pulling over to the side of the highway and repacking your entire car to fit the bed in, trust me.

  • Series 90 C++ Emulator and Development Environment

    I downloaded the demo of CodeWarrior for Symbian and the Nokia s90 C++ SDK this afternoon and I can say without a doubt that the C++ emulator is ten times better than the j2me emulator.  You can definitely get a feel for the environment with the C++ emulator.  I built and ran the C++ Hello World program (which is a helluva lot more complex than the j2me hello world) and was blown away when the above screen popped up.

    The environment is beautiful.  I took the time to poke around a little bit, and everything seems to make sense so far.  The only thing I am worried about is text input.  It looks like your two options (at least on the 7700) will be tapping away at a virtual keyboard or using a pop-up text regognition box.  Below are examples of these two types on input.

    I continue to be impressed with the environment, though I do find the C++ toolchain a bit cumbersome.  The Metrowerks IDE is pretty much required for writing C++ for the 7700.  The C++ SDK is also a lot beefier, but you get an awesome emulator with it!  The build process is run on special build files either at the command line or from within CodeWarrior.  I can’t complain, I just wish that it was easier.  From grokking the various examples that are included with the SDK, the C++ route is definately the harder way to go, but it so much more powerful.

    The basic Hello World app requires the following files:

    • HelloWorldBasic.cpp (DLL entry point)
    • HelloWorldBasicApplication.cpp (Application that creates a new blank document and defines the app’s UID)
    • HelloWorldBasicApplication.h (header)
    • HelloWorldBasicDocument.cpp (A document object representing the data model, constructs the App UI)
    • HelloWorldBasicDocument.h (header)
    • HelloWorldBasicAppUi.cpp (App UI object that handles the commands generated from menu options)
    • HelloWorldBasicUi.h (header)
    • HelloWorldBasicAppView.cpp (Application View object that displays data to the screen)
    • HelloWorldBasicAppView.h (header file)
    • HelloWorldBasicView.rss (Resource file.  It describes the app’s menus and string resources.)

    The build/make/run process isn’t too hard after that:

    bldmake bldfiles
    abld build winscw udeb
    epoc

    I’ll be diving deeper in to the development environment and emulator in the coming days.

  • Apache Axis C++ 1.0 Alpha

    WebServices.Org notes that Apache Axis C++ 1.0 Alpha has been released.  Here’s a quick tidbit about the Axis C++ team:

    The team consists of four active developers and other contributors sponsored by Sri Lankan software companies. Development is done at the LSF (Lanka Software Foundation) which, launched the Axis C++ effort.

    More information can be found in the docs.  It requires XercesC and Apache under Linux.  Glancing at the docs, it looks like it will have the ability to generate wrappers from a WSDL file using WSDL2WS.  It also looks like it builds under MSVC++ under Windows, rather than your typical Cygwin port.

    Who will be the first to throw out some benchmarks?

  • Testing C++ Applications on Series 90

    Nokia released a new pdf today titled Developer Platform 2.0 for Series 90: Testing C++ Applications v1.0. It outlines the steps required to properly test a native C++ app. They suggest that this testing be done on physical hardware rather than an emulated environment.