RiscOS 4.02 "Virtually Free" edition

RiscOS is one of those things that has a quite complicated history. Currently the two companies who are releasing versions of RiscOS are Ionix and RiscOS Ltd. The legal battles between the two have been ongoing for a while, but (hopefully) things are calming down a bit, which brings us on to the news.

RiscOS Ltd have announced a "Virtually Free" edition of RiscOS 4.02. What they mean by "Virtually Free" is a low cost release, along the lines of the Amiga Forever packs. And just like with Amiga Forever, there is a cheap (£5) download version, and a more expensive (£10) CD release. Both versions come with instructions on how to get it running in an emulator.

RISCOS Ltd Managing Director Paul Middleton explained that: "We have been looking at ways of making a low cost, or 'Virtually Free' version of RISC OS available for some time. With RISCOS Ltd having now confirmed it's ownership of all versions of RISC OS produced since February 1999 we are now in a position to offer a low cost product that acts as an introduction to RISC OS."

Sadly you may have a little bit of a wait before you can get your hands on it. Although the sales were supposed to have been available from today (Monday, December 8, 2008) at the moment the sales page contains a message to the effect that "We are sorry but due to technical issues the RISCOS Ltd sales website cannot currently process orders online."

You can, however, order via telephone on 0772 044 6921 or by email at sales@riscos.com.

Hopefully this won't dampen the interest in a genuinely unique operating system.

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Death of an Acorn

RiscOS has been on life support for a couple of years now. For those of you who haven't happened across it, RiscOS was an innovative operating system developed for the Acorn Archimedes / RiscPC range of computers.

The Archimedes was the successor to the BBC Micro range of computers, using the RISC based ARM (Archimedes RISC Machine) CPU. They were commonly found in UK schools in the late 1980s / early 1990s.

Often seen as a competitor to the Amiga and Atari ST (although arguably less successful in the home market), the Archimedes morphed into the RiscPC and, in common with the Amiga, has been owned by a number of companies, had arguments over the ownership of the OS and is often seen as yesterdays news.

Currently work is underway to open the source to RiscOS, and the announcement by the current owners Iyonix apparently doesn't change this.

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Novell's Linux Adverts

We've had a look (and made fun of) the new Microsoft adverts. Microsoft have now dropped the Sienfeld and Gates double act, and are hopefully going to be producing adverts that actually say something.

Of course, it is all too easy to judge, especially when the competition already has a well known series of adverts ("I'm a Mac"). What about Linux? Well, let's look at what Novell came up with in 2007.

(As a side note, those of you that read to the end of the post might get to see something nice)







So there you go, adverts for Linux! Whoo hoo! Shame that they had to copy someone stuff. Hmm, maybe they were being ironic?

Not the best spoof of the Apple ads though. The prize for that goes to this.



I know which one I'd rather play with. . .

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Chromium for Linux and Mac! (Well, sort of. . .)

I think I've made my opinion of the release of the Windows only Chrome beta pretty clear - but just in case you've not been paying attention - I'm less than impressed.

I did, however, point out that with the source being available someone might be able to put something together for those of us not stuck on Windows.



Codeweavers have done just that.

In eleven days they've used their Wine based porting tools to put together a version of the browser for Linux (and MacOS too!) based around the Developer Build 21 release of Chrome.

A couple of things to note however are that there is no automatic updater for this unofficial package. Another is that as this is almost a beta of a beta you shouldn't use it as your main browser, just think of it as a tech preview.

Packages are available for most major Linux distro's here.

I've not installed it yet, but once I've done so then I'll let you how it compares to the native Windows version.

So how well does it work? It is certainly a lot slower to use than a native browser such as FireFox on my trusty old Athlon XP 2200, but was certainly up to day to day browsing, in fact I'm updating this post using Chromium. I'm not sure if the lack of speed is down to Chromium itself, or due to the porting process.

More importantly - you can watch YouTube videos, at last once you've installed the Windows version of the Flash plugin (which you can do via the browser, just remember to quit and restart the browser afterwards).

It probably isn't worth using this as your main browser, but is certainly nice as a "fill in" until the proper native version of Chromium comes out.

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DRM Sucks

Warning: This post contains foul language, adult references, and satire. Anal insertion of recordable / pre-recorded media is not condoned by the publisher under any circumstances. No matter how extreme the provocation. Thank you.


DRM Sucks. That isn't just an opinion, that is a solid gold fact.

Let me explain. If you are a publisher then please take note of this: DRM does not stop piracy. It does not significantly reduce copying. If mainly serves to punish the people who have actually bought your products. You know, your customers.

Let's give some examples. If I buy a DVD (and I've bought a fair few over the years) I don't want to have to watch a presentation on why piracy is bad. Look, I've already bought the fucking DVD, what more do you want from me? Let's make it worse and have it play every time we put the DVD in the drive shall we? No, let's go further and make it so you can't skip past it. Oh, wait, you already have.

Look, put it on rental copies by all means, in fact it makes sense to do so. But what gives you the right to waste five minutes of my time on each and every fucking disk of a boxed set that I have already paid for?

If someone can let me know whose bright idea that was then I'd appreciate it, because I've got more than two hundred legally bought DVDs that I'd like to shove one-by-one up that fuckwit's arse. Without the aid of lubricant.

You know what's really ironic about it? How about the fact that pirated versions of the dvds won't have that message on it. You're pissing off the honest people who have bought it from you not the pirates!

How about music? A short look at recent history shows that when you "buy" DRM protected music you can end up loosing out big time, especially if the company that you've "bought" the tracks from goes out of business, or decides to stop publishing music. Your music collection that you've paid for can quickly become worthless.

Does the DRM stop people pirating the music? No. You can install the pirated MP3s anywhere you like, on any device that supports MP3s. How about your DRM protected music? Think it's going to work on your £15 mp3 player? You never know, you might be lucky. Then again, you probably won't.

Games are even worse. Unique registration keys? Fine. Using the CD as a key is annoying, but I can live with that. Phoning home via the internet is mildly irritating, but not the end of the world. Restricting the number of times that I can reinstall the game though? Not a good idea, not unless I'm getting the game at a serious discount. Want me to pay full price and only be able to re-install the game three times? How about you fuck off and come back when you're serious about wanting my money and not about wasting my time.

So what can we do about this? I'm not sure that boycotting products would work, as the publishers would blame the low sales on piracy, making them more determined than ever to make life difficult for us honest folk.

So how about this, let them know that it isn't good enough. If we buy something then the agreement should be that it is ours to keep and use as we see fit without unnecessary restrictions. Track down pirates by all means, sue them into oblivion, string them up by the nuts if it makes you happy. Just don't punish the honest customers.

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Ubuntu to fund a better Linux?

Mark Shuttleworth, boss of Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu), famous as the guy who did what a lot of people said couldn't be done by making a fortune from Open Source is taking steps to improve Open Source by helping to fund development of some of the projects.

In his blog (which you can read here) he gives the reasons behind this, but it boils down to this:

Canonical is in a position to drive real change in the software that is part of Ubuntu. If we just showed up with pictures and prototypes and asked people to shape their projects differently, I can’t imagine that being well received! So we are also hiring a team who will work on X, OpenGL, Gtk, Qt, GNOME and KDE, with a view to doing some of the heavy lifting required to turn those desktop experience ideas into reality. Those teams will publish their Bzr branches in Launchpad and of course submit their work upstream, and participate in upstream sprints and events. Some of the folks we have hired into those positions are familiar contributors in the FLOSS world, others will be developers with relevant technical expertise from other industries.

Although Open Source has in recent years reached the point where it is suitable for everyday use, a little extra polish really doesn't hurt. It is nice to see a company that not only uses Open Source, but continues to invest money and resources back into it.

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Seinfeld + Gates = Oh Dear

To "help promote" Windows Vista Microsoft have decided to enlist the help of Jerry Seinfeld, you know, the guy who used to be famous in the 1990s. Had a neighbour called George. Did some stand up comedy. The cartoon about Bees? Yes, THAT Sienfeld.

Anyhow, the latest Windows Vista advert is here and. . .

Oh dear.

Even in these days where I'm used to playing "guess the product" when watching adverts this takes the biscuit. Or the "moist slice of cake" perhaps.

Have a look and see what you think:



So, erm, right. Does that make you want to go out and install Vista? Didn't think so somehow.

One day, we'll look back on this Advert and laugh. But not today, at least, not until I've finished cringing. I certainly wouldn't want to be in Bill's size ten Conquistadors after that (although I certainly wouldn't mind his bank balance for a little while).

Apparently this may be the first in a series of adverts (please God no!), all featuring those new comedic superstars Seinfeld and Gates (have mercy!). Who knows, they might actually get round to mentioning Windows, Microsoft, or whatever the hell they are trying to sell to us?

On a more positive note apparently Shoe Circus is now completely sold out of Conquistadors. Who says advertising doesn't work?

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Adding Yahoo Buzz to Blogger

You've probably noticed the natty "Buzz Up" button to the left of my posts. This is a vain attempt to encourage people to vote some of my stuff up on the new Yahoo Buzz service - which is sort of like Digg only newer and more funky.

If you'd like to add it to your Blogger template then follow these simple instructions:

1 - Edit the layout of your page
2 - Put a tick in the "Expand Widget Templates" checkbox
3 - Look for the following line in your template:

<p><data:post.body></p>

Replace it with this:

<p><table align='left'><tr><td><script type='text/javascript'>yahooBuzzArticleHeadline = "<data:post.title/>";</script><script badgetype='square' src='http://d.yimg.com/ds/badge2.js' type='text/javascript'><data:post.url/></script></td></tr></table><data:post.body/></p>

Preview your template, and if everything has worked correctly and you are happy with the look of the button then save it and feel the Buzz love!

This will fill in the title of your blog post as the title of the Buzz'd article too.

(Originally posted on half-a-page.blogspot.com)

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Of Chrome and Chromium

You may recall my annoyance at the lack of a Linux implementation of the Chrome browser - and the note on the source code page:

Note: There is no working Chromium-based browser on Linux. Although many Chromium submodules build under Linux and a few unit tests pass, all that runs is a command-line "all tests pass" executable.

Yes, that one. Well, there is a reason for that, and it hasn't made me any happier about Chrome. The reason is that Chromium is just the browser engine, it isn't a browser in its own right.

Just in case you don't believe me, there is the following nugget of info on the same page:

Google Chrome is built with open source code from Chromium.

See what I mean? I get the sneaky suspicion that I might have a long wait before I'm running a native Linux version of Chrome.

The upside, of course, is that is someone is really desperate to have a Chromium based browser on Linux (or MacOS X for that matter) then at least the engine is there, ready for someone to build a nice front end for it, but as to the exact license of the Chrome (browser) elements - I'll have to do some digging (apparently it may be BSD but I've yet to confirm that).

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Google Chrome - First Impressions

Updated 04/09/2008

Google, masters of the search engine, blogging, advertising and God only knows what else, now want the web browser market too.

To this end they have created a new browser, Chrome, which is currently in Beta.

Well, created may be too strong a word. They've taken parts of multiple open source projects, such as Apple's Webkit (or KDE's Konqueror as I prefer to remember it), Mozilla, and others, and mixed them all up to make Chrome.

You could describe it as Safari, with knobs on.

Well, I've installed it on a spare Windows PC, and yes, it works well. Text renders well, the browser certainly feels nice and snappy - much like Safari, strangely enough.

There are some nice features, such as the "Task Manager" which shows what elements of the browser are using your CPU time (or, to put it another way, you can see how much the Flash Plugin is hogging).

Google Gears is also integrated into Chrome, which gives offline support to some web apps. This isn't particularly useful now, as there are hardly any Google Gears enabled sites, but this should come in time.

Now for the negatives. If you read the "End User License" for Chrome, you come across the following gems:

11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organisations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

Oh dear, that doesn't sound too nice. Whatever happend to Google's "do no evil" credo?

(Update: This has now been changed.

The new section reads as follows:

11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services.

That is much less evil, so thank you Google.)

Something else that really gets on my tits about Chrome, is the lack of a Linux port (and the same for MacOS X too). Considering most of the code originated with Linux that is beyond insulting.

OK, so you can download the source code (from here if you are interested) but to be honest - I wouldn't bother at the moment if I were you.

I was going to build Chrome on my Ubuntu install and give it a shot, even if it wasn't quite as complete as the Windows version - but according to the download page:

Note: There is no working Chromium-based browser on Linux. Although many Chromium submodules build under Linux and a few unit tests pass, all that runs is a command-line "all tests pass" executable.


Great. Cheers for that. So we have an "Open Source" browser that, at the present time, is Windows only.

Nice one! Well done Google! (Did you spot the sarcasm there? I think you did!)

Hopefully they will be trying to rectify this sooner rather than later. I've added myself to the mailing list for news about the Linux port of the browser, and as soon as there is something worth testing I'll let you know what it is like.

Slightly more worrying is the well publicised Safari security hole that also affects Chrome (strange that, isn't it). So if you are security conscious you may want want to think twice before installing. . .

So a bit of a mixed bag this. If it wasn't for the license, bugs and the fact that I can't install the damn thing on Linux, I'd probably switch to it. But as it stands at the moment, I'll just say that it shows promise and wait for it to come out of beta.

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Ubuntu on MacBook G4

I like Ubuntu - I'm not ashamed to say it. Don't get me wrong, it isn't perfect but it has a nice balance between speed and ease of use.

On Intel based PCs I've had very few problems installing Ubuntu on Laptops, so when a colleage of mine wanted to install it on his MacBook G4 Ubuntu 8.04 was the recommended choice.

By and large Ubuntu tends to have pretty good hardware support - and the Power PC version is no exception. . . or so I'd like to believe.

Most things do work well. The graphics - no problem. Onboard network? Yep, worked as expected. USB support - don't spare it a second thought. Wireless? Ah, yes, well, erm. . .

Wireless is a nightmare to configure - and we stil haven't got the damn thing working properly. Although there are tools to make it easier - they didn't work correctly either. So we were left with wireless networks that we could see - but we couldn't connect to.

I think given enough time I could probably get it working (see here for some examples of the hoops people jump through on PowerBooks) and some time spent searching Google brought up plenty of other examples (like this, or this, or this).

So it does appear that it can be got to work - but only with a fair bit of effort (and more than a bit of luck too).

Luckily the rest of his Ubuntu experience seems to be going well - and he actually seems to be enjoying using it at the moment - so could this be the start of someone moving from OSX to Ubuntu? I'll keep you posted.

(I'm still annoyed about the wireless though!)

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KDE - The Long Shutdown

As the Alice Cooper song goes "It's the little things that drive you wild," and that is certainly true with KDE4.

KDE4 has a lot of good things going for it. It looks very nice, it is easy to configure, the widgets work well, and even though it's not quite finished what is there tends to be an improvement over KDE3.

There is one thing that gets right up my nose though, and that is the shut down options. Allow me to walk you through the shutdown routine.

Step 1: Click on the "K" button to open the menu
Step 2: Click on the "Leave" tab
Step 3: Click on "Shutdown"
Step 4: Click on "Turn off the computer"

At this point the computer will actually shut down. That's a lot of steps for a simple task. The really annoying thing is that you actually get asked the same questions twice, so after you choose "Shutdown" from Step 3 (as opposed to "Log out" and "Reboot") you get presented with the same set of options again, but worded slightly differently.

Look, if I didn't want to shut the damn thing down I wouldn't have chosen "Shutdown" in the first place.

Personally I'd say it would be better to skip from Step 2 to Step 4 missing out the redundant set of questions in the middle.

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Hans Reiser - Sentenced

Hans Thomas Reiser, former Linux file system guru, was sentenced to 15 years to Life yesterday (Oakland, California). Hans confessed to the murder of his wife (Nina) as part of a plea bargain which reduced his minimum sentence from 20 years.

He claims to be putting Namesys and ReiserFS into a trust fund for his children, and hoped to earn money while in prison for them, "assuming I'm able to get access to a computer and the internet."

So what does this mean for ReiserFS? This probably finishes it off. Work on Reiser3 (which is included in the Linux kernel) stopped a couple of years back. Reiser4 is unfinished, and likely to stay that way.

Even assuming Reiser does get access to the internet and resumes work on Reiser4 is anyone likely to use it? You get the feeling it is going to be remembered as a "killer file system" for all the wrong reasons.

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I Love IM - NOT!

I'm starting to develop a serious dislike for Instant Messenging. Don't get me wrong, it can be a useful tool to keep in touch with people, or at least it is if they use the same protocol as you.

For example, if you sign up with an MSN account you can't communicate with people using Google Messenging, AOL won't talk to Jabber, Jabber can hardly talk to Jabber, never mind anyone else and so on.

This means that you end up needing multiple messenging accounts (and in some cases multiple clients) in order to do one job.

It really is a shame that Google, Microsoft et al are so distrustful of each other that something that really does need to be cross platform and cross protocol ends up just making people cross.

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Microsoft takes tougher measures against XP "Pirates"

They're at it again. The "Windows Genuine Advantage" (WGA) programme is being toughened up to make life less pleasant for users of pirated software. As well as a permanent watermark on screen, the desktop background will change to a plain black colour, and will revert to this once every hour if the wallpaper is changed. These changes are only being done against Windows XP Pro, because they are "focusing on the product edition that is most often stolen."

Or are they?

Many people use XP Pro in preference to XP Home for the simple reason that XP Home really isn't that good. So if you want to upgrade the most common way is to buy an OEM version of Windows XP Pro and use that instead. This is where the problems come in to play (and I think is one of the reasons behind the WGA scheme). Many OEM licenses are being blocked by WGA (I should know, my legally bought copy of XP Pro, complete with license sticker also fell foul of this).

This is because Microsoft don't want people buying OEM versions, they'd much rather you spent a couple of hundred pounds to buy the "Full" version of the product. The problem is the resale of OEM copies of products is perfectly legal in the UK - even if Microsoft don't like it. So their solution is to block these genuine copies of Windows - and if complain about it you are given the response that you need to "talk to the company that sold it to you."

Personally I think they're just after finding new ways of persuading people to upgrade to Vista.

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iPhone Antics

Truth in advertising is a wonderful - if sometimes rare - thing. Apple have fallen foul of the UK's stringent advertising laws with their iPhone adverts.

So what was the problem? Essentially this: "all parts of the internet are on the iPhone". All parts except those that need flash. Or Java for that matter.

The verdict?

"Upheld
The ASA noted that Java and Flash proprietary software was not enabled on the iPhone and understood that users would therefore be unable to access certain features on some websites or websites that relied solely on Flash or Java. We noted Apples argument that the ad was about site availability rather than technical detail, but considered that the claims "You'll never know which part of the internet you'll need" and "all parts of the internet are on the iPhone" implied users would be able to access all websites and see them in their entirety. We considered that, because the ad had not explained the limitations, viewers were likely to expect to be able to see all the content on a website normally accessible through a PC rather than just having the ability to reach the website. We concluded that the ad gave a misleading impression of the internet capabilities of the iPhone.

The ad breached CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 5.1 (Misleading advertising), 5.2.1 (Evidence) and 5.2.2 (Implications)."

This does raise an important point about tech toys (and yes, the iPhone is definitely one of those) - if you start advertising it as more than a toy and it doesn't live up to peoples expectations then you could end up in a whole world of trouble.

Realistically only two people (who could probably do with getting out in the fresh air a bit more I expect) complained about the advert - and to be honest the iPhone probably browses the web better than most other mobile phones.

I just hope those two complainants are proud of themselves - isn't that right Bill and Linus?

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Pystar to Countersue Apple

According to CNET Pystar, those wacky funsters who have been selling Mac clones (with genuine Apple software) are countersuing Apple!

Rather than bending over and dropping their trousers ready for the gentle pleasures of Apple's lawyers, they are going on the offensive using two Federal laws which are meant to prevent anti-competitive practices in business (the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act).

I've got to admit, much as I'd like to see Pystar win (just for the sheer Hell of it really) I get the sneaky feeling that Apple may follow what appears to be standard business practice amongst big companies these days and string things out until Pystars money runs out - then sue them into oblivion.

If Pystar do win however, then this could mean some interesting times for Apple and OSX.

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For Sale - One Sun, Slightly Soiled

Latest on the rumour-mill is the possibility of Sun Micro being up for sale, with Microsoft being the potential buyer.

I've got to hope that this isn't true. OK, so the Sun of today is nothing like they were ten years ago - in fact I'd say they are pretty much a shell of their former selves and have been trading solely on their reputation for quite a while - but it would still be a crying shame if they were assimilated by the Microsoft Borg.

I've got to admit that I quite like the combination of Solaris on Sun hardware. There is something so damn solid and heavy duty about it which other companies (and I'm including Apple here) have never been able to match.

I've got to hope that this just turns out to be the gossip of bored journos out to get some more readers.

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