Shane Fagan

Ok my computer is making this really bad sound that means the fan is broken. The sound came and went a few times but its not stopping now. I cant get any work done because I get a headache listening to it. Its a broken fan obviously from the sound but its old anyway and really crap.

Im trying to get things done like changing the interface for updates of the software sources program to the specifications of the design team (which is almost done by the way and is in a branch) and make a quickly vala template (started but not anywhere near done) for this ubuntu release cycle.

Just so people dont think im trying to cod them out of some money heres a video.

Id like to get this computer from zareason. So thats my goal $ 799.00 or € 617 if I cant get that much ill figure something out or just get a different computer for cheaper.

So if you can spare a small bit of money id be really appreciative.

Donate

EDIT: WordPress strikes again it ruined the donate link so I had to do it like any normal link so its fixed now ^
EDIT 2: I fixed some bad writing on my part sorry about that.

Why oh why do we always have to be at war about the small things? Technology is such a hard place to be at the moment with many mine fields and cold wars going on for so long. Copyrights, patents, closed source vs open source software and just politics harming development.

Its just business its not personal so its really a war between business and ideals.

So for the first battle is open source vs closed source when you want to make money.
So you open source the code now you have some serious problems with piracy people using the software without paying. So I have to ask how exactly do you make money and keep the code open?

The only code I can think of thats open and makes money is the id software engines that are used in many of the worlds biggest games. The way they do it is they ship older versions as free software and only charge for commercial use of the engines and don’t ship anything that can be used without extra code being written. So then other games a few of them probably are in the repo at the moment use this great engine for free and its awesome that id software do that. The problem is they only ship the older versions of the engines and keep the two newest proprietary and open source them when it gets old. So its only semi open source but still the best example of selling open source software at the moment.

The other side of the coin is the idea of shipping a free product and offer support services around it. This is the Ubuntu model of doing things and is nice but in the sort term doesn’t make money because it requires building a community and a need for those services.

So back to the war how can a multi-billion dollar product succeed if all the code is open for people to exploit?

Patents are a known issue with software development at the moment for companies and community development efforts alike. My opinion on this is that patents for technologies other than software is ok but when people file dumb generalized patents and sit on them is what is wrong at the moment. People are so afraid to write creative code and do cool things with computers because they are so afraid of a patent troll coming in and suing them out of existence.

The last thing id like to rant about is politics. Politics is something that is very funny to me and is something that we have a lot of problems with in the open source movement. In particular Mono has been a big topic over the past few years. Ive had long chats about mono and im guilty of doing some miss informed posts and had great conversations that cleared up some things about the issue for me. The result is that im not against mono because its creation by Microsoft or anything but because it takes up a lot of space on the cd for not many applications. If you want to use mono I don’t mind I think the only thing holding it back is the politics. On a personal level I prefer python or vala for apps that I make.

So what do you all think? Love is a battle field and so is technology. Oh and I haven’t written for a while so hopefully im not too rusty

EDIT: I removed the word piracy because its not really pirating if the code is out there. Its in the spirit of open source to share and use the code. What I meant really here was if you are charging for software in the per copy ideal and you open source the code who will pay for it.
Oh and doctormo made a great blog post at the same time that answers a lot of the issues I bring up about business so have a read here.

I thought I should give a rundown of my 3 favorite mailing lists.

Ubuntu devel discuss there always seems to be some weird stuff discussed here its just one of those lists that gets a good mix of people talking.
Ayatana this is the ubuntu design mailing list and its crazy busy but always interesting.
WHATWG making the web better.

Hehe I finally got updated to wordpress 3 and I made a new look have a look if your interested I did it really quickly. Its just the new default wordpress theme with a few changes.

Well theres a lot of buzz around the iPad, Android (on tablets) and palm’s OS on HP computers. So what do we (Ubuntu) have to do to make a good touch OS interface?

1. Big buttons
Not everyone has tiny fingers and its hard to close/minimize/resize a window if the buttons are really small.

2. Gestures
Apple have done this right with their new mouse and with all their touch interfaces. We have nothing like this yet but Synaptics is working on this.

3. On screen keyboard
There was some talk about this at the UDS.

4. Integration
The thing at the moment is that none of the main apps in the Gnome desktop (I dont know about KDE on this) arent at all suitable for touch. Apps like Gwibber are ok because its just a textbox and a few buttons but when you look at applications like evolution that have very complicated interfaces you have lots of problems.

5. Speed
If you look at the specs of the touch computers coming up the are fairly low spec. We figure pretty well here we are fast but some applications arent. Firefox is a prime example of this it takes 10 seconds to load on my computer and that is way too long (Ok my computer is fairly bad but its better than most of the touch devices coming). Open office, Gimp and Gwibber are also good examples of apps that dont load all that fast.

6. Content
This is where we fall down we have music but most of these pads coming up are best used for reading books and playing little fun games just like the iPad. Of course you could say you can get lots of ebooks across the internet but most of them use DRM so we cant view them. And we do have lots of cool little apps but none of them are suited to this environment.

With Unity I think Ubuntu is heading in the right direction in terms of interface for touch but will we address all of the issues above very soon I cant say, maybe we will be ready in 2-3 years for the big time in this space. I cant wait to get my hands on a Ubuntu touch device though.

2010 so far has been awesome.
1. Ubuntu 10.04 was released and its the best Ubuntu yet.
2. Google released WebM (Vorbis+VP8).
3. Steam began porting their engine to Linux.
4. WebGL and other HTML5 technologies are gaining ground.

What all this means is the barrier is lowering and lowering for full open source adoption. With all these great technologies in the browser and on the desktop that support our open source efforts we can rest assured that regular users can move away from proprietary software. Oh and porting steam to Linux lowers the barrier to moving to Linux so although its proprietary software itself it helps users to not get regressions from moving and we should be very very happy about any help we get.

The innovations in web technologies support everyone but mainly this support helps Linux.
If everything on the web is inter-operable then why pay for an crap OS? If all the awesome innovations happening is open source how can Microsoft compete? The answer is even with all of its money Microsoft cant compete long term and with this web innovation happening no one should pay for an OS.

The challenge to Ubuntu is to leverage web apis on the desktop but build fantastic desktop applications for the times when you aren’t connected. Integrating the web into the Ubuntu desktop experience is the challenge for the next 10 years.

Leandro mentioned Sheldon’s favorite Linux based OS. One of my favorite TV shows from years ago mentioned Ubuntu Warty back in the day. The video is a nerd fight about which is better Ubuntu or Mac OS.

7 seconds to the internet, IM, Facebook, Twitter…..Our Meercat is a fast one

The thing that I am excited about is Ubuntu installed along side Windows as a fast and light desktop solution. Of course regular Ubuntu is fast enough but me personally I thought that it was either Windows or Ubuntu. The truth is we can expose PC buyers to Ubuntu without knocking Windows from being pre-installed. So bravo to Canonical for surprising me with such a great idea.

I have to say though it reeks of Google Chrome OS but with some native apps and not just a browser alone. I just love that its made to be more touch/net book oriented. You can find more info here.

I had a nice look over the Ubuntu manual and I have to say its really good. Of course I didnt really get much out of it myself since im very used to Ubuntu because im using it since 07 but id recommend it to any new users with questions.

One thing I loved was the extra details like the history of Ubuntu at the start. I support the project mainly because its low barrier of entry for contributions. Unlike the Ubuntu documentation it doesnt require knowledge of docbook or mallard to contribute, just good knowledge of the subjects you are writing about.

So anyway if you want to learn more of the ins and outs of Ubuntu then go read it or if you can help im sure they wouldnt mind some help with the Maverick manual. More info about the Ubuntu manual here.

Edit: Ubuntu docs do allow plain text submissions so sorry for the bad point above about needing to know docbook. I love Ubuntu docs and I have sent in some patches to them over the years. So go contribute to them as well as Ubuntu manual. More info about the Ubuntu docs team here.

I fully agree with Steve Jobs about the problems with flash.
All of his points are correct but one of his points is very hypocritical.

• He complains about Flash being a proprietary technology when most of the apple platform is proprietary.
• He also complains about Adobe having complete control over the Flash platform, when apple themselves used their control over their products to block Flash coming to the iPhone OS platform.

The technology points are very correct Flash causes so many problems when browsing for me personally. Since I moved to AMD64 I have problems almost every time I browse sites that use Flash.

Adobe said that Flash is an open spec and that anyone can deploy it but it will never be as complete as Adobe’s own. If Flash is to survive the crossover to HTML5 they will need to make an open source version and allow community contribution to make it stable. Adobe said a few months ago (I cant remember the link) that the reason they cant open source it is because they have a H.264 decoder included in it. Just strip it out plain and simple.

I love some Adobe products like Flex, Dreamweaver and Photoshop. They are all fantastic programs but until Adobe get smart they wont survive without their main product. Plus I really hope they release the creative suite on Linux.

Hehehe “awesomeness” is a word I have to use less often its starting to lose its punch. Put simply Ubuntu 10.04 is the best release ive used of Ubuntu. When I was at the UDS I was thinking that its all about stability so there wouldnt be much surprises I was very very wrong.

With the new look of the desktop I think we can compete on every level with our rivals. The one thing that people always commented on when I showed them the desktop was the colour and both of the new colours are a lot better than the brown. I dont really care about what side the buttons are on I just love the new look.

Gbrainy and Gwibber are both welcome additions to the desktop and I love both. Gbrainy actually surprised me for such a young program how stable and cool it is. Gwibber’s new interface is a hell of a lot better than previous releases and the Me Menu makes it easy to post updates on the fly. F-Spot got a nice viewer mode and a nice little editor too which is very nice.

I dont have a clue about the server, cloud and netbook side of things (because I dont have any of them but if anyone wants to donate some machines to me id be grateful, specifically a netbook because I would love one id do a nice review if you want too ) but im sure they are rocking.

This is my first release that I went the UDS and got to know all the people who make Ubuntu awesome. It was nice chatting with people about what they are doing and learning a lot. I cant go to the next UDS because of college but ill more than likely go to the 11.04 and rock that. My focus for the next Ubuntu release is going to be less QA and more desktop and quickly work since ill have lots and lots of dev time.

What im most looking forward to (and both may seem boring to some people) is the new font coming because the fonts are bad currently and Zeitgeist being integrated into the desktop because its full of awesomeness (damn I used it again bad Shane).

So anyway go download Lucid (if you havent already )

Im not a very good nerd

Do standards hold us back? Its a good question to ask ourselves as
people who work with technology, should we be always looking to
innovate?

First of all are all standards bad and the answer is a big no. Doing
things in a centralized fashion is great for things like the dbus and gstreamer but what about for things
like OOXML
that was made an iso standard even though there is no completely
standard compliment implementation not even from Microsoft themselves.
Standards can be great but it really depends on who makes them.

Application developers who make services for the desktop like Zeitgeist
and Tracker innovate. They dont need to worry about communication
because they use the dbus to pass info and have a well documented way of
formatting the info passed. So innovative projects use standards but the
programs shouldnt push things like how Microsoft pushed OOXML, they
change things release on release and try to keep things stable and well
documented but it doesnt stop the innovation.

So the problem with standardization in software projects is exactly what
happened to OOXML. A bunch of people sat around a table and wrote a
document that was rejected as a standard then they made some changes and
it was accepted (quite ridiculously). While they should have been
already developing it (maybe not releasing it but working on it) because
developing it works out the kinks. There is lots of pages to the
standard but some of it will never see the light of day and why because
it wasnt developed in the correct manner. They should have developed the
standard in house then presented it as a standard.

How can you expect anyone else to develop a standards compliant
application if the developers of the standard cant even do it? How do
you expect to develop a standard without testing it? Whats wrong with
innovation as a means to develop a future standard?

You develop standards through innovation not by committee.

Well I only noticed it today but Quickly’s tutorial is now available for translations. I ported it to docbook over a month or two and it is now on launchpad translations. So translators of the world help the developers using your language by translating Quickly. Theres a lot of text but its worth it
Ive done a little bit of the Irish translations but still a lot left to do.

I listen to lots of podcasts heres my listening list check them out if you want
Software freedom law show I learn a lot from this one.
Ubuntu UK podcast This is like my news show its nice to hear whats going on.
Shot of Jaq This is a nice one to get my blogger brain going and commenting about issues.
Linux Outlaws (ish their shows are way too long I get really bored halfway though most of the time)
Hacker Melody This is kinda new but I like it so far I started listening after popey mentioned it.

Here are some websites I like lwn arstechnica omg ubuntu planet ubuntu planet gnome

I took the initiative today to write a better CV, I succeeded and its available online and in pdf format. I emailed anyone who had my old one and gave them the new one. So if you need Linux deployment in Ireland or have some development work on any platform (or you can think of something better for me to do) drop me an email. I could do with the work so feel free to make proposals ill take anything into consideration. Thanks to everyone who helped me out.

So im in college at the moment and I will be for the next two years (exams permitting) so this is what im hoping to be like then. The point to this post is to lay out a simple list of things I know I have to improve on to be a better person and laying out the goals for

• First and foremost ill be still using Ubuntu I dont foresee any major hurdles to this.
• Second to have 3 years of development behind me.
• To be at least an “official” contributing developer (I contribute here and there but nothing big yet, im just getting started!!).
• To have went to at least 2 more Ubuntu developer summits (Ive been to one and UDS-M is during my college exams but only one test actually falls that week so ill be remotely participating).
• To have applied to a job (Or to have one waiting for me) in some sort of free software company (Im hoping 2 will help me get this one).
• To get my Dad (and my sister maybe) to use Ubuntu (I got my Ma to use Ubuntu until her computer broke)
• To have contributed a lot to at least one program that people find useful (This ones a hard one)
• Complete my college course(software development, im 2 years in at the moment)
• Get a girlfriend (its a simple one but meeting women in college situations doesnt lead to much)
• Be silly when its appropriate and be serious when its appropriate (this is very complicated but its very merited).
• Take breaks from thinking (I think a lot, in fact way too much and half of it isnt of major importance. So I need to be a lot more focused)
• Learn how to play the harmonica and/or keyboard
• Communication: The main goal I want to deal with is my communication with people. I simply dont know how to talk with people well in person. I can communicate a lot better when im not talking face to face with people and its kinda obvious when people meet me that I dont feel comfortable talking at all really. Im a person who thinks a lot but cant deal with people and its always been a big problem for me. So when im in a room with people and not talking I get really nervous and make lots of small talk because in really uncomfortable. I also tend to say/do dumb things when uncomfortable too which I need to fix as well. I need to learn when to talk and when to interrupt because I tend to jump across people in discussions and that seems a little rude so I have to be a better listener in general.

So thats the main thing I want to change over the next 2 years in short to be cool. (I know im Irish so that lends a little coolness but I need to a lot cooler.) Oh and apologies if some of this post is a lot off topic for planet Ubuntu.

Any suggestions? (If you dont want to put them in the comments email me constructive feedback is always welcome in my book)