While women complained of sexism at the US Masters one brave man decided enough was enough!
I just hope they didn’t turn around… *gulp*
New b2 snapshot release
This release is a must-have for anyone running b2++ as it fixes a major bug in the b2options.php page. Thanks to Andreas Banze for finding that one!
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Bob, first of all, glad to hear your son Channing is doing well. It was a shock to read about Chase a year ago. It doesn’t seem that long at all!
Unfortunately I have to disagree with your arguement against Open Source.
When a project is successful it’s used by people and the maintainers are hopefully motivated to work at it. Even if the project developers lose interest in a project sometimes those projects are taken up by others. The author of b2 disappeared off the Internet (he’s back, sort of now!) and now there’s several branches of b2, including this website, all with enhanced features.
If a project stagnates and isn’t maintained, it’s usually because people aren’t using it. There are many exceptions of course, and some popular tools go unmaintained, but what happens when a company goes bust? What happens when the company won’t support your old version of the software? At least you, or your development team has access to the source of the open source project.
I don’t believe Microsoft can easily subvert OSS projects by simply pumping money into them and leading them off in a tangent. People will notice.
You cite the Apache project. The new Apache 2 has been out for quite a while. How many complex sites are using it? It doesn’t have much support from 3rd party developers. So much for the mighty influence of IBM.
Where’s Ximian now? What have they done in the Gnome world to lead that desktop environment?
They might have a chance if they got a controlling role in Red Hat or some other major Linux distributor, but even then there’s too many people. Alan Cox is quite independent of Red Hat even though they pay his salary.
Open Source will be around for a long time I’m glad to say!
Linux 'Just Works' For Me
After all those “Linux doesn’t work! I’m going home to mammy!” stories here’s a refreshingly positive story about Linux, and also a link to a great apt-rpm repository. Here’s some brief instructions on getting it working. Lots of games and stuff available 🙂
And the award goes to:
This one has to go in “Humour”, no doubt about it. Made me grin. hehe.
Proinnsias is on the upgrade cycle once more. Pity Mr Project can’t import MS Project files..
The Dictionary of Cork Slang
Adam, this dictionary is excellent! Your uncle did a great job! A must read for Corkonians!
Linux drivers for Conexant Chipsets
Yaay! Linux drivers for my modem have been released for Red Hat 9 and other distributions! Should be online tonight! Thanks Ruairi!
OpenOffice
The ILUG is a great resource and often it’s great having such a varied and technical group of people on the ILUG. Caolan works on Open Office/Star Office and it looks like my OO problems may be fixed in the 1.1 release!
I love his explanation why bullet points were a bit screwy when exporting to Word format. hehe.
Using VNC For Your Main Desktop
Justin Mason looks at using VNC for his desktop. His machine is too noisy so what better way to get a quiet PC?
I used to use VNC but it was too slow. I think you’d probably need a switched network with decent network cards and switches. I have decent network cards, but only a hub.
Template Engines
Here’s an interesting article, Template Engines from the author of bTemplate.
In short, the point of template engines should be to separate your business logic from your presentation logic, not separate your PHP code from your HTML code.
That’s the short definition of what a template should do. I think it should also:
- Provide application and server security. It could be argued that PHP safe_mode provides a level of security against third-party code.
- Make it simple to maintain the template.
In my experience, Smarty syntax is clearer in a html template. Mixing php and html grates on my brain but obviously it’s a subjective matter that many people are happy with.
Nevertheless, if you’re sitting on the fence about using templates, read the above article. See what the author does in his examples, and make up your own mind if they’re useful or not. You might find yourself using Smarty afterwards anyway!