open source

You are currently browsing articles tagged open source.

So long, last.fm!

May 27, 2009 | 2 comments

I have had an account with last.fm for a while now and have always liked the service.

I just said goodbye to them.

Last.fm is a music tracking service. After you create an account, you can install a scrobbler. This is a small program that tells their site what music you are listening to as you listen to it. They keep track of what you like, and can recommend music that you may like based on what you have already listened to. They also have streaming radio stations of music that you may like, or that your friends are listening to. In short, they let you find stuff to listen to that you otherwise might not have heard of.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , ,

OpenID

January 20, 2007 | No comments

I have been messing around a little with OpenID lately. OpenID is a fairly new system of identification, where you only have to remember one password for an OpenID server, which will let you login to any other OpenID enabled system. This has been tried before (Yahoo wallet, Micro$oft Passport) but the benefit of OpenID is that it is decentralized and open source. In the couple of weeks that I have been tinkering, I have used my LiveJournal account, myOpenID, and phpMyID on my own server, all with different passwords, yet this doesn’t change anything for any of the sites that I have registered my OpenID with.

The main problem with OpenID is that not many sites support it. Yet. Wikipedia, which I visit more often than Google lately, has said that they will use it soon. Ma.gnolia, which is a social bookmarking service like del.icio.us but nicer, supports it. There are a couple of small sites that use it. But most of the big boys don’t yet. I want my OpenID!

The one I don’t get, however, is MicroID. I came across this in reading up on how to implement OpenID in my own software, and it just makes no sense to me. A microid is basically a hash of your email address and website. All this proves is that someone knows your, well, your email address and your website address. So? I can’t even find documentation on whether you are supposed to include the trailing slash on your URL. They do in half the examples and don’t in the other half. Can anyone please explain to me how the hell MicroID is useful or secure in the least little bit?

Tags: , , ,

Promoting Linux

January 15, 2007 | No comments

Most Linux news sites (OS News, Linux.com, NewsForge, etc) run a couple of articles per week on how you can help to promote use of Linux on desktop systems. My simple advice, refuse to do any tech support for people using Windoze, other than installing Linux. Since most tech geeks are their family’s IT support, if more people refused to help troubleshoot viruses and malware on Windoze the unwashed masses would have little choice other than to either migrate to Linux or put up with Indian tech support hotlines.

Slightly cruel but should be effective.

Tags: , , , ,

Code Ignitor

January 9, 2007 | No comments

I am recreating my most used Google apps under the open source Code Ignitor framework. I have always stayed away from frameworks. Not because I feel they make you lazy (lazy programmer = productive programmer = happy programmer), I just don’t like having to bend my code to the way someone else thinks I should write it. I normally stay away from any library that offers more than two or three functions, but after playing with CI trying to go back to straight PHP just feels clunky.

The main nice things about making your own web apps is that:

  1. You don’t have to worry about licensing issues
  2. You can hard code in stuff such as passwords and preferences
  3. You don’t have to include everything.

That last item could use some explaining. When you create a normal web app, you need to consider everything that a user could want to do and either include or ignore it. When you are making something that you will be the only one to use, you only have to worry about the stuff that you want to do often. The little one-off cases (such as changing a password) can be done directly in source files or SQL. No sense spending an entire afternoon allowing yourself to change a password when you can do it directly from the command line, and you will only do so every couple of months.

If you are looking to escape from both proprietary web apps and being tied to a single computer (or syncing files) I would recommend that (after searching FreshMeat) you download CodeIgnitor, read the user guide, and make it yourself.

Tags: , , ,

Free as in speech…

December 26, 2006 | No comments

The open source movement’s motto has long been “Free as in speech, not as in beer.” Of course, I go for both as I am poor :-)

After reading Features vs Freedom, I realized that I use mostly non-free software. I had thought myself big on free software, but had not considered the fact that web apps aren’t really free. I use a lot of Google’s web apps. Nearly all of them, in fact. I am trying to change that.

I am still using GMail because my web host’s POP and IMAP servers don’t seem to work. However, I have weaned myself from my favorite Google app, Reader, for Vienna, a desktop aggregator. I am also using the bookmarks built into my browser (Camino), instead of Google’s bookmarks.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the way Google makes their stuff, I just want to have as much freedom as possible. This is my computer, after all. Shouldn’t I be able to control the stuff on it?

Bonus tip: If you use Privoxy (which you should) try enabling user.filter (in Privoxy/config then paste these two lines in it: 

FILTER: noscripts Kill all <script> tags
s@(</?)(script)[^>]*>@$1no$2>@gU

Combine that with the build in filter for JS events and you can disable JS on a site by site basis. Comes in handy.

Tags: , , ,

« Older entries