breakthesystem.org

We’re moving!

winsmith — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:52:24 +0000

I’m going to move the blog to blog.breakthesystem.org soon. This is the first of a series of changes to establish breakthesystem.org as a company for my future software development endeavors.

Stay tuned! I’ll be back.

Some Type

winsmith — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:46:08 +0000

MacBook Pro Problems With Radeon Drivers

winsmith — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:33:31 +0000

[ no image, cos I’m on Windows and don’t have the tools handy ]

I finally managed to solve my problems with the Windows Radeon Drivers on my MacBook Pro. When in Boot Camp, I was never able to set the resolution of my external monitor right, even though it worked in OS X.

I first tried to install the Radeon Omage Drivers from here, which helped a little, but still didn’t really work right: I was able to set some resolutions, but not all, and especially not 1680×1050, my external monitor’s native resolution.

The solution for that is simple: In Display Properties | Settings | Advanced | Displays, un-check the checkbox marked “Preserve Wide Aspect Ratio on attached displays.” Then it just works.

Solving all your MacPorts problems

winsmith — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:45:25 +0000

I just found the reason behind a bug in MacPorts that has been annoying the hell out of me the last few months: Sometimes, when installing new ports, the installation will die at the compilation stage with an error similar to this:

-DNDEBUG -g -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -DWITH_APPINIT=1 -I/opt/local/include -I/opt/local/include/python2.5 -c _tkinter.c -o build/temp.macosx-10.3-i386-2.5/_tkinter.o
unable to execute -DNDEBUG: No such file or directory
error: command '-DNDEBUG' failed with exit status 1

Seems like the port doesn’t call gcc [args] to compile the binary, but only the [args], which often start with -DNDEBUG. (which, incidentally, is hard to google for, because of the minus sign.)

afb@macports.org has the reason for this:

It seems that those python ports are expecting $CC to be set in build as well as in configure, and fall back to random values such as “” or “cc” or “/usr/bin/gcc-4.0″ when it isn’t. This probably also explains why rerunning the build sometimes succeeds, if something else was adding a $CC to the environment that can be picked up as a lucky guess second time.

A workaround is setting the build.enc environment variable like so:

sudo su
password:
set build.env="CC=gcc"

and then run port. Here’s the ticket for more info.

Memetic

winsmith — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:53:50 +0000

A meme that arrived in my feedreader via The B-List:

$ history|awk '{a[$2]++} END{for(i in a){printf "%5d\t%s\n",a[i],i}}'|sort -rn|head
  127	cd
   96	svn
   86	ls
   41	ln
   36	ssh
   20	ping
   15	sudo
   13	rm
   13	export
    6	cp

Moderate Site Update

winsmith — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 08:01:31 +0000

Updated to Wordpress 2.5, which looks quite awesome. Also updated the look of the page a little, with my Twitter updates and a tag cloud.

And, before you laugh… yes, I kinda get Twitter now. And I like it.

PS: I couldn’t find a better picture for this post, so I used my new favourite image.

Reznor… reznoring.

winsmith — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:56:09 +0000

Finally! New Nine Inch Nails album available… under a Creative Commons Licence!

You can either

download the first 9 tracks for free from the NIN site
download all for free from the Bittorrent site of your choice ;)
pay $5 and download the full album (and support the artist)
pay $10 and get the download plus a 2-disc digipak
pay $75 or $300 for deluxe packages respectively

I bought the $10 version. You can pay via Paypal, which is very convenient and right now I’m eagerly awaiting my download link. And with the ridiculously low dollar, its just a little more than a normal store-bought album even with shipping and taxes.

I’ll post what I think of the music once I’ve listened to the album a few times. (Yes, I am one of those old-fashioned people who listen to music before reviewing it ;) )

Europeans: I want YOU to sign this petition

winsmith — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:43:07 +0000

So the content mafia is going to push for an extension of the current copyright term of 50 years. In my book, fifty years is more than enough. In yours too? Sign the petition!

Copyright is a bargain. In exchange for their investment in creating and distributing sound recordings to the public, copyright holders are granted a limited monopoly during which are allowed to control the use of those recordings. This includes the right to pursue anyone who uses their recordings without permission. But when this time is up, these works join Goethe, Hugo and Shakespeare in the proper place for all human culture – the public domain. In practice, because of repeated term extensions and the relatively short time in which sound recording techniques have been available, there are no public domain sound recordings.

Full text at soundcopyright.eu

Neil Gaiman (sorta) Reznoring

winsmith — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:23:03 +0000

Awesome fantasy writer Neil Gaiman is giving away his book American Gods for free! I personally have this book on my shelf at home and I *lurv* the shit out of it. The only downside of this version is that you can only read it online. Have a look at American Gods, by Neil Gaiman.

And so it begins

winsmith — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 08:39:48 +0000

I wonder if the Web 2.0 bubble will burst just as spectacularly as the first did. Maybe it won’t; maybe it will just silently implode over the course of a few months and nobody will publicly acknowledge it, because it would be just too embarrassing.Regardless of how it will happen, I’m beginning to think that the when is clear: Now.I think that right now we’re seeing the first signs that, once more, VCs and startups are going to learn that there is no unlimited growth. That their users’ attention spans are going to run out. The first reports are popping up that, maybe users aren’t that interested in Facebook and MySpace anymore. Writes the Creative Capital Blog:

But the pain is not just a MySpace problem. It seems to be an industry-wide issue. The total audience of U.S. social networks seems to be stuck at a low-to-mid-single digit growth rate, while the engagment metrics are falling for just about everyone.

Here in Germany, we have a Facebook clone called StudiVZ. They changed their Terms and Services about a month ago, and required users to accept the new ones in order to access the site. Problem was, there were a lot of rumors that the new terms were very evil, privacy-wise. To opt-out of most of the spying, you had to surf around the site and find, after about 6-8 pages, the opt-out confirmation page.Now it seems that most users didn’t even bother. Many used the new conditions as a good excuse to finally delete their account, and even those who stayed mostly changed all their personal information, names, university courses, everything, to nonsense; because it seemed easier to do that than finding the opt-out page.Now even if you don’t have all your friends added, you won’t find them, because they all have fantasy names and are in courses like “The Dark Side of Economics, by Darth Vader”.It’s getting silent on StudiVZ.As the article I linked to above shows, most other social networking sites have declining growth ratings. Facebook is even predicting they will be losing a lot of revenue:

That means the company would have a negative cash flow of about $150 million (EBITDA minus CapEx), rather than break even, as it does now.

What I’m saying is: This is it. This is the beginning of the next bubble burst. Prepare for a hot ride.