Sep 5, 2007 · 3 minute read
NewsOpinion
Microsoft has released Silverlight 1.0, the company's intended Flash-killer, and has announced that it will be working with Novell to provide support for the open source, Mono-based implementation, Moonlight. Overall, I think this is a fantastic development for the open source community. Microsoft has basically pledged to support the Novell developers by providing test suites and the like so that complete compatibility can be (almost) guaranteed. This would mean that application written for Silverlight on Windows or Mac would run just as well in Linux or any platform supported by Mono and Moonlight.
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Sep 5, 2007 · 2 minute read
I added a very simple mod today that you might have noticed – there is now some text added dynamically to the search box that should give a better indication as to what that area is for. I used jQuery for this, just to further increase my exposure to the library, and I must say that it was extremely easy. I love the way you can simply attach functions to events with jQuery: you can see that when the search box has focus the "Search…" phrase disappears, allowing you to type straight away without having to worry about it.
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Sep 5, 2007 · 1 minute read
Omar Kilani, from Remember The Milk, has written up a fantastic contribution to the Google Developer Knowledge Base entitled "Taking web applications offline with Google Gears". Fittingly, it goes through what Google Gears is, how it is used, a general strategy for moving your web application over to using it and how it was used at RTM. If you're interested in adding offline functionality to your web app, or you'd like to know more about Google Gears, then I recommend giving this a read.
Sep 4, 2007 · 1 minute read
I watched [Douglas Crockford's][1] "Quality" talk on YUI Theater today and I thought that it was a great talk that can benefit anyone involved in software development. In particular, I think it'd be good for students for be exposed to the ideas that Crockford is talking about as it will hopefully allow you to avoid some mistakes. Links to the video are here: Yahoo! Video (Flash) or download.yahoo.com (M4V, iPod/iPhone-compatible)
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Sep 3, 2007 · 1 minute read
News
According to APC Magazine, Hewlett-Packard are planning on selling desktop PCs in Australia that are loaded with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop, with Red Hat providing the support. The models available will be AMD systems with Semprons, Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2 CPUs. Honestly, I'm not sure why anyone would want to buy system based on those CPUs (with the superior Intel chips being available) but I guess these are aimed at small to medium businesses, which is the reason for the choice of Red Hat as the operating system.
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Sep 3, 2007 · 2 minute read
I have added in a modified version of Alex King's Friendly Search URLs. What this basically does is add a rewrite rule and some JavaScript that changes http://www.chnorton.com.au/?s=friendly%20search into http://www.chnorton.com.au/search/friendly+search, which I think everyone can agree is much nicer (but both will work). It's also easy enough to remember that you can type it into the address bar of a browser directly. I have been wanting to try out some JavaScript programming for a while and I'm especially keen to get into jQuery so I decided to rewrite the JavaScript code to use that.
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Sep 1, 2007 · 1 minute read
News
EA is celebrating the 12th birthday of the first Command & Conquer game by offering it as a free download. The version offered is the Windows 95-compatible "gold edition" and comes on the GDI and Nod discs. There are install instructions as well as it seems there are some extra steps necessary to get it running under Windows XP. Since the site requires JavaScript enabled to view the text, and I know there're lazy people out there, here are direct links to the ISO images and install doc: GDI ISO Nod ISO Install file Update: Apparently the game runs on Wine as well but not on Vista (thanks 0bsolete).
Sep 1, 2007 · 7 minute read
Opinion
I read this article on OSNews a couple days ago: Competition Is Not Good by Kroc. I admit that I'm slightly baffled by the case that is being made for why competition is not a good thing. Here I present my reasons for this and some alternative arguments for the points raised. Need I Point Out The Obvious? I think one of the fundamental flaws in the article is the logical contradiction that becomes evident near the end.
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Aug 31, 2007 · 1 minute read
News
The Melbourne Anime Festival (Manifest) will be starting a fortnight from now, on Friday, September 14th. If you're an otaku, or at least know what otaku means, then I heartily recommend coming along to this con. It's held at Melbourne University so hopefully it should be easy to reach for most people living somewhere near the city. Most events, screenings, trading and general fun is to be had on the Saturday and Sunday but it's good to come and get everything organised on Friday and see some of the early cosplay and screenings.
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Aug 30, 2007 · 2 minute read
Opinion
After reading about Sony basically pulling the plug on their primary ATRAC-encoded content delivery service, the format seems to be coming to the end of its downward spiral into oblivion. I think that ATRAC actually has a few nice features that have a place in the world of audio formats and it's a shame to see Sony simply throw that away. I think that a "solution" to this is for Sony to open up the ATRAC standard for use by anyone.
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