MindlessCode.net

(As written about here before) Wired is reporting that the EFF will request that 10 patents be reexamined.

• One-click online shopping (U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411.)
• Online shopping carts (U.S. Patent No. 5,715,314.)
• The hyperlink (U.S. Patent No. 4,873,662.)
• Video streaming (U.S. Patent No. 5,132,992.)
• Internationalizing domain names (U.S. Patent No. 6,182,148.)
• Pop-up windows (U.S. Patent No. 6,389,458.)
• Targeted banner ads (U.S. Patent No. 6,026,368.)
• Paying with a credit card online (U.S. Patent No. 6,289,319.)
• Framed browsing; (U.S. Patent Nos. 5,933,841 & 6,442,574.)
• Affiliate linking (U.S. Patent No. 6,029,141.)

Yay for the EFF!

The Public Patent Foundation is looking for geeks to help them do some patent busting work. PubPat recently challenged the Microsoft FAT patent by filing a formal complaint to the USPTO.

Let’s see what happens :).

Wahey! Look what I found: http://developer.kde.org/documentation/tutorials/qtgtk/main.html
This is really super, should reduce a lot of my work on Icewater :)…if it works. Looks like each app will require a few mods, which could be patches returned to the main CVS tree of the app, then it could be compiled with a –enable-kde option, or something. Screenies:
http://ktown.kde.org/~danimo/bmp_kde_diropen_dlg.png [Beep Media Player–GTK2(?)]
http://ktown.kde.org/~danimo/bmp_kde_fileopen_dlg.png [Beep Media Player–GTK2(?)]
http://ktown.kde.org/~danimo/gimp_kde_bridge.png [Gimp–looks like the GTK1 version(?)]

Boy, I can’t wait to try this out :D.

When will this madness end!!?
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,681,985.WKU.&OS=PN/6,681,985&RS=PN/6,681,985
Washington Mutual has filed a patent on how they designed their branches (the ones with the coffee, popcorn, touch-screen tellers, and play areas). Ack. I don’t think I need to say more.

2 days, 22 hours, and 55 minutes, and 2.5GB (downloaded) later, and I’ve got it! Got my disks burned finally…I think I had a bunch of bad CDs…but these seem to be working fine :). Let you know what I think

Ack! I’m still downloading Slackware via BitTorrent…I also have a bunch of bad CDs :(. My downloads are going real sloow (1.4KB/sec) and my uptime is

20:26:13 up 2 days,  1:42,  1 user,  load average: 0.70, 0.77, 0.73

.

C’mon, join the torrent! My ISP’s gonna hate me…I’ve uploaded 3.0GB in this session and downloaded 1.8 GB. I’m annoyed, sorry.

— [HALT]
OK, I got that overwith. I’ve been hacking on the GTK+ source (I already hate it) today trying to figure out how the save/open dialogs work. I want to make GTK/Gnome apps use the same dialogs that KDE ones do. The new GTK file chooser is even worse that the old one, if you ask me. Also, the GTK file chooser code is a total mess–I’m used to the OO KDE which is really clean. You need to call a million functions to get a dialog:

	/* Filters */
	filter = gtk_file_filter_new ();
	gtk_file_filter_set_name (filter, _("All Files"));
	gtk_file_filter_add_pattern (filter, "*");
	gtk_file_chooser_add_filter (GTK_FILE_CHOOSER (filesel), filter);

	/* Make this filter the default */
	gtk_file_chooser_set_filter (GTK_FILE_CHOOSER (filesel), filter);

Ack.
/Ducks from angry Gnome overlords

— [HALT GEEK]
OK, got that over with. Went to the theatre production of Beauty and the Beast by the local funky household acting company (AAA–Actors of Alexander Avenue)…totally awesome! Thanks everybody (even none of you read this :P).

— [REENTER GEEK MODE]
I donno what to do about Icewater. I’ve halted work on my package manager system…do we really need another package management system–even if it is the answer to dependency hell (err…uh…sure, right)? Methinks not. The coolest thing I’ve seen is Autopackage. It’s trying to be a cross-distro package managment system (like InstallShield, except without the overhead of the self-contained installer, and it has deps resolution). Also, it trys to make the executables relocateable, which is really super. What’s the downside of it? It’s still alpha/beta, and isn’t really designed to create a distro with. That’s what RPM is for. Autopackage is what every Linux (/Ducks) program on the planet should provide binaries in. It’s awesome, but I donno… I’m thinking of building Icewater with RPM, then providing the Autopackage support code and going on a Autopackage rampage, createing packages for every app on Freshmeat. Also, since this would probably require a little source-code modification (to make the apps relocateable), the task would huge :*. I donno what to do :(.

Yahoo is at it again…they’ve blocked 3^rd party clients. Trillian, KYIM, Kopete, all of them by changing their protocol–again. You can read all about it on ZDNet. By the way, I suggest using Jabber. It’s free, open source, complete, fast, and has clients for every operating system under the sun. I’m using Kopete, works great :). If anybody ever does want to get in touch with me, my jabber ID is tmorton@jabber.org.

Woohoo! Slackware 10 is out. Most of the mirrors don’t have it yet (or the ones that do are Slashdotted). Of course, you can get it from Bittorrent. You’ll need a BitTorrent client too, I suggest Azureus. Keep the torrent strong, join in, please!

I’m currently clocking the first ISO at 1 day 4 hours, uploading at 45 kB/s, downloading at 12 kB/s, outch, I only have 6% of it :|. Join in and keep your client running after you’ve downloaded.

Thanks, Slackware team!

A friend (no, I’m not saying which one) sent me these license agreements to the free copy of VB.NET you can get if you watch and rate some movies. They license agreement is pretty scarry. In general, it forbids you from creating open source apps, releasing benchmarks against .NET or any other project (like Mono), and other generally scarry stuff.

Here’s the quote about redistributing (removed all the legalease):

3.1 General Distribution Requirements.
(a) If you choose to redistribute Sample Code, Redistributable Code, or SMC (collectively, the "Redistributables") as described in Section 2, you agree:
* to distribute the Redistributables only in object code form

[no source code]

* that the Redistributables only operate in conjunction with Microsoft Windows platforms

[Don’t try and create something, then compile it again with Mono]

* to display your own valid copyright notice which shall be sufficient to protect Microsoft’s copyright in the Software

[No public domain software]

* to indemnify, hold harmless, and defend Microsoft from and against any claims or lawsuits, including attorney’s fees, that arise or result from the use or distribution of the Licensee Software

[My emphasis. If your code blows up, then you will defend Microsoft against any charges…what about a bug in the .NET code?]

3.2 Additional Distribution Requirements for Certain Redistributable Code.
* Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE). If you redistribute MSDE you agree to comply with the following additional requirements: (a) [cut] (b) Licensee Software shall not substantially duplicate the capabilities of Microsoft Access or, in the reasonable opinion of Microsoft, compete with same;

[Don’t try and write a replacement to Access if youre using MSDE.]

* unless Licensee Software requires your customers to license Microsoft Access in order to operate, you shall not reproduce or use MSDE for commercial distribution in conjunction with a general purpose word processing, spreadsheet or database management software product, except for the exclusive use of importing data to the various formats supported by Microsoft Access.

About the Benchmarks:

3.4 Benchmark Testing. You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of the .NET Framework component of the Software to any third party without Microsofts prior written approval.

[If they don’t like the results, you can’t publish them…sounds familiar, eh?]

/Ducks

Does anyone know if the commercial version of VB.NET/.NET SDK is the same?
If anyone is interested, you can read both license agreements here (eula.txt is a little messed up, had a bunch of NULL bytes added to it. I removed most of them with KHexEdit, but there’s probably a few I missed): http://www.wildgardenseed.com/Taj/eula

As reported on C|Net. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah is planning on introducing a bill that could outlaw VCR’s, ReplayTV, and other technology because it could be used to infringe on copyrights. What next, outlawing CD Burners? Does this sound familiar to anyone?

If you happen to get the right number (30,000 against 1) you’ll get a Gmail invite: http://gmailmachine.mmgn.com/