Posted by Trejkaz
Mon, 24 Jan 2005 01:42:00 GMT
In today’s news, a certain Windows user/developer hacks copy-on-select into a certain IM client (names withheld to protect the innocent/guilty.)
I found a better solution to this problem years ago I call it “using Linux.”
This solution is “better,” because in Linux, you get it in every application as if for free.
But while we’re on the topic, there are a great deal of UI deficiencies in Windows which need to be tackled at the OS level.
- Lack of copy-on-select, as just mentioned;
- Needing to aim for a thin titlebar, thus violating Fitts’ Law in the most horrible way (a large number of X window managers allow you to hold Alt and click anywhere in the window, which is much more comfortable);
- Needing to click on a window in order to use the scrollwheel to scroll it. If I wanted to click on the window and scroll the window, I would have clicked on the scrollbar.
Those three are the ones that bite my butt on a regular basis around once every 10-15 minutes while at work on a Windows machine. I think if they fixed these few issues, the entire OS might just become pleasant enough to use as a real desktop OS (crashes and hardware issues notwithstanding.)
So I dunno. Is shoehorning Windows into Linux on an application-by-application basis really getting anywhere? Instead of adding copy-on-select to Psi, Firefox, mIRC, PuTTY, and the other dozens of applications, people could have spent time adding it to the OS itself, or even just spent the time installing another OS. It doesn’t take that long. :-/
Tags linux, windows
Posted by Trejkaz
Wed, 19 Jan 2005 15:00:00 GMT
I’ve been looking for ways to get free or nearly-free SMS access to Australia, so that we can create a little gateway to it from jabber.org.au and improve our visibility.
The main problem is that services like ICQ have all shut down their free service, along with almost every other free web gateway in the world. Everyone who hasn’t shut down their gateway yet is blocked from this country one way or another.
The bulk SMS shops seem to be the most flexible way to do it, but so many of them charge 15 cents for each SMS that you wonder how they’re still in business (though the answer is obviously that they pay far less than 15 cents themselves.)
The best exploit right now seems to be getting a $79/month Vodafone plan. The plan caps at $79 until you spend $500. Then you just spend that entire $500 on SMS at 25 cents per message, making up 2000 messages at around 4 cents each. It gets shady though if we have to recover the cost, since Voda probably wouldn’t take nicely to us reselling their service.
Has anyone been here before? Know anyone who would sponsor an effort like this?
Tags jabber, sms
Posted by Trejkaz
Wed, 19 Jan 2005 02:00:00 GMT
I’ve completed the reworking of my JEP-0050-compliant XMPP bot into JSO. Ad-hoc commands were relatively easy to implement, and I’ve done a bit of a better job of separating out the responsibilities in the new code.
ServiceDiscoveryManager maintains a mapping from node IDs to Discoverable objects, and it is the Discoverable’s job to populate the disco#items and disco#info responses as appropriate.
CommandManager maintains a mapping from command node to CommandHandler, and CommandHandlers are Discoverable, so you can discover commands. The CommandManager itself is also discoverable, in order for clients to discover the list of valid commands. I made the bot itself discoverable as well, and hooked the service discovery up so that discovery on the bot not only listed “commands” as a feature, but listed the child item for easier navigation. :-)
Read more...
Tags bot, jabber, software
Posted by Trejkaz
Fri, 14 Jan 2005 01:40:00 GMT
Since the prototype of my Jabber bot which I’ve been using to make weblog posts is doing quite well, I figured it was time to tidy it up and get everything in order.
Leaving Smack behind, I moved to using JSO, whose protocol support is a lot more comprehensive than Smack’s anyway. It took a while to bang everything together some kind of order, but I think I’m finally there.
I just need to port the Ad-hoc Command stuff over, which can’t be as hard as the query framework was. Then I need to build in the ability to easily extend the bot, and then I can just port over the weblog poster.
Tags bot, jabber, software
Posted by Trejkaz
Wed, 12 Jan 2005 01:41:00 GMT
Looks like people have figured out how to create [viruses][1] which run inside Windows Media Player (WMP)’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) framework.
So in case anyone actually runs WMP with the “Acquire licenses automatically” option turned on
Tags drm, exploit, windows
Posted by Trejkaz
Tue, 11 Jan 2005 06:55:00 GMT
It’s like it sounds.
I wanted a copy of [Wikipedia][1] to use on the run, when I had no easy access to a net connection (this is especially the case while I have no Wi-fi adapter and need to make do with Bluetooth, or USB for better bandwidth.)
Read more...
Tags gadgets, software, wikipedia, zaurus
Posted by Trejkaz
Tue, 11 Jan 2005 06:32:00 GMT
I wanted to set up stuff to run automatically when the SD card is inserted. One of the reasons for this was a Zaurus Wikipedia install, as I wanted it to mount the wikipedia when the card was inserted and unmount it as it was ejected.
Read more...
Tags gadgets, software, zaurus
Posted by Trejkaz
Fri, 07 Jan 2005 01:41:00 GMT
Microsoft Anti-Spyware. I wonder if it removes Internet Explorer and Windows Messenger
Tags microsoft, spyware, windows
Posted by Trejkaz
Wed, 05 Jan 2005 01:41:00 GMT
This is my first test of posting weblog entries via Jabber.
The post, when received by the bot, will search for user snips with a JabberIDLabel which matches the sending JID. After finding any snips with this JID, it then looks for a SnipLabel called “Weblog” which points to the blog which should be posted to.
The bot then sets the user to each snip it found, and posts to the associated blog.
Users who don’t have permission to write to the associated blog will simply fail to post and should get back an error message to that effect. Users who (maliciously?) add another user’s JabberID to their own user snip might still cause issues
Tags jabber, meta, software
Posted by Trejkaz
Tue, 21 Dec 2004 01:44:00 GMT
I’m migrating all the Jabber accounts from jabber.xaoza.net to jabber.zim.net.au in the next week or so, in preparation for the potential removal of the xaoza.net domain.
One thing that this does for me which is actually pretty good, is that it cleans out my roster. Anyone who doesn’t respond to the new authorisation requests can just be deleted after a week or so
Tags jabber