Think illegal downloading is free?
Saw this on reddit earlier and it made me chuckle. Original image found here.
(How great is Communication Breakdown by Zeppelin?)
Last.fm just gets better
Last.fm, the infamous music website that logs the music a user plays to create recomendations of bands and to introduce users to others with similar musical taste, has today announced that it is the proud owner of the largest free music service available today.
This article on the BBC website goes into detail about this new service.
I personally feel that it is a step in the right direction, providing a music streaming service so that users can actually “try before they buy”. It will be interesting to see how well this idea catches on or even if it is successful, but it is safe to say that the record industry are looking for a new sales model and this venture by Last.fm could be the kick start they need.
Last.fm has a huge user base already, which should give this service a kick-start and I personally will be using the free streaming service as a way to be able to easily listen to new music without having the hassle of listening to free samplers. Just a shame Last.fm is now owned by CBS….
Living with Linux
A while back you may remember a post regarding my new computer and the joys of running Linux. I feel that it’s time that I do a post regarding my feelings towards Linux, or Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) to be more precise.
I have to say I haven’t had that many issues with setting up and running Gutsy but I still have a few minor problems present now (which will you will read about later, if you can be bothered going through all of this entry).
I think wireless Internet was the biggest issue I had with setting up Ubuntu and it still isn’t completely fixed now. I started off trying to use an old BT Voyager wireless adaptor and installed ndiswrapper to get things started. I didn’t really have any problems with the installation or finding the driver for the adaptor - the main problem was that the wireless adaptor wasn’t working.
After purchasing a new wireless adaptor (some cheap Belkin G thing), I set about trying to get wireless Internet. Eventually managed to find the right driver for the adaptor and that was all fine. I know decided that the current network manager was not sufficient for my use (note: I have not got wireless Internet working at this point) so I installed gtkwifi and had no look AT ALL. So after much struggling I returned to the original network-manager provided with the Gutsy installation.
I couldn’t work out why I could not connect to the network for a while before realising (rather embarrassingly) that the encryption used on the network is WEP(ASCII) and not WEP(passphrase). Once this little mistake was corrected I now had a network connection!!!
Great isn’t it? Not really - I did not have Internet access and after some little research discovered that Gutsy used ipV6 as default and of course hardly any wireless routers support ipV6 (another reason why ipV6 will fail). Disabling ipV6 solved this lack of Internet issue.
Unfortunately this is not the end of the story as I still get random disconnecting now. I think this may well be down to having a rubbish wireless adapter but it is still annoying and I am yet to find a permanent fix for this. I do however have a temporary solution for when a disconnection occurs:
- Remove wireless adaptor
- Plug back in
- In the terminal type:
sudo modprobe -r ndiswrapper sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
- Reconnect
- Re-enter encryption
- It will connect and subsequently drop immediately
- Re-connect again and this time the connection holds!
Another really annoying issue that I have with the wireless Internet is that I cannot use more GMail account very well at all. Whenever I go on my account and try to send any sort of email the Internet connection always drops. Why? I have no idea and I am yet to find a solution for this so if anyone can help, please do.
Apart from this wireless Internet issue I am loving having Gutsy; it’s help me improve my knowledge of Linux and it is just pleasant to use. I am also in love with multiple desktops and how simple all the software is (and the fact it is free!).
Some of the features that I like can be seen below.
With a new release of KDE just out and a new version of Gnome coming out shortly I have to decide whether to try out Kubuntu running the new KDE or to hold out a little but longer and to get the next version of Ubuntu running the new version of Gnome.
(The Internet disconnected twice whilst creating this entry)
Interfaces SHOULD be your friend
I recently had to develop a web browser as part of my univeristy course as a practice of creating GUI’s in Java, as well as being able to create an easy to upgrade piece of software. We were strictly told to use interfaces in the creation of the program, but I did not really take in what they meant by this. So I went away and created an amazing web browser (for a basic web browser who’s design is not about support CSS or anything else) and only used interfaces for some of the main components of the web browser so if those components were to be replaced then there would at least be some way of ensuring that what they’re replaced with would allow the web browser to still work.
I got 96% for the web browser - pretty good ey? I have however just realised what the module leader meant when he said to use interfaces to improve deplugability. He meant you should use them in the declaration of get methods so that if you needed to change the get method so that it used a data type it would break the entire program and allow it all to function correctly.
Take the example below. The get method has been defined to use an ArrayList, nothing advanced (not even using generics!!).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | public ArrayList getNames() { ArrayList names = new ArrayList(); names.add("tom"); names.add("edd"); return names; } |
Now imagine you didn’t want to use an ArrayList anymore, but rather a LinkedList. You may think that isn’t a problem, just need to change the method so that it uses a different type of List. Wrong - you will have to change everything that uses this method as it to will be using the type ArrayList.
Now imagine that you had declared this method to return the interface List and you wanted to change the type of List this method uses. You could change the data type within the method to watever you want it to be and as long as the method returned a data type of List then there should be no problems.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | public List getNames() { ArrayList names = new ArrayList(); names.add("tom"); names.add("edd"); return names; } |
I hope this is enough reason for people to START USING INTERFACES. I for one will be trying to remember to use them all of the time to try and reduce this sort of issue occurring in the future.
(If you cared to know I lost the 1 mark on the web browser for not refreshing the web page correctly, something about not forcing it).
We wouldn’t steal
I know I promised I would actually start writing articles etc. but I am still doing University exams (did I mention this?) so don’t really have the time at the moment.
Anyway “We wouldn’t steal” is about political parties in the European Union making a stand against the copyright lobbyist groups and the propaganda they use about file sharing - you know the stuff, comparing downloading a film to mugging an old lady.
This is being backed by The Pirate Bay (of course) and if you would like more information visit the link at the bottom.
They’ve made a nice mini-advert as well, which is can be seen here (just in case you need enticing).
What a legend
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7187497.stm
(I seem to be getting lazy and just linking to other sites instead of doing some sort of writing myself, let me know if anyone wants to learn about binary exponential back off protocol :p).
Quack quack went the goat
I just read an interesting interview of a German lawyer who is representing 500 file-sharers on TorrenFreak. Well worth a read. It is linked below.
Doing the happy dance
I think I have failed to previously mention that I have a first round interview with Accenture on 5th February down in London town. Was a bit of a surprise to get an interview as I buggered up the application by not completing it properly as I thought there would be an opportunity to have a review and go back and change the application at the end, but this wasn’t possible. This is for a summer internship.
What I am actually doing a happy dance about is the fact I have a phone interview with HP. This was another surprise as I kept getting e-mails from them saying I had not finished my application (when I quite blatently had and submitted it). It turns out there is another section to the website and you have to fill out a questionnaire for it…oops. Either way I now have some sort of interview for HP for a year-long internship. Yay!!
Colin Murray
What a radio DJ. Colin Murray is a DJ at Radio 1 who does the 22:00 - 00:00 slot on a weekday, but use to do the 13:00 - 16:00 slot with Edith Bowman. His evening show is really good and tends to play a lot of obscure music, which the average listener has never heard and it all tends to be pretty damn good.
Anyway he does this feature called Mobile Disco where he plays an hours worth of music non-stop (and it is pretty non-stop). This feature is surprisingly good and today he was playing songs that made it to No. 2 in the charts. Pulled out some absolute crackers and would recommend going to the listen again section on the Radio 1 website. Alternatively listen to his evening show, which is again available online.
One final thing, happy new year.
