By RangerRick, on August 19th, 2008%
Do you see that picture on the right? I bought Windows XP when it came out. An actual legitimate copy of Windows XP Home Edition. It promised a lot of things that it eventually pretty much delivered after a couple of service packs. It’s moved from machine to machine as I’ve updated hardware. I’ve gotten rid of basically all of my old PC hardware and now it lives on my Macbook Pro. I’ve been reasonably happy with it. Except…
With such a long history, I’ve long-since passed the time when Microsoft accepted my key without question through internet activation. Do you know what happens when you pass that time? Painful crushing phone activation.
Observe:
First, you have to call a number, and enter 9 sets of 6 digits (they’re kind enough to let you use the touch-tone phone to do it, instead of braving their voice recognition system). Then, on the 9th set, it always complains that it didn’t understand the last set of digits, until you’re forced to tell it to forward you to a human without finishing the automated input.
Then, since it didn’t . . . → Read More: Microsoft, Why Do You Treat Me Like A Pirate?
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By RangerRick, on August 18th, 2008%
In addition to digital downloads through Amazon MP3, iTunes, and a host of other services, my first album, Finally, is now available on CD.
Order now!
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By RangerRick, on August 7th, 2008%
So I’ve been meaning to do a Dev-Jam 2008 summary since we got back last weekend, and I can put it off no longer.
In summary: Dev-Jam 2008 was a huge success!
Sunday, July 27th, SVN revision 9618
We loaded up in the Dev-Jam Express and started the drive from North Carolina to the Georgia Tech campus. After plenty of rest stops, food breaks, passing water towers that look like giant spanked butts, and picking up of supplies, we arrived.
We got settled in, got room keys, met with the other folks who had arrived, and recuperated from a long drive.
Monday, July 28th, SVN revision 9622
Tarus started out by welcoming everyone and doing a “State of OpenNMS.” Since last year we blew away our goal, “2007: The Year of 4 Releases”. Development has increased dramatically, despite the fact that off and on, OpenNMS regulars have been busier than ever with non-OpenNMS projects. Of course, new regulars have joined in the fray. (Does that make us “more regular”?) Anyways, OpenNMS has gotten easier to install, more robust, and just plain better in every . . . → Read More: OpenNMS Dev-Jam 2008 Developer Journal
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By RangerRick, on May 29th, 2008%
With the help of a number of folks, I’m happy to announce the latest KDE/Mac snapshot, based on KDE 4.1 Beta 1. Also, while it’s been available for a while, I’d like to point out that KDE/Mac now has an official website, at mac.kde.org, using Benjamin Dietrich’s pretty design.
Torrents are all seeded, and downloadable.
Note: Apparently bittorrent doesn’t preserve executable flags. 🙁 Before installing, run, in a terminal: chmod a+x *.pkg/Contents/Resources/postflight
As always, questions are welcome in the comments, on the kde-mac list, or in a bug report. =)
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By RangerRick, on May 20th, 2008%
Finally is now available for immediate download!
You can get it at iTunes, Amazon.com, eMusic, and a host of other digital download sites.
Check it out, and let me know what you think!
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By RangerRick, on May 14th, 2008%
After reading Tarus’s post, I couldn’t help posting my own response to Matt Asay’s CNET blog. I know I shouldn’t rise to the bait, but sometimes, you just have to get it out. I was as frustrated as Tarus after reading it… Feel free to read it yourself, but don’t click the ads, click mine instead! (cough, sorry)
Anyways, CNET’s lovely comment system apparently doesn’t believe in carriage returns, you’re only supposed to post in sound-bites I guess. 😉 So, I’m going to repost my response here, in a form that looks less like a Giant Blob o’ Text (and with a few changes for emphasis). Also, in my original comment I accidentally wrote “free-loaders” once instead of “free-riders.”
I have read a few of your previous blog posts with interest, but I can only assume that this time you’ve gone the way of Dvorak and are posting sensational ideas for the purposes of ad revenue for CNET. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.
You posit that because communities don’t grow on software that gets “open-sourced”, software doesn’t grow on communities. You couldn’t be more mistaken. . . . → Read More: Sometimes I Can’t Help Myself (Rant)
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By RangerRick, on May 11th, 2008%
I’ve set up a separate site for my music, since it’s a little off-topic for this blog. Major announcements will still be posted here as well, but I intend to post other news, information about releases, previews, and other things relating to my music to the other site instead.
Feel free to check out music.raccoonfink.com for all the latest happenings.
Thanks!
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By RangerRick, on May 4th, 2008%
So if you’ve followed my blog for a long time, you might have noticed me mention that I have, on occasion, written music.
I’ve finally found some time to really work on getting everything set up again so I can write more music (and, in fact, I’ve got a guitar on the way as a birthday present from my wife!). This past month, I’ve worked really hard to do something I’ve meant to do for a long time: release an album.
Now, my music has always been freely available, it’s a part of the demoscene culture, not to mention my open-source roots, working with OpenNMS, Fink, and tons of other stuff. One thing that’s very hard to do, however, when writing tracked music, is get that “finished” sound.
I’ve spent the last month going through my catalog, dumping everything to Garage Band and ProTools, and re-mixing, remastering, and all-around cleaning up my tracks.
Without further ado, I announce my first single, Pointillize, available immediately on Amazon MP3 download, and soon on iTunes, Rhapsody, and other music download services.
On May . . . → Read More: And Now For Something Completely Different — Raccoon Fink Music
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By RangerRick, on April 23rd, 2008%
So I’ve been slack in posting to my blog, for any number of reasons, but I’ve been busy busy with lots of crazy stuff.
First, I’ve been spearheading the OpenNMS involvement in Summer of Code. Aside from one unfortunate incident things have been going well. I’m really looking forward to getting to know our students and seeing what they can come up with. It will be a learning experience for all of us. =)
We’re also starting to gear up towards another beta on the road to OpenNMS 1.6. We’ve already got a bunch more bugs finished off, but also plenty to do still.
If you haven’t noticed, my blog looks a little bit different. I’d been limping along with pretty much unchanged templates from upgrade after upgrade of Movable Type since version 3.1 or so. It’s a testament to their software that everything’s worked swimmingly without any major surgery for all of that time, but I’ve been itching to take advantage to the much cleaner HTML and CSS they’re using in newer default templates, and other spiffy features which I have not been able to . . . → Read More: I’m Not Dead Yet
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By RangerRick, on March 26th, 2008%
I’m in the lucky position that I get to work on open-source software for a living. Not only that, but I work with a group of people who really believe in open-source software as more than just an alternate business strategy — it’s a philosophy that benefits everyone involved.
OpenNMS is completely open-source. There’s no whacky $50-per-node “enterprise” version with extra features — we put it all out there, and we stake our reputations on being the people you contact when you need something more than community support on the mailing list. The code is open, and anyone can become an OpenNMS consultant if they want. To survive as a services company, we have to be good at what we do, and not just keep the code hostage and force customers to go through us to get things done. We have to work our butts off to remain the go-to experts on OpenNMS.
That’s what makes it frustrating when we see our code, and the code of lots of other contributors appear to be misused. The whole point of the GPL is that everyone benefits from improvements made to the . . . → Read More: When “Do No Evil” Is Not Enough
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