Ideology fanatics · 30 July 2006 by Alex Beregszaszi
I am subscribed to pretty much mailing lists, like I wanted to send in a patch for something and the list was members only, thus I subscribed and forgot to unsubscribe.
The same is the case for QEMU for which I have sent in some patches (VPC and Bochs image support) some two years ago. Since that I was not able to follow it strictly, but every now and then I read the interestingly looking mails.
First, as an introduction, you need to know, that QEMU is a multiple machine emulator (the best freely available now?) with optional support for virtualization (like VMware). In that case, when running the emulator on an Intel host for the purpose of running for example Windows on it, the instructions wont be emulated, but executed by the CPU. This is much faster of course than emulaton.
So. Originally, Fabrice Bellard (who is the primary author of QEMU) wrote the QEMU Accelerator (also called kqemu)- the virtualization helper kernel module – as an addition and made it available as binary only, with a proprietary license, while Qemu itself is GPL/LGPL. This is legal of course.
And now comes the misery. Every now and then, people get to the list, and without doing anything in favor of the project and people, just write some ranting words like: Yo, this is not ethical, make it open.
These people just don’t catch it. They get it for free, damn.
You need to know that there is also a free (as in freedom) virtualization module for QEMU called qvm86. Use it if you dont like the binary blob.
As an interesting addition, on the QEMU Accelerator some years ago there was a note, that if someone pays enough money, he will make it open. But that paragraph is gone now.
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Hungarian web culture · 27 July 2006 by Alex Beregszaszi
Warning, this will be a rude rant!
The hungarian web culture is at least 5 years behind today. Tables are still mandatory, XHTML-CSS design is mostly unknown and 1pixel spacers are widely used. Funny, isn’t it?
Today I have seen an ad of the SZTE-BMI – a university faculty with media related classes. They are offering specialization in what they call mediainformatics and explain as webdesign. Just look at their kickin old school website. And they are going to teach such awesome design skills and culture.
Copyright absurdum · 13 June 2006 by Alex Beregszaszi
In the past you could go to a library and read, borrow or copy any book. Today you’d get arrested for mere telling someone where the library is.
– Michael Niedermayer
Michael is/was an MPlayer developer, but does FFmpeg maintenance nowadays. He is a codec guru and explains things in his blog.
Windows Media Photo · 28 May 2006 by Alex Beregszaszi
Windows Media for president.
As I am pessimist in regard with Microsoft standards, this Media Photo stuff smells again like the usual way: trying to spread the usage of some own remake of the available tools. Once its used widely enough, try increasing the fees for it. At least after the competition is not possible.
Why do they like this borg-ideology?
Brave license compliancy · 27 May 2006 by Alex Beregszaszi
A siker egyik eleme [...], másik pedig a Linksys merészsége, amely ahhoz kellett, hogy szabaddá tegye a Linuxot futtató router programjának, azaz firmware-ének a forráskódját. (Linksys, Linux, advocacy by Zsolt Köhler, CHIP, 2006 June)
One key figure in the success of the Linksys WRT54G had been Linksys’ being brave enough to release the firmware of its Linux based router.
What is brave there? It is just about complying to licenses – to the GPL. It is really good that people familiar with open source are reporting about open source in the mass media. Really.
Joga Bonito · 16 May 2006 by Alex Beregszaszi
I basically dislike football, probably because the hungarian cultureless football and football fanatics, but the Joga Bonito (play nice?) ads do say the same thing which comes up every time in Hungary: play football because the love for the game and not for the money in the first place.
The JogaTV “Ronaldinho Joy” has the best music, anyone knows the title of it?
Ads:
Unprofessional journalism · 9 May 2006 by Alex Beregszaszi
The report on mediablog about professional vs citizen journalism started me to think about the subject.
This contra post addresses Citizen journalism vs. professional journalism I posted on The Editors Weblog, but first summarize its content:
- an amateur loves to do something
- a professional does something just for paying the bills
Certain core values and practices of traditional (professional) journalism—such as objectivity, accuracy, corroboration, avoiding conflicts of interest, transparency, editorial oversight, etc.—exist in order to enhance our integrity and thus earn the audience’s trust., says Amy Gahran.
Accuracy: bloggers don’t really report so what’s there to be accurate about?
Accuracy. Professional journalists claim they are accurate, however, they learned how to write and not all those fields they are writing or reporting about. Just pick up a usual journalist: she needs to interview dozens of people of different fields every month. Does she claims to have accurate background on each field? No, she knows how to write, preferably even how to ask, and when everything goes right, she even sends the draft for review to the interview partner.
Let’s go to the other side, take a professional from some field. For the example, let take someone active on the multimedia scene. She reports weekly about what she has done, what new ideas she has – with the correct background knowledge. Let’s call this person the professional amateur journalist.
More and more blogs are started by such people who have reached great knowledge in certain areas; and while working in this area, they still have time to blog in the area. These professionals are creating valuable content. And thats what the mean journalist are fearing from, thats why they are every time telling how useless blogs are.
Even if these professional amateur jorunalist are not the best at writing (still the content goes through), are they creating less value than professionals, who can only report and not create?