Vi input mode for Kate, now this is something that will be very much appreciated 

I don't really like KDE a whole lot but sometimes you can't avoid it. One thing that I have not been able to do in KDE is to replay Kate completely with vim, well this looks like the solution!!

http://hamberg.no/erlend/2008/11/24/the-vi-input-mode-for-kate-is-done/

I've not tested it yet but I'll give it a try on a Kubuntu Machine I'm currely using. I hear my new Linux machine at work will be a Gnome machine and i'm NOT looking forward to that .. I'm eager to see how well this works on KDE.

From the artcle:

I just marked the Vi input mode (”V.I.M.”?  ) for the Kate kpart as done in the feature plan for KDE 4.2. It feels a bit weird to mark it as done, though, as there are tonnes of things I want to implement after KDE 4.2.

As you may know this started as a Google Summer of Code project and I’m quite happy with the way things have turned out. Since we are in feature freeze I would like to present the features that will be in the Vi input mode for the Kate part in KDE 4.2.

I'm curious though why you would want to use Kate instead of vim but if you really want to have vi input mode whenever KDE loads up Kate even if you prefer it didn't then this is the answer.

Read the article http://hamberg.no/erlend/2008/11/24/the-vi-input-mode-for-kate-is-done/

 

http://www.worldaidsday.org/

http://www.stopaidsnow.nl/

http://www.stopaidsnow.org/

I don't often use the MSN transport on ejabberd but I had to do so yesterday and I received the error:

Failed to connect to MSN servers: [Failure instance: Traceback (failure with no frames): exceptions.Exception: Timeout]

I did a quick Google search and found the answer deep inside a story in German on http://www.jabber-me.de/1.0/?q=node/39

The solution is easy, change ./src/legacy/msn/msn.py on my Debian system it was in /usr/local/pymsnt/src/legacy/msn

Change line:

MSN_PROTOCOL_VERSION = "MSNP11 CVR0" # protocol version

to

MSN_PROTOCOL_VERSION = "MSNP11" # protocol version

Restart the MSN transport and it all worked again.

Thanks to http://dev.esl.eu/blog/tag/ejabberd/ for pointing to a solution.

We can never be too sure before travelling a few hundred kilometres this time of year.

Take a look at http://www.meteoalarm.eu/

I found meteoalarm http://www.meteoalarm.eu/ from http://www.meteo.be and thought it was interesting especailly as we do tend to drive long distances from time to time.

This site is available in lots of languages and is updated regularly! Check it out if you're about to drive off!

This is a sample map from the site, click on http://www.meteoalarm.eu/  to get the details!

I've been busy lately and have not posted much but, to those of you who know me and meetings, today's Dilbert is the best, why didn't I think of that ? 

 

Something I never thought I would see.

This article http://www.product-reviews.net/tag/psystar/ by Nikki talks about Pystar counter suing Apple over its manufacture of Mac OS X computers.

From the article "Psystar the company at the forefront of the law suit with Apple is fighting back and countersuing Apple, most people would have thought a small company would run a mile when faced with the big boys like Apple, but not these guys, they have come back fighting and going to battle it out using Antitrust Acts, saying that Apple’s restrictions and the tying of its OS to its own hardware are anticompetitive.

The Law suit came about a month ago when Psystar branded an Apple Clone where selling Computers called “OpenMacs” but for a fraction of the price as a Apple Mac, reports from Psystar say they are still open for business and until the courts say otherwise it is business as usual, although since the law suit the “OpenMacs” are not called “OpenComputers”." 

Read the articles

I'm very curious about the outcome!!!

The OUTCOME:

PsyStar's Suit Against Apple Gets Booted

http://www.internetnews.com/

November 19, 2008
By Andy Patrizio: More stories by this author:

A California district judge on Tuesday granted Apple's motion to dismiss claims of anticompetitive behavior by PsyStar, the Florida system builder that has been selling computers with Mac OS preinstalled.

PsyStar charged Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) with violating antitrust laws through its vehement opposition to third-party hardware makers looking to sell their own computers with Mac OS X preloaded.

Apple has only once allowed Mac clones to be sold, back in the mid-1990s. In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to the company he co-founded and immediately put the kibosh on those clones.

Until recently, PsyStar had been an unknown PC clone system builder in south Florida, one of thousands across the country. It came to national attention for selling computers that had been designed to run a hacked version of the Mac OS X operating system without Apple's authorization.

Read the whole story

http://www.internetnews.com/

A year ago I posted the story Apple's revenge, first Dell now IBM, next .. and so it gave me quite a laugh when I saw this story Apple could buy Dell with cash from Fortune @ CNN!!

Basically and I quote (by Philip Elmer-DeWitt)

When the markets closed on Wednesday, Dell (DELL) was trading at $11.98 share, with 1.96 billion shares outstanding. That puts Dell’s market capitalization at $23.5 billion.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, Steve Jobs reported that Apple (AAPL) ended fiscal year 2008 with $24.5 billion in the bank.

In other words, Apple could buy Dell with the cash it has on hand and still have more than $1 billion left over. (Or rather $10 billion, if you count, as reader Joe Goodart does, the $9 billion Dell has in the bank.)

 Hard to believe that it’s been only 11 years since Michael Dell, asked what he would do if he were Apple’s CEO, answered:

“What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.” (link)

Read the story. Michael Dell is not a poor man but all this makes me chuckle ;-)

 

This is the most excited I've felt riding the bike since it was new, I'm disappointed I've not fitted this exhaust before. I can't believe I've ridden 60.000 KM on the bike with the standard boring BMW exhaust ;-(

The sound is really exciting but if you dare and remove the silencer then it is really something else. I don't recommend you ride by any police under acceleration with the silencer removed but I did ride around 40 KM with it removed and it was a lot of fun, probably not a safe to the ears for long rides due to the loud noise but I guarantee you will NOT stop smiling! Having said all that, the sound of the bike with the silencer in place is really great.

Check out the pictures on this page and you'll see what I mean by the silencer (it removes easily with an allan key)

I have a feeling the bike has smoother and snappier acceleration but of course this could all be due to the excitement of the sexiest exhaust sound  you've ever heard!

This is part one of three upgrades I'm doing to the bike. 

Part 1) Akropovic  Exhaust - Finished
Part 2) Remus Headers
Part 3) K&N Air Filter
Part 4) Akropovic Performance Chip 

The problem below is NOT solved! The songs played for a couple of days and then stopped playing again asking for authorization. I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT BUY songs from iTunes unless you burn the songs to Music CDs immediately. I have re-contacted Apples support and they have once again asked me to uninstall iTunes as per instructions below, I have done this and the songs play for a few minutes and then iTunes starts to ask for authorization.

I'm am managing to burn CDs but after a while the songs refuse to play.. 

I followed instructions from Apple Itunes Support and I can now listen to all my songs. However, this is very alarming that this can happen and has made me rethink the whole issue regarding buying encrypted songs with limited playback capabilities.

The steps followed were:

1. The iTunes Store DE-Authorized my computer to play iTunes
2. Uninstall iTunes
3. Remove related files as per http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1224
4. Remove the SC directory /Users/Shared/SC Info
5. Reinstall iTunes
6. RE-Authorized my computer after clicking on a bought song

I am one Apple iTunes VERY UNHAPPY customer!

I am completely frustrated with this problem that started last week. Some of my iTunes purchased songs play and as you can see from the image above, some do not play. The problems is completely random. The songs play one minute, then they don't play the next. I come out of iTunes and the songs that did not play before play and then a few minutes later other purchased songs no longer play.

The message says "Would you like to authorize it" so I authorise it. And I get the following message.

This machine is already authorised 

I have contacted Apple support and followed their instructions:

    Authorized  logged in as jerry 
    Rebooted   
    NO CHANGE SAME PROBLEM                                                                                                                                 

    Downloaded and installed latest version of iTunes: http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
    Downloaded and installed latest version of Quicktime: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download
    Authorized logged in as jerry
    Signed out  
    Quit iTunes
    Started up iTunes  
    NO CHANGE SAME PROBLEM                                                                                                                                 

    Removed the /Users/Shared/SC Info as per http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1389?viewlocale=en_US 
    Rebooted   
    Logged in as root
    Authorized  as root 
    Rebooted    
    NO CHANGE SAME PROBLEM     

I don't know what the next step is, I wait an answer from Apple

In the mean time, after all those years, back to buying CDs.

NOTE: I back up my music to several hard disks, I never thought this would ever happen. If you have purchased iTunes music, make sure you burn each CD to a normal music CD that way you can always RIP them to MP3 later