muesli's Blog

I started Konversation development some time ago and here's my latest patch. It's an extension, which enables this IRC client to display incoming messages (also joins, events, queries) transparently over your desktop. There is still some work left, of course. Here's my TODO list, regarding this patch:

- Text colour should be configurable. At the moment, it's only possible to display white fonts. I'll fix this one as soon as possible.
- Position of the OSD message needs to be adjustable. Only top border of your desktop, right now.
- Different events should have different colors
- I'm thinking about integrating the OSD support into the KNotify Dialog. Opinions?

Here's the patch.

Install instructions:

- Apply the CVS diff (konversation_osd.patch).
- Copy the other files to your [CVSROOT]/kdeextragear-2/konversation/konversation directory.

Recompile. Be happy

Links to old patches:
http://blog.chris.de/archives/111_Another_konversation_patch.html
http://blog.chris.de/archives/109_Patch_for_konversation.html

The SANS Institute (working together with the FBI) published a list of "The Twenty Most Critical Internet Security Vulnerabilities". They are discussing the top ten security risks of each OS, Windows and Linux.

The leaders are BIND and IIS, some general issues got even discussed twice and made it into both lists.

Here's the link!

Here's an example what software patents do to you:

Microsoft's ActiveX Changes Document

The best thing about it, they're describing how to work-around those changes in the "Changes" document itself.

rotfl.

Got some new music and games, lately. Here are my impressions of:

Obie Trice - Cheers: Maybe the hiphop album of the year. At least the best till now. Eminem, Dr. Dre, 50 and Obie do have some cool beats and lyrics I really like that one. First song to listen to: "Got some teeth"

EA Sports' Tiger Woods 2k4: Even better than the predecessor. More game modes, slightly better graphics, more fun. This is just too addictive (no, I'm neither a golf fan nor a player *g*)

Ferris MC - Audiobiographie: In my eyes, the last album was a bit better, a bit more innovative, a bit more fun. This one is definitely not bad, just a bit strange. For the german hiphop friends only, maybe.

I just came back from the gas station, where i bought some drinks and snacks for the night. Just then, I saw the latest "ComputerBild-Spiele" issue. It's a cheap magazine (2.90 euros), which belongs to the Axel Spring Press ("Die Bild").

The headline caught my eyes: "Anstoss 3 Vollversion", a complete copy of the famous soccer manager included "for free". 5 seconds later, I paid the magazine and left the station. This is just too great! If you're a fan of soccer management simulations, GET THIS ONE! It keeps you bound to your PC for nights and weeks. Even better: In the next issue, there's a copy of "Anstoss Action", a soccer game, where you could play and take control of the team, which you formed in Anstoss 3!

Have fun,
muesli

In a message on the halflife2.net forum, Gabe Newell confirmed, that the Half-Life 2 source code was stolen from their servers and got released on the net. As you can imagine, he's really disappointed now, and he begs the users to help tracking this issue down.

Anyways: I'm pretty sure that Half-Life gets one of the greatest games ever. It's graphics and interaction just sets new standards for the genre. Buy this one!

On the other hand, it would be just too thrilling to see the sourcecode of this game. Not for stealing it or anything like that: Just for the plain fun of reading it!

Maybe Valve is really cool, trying to get the best out of the situation: Make it Opensource! I'm quite sure there's not the whole stuff out there to re-compile the whole game (think of all the game data and so on), besides that: No-one would try to compile and sell it afterwards. No-one could be that dumb.

So, just think of all the great opensource extensions to this game... People helping you fixing bugs for free, and still everybody agrees with the fact, that you're selling and getting money for this product, since you did most of the work, the design, the graphics, the marketing, and so on and on an on

Valve, I'd like to thank you for this game, no matter how you're going to handle this tough situation!

Yeah!

After one week, amazon finally did it and my new xBox controller arrived. It's a BigBen XS Pad, which actually got the size of Microsoft's small pad. It costs half the money of the original, offers great handling and has just the right size (reminds me of my favourite controllers, the good old PS2 pads).

Here's a link to amazon's product page!

Here's your redemption.

(Look closely!)

Here's your contract!