Moblog - Software

Grafische Scriptprogrammierung

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:13:55 +0100

Sikuli gets around this by using picture based computing. Instead of needing intimate knowledge of a particular API or language you simply use Sikuli script to take an action on an area of the screen it finds by you giving it a picture.

DownloadSquad: Sikuli uses screen shots to run scripts

Disable Annoying "Disk not formatted" Dialog on Vista/Windows 7

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:22:41 +0200

Other than disabling autorun completely, there is no official way to stop the "You need to format the disk in drive X before you can use it" dialog from popping up every time you connect a drive with unknown (ie. non-FAT/NTFS) partitions, or when you accidentally click on it. Because my external drives are fully encrypted, this message appears every time I connect them, and if you mistakenly press the wrong button you have to be fast to stop it...

I've been using a self written AutoHotkey script to immediately close the dialog as soon as it appears for a few weeks now, and it works great. It sits in my tray, waits for the dialog and then closes it without me even noticing it. It takes virtually no resources, and doesn't do busy waiting thanks to the WinWait command of AutoHotkey.
Continue reading "Disable Annoying "Disk not formatted" Dialog on Vista/Windows 7"

How to Extract Drivers/Files from Installers

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 09:10:37 +0200

I've posted the Microsoft Lifecam standalone drivers a while ago and got a lot of questions regarding how I extracted them from the original setup. I'll explain it based on the latest 64bit installer for that webcam [LifeCam 3.0 downloaded here], but I'll also try to keep this short guide as general as possible. The same method works for all kinds of installers. I very often use it in cases where the driver installation is linked to some ugly software installation.
Continue reading "How to Extract Drivers/Files from Installers"

Fravia died.

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:42:39 +0200

Fravia died on May 3rd, 2009. Long live his memories. Goodbye.

Lord of the Cloud: John Markoff and Clay Shirky interview David Gerlernter

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:06:06 +0200

I've recently finished Markoff's great book on how the 60s counterculture shaped the personal computer history. Today, I've come across an interesting interview by him with David Gelernter.

David Gelernter .....

"...prophesied the rise of the World Wide Web. He understood the idea half a decade before it happened." (John Markoff)

"...is a treasure in the world of computer science...the most articulate and thoughtful of the great living practitioners" (Jaron Lanier)

"...is one of the pioneers in getting many computers to work together and cooperate on solving a single problem, which is the future of computing." (Danny Hillis)

"...is one of the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time." (Bill Joy)

Watch (or read) the interview at Edge: The Third Culture.

Follow-up: Read about his 'worst enemy', technology hater and terrorist Theodore Kaczynski ("The Unabomber") and his manifesto Industrial Society and its Future.

(...)
96. As for our constitutional rights, consider for example that of freedom of the press. We certainly don't mean to knock that right: it is very important tool for limiting concentration of political power and for keeping those who do have political power in line by publicly exposing any misbehavior on their part. But freedom of the press is of very little use to the average citizen as an individual. The mass media are mostly under the control of large organizations that are integrated into the system. Anyone who has a little money can have something printed, or can distribute it on the Internet or in some such way, but what he has to say will be swamped by the vast volume of material put out by the media, hence it will have no practical effect. (...) Even if these writings had had many readers, most of these readers would soon have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which the media expose them.
(...)
172. First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.

173. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can't make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better result than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

174. On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite—just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consist of soft-hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone's physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes "treatment" to cure his "problem." Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them "sublimate" their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves useful in the present system.) On those who are employed, ever-increasing demands will be placed; They will need more and more training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized so that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The system will have to use any means that it can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people to be docile, to have the abilities that the system requires and to "sublimate" their drive for power into some specialized task. But the statement that the people of such a society will have to be docile may require qualification. The society may find competitiveness useful, provided that ways are found of directing competitiveness into channels that serve that needs of the system. We can imagine a future society in which there is endless competition for positions of prestige and power. But no more than a very few people will ever reach the top, where the only real power is (see end of paragraph 163). Very repellent is a society in which a person can satisfy his needs for power only by pushing large numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of their opportunity for power.
(...)

April IBM DeveloperWorks

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:45:20 +0200

Java: Elliote Rusty Harold, Easier testing with EasyMock.

"Any time you have an interface that needs to return certain results for purposes of testing, you can just create a quick mock. It really is that easy."

PHP: Matt Butcher, Get to know the QueryPath PHP library

"The new QueryPath library, a PHP cousin of the jQuery JavaScript library, offers an efficient API for working with XML, HTML, and HTTP. From Web pages to Web services, SVG to SPARQL, RDF to Atom, QueryPath provides a robust yet simple API for contemporary Web development in PHP."

Grails: Scott Davis, Mastering Grails: Authentication and Authorization

"In this article, I continue building a "tiny little blog" named Blogito. You'll learn how to enable logins, limit activity based on whether or not the User is logged in, and even add in some authorization based on the User's role."

Tipping, or: Micropayment

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:38:10 +0200

Turns out I was about a year late with my idea about a tipping/micropayment service, where you can give away small amounts (as small as 1 cent) to any URI you like as easy as clicking a button, without going to a tedious process and the requirement of the receiver to sign up first. I even thought about trying to get Y Combinator to seed fund me.

QUOTE:

(...) The company, which was originally seed-funded by Y Combinator and went on to raise $1 million in Series A financing in September 2008 (...)

At least it shows that my ideas aren't that stupid after all. I have enough of them left.

JetBrains Meta Programming System

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:10:33 +0100

At the moment, I am preparing for 'my most important exam', which happened to bring me to the website of Markus Völter, one of the current experts in Model Driven Software Development and Product Line Engineering. In his list of recent publications, I found a nice (German) article about the Jetbrains Meta Programming System. I've heard of MPS before, but his introduction is nicely written and understandble. Basically, MPS is a nice editor and composer for Domain Specific Languages. What makes it interesting is that apparently you can combine your own DSL with other languages, for example to easily extend a base language like Java with your own concepts. The DSL code is then transparently translated into the base language.
Also, you can use it the other way round, and extend your own DSL with concepts from existing languages, for example Java expressions.
Continue reading "JetBrains Meta Programming System"

New TeamDrive Beta Supports WebDAV over HTTPS

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:20:45 +0100

I'm still hunting for a good "all-inclusive" solution for backup, online storage and versioning. Lately, more and more services pop up (there's an incomplete list buried in my wiki), but TeamDrive stands out because you can use it with any WebDAV storage. I like Syncplicity for its ease of use ("zero configuration"), but I just don't feel well knowing that my files are out there, unencrypted, on some strangers' server.
Now that they've added HTTPS and Vista x64 support, I really need to try it. Also, it is the only tool in this area that doesn't require administrative privileges and runs from a USB stick ("portable"). Linux and Mac versions should be out soon.

Also, you might want to look at the somewhat similar PowerFolder (no versioning, no WebDAV support).

Microsoft LifeCam Webcam - Drivers Only

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:40:08 +0100

I own a Microsoft LifeCam VX-1000 webcam, which is nothing special, but absolutely okay for its price. The only thing that bothered me is that the driver is not available as a standalone download: You need to download a 50MB installer, which then downloads another 150MB: DirectX, the .NET framework and other components required for the (useless) software. Without network connection, you cannot install the driver. Also, (of course) you're forced to install the software, too.

So, I extracted the driver files from the setup. The ZIP file includes drivers for the NX-6000, the VX-1000, VX-3000 and VX-6000. They're working fine without the software.

LifeCam drivers for Windows XP 32bit (extracted from LifeCam 2.04 installer, 8 MB)
LifeCam drivers for Windows Vista/Windows 7 64bit (from LifeCam 3.00 installer, 3 MB)

Update: Added standalone drivers for 64bit.

Update: Drivers confirmed to work for Windows 7. After installation, an installer will open and try to download the software, but you can cancel the dialog.

Lenny's Xen Kernel 2.6.26 Causes DomU Freezes

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:53:00 +0100

With the release of Debian 5.0 "Lenny" as stable, I have upgraded my servers and installed its Xen 3.1.2 and Kernel 2.6.26 Xen packages for my DomU's. After that, one of my DomU's kept freezing: 100% CPU, no responses on the console whatsoever. I found that various people report similar problems, but no hints towards a solution.

If you experience similar freezes, downgrade your DomU to the 2.6.18 kernel from Etch: Add the etch sources to your APT repository in both Dom0 and your DomU, install linux-image-2.6.18-6-xen-686 (or -amd64 for 64bit systems) and modify your Xen configuration to use the old kernel. You can keep the rest upgraded to Lenny.

Becoming a Software Testing Expert

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:00:04 +0100

(via codinghorror.com)

review-board.org - Web Based Software for Code Reviews

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:11:15 +0100

Review Board is an open source tool developed by the VMware team to help with code reviews and pending code changes. Somewhat similar to an issue tracker, but worth a look.
From the same team: Parasite, a live debugger for GTK+ applications ("sort of like Firebug").

TYPO3 v5, FLOW3 and Unicase

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:11:52 +0100

I had the pleasure of attending two interesting presentations at our university yesterday. I am a bit biased here, because one was held by myself, for a few students participating in the current "Softwareentwicklungswerkzeuge" (software development tools) lecture. The other one was a presentation by Sebastian Kurfürst, one of the core developers of TYPO3 (and a "former student of mine"), for the T3 User Group Dresden, about the upcoming TYPO3 v5 and its application framework FLOW3.

Even if you're not interested in TYPO3 or CMS development, I recommend reading the [very fancy] slides (if you understand German). They have a rather large user base, still they decided to throw away the current code base and design the new release from scratch - using 'modern paradigms' such as strict Test Driven Development, Dependency Injection, Aspect Oriented Programming, Domain Driven Design and MVC. Sebastian accomplished to explain these concepts clearly, so if you want to refresh your knowledge about any of these techniques, take a look at the slides. According to him, TYPO3's new base level application framework is the first framework to introduce AOP to the PHP world, and is 'ahead' of the current PHP development (they require PHP 5.3, which is not even in beta yet).
I'm really looking forward to the new TYPO3, which hopefully might be one of the first web application frameworks and CMS that doesn't suck completely.

My own presentation (not very fancy slides...) was about a MetaCASE tool called "unicase", suitable for smaller collaborative projects and especially targeting research projects with special needs such as a new methodology, or other individual model requirements. It is being developed at the TU München by a team around a good friend of mine, Maximilian Kögel. Its main features are model generation from an ECORE meta model (it's Eclipse based), so you can easily introduce new model elements and regenerate your client. The central repository with similar concepts as Subversion (checkout, commit, update) is able to work with any meta model compliant models, and the client tracks any changes to the model and the client usage, which is especially useful for research projects interested in how their application is being used.
Unfortunately, the most important part of the presentation was a live demo, where I showed how you can easily generate a "new client" by small changes to the meta model. The unicase website has screencasts of most features though, so if you're interested, you can watch it there.

If you want to try it out, I'll explain the few steps required to get your own local server and clients to run. If you just want to try the client, they have an update site you can easy add to your current Eclipse installation, and a standalone download. Unfortunately, the link to the relevant unicase documentation is "hidden" in the right sidebar, whereas the main documentation link in the center of the page currently leads to a mostly empty wiki page.
Continue reading "TYPO3 v5, FLOW3 and Unicase"

Burton Analyst Manes: SOA is Dead

nospam@example.com (Mo) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:52:18 +0100

QUOTE:

Once thought to be the savior of IT, SOA instead turned into a great failed experiment—at least for most organizations. SOA was supposed to reduce costs and increase agility on a massive scale. Except in rare situations, SOA has failed to deliver its promised benefits. After investing millions, IT systems are no better than before. In many organizations, things are worse: costs are higher, projects take longer, and systems are more fragile than ever.

Continue reading "Burton Analyst Manes: SOA is Dead"