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Macs, Windows, Choice…

Gotta love the Scoble! His post titled “New iMac out, why not get a Tablet PC instead?” had this comment:

Because I have to use a PC at work but I can chose my own home computer.

This is something I’ve heard (and seen) time and time again. Which brings me to this:

People switch to Macs… Companies switch to Windows…

Really, this is what I’ve seen. Companies switch from using Macs, to using PC‘s running Windows in the hopes that it will cost less, and be easier to support. Don’t get me started on this one because I’ve dealt with it for over ten years now… But when it comes time for people to get a new computer for home, I’m never surprised they choose a Mac instead of another Windows machine. Most cite the fact that they are sick of the security holes, or want something that “just works” or is based on *nix, or even cite the “coolness” factor.

Am I off on this? Are there companies that switch from using Windows all around, to using Macs? (This decision is usually based on one or just a few manager’s decisions.) Do you know individuals who have dumped their Mac for Windows?

Maybe I’m way off, but I’ve said it before, a great deal of people I respect and think are really smart (well, smarter than me anyway ;) seem to use Macs…

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renko fixes

Oops! I knew I should have double-checked everything! Fixed a problem with renko, and now renko v0.2.3 is available…

It’s an RSS enclosure aware aggregator written in Perl that should run (almost) anywhere…

(See Audio, Enclosures, renko, etc… for details.)

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Audio, Enclosures, renko, etc…

I’ve been very interested in what Adam Curry is doing lately, promoting the ‘iPod Platform’ as it’s being called, though I have no iPod, I still get involved here, as does Dave Slusher at evilgeniuschronicles.org

While these guys are both from the world of radio, I have very little radio experience, only appearing as a guest a few times many years ago. What I do have a background in is publishing – of all sorts – from print, to music, and stuff in-between, so while I’ve got a face for radio, and a voice for the written word, that’s not gonna stop me.

I’ve released renko, which is similar to Adam’s iPodder script, and Dave’s get_enclosures.pl script. I’ve been using similar scripts and cron jobs for almost a year to download some web-radio shows, and doing the RSS enclosure thing when it started happening. This is code that is slightly cleaned up and made fit for human consumption. (Or so I hope!) grab renko if you wish. You’ll need Perl, and if all goes right, you won’t have to install any modules. It’s a proof-of-concept rather than a finished application. It’s got many missing features, but it’s a start. Hopefully it’ll help kickstart this revolution.

(Honestly, I think NetNewsWire could kick butt in this area, it’s a Mac OS X application that could tie directly into iTunes quite easily, and Brent could do it all with a great interface… Brent, you listening?)

Oh, both Adam and Dave wondered about enclosures in Atom and assumed Atom must have something similar, but every time I ask, no one seems to have a good answer. Maybe this will help poke the Atom folks a bit.

I started doing some audio experiments, and if you wanna keep up to date, just subscribe to the feed at http://rasterweb.net/raster/feeds/rwaudio.rss with renko, or one of the other enclosure aware aggregators and see what happens. I used Audacity for the most recent version, and it’s improved a bit since I last used it. (Noise reduction helps quite a bit!) Audacity is open-source, so that helps lower the barrier to creating the audio, though I know it’s still not the software Adam is looking for…

Anyway, that’s it for now, must run!

Update: renko is here.

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Brad joins Six Apart

Ok, I’ve gone with the title “Brad joins Six Apart” instead of “Proprietary Software Company hires Open-Source Developer” but that won’t stop me from worrying… (I know, it’s a bit sensational, but so am I sometimes.)

What, me worry? Sure! Why not… Brad has written some nice code in the past. I’ve especially gotten good use out of his port of Textile to perl. The code had a liberal license, I’d call it an open-source license. (Though the OSI would have to check on that to be sure.)

My worry comes from the fact that while working for Six Apart, we won’t see any innovation from Brad that won’t be a part of Six Apart’s non-open-source code. Maybe I’m just being selfish, but I’d hate to see some of the best open-source developers go to work for non-open-source companies and have their contributions to the community disappear. I’m not saying this will happen in this case, or that it happens very often, maybe it does, and maybe the community deals with it well enough. I suppose since I’m unlikely to be in such a position, it’s easy for me to comment on it. (Job openings for “Hacker-type who hates Windows” are sparse right now…)

Anyway, good luck to Brad in his new endeavor! I know it would take the right offer (and then some) for me to uproot the family and move across the country. I hope it all works out.

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captcha this!

Some web sites use a ‘captcha’ which is a dynamically generated image with some code that must be input for you to post a comment. It’s a great idea, but oh, the accessibility of it all! What of people who can’t read that image? I mean, come on, haven’t we all dove into accessibility by now?

I have a solution, in the form of Text::Banner, and it goes something like this: 

#######  #####   #####  #       
#       #     # #     # #    #  
#       #             # #    #  
#####   #  ####  #####  #    #  
#       #     #       # ####### 
#       #     # #     #      #  
#        #####   #####       #

There! An accessible captcha ‘image’ as it were… it should even work in Lynx!

But wait, don’t like horizontal, try vertical! That’ll trip up those pesky spambots! 

#######
   #  #
   #  #
   #  #
   #  #
      #
      #
      
 ##### 
#     #
#     #
#  #  #
#  #  #
#  #  #
 ### # 
 
 #   # 
#  #  #
#  #  #
#  #  #
#  #  #
#  #  #
 ## ## 
 
  #####
  #    
  #    
  #    
  #    
###### 
  #

Urm… maybe not… I’ll work on it a bit more…