Archive for April, 2004
We just implemented a volume discount for Grant Skinner's 3-day Flash MX 2004 Enterprise Development workshop in May. Sign two people up for a 15% discount and three or more for a 25% discount. This promotion ends May 14th.
I just noticed that we had the date wrong in the last post (now fixed -- thanks to Peter Elst for the catch!) Grant's workshop will be held May 24th-26th, 2004. Sorry for any confusion this might have caused.
We have an amazing month planned at the London MMUG for May.
To kick off Macromedia's Community Week, we will be hosting the Worldwide-MMUG meeting in London on May 19th. We've been told that we'll be getting never-before-seen sneak peaks at certain Macromedia products during this event. Then, the very next day, we're got two of the Flash world's most famous names, Grant Skinner and Mike Chambers presenting at our monthly meeting. Grant will show us how to create simulations of autonomous lifeforms and Mike Chambers will share his (and Macromedia's) vision for the future of Flash. Grant will also be holding a three-day workshop organized by Bits And Pixels on May 24th-26th.
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) will be holding a protest in Brussels against the latest attempt to bring software patents to Europe, a move that is being pushed by Nokia.
FFII is a non-profit association registered in Munich and dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy. FFII supports the development of public information goods based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 300 members, 700 companies and 50,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in public policy questions in the area of exclusion rights (intellectual property) in data processing.
According to the FFII's web site:
"In February 2002, the European Commission proposed a directive that would legalise software patents. However, the European Parliament decided in its Plenary Vote of 24th September 2003 to fix all the loopholes in this proposal and explicitly banned software patents.
Currently, the European Council of Ministers is discussing this directive. Their internal working party proposes to simply discard all clarifying amendments from the Parliament. They want to make everything patentable.
That is not an option Europe is willing to accept. We showed them this on 27 August 2003. We will show them again on 14 April 2004."
There is also an online demo that companies and individuals can support by adding a protest page or banners to their sites.
It has always been my position that software patents are very dangerous. None of us would be able to write applications had truly unique processes in the software field been patented in the early days. Constructs such as the for-loop, while-loop, stack, hash table, objects, etc. We are currently seeing the fallout from software patents in the US and I hope with all my heart that we can stop software patents from becoming law in Europe.
Winds of change are blowing through our computers at Bits And Pixels...
Mozilla FireFox web browser
Dia diagramming tool (Windows installer)
FoxServ (Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc. single-click installer for Windows)
DBDesigner 4 (visual database design tool)
Eclipse (universal IDE)
NNTP//RSS (use your newsreader to read RSS feeds).
RealVNC (open-source remote control software -- run through an SSL tunnel for security.)
Putty (& Puttygen, Pageant, etc.; SSH)
TortoiseCVS and TortoiseSVN (excellent Windows Explorer shell integration for CVS and Subversion)
Apache Tomcat
OpenAMF (J2EE) and AMFPHP (PHP)
CSDiff by Component Software.
GRC.com security apps (Shields Up! and LeakTest)
No! Flash - A great tool for temporarily disabling Flash in IE
MM-Exporter (for backing up DW, Flash & Contribute settings & sites)
Iceows (great unzip utility)
Action Script Viewer (ASV)
PrimalScript
As Soon As Present (ASAP)
Trend Micro Internet Security (previously called PC-cillin; anti-virus, firewall, etc.)
Tiny Firewall (best darn software firewall there is -- keep Trend Micro's one on the "Low" setting when using both.)
Sonic Foundry (now, unfortunately, Sony) Sound Forge, Acid & Vegas Video
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects
Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Pro
Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 Pro
Macromedia Flex 
We're finally switching over from Microsoft Office and Outlook to Open Office, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Calendar. Unfortunately, the OS of choice remains Windows XP since Flash MX 2004 doesn't run flawlessly on Wine/CrossOver yet (then again, Flash MX 2004 doesn't run flawlessly on Windows either so maybe there isn't too much to worry about!) 
In an effort to embrace open source a little better, we're also going to be saying goodbye to our Mac server, which we've been using for CVS, in favor of a Linux server (this will coincide with a switch from CVS to Subversion in the coming days.)
Other great open source software that we're currently using:
Not open source, but great free applications:
Not free but worth-every-penny, joy-to-use applications:
Software we use because we have to:
Software we'd like to use but can't afford:
This list is definitely not meant to be exhaustive (you only realize the wealth of software that goes into a development company when you start to take careful inventory) and more links and applications may be listed here in the future.
I realized that I've been putting off blogging ever since my two-week trip to North Cyprus. That, and the seminar I gave there at the Eastern Mediterranean University, really requires a post of its own. The real reason I'm typing this is to test out my new 3G Vodafone connection. You see, I'm typing this on a double decker bus headed towards Warren Street The speed? 384kbs. Wow!
The speed? 384kbs. Wow!
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