Openness has little to do with it

[Cross posted from my newer blog dgoemans.wordpress.com]

Recently there's been a lot of talk about piracy on Android. This came after Madfinger Games dropped Dead Trigger's Android price to $0 citing piracy as the reason. A day or two after, a developer by the name of Matt Gemmell wrote a post criticizing Android for how open it is and how its openness drives piracy. Along with that came some bad reporting, implying that Matt Gemmell was a developer for Madfinger Games. In my opinion, openness has little to do with it and there are some things that need to be cleared up here.

Piracy happens on iOS

There seems to be a lot of misinformation about Android piracy. It happens, and I don't doubt that piracy rates on Android are much higher than on iOS, but that doesn't mean that iOS is invulnerable. The developer of FingerKicks, a popular iOS game, had a pretty horrible experience too. "FingerKicks has sold only 1163 legitimate copies but there are at least 15,950 pirated copies being played on a regular basis on Apple’s Game Center" [link]. That's about the same figure we heard from the Dead Trigger devs. All you need is a jailbroken iPhone, and jailbreaking an iPhone is easier than installing a custom ROM on my Nexus S - the device for OS hackers.

Then there was the story recently about a Russian hacker who managed to redirect iOS in-app purchases through his own server. Apparently this didn't even require a jailbroken iOS device, and it was very simple to setup. The Next Web reported that "30,000+ in-app purchases have been made through Borodin’s service" [link].

iOS is not free of this, and despite being a closed system, piracy is still a big deal.

Users who paid that much money for a phone don't need to pirate.

Ye I said it. The iPhone is a luxury product. As is the Samsung Galaxy SIII. People who paid upward of $500 cash or $150 on contract for a phone are less likely to have an issue paying $1 for an app. Apple's business model is, to a large extent, one of vendor lock in, so most users are used to paying extra money for Apple services and products. Sure, they make high quality, attractive looking products, but those come at a premium price. I sure wouldn't go and sully my beautiful top of the range smart phone with pirated products, potentially containing malware. We also shouldn't forget that while Apple's iPhone 4S costs $199 on contract, Samsung's Galaxy Y costs $159 on prepaid. Android has a much wider range of users, from the ones who can afford apps to show off how rich they are, to tech savvy teens who don't have access to their parent's credit cards...

Google's market still requires a credit card in most countries.

iTunes has considerably better payment options. Until recently Google Play lacked paid market support for most countries. There are many cases where people pirate, not because they don't want to pay, but because they don't have a legal way of getting the app ( or music or movies or TV show ). This phenomenon is relatively common. For example, Game of Thrones was one of the most watched TV shows around the world this past year, especially in countries where it wasn't being broadcast. While Google Play might have a paid market in the Netherlands, it doesn't have payment options. The Netherlands is one of those odd countries where people generally don't have credit cards. I know many people with Android phones who don't have paid access to the Play store. I see iTunes vouchers in my local super market, but never Google Play vouchers. Google need to work at this.

Google is doing something.

Although OS updates are slow on Android ( this deserves another post lamenting device manufacturers ), Android 4.1 automatically encrypts all applications and generates a per device key for each application. Google realise that piracy is easy on Android, so they're trying things to make it more difficult. It may not be enough, and I still think they should focus more on increasing payment options globally, but it's a step forward.

Freemium generates more money on all mobile platforms.

Free to play and Freemium games generate more money on average on mobile platforms. Developing mobile games with a standard cash-on-sale business model is no longer advised by many analysts. Nicholas Lovell has publish much about this, and in my own experience in the mobile games industry, I agree with him. Going free isn't automatically bad. Freemium works around piracy for the most part, and generates more revenue than paid apps. It's the way forward and I respect Madfinger for trying it in an industry of peer pressure not to. Hopefully they'll see the benefits of Freemium and build their next games around it.

Open has little to do with it

I see many issues here, but openness is not one of them. Openness means that it's easier for the 1% of technical users to install custom operating systems and hack their phones. That 1% is not the 90% that Madfinger points out. Openness just gives users choice of where to get their apps from ( legally ) and what apps they use for every function on their device. Openness gives developers aren't locked into an OS and a programming language. Openness is what allows device manufacturers to develop phones with hardware keyboards, massive screens and styli. Openness is what allows for $150 Android devices, which you can easily give your kids so they can use WhatsApp.

Payment options and the fact that we're comparing different socio-economic groups are two of the major monetization influencing differences between the platforms. iOS isn't some sacred perfect platform free of piracy, and it's closed nature may mean that there are more security vulnerabilities, like the in-app purchase one, that we don't even know about. Neither platform is perfect, and much work is going into improving both.

A week in Ubuntu: The good, the bad and the ugly

[This is cross-posted from my new, more general blog at WordPress]

I used to be a Linux user, all the time. Then the mass exodus to Ubuntu and Gnome started happening. And Windows 7, which was a very solid OS. As a KDE user, feeling sidelined at the lack of deep OS integration that Gnome was getting in Ubuntu, I was at a crossroads. I tried to love Ubuntu, but never could. Ubuntu always disliked something of my hardware - which openSUSE didn't seem to mind. Kubuntu never felt well put together, not like Ubuntu. So I left it behind, bought a great notebook with Windows 7 pre-installed, and stuck to that.. for 3 years. Over a week ago, I decided to give Ubuntu another shot. Here's how that went.

The Good

Some things about the OS are great. Ubuntu has come a long way, as has Linux, and desktop Linux may still have a bright future, especially with Steam on the way.

Installation of Ubuntu is amazing. It's easier than any other OS I've tried. This has always been the case. Good on Canonical knowing that if it wasn't this easy, people wouldn't even try.

The OS is fast, bootup is quick, everything is responsive. The experience feels very optimized. There wasn't a point where I thought, damn this might lock up, or that I might be taxing the system by opening Inkscape, Gimp and Spotify at the same time.

Unity desktop is stable, and does exactly what it should. All of the demos, with the HUD and launcher are exactly as expected. This is something I could really get used to, and hope to see all desktop environments going this way. I know Windows 8 does something similar, but without the HUD for alt+key combinations - something that's really awesome.

Gnome 3 is actually a really nice desktop environment. I've heard so much hate about it, and although I can see why, I don't agree. It's quick, stable, and customizable. The extensions are ridiculously easy to install, and the only thing I couldn't find is a button taking me to the extensions site. The extension installer even worked out of the box in Chromium.

This deserves its own point, although this aplies to Linux in general. I could change the desktop. This is something I still love about Linux, and it'll always have a place in my heart. Even if Unity itself isn't customizable, I don't have to use it. I could install Gnome, XFCE, KDE, LXDE, or even - something that I still have a soft spot for - Enlightenment.

Apps on Linux are just getting better. Geany is great for editing PHP and Python. Eclipse always felt more native on Linux than on Windows. Spotify ( since I have a premium account ) worked like a charm. I even managed to develop a Spotify extension using only the Linux version. The games selection in the Software Center is looking much better too, with some top premium games. And with Steam and Unity 3D ( the engine ) support coming, that will only get better.

My laptop is a Dell XPS 17, with an Optimus chipset. Something that's been in the media lately for NVidia's lack of official Linux support. It turns out, there's a project called bumblebee, which works surprisingly well. Once I followed instructions, things were working great. The little 3D sample app, GLXSpheres, went from 1,6 fps - using the intel card - to about 180 fps - using the 555M my laptop packs. I tried a few 3D games, without a problem. I even played some levels of Swords and Soldiers, a port of the Xbox/PS3/Steam version. This is where Linux shines, if NVidia won't support it officially, someone will find a way.

The Bad

Before installing bumblebee, Ubuntu decided to use Unity 2D instead of the full blown default 3D experience. It was still really quick, but it had some quirks that made me install Gnome 3. It was only after I installed Gnome 3, I realised that my 3D drivers weren't active, because I kept booting into Gnome Classic. This may have sullied my Unity experience - which it did to some extent - so I tried full blown Unity again. I still went back to Gnome 3.

Unity in general hasn't won me over. I dislike single menu bar and the side dock. I've written about this before. Basically, the dock becomes annoying for me to use if there are more apps on there than it is high. I also find global menu bars annoying - this argument is roughly how I feel about it. I generally dislike the way OS X deals with window management, and since they're adopting OS X style standards, I dislike that. Sure, it's  an opinion, and some people might like it, but I don't and if Ubuntu is going the way of the Mac, that will make sure I never use Unity as a default desktop - which thankfully in Linux you can.

Gnome 3 is pretty good, but I'm disappointed by the lack of a default window list/manager as quick as that in other desktops. I installed the Window List extension, which has worked around the lack of space on the bar. That said, this extension works well, but not something I'd recommend for the beginners.

I was pretty disappointed to find Gimp 2.6 in the repository. One of the reasons I wanted to use Linux was for this. It's a shame since 2.8 is now stable for a few months already and I'd have expected it to be up streamed into the repo.

The Ugly

Something that really got me angry was the default notifications in Ubuntu. I had forgotten about this from my previous attempts at learning to use Unity, but it actually makes me lose my patience. I use my laptop - which is my main computer - for several things. It's my primary development environment, my internet browser, and my primary means of chatting. The fact that you can't click on the notifications means that for me to respond to chat messages, I have to either multitask ( 2 clicks ) or go to an annoying menu at the top of the screen and select the chat that the notification came from ( 2 clicks ). It even goes to the extent of blurring the notification when you mouse over it, almost taunting the user, "I know you want to click on this, but you can't". That actually made me find and install an alternate notification system, which integrated so poorly with Unity that I installed Gnome 3 instead. It turns out that this notification system is like this by design. That fact annoyed me even more. Every OSes notifications are becoming more functional, I only hope Canonical wake up to this soon.

Something more directly related to Empathy - the chat client - was that every time I woke up my laptop, I had to redo my 2 step verification on my Google account. That meant, logging into my account in the browser, regenerating a new per app password and entering it into the client. As a default chat client, this is very annoying. Linux users normally have higher security than other OS users, so the fact that this bug wasn't fixed before release is amazing. I found a bug report for it over a year old. It seems like a minor thing, but having to come home from work every day to re-enter a password behind 2 walls of authentication is not acceptable usability. Sure there were work-arounds, and other apps like Pidgin, but I was tired of fighting the OS defaults.

I have a Logitech Performance MX mouse. I paid good money for it to do some serious gaming. It's a great wireless mouse with a darkfield laser - so I can use it on reflective surfaces. I probably won't replace it any time soon and if then, only with something similar. The problem is that Ubuntu keeps forgetting it. It happened 3 times in 1 week. I'll start up, and the mouse won't work. It requires me to unplug the usb adapter for it and plug it back in. Add that to the previous hassle, and starting up my laptop is ridiculously annoying.

Conclusion

So I sit here back in Windows 7. Maybe it's stockholme syndrome that makes me comfortable with Windows, but my chat client isn't complaining at me and my mouse works. That said, I will definitely go back to Linux occasionally. Especially now that Unity 3D is going to have a Linux exporter. My current Unity 3D games will get Linux ports, and I will be putting them in the Ubuntu Software Center. Although I may be in Windows, I haven't deleted my Linux install, and probably won't any time soon. Ubuntu is better than I remember, but it's still got a long way to go before I can achieve the same level of productivity that I can in Windows. Given that Apple's share in the desktop/laptop market is only growing, users will be more comfortable trying out Linux. And I can only hope that with more end users, more of these usability issues will be ironed out.

Natty Not-quite

I've blogged before about trying to go back to Linux on my laptop, and made my requirements very clear. Windows 7 pre-installed had more working features than any of my attempts to install Linux. But as always with Windows, it got slow. After a bit of investigation and trying out, i decided to take the plunge.

So these last few months, i've been running Ubuntu 10.04 on my laptop. And it grew on me. I do like the panel integration, and got really used a lot of features. I miss the little bit of extra polish and features from KDE, but appreciate the stability and native support for Gimp and Eclipse. Most things worked great, until one update broke the sleep/suspend function - a great annoyance for a netbook! So i took the plunge and went 10.10, hoping a new kernel would fix it. This broke sleep even more - no longer just not sleeping, but not waking up and sometimes not booting after having been restarted from sleeping. Thankfully everything else was ok.

After a month or two of anger at the sleep issue and reading a bunch of reviews of 11.04 beta, i decided let me try that out - again thinking a newer kernel might help. The new 'Unity' ( not to be confused with the awesome game engine i'm growing to love ) interface intrigued me. And after a few days with it, i hate it in the same way that i hate Mac OS. It has taken exactly what i can't stand from OSX and put it in my Linux. Thankfully i can still go Gnome Classic, but if this is the future of Ubuntu, i'll take a step away for a while. That is until the following critical user experience issues ( some of which are also in OSX ) are addressed:

• The dock is unwieldy if you have a lot of applications. I either have to scroll ( really slowly ) or drag vertically which is clunky at best with a mouse.
• The dock is a little too twitchy and none of the behavior options feel right. There's something annoying about having to go to the top to activate it. I have to direct my mouse a bit more than i'm used to. OSX and KDE this fantastically, the dock is always ready and pops up when you need it to. Windows still has an issue - since '98 - where it sometimes doesn't focus are refuses to pop up.
• The unified menu bar forces extra clicks. I hate it in OSX, and hate it here. I often have multiple windows open, and sometimes am mentally focusing on a background window. This may be that the foreground window is a popup or something insignificant to me. I always have to do a double take when i see the wrong menu bar. This may not make sense to some people, but i often operate with 2 screens or with small overlays and the 'foremost' app might not be immediately obvious. In which case the menu bar becomes non-obvious. I want an option to en/disable it like in old-school KDE ( remember those days? ).
• If i have 2 windows of the same app open, there's no easy way to access either with one click. This happens a lot in apps like Empathy and Chrome. I first have to pull out the unwieldy dock, then click on Chrome - which i see has 2 little arrows. Then it zooms out and presents me with 2 thumbs of my windows. That's great and all, though a little hard to see with fullscreen apps. My suggestion here would be to look at Windows 7 as an example of the new wave of app management done right. Hover over the taskbar item, get presented with thumbs. Hover over the thumb, bringing the hovered window to the front. At first i hated the step toward the OSX style there, but i quickly realised that they made it work. Unity has basically knocked off OSX.

Not to say i hate everything about it. I like the speed, and it looks great. The new app launcher is excellent so far despite one or two crashes. The idea of a dock isn't horrible, but i'd like more control over it, not some hidden options in the Compiz settings.

And a final note for anyone who's going to troll... get used to articles like this as Linux becomes more popular... it's called constructive criticism, and i noticed the Linux community often doesn't take it very well. This is just an opinion, you're free to point out - in a rational manner - any mistakes i have made, or correct my assumptions.

Emergence of the Tablets

So recently i read an article about the iPad and how it still has no rival, even when faced with the Moto Xoom. The gist of the article was that the iPad is unrivaled and no matter how many Android iPad clones arrive, the iPad will still be the number 1 tablet on the market. The article claims that Apples R&D is years ahead of the competition and anyone playing catchup will never be as good.

This reminds me of several hundred articles from 2008, 2009 and even early 2010. About how the iPhone was dominant in the market and no one could ever compete. Clones would never be as good, and even Android was only playing catchup and hence will never be better. Lets review some mobile phone numbers from Gartner:

Q1 2010, Android at 9.6% and iOS at 15.4%

Q1 2011, Android at 22.7% and iOS at 15.7%

What that tells me is either that Android is superior ( in terms of value ) or iOS is better and that's irrelevant to mass market consumers.

Now let's assess the first possibility. I prefer the control, choice and freedom on my Android phone. For example, the menu button is something i really miss when using an iOS device. Furthermore i like having options, such as widgets and keyboards. I strongly disagreed when those articles said Android was being developed in the shadow of iOS. Back in those days, iOS didn't have multitasking or even the option to change your wallpaper ( something even my Nokia 6280 had! ). Android introduced those features from day one. Widgets came shortly after, and development has gone so quickly on Android, that feature for feature they surpassed iOS at least a year ago. Which is my general experience with healthy open source projects. Rumours are now floating around that Apple will introduce NFC into their next phone. This leads me to ask, who's actually playing catchup. However, i will admit that almost every single feature that iOS and Android share, is more polished on iOS. This may be considered a sign of quality, and some people firmly believe the quirks and roughness of Android drop its value as a market competitor.

The second possibility is something i find more likely. Most end users - sadly - don't care about freedom and choice. They do generally care about availability, reputation and cost. This is where Android clearly dominates. In the US, iPhone was, until recently, available only on AT&T. This must have hurt sales. Here in the Netherlands, T-Mobile held a similar monopoly. Last year their data network collapsed ( and i still stuggle to use at and am waiting eagerly on the arrival of my Nexus S on Vodafone ). These sorts of availability issues allowed competitors to get a foothold when it mattered. The reputation of Android started off pretty low. I was discouraged from buying my G1 when it first came out. The store clerk said bad things about the OS, that it wasn't ready. I bought it anyway, and despite working daily with iPhones, i still didn't regret my purchase. Slowly it grew to be the only other serious smart phone competitor. A year after my G1 purchase, my wife went to get a new phone, and pretty much all that was recommended in the price range were Android phones. Which is the final point. The iPhone is still too expensive. Android phones are everywhere. Even on prepaid packages. Everyone can have them. This is where the open OS shines. There's no limit to what kind of device you can buy with Android on it.

So back to the tablets. What does the above rant have to do with the iPad? Well, i feel we're in the same situation now with tablets that we were with smartphones when the G1 launched. The Xoom strikes me as the first viable tablet from the rest. Yes, it might not be better, but it's a matter of time before there are 20 Honeycomb tablets floating around with prices ranging from $250 to $1200. So unless Apple adjust their strategy, i think the likelihood is that the same thing happens as with the iPhone/Android fight.

Apple, firstly, need to catch up. The iPad's low resolution and lack of camera's currently aren't on par with most upcoming Android tablets. The iPad 2 may correct this. Apple's iPad pricing has been aggressive, but companies like Archos are known to produce considerably cheaper competitors. If they jump onto 3.0, the first $300 Honeycomb tablet won't be far behind. Once main stream retail picks up the plethora of tablets, it'll be easy to grab a cheap device that fills most of a particular user's needs. If Apple instead go against their normal grain, and release a mid range tablet device with lower specs and wider market reach, they might have more chance competing, otherwise i believe that they will be fighting to hold a lead in 2 years time.

Lucid Nexus One Development

Android development is fun. It's a lot nicer than iPhone development, and although it's not as smooth as Windows Phone 7 development, you're not tied into OS or IDE. So i've recently installed Ubuntu 10.04 ( LTS ) on my netbook, mostly for performance reasons, and need to continue work on my clock widget - which hit 400,000 downloads sometime yesterday :)

There are pros and cons of Android dev'ing on Ubuntu, but the biggest one is that by default, the debug bridge ( adb ) doesn't have permissions to access the device, namely my Nexus One. Reading many online posts the suggestion is to run the adb as root, or just restart the service with sudo. Unfortunately that sucks, why?

• You have to keep redoing it every time you start up your dev environment
• Running a potentially insecure service as root!!!
• If you do restart it while eclipse is running, you get some extra output in the console window

To be honest, for me the first and third are my biggest issues, i hate admin and i don't like unnecessary output in my windows, especially not in distracting red - yes i'm a psychotically pedantic developer.

So here's the proper solution:

As recommended by Google the best thing is to add a udev rules file. So,

1. Unplug your device!
2. Create a file as root: /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
3. Paste this line into the file: SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="XXXX", MODE="0666"
4. Lookup the vendor id in this table ( from the android dev site linked above ) and replace XXXX with your devices vendor id:

   Manufacturer	USB Vendor ID
   Acer	0502
   Dell	413c
   Foxconn	0489
   Garmin-Asus	091E
   HTC	0bb4
   Huawei	12d1
   Kyocera	0482
   LG	1004
   Motorola	22b8
   Nvidia	0955
   Pantech	10A9
   Samsung	04e8
   Sharp	04dd
   Sony Ericsson	0fce
   ZTE	19D2

   If you're using a Nexus One, like myself, the vendor id is NOT in that table! At least for some reason, my vendor id registers as: 18d1
5. Save and close the file. Plug in your dev device, and start up eclipse/adb.

That's it really!

PS: To find out the Vendor id of your random android device, run lsusb with and without the device plugged in. Do a game of spot the difference, and the first 4 digit hexadecimal number ( XXXX from the number XXXX:YYYY ) is your vendor id.

Trying to go back

Linux, it's a double edged sword. It's awesome, there's no doubt about that. But it hates every one of it's users. The constant fighting to get it to do what you want as a desktop OS. As a server it's great, but the desktop still has a long way to go.

Over the last few month's i've not used my desktop much. My desktop dual boots Windows and Ubuntu 10.04. When i eventually got to upgrading to 10.10, the graphics setup just failed and died. Someone with less Linux knowledge probably would have reinstalled, since even the repair stuff didn't work. I basically had to get into a console, uninstall my ATI drivers, delete my entire Xorg config, and reset everything up.

So in place of my desktop, i got a netbook ( semi-netbook really, dual core atom processor with NVidia 9400M processor, runs Supreme Commander 2 pretty ok ). It came with Windows 7 Home edition. Windows 7 is ok, i can live with it. It's a lot better than XP and they even implemented a Mac style dock better than Apple. I've wanted to install Linux on there since day one but everytime i try out a live usb, i get some stupid trivial issue.

First with Ubuntu 10.04, my sound didn't immediately work. Something silly was wrong and it was a setting i had to tweak, but i'm not going to return to the hell i've had on my desktop with sound issues - i eventually just bought a new sound card to fix an OS issue.

10.10 came out, so i thought, awesome! Let me try the netbook edition. Crashed on first boot, because it needed 3D acceleration to be active for Unity. I had a lot of trouble attempting to activate the NVidia driver from a live usb, so i gave up and thought, let me preview the default gnome desktop. My sound was working, but it still had the same annoying problems that 10.04 has on my PC. The message popups in the top right go invisible when you mouse over them, but are still there. I want to be able to click on them, but no, that's not an option. The OS social integration is awesome, but 60% of the time doesn't login when i boot up and has other strange issues. So i gave up for a while.

I used to love KDE. I still do, great technology! So last night i thought i'd check out the latest Kubuntu. And it's truly awesome, beautiful and functional. Still has the Ubuntu issue of not just being able to activate the NVidia driver on live booting, but i expected that. Now imagine a person new to Linux. Boot up the live stick, open the browser. It says, 'Hey, we can install some kewl stuff to improve your browser experience, like flash and a bunch of plugins'. Click ok. It responds with, 'Blah blah flashplugin-installer blah blah blah'. Click ok and it closes. That's just terrible. Clean boot of the recommended 32-bit version, and it can't even install Flash?

Now having had this problem with Ubuntu 10.04, i know that for some reason the flash installer keeps breaking with the package manager, and there's supposed to be some easy way of fixing it. So opening up KPackageKit as my package manager, i search for flash. No where to be found. Wait a go communicating with your users Kubuntu. That's where i gave up. I used to have the patience for it, and go to the adobe site or scour forums for answers, but i'm long past that.

If a live usb disk can't convince me that the distribution is easy enough to not get my hands dirty - like i have for the past 10 years - then i'm just not ready to install it. If Android is the only Linux i end up using in the next few months, it's because all the desktop variants can't get basic things right.

Intruder alert

Well, i've been away for a while, work has been keeping me busy. I have also been developing a Clock widget for android, and you can download it via this QR Code:

Otherwise, i have done some testing of Motion Detection software for Linux, and here is a brief overview of what i have discovered.

There appear to be 2 developed solutions, ZoneMinder and Motion. 

ZoneMinder:

This seems to be the more well known and more established of the 2. It appears to have lots of binaries available, but sadly mostly for debian based platforms. If you need to compile it from source, it becomes a complete nightmare of weird dependencies, many of which i didn't know existed. It took several hours to get configure to run, and in the end, i could compile it, but it crashed on launch. Not very impressed. I also noticed that it was heavily perl based, and while i have no problem with that, it did make things more complicated than they could have been. That said, the screenshots show some fantastic features, and i'm sure that if you can get it up and running, it's a great - although possibly overcomplicated - piece of software.

Motion:

This also had a few odd dependencies, but took no more than an hour from download to simple motion snapshots working. After working out how to set up the config file, i also got the built in webserver running. From here, i need to set up a remote viewing and config site and an email notification service, which shouldn't be too hard. Overall, this software is considerably easier to setup than ZoneMinder however not as feature packed. This does, however, do everything i need it to do, and has some nice extra features which i thought i might have to build myself. It may be simpler than ZoneMinder, but it is definitely extensible. It also includes setup for proper LAN security cameras and the built in webserver has some nice features. There are also some smart features such as automatically drawing a white box around the area of motion in the image.

Conclusion:

If you just want to set up a simple motion detection camera for home, i recommend Motion, as the setup was simpler, and it does the basics really well. If you need a bigger solution, and potentially have a PC to spare just for this purpose, then ZoneMinder is probably what you want. In the end, i'm just really glad to see some motion detection solutions for Linux.

Comux 011001

When the Contribution Model Fails

I'm a big advocate of Open Source software. I feel that there really is no reason to close software source for the most part, and in general, closed libraries are very frustrating for me as a developer. However Open Source has it's flaws. The contribution model may be one of it's greatest strengths, but is also a big weakness.

What leads me to this "revelation" is an issue which i've been considering getting involved in and fixing. It's a Gimp enhancement request, which is probably the thing that annoys me most about Gimp at this moment. The "bug" is the lack of grouped layers in Gimp. Obviously, not having groups for layers can make a large document really convoluted, but more than that, i often find myself wanting to make modifications to multiple layers at once, such as opacity or translations. So what's the problem? Surely if they know about it and it's in their list, i should either do it myself or just be patient?

It's a 7 year old feature request.

I do understand that "implementing this feature is not trivial", but 7 years is not even close to acceptable. I realise they are suggesting it might make it to version 2.10, possibly in 2011 or 2012? Before the end of the world i'd hope. But seriously, in the commercial world, people lose their jobs for taking over a month to implement features like this. This is not easy to do, but in that time the KDE guys have written Krita from scratch, which may end up soon overtaking Gimp in features, and already has grouped layers. To me it almost seems like no one wants to take on the task.

What happened to open source being the cradle of innovation, instead of lagging behind commercial competitors? In Gimp, you have the Open Source stereotype. It's not as good as commercial counterparts, and lags several years behind in features. Some Open Source projects really seem to suffer from this. I'd suggest that X.org is another that just can't keep up with feature requests. Is it because of a poor codebase that people struggle to build on? Is it because of lack of interest in the project from outside devs? I'm not sure, but it really does bring down the quality of some big Open Source projects. 

On the other hand you have the entire KDE team as an example of real innovation. The KDE desktop is years ahead of any competitor, the codebase is beautifully clean, and they are churning out major features in just a few weeks. My example of Krita is a very pertinent one. It may turn out to be a big threat to Gimp in the long run, especially because it is now cross platform. The pace of development is clearly much faster, and it seems that it already has some of the modern features Gimp lacks.

In the end this does highlight some of the problems with the contribution model of Open Source software. Some projects fall behind, potentially become aged, while others forge ahead. How do you prevent a split like this? Should similar projects collaborate? Does that then remove an element of choice? The way i see it is that if it is needed enough, someone will do it. Maybe thats why Krita is moving so quickly, compensating for Gimp's inadequacies? It's probably also why Google are going to replace X.org in Chrome OS. After all sometimes its good to do some spring cleaning.

Opera does something right, again!

In KDE, i disabled the window border, and in Opera moved the tabs to the right... this is a browser experience i can certainly get used to!

Adding some shine to your Pepper

So, with my new domain, having my own wiki, part of the intention is to start a series of tutorials. The immediate focus is some simple tricks in Gimp for programmers, since programmer art generally has the rep for looking tacky and cheap. I don't claim to be an expert designer, but i do try and keep my art standard above a certain level. The first tutorial is a simple button with a bit of shine and can be found here:

http://davidgoemans.com/wiki/index.php5?title=Simple_Button_Shine

But... i've embedded it below anyway :)

Creating a simple button with a bit of shine

• Open Gimp and Create a new image with canvas size 128x128
• Right click the Background layer, and click Add alpha channel
• In the Select Menu -> All
• Select -> Rounded Rectangle ( Set Radius = 50 )
• Select -> Invert
• Edit -> Clear ( or just press delete )

• Select -> Invert
• Use the Bucket Tool to Fill with color #3d3d85
• Create a new layer above the background
• Use the Ellipse Select Tool with Ctrl + Alt depressed. Using Ctrl + Alt creates an intersection with the existing selection created an intersection.
• Select an ellipse like this:

• Use the Gradient Tool with the Tool Options setup with a gradient from White to Alpha
• On the new layer: Start far below the image ( 50 - 100px below ) and drag to a few pixels before the top of the icon, creating the gradient

• Create a new layer between the background and the highlight layer ( Naming layers is good practice! )
• Select Forground Color: #2a2a5a
• Use the Gradient Tool with the Tool Options setup with a gradient from #2a2a5a to Alpha
• On the new layer: Start just above image ( 10px ) and drag to just over half way down the selection

• On the background layer in the toolbox, right click and select Alpha to Selection, thus selecting the nice rounded rectangle.
• Create a new layer directly above background again
• Setup a gradient from White to Alpha
• Set the Gradient Shape to Radial
• On new layer: Start just below top left rounded corner, and drag to just off ( 10px ) the bottom right corner.
• Set layer opacity to roughly 50%

• Create a new layer directly above the background again
• Select the Paintbrush tool
• Change the current brush tool option to Pepper ( yes the green pepper ) and set the scale to 1.70
• Draw the pepper in the center of the new layer

A domain with a wiki

Apologies for the very extended AFK, work has been keeping me busy. However, to compensate, i have many fun things in store. Firstly, i have finally bought my own domain, and have some basic stuff set up, including a wiki. So without further ado,

www.davidgoemans.com

"Microsoft Hatred is a Disease"

Thanks to @mjhutchinson on twitter for the screen shot.

Btw, sorry for all the AFK, will return shortly. ish. sometime. i hope. soon.

Game Review: Swords and Soldiers

Since the Wii has hit the market i've been saying that it is the console that will allow for decent strategy play. And so far there have been very few attempts to make it work. That said my understanding of Wii sales is that the console, Nintendo, Sega games and Guitar Hero have made up most of the sales, and everything else has been gimmicky nonsense. Wiiware is really populated with a lot of mini-games, and this may or may not reflect exactly on the demographic that own Nintendo Wiis. But then there is Swords and Soldiers. As a strategy fan, it had to be bought.

The thing that interested and worried me the most about this game was the fact that it is side scrolling strategy. I'd never heard of that concept before this, so i was very wary of the 1000 Wii points i spent. At first the game strikes you with the great visual style. Cartoony interface and fun sounds and music make a good first impression, however you instantly know this isn't going to be a hardcore 100+ unit strat game. I wasn't expecting depth at first glance, but it is true that a good strat game doesn't need complexity. And the gameplay really illustrates that.

The single player storyline is ridiculous, but tongue in cheek from the start. You're a Viking, preparing a BBQ and your butcher is attacked. You then need to send troops to save him. Hilariously thought at, and at no point meant to be serious. The feel of the game fits in perfectly with the story and makes for an enjoyable laugh.

But this still doesn't tell you how a side scrolling strategy holds up. Gameplay is vital in a strat game, which is why most strat gamers are still playing Starcraft and not any of the newer games. So here's the deal: Its good. At first it's odd with minimal micro management, but you grow used to the fact that you don't control individual units. To upgrade your tech tree ( which has about 10 options depending on race ), you spend gold. This normally unlocks new units and abilities. To build a unit you just click on the icon, and instantly the unit heads off to fight or mine. There is no micro of units. the maps are normally linear, so the fighting units just walk continuously in the direction of the enemy. Abilities are cast from a global mana pool ( which auto regen's and some abilities add to it ), and these give you some micro control over the battles. Dropping Aztec cages on enemies, casting Viking lighting or sending a massive Chinese Dragon across the entire battlefield are just some options you have, and they really add depth to the game. The game is well balanced with costs and cooldown times, for example, the Chinese have very slow mana regen ( unless you build a really expensive tech 3 tower ), and the Dragon costs a lot of mana, but does an immense amount of damage.

All 3 races seem to have been thought through carefully and have enough variation to feel different. Each have their own abilities, variations in tech trees and order of unlocking items that you find yourself preferring one due to personality and feel of play rather than how strong they are, which is the sign of a well balanced game.

The multiplayer is enjoyable, and although my wife is beating me on average ( this reminds me of our early Starcraft games ), i'm still excited to try and challenge her, and feel like every game has been close. The average game lasts between 3 and 10 minutes, which although short, is just long enough to not get bored with the limited choices.

Overall, a top game production, making it the most fun i've had with Wii Ware. It's not as hardcore strategy as i might like, but it is really fun and has some longevity in gameplay.

Pros:

• Really good humour
• Well balanced gameplay
• Multiplayer is enjoyable
• New concept in side scrolling strategy, done very well

Cons:

• Limited number of maps
• Not for very serious strategy

Opera's Brick Walls

Today Opera announced something amazing. Unite. The basis is a webserver in a browser. It allows you to share your music, images, files, and host chatrooms with anyone you choose, whether or not they use Opera. Futhermore, the APIs for writing your own services are available now. And the press has jumped onto this. Even Slashdot incorrectly reported it as the 10.0 release. However, will this actually get them users? In truth i doubt it.

Here's my theory, most Firefox users are using Firefox either because they have it installed on their machine by a sys admin or family member, or because they are religiously bound to Firefox ( oddly, in my opinion, this is very much like Ubuntu users ). Most internet explorer users just use it out of convenience or because they don't know of an alternative. This leaves very little space for other browsers.

But what about Chrome? Chrome has not done that well, even though it has the might of Google behind it. Less than 2% market share in over a year with the search giant punting it instead of Firefox at every turn, that doesn't impress me. And i like Chrome, its way ahead of Firefox on my browser preference list. But the world doesn't really care. They have IE8 with tabs by big evil Microsoft* ( which honestly, is a whole pile better than IE7 ), or they have Firefox which is open source and completely pluggable. I don't talk about Mac users.

So what am i trying to say? The average non technical user doesn't know anything beyond their desktop. And until such a time as the average user becomes technical enough, the only reason people will change their browsers, is if sites stop supporting them. If everyone stopped supporting IE 6 years ago, Microsoft would be out of the browser market. This is the same argument that can be applied to Flash, that it is no where near superior technology, but everyone supports it, so it gets used.

Opera won't get picked up in the main stream, until there is a killer app or function which makes it a necessity. And they are close. Opera Link is really an amazing service, i can't live without it. Turbo is incredible for anyone who uses internet via Wifi or mobile connections on a regular basis. And now, Unite, which has more innovation in 1 service than i've seen from Firefox since its launch. But still this isn't enough. And if this isn't, then honestly, will anything ever be?

* i don't think they're evil, but a know lots of Firefox users who do

Comux 011000

Xorg, a stumbling stone?

Statement: Xorg is a stumbling stone in the advancement of desktop linux, discuss.

This may seem like a university essay, but there's a valid point hiding in there somewhere. Xorg is bigger, slower and more complicated than the graphical servers of other operating systems. One of the reasons is that it lives in user space and, thus, is not part of the kernel. This has massive advantages for stability, but does mean that getting flickerless boot is somewhat complicated ( Fedora have been trying for a while now and are getting close ). It also means that driver problems within Xorg are often harder to diagnose from the start. 

Here's a little example, i've just bought a Dell Optiplex G280 to use as a media center. It has a Radeon X300 graphics card, and while it works perfectly on my 19" monitor, it refuses to work on my TV, no matter what driver i have installed. There is no feedback, it locks up the entire system, and i can't find anything in the log files. Several different Linux distributions with several different kernels have exactly the same problem. What makes it really frustrating is that i get full graphical boot and have no problems getting to the point where X initialises. Dual screen even refuses to work. And this is not the first rough encounter i've had with X. In fact since i've used Linux ( ~12 years now ), i can remember always having to edit the X config file manually. This is one thing which has never worked properly, and the only config file that i have consistently had to mess around with for 12 years.

My question is why? Firstly, do we need X in it's current form. Yes it's really advanced and has some amazing functionality, but does the average desktop user need that. Would it not make sense to rewrite ( much like Apple did with OS X ), a smaller, faster graphical server which may be part of the kernel? Something dedicated to being primarily a desktop graphical server, and secondarily an advanced server. If linux is to be taken up in the public at large, we can't have people struggling to attach an external monitor, since that is becoming a far more common task. Also, surely taking it into the kernel would make sure its extremely well maintained? Correct me if i'm wrong, but there are far more active and willing kernel developers than there are X developers?

Surely something as old as the X server needs a code over haul anyway? I've heard that there are plans afoot, but i'm not convinced that its anything more than a big extension of some code from 1992. To me, everything about X seems old and archaic, from their code base to their website ( which is just lacking a spinning under construction gif and some marquee text ). I can't believe that something which has never had a complete overhaul for that long is really built to handle modern graphics cards, 3D rendering and all the new input methods like tablets and multitouch very well without some major hack work. And hack work is _NEVER_ a good thing. And seriously, for a graphical server, i do expect a little bling on the web page.

I'm not sure exactly how i would go about it, and maybe it hasn't really been done because it's not something many people know how to do. Yes, i've heard of Wayland, which is NOT meant to ever be an X replacement ( read the FAQ ), and Project Looking Glass, but my stance on Java is a big firm no. What i want to know, is why isn't there a bigger effort by either the Linux Foundation or some big company like Novell, Red Hat or Canonical to actually make a big difference?

And in truth, if Windows works on my media PC, then i'll have a Windows media center. Because sometimes, it's about what works, and not what's got the better theory behind it. And no, i still won't get a mac tv. ever.

A Note As A Gamer

To put the below review in context. I am not a constant hardcore gamer. In fact, i generally don't get hauled into many games... i got bored of WoW within a month or two. A game really needs something special to keep my attention. I appreciate seeing that the developer has cared about the product, and this is normally obvious. Something like Portal was made as much for the developers as it was for the players, and when you play the game, you can tell it was enjoyable to make. As a developer i try to put some of myself into the game, and i expect no less of other developers. Games need personality and originality, if not in concept, then in humour and style. I just hope good gaming stays alive.

Game Review: Mechanics Touch ( Android )

Mechanics Touch from a dutch studio Orange Pixel caught my eye on the Android market one day. Not because i'm also in the Netherlands, but because it struck me as a game on Android market that didn't look atrocious. There are a few decent games on there, Cestos is definitely one, but as far as the paid stuff goes, there hasn't really been much to talk about. Not many original ideas being used, and not enough taking advantage of the fact that its more than just a phone.

The game itself has style, something often lacking from many modern games. From starting the game through playing and unlocking the levels ( there are 45 of them, not that i'm there yet ), the game comes across as distinctly quirky and fun. The music is really enjoyable, and made me laugh the first time i heard a few tracks. The graphics are generally crisp ( although a few of the sprites looked a little rough, even though it is sort of the style ). And the idea is good.

Basically similar to Lemmings, but far more interactive. You guide the characters from an entrance point on the screen to an exit point, in a very similar fashion to Lemmings, excepting that there are many aspects of the environment that need to be modified instead of the characters themselves. Tapping some platforms can make them fall, tapping teleporters activates them and tapping doors opens them, and so forth. The levels are built very well around these aspects, and often force you to react quickly while still trying to think of the next step. There are some traps, and the game does require some thought, while still being a casual puzzle game.

The game also features online high scores, and an achievement setup! Achievements always make small games like this much more enjoyable, and definitely add to the replayability ( at least until you've unlocked them all ).

Of all the games that i've downloaded and played, this really stands up as polished, something i can't say for many of the others. Guitar Hero mobile is put to shame by Mechanics Touch, and i'm more than willing to pay for something which clearly has received some care and attention. Some of the big companies could really learn something from Orange Pixel.

Pros:

•  Polished. Extremely finely polished
•  Fun to play, and enough levels and extra challenges to keep you busy
•  Sound and music are really entertaining

Cons:

•  Graphics could be better
•  Possibly a bit expensive. Maybe.

Rating: 4/5