Wayne D's Blog

I have been struggling with trying to get an open source program to compile on any of the version of Linux that I have available to me with no success so far. To add insult to injury the person who released the project has released executables for both Mac and Windows and not for Linux. Linux users have to be satisfied with a tarball because as any reasonably savvy Linux users knows Linux has it's own version of dll hell, shared library hell. Each Linux distro has a different set of what the distro considers to be the standard set of shared libraries. The package I was trying to compile uses qt4 which neither Centos, Ubuntu or Fedora core uses as part of the core distribution. Additionally this particular package uses a version of someone else's library that isn't the latest version. Finding the source code for this particular version of the package is very, very difficult because the maintainer has changed source control packages. This means previous version aren't available in the software repository. At some point I decided that four hours was enough time to struggle with this particular project and I installed the Windows version of the software instead. It took less than a minute to get it running not including the download time.

I was reminded of this problem today when Codeweavers released a version of Google's chrome browser that runs on Windows. The wrinkle? Instead of being a native Linux version it is a port of Chrome that runs under Wine, the Linux project that allows Linux users to run Windows software. Codeweavers have brilliantly avoided the problems with shared library dependencies by using the Linux Wine standard API, which is the Microsoft Windows API. I download the Chromium browser and had it running in less than 5 minutes. Wine isn't perfect, it wouldn't run the Windows version of the package I was trying to install earlier but maybe that's the path Linux should take at least in the desktop space. (updated Sept 24) Even better, it did run under Wine after installing Chromium Refine the Wine implementation of the Windows API and give people a real alternative to Windows. Now I have a dilemma on my earlier problem. Should I continue to try and get the dependencies satisfied for a native Linux version or would my time be better spent fixing Wine? Hmmmmm.

Today I received a comment on one of my previous posts about how anxious the poster was for the return of Pushing Daisies and it reminded me of a USA Today story that I read when I was in San Jose for Nvision. The story basically says that the studio wanted to "rein in the more "fantastical" elements of the show to woo a broader audience". Oh, oh, the quirkiness of the show is what I found so endearing and charming. Pushing Daisies was my favourite show of last year. It also sounds like Kristin Chenoweth, who plays Olive, may not be playing as large as part in the show as she did last year with her move to a nunnery. I am prepared to give ABC the benefit of the doubt until I see a few episodes but I am not hopeful. Studio exec's meddling with shows is usually the beginning of the end and a show that has only had nine shows needs a chance to find it's legs.

For those of you who haven't seen the show I can't do it justice with a description but I'll try. It's about a pie maker who can bring the dead back to life for a short time, his childhood sweetheart who he can't touch, his detective partner who uses the pie makers unusual skill to solve crimes for the rewards. If you want to see what all the fuss is about and live in the U.S. you can watch the first season online at http://abc.go.com/player/ if you are outside the U.S. you can try Google. I'm keeping my fingers crossed until October 1st when the show premieres for this season.

As I have been writing this post I have also been watching a rerun of C.S.I. that I didn't see last year, with a funny cameo by the Mythbusters watching one of the C.S.I's lighting a dummy on fire. I also just saw an ad for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, I hope it's not aimed at me because I wasn't impressed.

(update Sept 19) Here are a couple of season 2 sneak peek videos I found on Brightcove.com.

I was watching Diners, Drive Ins and Dives recently and they kept featuring eight ounce burgers, and those were singles not doubles. Around here most restaurants have taken to serving eight ounce burgers with fries for $10. Cheese is extra of course. To me that's too much meat especially when it's high in fat as most burgers are. I understand that it's in a restaurants best interest to sell a slightly bigger burger for more money and that people want more meat but when will it stop? Eight ounces used to be a good sized steak and now it's a normal size burger. Remember when a quarter pounder was a big burger? Not any more.

Just say no, end the burger madness.

Thanks to the invite I received I now know the answers to the questions I previously had posed. Twine does not retrieve web page info when a user creates a bookmark, instead they offer an edit box for the user to enter a description. One Twine user told me that twine will spider a site when a user doesn't add a description but my quick perusal of the twine website I couldn't verify this. I'd like to make it clear that Twine.com does follow all the requirements of the DMCA with respect to removing infringing content quickly and efficiently but it must be the frustrating to the person who shared this information to see his hard work disappear. I'm pretty sure he added it to Twine in good faith.

Twine.com like many other sites that are built around user generated content should assist their users to stay on the straight and narrow with respect to copyright. Though I'm a bit foggy on the whole concept of what the semantic web is all about it would seem to me that when you get a URL and a description from a user you might want to try and check automatically to determine if the description is the content. People are generally lazy and hoping they will produce useful summaries of web pages they bookmark is probably wishful thinking. Producing a page with useful summaries of content would help to differentiate twine from Google.com which gives a one line summary and Mahalo.com or delicious.com which provides bare links. I recently join delicious.com so I could make my bookmarks portable and I could see myself using Twine instead if there was some added if this and some other enhancements were added. This would also help reduce the workload on the person who has to responds to DMCA take down notices. At a minimum Twine.com should add some text to their bookmarking tools to remind users that adding all the text from a page to the description will probably result in the removal of their public bookmark.

I wish Twine.com the best of luck in getting through their beta period and working out all the kinks. Though I'm sure Twine would have preferred me becoming familiar with them in different circumstances I'd suggest you check them out and give them a try and help them get better. I'll be checking back with Twine.com and seeing how things develop.

Update Sept. 13th The final chapter in my Twine.com saga is here

After updating my previous Twine.com post I realized that those who read via RSS may not get the latest updates. I decided to take them out of the original article and create a new one. Sorry if you've seen them already. If you don't know what's going on the back story is here.

Twine.com responded the next day to my email and removed the article.

I have no reason to doubt the comment from Twine.com on the original post that this was simply an over exuberant user and illustrates the problem with user generated content, when you let them generate the content that has your websites name on it you rely on your users to pay attention to copyright and fair use issues.

I am curious what a Twine.com user does to bookmark a page. Do they simply paste the URL and Twine retrieves the page for them or do they have to copy and paste the text from the page? Can any Twine user enlighten me? Twine is still in closed beta so I can't check for myself until and if they give me an invite. I suspect after the fuss I have raised they may not be too happy with me which I can totally understand, They are doing their best and some know it all blogger comes along to make their life miserable. Maybe in their zeal to make things easier for their users they made things too easy. Perhaps some of the semantic webs power could be used to help educate Twine.com's users how to keep on the right side of copyright issues.