Back in 2010 I complete my dissertation. The idea for my diss came to me while sitting in Starbucks in Camberley sometime during my time at Sun Microsystems, probably early 2009. The idea was quickly jotted on the back of a Starbucks serviette.
Applications crash and can take down a system, if we could virtualise the application and separate it from the system then it couldn’t bring it down. This was the subject of my diss and I mostly implemented it using OpenSolaris Zones. Continue reading
Once upon a time I had the notion that I would post something vaguely interesting or helpful once a month. While working at Sun that was easy (also making myself blog about my weekly activities for later reference helped), even my final year of uni I pretty much managed it, but I now look back over the last few months and see that I’ve not posted anything really since early December, and before that sometime in October. Continue reading
Just a quick post to wish you all a very Merry Christmas
Ars Technica recently published HP’s decision means webOS could end up more open than Android.
The fate of WebOS has had people pondering since HP announced it was going to stop developing WebOS. It has been suggested that HP should open source WebOS rather than just killing it. It turns out that that is exactly what they are going to do.
Now this raises an interesting question, could WebOS be more open than Android? Many of us know that you can download most of the Android source, and that you can build Android and put it on your phone, but it’s not a community driven project, indeed it seems to somewhat shun the community.
I seem to recall that when Richard Stallman came to Aberystwyth University, he said something like “Android is not open, but it’s the best we’ve got right now”.
I know a number of people who have rejected the iPhone and the Apple culture because it is extremely closed. These people have promoted Android as the open alternative.
My question to these people who wanted the open option: When HP opens up WebOS, will you all be jumping ship to the truly open source mobile OS?
After the death of Steve Jobs Richard Stallman has said some somewhat callous things about Jobs and Apple and how they have us in “digital handcuffs”.
When we purchase a piece of Apple hardware or software, we must accept a EULA before we use it. It’s pretty standard in the proprietary world to put measures in place to restrict a user’s use of the product.
I am pretty confident that hundreds of users click “accept” every day without reading such a license , let alone understanding it.
I have fallen in to this trap too, what “freedoms” am I signing away to Apple? Over the next few weeks I’m going to sit down and read the EULA for Mac OS X Lion, iTunes, and iOS 5. Am I really happy with signing these “freedoms” away?
Co-writer of the C language and co-creator of the UNIX operating system Dennis Ritchie sadly passed away last Saturday. It seems his death was somewhat overlooked due to the passing of Steve Jobs.
Thanks to Ritchie’s contributions to computing, we have the C language and its derivatives (including Java, C++, Objective-C, JavaScript, and more), and UNIX with its derivatives (including Mac OS X, BSD, Solaris, Linux).
I sat down at my computer this morning before work, I glanced at my tweets, then at my RSS, I realised what had happened.
Yesterday the world lost a great man, Steve Jobs.
I know that this will be plastered all over the Internet, I know that newspapers already have obituaries written, but I wanted to pay my respects to this great man.
Steve’s keynote speeches were always brilliant, it was these speeches that made me so enthusiastic about Apple products. I love reading about what he had done in the early days of Apple, watching old videos, etc. I love how the company grew and how he drove it forward.
I will miss that we will no longer have the chance of seeing him at Apple events, on stage or in the crowd. There will be no more reports of his one word responses to the pleads of customers/developers.
My thoughts go to his family, both at home and at Apple. Goodbye, steve.
Sherlock is one of my all time favourites. No, not the stories, the game!
A couple of friends have made some apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch, so I thought I’d quickly plug them 
First up is Wager by Tom Diggle. This app is handy for calculating the return and profit of many betting types.
It sports a succinct UI which is both fast and effective and allows for multiple bets to be stored for later reference.
Find it on the App Store for just 69p!
Next we have Doodle Sub by Oliver Foggin. A simple game, yet so frustrating and highly addictive!
Dive your sub to the depths of the ocean, is there ever an end!? If there is, I’ve not found it yet!
Once again, this can be found on the App Store for just 69p!
Last weekend it was Faye’s 23rd birthday. Having asked her previously she had joked about an iPad, so I saved and an iPad she got. A 32GB, Wi-Fi only iPad2. Continue reading
