Posts by Gareth Holmes

Dawkins' website forum hacked to send spam

what in the name of god happened there?

Some militant religious type will probably post this as proof that prayer works :)

Although perhaps the forum just evolved the ability to send spam?

Microsoft arms half-wit developers with PHP handgun

"you must be this awesome to ride"

Ted might not like PHP much, or more accurately the clownfest that will most likely occur when someone like MS "open up" to PHP, but he certainly made me chuckle through my bank holiday breakfast.

Don't get me wrong, I used to code in PHP, and still do on occasion. I like the language but I don't think Ted is on the thinnest of ice when he takes a pop at PHP developers for have a high percentage of interwebz for dummies readers.

Microsoft’s Silverlight 3 delivers decent alternative to Adobe

not likely

Flash for online and Air for offline use work on windows/mac and linux. It's reasonably consistent across the platforms.

Silverlight doesn't natively support linux on the client side or on the server side. No sale I'm afraid.

YouTube blocks music videos in UK

PRS bullying

Who appointed the PRS again?

I got a letter from them last week demanding that I pay for a music license. The wording was something like, "If you play music for your clients then you are legally required to have our license to ensure royalties are paid". I noted that there was no ambiguity and that playing music equals paying PRS or else some form of legal shenanigans.

As a musician who writes and records all the music I supply to clients I fail to see how legally I am bound to pay the PRS (who take a cut) to ensure that I get my own royalties for the music that I provide to everyone else as creative commons works.

It seems like the letter was worded in order to "scare" people into getting a license as the wording was very much a statement of fact rather than an advisory letter.

'Tofu' license pits open source against meat

Seen it before

This license will go the same way as that weird clause on Zynaddsubfx (A fine and free synth).

The clause was something like "Please don't use this program to make music that is against God and Jesus Christ".

Thankfully that weird request appears to have disappeared in the latest incarnation of Zynaddsubfx.

(Bill-Z-bub for relevance)