Sad passing of Dennis Ritchie

Saw a tweet earlier on today and it caught my eye.

Then learnt that the creator of the C programming language and also Unix, passed away over this weekend.

RIP Dennis Ritchie.

On a more serious note, need to get this off my chest, and no dis-respect either in this regard to Apple’s Steve Jobs who also passed away last week, but…and this is what I find absolutely gob-smacked about, very little was mentioned of Dennis Ritchie (dmr). The twitter-sphere has been going on about Steve Jobs for the last week or so. The cruel twists of fate has been made… when you read on and realize…

But what the twitterers fail to grasp the concept and realization, there would have been no C language nor Unix for that matter, no applications/games that was possible in the 1980′s and 1990′s either, and no operating systems either.

When you think about it for a moment, the influx of different designs of operating systems was programmed in C, combined with assembler programming language.

Nor would the advancements  in chip design have been achieved, which is a catch-22 in this regard, some kind of a package to be able to program the logic flow of chips etc. Hell, even, there would be no mobiles/smartphones, no Android, no Apple OS….

Even in the telecommunications sector, without C, there would have been no improvements somewhat in the arena of phone switching etc, nor even a operating system to run, in the sense of to manage the telecommunications infrastructure either.

There would have been no internet (TCP/IP protocols which was formed on the backbone of the C programming language), or even would DARPA have existed only for that once when the gates to the internet world was opened up? What about web pages, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, the things that we take for granted now today in this electronic age where communication is even more emphasized.

And it was not Steve Jobs that is a legend either, for that matter, sure he pushed and raised the bar for Apple has become of today. No dis-respect to him either, without him, certainly, smartphones would not have been made possible in terms of features and raising of the bar for standards across the board.

The real legend was the quiet man who hacked away and coined the biggest revolution in his hands alongside with Brian Kernighan that totally changed the IT world forever.

You may object and say hang on… but I digress, sure it sounds a little one sided, but have you not thought of what the world would be like today without the Unix, C today.

What would have become if dmr did not pioneer  C, or Unix. What would the IT landscape be like without it, would Apple have existed, would Microsoft have existed, internet, tcp/ip protocols, Windows, you name it…

So for all people out there, I ask you to re-tweet a simple tweet of your liking to salute dmr for he totally changed and revolutionized the IT landscape right back in the late  1960′s/early 1970′s.

From me, who was a self-taught C programmer, and Linux fanatic, I salute you dmr, you’re the real legend!

Fonts for coders

Here’s a nice font – called Anonymous, a fixed width sans font for coders like you and me….

Thanks to Mark Simonson for releasing it.

UML Graphics

For those of you into UML (Unified Modelling Language) graphics and implementing code based on ‘use cases‘, ‘actors‘, ‘implementation‘, ‘inheritance‘, look no further to this really cool UML drafting tool on-line, in which you can specify text-ually what the representation of the UML should look like, go to this site and form an orderly queue.

Even better, the graphics are nicely illustrated, clear and concise and can be retained in a PDF format for saving later on, or using a perma-link to the illustration.

I like the word play on the URL – yUML.me as you-em-el.me which has kind of a recursive naming, which is clever!

Neat! Enjoy UML’ers

Virtuawin

This utility virtuawin is way better than any of the virtual window managers I have tried for Windows, the really neat thing is that it works straight out of the box!

There’s a good reason, the taskbar can get too cluttered thus distraction increases, by using virtuawin, the window manager can move other windows to a separate desktop (same background, same icons and shortcuts) with a distinctive ALT+TAB for each virtual desktop thus compartmentalizing the tasks into that virtual window.

In effect, the taskbar under one virtual window will be less decluttered and therefore less distracting. For an example, the first virtual window is called ‘Main’, the second is called ‘Linux’ and anything related to it such as putty gets moved out of the way, the third is called ‘Dev’, in which anything related to development like Visual Studio and so on… in that way, no need to be overwhelmed by so many windows and getting distracted in the process!

Here’s to productivity increase thanks to virtuawin. Go on, download it, it’s open-source and free and does exactly what it says on the tin!

Watch out!

There is a fake anti-virus software in the wild…that claims to be ‘Microsoft Security Essentials’ which does the following:

• Installs a fake virus scanner
• Blocks certain processes that the fake package does not like
• Block access to certain websites depending on domain name
• And charges you for every scan/removal of so called ‘viruses and malware’

Always download from the reputable source or invest in a well-known anti-virus products such as McAfee, Symantec, Avast, Eset, BitDefender to name but a few…

See this blog entry here about this fake anti-virus software package passing off as if obtained from Microsoft…

The proper link to obtain Microsoft Security Essentials is here.. See what was said on theregister.co.uk about this.

Do not fall into this scam!

List Viewer

Would anyone remember the infamous program called ‘List‘ by Vernon D. Buerg? This is going back to early 1990′s. That was the program that I grew up with, learning and poring over ASCII text files…Ahhh…those were the times, what was useful about it was it can open the text’s very quickly and instantly switch to hexadecimal viewer…the times I have spent staring at file dumps of machine code working it out and learning…

I have looked everywhere for a replacement for Windows version…I think I have found it, but it is slightly limiting, it is called ListXP.

It is noted that the code is open-sourced and is available. The original site on listxp.com is out-of-date as the domain name is for sale, however there is a archive copy of the website found here.

I have saved the archives and intend to put it up here in case the links disappear.

The only thing missing from it is the tab pages so that you can have one single instance of the viewer with multiple tab pages with different files viewed – that I think would be useful…

ho hum… let me work on this code and see where the change could be made…

MySQL decline?

After reading the article here on infoworld.com. Now, this is a real shame, a corporation that is intent on destroying the most popular and valued open-source database that is used to power the majority of websites like this one – MySQL. If the deal goes ahead and Oracle buys out Sun Microsystems, this will reduce the popularity and then you’ll know it, the user base for MySQL will dip by 2014.

I beg to differ, why does Oracle seem intent to shove MySQL to the way-side because their own database is better and they are afraid that MySQL will kill the corporate sales of Oracle database itself?

Today, we have seen a global phenomena in the world of Open-Source, ever since Linux, Apache rocketted upwards and that people are now adopting the movement, even incorporating principles of open-source into their line of businesses.

For instance, Linux can be used to provide a rock solid platform for a server work-horse, combined with MySQL for its popularity and a stable user-base (I may sound biased but I do not want to drag in commercial counterparts into this) that can empower a business, armed with a PHP scripting, and in no time, you can have a CMS system that can and could benefit businesses.

It seems sad, that such a big massive corporate giant wants to open up MySQL even more, but only on their terms, not the open-source world’s terms, and who knows the direction it will take. Perhaps we will all end up having to pay for the privilege in using MySQL…who knows…?

Fancy becoming an iPhone dev?

Does the thought of building an application for an iPhone whet your appetite? Take a look at 13 development tools to do the job at this site where you can build one, even if you do not have any programming or scripting experience?

FileHippo

I cannot tell you how much open source software I have on my netbook and it can be for a period of time before I realise that the software needs to be updated since I last ran it on prior occasion. This software comes to the rescue, called FileHippo and it proved to be a lifesaver.

What it does is, it scans your installation for any software, then informs you of the updates required, by double-clicking on the icon, it will load up a webpage on FileHippo’s site indicating what is the latest version.  FileHippo will pull down the latest software for you but you have to install it yourself. Who knows, FileHippo may be able to do automatically for you at a later stage. Lacking that, otherwise, it is a worthy piece of software.