Friday 26 September 2014

Release 0.1

Implementing the du into Filer was a challenging learning experience.

It all started with,

NPM

It was a beautiful day outside, the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and I was in a room with no windows.


Oh, no big deal, I'll just go download it and install it. BOOM, second error. After that, I decided to talk to a friend of mine who is also taking the course, he said he had no problems and that everything installed very easily. I threw a keyboard.

I eventually got it installed and then tried to run the npm install command to get grunt. BOOM, no folder called npm in the user/<user name>/App Data/Roaming/npm folder... WHAT?! Windows installer bug. Bought new keyboard, threw it out.

I then created an npm folder, ran it again, got a page full of errors, but at least something happened. By now, a few hours had passed, so I decided I needed some sun and took a walk.

Grunt

By now, several hours had passed and I was feeling rather successful; NPM was installed(kinda) and Node.JS was installed. Next I thought to tackle Grunt, how hard could that be? Two commands, install, then install globally the cli, easy right? Absolutely not. I spent the next hour intensely pounding on my laptop getting only errors after errors, ready the manuals, and then getting more errors. I eventually decided to switch environments and use SSH to connect to my school.

I'd prefer not to talk about this dark time in my life that was filled with passion, regret, and sadness. Needless to say, I eventually went back to windows and used my new found knowledge to properly install everything.

Filer

This seemed a daunting task, but using the top down method I broke everything down starting with the documentation, then moving onto the test cases, and finally moving on to the implementation. It was the easiest part, even though I've never really used JavaScript before. I cloned it from git hub, pushed my changes and now need to pull request to the Teacher!

I called this a roller coaster of success.

Cheers,

James Laverty

Tuesday 16 September 2014

(Cr)eating Chromium; an introduction.

Hey everyone!

Today I've decided to take a peak at the open source project Chromium from www.chromium.org.

Essentially Chromium is Chrome before it gets built, packaged, and distributed by Google. It is an open source web browser for those of us that don't trust Google enough to want to use their prepackaged build and want to be part of the building process.

Chromium can be used on:

  • Windows
  • OS X
  • Linux
  • Chrome OS
  • Android 
  • iOS
It's actually a lot lighter than chrome on resources which I like a lot. I've only used it a little bit so far, but I'm excited at the prospect. 

More to come soon!

Cheers, 

James Laverty

Monday 8 September 2014

To read the EULA or not to read the EULA

I decided to read the ITunes EULA and the MIT License today.

The first thing that struck me was the differences and similarities in length and style of writing. The length of the two documents is vastly different, ITunes being very long and the MIT License being very short. I believe the purpose in a long length is to diminish the customers desire to read the EULA, where as the shorter version is more clear, concise and to the point. the The writing style is similar, a mix of lower case and upper case, as well as a lot of legal diction, but the EULA is filled with some very odd stipulations where as the MIT License is straight to the point.

An example of this is,

"The Application Provider, and its licensors, reserve the right to change, suspend, remove, or disable access to any Services at any time without notice"

ITunes essentially says that they take away your use of the product for no reason, even after paying for it. As well as to change the license without any notice. This leaves the customer very vulnerable and very, very ridiculous.

Another part that caught my eye was,

" Location data provided by any Services is for basic navigational purposes only and is not intended to be relied upon in situations where precise location information is needed or where erroneous, inaccurate or incomplete location data may lead to death, personal injury, property or environmental damage."

This one is interesting, there is a possibility you could die by using this service. How crazy is that? This makes me worried about what could possibly be in other EULA's that I was never aware of.

The one if I found the most ludicrous is this,

" By using the Licensed Application, you represent and warrant that you are not located in any such country or on any such list. You also agree that you will not use these products for any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, missiles, or chemical or biological weapons."

Step one, this is trying to impose US law on the entire world (not so different, I know) through a software agreement.
Step two, nuclear weapons(WHAT?!), just incase I wanted to create nuclear weapons with ITunes, I should be worried that they might cancel my service.

As well as reading through this EULA, I scanned a few others and found they had equally funny/crazy stipulations thrown in. Whether these will hold up in court is another matter, but I'm sure in a few years someone will try and own our entire life through the use of their software and we'll find out.

As a contrast, here is the entire MIT License,

"The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE."
That's it; no bombs, no deaths, no financial advise. Enjoy, share, learn,

Cheers,

James Laverty


Wednesday 3 September 2014

Intro to James 101

This is my first blog. I am writing to you to say hello and that I am very excited. My blogs will get a little more technical after this, but for now I'm keeping it as a simple hello.