However, it’s an interesting and not-too convoluted read. I encourage the two people reading this blog to go and take a look. My own comments on the rights/responsibilities document follow…

2.3 states that facebook’s license to use content “ends when you delete your account” - This seems to be a problem for 2 reasons: First, 2.2 states that shared content may persist until deleted by other users (so facebook would be using/distributing the content after their license to do so had ended). Second, if the license is transferable, how can it be ended? Are the people who go on to use the content also obligated to stop using it once the facebook user deletes their account, and how would they know?

3.6: Hateful and threatening are very different from, and should be clearly distinguished from, pornographic and violent. Pornographic and violent content should be incorporated with mature content in 3.7.

9.2: Data collected by the app needs to be clearly distinguished from facebook user data, and the developer should be allowed more freedom of use over app-collected data. For example, in the case of a survey form, answers to survey question should be able to be used by the developer without sub-responsibilities 9.2.1, 9.2.5, 9.2.6 and 9.2.8 (9.2.2, 9.2.3 and 9.2.4, which require user’s approval to use the collected data, should apply to both types of data)

Conflicts with the proposed Principles:

3, a commitment to limit sharing of dangerous information, 5.1 and 5.8, commitments to protect private information, and 9.7, a restriction on advertisement, all conflict with Principle 1 (People should have the freedom to share whatever information they want…)

4.2, 4.3 and 4.4, barring use by certain groups, conflicts with Principle 10 (The Facebook Service should … be available to everyone in the world.)

3.7, which refers to age-based restrictions, 3.8 and 5.1 which refer to unlawful activity, 4.3, which relates to US embargoes, and 5 and 9.13 which relate to US intellectual property, copyright and privacy law, all conflict with Principle 10 (The Facebook Service should transcend geographic and national boundaries…)

Vague Terminology:

9.6 (You will provide customer support for your application) is vague - what constitutes customer support?

9.7 (You will not show ads or web search boxes on user profiles) is vague - what constitutes an ad? In many cases, information or entertainment content may advertise a product either intentionally or accidentally. I’m not sure how to do what you clearly want to do here - perhaps ban the use of trademarks, rather than ads? (thereby restricting brand names, logos and advertising catchphrases)

9.14 (We do not guarantee that Platform will always be free) It needs to be clarified whether this relates to the Facebook Platform or the Facebook Developer Platform.

12.4 (We can make changes for legal or administrative reasons upon notice without opportunity to comment) is vague. What constitutes a legal or administrative reason?

Things I think they got wrong or missed:

10.3 (You understand that we may not always identify paid services and communications as such) I think you should always identify paid services and comms. Failure to do so causes distrust in the facebook service as a communication channel.

Additional Right/Responsibility within 10. Users should have the ability to opt-out of providing information to advertisers (and this opt-out functionality should be granular). Although I appreciate and enjoy the benefits of targeted advertising, I have recently been forced to remove personal information from facebook (Status: single) because about 80% of ads served were for a service that doesn’t interest me (dating sites) - once removed, I started seeing ads that were relevant to me again, but I would rather not have to remove information from my profile to achieve this. As an alternative, users should have the ability to block certain ads or advertisers (FB seems to be going this way with the like/dislike this ad functionality, but it doesn’t yet appear to do anything).

What kills me is that in each of these three catastrophic failures, there has been no problem with the transformer, nor any problem with the battery. The thing that’s died each time has been Dell’s infuriating power management system, which is built into both battery and transformer. I suppose it’s ostensibly there to stop you overcharging your battery or something - but if other laptop brands let you use a standard transformer, why do Dell have to do it different?

It smacks of planned obsolescence to me - but hopefully not planned well enough in this case - I reckon I might just squeak in under warranty, assuming I’ve kept all the paperwork (which is a rather big assumption, knowing me).

Grr, I say, grr.

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Project Lazy is a platform game framework, which I’m hoping will someday develop into what has been described as a Massively Single-player environment. I’m planning on posting all the AS source files somewhere online sometime soon. At the moment, it’s all really just experimentation - getting used to the API. At the moment, I’m trying to sort out collision detection, which is always a problem, of course.

One very important thing to remember is this: Don’t be a Dick about it.

Repeat after me: Windows is a very good Operating System.

Yes, it has flaws, and yes, I agree that in many ways Linux is better. However, Windows didn’t get to it’s dominating position by marketing alone. It’s a very powerful and easy to use system. You may think that terms like WinDoze, WinBlows and WinDoesn’t are clever, but they’re not, and you’re a cock. Abbreviating Microsoft to M$ is similarly lame.

I avoided the *nixes for an awfully long time because of comments like these - I assumed that the only reason people would use Linux was because they hated Windows, rather than because it was good. Comments like these actually convinced me that Windows was better, which I’m sure was not the intent of people writing them.

Also. Do not force your mother to try Ubuntu. It is different, and she’s just got the hang of Windows, and needs a few years getting comfortable with that before she will be willing to broaden her horizons. Trust me on this - I traumatised my own poor mother, and it’s not a kind thing to do (And she ran back to Windows first chance she got). I’m not saying don’t get out there and convince your friends to try Ubuntu - just do it to those friends who are comfortable with new things.

Thanks for reading my rant - try Ubuntu, it’s great.

First up, I create a makefile for each flex project. It sits in the project folder, and when make is called without a target, it compiles the base file for the project, then launches the new swf in firefox. Here’s my first one:

MXMLC = /home/ben/coding/flex/bin/mxmlc
MFLAGS =

TARGETS  = Game.swf

all: $(TARGETS)

clean:
$(RM) $(TARGETS)

.SUFFIXES:    .as .swf
.as.swf:
$(MXMLC) $(MFLAGS) $<
firefox $@

(Notice I’ve made an absolute reference for the mxmlc file - this is so that it will still work if I move the project folder around.)

Next, I open up gedit, which I use to edit my .as files, and add the External Tools plugin, from Edit -> Preferences -> Plugins. Then, in the External Tools Manager (Tools ->External Tools), I make one teensy edit to the build command. I change the line that reads

make -C “${DIR}”

to read

make -C “${DIR}” -B

Now the project will build even if I haven’t altered the base file - I want this to happen, because often I will have edited a linked file. I also change the shortcut key to <Ctrl>F11, which I got used to from some program or another.

Now whenever I’m editing any file in the project folder, I can hit F11 to compile and launch my app - and any compile failures appear in the bottom pane of gedit. How simple is that!?!

By default, gedit doesn’t colour-code .as files so I’ve taken the javascript language file and modified it to the actionscript specification. Download this file and save it into your /usr/share/gtksourceview-2.0/language-specs folder. This will make actionscript 3 show up in the Scripts section of your highlighting modes, but will not automatically make .as files highlight. I’m still trying to work out how to do that - I think it involves adding actionscript as a mime-type - I’ll update this post when I have it sorted.

1. Eclipse: A great multi-purpose programming platform. Install it from the Add/Remove tool, or manually for the latest version.
2. Battle for Wesnoth: An awesome turn-based strategy with a fantasy theme and playable campaigns.
3. Blender: A 3d modelling program. WARNING: This program appears to have a seriously fucked up user interface when you first use it (I couldn’t even figure out how to close it - had to hard-shutdown my computer). But if you put in the effort to learn it (there are websites out there to help) it quite quickly burns itself into your neural pathways until it becomes intuitive, to the point where you find yourself trying to use its features in other programs.

First, download the Flex SDK from www.adobe.com/products/flex/flexdownloads/

Unzip it somewhere. I put it in /home/ben/coding/flex

Now you need a makefile. Put this in your user folder (in my case /home/ben/) - it’s just a file with the name Makefile (the capital M is important), containing the following code:

MXMLC = coding/flex/bin/mxmlc
MFLAGS =

.SUFFIXES:    .as .swf
.as.swf:
    $(MXMLC) $(MFLAGS) $<
    firefox $@

To test it out, I made a file called hello.as in my /coding directory, containing the following:

package {
    import flash.display.*;
    import flash.text.*;
    public class hello extends Sprite{
        public function hello (){
            var t:TextField = new TextField();
            t.text = “Hello World!”;
            t.width = 300;
            t.height = 200;
            t.x = 50;
            t.y = 20;
            addChild(t);
        }
    }
}

Then pulled up a terminal and typed:

make coding/hello.swf

This compiled the swf and launched it in firefox, as intended - w00t!

I learnt how to do it here: http://ntt.cc/2008/05/19/using-actionscript-3-to-develop-adobe-flash-content-on-linux.html