If you really are using prolog, the data you get from prolog and its database (I had the mis-fortune of studying this 3 times) aren't really congruent with mySQL.

One is highly structured tabular, the other is derived and organised in a hierarchy, if you need storage for you'd probably be better dumping text files, or get with the hipsters in the NoSQL camp.

Prolog in Python (pt. 2) : ryePDX.

tl;dr

For the vegetarians amongst you, there is a very easy analogy the iPhone is a quorn burger, where as the iPad is a full blown New York strip steak with steak sauce, fries and whatever else you care to have on, or with your steak. Yes it doesn't multi-task, and yes you are limited to the apps that apple approve - but what you do get is a fantastic piece of hardware with some fantastic apps.

The ultimate role of the iPad is neither to be a laptop nor a giant iPhone, it is to be the device you goto on a morning to get your news fix, or when you are sat down and having an argument over who made the engines for the Blackbird. It's instantly on and instantly there, unlike any device I have ever used you click it happens.

The keyboard is surprisingly good and like the iPhone, it will learn your common mistakes and correct them. Unlike the iPhone however there is built in spell checker, which seems to be apart of the OS so is available to any application that supports it; it's the simple touches that make life easier.

As far as battery life goes I expect it to easily last the 6hour flight to San Francisco that I am on now, which will involve watching at least 3 episode of FlashForward, and multiple tweets.

All in all I think it may well turn out to be a good buy.

Turns out you can with a little SIMBL plugin, http://themacbox.co.uk/smr/

I have almost solely being listen to music through spotify for the last couple of weeks, sure it doesn't replace iTunes but its damn good at what it does, all you can eat music for free. http://www.spotify.com/

The Problem:
Spotify can use the built in shortcuts for play/pause, forward and reverse, but if like me you use a different keyboard and effectively 'dock' you Macbook its not much use. Enter Quicksilver, the perennial quick-launch and whiz-kid short-cutter for mac. http://bit.ly/yrlr7

I already have a load of triggers set up within quicksilver for everything from make an event in iCal to post a tweet or send email.

So getting Spotify in there, it turns out Applescript is here to help, using the System Events helper you can select a menu item without actually clicking it. Below is the code for the main actions you would want in Spotify. Simply save the apple script, then attach it to a trigger in Quicksilver. Hey Presto, magic! For more details on setting up triggers check the Quicksilver wiki, it explains it alot better than I ever could. http://bit.ly/134dnL

Play Next

tell application "Spotify" to activate
tell application "System Events"
   tell process "Spotify"
      click menu item 3 of menu 1 of menu bar item 5 of menu bar 1
   end tell
end tell

Play Previous

tell application "Spotify" to activate
tell application "System Events"
   tell process "Spotify"
      click menu item 4 of menu 1 of menu bar item 5 of menu bar 1
   end tell
end tell

Play/Pause

tell application "Spotify" to activate
tell application "System Events"
   tell process "Spotify"
      click menu item 1 of menu 1 of menu bar item 5 of menu bar 1
   end tell
end tell

Notes:
Don't forget to activate assitive device support see http://www.macspeech.com/extensions/faq/kb.php?article=48

Firstly, what got me there was no mention of the Data Protection act fair enough last.fm is a CBS company, but its still based in the UK (for the most part) and that would mean the passing of this data would be illegal. You cannot pass data to a third party without consent from the data subject.

Also it seems like there are alot of people and blogs posting unsubstantiated rumours to get traffic and therefore ad revenue etc. I know its always been there but it seems like everybody is at it even big news companies, what little credibilty these sites have is been quickly ruined by hastly researched stories and a all too trigger happy publish finger. 

Last.fm - Keep up the good work.

TechCrunch Article

Last.fm - "TechCrunch is full of shit"

There is still talk of Microsoft buying Yahoo! Search, which is fair enough take the least toxic bit of Yahoo! But what are you then left with. Yahoo! Mail, Delicious & Flickr they are the only remaining big properties that Yahoo have on the books.

Delicious & Flickr have yet to be monetized and the user base on both platforms would kill the person responsible for upsetting the status quo. That leaves Yahoo! Mail, which has some ads but the willingness of Yahoo! to go with the Google advertising deal means they are likely making no money on that either.

So how is Yahoo making money?

Sure its got deals with BT in the UK providing the homepage and mail service to all BT Broadband customers, and it has some News properties which are well trafficed. User growth is going to be negligible anybody who would want to sign up for a Yahoo! Account probably have, its a problem many big companies face and sure there have been attempts to get the workforce re-invigorated but so far nothing new and astounding has made it through the door, and what has been something a bit different had to be bought in.

I have said many times before that Yahoo! doesn't have a clear sense of what it wants to be; Search, Advertising, Content or Video, it just doesn't sit nicely anywhere and it can't be the agregator for all because Google has sewn that one up however, thats not to say Yahoo! couldn't compete - they could if they become a strong leader in the tech sector again.

If I where Yahoo! I would invest heavily in cloud computing services, rather than following try and jump ahead. Just like Apple did in 1997.

Firstly, take a look at the iPhone. Its a fantastically designed device, and the attention to detail is insane - that's not to say the Android platform isn't. But it is a sensible justification that the platform needs to slightly closed to allow a continuity of quality to be maintained. Secondly, the iTunes to iPhone facility has yet to face any real competition, its far from perfect but there is a seamless connection from buying to using. You click buy and the app or music is downloaded and synced to your phone, without having to drag and drop, move or do anything manually. However there is growing concern that the closed nature of the platform will be its undoing see Pull My Finger [1]

Lets be fair, the Android platform does has some major advantages. Anything, anyone and everything can be developed for it, its open. The Android developers needn't be the best usability experts, they just wait for the experts to develop there own slick UI for the system - but here in lies a pitfall, how open is open. For instance T-Mobile have already said that the G1 shouldn't be used as at tethered device [2], and there are also limits to how much you can actually do, before it starts to impact on stability of the system, something vitally important if it is to really go head to head with the iPhone.

I am all for the open platform, but the average Joe consumer it makes no difference, really super cool device (iPhone) or clunky lucking no the less cool device (T-Mobile G1) 

So open shouldn't really be open?

I think the main problem with an open platform is you end up with far too much choice, which is fine for a geek. The average consumer wants simple, so I would hope that there are some very clear limits placed on developing for the Android, i.e. you can use this much and no more, you can't access the ... etc this means that stability can be maintained. 

Its the problem Microsoft has always had, you can't be all things to all people and you can't ensure everything works all of the time, which in-part open source solves the problem. But also pretty soon you can end up with the same phone running radically different programs and processes. Whilst some people may favor this model, it isn't good business. Especially when going after the Goliath that the iPhone has become.

The Android Platform and the G1 have promise but I don't think this iteration of the idea will make much of a dent on the iPhone at least not with the core consumer, but I can see the early adopters of the world moving of to Android.

As a developer I would develop for both, as I consumer I would have the iPhone, as a Geek I would have the Android. So I will end up with both in my pocket.

Written whilst listening to TWiT 162

The net's regulator, Icann, voted unanimously to relax the strict rules on so-called "top-level" domain names, such as .com or .uk.

The decision means that companies could turn brands into web addresses, while individuals could use their names - BBC NEWS

Despite the fact it opens up a whole slew of stupid domains, it means you can no longer guess a domain name by picking the brand and adding .com or .co.uk it also means domain squatting is going to get more and more common, even if initially domains cost six figure sums.

ICANN - The idea is stupid, work out a better way, and try to find some way of regulating domain squatting not making up stupid ideas and justifying them by saying it will make the internet easier to use, because it will not!

My first exposure to a computer was a windows 3.1 machine in 1995, it was god awful but I was only five and young kids and technology don't really get on. It was a good few years before I got a computer of my own, I ended up with a Pentium 1 MX running Windows 95, which didn't last long. I couldn't play any games on it, and it was stable as a long pole with a plate on it. So inevetably it was upgraded to a machine running Windows 98 Pentium 2, with a decent graphics card and MPEG decoder card.

Its probably at that point that the bug really caught me, from then on in I had a slew of applications and experiments going on the poor computer, which I still have under my desk. Three computers later and I made the big switch to Mac, something which I haven't regretted, and still manage to keep up with windows excluding Vista which is almost as bad as 3.1. I also managed to pick up Ruby on Rails and a bit of PHP along the way, and ashamed as I am to say it Visual Basic.

People always ask me how I know how computers work. The simple answer is I have been tinkering with them for far too long. Every computer I have owned has been broken replaced upgraded and attacked by me, leading me to come across practically every common error you can get. Its sad to say but I can usually diagnose a hardware fault before the BIOS has finished its self test at boot up, and a software problem by hitting less then 10 commands.

The trend over the last few years is people are using technology every waking moment, but very few know how the stuff works. I love knowing how it works, and couldn't really care less about using it. I will strip things down take them to bits, rebuild them, and then maybe use them. Because of this I have a collection of gadgets and gizmos that few other people my age can boast. It also means, that college work can sometimes come a distant second to a new gadget or blog post.

I don't procrastinate as such, I just love technology to distraction. Wait a minute that is technically procrastinating. I don't know what career I may choose, convergent technologies mean that practically any field is open to me.

Best bit is I know there will never be a boring job, technology is getting more and more exciting the closer we get to the point on the curve we drop off.  

This week the BBC has joined the OpenID foundation.
BBC Internet Blog 

OK, so there are some problems but I do have faith that they know what they have to do particularly with making iPlayer Cross-Platform and stripping the DRM (I think a little wishful thinking is needed on this point)

Overall the BBC have seemed to be more than ready to jump in were the other industry giants have failed or been far too slow, obviously some people have learned from the Music industry hopeless mess. They have been willing to say most of the 15 - 25 year old market is not watching TV they consume their media online and not in the traditional linear sense like with traditional TV. Also an unexpected (at least to me) effect of iPlayer is how many 'older' people can and enjoy using iPlayer. I often get the comments "Wow, so I don't need to tape anything anymore?" response, which hats of to the BBCs marketing department.

I think some good things are coming out of the BBC, I wonder if they can keep it up and appease both the techies and non-techies alike. I know its a seriously tall order.

Microsoft has offered $44.6billion to buy Yahoo! At least if Microsoft does by Yahoo!, Live! search becomes half decent and there are some real brains in the web division, it could also go the other way and Yahoo! becomes what Live! is now. 

Even with the combined forces of Microsoft & Yahoo there will still be a long way to go before, they can topple the impressive lead Google has over them both. Only time will tell. 

I have been running Fedora 7 through VMware, with it emulating to cores thats right you can virtulise stuff on multiple cores. It screams. I had a little trouble getting the resolutions right (this is because Fedora isn't a supported OS) but a bit of googling (who knew this was now a verb) and I got it going.

I now have a fully operational Death Star, for use with my many future Ruby on Rails Projects. I am really looking forward to seeing what Parallels comes up with in there next version, all it really needs is more performance and I will have a dilemma which to use?

If there is an EMI then the connection may drop or you may experience slow browsing. Please make sure that the modem is not placed near any of the following electro magnetic devices such as:

1. Halogen desk lamps near the modem or telephone line, especially those with dimmers.
2. Any electrical dimmer switch.
3. Electronic devices, such as stereo speakers, PC speakers, televisions, monitors, microwave ovens, etc.
4. Routing the telephone line parallel to an AC power cord for more than a few inches.
5. Electronic insect electrocution devices (bug zappers).
6. Low quality 900MHz cordless telephones.
7. Any other emitter of high frequency electromagnetic radiation.
8. Should not be placed above the computer tower.
9. Should not be placed directly on a carpeted floor.

How does carpet create an EMI, or for that matter any of them really effect speed of my connection.

It looks exactly what I have been looking for, Asterisk based, but stupidly simple to manage, and no editing the conf files manually. I just want something that doesn't take forever to learn and make work. I am running Trixbox CE at the moment and its one update away from reinstall so it looks like a perfect opportunity to change to Trixbox Pro.

I will have a review posted as soon as I get Trixbox Pro Installed and running.

Trixbox CE - Community Edition

Trixbox Pro

As for safari, I have switched back. First impressions, its polished and fast. Google Reader now no longer has the weird beach ball effect when loading the next lot of stories, its also a lot faster than Firefox loading, Visual Rich Editor in WordPress works (although it has its quirks). It also has the Element Inspector from WebKit which is incredibly useful to me making sure websites work. It also just seems to feel better, nothing much has changed but it seems to run more smoothly even load web pages faster?

In the process of making this post I have corrected 4 errors, on the website. Due to Safari 3 not liking certain elements. 

The Case in point being the Asterisk Phone System I use, I spent a good weekend setting up and making it all nice, setting up DMZ and all that jazz. Then the hub threw a characteristic hissy-fit and stopped the HubPhones working. It has taken me to this day, nearly half a year to find a workable solution, so I though I would share, for anybody else in the same position as me.

Put simply I have a good router and network set-up and the HP wireless printer works on the wi-fi unlike the Home Hubs Wi-Fi. So the solution I have worked out is simple, use the Home Hub to run the hub phones and use the original router.

First thing you need to do is get yourself a Super User account on the Hub itself, Instructions here

Second Adjust the DHCP and IP settings for the hub, this step caused me many frustrations. Instructions here (TIP: if you make a mistake here, connect via USB and perform a restore, Instructions Here) The settings should be the same as your main router, set-up the IP address (192.168.0.254 in my case) and DHCP (this should match the settings of your main router) After you have set this up reboot and make sure the settings have taken.

Now to make the whole thing work, firstly turn off DHCP this can be done easily through the web interface in configuration>IP Addresses. Login into the Hub using telnet, and issue the following commands, replace [Router IP] with the IP address of you main router.
:ip rtadd dst=0.0.0.0 gateway=[Router IP] intf=LocalNetwork
:dns client dnsadd addr=[Router IP]
:dns server config WANDownSpoofing=disabled
:dns server route add dns=[Router IP] intf=LocalNetwork
:voice config intf=LocalNetwork
:system config defaultconnection=LocalNetwork
:config save filename=user
:system reboot

After the reboot connect up the Hub to your router and it should all work, if you haven't configured Broadband Voice yet goto the bt.com/bbv and when you see the pop-up saying 'configure now' copy the link and replace the http://api.home with http://[IP address of Home hub] this will configure you BBV settings. Backup You settings now you know it all works incase a firmware update scrambles it all.

Now after all that you should have, you router set-up and Hub serving the hub phones. I would also assume that using this setup would allow you to use BT Vision also, but as I aren't signed up the service I can't test it.

5 Reasons to switch from IE to something else:

1. Its Horrible confusing and counter-intuitive (in versions 5 - 7)
2. Its unSafe See Here
3. It causes headaches on a monumental scale, I only play with web design its not a serious job and it give me headaches I can only imagine what it does to the poor developers that design sites for a living.
4. Pop-Ups - whilst installing Google's toolbar and using pop-up blockers built into the latest version IE its still not good enough, with a couple of firefox extensions you can block anything you don't want easily and you can even stop the annoying "Zap Me!" ads
5. This is the simplest of all the reasons, its made by Microsoft and therefore supports there own proprietary software and activex controls, which should really be named entry points for spyware and nasty painfully hard to remove software that you simply don't want

Simply put switch and make your life more productive and Kill Off Bills Browser

"Unfortunately, many schools have turned a blind eye to piracy," Berman said. "I don't doubt that there are legitimate issues that universities must grapple with, including privacy and cost concerns. However, when a university such as Purdue tells the AP that it rarely even notifies students accused by the RIAA because it is too much trouble to track down alleged offenders—such inaction is unacceptable."Congressman Hollywood: Universities a wretched hive of scum and villainy

This is what happens when a person in power, brains' get turned to jelly and is spat out by the cat. It never occurs to these people funding researching and going around screaming disaster and catastrophe from the hill tops, to actually look what is right in front of them.

The Music/Movie Industries is Inherently, poor at adapting
So what exactly does this mean well its quite simple. When Napster came along the Music industry looked at it and said "We still good it will all blow over in a couple of months" Then a couple of months later they had a problem. The same goes for the Movie industry. They are arrogant enough to dimiss a technology that will quite clearly effect them in the money making department and try to place the sole blame on the cosumer. The consumers pay them money in the first Place

Solve not Sue
Anyone with a slight business interlect and brain cell(s) would look at the current situation within the Music/Movie industry and start working on solutions, put the money were it is well spent. The industry will never change the habits of the youth of today, they have spent to long in the courts increasing the resentment for that. They need to start working to give the consumer product they want in the form they want, this by no means free.

The idea that forcing your consumers to do something because the man companies say it should be is completly stupid and cause more illegal downloading, just so you as a consumer feel happy your pissing the said companies off. Everybody knows that downloading music and not paying for it is wrong, but when the labels offer no better alternatives, what else are your options.

The Other Options
iTunes Store, has a big market share and a big catalog of major labels and indie music, look deeply at the  Store and you see just what a miracle it is, its there, and in the same moment why it doesn't give what a p2p client gives. The simple matter of choice is what it now starts to boil down to, what could be classed as the catalyst to this whole thing in the first place.

People want choice they want to choose how they consume media and where, iTunes limits you to the iPod and your PC/Mac, there is a simple solution get rid of DRM and completely and open the whole thing up, and I would never illegally download again.

However, there is one place that iTunes excells at apart from providing a seamless UI experience. Our friend the Longtail, p2p only really is a good distribution system for popular tracks, when you get to less popular tracks you quickly find nobody sharing things.

To cut a long story short we need a solution, that the consumer is happy with and we need it fast else we could see everybody going down to court.

read more | digg story

Its obviously a stock image but you would think Microsoft with a marketing budget that could dwarf Dells would spend a little money in getting images of laptops that actually Run Vista, and Bill Gates has once again shot himself in the foot with this along with the fact Vista is now cracked the suposably most secure operating system windows has ever made...