Nokia Acquires Trolltech & Qt

Trolltech, maker of my favorite development platform Qt 4, just announced they're being purchased by Nokia. Damn.

History has pretty much shown that the independent, open-source shops being purchased by mega-corps have largely resulted in a slovenly product. Novell's purchase of SuSE has resulted in a distro that kernel dumps... kernel dumps occasionally on bootup. I don't hold fantastic hopes for Qt 4 unfortunately.

It appears that others share my scepticism. A good deal of comments to LWN - which still boasts a pretty coherent readership - seems to also have the sort of timidity stemming from being burned before. The Register, which prints an overall positive article, still feels it needs to assert Nokia has made claims of continuing Qt development.

It feels at the same time like the OSS world is shrinking and expanding. While awareness and adoption is at an all-time high, the high-profile projects are starting to be absorbed into the same machine they raged against.

Keyboard and Mouse Synergy

I've been using Synergy for... what... like three years now? It's one of those integral pieces of software that I can't do without anymore. If you ever have craved a dual-screen setup for your laptop, but still want to use your desktop at the same time, Synergy is the perfect thing for you.

Synergy works like a KVM in reverse. You give it two or more machines, each with its own display. Pick the machine with the nicest keyboard and mouse - that will become the "host." You tell Synergy where the other machines' monitors are located (i.e. the laptop is to the left of the desktop's monitor) and Synergy will transmit all keyboard and mouse events to the other machines. You basically have connected your mouse and keyboard to your remote machines via TCP/IP.

For example, let's say you have a desktop at home and a laptop at work. Pretty typical setup. And you have a nice dual-monitor setup at work: you have your laptop's monitor on the left side of your desk, and a nice DVI monitor on the right side of your desk to use. When you get home, you'd like to have the same sort of setup... except you don't want to detach your desktop's monitor at home and re-attach it to your laptop every day.

Synergy will connect your laptop and your desktop together at home so one keyboard/mouse can control the contents of both screens. Copy and paste, lock screens, whatever you like. You can't drag-and-drop files from one desktop to another mind you - they're still physically separate machines. But you can verily easily browse the Web on one monitor and code in the other, all using the same keyboard.


The above image is translated from http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/about.html - but unlike the source image it isn't animated (thanks blogspot). It gives you a sense of how the desktops can sit side by side and Synergy allows the mouse cursor to "hop" over to the other screen. Do take a look at the animated version on Synergy's site to get a better sense of it.

It's cross platform, so Linux desktops and Windows desktops can still work well together. Even works with OS X. So your PowerBook can share a screen with your WinXP desktop alongside your Linux server. Nifty!

Jini in the Skull

Now that I have my uber-huge project out the door, I'm trying to think smarter about development in general. I kept thinking that being smarter about development meant thinking bigger - so I initially tried to get more involved in the infrastructure of things. But it wasn't a good fit in my brain - you can't lose yourself in a PowerEdge like you can lose yourself in a stream of bytecode.

This hit home when I was talking to a previously C++ programmer at work. Because I'm a) lazy and b) often muddle explanations, I often tell new Java developers... whilst stammering and mealy-mouthed... that Java passes objects by reference. This quickly helps people understand(ish) why setting a value on an Object inside a method doesn't necessitate a return value. However, when I say that I'm perpetuating a distinctly wrong concept. One I should be ashamed about.

I try to avoid the long conversation that ensues, but I should tell developers the truth. Java always passes by value, never by reference. In fact, it passes references by value. Most people look at me like a Buick is growing out of my head when I say "passes references by value." But the fact is that variables only hold primitives and references, and are always passed by value.

Take a look at Java is Pass-By-Value, Dammit! It all boils down to this fact: C and Java always pass by value... that's why you can't do the standard "swap" function. For example, in C++ you might do:

Object hello = new("hello");
Object world = new("world");

swap(hello, world);

printf("%s", hello);
printf("%s", world);

void swap(Object obj1, Object obj2) {
Object swap = obj1;
obj1 = obj2;
obj2 = swap;
}

This transposes the value in obj1 with the one in obj2. You should see "world hello" from running this craptastic pseudocode. Try this same code in Java and nothing happens - you've locally overwritten some values, but you didn't swap your references:

Object hello = new Object("hello");
Object world = new Object("world");

swap(hello, world);

System.out.println(hello);
System.out.println(world);

void swap(Object obj1, Object obj2) {
Object swap = obj1;
obj1 = obj2;
obj2 = swap;
}

Here you'll just get "hello world" out - your references remained intact, because you passed by value.

This is ultimately a cleaner way to develop... so it's a major plus for both C and Java. And my New Year's resolution is to stop telling people that Java passes by reference just so I can end the conversation sooner.

On the flip side of the complexity coin, I've been reading the the Jini specification by the Jini community as well as Jini and JavaSpaces Application Development by Robert Flenner. Jini has evidently been around forever, but I've only recently become interested in it. Remember the old pre-turn-of-the-century adage that Java would be running on everything in your house, from your kitchen toaster to the fridge? Evidently around 2000 or so Jini was sold as becoming the premier way Jini could allow your toaster to auto-discover your refrigerator and... er... do... heating and cooling... stuff. Who the hell knows. The idea of automagically connected and integrated micro-device clusters communicating across a mesh network is cool, but practical consumer applications are pretty much nil. Then once EJB's started incorporating RMI, Jini came back to the forefront as an easy way to do the heavy lifting of RMI without the thick refried JavaBean layer.

Once you get Jini up and running, it is wicked cool. Start up your Jini registrar and then poof, services get published across a network. Look for a remote service and poof you can discover it and invoke it - no need for stubs or manual marshalling. Once you get the Jini infrastructure up, you don't have to teach developers how to use it... they just implement an interface and the rest is done for them. You can have a mesh network of peer-to-peer nodes up and running within seconds, and the actual node developers don't even know they've done it.

No crappy WSDL's. No UDDI. No thick & slow SOAP XML transport over HTTP. Bytecode and serialized objects all the way. We're not just talking a faster mode of transport, we're talking about delving down two entire network layers.

The application for such technology is mind-boggling... which maybe is why people aren't using it as much as they could. Damn shame, too.

Now Maybe We Can Talk

Well... it's out. The press releases were finally sent out, the media embargo was lifted, and my big no-sleep-'till-prod project has finally been announced to the public. It was almost four months ago I last prepped the exit music, and hopefully I'm back for a little while now.

Project Apricot is in full swing, the NDS widely available homebrew cart, I'm still filing bugs for openSUSE 10.3, accelerated MPEG2 playback isn't working on my Mythbox, I finally got a copy of The Orange Box along with a copy of Orcs and Elves for the NDS. There's plenty to do.

In my five-minutes-here-five-minutes there I've been enjoying Carmack's mobile-turned-DS title, although it took me a while to adjust my frame of reference. Don't expect more than a turn-based DooM mod... it's a sprite-based engine that is first person but completely turn based. But after you adjust your expectations you realize it's a return to form of sorts. Carmack was a pencil-and-paper AD&D player, and such roots definitely go deep in this title. You can see where his experience as a DM sparked a lot of good ingenuity and design into a rather primitive (but imminently playable) title.

Left Undone

I'm so damn tired. And I'm leaving so many things left undone.

It's amazing to me how close Novell can get with openSUSE, and how far away they still remain. I've known even anti-SuSE people converting away from Fedora Core or Ubuntu lately, due to its (relative) stability, out-of-the-box Compiz and working wifi drivers. But it seems they're ignoring fixes to some pretty obvious issues, even when the answer is served up to them on a silver platter.

Case in point: Intel wireless 3945 not connecting openSUSE 10.3. Ben gave patches, source RPMs, binary RPMs, explicit debug steps, log files... everything. In freakin' October. And its still not released via Novell's update service. It's a big, obvious issue... and getting no attention.

There are so many things I need to take care of, too. I have an entire graveyard of half-completed electronic assemblies that need to be pieced together into some working mechanism. I need to research how I can get XvMC to freakin' work on my VIA EPIA box. Evidently I decided to pick the one "pro" chipset that works with virtually no other distributions out there, due to the complete insanity behind driver support. No accelerated MPEG2 to for me until then.

DeskBlocks and ConsultComm are both abandonware right now, too. I really want to devote some time to them... especially DeskBlocks... but there's absolutely no freakin' time. I can't get over feeling extremely guilty over leaving a half-eaten OSS project sitting out on SourceForge... bitrotting with the rest of the half-eaten projects out there.

Games 'n' Music Finally Viable?

It appears that the widely available Games N Music homebrew cartridge has finally been hacked - the filesystem can now be written to after all. It now looks to be a possible development platform...

Dammit. Wish I had time to mess with it.

SuSE Ten Point Ugh

It definitely seems like Novell's openSUSE distribution has taken a page from RedHat's Fedora Core. RedHat took their mainline distribution and split it into two - an Enterprise product, and a "community" product. Ultimately their community product had a lot of problems with communication and collaboration, although it seems they've leveled off since. The "Core" distro was really a way to publicly test and iron out bugs for their enterprise product.

10.3 definitely feels this way. Although they have an open Bugzilla, there are lots of bugs that should have been caught. Eclipse doesn't even start, Intel wireless cards have problems with NetworkManager and autoplug, and Xgl has crashes and other weird problems. Novell is even looking to awkwardly cram all of KDE into /usr, like RedHat infamously did. Mosfet blew a mosfet about this layout, and rightfully so.

I had a similar volume of really, really annoying bugs in 10.2, although most were eventually remedied after several weeks. And I even grew to like some of features that annoyed me at first. But the first few months of a release are choppy at best.

So I'll hold off on any big judgement. The problem with Linux desktop releases is that everything is really close to almost working... so close that it's maddening. I think that's why people fly off the handle when a new release comes out - you're so close to having a perfect setup, it's absolutely maddening when a few nagging bugs completely screw it up.

Prep the Exit Music

Started a new job this week. The motivational speech from the .com's owner was "if you're not working 80 hours here, let me know. I'll write your a letter of recommendation and get you out of here."

So, alas, I'm going to fade away into work. I'll let the two most nerdcore l33t play the music as I sign off into the sunset.

You know I never post YouTube videos on this blog, right? Right? So trust me when I say this is deserving of breaking my streak.

Until later...

Crystal Chair

I remember, still quite distinctly, one particular moment in the December of 2002. My job wasn't what it once was, and I was starting to contribute more into some random open source projects. I wanted to see what game engines "looked like," so I downloaded the developer documentation for CrystalSpace on my (now destroyed) iPAQ. It was December however - and of course I had to do a blitz of Christmas shopping.

While walking all over the mall's green turf, I tried to read the CrystalSpace HTML docs. Finally I took a break and crashed in a lounge chair inside a Von Maur and poured through half the pages I had sync'd. It was in that chair that I was first turned on to CrystalSpace's automagic "smart pointers." When things finally clicked about factory design patterns. When I finally saw how platform-independent file mounting could work. Things largely fit into place for the first time in my head, and a rush of Computer Science courses that were starting to leak out of my brain finally kicked into place. It all weirdly made sense.

I still think of that December of 2002 whenever I pass by that chair. Last year, before I aged another decade, I provided myself with a crap-or-get-off-the-pot objective: to finally have a working game out by February of 2007 or otherwise just give up the ghost. While I did some extensive hacking, spent a lot of late nights and tried to do it, in the end I just wasn't able to produce the goods. I have a partially completed project out there, but in the end I wasn't able to make it happen. I finally gave up the daydream.

I passed by the chair yesterday and thought about how fall was coming soon. Christmas shopping season. And how I'm not going to be perched in that chair pouring over docs anymore.

Sitting Upright with Tux

I saw the weirdest thing in a local putt-putt establishment today. Sitting front-and-center was an upright arcade version of an old favorite, Tux Racer.

Everyone in my family, young and old alike, has played a more updated version of Tux Racer on my Linux box at home. PlanetPenguin Racer was the more "finished product," granting desperately needed functionality and map layouts to its elder version. I'm used to it being an open source game on every Linux distro that even two year olds love to play.

Evidentially Roxor Games turned this into an upright. It was so weird seeing the familiar Tux splash screen behind a quarter slot... I had to do a double and triple take. And then take a crappy cell phone photo. But it was fantastic to see it occupying floor space. It's like the smell of roast beef and mashed potatoes when you walk through the front door. Not the front door of an arcade... the front door of... crap, forget it.

It was just cool to see.

Best Intentions

I seem to have hit an interesting cycle of professional life. Hire, work 70 hour weeks, burnout. Hire, 70 hour weeks, burnout. My independent development fits into the cycle. When I did work for Planeshift I was in the burnout phase - but then I ran out of time to hack when I started to look for new jobs in the "quit" phase. I lost my Planeshift development responsibilities and instead started flailing about in my new (paid) job.

Recently I went through another burnout period, which yeilded the beginnings of ConsultComm version 4 and DeskBlocks. But ultimately before I was even finished I started to interview for new jobs, quit my old one and move on to the flurry of a new corporate projects.

I'm starting the new job soon, and I'm sure that means my open-source development will once again need to go on hold for a bit. I'm hoping to finish my latest round of ConsultComm bugfixes first, so I can at least leave with a clean conscience.

Paul Graham wrote a good article that pretty much explains the above circumstance in his article “Holding a Program in One’s Head”, which pretty accurately reflects the difficulties of hacking. Code often exists like a house of cards in your head, and one weak wind can send it all into collapsination. It's really bad in the office, when random walkby's and phone calls are pretty much modus operendi.

At least I'm starting over again. And a fresh start means I might just make it happen this time, right? Right?

We Suck Less Than Our Competition!

My head is a cloud from the latest plague that I caught, so I'll make this disjointed and brief.

Everyone (myself included) has been caught up in the Linux for the desktop craze. I do use Linux as my primary desktop 95% of the day, and the other 5% is either a) scanning b) iTunes or c) gaming.

However there are several things that I have grown... calloused... towards. Audio can be wonky at times, with either devices being exclusively reserved. Things will become completely unresponsive during high I/O loads. Still, it's a developer's panacea... things work sensically, have an easy interface and are interoperable.

Still, I can understand why Con Kolivas was frustrated. He did his best to fix up CPU scheduling, make things more desktop-friendly, and in the end his kernel patches were nibbled on and digested into someone else's mainline patch. I can see both sides of the story at times... but I think advocates like Kolivas are desperately needed in the Linux desktop world. Especially when it comes to speed. His argument that our gajillion-gigawatt processors should be cutting through our daily chores like cake... but instead we're dealing with the same lag time as the "desktop search engine" indexes every freakin' file on our 1 TB hard drive.

A familiar notion nowadays is that of the early zygote of a hacker... addicted to the Amiga 500 or Commodore64. Kolivas brings an interesting perspective on why: hardware no longer sells. We're dealing with the same scraps as we had before, just with increasing amperage. Hardware is sold because of the OS, where the hardware was pushing the OS in the late 80's. And so it has been ever since.

Or maybe not. Take a look at the XO Laptop from the One Laptop Per Child project. Do you care what operating system it runs? Nope, the hardware is the thing that drives the device. The OS reflects the hardware's abilities and limitations, but in this instance "operating system" is an abstract notion. You don't care that it's running Linux, or Windows, or OS X... just that it's linking together a mesh network of 50 kids over 20 square miles.

Notice it has a "view source" key? Kids can evidently take a look at the current running program's source code on-the-fly, in hopes that they'll want to peek under the hood and maybe hack a little.

Sounds like OLPC is spawning a new generation of Amiga 500 hackers, doesn't it? Both stood to be inspired by "cheap, cheerful, unique" computers that spawned their interest as kids. Here's to hoping that we're encouraging another generation of Kolivas'.

My Cheydinhal Home

I've been suffering from pretty extreme headaches for the past five weeks, so I decided to take a break from... well... everything and try and relax. Part of that relaxation involved finally finishing the main quest & guild quest in Oblivion. It only took fourteen months - better late than never!

Things have been so crazy busy that I haven't played much of anything at all since I walked away almost exactly one year ago. Damn... where does the time go? I've been doing more casual gaming since that fateful summer in 2006 - thanks to Nintendo's solution to gaming in a bathroom stall. Now I can fill even the most narrow of crevasses in time with some match-three variation.

To any point, I finally finished the important quests in Oblivion. I finally trucked back to my home in Cheydinhal, put all my memoirs up for display on my shelves, read a few final tomes I had sitting on my desk, visited a few more scenic locales, then went back to reside My Cheydinhal Home en perpetuity. It was hard to give up, but after a solid three days of gaming I was ready to finally put the DVD-ROM away.

It's been hard to code with the headaches, but I've been trying. I'm working on finishing up Deskblocks and rolling out a point release for ConsultComm. It's just really, really hard to concentrate and code when it feels like a titanium spork inside your dura mater is trying to shovel its way back out through your skull.

Wow. Just..... wow.

I was always a big fan of ReiserFS. It did a good job on filesystem recovery from sudden calamity, and was great with metadata over many small files. I moved to ext3 recently, despite being incredibly slower, mainly due to the more cautious journalling features.

I heard about Hans Reiser's wife, him being a suspect and his friend admitting to murder of eight other people. But Wired's article on the subject is an unbelievable piece of art. By juxtaposing code snippets of ReiserFS with the crescendoing story line (especially if you recognize the code), there is an amazing amount of suspense and revelation that works in tandem to the first-hand narrative. Reading
+ if (!JF_ISSET(node, JNODE_HEARD_BANSHEE))
+ warning("nikita-3177", "Parent not found");
gave me absolute goosebumps.

A Package On Your Doorstep

I first started working with CrystalSpace in 2003. Back then compatibility would change from version to version, building CS was a regular task and CEL was still an up-and-coming project.

Then this January the team announced the first stable release of CrystalSpace; one feature-complete and ready to be production ready. It's amazing how mature the project has become since then... documentation has flourished, CEL has become a fantastic development framework, titles can be developed with little to no coding and Blender integration is now ready for prime time and sponsored by the Blender project itself.

Not only that, CrystalSpace has finally hit the prime time: binary packages are now widely available on most Linux distros. Debian has been carrying packages for a while, but now native SuSE RPM's are available via PackMan.

No, you shut up.

Now people can develop entire titles while only focusing on content creation and scripting, allowing people to focus on what makes a game a game. Not only that, there are copious templates and examples for how to build projects. And you no longer have to build packages every night. And it's open source and readily available. It blows my mind.

I've Never Been So Excited for an Apricot

Blender has been the model editor of choice for CrystalSpace for a long, long time. Most of my CrystalSpace documentation has revolved around using Blender to create content for CrystalSpace code. The two together are like peanut butter and bananas. Fantastic.

Recently Jorrit made an exciting announcement on behalf of the CS team - Blender and CrystalSpace are partnering to build Apricot, an independently developed and completely open game title. To fully understand my unbridled enthusiasm you have to understand Elephants Dream, originally called Blender's project Orange. This was an open movie project - a full movie title with all content released under a flexible Creative Commons license. Textures, models, all production files are freely available. This did unbelievable things for Blender. Not only did this give users access to professionally generated content, new documentation and a whole new realm of tutorials it also pushed the envelope for Blender itself. Orange generated demand for whole new genres of features, and kept the Blender development team pushing point release after point release to keep up. If I recall correctly, Blender's hair generation system was largely built due to demands made by artists creating content for Elephants Dream. Not only did the movie promote Blender, it made Blender a production-quality product that could demonstrate it was ready for prime time.

The same envelope is getting ready to be pushed for CrystalSpace now. That's where my unbridled enthusiasm lies; CrystalSpace has been a commercial-quality 3D engine for a while now, but now every stage of the production process will be thoroughly tested and fleshed out. While I have no doubt that this project will result in enhanced functionality grown by the demands of the game developers, I'm most excited about the tool chain being completely fleshed out. In my mind while the Blender exporters for CS were fantastic, all the corner cases hadn't been completely covered. With Apricot, model exporters should be polished, skeletal animation should be more integrated into Blender armatures, physics should be more strictly related to Blender riggings and meshes should have attributes that more exactly equate to CrystalSpace equivalents. This should make the entire end-to-end content generation process as smooth as a polished stone.

Nothing like a real-life, production quality project will take the edges off of the various and sundry tools used for development. It's amazing how much one will forbear when it's not a "huge issue," but when you encounter the same "not a huge issue" twenty times a day it suddenly becomes something worth tackling. Ideas and features may be the result of inspiration, but the remaining 99% of time spent refining a project is sheer perspiration. I'm looking forward to both projects' continued trial by fire, and seeing what has been forged once the fires have quieted down.

What the NDS and iPhone Have In Common

This past weekend I saw a copy of Opera for the Nintendo DS just idly sitting on the store shelf. I picked up a copy and thought to myself "damn, I'm out of the loop. I didn't even realize this was out yet!" Evidentially I picked up an early copy - the release wasn't reported until the following Monday.

I'm surprised how much I'm using the browser. I didn't think I'd be the type to roam through my house checking random sites on the NDS. But in an age of ubiquitous WebMail and continuously streaming blogs, a device that allows you to quickly scroll through snippets of online text is actually pretty useful. There turns out to be plenty of opportunities where I "just want to check something," such as see if a webcomic has been posted for today or check if I've received new e-mail at work. Instances not exactly worth booting up a laptop, but perfect for just cracking open the NDS and hopping on wireless briefly.

The DS doesn't have an open third-party SDK, and no accessible means for running homebrew currently exists. Instead, Nintendo is hoping that Web applications will grant enough functionality to fill the gap. Sound familiar?

Steve Jobs' recent keynote hammered home the insistence that while 3rd party API exposure won't be available for the iPhone, Web applications will be more than enough to offer custom functionality. He suggests that a Web browser can be used in lieu of an ability to launch third-party applications.

The assertion that modern Web applications, what with their asynchronous JavaScript and XML, can replace standard applications is pretty ridiculous. Can JavaScript monitor what roaming tower your SIM card is using? Er... no. Can XML be used to play Doom? No. While you may be able to monitor a RSS mashup, no applications can leverage the hardware in your hand. Saying that any Web application is going to replace a device's native API is hella stupid.

But will the lack of third-party applications hurt the iPhone's success? Not likely. Lack of homebrew availability on the NDS hasn't exactly hurt sales all that much. If you do something and do it well, you're going to sell.

Muted Games N Music

In the time that has passed since I first lamented the DS' limited ability to execute independent applications Nintendo DS development has become increasingly mainstream, and along with that a slew of affordable and easy-to-use NDS flash cards have become available that allows independently developed applications to be executed on the DS. There's even a retail flash card now - the "Games 'n' Music" cartridge. I'm not linking to it... it lacks the file system drivers that make it a useful device. But it's the first flash cartridge (that I know of) that's widely available in retail channels such as your local neighborhood BestBuy.
I picked one up, just to see what it was like. It lacks DLDI support, which means it can't interact with the filesystem. If it can't interact with the filesystem, that means no save games, no loading libraries, no loading maps, no user profiles. Blech.

But it's in retail, which makes it interesting. And it boots DS Linux, which is at least mildly intriguing. At it's cheap... only $35 for the flash card, 128 microSD card and a microSD USB reader. I might waste an equal amount on a craptastic NDS title... so I don't feel too entirely guilty about buying a flash cart that's missing a DLDI.

I think I understand why Datel didn't offer DLDI support. By disabling DLDI people can't execute pirated ROM's from commercial cartridges - instead people are stuck with pure homebrew that doesn't require local storage. This could possibly limit ROM execution of course... but this also wrecks a lot of homebrew.

Thus far I've booted Linux, tried a video and failed to play one homebrew title. Maybe this will eventually gain usefulness once the cart's filesystem is cracked, but until then it may just stay in the bag.

Bluetooth Affinity

Now that I have my handy-dandy Bluetooth phone I'm a regular Bluetooth addict. I've always had an odd engineering respect for the specification (the true measure of a geek is how emotionally attached they can become to a tech spec). Bluetooth seems to have been designed by engineers for engineers, and done very well. The fact that it uses the Hayes Command Set gives me that odd sensation of nostalgia... like seeing a Pac-Man clone on a modern $600 cell phone.

I was pretty impressed with Linux Bluetooth support - a single KDE desktop applet allowed me to browse all Bluetooth devices within range and view their individual services. Within only a few seconds I was able to transfer files and view device status... very schwag.

One thing I didn't understand until now was the concept of Bluetooth "profiles." Just as TCP may be a conduit for HTTP or FTP, Bluetooth is a conduit for OBEX exchanges or headset commands. It makes sense in retrospect, but Bluetooth host devices offer up services such as HSP (headset communication), OPP (pushing files) or BPP (printing).

No OSS project I've run across so far has been able to do vCard or vCal retrieval or transmission. Most projects appear to perform vCard and vCal access via OBEX, which Linux supports. One thing I was hoping to do was send vCards and vCals to and from the phone, but thus far I've been unable to do so. My phone doesn't have the SYNCH profile used for PIM exchange, yet it supposedly transmits raw vCards over Bluetooth... but I haven't been able to get Linux to receive them. Something I can hopefully remedy.

This limitation seems to exist even in commercially available products. DataPilot evidentally supports syncing the phone book, but not the calendar or text messages. Mobile action is evidently C|Net's choice, but just does contacts also.

From what I can tell, my handset supports:

HSP

Headset Profile

Uses Hayes Command Set for headset operations

HFP

Hands-Free Profile

Used for car interop. Synchronous Connection Oriented link with mono, PCM audio

DUN

Dial-up Networking Profile

Networking dial-up abilities using SPP from laptop or other workstation

OPP

Object Push Profile

Transfers are always instigated by the sender (client), not the receiver (server) using the APIs of OBEX operations connect, disconnect, put, get and abort

FTP

File Transfer Profile

Uses OBEX as a transport and is based on GOEP for getting folder listings, changing to different folders, getting files, putting files and deleting files

BPP

Basic Printing Profile

Sends print jobs to printers without needing drivers

A2DP

Advanced Audio Distribution Profile

Possible ALSA integration, used for headphones & media players

AVRCP

Audio/Video Remote Control Profile

Used in concert with A2DP or VDP to allow a single remote control (or other device) to control all of the A/V equipment to which a user has access

Requiescat In Pace

It has been a fantastically horrible month in my real life. I'll just leave it at that. All my current projects, including the portal I was hoping to launch, are pretty much indefinitely on hold.

In other news, I've been trying to find a better way of connecting to my home network while abroad. I've been using SSH to connect and locally forward ports to the home network, but that meant every service had to be hard-coded. Instead I've been evaluating OpenVPN on OpenWRT. Both are amazing projects, and both worthy of considerable attention.

I haven't evaluated OpenWRT in nearly four years now... they had just started using a package manager when I last tried to flash my WRT54Gv2. It's in an amazingly well-adjusted and highly advanced state now... it was hard to believe how flexible the OS & utilities were. Everything worked out of the box with a minimum of hacking. Especially for someone like myself who used to construct Linux home firewalls out of old workstations, this fit my schema perfectly. I was a HyperWRT guy, but as that firmware grew stale I moved an entire distro-in-RAM.

OpenVPN is further evidence of why IPSec tunnels just never gained proper adoption in the roadwarrior market segment. They work fantastic when joining disparate networks through concentrators, but they just don't offer the flexibility, interoperability and ease-of-use that SSL tunnels do. I was an IPSec advocate in the days of FreeS/WAN, but once opportunistic encryption adoption didn't reach ubiquity they supposedly just closed up shop. PPTP offers good interoperability and ease-of-use, but was ultimately PPP with some wrappers around it. OpenVPN has proven itself to be a secure and flexible compromise between the two while still maintaining ease of use behind firewalls, proxies and NAT's. It may lack a certain "purity" of IPSec, but for roadwarrior and ad-hoc connections OpenVPN is indispensable.

Juniper Networks has a pretty good "Instant Virtual Extranet" platform that incorporates an SSL-based VPN solution which does a great job - it even supports Linux. I have to give a big tip o' the hat to Juniper Networks on that one - the actually developed a VPN client that works properly in Linux. Launch a Java Applet, grant it rights to install a client stub on your machine, then an SSL tun0 interface automagically pops up on your Linux box. Bravo.

But I digress.

The NetworkManager GUI within both Gnome and KDE has support for OpenVPN tunnels, so I decided to give it a try. At first I attempted the most simple case using a static key. For the life of me I couldn't get static key support to work with NetworkManager... it wouldn't even establish a connection despite the fact that it worked manually on the console. I gave up on static keys and instead created a public key infrastructure, issuing client keys when needed. This allowed me to establish a connection just fine, but it brought one critical bug to the surface: DNS resolution was subsequently borked, since NetworkManager wiped out resolv.conf once the tunnel was initialized. Fooey.

So instead I created a manual script that initiates the tunnel. That appears to be working pretty well now... no big worries. For now it's a straight UDP tunnel, but I might change it to TCP down the road.

The configuration wasn't too bad - I followed the HOWTO Quickstart pretty much by the letter by creating the keys, issuing them to clients then using their sample server and client config files. On OpenWRT, all I had to do was create an /etc/init.d/S50openvpn script to start OpenVPN on startup, then add the following firewall rules:
### OpenVPN traffic
## -- Permit initial negotiation
iptables -t nat -A prerouting_wan -p udp --dport 1194 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A input_wan -p udp --dport 1194 -j ACCEPT
## -- Permit tun interfaces
iptables -A forwarding_rule -i tun+ -j ACCEPT

Now I'm able to connect and browse at will. Not too shabby!

Amazing that you can build a VPN concentrator, WAP, firewall and management station for a little more than $50. Ultimately you end up with more usability than you could get with a $200 cheapo desktop.