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            <p><a href="online-ides.html">Continuing my exploration of online IDEs</a>, here are a few more that I came across: </p>
            <p><a href="http://gomobi.info/">Gomobi</a></p>
            <p>It's Touted as a service to build a professional mobile website in minutes, but after several minutes I haven't still figured out what it's about. Correct me if I am wrong here, but this looks like a rebirth of old Geocities, Anglefire etc but for the mobiles.</p>
            <p><a href="http://www.akshell.com/ide/">Askshell</a></p>
            <p>Askshell is another IDE that opened up without any fuss at all. It's geared to build apps with server side javascript. I remember doing that sort of thing eons ago when SUN was the leader in web server software, gosh how long ago was that? I can't even remember the name of that darned webserver. It should be dead. But server side javascript lives on in Node.js (maybe it's the zombie apocalypse)</p>
            <p><a href="https://www.sourcelair.com/">SourceLair</a></p>
            <p>For a change here is an editor that lets you start writing code without forcing you to sign up. It will even compile and execute C and C++ code for you. What exactly happens to code written in interpreted languages like PHP is not very clear.</p>
            <p><a href="https://codeanywhere.net/pricing-and-plans">codeanywhere</a> and <a href="http://codey.co/">codey.co</a></p>
            <p>These two are not related, they just have similar names and similar lack of features, namely SFTP support. Oh and you can lump '<a href="http://edit.orgapage.de/">PHP Code Editor</a>' together with these two.</p>
            <p><a href="http://jsdo.it/">JustEdit</a></p>
            <p>JustEdit is just an HTML, Javascript editor but at least it doesn't pretend to be anything else like the majority of the IDE/editors I have looked at so far.</p>
            <p><a href="https://jsfiddle.net/">jsFiddle</a></p>
            <p>This is a good editor (again for HTML and Javascript only.)</p>

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More online IDEs (and pretenders)

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            <p></p>
            <p>I started looking at what's new in the field of Revision Control Systems and naturally my explorations took me to the field of Cloud hosting. That in turn set me off on another tangent, exploring online IDEs and editors. There are quite a few - too many in fact. Seems like the sensible thing to do is to go through some of them quickly and make a short list for in depth study later. So let's start. </p>
            <p>Disclaimer, this post might appear more of a note to self than a real blog entry, so please feel free to skip this post and come back later when I publish a more indepth review.</p>
            <p><a href="http://www.cloud-ide.com/t">eXo Cloud Ide</a>.</p>
            <p>Once you sign up, they create a subdomain on cloude-ide.com for you, thehy ask you to provide a lot of details about yourself, but fortunately there is an 'i will do it later' button! When I logged into cloude ide though all I got was the nav bar at the top and no IDE (huge white space where the IDE is supposed to be). This may or may not have been caused by a missing css file. The console shows that a file named CellTree.css is being requested from the server but not recieved. What it means though is that cloud-ide will not be in the short list.</p>
            <p><a href="http://c9.io">Cloud 9</a></p>
            <p>As they say right there on their site, this is 'For those who want to get started coding quickly on public, open-source projects that you want to share'. I often mind myself toying with new libraries and projects and cluttering up my hard disk, that sort of thing can be moved there. I did clone a project from github but when trying to open the file I get nothing but an ajax spinner.</p>
            <p><a href="http://online-php.com/">online PHP</a></p>
            <p>Then there is online PHP, it FTP transfers files back and forth between your server and the editor. Who in his right mind uses FTP?</p>
            <p><a href="http://www.tumaestroweb.com/">HTML5 Web Development IDE</a></p>
            <p>Well this one looks more like just a plain old text editor to me.</p>
            <p><a href="http://shiftedit.net">ShiftEdit</a></p>
            <p>Ladies and gentlemen, we have here the first online IDE that started up with out any fuss. I just signed in with google and OAuth and hey presto I am presented with something that looks very much like an entry level IDE that you get on desktops. I have already developed a liking for it.</p>
            <p><a href="https://www.coderbuddy.com/">Coder Buddy</a></p>
            <p>Coder Buddy is another IDE that looked interesting at first glance. However it only supports python at the moment (which unfortunately is not in my language list), but certainly worth a second look later on.</p>
            <p></p>
            <p></p>

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            <p></p>
            <p>I have an <a href="https://www.raditha.com/blog/archives/3016.html">Acer Aspire One netbook</a>, or should I say I had one? The kids lifed it a while back. I decided that they could keep it and to install Edubuntu on it. </p>
            <p>The netbook originally shipped with Windows 7 starter but the first thing I did was install Fedora on it - neither of which is really suitable for kids to learn about computers. So all that they do with the netbook is watch Youtube videos (they are not allowed to watch TV) or play games. Hopefully Edubuntu will put that right.</p>
            <p>I have lost count of the number of different distros that I have tried or the number of times I have installed/upgraded Fedora (or it's predecessors). So I wasn't going to waste time to find out if there is anything better than Edubuntu and I didn't expect it to be a smooth installation. It wasn't.</p>
            <p>Downloading the minimal ISO and choosing to do a network installation wasn't probably the smartest decision. It froze at downloading package number 531 and stayed stuck for quite a while. Eventually apt-get had to be killed. The installer then aborted the install process. Thankfully the Ubuntu installers are less cussed than their Fedora counterparts. It takes you back to the previous step instead of rebooting. However these two steps were repeated twice more until I decided to try another set of packages.</p>
            <p>Trouble wasn't over after the installation completed. GRUB was messed up. I've yet to see a linux install where GRUB didn't get messed up. The usual thing to do is to boot up in rescue mode and edit the grub.conf file (if needed) and then run grub-install. But the fat lady wasn't singing even then. The wireless network refused to start up. Yes, this is the same wifi device that was used by the installer to download the packages. If the installer which has the bear minimum about of code can make use of the WiFi device why not NetworkManager ?</p>
            <p>There were some issues with the Wifi when Fedora was first installed on this netbook but I had neglected to blog about the solution at the time, so now it's a case of reinventing the wheel or looking for a helpfull blog post from someone who is more considerate than I am.</p>
            <p>I gathered that the problem maybe with the driver and followed the instructions at http://arch0njw.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/acer-aspireone-d255-wireless-network-and-kubuntu/ to update the same. Still the network icon in the topbar didn't allow me to connect to any wifi network or show me the wifi networks available. However I could manually start up the wlan0 interface, so that's a start. Turns out the next step is really simple, you need to edit /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf and set the manged=false to managed=true</p>
            <p></p>
            <p></p>

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Edubuntu

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            <p>Once upon a long ago, I used to swear by <a href="https://speedtest.net">speedtest.net</a> for broadband speed tests but then I discovered that their test method is <a href="1791.html">not very scientific</a>. Yesterday I aquired a new broadband connection from Etisalat and decided to do a four way speed comparision between Mobitel, Dialog, Lanka Bell and Etisalat, out of laziness I chose speedtest.net for the test, but the results from the Mobitel test against the server in Colombo reminded me that it's not such a good idea.</p>
            <figure style="text-align:center"><img alt="Mobitel Speed Test" src="https://www.speedtest.net/result/1809862914.png" title="Mobitel Speed Test" width="300" height="135">
                <figcaption>What's strange about this speedtest?</figcaption>
            </figure>
            <p>Spot it yet? It's not the slow 0.58mbps speed that I am worried about but the 3 second latency for the ping. There's no way that it can be so. The server is less than 10 kilometers from here and the server is hosted by Sri Lanka Telecom (SLTL) - the parent company of Mobitel. The test was repeated three times and on each occaision the results were similar.</p>

            Now let's see what a test using the Etisalat connection produces:

            <img alt="Etisalat Speed Test" src="https://www.speedtest.net/result/1809852605.png" title="Etisalat Speed Test" class="aligncenter" width="300" height="135">

            Notice how the Etisalat link appears to be faster than the Mobitel connection, well that's to be expected the Mobitel link is 1mbps while Etisalat is supposed to be 21mbps (but the USB modem in this case only supports speeds upto 3.6mbps) but notice how much faster the ping is.

            <img alt="Lanka Bell Speed Test" src="https://www.speedtest.net/result/1809870709.png" title="Lanka Bell Test" class="aligncenter" width="300" height="135">

            Is Lanka Bell really all that slow? Nay not so. It's actually <a href="broadband-speedtest.html">quite fast</a>, even the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission concluded last year that their speeds are closest to the advertised speeds.

            Thus it can be concluded once again that using speedtest.net is not a very scientific way of doing this.

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How accurate is Speedtest.net ?

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            <p></p>
            <p>On the 1st of March, the all share price index of the CSE gained 0.2% even while the the declining counters &nbsp;outnumber the gainers. To be precise 122 counters declined while price rises were seen only in 90 counters. How is that possible? because several counters make disproportionately large positive contributions to the index. Two highly illiquid counters CDIC and SELI figure at first and fifth place in terms of largest positive contributions.</p>
            <p>&nbsp;</p>
            <p></p>
            <figure style="text-align:center"><img alt="Top Contributors to the CSE All Share Index" height="261" src="http://images.raditha.com/blog/images/cse/ADR-marc.png" title="Top Contributors to the CSE All Share Index" width="343">
                <figcaption>Advances, Declines and Top Contributors to the Colombo Stock Exchange All Share Price Index</figcaption>
            </figure>
            <p></p>
            <p>&nbsp;</p>
            <p>Now let's look at the top gainers for the day.</p>
            <p></p>
            <figure style="text-align:center"><img alt="Manipulation is rediculously easy." height="200" src="http://images.raditha.com/blog/images/cse/stock-prices-march-01.png" title="Scammed!" width="519">
                <figcaption>Top Gainers at the CSE on March 1, 2012</figcaption>
            </figure>
            <p></p>
            <p>&nbsp;</p>
            <p>Following the pattern that has become depressingly familiar since the <a href="ats-7-trouble-continues.html">notorious ATS 7 upgrade</a>, the top gainers have all risen with almost no volume to back them up. In fact out of the top five gainers, only one, TPL has seen more than 10 shares change hands. Quite significantly SELI and CDIC occupy the first two places. Both have gained more than 18% they have a combined volume of 9 shares and a combined turnover of Rs 8850. This ladies and gentlemen, is how the index is <a href="market-manipulation-on-shoestring-budget.html">manipulated on a shoe string budget</a>.</p>
            <p>&nbsp;</p>
            <p>In the past, i have often labelled the CSE as the Colombo Joke Exchange. It shall henceforth be known as the Colombo Scam Exchange.</p>
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Colombo Scam Exchange.

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            Colombo Stock Exchange recently upgraded to version 7 of their Automated Trading System, a software shipped with show stopping bugs.

            I have already mentioned how the CSE <a href="dodgy-gets-dodgier.html">no longer records all transactions</a>. I have also explained how you would place an order and find that it's not in the order books but the order gets executed anyway. Well, there's more.

            <figure style="text-align:center"><img title="Stock Prices On the 29th of february" src="http://images.raditha.com/blog/images/cse/stock-prices-feb-29.png" alt="Stock Prices On the 29th of february" width="482" height="431">
                <figcaption>Stock Prices On the 29th of february - with errors.</figcaption>
            </figure>

            Notice once again how prices have jumped up on single digit volumes, but wait, that's a feature added to aid manipulation not a bug. To see the bug look closely at the second line in the table. Notice how SIGV has the same value for open, high and low but the closing value is different? Only one share is reported as have been traded. That means all four of Open, High, Low and Close should be the same. In actual fact, SIGV traded twice on the 29th, first at 84.80 and again at 84.40.

            Till now, when the CSE failed to record all the transactions it left the high and low fields blank, but now CSE is giving false information which is probably worse. Curiously there are still empty values in their price list. You can download the <a href="http://images.raditha.com/blog/images/cse/prices-2012-2-29.gz">archived price list</a> and check it yourself.
            <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="margin: 20px;" title="indices as shown on CDAX" src="http://images.raditha.com/blog/images/cse/cdax-indices.png" alt="indices as shown on CDAX" width="469" height="168">
                This is CDAX</p>
            <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="margin: 20px;" title="indices as shown on DirectFN" src="http://images.raditha.com/blog/images/cse/directfn-indices.png" alt="DirectFN indices">
                And this is what DirectFN says the indices are.</p>
            <p style="text-align: center;"><img style="margin: 20px;" title="indices as shown on the CSE website" src="http://images.raditha.com/blog/images/cse/cse-indices.png" alt="Indices on exchange website">
                And what's shown on the CSE home page.</p>
            At any given moment of time DirectFN, Atrade, CDAX and the CSE website will give different values for the Milanka and All Share Price Indices. Usually it's not a tiny fraction that you can dismiss as being due to lag or latency (though in this case DirectFN and CSE site have equal values, that's not always the case).

            The tickers on all trading platforms halt for minutes at a time, and then they keep running even after the market has closed. It's been <a href="cdax-ticker-gone-crazy..html">seen a few times before</a>, but since the ATS upgrade it's been a daily occurrance.

            Other bugs include:
            None of the online trading tools show the complete order book.
            The number of transactions in the 'time and sales' dialog does not match the number of transaction in the summary.
            Orders are rejected with the message that prices are outside the acceptable range even when they are with in the range.

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Monthly Archives for 2012 03

More online IDEs (and pretenders)

Online IDEs

Edubuntu

How accurate is Speedtest.net ?

Colombo Scam Exchange.

ATS 7 Trouble Continues