hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0412.txt

Episode: 412
Title: HPR0412: Episode 005 - Potluck Roundtable
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0412/hpr0412.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 20:06:35

---

Come celebrate 40 years of UNIX at the Ohio Linux Fest from September 25th through
the 27th.
If you use GNU Linux, BSD, Open Solaris, or any UNIX or UNIX-like system, you belong
at Ohio Linux Fest.
Register free today at OhioLenix.org.
Welcome to TIT Radio Episode 5.
I'm Monster B, and on the call with me today is...
Asmeth.
Audi Audi.
Mac Machine B.
Hello, hello.
330.
Mushy Mushy.
The Zopes.
Bumsla.
And the Sheriff, Peter 64.
Good eye.
And his deputy, Claude 2.
What's going on?
Well, I did get one feedback from a speaker ex.
We talked about...
Where's that noise coming from?
I think Claude 2 is watching aliens too much to get at home sick.
I can't hear a thing.
Maybe it is money.
Hold on.
I'm mute.
And Chair Squeaky, while they're rocking back and forth, or they're slaughtering like
a pig or something.
Oh, it's like...
Well, see Craig sent an email saying thanks for addressing his question.
Linux equivalent to Fruity Loops.
And that was the only feedback I got.
Well, we got some feedback on the site though.
Oh, cool.
We got like three or four comments on the site.
Yeah, but if they were all from the same bloke, he just passed on like four times.
Yeah.
Well, he had an issue with...
I don't know.
I'll just read it, actually.
So this guy's named Zafzad B Block.
And he's commenting primarily on the Adobe router, which is the story that I'd done like
last week or whenever that show was about the router that was like automatically find
all the networks around you and crack them for you.
And he says, while I agree with most of the roundtable comments in principle, the problem
with using these routers or similar ideas in the USA is that the RIAA or MPAA is they don't
care if you really have offending files on your computer.
Remember, they have sued people that never owned computers before in the good old USA.
They do first or demand settlements and the person that gets into their site might
not be able to afford a lawyer or a settlement.
I'd be willing to bet that you'd feel like crap if someone in the neighborhood got
figured for six grand by the RIAA for your torrenting.
Now, in France where they actually need proof, I say go for it.
Here in the USA, where you only get the law, you can buy a class whose idea is just
going to cause some poor innocent misery.
That kind of thoughtless action gives all geeks and hacker types the bad name either way
I love the podcast.
Those are his thoughts about the Hadoopi router.
And to that, I personally say I don't agree.
I think that Hadoopi routers a great idea because I don't think the people getting hurt are
going to be the ones being cracked, having their routers used by other people.
I think the people are going to get hurt or the people trying to monitor and sort of keep
tabs or judge the kind of traffic that each of us is utilizing.
It's kind of like spreading the wealth.
We're all giving each other equal amounts of torrenting and questionable activity so
that people are trying to look at our traffic and throttle our bandwidth or persecute us
or whatever.
They can't really finger us because it's on everyone's network.
That's my personal opinion.
Anyone else have a thought about that?
I second your opinion.
Stand, have safe.
I think we got the take off.
Take off.
Man.
Man.
So you're getting noises now Bill.
Yeah, it was pretty loud.
Yeah.
Really loud.
I'm mute.
Tell me if it's any noise here.
No, it's quiet.
Quiet.
But it does.
And now it's back.
No.
No, it's like a weird, like it comes in a weird time.
I was just wondering if, like there's no noise at all in this room.
I just wondered maybe if it was twinkle or something, but I can't hear a thing.
That's why I'm wondering if it's got something to do with my end.
I don't think it's you.
Well, I was muted all the time.
Clot 2 was talking.
So if you heard a den.
No, we didn't hear a thing.
No, we didn't.
We heard it like right after 330, so I second your motion or whatever.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's muted.
But anyway, I'm just wondering why I can't hear it.
And like Peter says, everyone else who comments is pretty much the same guy, because the
last comment, which says, I usually have a critical eye, but this is the best podcast
I've heard in a long time, I really appreciate the kudos for Linux and older hardware.
All the topics are actually enjoyable, keep up the good vibes.
And that's from Davey Jordan.
Someone obviously paid him off to write that.
I didn't do it.
Huh?
Well, that's because you're broke.
Yeah.
It was me.
I paid not Australian money, so it really didn't cost me that much.
Oh, right.
Okay.
Cool.
Good idea.
5-5 years.
Two minutes.
Get in there.
Get in there.
This is the first time the deputies have been sent to that.
We've been through.
You can't send a deputy.
Yeah, I can't.
I can't put on the sheriff.
Yeah, well, what are they going to do?
They might be invited.
They might show you how to get some good teachers.
Come here, boy.
You got a real bad smile.
I'm going to make that blue hair stand on end.
Well, Sheriff, you want to kick it off the first time?
Yeah, I can.
I've just got a quick one here.
This is tearing on our astronomical theme that I started off with with Celestia and whatever
the other one was.
Now, this one here, I was talking to Derek, who has been in his comfy chair for a while,
and he pointed out this little site called Galaxy Zoo.
And what this is, it appears that us humans are a hell of a lot better in discerning shapes and that.
And what they have is this slant digital sky survey telescope that just goes on.
I think it seems to be about a quarter of the sky.
And then what they ask people, originally, this is actually Galaxy Zoo the second one.
The original one was just purely going in and saying, okay, is this picture of a Galaxy?
Yes.
Can you see any arms emanating from the center out?
What do you know?
Like in the spiral fashion, yes, et cetera, like that.
And the beauty of that was these images that you were looking at, you were the first person ever to see them.
Because this slant digital telescope is actually a robotic telescope that just goes off and just takes pictures.
And then with this second incarnation of the site, you're actually going a lot deeper.
And you might say, okay, yes, this image does have spiral arms or maybe a Galaxy on its side or whatever.
Then you go off and answer more questions about it.
And a few interesting things have actually come out of it.
This, in particular, is called the Vorwerp or something called anyway.
I just, that they haven't have a look at the site.
There's some interesting reading on it.
But this one, like, had a look at this picture and there was this sort of blue thing underneath.
And he just paced it in the forums and said, oh, what the hell is this?
And as a consequence of that, they've named this sort of after that bloke.
They're still not quite sure what it is.
And also why have it hasn't now.
Yeah, that's right.
They named it, they called it after him.
And just some of the images that this slant scope takes are just worth perusing.
Just posting them in two seats and then they'll look.
I mean, they're just beautiful images.
But anyway, get over there.
I mean, I joined up and some of them, if you stare too long, you start to see.
You think it's like spaceship's clutter.
You'll love this sort.
Yeah, it's pretty good.
It's something to look at with your kids.
If you don't have kids, it's enjoyable anyway.
So that's just a quick one today.
And this is like classifying the galaxies, right?
That's what you're doing.
Your thing is just the spirals, galaxies.
I forget what the other class is.
Yeah, it says if it goes.
Yeah, if it goes clockwise or any clockwise, whether there's any other thing in the picture
that might be of interest to you, whether it could be a, you know,
you get that classic cigar shape galaxy with the bulge in the center.
So you're actually looking at a galaxy side on just, it's a question like that.
But it's very easy because all you're choosing is virtually a yes or no.
You know, you let's show you a picture.
You get to choose either whether it's this or that, then you say it's this.
Then the next time I'll say OK, I said this is all this.
And then you're just very easy to do.
Yeah, cool.
Yeah.
All right, cool.
Any more questions on this one?
How about you, Claude?
What do you got for us?
Oh, I've got, oh yeah, OK.
So have anyone heard of this?
This is kind of cool.
They're apparently around the same time that Google had released, you know,
the big press release about Chrome OS or whatever.
That's the obligatory Chrome OS mentioned for this episode by the way.
But apparently around the same time they released an open source.
It's called MeetX.
Has anyone heard of this before?
No.
OK, so this is basically where you can use, and I haven't tried this yet,
because I just found out about it.
But you can use, you know, like SSH over into your box or whatever, you're, you know, remotely.
And rather than just doing a normal X forwarding session, you would use MeetX.
And this will basically compresses all of the different X system requests or whatever.
So you're forwarding X, but you're doing so.
I reckon you're like utilizing a lot more of your local resources and just compressing the call,
you know, the system calls, you know, from the remote box.
But it's supposed to speed up, you know, the graphical response when you're doing the X forwarding dramatically.
And then the name of the project is MeetX, which is just in EAT letter X.
And I guess by Google, but it is apparently GPL, you know, so it's kosher.
It uses the in-X protocol, which is, I guess they compresses the X request.
Do you have any links to this, like putting the show notes?
Yeah, I do.
I've got probably the best place to do it.
It's just code.google.com slash MeetX in EATX.
I'll put that in my RC as well.
I was written down.
If you're logging this or not.
You know, I do everything around here with sticky notes, Clot2.
Okay, well, yeah.
code.google.com slash MeetX in EATX.
You're going to try that one.
Sticky notes.
Was that a lead end for my story?
Yep.
Oh, pretty slick.
Well, on the subject of sticky notes, yeah, I mean, you know, so that art don't have to keep and pasted in the center of his forehead anymore.
Run across a little program called Zem.
And I heard Chad mention it on his show here a week or so ago.
I went and looked at it and played with it.
And it's a really neat little desktop wicking.
And the whole thing is, after you play with it just a little bit,
it all of a sudden dawns on you that it's just almost the same as Tom Boy notes.
Except it uses Pearl and Python as no mono.
And that's called Zem.
You can X, Zem.
Z-I-M.
Let me put it in there.
There's a link to the project.
But no, I, well, I went, went looking.
And then, yeah, it's in Ubuntu's repository.
But after I've already downloaded it, it was playing with it on a Ubuntu machine.
I found it comes as part of the original install on anti-X.
It's also pretty good for doing notes and stuff.
Yeah, it works.
And you can change it automatically.
Yeah, you know, you'll link the darn things, it's just like HTML.
In fact, you can export them as HTML.
Well, you go over to the Zem site and you'll find that the whole site was written in their little notebook program.
Project actually using their own project for their project.
That's pretty cool.
That's good.
Yeah, you know, that's a neat little tag at the bottom of their page.
You know, this whole site was written in Zem.
It's always an encouraging thing.
So, you know, that hack if you're not an else, you use it for a WhizzyWag HTML editor.
So that's what Tom Boy is.
Basically, it's just like, yeah, basically like a desktop local wiki.
Yeah, Tom Boy and it look almost identical and the functions are close.
It's hard to tell them apart.
Yeah, I was always confused as to why Tom Boy was such a shining example of mono.
It just seems like it's just like slightly fancy notepad or internal database kind of thing.
I could never understand why everyone got so excited about it all the time.
I used to use Tom Boy quite a bit.
And then not too long ago, I saw something somewhere about a port of Tom Boy over to C++.
It's called Geno.
It's the same exact thing.
It's just written in C++.
This posted a link in the IRC channel.
Anybody wants to check it out.
But it looks like everything is pretty much ported over.
Some of the add-ons are still being worked on.
And the synchronization support is still being developed also.
But everything else is up to par.
Well, it's plain that you don't have to have mono to have a desktop note taker or desktop wiki.
Exactly.
So what do these use for like a backend for a database?
So using the tiny SQL?
That one is a new one called Couch or something.
It's supposed to be like some kind of SQL, sort of a new hip desktop SQL.
I was just wondering how easy it would be to back this stuff up.
Like everything you put in here, they're an easy way to back it up and move it to a different system.
Probably just a hidden folder in your own directory.
I would imagine.
I would hope.
Yeah, that's what it's got.
What do you just like to choose these things for?
I don't.
Yeah, I just couldn't see the need.
I mean, you never take notes.
No, in that obvious, when I'm talking, I just don't know what I'm talking about.
That's why.
I make notes for any interesting stories and stuff.
That anything I, I mean, I've got a text file.
I think I mentioned before.
I call it Jay Lindsay and it's all that I've got of him in there.
Maybe I could use it for that.
Yeah, plus you can put links in this.
Okay.
I don't know.
I suppose a lot of people must use him because there's so many of them out there.
Well, I mean, it's nice.
I used to use Tom Boyle the time when I was doing programming stuff.
Like I would take him through snippets in the separate note.
And then you can link them up together to do this in a second.
Yeah, the Zim does look neat because I, I don't know, I might try this because I mean,
I like to lay out of the website that they made on Zim-Wiki.org.
I mean, it's simple, but it'd be nice just for, you know, like platypuslinics.org.
Yeah, I might be able to use this for an easy input stuff.
Well, I've found sometimes it's nice to put pictures in your notes and this sure works good for that.
So what is it like, because I'm looking at the screen sizes format up there,
would I be able to tie something out and then export it to HTML or how would that work?
Yeah, well, you just export the whole page to HTML.
You know, all you have is an HTML file, then that you can open up browser.
Yeah, I'm definitely going to look at this.
Am I the only one to think that Zim looks overly complicated?
Yeah, next question.
You must be, because that's not.
I mean, it's one of the samples like in programs I've ever seen.
It's got some cool little things like a set that's to do list.
You can just do open square brackets, play square brackets, then whatever it is.
And then like the number of exclamation marks is how important it should be.
There's a couple of shortcuts like that that you can just do and it suddenly populates a to do list for you.
Yeah, it's like anything.
Yeah, you can make it as simple as complicated as you want.
This is what's next in the Windows.
I believe that is cross-ported.
Yes, it is.
I believe it will run Windows or Mac or whatever.
I'm looking at the download page.
It has Windows, Arch Linux, Debian, Gen2, Fedora, FreeBSD.
Pretty much any weather to monitor it will run.
Yep.
All right, any more questions on this one?
All right, let's move on to Snack Machine.
Well, I found this is not really Linux oriented, but I thought this was kind of cool.
I've been dealing with a lot of camera stuff lately.
And Canon just introduced a new type of image stabilizer.
So you know when you're taking a picture and your hands are real shaky and ends up blurring the picture,
will they have image stabilization built into a lot of cameras anymore?
Well, Canon developed a hybrid image stabilization.
So it not only covers the linear, which is the normal stabilization that you pretty much find anywhere now,
but it also does rotational as well.
So as you're moving and you turn the camera, you can have it at an angle turning it
and it's going to keep your picture nice and crisp.
It's really, really cool or just cut down on the coffee.
And this is just in their new, like their newest high-end digital cameras?
Yeah, it's in, they're going to start putting it in their new SLR models that are coming out.
This was just announced on the, what was it, the 22nd?
This was announced.
And then it says on the site, I'll post the link here in a second.
It'll be for use.
Any lens is going forward as of July 17th of 2009.
We'll work with the new stabilization techniques.
No, it sounds cool. I mean, I love Canon cameras.
Yeah, it's a lot.
My Canon's 17 years old and still working strong.
And Mrs. Oaks, Canon's even older, it's still working.
I had issues with mine a while back.
It was doing weird horrible blurry lines, but there's a worldwide recall on the Canon cameras
because they had a dodgy batch of CCDs, so they prepared it free, basically.
Even though it was like five years old, they didn't care, they just took and fixed it.
Now it works great again.
Yeah, I've been watching.
They've had a bunch of different firmware updates for different models.
And like you said, they had a recall on a bunch of the CCD sensors, so they were replacing a lot of those.
And they were one of the first ones also to come out with HD video on SLR cameras,
also with their latest model, the T1i, I believe it is.
And this is just another thing that's going to make photography that much better,
because unless you're sitting there with a tripod, there's always some sort of camera shake that you're going to have,
unless you're really, really steady.
Well, and even then, like in certain light conditions, it's almost impossible to be steady enough.
Exactly.
I don't know how good this image stabilization is, though.
I guess I'd like to see it first before I sat around and praised it, but it means like I said,
and like I said, Canon really seems to make really good camera.
Yeah. Any more comments on this one?
Nope.
Do you want to go next, Elk?
Sure. So I've got a 130, maybe interesting.
The website called PrivacyChoice or PrivacyChoice.org.
I'll paste it into the right button.
I'll paste it into the RC.
Basically, there's a bunch of ad networks that do, you know,
give your cookies and screw around with you and stuff.
So see what you're doing.
But quite a lot of them have opt-outs if you go to a particular thing,
they'll give you a cookie to opt-out.
This website just gives you like 89 cookies that opts you out of all these companies.
So things like Google Ads and DoubleClick, Yahoo and AOL.
You just click on it, it gives you a bunch of cookies, and you opt it out,
least in theory.
I haven't gotten tested it fully.
But it looks like a cool idea.
There's even got a Firefox add-on, which will automatically restore them
if your cookies are ever wiped.
Just on your big Firefox bookmark repository?
No, it's not.
As a seller, I haven't gone through and played around with it entirely yet.
But instead, you can just go to the website and click on it,
and I'll give you the cookies.
What you can do is that the other one.
I haven't got a big sort of anonymous paranoid Linux version.
Sorry, paranoid Firefox add-on list yet, unlike some people.
But I think it's a cool idea to instantly opt-out of everything.
So how does it work?
It's putting cookies on your computer from privacy choices?
Basically.
I mean, let's learn how this works.
So I shall read you the bit.
Blurp here.
The property choice was it uses cookies.
Small files are in blah, blah, blah.
You know what a cookie is.
Nearly all websites use web cookies for useful things, like you're ever going to use
a name for visits to visit.
Since web pages consist of contents of many companies,
any or all of them may serve cookies on your machine through that page.
They include networks that provide advertising companies that do market research.
By recognising your browser as you visit different sites,
these companies collect information about your overall activities and interest.
Tracking cookies that offer an opt-out from this profiling provide a special cookie
that tells their systems not to record your behavior
when your browser communicates with their service.
Rather than have you visit all of these individual networks sites to opt out,
you can use privacy choice to cause your browser to collect those cookies
from all those different networks at the push of one button.
And you can either choose opt-out completely or opt-out selectively.
The privacy choice browser add-on makes your opt-out preferences permanent
by rewriting all the opt-out cookies on your computer whenever cookies are cleared
or whenever you start a new browser session in case cookies are deleted from your computer.
The browser add-on also provides the most complete coverage
since it writes opt-out cookies for all networks,
even though it's a block-out web-based visitor.
I mean, if you're using something like cookie-safe or a different plugin
to get rid of, you know, a squid or a provoxil-something to block cookies anyway,
I don't think it's going to matter.
But I thought it was an interesting little thing that you just click here
and it opts you out a little of a lot of them.
You can never opt out too many times.
I mean, of course, this is assuming you trust privacy choice.
The website.
Do you trust them?
I've not gone to... I mean, I've just looked at what they say they do.
The next thing is to go to various websites and look at who's talking about privacy choice.
You know, and then see, you know, links to or whatever the command is under Google
or similar. Just see what's going on.
I haven't fully... I figured I'd just tell 313 here
to look at if he gave it the 313. He's done some approval.
Then we knew it was good.
Give it the tin hat seal of approval.
Could you look it over and let us know 330?
Yeah, I will. I just did it and turned off all my other anti-cookie add-on.
So, I'll go dig in through and see what it's doing.
I don't know. Stuff like this scares me because how do you know they're not going to grab your Google account
or Yahoo account or PayPal or, you know, they grab the cookie that you're supposed to get.
You know what I'm saying?
Well, the cookie shouldn't have any of your login information on it.
Like, okay, like your Google account, where does it store it?
It would be in... I thought that was stored in a cookie.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're right.
Because if they're replacing it with their cookie and then you go to Google,
what if it sends it to them?
Well, they're saying what I understand and what I just read out.
You click on it and it takes you to their opt-out page,
not privacy choice, I mean, Google likes and so whatever.
That's what they're suggesting.
We're just trying to pick it apart, so that's all.
No, that's fine. Go ahead. I mean, I said I'm still looking into it to figure out if it's any good.
I mean, that's just from one interesting thing.
If you get that about us.org,
forward slash privacy choices.org, hang on, privacy choices.
Yeah, not for all.
Yeah, I was going to say privacy choices up against being.doubleclick.net.
That's what it says.
That's what about us. It says,
social privacy choices, language, English.
Give us an address and it says contact.
It's master at double click.net.
Wow.
That actually, because yeah, but that's the wrong thing.
It's privacy choice, not privacy choices.
So that is kind of funny if double click is trying to get a website that's very similar.
Yeah.
But it's not like they're doing something good because they have enough double click.
Yeah.
No, I clean my cookies out like probably like every two hours.
I mean, if I'm going to, if I'm going to order something online or go somewhere to log in,
I usually clean my cookies out and you know, clean everything out in Firefox.
So that just makes the tracking ineffective?
Or less effective, anyway.
Ah.
Because what you're still locked in and things stuff.
I just said, I just use cookie safe.
I got it to block pretty much every cookie and that's I really, really need it.
Yeah.
In Conqueror, you can pretty much configure it that way too.
You can say, father with cookies or you know, ask me about them.
And then I just have a block it.
Really think about it to be honest.
I don't really find that that many types seem to like demand that I have cookies anymore.
Or that I accept cookies anymore.
Thank you, sites too, don't they?
Yeah, I don't really do any thinking.
Well, I do some bank outline, but I don't know.
I guess my, my, my, my if I doesn't.
Yeah, I just tend to recall not being able to access mine.
I think I had to enable cookies.
So the worst thing is JavaScript.
You can't do any damn thing on internet without JavaScript.
Yeah, yeah.
One of them, I don't even have a little, or a link,
has a, has some pretty good JavaScript and sort of features.
Even if you're doing something like a text based browser,
it'll kind of emulate what's going on with that JavaScript.
Or it'll tell you that something's trying to run,
and it'll kind of let you know what it's trying to do.
I forget which one it is though.
That are e-links or links.
Oh, speaking of milk and cookies and beards.
You got anything for us 330?
Yeah, I do.
And amazingly, it has nothing to do with 10 foil hats,
or being crazy or anything like that.
And it'll probably be the least technical thing discussed tonight.
But as a lover of the Matrix and the Matrix View screensaver,
I figured I'd talk about how to change the pictures in it,
because I don't know about you guys,
but I can only look at Neo and Trinity for so long before I go,
we got to change this.
So as pseudo root, if you edit,
flash users, flash share, flash applications,
flash screensaver, flash,
flash matrixview.desktop.
And where it says exec,
if you make that matrixview,
base-r, space-image, space,
and then the path to your pictures,
it'll actually just put up a single folder of your pictures.
You can't have them multiple folders deep.
And I actually found that,
like a spray paint template,
actually kind of worked the best,
because they're already made to be read, you know,
through a terribly fuzzy medium.
Pretty cool.
What's the screen saver call,
though? I don't actually know the one that you're talking about,
what's it called, the Matrix View?
Yeah.
I know it's in the GNOME screensaver pack.
I usually just have my screen going black,
but don't check this out.
Oh, I thought the matrix screen saver was just the ones
and zero as cascading down the screen.
But I imagined it would be.
Let's say there's that one also,
but this is the characters cascading down the screen,
and then they morph into a picture.
So it's kind of like you're looking through the matrix
at a real thing.
Kind of trippy when you walk by,
you know, your screen says, you know,
you know, rise up,
and it's in, you know, matrix code.
Speaking of the matrix code,
Clutter, did you watch the 13th floor yet?
No.
Well, I actually sat and watched it again yesterday,
just to make sure it's as good as I remembered
back from 10 years ago more.
And I'm going to say, do yourself a favor,
sit down and watch it.
Very enjoyable movie.
It isn't like you somewhere.
It's blaming me for bloody 12 months.
Yeah, at least.
No, I'll turn my attention back towards that.
Yeah, I've seen that movie, Peter.
It's not real bad.
It's got some things that are,
have you ever seen with the dark city, Clatu?
Yeah, yeah, like that.
Okay, so it's kind of like the combination of, say,
dark city and the matrix,
kind of push those two together
and not kind of what the 13th floor is like.
Cool.
Anything else, 330?
Nope.
All right, cool.
And Mrs. Oak, do you have a story for us?
Yeah.
I actually did my homework this week for Tried.
It's about the Apple iPhone
and some of the apps that are created for it,
one in particular.
The link is already in IRC,
or those of you who want to read about it.
But what's funny is that it was developed
by, I think it's a guy named Short.
And the funniest part about it is the app itself.
Does it do anything?
But it's one of the most popular apps being downloaded to the iPhone.
Mrs. Oak, you're talking about the iPhone on the Linux podcast.
Well, not that it's really Linux.
Sorry, get to the bin for letting your wife talk about an iPhone.
Five minutes.
I can't believe it.
So Mrs. Oak, go ahead.
So what does this app do?
Nothing.
Nothing.
It's just, it looks like a frame on a mirror.
And I guess if you look at your,
you're in the,
leaving the screen of your iPhone behind that frame black.
So I guess if you look at your iPhone,
when you have this app up,
it actually looks like it.
The one that always amused me was that one that I am filthy rich
in a cost $9,999 or whatever it bloody was.
Yeah.
And what seven people bought it?
Yeah.
So you know there's an app for the,
for the memo devices called,
I am free.
That does the exact same thing as I am rich.
If it's free.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that was pretty clever.
I find a lot of those iPhone apps.
I mean, like every store I pass on the street
has a sign out front these days saying,
quick, go download our iPhone app.
And it's just like,
I don't even know what it is.
It looks like from the,
from the advertising,
it looks like it's just their webpage,
you know,
except instead of having it,
having to go to their webpage,
it's just like,
it's the quote unquote app for your iPhone.
Well, the state of New York or the city of New York
just came up with an iPhone app that
allowed you to piss and moan about things.
So like if there was like a,
a stop sign that was obfuscated by a tree,
you could take a picture of it,
attach that to your complaint,
and send it in from your iPhone.
I see.
And then what happens to it then,
I wonder,
did some early ignored it?
I'll say then,
then some kid working there for the summer
has passed it,
deleting all of them.
That's right.
What I found the funniest about this,
this particular app was that,
but that they say in the description of the app,
it pretty much tries to discourage anybody from downloading,
and it only has an average rating of one and a half stars.
But it seems to be one of the most popular ones downloaded.
And I guess they're making $2,000 a day in revenue,
just based on the ads,
the ad revenue.
That's classic.
Yeah.
Well, it's like that,
you know,
it's like when you come up on the scene of an accident,
there's some cop going,
all right, everybody,
there's nothing to see here.
Yeah, certainly.
Well, if there was nothing to see,
he wouldn't be standing out there saying it.
Same reason people download this app.
I'm going to go buy an iPhone and download it right now.
I'll be damned to say,
tell me what I'm going to look at.
So these are probably the same people that buy ringtones.
Yeah.
Four individuals.
But you said you,
sometimes you walked on the street and you see signs,
people that say,
download their iPhone app.
Know what you said?
Yeah.
It seems like out in front of every store
that I pass on the street these days,
there's like an ad in their window thing.
Download our iPhone app.
And I just,
I think that they're basically just bookmarks
to their site or something like that.
No, I never seen anything like that.
Well, when I say all of the stores,
I mean like two.
Oh.
I think we need a TIT radio app.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Well, what do you think it is,
Clot 2?
It's not only like a bookmark to their site,
but a lot of them will have like an online
checkout type thing where they have an account
and then go in and they can place orders from there
or pay a balance or something like that.
Morning likely,
that's something like what it is.
I don't know.
Yeah, you're probably right.
So I find it, I do find it odd.
I mean, I don't know.
I mean, our iPhone is actually that,
I guess that overwhelmingly popular
that these places have to come up with an iPhone app
as opposed to apps for whatever other cell phones are out there.
I mean,
our iPhone is actually that popular.
They're waiting by the flight.
Go forward.
Okay.
Well, how many other,
sorry, Snacky.
Sure.
Go ahead, Peter.
Well, I was just going to ask you a question
because I'm not a phonehead.
But how many other phone companies sell apps for their phone?
A question.
Well, all the Windows mobile phones have app stores
or just have websites that you can go and buy the app.
Yeah, but they don't push it.
And like, when I get on my,
yeah, phone, whatever,
bloody use, run on Windows.
So yeah, it doesn't,
there's no store on there.
It's just running Windows mobile
and you could surf on the internet and go to a store.
But that's on the iPhone.
Pushed the store.
Yeah.
Well, the iPhone,
some blackberries,
the palm tree,
the Android phones.
Yeah, so, okay.
There's quite a few out there who do push the store.
Interesting.
Well, it's all the,
it's all the new phones,
all the new smartphones here.
Because all the new smart companies have realized
that's where the money is.
Yeah.
And before it would be tied to your,
to your cell provider,
so like you'd have the Verizon or Sprint app store.
Yeah, it'd be a little thing on your phone
that you can't ever get rid of for any damn reason.
That's absolutely right.
And the thing with,
you know, especially with the iPhone is that
that's where a lot of the developers are.
Right now is the iPhone.
But you, you know,
you see, you're starting to see a lot of them,
a lot of people not necessarily going from iPhone
to say Android or,
or Symbian,
anything like that.
But they're starting to develop app stores,
so to speak,
that are not carrier,
specific,
that are for the platform,
not the carrier.
So, you know, people can,
you know, either take a phone
from one carrier to another
or something of that nature.
They're more likely to purchase apps
if they're a phone,
especially since they're hitting a wider market.
They can lower the cost of their apps,
which makes people more likely to buy set apps
and the more people that, you know,
are buying them,
then of course,
the more money they're going to make.
And the thing is,
is all the,
the SDKs are in some way similar.
Yeah, they're,
there are only so many programming languages in the world.
Yeah, so you can write your iPhone app
and take almost the same exact code,
recompile it for the G1,
and then you can recompile it for,
you know, the palm,
well, not the palm tree,
you have to write it in Ajax.
But, yeah, it, it's all,
you know, they all have similar hardware types
and everything.
So, yeah, it really kind of makes sense
to have a,
a carrier agnostic store going on.
Yeah, that's right.
And that's,
that's pretty much, you know,
how it is with,
not necessarily mobile software,
but any software.
I mean,
programming languages,
once you get one down,
and you start to look at another one,
I mean, you know,
everything kind of falls into place,
and you can,
you can port one thing,
you know,
from one platform to another,
it's not,
it's not as much work,
as if you were starting from scratch.
I, I,
must admit,
maybe it's because I'm old,
I just don't get this phone thing.
Like, still,
the screens are just way too small to surf,
you know,
but the one I just got got WiFi,
I thought great,
I can get on Yahoo,
not Yahoo,
YouTube,
or whatever,
and do all this,
and then,
you do it once,
just because you can,
and you never do it again.
Yeah, I can get the phone thing either, honestly.
Yeah.
Really, it's,
it's not bad with,
with devices like the iPhone,
and even some of the newer Android devices,
like the,
oh,
what is it,
the G1,
the G3,
because a lot of them,
a lot of them,
are the touch screen,
you know,
you know,
multi-touch,
where you can stretch,
and shrink,
shrink,
the screen as you want.
Yeah, that's,
that's the problem iPhone,
like,
the screen to just wait too little,
and even,
when you're serving the internet,
you're going to sites,
sort of,
for mobile devices,
aren't you?
Well,
they're always
soon to have a slash-am at the end of them,
but they still don't format the page well enough for me
to be able to,
read without scrolling all over the place.
I don't know about you guys,
but I just burnt up my,
my central battery.
It's been about three days now,
and I feel like a crackhead.
I am,
I am,
I am, I am,
I am dying without this phone.
Two,
it's a 330,
do you use it as a phone,
or do you use it as a,
as a,
an internet tablet?
I use it as both.
Okay.
So I've been tried Twitter,
I just,
I did one Twitter from it,
and I thought,
well, that was fun.
I don't know,
you just,
you either do it on a PC
or if you don't have a PC,
you don't worry about it,
until you get home.
Well, see the,
I mean,
my phone,
I actually use more
as an internet device than I do
as a phone.
Yeah,
and that's,
and that's it.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
I was just,
I was just,
I shut up.
How I would use a phone,
as well,
if I had one,
I would just be using up the data,
less than right,
but I would,
I would say,
not even use the talk minutes at all.
Yeah, I use way more data
than I do.
Voice message.
But what,
why do you do it?
Because you don't have a laptop handy,
or because you're right on the move,
or...
Well, I'm on the move,
or it's something that isn't,
it's something that's going to take,
just long enough that,
you know, walking over to my computer
or booting up my triply,
is going to take longer
than the thing I'm actually doing.
Yeah, I mean,
that's what I do with my Nokia.
I mean,
if I'm just,
no matter where I am,
it's probably in my pocket,
so I can just,
you know,
open up to the Nokia,
and,
yeah,
open up to the Nokia,
check my right,
so whatever.
Yeah.
How big is the screen,
quite too,
on the N800?
It's getting around
four inches,
is there something?
It's about four inches,
big.
It's about, yeah,
it's probably about, yeah.
Yeah, I can see that
is probably being usable.
But like,
a two and a half inch
even three inch screen on a phone
is just too small.
Yeah, one thing that's nice is,
I mean,
I always have a high-speed
data connection.
Where is it?
You know,
see if I were to bring out,
like, a netbooker,
a notebook,
even.
I wouldn't have that data connection
with it unless I,
you know,
tethered my phone
to it,
and I, you know,
I really don't need to do that
if I can just use my phone.
And that's one,
one less thing I've got to carry around
with me, you know?
Yeah.
Say like,
I use my phone for that.
It's like,
you know,
people have a desktop
and a laptop.
Well, because you don't want to
carry your damn desktop everywhere.
Yeah.
And it,
you just get into the thing
where you,
where it's smaller
and smaller and
smaller increments of use.
Yeah, you're like,
well,
what's going to be easier?
Finding a Wi-Fi connection
that I can steal to use the
in a hundred
or just use the,
you know,
the,
the modem that's in my
cell phone to look up,
yeah.
How many houses
have you ever had that
had tigers in them?
Or some dumb
shit like that?
15?
Like I think the most
frequent and
frank,
it would be great
if I could speak English.
If someone,
if someone would make an app
for that,
that would be nice.
That would be fantastic.
And the most frequently
used webpage on my phone
is Wikipedia.
Just somebody
you'll spout
off something and I'll go
that's bullshit.
And take out my phone
and start looking it up.
I've settled
many of arguments that way.
Yeah, and that's the kind of stuff.
I used my phone for the exact same thing all the time,
and I looked up my data plan not too long ago,
and I think this last month or so,
I used probably close to 120 megs on my phone.
That's how much I used the data on my phone,
and I barely used like a 16th of my actual voice plan.
Yeah, and 120 megs doesn't sound like that much,
but it is like a two or three inch screen.
So how much data can you push across that screen in a month?
Yeah.
Because all the modems of any type are capped at five gigs by the FTC.
And everybody goes, five gigs,
I've never been able to do more than five gigs on my phone.
And I tried.
I couldn't find enough data to push through it.
Yeah, I think it can't interrupt your stuff to your phone.
The one time the data used to jump my phone was awesome.
I needed to get an ISO of Ubuntu for some reason.
Now it's on my way home.
So I SSH then to my server,
after I had gone on the web and gotten the download link,
and just WGAT.
I guess WGIT did the file just from my phone.
It's just a simple copy and paste.
Keeping copy and paste on your phone?
Yeah.
Wow, that's cool.
Yeah, and it's been out for two, three years now.
Yeah, Palm device has been able to copy and paste for a while.
So that's something Apple finally had intadated just recently.
Oh, well they did.
But people were doing it before.
But is Apple's innovation?
Right.
Yeah, it was going to say Palm and even Rem had that on their blackberries for the longest time now.
Well, can you copy and paste on some of the early Palm pilots?
I'm that I don't know.
I never had any of those.
I wish my Tony Clea still were.
We get that.
I was going to say worse peg wall.
He'd probably know.
I think he said he had one of the early Palm pilots.
He had a hand spring visor and I swear it could copy and paste.
He could.
I had a visor as well if it could copy and paste.
I missed my visor.
Dude, did yours have the indiglo thing?
Yeah, yeah.
Where it went up in the...
Yeah.
Yeah.
I miss it.
I can't think around still.
I know me too.
I wanted to see if you could put Linux on or something.
But I guess you can't.
What was this device?
It was the Palm pilot except it was by this company called Hand Spring,
who I guess what?
They branched off of Palm or something for some reason.
Yeah, it was really nice.
It was a really nice little...
Was yours the flip top 330 to silver one?
Was it just kind of flipped up?
No, I had the...
It was the same color blue that the blueberry iMacs were.
Okay.
Yeah, I remember that series.
Okay, I've got a picture up on from Amazon right now on it.
They were great.
I mean...
You can buy one new for 30 bucks.
Oh.
And I hear the Palm software when it works quite well.
Yeah.
They had this great thing called the Springboard expansion slot.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah.
It looked kind of like an Nintendo...
It's like a Game Boy cartridge.
Yeah.
You can do all kinds of...
There were cameras and all kinds of shit you could put in there.
I actually used the handwriting recognition on that almost as much as I did anything else.
That was...
We're doing what you had too, right?
Yeah, that was the only input method.
That worked really well actually.
I was really good at that.
Did it ruin your handwriting forever?
Yeah, I mean I still do graffiti here.
I think they call it graffiti.
Yeah, they call it.
I still forget to cross A's.
Yeah, exactly.
Why bother?
You know, you don't need it.
Now, for a while, I thought that would surely replace the standard handwriting, but unfortunately it didn't.
Sorry, we can leave the charge.
Yeah, 10 years too late.
Well, I remember last week I said I was going to try PCBSD.
Yeah.
Yeah, I gave it a try.
I didn't have much luck with it.
If I'm not having much luck with it.
It went through the installer.
I mean, everything seemed like it was working good.
The installer is beautiful.
Yeah, it is.
I tried that too.
Went through the whole thing to the partitioning.
Went to the point where it started installing everything.
And then it would get to about 50-60% and it would just stop and say seek failed invalid argument.
Period.
I found the information from the PCBSD forums.
And it seemed like everybody had a SATA DVD drive.
So I'm just guessing that might be the problem.
Anyway, I tried it three times.
I gave up on it.
But instead I threw the free BSD disk and installed that.
And I'm liking it.
I mean, it was a really easy install.
I mean, I compared the install to probably like Slackware.
If you follow the handbook, it's really simple to install.
The default install just drops you without X or anything, right?
It's just a text log in and you install the extra packages from there.
Yeah.
During the install, you have a choice to install like extra packages like KDE.
Okay.
But you still don't get X.
You still have to configure X by hand.
So what's the advantages of BSD over Linux?
It's just security as they mind objective, isn't it?
I mean, the main thing would be the, obviously, the kernel.
I mean, that's the major difference.
Well, I guess a lot of the user space apps are not GNU, huh?
Because I don't think they BSD and GPL aren't even compatible licenses.
Is that correct or am I just completely wrong?
I mean, I know there are different licenses, but I think they're compatible.
So you can mix and match.
I mean, there's a lot of stuff in Linux distributions that have the BSD license.
Yeah, I thought I read somewhere on the open DSD things that they weren't,
they weren't including post-fix because it was GPL or something weird like that,
but I could be wrong.
But I mean, I would think that the kernel would be the major difference, although I don't know
so what the significance of that is.
What was the question again, Peter?
Did you ask what the advantage was?
Are they different?
No, it seems to me, like I don't know a lot about BSD,
but it seems to me that their main focus is on security.
Isn't this the one thing that Tollwald said they're masturbating monkeys or something?
Is that the one?
He said that specifically about the open BSD people, I think.
Right, but he was sort of insulating that they concern themselves more
about making the kernel very secure than doing anything else.
Yeah, I mean, I'm reading a book on the Linux kernel, like understanding Linux kernels,
I owe rightly.
And they're talking a lot about like, you know, a monolithic kernel versus a modular kernel or whatever.
Yeah, they're very similar, stuff like that.
I still don't understand it.
But I'm feeling that that's where it's going to be.
I think user apps are app.
From what I could tell, especially when I was playing around with like Dragonfly BSD and Open Solaris
and just what I know of Linux, it just seems like the user's based apps are just kind of like,
they're either all the same anyway, you know, like you see send mail and post-fix and things like that
or they're just really, really similar and just seem to function almost exactly the same way.
Even though they might, I mean, some of them might be called the same thing,
but there's like a, you know, maybe a Linux version of top and a BSD version of,
well, I think top is all the same, but like, I don't know, CP or something.
You know, there might be a GNU version, there might be a BSD version, there might be a spun version.
They'll do this basically the same thing.
It doesn't seem like that would be the significant difference.
It seems like the big deal would be a lot lower level than that.
But so far, I haven't seen really much of a difference between performance,
but I guess I haven't really, like, rigorously tested, you know, BSD versus Linux versus Solaris.
Yeah, I might just have a look at that thread on the machine one day.
I haven't been able to play with it.
Yeah, I mean, it's probably worth it.
You should try, you should try those three BSD and I would give Open Solaris a go if I were you.
I sound good at that thing.
I've actually, yeah, I didn't play with Solaris.
So I just came out on a magazine.
I know, Jay Lindsay was talking about his playing with PC, BSD at the moment.
He said, that's pretty good.
You were talking about monolithic kernels and that,
and anyone who's interested, Dan, covered it on a HPA episode a while back too,
which was an interesting one about the different types of kernels,
if anyone's interested in listening.
Jay's episode on the kernel and the boot process.
And those were just, those, I think, were some of HPRs.
I mean, those are just fantastic episodes.
Yeah, they emphasized you can get back and listen to a couple of times.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They're pretty complex and you keep picking up something different every time.
Yeah, once I installed free BSD, I mean, I don't see any difference between using Linux or free BSD.
What about some of the command line applications that are all the same?
You're not running into things where you're trying to type something in
and you'll use an option or a switch and it won't do it or something.
By default, the terminal is a born shell.
But you can easily put bash in there if you want.
Oh, OK.
I mean, it's up to you.
You can choose any shell you want.
Sure.
So I mean, if you, I haven't really run into any problems just using the born shell,
but I, but I do plan on changing it to bash.
And they've got all the, the command line applications that you'd expect.
Like, if you can say, I've got what you can say, the H clients, I don't know, you know, those kinds of things.
I really haven't, I haven't needed them.
So I don't know.
OK.
And I don't have that system booted up right now.
Yeah.
I'm just curious about that because I know that when I was trying to stilera,
it was just, I can't tell you how many times I would go to do something that I would normally do,
you know, in Slackware or whatever.
And it would just, I would get slowed down because the, they just weren't.
I didn't know the equivalent of those commands.
And I thought they were really common commands, but maybe not.
Well, I know like the, you know, the labeling of, you know, your hard drives and...
Yeah, yeah.
And you're now working on...
Working interfaces.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, that's different.
That would, that confused me a lot too.
Now, with these BSDs, can you still use grub and dual boot?
They have the wrong boot loader.
I'm not sure what it's called, but you can do a boot with another operating system.
So if I went installed, say PC, BSD, and it installed a boot loader,
it would have a right grub, but I'd still have my arch install on the boot loader.
Yeah, I have no idea how that works.
All right.
So probably good ideas to use it on a machine that, you know, you don't need just in case.
Yeah, that's what I did.
It's free BSDs on its own box right now.
Yeah, I've got this week off, so I might grab that PC version and have a play with it.
Yeah, the free BSD, their, their ports collection.
As of right now, I'm looking at the page.
There's 20,457 ports, and there's also that many packages too.
I don't know if you know the difference.
If you know about ports or not.
Nah, what's that about?
Well, the ports are our source code that you would navigate to your ports directory.
Like say you want to install IRSSI.
You would change to the directory, USR, forward slash ports, forward slash IRC, and forward slash IRSSI.
And you would just type in make, and make, well, if it's just the source code, patches it, configures it, and compiles it.
And then once it completes, you type in make install, and then it just installs it for you.
Now, if you don't want to compile, you know, compile this, you can, you can use a package instead, a binary, and you can just type in PKG underscore add-r, and then IRSSI.
And it just installs a binary.
Does the port same, does that result dependencies?
Yes it does.
And it compiles those dependencies as well, or what?
Yep, it compiles everything.
You know, I'm new to it, but there's a way to pick and choose what you want to compile.
Sure.
So you can like say, you know, I want this, but this dependency pull down the binary instead.
I see.
Interesting.
Once you've installed this senior, you went and installed KDE.
If you didn't drop down to the command line, you wouldn't know whether you're running Linux or FreeBSD, I'd take it.
But it'll look exactly the same.
It'll look close.
I mean, if you had Bash, I mean, it'd be pretty much the same thing.
I mean, like I said, you know, installing it kind of felt like Slackware, but once you have it installed, it kind of has that Gen2 fill to it.
Unless you're using the binaries.
I mean, it's just different.
You know, I see why Jeff was saying that FBOPKG was sort of influenced by the ports and because that's found a little bit like FBOPKG,
because it doesn't do descendants port does.
But you go through, you kind of find your stuff, and then it can actually compile before you install it, which I like a lot.
I like, you know, having it compiled rather than just pulling down a binary personally.
Yeah, it's kind of nice because, you know, like if you like to do the compiling of everything, that's fine.
But like say it's something big, like Firefox or KDE or GNOME.
You just pull down the prebuilt binary.
Yeah.
So FreeBSD that come didn't have any problems with your DVD driver?
No, not the FreeBSD.
That's interesting.
Because I mean PC, FreeBSD is based on FreeBSD, isn't it?
Correct.
No?
It's weird.
It's so strange.
Yeah, I mean, I tried installing FreeBSD as well, and it did install.
I didn't have the link to the manual.
You'd give me the link a little bit later.
But really, I didn't really plan around with it.
But PCBSD wouldn't install, make it weirder either, but Free would install.
Now, as a player, I want it a little bit more now.
Yeah, once you install it, I mean, during install, you set up everything like your networking.
How would it go on a laptop and getting, I would imagine that trying to get Broadcom wireless card or a Theoros wireless card working,
probably would be a hell of a lot harder than in Linux.
I thought the Atheros drivers were actually open and free.
Oh, right.
So they're probably built into the birthday kernel.
Yeah.
Oh, OK.
Or at least while you're obtainable.
Oh, yeah.
I've just never heard of anyone running that on a laptop, but I suppose not being in that sort of community,
and that you would probably wouldn't.
Yeah, I think I've met a couple of people running PSD on a laptop.
I don't know, I didn't ask for details though.
And there is some kind of Linux binary compatibility layer.
I know that BFB has.
I don't know the details on that though.
I don't know how far that would go to help with those kinds of issues.
Yeah, I'm not sure how that works.
I went ahead and installed it.
You know, during the install because it asked you.
So I'm like, OK, so I just went ahead and put it in there by having no idea how to use it.
Do any of you think of, because I noticed there's like, in the ports collection,
there's a Linux Firefox version.
So I have no idea what the advantage to that is over just the regular Firefox version.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's just looking at the PC, PSD, forum, and those pages and pages in the laptop section.
So obviously, it's pretty easy to get running on a laptop.
Yeah, I think that, you know, I just wish I could have tried it out,
because it does look nice from the screenshots.
But once again, the screenshots, you'd be looking at KDE or take it.
Yeah.
Is that wrong?
Yeah.
And you're probably experiencing as much PC, PSD, as you, you know, running free PSD,
as you would if you actually gotten PC, PSD, installed.
Sure, there's no difference.
More no substantial difference.
Probably the installation is the part that's really different.
Once you've got your core system set up, then you pretty well can install any Windows Manager you like.
Like GNOME and FluxBox and whatever you want to put on there.
Yeah.
You just got to install X first.
Yeah.
So very similar to arching stall.
But the handbook is really nice.
It's very well written.
And plus it's updated, you know, each release that they have.
So they're on the release right now for free BSC 7.2.
So when A comes out, then the handbook will be updated too.
So it's always going to be updated.
And that's worth a read anyways.
They got one chapter and are just on Unix commands.
Right.
So, you know, most of the stuff in there you can use with Linux too.
But I don't really see it.
I don't think it's difficult to install or use.
You know, and over the past couple of years I've seen people talking about it saying that free BSD or BSD is like five years behind Linux.
I mean, technology wise, I don't see it.
I mean, they have almost the same amount of packages as devian.
The only thing I can see that they would be talking about is flash.
I think you're at version 7.
What about drivers for some of the more common peripherals like say scanners and web cameras?
I don't suppose you haven't been using it long enough for that sort of thing.
But maybe the development in those sort of areas is a bit behind.
Yeah, I have no idea about that.
I don't see why it would be, but...
Yeah, well, really Linux didn't have flight web cameras until maybe 12 or 18 months ago.
Now, what about video editing?
I'll be interested to look at that, actually.
We've seen this.
They've got all the same user apps, basically.
I mean, it's...
Oh, yeah, I suppose.
Yeah, so they've just caved in life.
Yeah, you know, and it's based off of like ffn-pag or some underlying thing like that.
And that's just that compile one.
Everything I've ever tried to compile it on.
Yeah, yeah.
ESP and Mac.
Well, really years have talked me out.
I've even looked at it.
So I don't think I'm going to say anything new.
That's kind of why I kind of gave up on it.
I was just like, well, probably the same thing as any given Linux distribution,
except without the GPUs.
Yeah.
So, you know, why bother?
Hmm.
Kind of said that.
I'll probably still...
I'm probably going to have to have it all the way around.
Possibly put BSD anywhere.
The live open BSD on my external SSD card slot on my triple EPC.
See if that works.
Yeah, I'd like to try that too.
I'll let you know how it goes.
I'm probably going to do it tonight.
Downloaded last night, but never got around to actually putting it on here.
Yeah, I think what I like about it the most is the handbook.
How everything is standard.
You know what I mean?
There's...
I mean, there's a lot of ways you can do things, but the way that manual says to do it,
it's going to work.
Yeah, but I mean, how much of this is going to work?
Because you are month to be and you know what you're doing around a Unix system.
How much is it...
I mean, do you think someone kicking up Unix for the first time,
or maybe not the first time, that someone's still getting kind of developing their chops on Unix?
Do you think they could...
Do you think this would be better or worse than say Slackware or Arch?
Or the same?
I would say the same.
Most likely once they sit down and read the manual and start installing it,
they'll probably stick with the first one they install.
Yeah.
But I think I'm going to keep this on my second system.
And I like to get synergy going and see how that works.
Yeah, I'm looking through the free BSD port search.
I mean, no matter what I put in there, I find it.
Now, here's a question on the ports that you're searching for.
Do the version numbers seem to be on par with the average Linux distro?
Yeah, it does.
Like when I put Firefox in there, it's 3.5.1.
That's good.
I mean, I used to...
I played with free BSD and I think it might have been open BSD a few years ago.
And the only thing that kind of annoyed me is some of the packages were maybe a version
or two at the most behind.
But that was a real big deal.
It was a little bit of a curve going from a Linux system to the BSD system.
It's a little bit different.
But I imagine if I spent some time and actually sat down and played with it,
it wouldn't have been too hard to get a grasp on it.
Okay, they have two branches.
They have the stable, which is the release, you know, the release.
7.2 release is what I'm running now.
So that's stable.
But there's also a current, which is going to be 8.0.
No, it's going to say that's going to be 8, isn't it?
Yeah.
So I guess if you're running...
Like right now, 7.2 just came out, I think, in May or June.
So it's really not that old.
But I guess in a few months, I mean, some of the packages are going to start showing their age.
If you're going by version numbers, which is always run current, get the latest packages.
Yeah, and that's the same thing I always did with Slackware.
I just ran current.
Yeah, I think if you're using these systems for, like, everyday computing and not just throwing it on a server or something,
running current is probably the way to go.
You do get all the up-to-date stuff, pulling these features.
Yeah, the only package that I'm kind of disappointed with for version numbers, G-Potter.
But surely, I mean...
Oh, I see.
And so that's in the port repository or whatever?
Yeah.
Okay.
And that's because of Chess Griffin.
He needs to get on it and update it.
Chess doesn't have anything to do with G-Potter.
He maintains the package for it.
Oh, I think.
Wow.
Well, we have...
Let's jump in his IRC channel and tell him about it.
Yeah, the last update to G-Potter.
I mean, the last port version was 0.15.
And they're up to 0.16.1.
Yeah, it shows his name right on there too on the G-Potter website.
Let's go to the download section.
Yeah, I got to learn how to package things.
There was some random application.
I think should be in some repository and make note to myself.
I got to learn how to package that.
Get it in there.
And of course, I haven't learned yet.
Yeah.
Like Slack builds.
How are they pretty difficult to make?
You know, the time...
I sat down for like three days straight and tried to learn that.
My problem was that I was trying to learn it for like lenders or something.
I was trying to package something way above my head.
So I need to sit down and do that again with something a lot simpler,
a lot more nice little simple app like Normalize or something like that.
Some command line, little app without too many dependencies.
So yeah, I need to return to that kind of level.
I would try each top.
It's pretty simple.
Yeah, I could try each top.
They might already have that.
Yeah, they already have one.
You can always do it again, just for practice.
That's true.
I can't find a little app, a little level later app, sort of.
It's called Normalize.
And I can't find that so far in Slack package or anything like that.
And how good is that working?
It works great.
I use it all the time.
I'm going to have to try it.
Yeah.
I think in Debian it's Normalize-Audio.
They change the name to Normalize-Audio.
Although I always alias it to just Normalize,
because Normalize-Audio is too much to type.
But it isn't a Debian repository.
Yeah, I'm looking for it now.
I'll use it for this show.
Yep, there it is.
Now, how could I find this before when I was looking for one?
Because you didn't ask me.
I know.
If I was using level later.
Yeah, you know I tried out level later.
And, you know, if I'm from the nice little screen thing that's got that little drag and drop area,
that looks so cool.
I didn't really find it like all that.
I didn't really see the big deal.
And then it kept breaking every time you updated your distro.
Then you have to go in and tweak level later or something.
Right.
Because it's not free.
Yeah.
It's kind of weird.
Normalize works for me, but having said that I don't...
No, you know, I use it on the round table and I think it worked.
Okay.
I was going to say I haven't used it where there's like five or six different people with different levels, you know.
I just use it on myself to boost my signal and lower my noise.
But yeah, try it out on this one and see what happens.
Word of warning, it is destructive.
So make a copy of the audio file before you run it through Normalize.
All right.
Open it.
It overwrites it.
Because I hear a turkey in the background.
So I'm hoping it brings that up.
Yeah, that was great.
So we can hear the turkey.
Yeah.
Glad you can hear it.
I almost found the thing that was just me.
And I was getting hungry.
Getting hungry.
I should be big and fat in terms of Thanksgiving, shouldn't it?
So I think that's a stupid comment that's been...
You got to throw me in the...
Yeah, that'll teach you.
All right, so you should have been on to that.
All right, deputy.
Peter, who's the thing?
You know, how many times you've been in the bed now?
And not enough?
It's going to say he still has it, Lord.
I don't know if it's working.
You're going to have to result in different tactics.
Oh, I can't shoot the pull, Blake.
You're going to have to play it.
Peter, I can shoot him.
I think this is like pain from the nearest yada I'm aware of you.
I think people...
Was anybody got anything else to say before and this?
I don't know.
I think this show was over an hour ago.
Now we got a lot of good BSD chat in there.
That'll be good for something.
Yeah.
And then...
I don't use BSD on anything important, so...
Yeah, that's a good one.
That's a good one.
The table's returned.
But since it's 40 years of UNIX, I figured I would throw it on there to celebrate.
Yeah, that's beautiful.
Beautiful thing to do.
Somewhere some bearded UNIX admin is very happy with you.
But the song tonight is by the dead ranch hands.
And the name of the song is called Stranger.
So, right after the song, I'll talk to you guys in the after show.
All right, good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night, everybody.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Okay, after show starts now.
Has anyone looked at this?
How the Swedish pirate party platform backfires on free software?
Yes.
Yes.
Anyone have any thoughts on it?
Because I'm still formulating mine.
I think he's right.
I think he's right.
Is there a way to save software freedom?
And lower the copyright terms?
Because the life of the creator plus 70 years is a little much.
Right.
Well, I mean, yeah, I'm just like what Stalin's saying.
Have some kind of a waiting period or something like that.
I mean, that would do what you're...
That would do it, right?
I mean, in theory.
Well, if it's the life of the creator, there could be a lot of unfortunate accidents.
Yeah, that's a good point.
That's a good point.
I mean, the original copyright term in America was 14 years.
Not so much more sensible.
Well, it makes absolutely sense.
Because really, in England, they did a test on this.
The actual usable copyright term is only seven years.
Like, after seven years of creating something,
the money you actually make from it diminishes quickly.
I mean, I still think they also have...
I mean, to get everyone on board,
because let's face it, we're going to get Disney for copyright.
Because they're worried that Mickey Mouse is going to run out of copyright.
Yeah, even though that...
70 years ago.
...was a violation of copyright.
Yeah.
Mickey Mouse himself was ripped off from Buster Keating, or something, wasn't it?
He was ripped off from...
Yeah.
But that was...
Was that Buster Keating in the movie, in the movie?
But that was...
A story about the train driver.
The American Folk Note KXJ.
Thank you, Mr. Soap.
And so it's...
You know, it's so screwed up anyway.
The whole thing was ripped off, ripped off, ripped off, ripped off.
Oh, wait, no, it's copyright now.
But I'm thinking you need to say something like...
We also have a problem with all these people that have patents and stuff out.
They're just assholes, because they don't do anything with them.
So I'm thinking you need to have some sort of rule that...
To be actively using the patents or something.
Otherwise, it has a really short lifespan.
Literally, like a few years, and it's gone.
Unless you're actually doing something with it.
Yeah, but it's gonna be really, really hard to determine what doing something with it is.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you need to...
So, you know, if it's like a movie or the character of the Terminator, for example.
You know, obviously, they're doing...
They've done an interview in new movies.
So you're like, okay, you get another 10 years of it, let's say.
But why don't we just give them 14 years flat out?
Yeah, so then...
So then the guy that's trying to create the Terminator in real life has 14 years to try it.
Because then I don't think Disney's gonna be interested.
And they've got a lot of money to go against Congress and see people up and say, no, let's not do it.
That's just what I was just thinking that, you know, obviously it'd be better if we have very little at all.
If you're going to try and take what we have and reduce it, try and say, well, okay, if you're actively...
You know, if you've made a movie in the...
And it has to be, you know, at least 70% new content or something.
To try and...
Because otherwise, you know, Disney every two years bring out a new version of...
I don't know, like a little mermaid.
So that...
Right.
So stuff like that doesn't count because that's just like a re-adding thing.
But because otherwise, I don't think Disney is gonna be interested with it at all.
And they're just gonna say, no.
So I'm thinking we ought to get something through realistically.
We have this conference.
We dangle a bit of a character.
Look, if you're still using it, you know, you're still making Mickey Mouse cartoons.
So, okay, we'll let you have Mickey Mouse because you're still actively doing cartoons and stuff.
And if you don't make a certain number a year, then you lose the copyright on it.
Because I don't think otherwise, you're gonna get any way.
Because if you turn around say 14 years, every single, you know, the MPAA, the RIA, all of those...
Just gonna turn around and say, uh-uh, ain't gonna happen.
And they've got the books to force it through Congress and stuff.
So I think the only way we're gonna do this is to actually say, look, we'll give you this.
If you don't actively use it and they exactly what you mean by actively use,
would have to be very strictly monitored and explained.
You know, but I think unless you're gonna do that, you're not gonna get anything.
Because people are just gonna turn around and say, you know, the company's just gonna turn around and say, no.
And then you're not gonna get it through Congress because they've got huge amounts of money to put all the...
What's the word?
When they pay people to...
Larve it.
Yes, thank you.
Both you and the wife came up at the same time.
Yeah, but I just think because they've got all the lobbyists, we're not gonna get anything sane through a mess.
We offer a compromise.
At least that's my thoughts, anyway.
I mean, obviously, I don't think that's the best way to go.
We can improve it.
But I think it's the only option we'll have to actually get something through Congress to say, okay, this is the thought.
And then if you have that...
If you're not actively doing it, all those companies that are bought up all the patents,
will they not doing anything with it? They lose them.
So I think it would also remove that as well.
As I said, it's...
I think it's better than what we have, but could be better still.
But I think that's the best compromise we'd actually get something through.
Anyway, discuss.
Don't know the local ones.
I mean, do you think that sounds reasonable?
I mean, do you think it would actually go for that?
Yeah, essentially, we're screwed.
That's what it is.
Well, yeah.
But I mean, do you think people would actually be vaguely interested in that?
Because it gives them a...
If they keep doing stuff, it gives them a way to keep hold of the copyright.
So the thing is, people are going to be stoked about it.
But, yeah, I think Disney and all those people are going to hate it.
Just because they...
Yeah, they want absolute control in this little bit of that way.
Although I don't think they would hate it so much.
I mean, if it was forced upon them...
I mean, they would just...
Like you said, they have...
I mean, they're big corporations.
They'd have some person sitting around at a desk all day,
making it look like legally...
They are doing something with every single copyright they own.
You know what I mean?
They would...
They would find the loophole and exploit it.
That's what companies do best.
They'd still have their 70-year patent.
I say, but...
They are on top of this.
Is there a way to save free software?
Save it from...
Boom.
Or from what?
Well...
Yeah, the...
The pirate party you've got your...
What do they say?
Five years, I think it is?
Yeah.
And then whatever it is goes into the public domain.
Which then allows for proprietary software vendors
to then take free software,
make it no longer free,
and then restrict people on top of it with things like ULAs.
Right, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and it would be really easy to do
as long as we only distributed binaries.
Yeah, because there's no really usable source code in a binary.
Right.
Yeah, we can...
We can license the terms of the use of the binary, but...
Well, maybe that's the part I'm not understanding that.
Because I mean...
It's...
Because in his blog post it says not the proprietary users are revealed.
I mean, companies are able to use free stuff, but the free stuff...
Free developers couldn't use the proprietary stuff.
But why would that be?
I mean, it wouldn't be proprietary anymore
because it would be released into public domain.
Well, it...
After five years.
Oh, I...
Yeah, okay.
Yeah.
They would be able to take our code...
Yeah, yeah, immediately.
Yeah.
Well, they'd be able to take it at the end of the five years
when the copyright is up.
Because, you know, we'll use just the GPL for sake of argument.
Is a copyright license?
It's like the creative commons, or something...
Yeah, it's...
Right.
It uses the protection of copyright as an enforcement mechanism.
So after five years, they could take our code
and do whatever we want with it.
But then we would have to wait five years
to see what they did with it.
And that entire time,
they're keeping users from having software freedom.
Yeah, yeah.
It's also theoretical, I guess.
I mean, who is...
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's just like, okay, the pirate party,
but I don't know if they're like that mainstream yet to really...
No.
They just got two seats in the parliament.
But I mean, even my blog post about this,
which isn't very long, I used science fiction out of the tag.
I mean, this is how extreme speculation at this point.
Right, yeah.
I think we kind of have to get started.
Yeah.
And that's a very preliminary kind of idea that they've got anyway.
I mean, they got two seats.
And they're up against Disney in the USA.
It's just, yeah, it's not going to...
I'm sure that if they may not know about the GPL,
they may not be privy to that outside of the equation.
So I'll make you go in and do a little bit of consulting
and they could be like, oh, yeah.
You see how that doesn't work.
You see, what I'm personally worried about is
the proprietary software vendor is taking free software,
slapping a u-long top of it, which keeps you from sharing
the free software as it is inside the non-free software.
And then them using DRM to make it absolutely unusable
even after the five or four years, whatever it is.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that'd be something they would do.
And at what point do you...
Now you have to relinquish your encryption keys for your DRM.
So then they have to keep...
If I was a DRM company, I'd be pissed,
because you constantly have to redo your work.
Because you know, you hand someone the keys
and they can unlock them.
Oh, this is a big, epic mess.
I really do want to see Cory Doctoro and Larry Lesig
weigh in on this.
Yeah, yeah.
And those two guys are much smarter than I.
There are no ethics corporations.
All there is is illegal department.
It's a legal guy says you can get away with it.
It's ethical.
Yeah, really.
All right, guys, I'm out of here.
I'm going to go see if I can get this BSD anywhere on my card slot
on this triple E.
So we'll talk to you guys later.
All right, later on.
Do you see it?
Do you see it?
Nightclub, too.
Yeah, good night, club, too.
I think I'm going to sneak out of here, too.
All right, later on, monster bee.
Good night, everyone.
Love you, monster bee.
Good night.
Good night, monster bee.
Thank you for listening to HACRA Public Radio.
HPR is sponsored by Carol.net.
She'll head on over to C-A-R-O dot E-C for all of her teammates.
Thanks for watching.
See you guys later.