Podcast Season 2 Episode 4
Podcast RSS feeds: Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and Opus.
Title: Issue One
In this episode: Linux Voice magazine is now available throughout the UK and soon throughout the world. There are going to be Ubuntu phones this year. Linux Containers 1.0 has been released and the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange runs into difficulty. We’ve got some great finds, a neuron and plenty of voices in podcast recorded in a large conference hall at the Manchester Raspberry Jamboree.
Team LV at Raspberry Jamboree with issue 1 (photo credit: Ben Nuttall)
What’s in the show:
- News:Linux Voice has launched! Thanks to you for bringing us so far! Details of Canonical’s upcoming Ubuntu phones have been revealed. Linux Containers 1.0 has been released and Mt. Gox, the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange, has collapsed.
- Finds of the Fortnight:
- Andrew:
- The first UNIVAC weighed 13 metric tons.
- One benefit of COBOL was that it bridged the gap between computer programmers and management, apparently.
- Mike:
- Pitivi, the open source video editor, is attempting to raise 35,000 Euros to help create a 1.0 release.
- Ben:
- An Android app called TextSecure enables you to communicate securely with other TextSecure users through your own servers.
- Piwik is a wonderful and open source replacement for Google Analytics.
- Internet Explorer is about to become our 5th most popular browser.
- Graham:
- Andrew:
- Vocalise Your Neurons:
- Thanks for sending your thoughts, Simon! If you’d like your neurons to be part of our next episode email mike@linuxvoice.com.
- Voice of the Masses: What can Linux users do to welcome XP users?
Presenters: Ben Everard, Andrew Gregory, Graham Morrison and Mike Saunders.
Download as high-quality Ogg Vorbis (57MB)
Download as low-quality MP3 (73MB)
Download the smaller yet even more awesome Opus file (23MB)
Duration: 1:06:24
Theme Music by Brad Sucks.
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About The Author
Graham Morrison
A free software advocate and writer since the late 1990s, Graham is a lapsed KDE contributor and author of the Meeq MIDI step sequencer. @degville on Twitter.
Hmm, so what book is Mike carrying in that picture?
Rhakios: http://www.amazon.de/Sonst-Fragen-Warum-weitere-Alltags/dp/3828957420/
That’s right, no S! 😀 You guys cracked me up talking about that haha good work.
Nice to see your work on GOL paying off, articles in Linux Voice and a weekly contribution to woGue.
Did you used to be involved with forum software development?
Thanks for another fine podcast, and thanks even more for continuing your tradition of great show notes.
I was previously aware of MikeOS, and that it was created as a Elementary OS Development educational tool, but the ‘Mum tries out MikeOS’ link from the show notes led me to the MikeOS website.
I had no idea what a fantastic piece of educational work MikeOS is and how many others have integrated it into other OS dev educational projects.
I know Mike prefers to keep a low-profile, but he has been much too humble about MikeOS IMHO.
Additionally, Graham’s reference in the podcast to Mike starting to rock while discussing MikeOS, an allusion to a behavioral quirk of Bill Gates, had me in stitches 🙂
The parody intro of the ‘Mum tries MikeOS’ is fantastic. OSFirstTimer also posted a 6 min ‘bloopers’ video of their out-takes while creating that segment; search YouTube for “PC vs Mac vs Linux vs MikeOS #2 – Get a Mac Parody”
That’ll be Fly Fishing by J. R. Hartley, eh Mike?
On the podcast you mentioned that there isn’t an effective free video editor for Linux. I think that may be true if you’re looking for sophistication but for basic editing, titling and transition effects I would recommend OpenShot.
I run it on Debian and, so far, it’s always got the job done and never crashed on me.
I agree that OpenShot’s great for basic video editing, although it’s crashed far too many times for my liking on Ubuntu/Mint. Perhaps the biggest problems I have are audio/video sync problems with some files when only trying to use part of the video – especially MP4s. In fact MP4s cause me no end of pain and trauma.
I understand the problems are downstream in libraries, but if there’s effort needed, someone needs to make it! I’m close to giving up with it now, which is a real shame.
You have commented on KDE in this podcast, but there is something I find interesting at the moment:
Like Xfce and Gnome 2 (argh), KDE does not look particularly attractive out of the box.
However, the themeing of Opensuse and, more recently, Manjaro KDE and Openmandriva, are more flat. In my opinion, they take some of the more appealing things in the Gnome 3 themeing and apply them to KDE 4. Manjaro uses a KDE menu/launcher that makes it look a lot like a fresher version of KDE 3.
So it may have general interest to do comparisons of distributions’ different takes on various desktops.
I think more people would listen to the Opus audio files if they were sent with the correct MIME type. They’re currently being sent with the header “Content-Type: text/plain”. It should be “Content-Type: audio/ogg”. With that header it would be possible to play the Opus audio files directly in Firefox since version 15.
It’s apparently easy to fix that by adding a line to Apache’s config file or the .htaccess file:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_mime.html#addtype
http://www.hypercosm.com/support/howto6.html
Oh, yes, I forgot to say: I am listening to the Opus files using VLC on my Android phone.
Ahh, I was trying to find something on Android that played Opus.
I’d been using Podkicker (free) and seemed not to understand it.
Yes i could run it nicely with VLC on android. the default music player on Andriod did not recognize the file. Have to say the Opus are much lighter but the quality of ogg was much better..
Thanks for vocalizing my neurons. While I realise I may have come across as a pretentious bore in them, the youtube video I mentioned really is great. A whirlwind and high-level overview of the power of Perl replete with dinosaurs riding sharks!
The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ5xTI1QRTA
Regards the SMS messages. Yes they do indeed fit in the D Channel of the GSM system.
Originally it was an engineering tool while they were trying to get the masts up. the power needed for SMS was far less than for voice calls. I was working with an organisation that was working with a big UK telephone provider, helping them with coverage analysis.
Any of us on their network they kindly unlocked the facility on the mobiles. After a while they realised how popular it was with us and started providing as a facility for their users. It then took off and they started charging for it.
It is an absolutely a cash cow. The cost (airtime/energy/bandwidth costs) are thousanth of a penny. In the end it was so popular the D channel was getting full so they started dedicating B (voice channels) to use for SMS. SMS is just an app on 3G networks.
Anyway I ramble on as ever, but that’s the basic history.
Great podcast!
Interesting discussion regarding Mt. Gox and Bitcoin. I think another interesting angle on this is how virtual currency exchanges have worked by taking the virtual currency in online MMORPG type gaming and trying to apply that into the ‘real’ world. Clearly if you have ever tried to purchase some advantage in a MMORPG (like buying some heavy weapon, armor, etc. for a character) then the ability to trade in some alternate currency in-game has been the way. Buying that in-game currency with real world dollars is an interesting dynamic – before a lot of MMORPGs went free to play, they had a lot of “Plat Farmers” (often in China) that would play the games full-time, build up massive stashes of loot from ‘farming’ in the game, and then you’d meet these avatar characters in some dark alley after sending them a bunch of money via PayPal, and they’d hand you the virtual loot you had bought.
In a way, wasn’t Mt.Gox based on that same dynamic? You’d buy ‘virtual currency’ (e.g. Bitcoin) with real dollars? Just seems that their exchange was treated with the same distain that a back alley transaction has….
Just a thought. Keep up the good work.
K