Podcast Season 2 Episode 5

Posted at 3:32pm on Thursday April 1st 2010

Title: April Fools

In this episode: Ubuntu switches to base 10, Novell fights a takeover bid while Sony removes Linux support from its older Playstation 3 consoles. We reveal how little we've used Emacs and ask whether Wikipedia should use open codecs.

What's in the show

News:
You Dare Us:
Discovery of the week:
- Mike: GNU/Hurd-ng.
- Andrew: Debian's own Hurd distribution isn't very good if you want to install it.
- Graham: A retro synth studio, called Audiotool/Firestarter 1.0, developed entirely with Adobe's Flash.
- Paul:
  - Microsoft Bob was used to pad the free space on the Windows XP disc to thwart pirates.
  - Type 'cal september 1752' on the command-line.
  - We've just release Brain Party for Linux!
  - Python's weakref is ace.
In the Hot Seat:

This episode's star performer is Mike Saunders.

Open Ballot: will a campaign to promote Theora and open codecs be a success?

Special offer: subscribe to Linux Format magazine and save up to to 55% - that's just $7.62 an issue!

Presenters: Andrew Gregory, Paul Hudson, Graham Morrison and Mike Saunders

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Music by Brad Sucks.

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Your comments

cal september 1752

shimi.chen@gmail.com (not verified) - April 1, 2010 @ 5:19pm

That is when the gregorian reformation happened. The transition between the calenders is the reason for the strange dates.

H.264

Shimi (not verified) - April 1, 2010 @ 6:26pm

The problem with H.264 is NOT that it's not free as in freedom it's that it's not free as in BEER. because distributers need to pay millions of dollars to the patenter in order to include a codec.

That is why Firefox won't include it. Millions of dollars would be required to be paid from every single operating system the installs firefox or any other gecko browser(you don't really see Debian paying for IceWeasel H.264 support do you?).

So basically using H.264 as the default web video codec would mean that any browser that supports it will not be included in any free(as in beer) operating system.

So imagine fresh installing ubuntu if this happens. Some obscure browser that does not support H.264 would be included, from there you would have to navigate to the installation page of firefox and install that, it will not be in the official repository either.

Or make ubuntu not available to US residents or any other country that has that patent problem.

They are saying that they won't sue anyone until 2016, but whose to say what happens in 2016? By then all the web could be based on H.264 and they could charge whatever they want for it and sue whoever is not paying/removing the content. I think it is unwise to use H.264 for that reason. We are better off with the evil we know, flv.

cal sep 1752

DruKe - April 1, 2010 @ 6:56pm

The lack of 11 days is to make up for the leap years missed from when the switch the Gregorian calendar happened.

How about another book for finishing it ;)

On H264 what if Google had to...

HandyGandy (not verified) - April 1, 2010 @ 8:35pm

pay Apple one cent ( US ) for every megabyte of video uploaded encoded in H264?

I don't know how Google stores the video ( hopefully in a lossless format that is converted to H264, but who knows ) but if it is a big problem now to convert all the videos to H264 then how much of a problem would it be if Apple were to suddenly start charging for H264?

Gregorian Calendar

Anonymous Historian (not verified) - April 1, 2010 @ 8:47pm

"That is when the gregorian reformation happened. The transition between the calenders is the reason for the strange dates."
In England. The Enlightened part of the continent used it since 1582 (this does not include Russia, who didn't use it until 1918.)

What codec is slashdot...

HandyGandy (not verified) - April 1, 2010 @ 8:48pm

using for it's slashroulette.

BIG NEWS

HandyGandy (not verified) - April 2, 2010 @ 8:32am

I WISH TO ANNOUNCE THAT SLASHDOT IS REPORTING THAT ED ROBERTS HAS PASSED AWAY ( ESSENTIALLY OF OLD AGE ).

For those who do not know Ed Roberts invented the Altair 8800, the very first microcomputer ( later to become known as the personal computer or PC ).

It speaks to the maturity of the industry when the inventor of the pc dies of old age.

WHY???

cal Sept 1752 (not verified) - April 2, 2010 @ 4:05pm

It was when the Gregorian calendar was officially adopted. Resulting in a deficit of 11 days.

more KDE hate ?

Tux_Radar_Fail (not verified) - April 5, 2010 @ 5:27pm

I dont get this constant KDE bashing .. ?

Understand this, by publically crapping on KDE, you are by association, also doing this to the users,
and with snide little 'quips' or the sweeping generalizations that you frequently make, you show yourselves up.

The desktop wars ended years ago, didn't you hear ?

Its all free and open software, my friends use Gnome,
but i dont bitch about it, though i easily could,
or call it or them .. grow up for gads sake will you.

Now unsubscribed from the podcast as i did ages ago from the dead tree version.

It's really hard listening

Anonymous Penguin (not verified) - April 5, 2010 @ 5:59pm

It's really hard listening to people abuse your favourite editor :(

I'm not going to try and win you over, but why haven't you switched the caps lock and control keys anyway? I don't think I've had control and caps in their "normal" positions for years.

@April Fools

uomosenzanome - April 5, 2010 @ 9:39pm

What did that podcast have to do with April Fool's other than the name? I was pranked ;)

The April Fools joke..

TenLeftFingers (not verified) - April 5, 2010 @ 11:45pm

..was unintended, but when I played the podcast in Totem, Totem displays a visualization in motion from the beginning.

What I didn't realize is that in spite of the visualization, there is no sound for the first four seconds of the ogg file. So I turned up my headphones only to be jolted a few seconds later.

Packages

RSF (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 3:29am

Haiku handles software pretty well (self contained ) but RevLin OS is going to do just what you say ( as in applications are self contained in the users home folder, and..... its linux based!

PS3 dropping linux

johnny_B_617 (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 5:36am

I don't really see how this is going to effect the big businesses and research centers that you've mentioned in the podcast. Firmware updating is only really essential to play the latest released retail and online content and to add extra features, so how many of these universities and research centers are going to be using these huge banks of Cell processors to play games on? They can just simply choose not to update their firmware and keep the linux functionality.

The only people Sony are going to screw over with this recent decision are the home users and we all know that huge corporations like Sony doesn't give a flying flip about end users or our freedom of choice.

Re: PS3 dropping linux

TuxRadar - April 7, 2010 @ 2:19pm

"They can just simply choose not to update their firmware and keep the linux functionality."

That will only work for a short while though -- I'd imagine that Sony will start shipping PS3s with the new firmware pre-installed (and no easy way to downgrade).

Oh COME ON!!!!!!!

DaveS (not verified) - April 7, 2010 @ 7:28pm

Is it beyond the abilities of you super talented command line geeks to give us album art in the podcast tag? What?

Microsoft Bob

avoura - April 7, 2010 @ 10:31pm

I would like to try out Microsoft Bob, is it available anywhere? I assume it would run under Wine, or has someone made a Linux version? Whether good or bad, I sometimes like to use retro software just to see what it was like or be reminded of stuff I used to use, before I decided that MS Windows was a real pain and should be replaced with Linux.

God, what is wrong with my

DJM (not verified) - April 9, 2010 @ 9:45pm

God, what is wrong with my spelling/grammar?! long day at work...