Podcast Season 4 Episode 8

Posted at 5:39pm on Thursday May 10th 2012

Title: Odysseus Returns

In this episode: Electronic Arts and Canonical make an important announcement. Microsoft won't allow Firefox on Windows RT. Ubuntu will ship on 5% of PCs worldwide next year and Linux Format magazine gets into the news. As ever, share our discoveries, hear our rants and raves and listen to your own opinions in the Open Ballot.

What's in the show:

Lightning News:
Discovery of the week:
- Efrain:
  - An Android app called 'gStrings' that can tune your guitar.
  - and another app, this time for playing the piano, called Perfect Piano.
- Graham:
  - Version 4 of the awesome sounding physically modelled piano, PianoTeq.
- Ben:
  - The French health service is quite good.
- Jon:
  - The new Debian Administrator’s Handbook is nowavailable.
- Andrew:
  - The 'Say No To Monk's Cross 2' campaign.
Rants and Raves
Speak Your Brains:
Open Ballot: Should Apache abandon OpenOffice?

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Presenters: Ben Everard, Andrew Gregory, Efrain Hernandez-Mendoza, Graham Morrison and Jonathan Roberts

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Duration: 41:39

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Your comments

H is pronounced aitch, nb no

towy71 - May 10, 2012 @ 7:31pm

H is pronounced aitch, nb no H on the front :P

Just listened to your

dm319 - May 10, 2012 @ 8:38pm

Just listened to your podcast on the way home - many thanks - excellent as always. The GNOME3 thing is crazy! For some reason, after an update, our fedora16 installation has dropped the shutdown menu option. Not sure why. V annoying.

Really enjoyed the speakyourbrains re computing teaching. It's absolutely right that 15 year olds have the learning capacity and brain-power to be doing so much more... It's a shame that this talent is being wasted. I'm 29, and I was on the downhill slope from about 18! I'm hoping that the raspberry pi and the whole movement around it will go some way to addressing this.

H

heiowge (not verified) - May 10, 2012 @ 10:14pm

+1 towy71 H has no H at the start.

Best

Ram - May 10, 2012 @ 10:29pm

laugh, I've had in a long time.

Re: Word count extension

Eages (not verified) - May 11, 2012 @ 5:25am

I tried the extension as per Qubit's instruction. It seems to be broken as of LibreOffice 3.5.2. Good to hear that LibreOffice will be implementing that functionality though, I guess I'll just wait for the update. Nice podcast as usual, see you next fortnight.

If you press the power

towy71 - May 11, 2012 @ 9:24am

If you press the power button of your computer there is an option to switch off your Ubuntu box

@Towy71

Ram - May 11, 2012 @ 9:39am

Which as been there since 10.04...

@Ram

towy71 - May 11, 2012 @ 2:03pm

I know but did other people? given that there is something said about no shutdown option on the desktop in this podcast ;-)

And I didn't realise that

towy71 - May 11, 2012 @ 8:44pm

And I didn't realise that the postings would be counted on the open ballot but My point is still vindicated by count through :P

Gnome Shell Shutdown Why?

mdba - May 12, 2012 @ 8:36pm

I'm wondering if there's a desktop environment which misses a shutdown button beside Gnome Shell. I think is good for Canonical for creating their own Unity.

America = squeaky idiot gets the grease

Robert Blackburn (not verified) - May 14, 2012 @ 5:18pm

I missed the 'hacking' issue on the stands, and was unaware of why until listening to the podcast. The Barnes & Noble here in Athens, GA displays magazines on four large, two-sided kiosks; approximately 6% of this total space is devoted to computer publications. '2600' lives about two feet down and to the left of 'Linux Format', and was unaffected by the outpouring of moral outrage.

now verified

robert_blackburn - May 14, 2012 @ 5:41pm

America in the sense of the ugly American, not in the sense of a Caucasian placeholder for the hemisphere. (see above)

Scroll Extreme Tablet

Ian Barton (not verified) - May 16, 2012 @ 10:10am

Thanks Effie for mentioning this, I have just bought one. Only had it about an hour, but so far am very impressed. Only minor niggles are the camera is crap and there doesn't seem to be any GPS. Not really worried about the camera, but GPS would have been nice.

Now I have to waste the rest of the day playing with it ntil the children get home from school and start fighting over it!

Scroll Extreme Tablet - More Rambings

Ian Barton (not verified) - May 16, 2012 @ 11:23am

This gets better and better. Being a tinkerer I was going to try and root the device. However, after a bit of research and opening up a terminal and typing su - I find it's already rooted!

@ Ian

Effy (not verified) - May 16, 2012 @ 4:46pm

Ian, that is great to know, now I am sure I will be buying one. About the GPS well, in my case, I am not to worry as I need it for my kids, you see? but I suppose it is an important feature that many users will find useful.
Still, great value for money.
Saludos.

living in the past

eponymous Penguin (not verified) - May 16, 2012 @ 7:43pm

Got to end of the comments and noticed the copyright statement at the bottom of the page -- which is still dated 2010. Does that need updating?

Ogg feed lagging

jargon (not verified) - May 17, 2012 @ 9:10am

How come your ogg rss feed is behind by 2 episodes? This makes me sad. :-( See?

@jargon

TuxRadar - May 17, 2012 @ 10:01am

Looking at it in Firefox, it doesn't seem to be behind. Both feeds are up to Season 4, Episode 8. Maybe there's something wrong with your podcatcher?

It's working now

jargon (not verified) - May 17, 2012 @ 11:58am

Oddly, it's working now. I deleted the podcast from my gpodder and resubscribed, and now I can see all the episodes in the ogg stream again. Also, a Ctrl+r helped with FF11.0., now the ogg feed is good in the browser too. Thanks. That makes me happy. :-) See?

Best tablet...

Prolific Puffin - May 20, 2012 @ 2:40pm

I f you want the best tablet for the $, get a Nook Tablet. While I have the 16 GB, as it was the only model at the time of purchase, the 8GB can be found as low as $150 USD, and will accept a 32GB Micro SD.

It was exceedingly easy to root (information at XDA developers website), and has better specs than an iPad.

Add the Go launcher, and you're done.

I actually have a new iPad 3rd generation, and it collects dust. a 10" tablet is PRECISELY the wrong size. 12" would make it worth lugging it around for media applications. 7", and it is easy to carry, and fits in your hand.

Honestly, I feel there are diminishing returns once you get past 7".

The little Nook is amazing. It's a much better reader than the Kindle or Sony, and lightning fast. There are projects going on to bring ICS and Ubuntu (full - not VNC) to it right now.

It is easily the best "gadget" I have ever owned.