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Slashback: Cinelerra, Dolphiname, Phoenix 259

Posted by timothy from the my-lobster-is-still-swimming dept.
Slashback with a success story about video editing on Free software, and all-important updates on the MySQL dolphin, MP3 software for Red Hat (why?), the fast-rising Phoenix, and more, all below.

And you don't want your database being a Flipper. MySQL has finally announced the name of their logo dolphin, and the winner is... Sakila! The name, submitted by Ambrose Twebaze of Swaziland, was chosen from 6357 entries "because it represents the global reach of MySQL as well as the friendly, open nature of the company." Slashdot covered the contest back in January, and MySQL listed some of the more popular names submitted back in April.

Perverse incentives are the most fun. Mark Barnett writes in reference to the ongoing pets.com lawsuit story Update: 10/04 00:18 GMT by T : Sorry, that's "PetsWarehouse," not "pets.com.":

"I was one of the settling parties. I did not settle out of fear. I settled because he wanted me to run his banner on my website for 120 days. The settlement did not say anything about the number of times it had to run. I ran it once per day at about 4 AM EST for 120 days. It was my joke on him. I think I got the better deal. I ran the defense fund banner about 1.5 million times versus his 120 times."

Wings for a lizard. Espectr0 writes "Phoenix 0.2 has been released!. Improvements include the return of the sidebar, extensions management and web form autocomplete. It's also a little smaller and faster, and 0.3 will be released in about a week. Get the scoop here."

Unsolicited testimonial. boomerang_56 writes "Wanting to see what the fuss was about, I just installed Red Hat 8. For me, working IEEE1394 features are a must. It was nice to see that now I don't have to recompile the kernel just to have Firewire working. So I downloaded and compiled Kino, and was able to capture from my camcorder, and even control it, without the major tweaks I used to have to do. Then I found out that Cinelerra has been released at version 1.0!!! So I downloaded and installed it via RPM (Pentium II binaries). I had to install an old version of libstdc++-3, but that was easy. No "--force" or the other hassles we used to have to go through. So the first time I fired up Cinelerra, after changing the preferences for IEEE1394 capture, I was impressed to see it actually captured on the first try. I guess the bottom line for this submission is as a user I wanted to say "thanks" for all the developers working on this kind of thing. We all know that besides gaming, video editing is the big killer app. It's really nice to be able to have this kind of power in open source software and not have to boot to Windows just to edit video now. It's not easy enough for my mom yet, but the way things are going, it won't be long. Oh, links... get Cinelerra here (check out the screenshots too). Get Kino here."

Blinkenlampen ueber Paris. fluxdvd writes "In celebration of the Nuit Blanche art festival in Paris, Project Blinkenlights has transformed Tower T2 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France into what is claimed to be the world's largest computer screen. The system used to drive the display runs an embedded version of Linux.

Read the story at Linuxdevices.com. They have live streams of the building at night (Paris time) and replay the previous night's display druing the day. It's quite impressive :)"

We mentioned the plans for this display a few weeks ago.

Don't you hunger for a patent-free, royalty-free, better-at-identical-bitrate alternative? The release of Red Hat 8.0 included the notable, intentional ommission of MP3 software, a decision Red Hat made on the basis of possible patent and royalty problems.

Now SnowDeath writes "After two days of trying to get my ALSA install to work correctly in RedHat 8.0 (Psyche), I finally headed over to the xmms website to see if there were any known bugs with ALSA. Low and behold, the first thing my eyes read tells how RedHat Software decided to not include the mp3 plugin in their xmms install in Psyche in fear of pending patent problems. So, do not despair, there is an rpm "update" for this particular problem on the xmms site."
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Slashback: Cinelerra, Dolphiname, Phoenix More

Slashback: Cinelerra, Dolphiname, Phoenix

Comments Filter:

  • CS (Score:4, Funny)

    by El Pollo Loco ( 562236 ) on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:04PM (#4384401)
    "In celebration of the Nuit Blanche art festival in Paris, Project Blinkenlights has transformed Tower T2 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France into what is claimed to be the world's largest computer screen. The system used to drive the display runs an embedded version of Linux.

    Am I the only one thinking this was someone's plan to play counter-strike on the worlds biggest screen?

  • Sakila (Score:5, Funny)

    by unicron ( 20286 ) <unicron AT thcnet DOT net> on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:04PM (#4384405) Homepage
    because it represents the global reach of MySQL as well as the friendly, open nature of the company.

    Shit, that's what I thought when I first glanced at that name.
    • Well when I first looked at it, it reminded me of Shakira, maybe her name pronounced by a Japanese person? (Don't flame me, I'm Asian :P). Actually the Japanese can say their R's quite okay, it's L they have a problem with...

      Mmmm, Shakira [geocities.com]...

      • Re:Sakila (Score:3, Funny)

        by namespan ( 225296 )
        Actually the Japanese can say their R's quite okay, it's L they have a problem with...

        I had a Japanese roomate/friend/coworker for a while, and I'd beg to differ. We worked for weeks trying to get his english R's right (while I worked on trying to get my japanese ra, ri, ru, re, & ro right), especially on words that ended with an r (like door, more, etc).

        One day we were leaving the appartment and he absentmindedly refered to closing the door and said it exactly right. "Iwi!" I almost yelled, "you said it!" Unfortunately, he never could reproduce it again.

        • Don't say "R" (Score:2, Offtopic)

          by darkonc ( 47285 )
          I had an alternative version of that story. During a bus strike, I got a ride from a Chinese woman. It was about a 1/2 hour drive, and I spent most of that ride trying to help her with her english pronounciation. Near the end of the trip, I finally got her able to pronounce the R's reliably correct.

          When I congratulated her, she said:

          "But if I speak like that, my Chinese friends won't be able to understand me!"
          All that work for nothing....
      • Actually the Japanese can say their R's quite okay, it's L they have a problem with...

        It's more complex than that. The Japanese "r" sound, found in common words like "ryori," meaning cooking or cuisine, is sort of a cross between the American "r" and "l" sounds. Whereas Americans (typically) make the "r" sound with their lips, and the "l" sound with their tongue, the Japanese "r" sound is made with a little bit of lip and a little bit of tongue. (Er, you know what I mean.)

        So Japanese speakers often have trouble with both initial "r" and initial "l" when speaking English. Terminal "r" and "l" sounds, of course, just disappear entirely. "Door" becomes "doh," and "pull" becomes "puh."

        But the average American has a much harder time pronouncing a Japanese word like "ryori" than Japanese people seem to have saying a world like "library."
        • Whereas Americans (typically) make the "r" sound with their lips

          I can't figure out how it's even possible to make an "r" sound with one's lips... I make an "r" sound by curling my tongue back so the tip presses against the middle of my palate, then making some sort of noise with my vocal cords. My lips aren't particularly involved... they just stay open during the process.

          Japanese "r" keeps the tongue flatter and taps the tip close to the front of the mouth, making it sound sort of like a soft "d". Check this page [thejapanesepage.com] for a more complete explanation, plus sound samples.


          • Just trying this myself, and I can't understand how you could make an "r" sound while pressing your tongue against your palate.

            It seems to me that *my* tongue remains fairly neutral on the "r" sound. It seems to be mostly made by the shape of my lips.

  • pets.com? (Score:4, Informative)

    by helmutjd ( 568988 ) on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:08PM (#4384427)
    Uhh.. shouldn't that be petswarehouse.com?

  • Mark Barnett (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportland&yahoo,com> on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:09PM (#4384430) Homepage Journal
    you still caved, even if you found a way to be weasily about it.
    Sure its funny, but now they can tell other people that previous suits have been successfull settled out of court and they had better pay up.

    All actions have consequences.

    "Weaseling out of things is makes us different from animals...except the waesel." H.Simpson.

    • Re:Mark Barnett (Score:3, Insightful)

      by benedict ( 9959 )
      People's gullibility is their own damn problem.
      All a settlement means is that both parties agreed
      to something. If one -- obviously insane -- party
      says the terms were favorable to them, and you
      believe them without checking, then you're a fool.

  • As a programmer... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:10PM (#4384432)
    What version of Linux should I be programming to? Should I go with The Standard, Redhat? The Pure, Debian? The Cool, SuSE? or The Esoteric, Sorcerer? I would love to develop applications for Linux, but it is too difficult to nail down a baseline system what with each distro constantly adding and removing components all the time.

    Each distro also demands tradeoffs. Redhat sacrifices everything to be "easy to install". Debian sacrifices currentness for stability (ha-ha). SuSE sacrifices compatibility with other distros for ease-of-use. And Sorcerer sacrifices that compatibility even more.

    When Redhat removes another component like they did here, it's just business as usual in the Linux distro world. But for those developers out here who want to write applications, it's really hard with moving targets like these.

    • Re:As a programmer... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Develop on one platform, and know the differences between them that are relevant to your application. Periodically, and definitely before any releases, test on all platforms that you want to support.

      Program to only one platform and ignore the others, and you better not tell your users that you support them.
    • I believe you should make the program plataform independent, and then let the guys working at each distro port it - they probably can do it better than you anyway.

      Of course, you should learn how to package for your favorite distro.

    • Re:As a programmer... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jason Earl ( 1894 )

      Programming under Linux is a bit tricky. Basically its a tradeoff between using the libraries specified in the LSB (which doesn't help you at all for GUI programming), or to simply target a specific set of libraries (probably the ones bundled with the newest RedHat). Too many of Linux's APIs are currently in flux, and so it is a crapshoot which versions people will have installed.

      The good news is that fixing the problem is usually as easy as making sure the right libraries are installed.

      This problem, however, is a horse of a different color. This doesn't have anything to do with shifting APIs or the difference between distributions. This has to do with the fact that MP3 compression is patented, and the patent holders have changed the terms for use of the patents. RedHat can't distribute MP3 codecs without paying royalties, and so they don't distribute the libraries that XMMS uses to decode MP3s.

      • Jason Earl said... [slashdot.org]
        RedHat can't distribute MP3 codecs without paying royalties, and so they don't distribute the libraries that XMMS uses to decode MP3s.

        Err, umm.... well, xmms.org [xmms.org] says:
        To clarify, since the beginning of our mp3 licensing program in 1995, Thomson has never charged a per unit royalty for freely distributed software decoders. For commercially sold decoders - primarily hardware mp3 players - the per-unit royalty has always been in place since the beginning of the program.

        So all this about RedHat not being able to distribute MP3 codecs without paying royalties actually appears to be, as we say, a bunch of FUD. Maybe they have different reasons, but it's not about royalties.
        • RedHat _SELLS_ Redhat Linux... XMMS is part of that product if it ships with it, therefore they are technically infringing on that ridiculous patent if they distribute an MP3 decoder with their product.

          It's really quite simple, it IS about royalties, either they pay them to cover their ass so Thomson can't sue them a year down the road from now, or they simply don't include an MP3 decoder.

        • Last I checked RedHat sold RedHat Linux, and that's almost certainly the catch. It's easy enough to take Thomson's word that they aren't going to prosecute, but the fact of the matter is that you don't need to protect patents like you protect trademarks. As long as RedHat doesn't have it in writing that they are free to distribute MP3 codecs then RedHat is liable for royalties (and penalties as well should it go to court).

          Thomson probably isn't going to go after the folks working on XMMS, but RedHat Linux could easily be categorized as a "commercially sold decoder." Nullsoft pays licensing fees, by the way, and they clearly give their WinAmp away as well. The world of law is a murky place where it is always better to be safe than sorry. You can't blame RedHat for staying clear of potential problems.

    • What version of Linux should I be programming to? Should I go with The Standard, Redhat? The Pure, Debian? The Cool, SuSE? or The Esoteric, Sorcerer?

      What about The Stable And Secure, Slackware [slackware.com]?
    • Moving target? Why not just use autoconf and automake? ./configure && make && make install has worked on every linux system I've seen.
      • Why not just use autoconf and automake?

        Because setting up such things can be more of a pain than writing the application itself. Autoconf is a good idea only because it works under some fairly extreme conditions. There's nothing else at all to recommend it.
        • Autoconf is a pain, I agree. That's what Automake is for - it does all the work for you. IMHO, the two together create a rather nice build environment, without too much setup hassle.

          • I've used automake for several projects, and never for portability. It is a nice build system. Automake+CVS+a test suite can be a beautiful rapid development environment.

    • Re:As a programmer... (Score:4, Funny)

      by rodgerd ( 402 ) on Thursday October 03, 2002 @11:06PM (#4385013) Homepage
      Yeah, that's right. Redhat should just keep shipping software in the face of legal opinion telling them they can't. Selfish bastards. They should include a pirated copy of Windows for dual-boot gaming, too.
    • ALternatively, you could try Open Kylix from Borland.com, and get everything statically linked into a single binary when you compile. (oh, and it compiles VERY quickly, has a great gui, and forces you to distribute with the GPL, it shows a friggin splash screen when you execute your binary, and you better be jiggy with pascal, but it has very nice auto-completion, and debugging tools in a consistent IDE) Phew!
    • BINGO! You have just discovered why most of the rest of the commercial suppliers of Linux lined up behind United Linux. Not because it's better or worse or whatever, but because apps developers in the real world, those that have to make a living and provide support, want a single target that they can certify their software for. I'm not involved in it in any way, but I sure can understand their motivation.
    • Configs in /etc, services in /etc/init.d, documentation in /usr/share/doc, user bins in /usr/bin unless your apps is necessary to rescue to the system, sbin for yoru admin bins, /usr/lib for your libraries, /usr/share for everything else, RPM for your packages, stable releases of glibc and gcc for C library and compiler, etc.

      Do you want to know more? [linuxbase.org]
    • If your a developer who wishes to distribute binary packages then you should consider targeting Linux Standard Base [linuxbase.org] C libraries. Be prepared to provide binaries of any non-LSB based libraries, either static linked or make sure that all binaries are called via shell scripts that set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH to a directory containing the unpacked dynamic libraries. Thank RMS, the licensing of almost all of the Libraries in Linux distributions make this a breeze. GNOME2 is heading towards a consistant ABI interface, expect a LSB style spec and toolkits next year.

      If you develop in C++, make the effort to upgrade to GCC 3.2 and the new style standard C++ library style of programming. Believe me it's worth the effort. The only execption to this is if your interacting/recompiling with older KDE or Mozilla. The latter needs GCC-2.96 to load plugins.

      • Do not set LD_LIBRARY_PATH. [visi.com] Compile with -R or LD_RUN_PATH instead.

        That essay about LD_LIBRARY_PATH is one of the most interesting things I've ever read. Reading it helped me understand not only the issues involved, but affected a lot of my thinking about programming in general. It's good for you! :) I never can remember where it is, but I see that it's the first hit you get when you search for LD_LIBRARY_PATH on google now.

    • Don't program for *any* "version". Use autoconf and automake and stick to the standards! (POSIX, libc, LSB)

  • Lossy formats are louse (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:12PM (#4384442)
    Since RedHat removed mp3 libraries from their distribution we should embrace a new format. This time, we should use a lossless format such as FLAC or Monkey's audio or even Meridian not only because of sound quality but because we need to show the Labels that we mean business. With lossless formats we will have equal standing with their business model technically and literally. We need to establish an age of freely distributed carbon copies of their material so that they become completely irrelevant. College dorms have enough bandwidth to exchange 30mb songs between each other. We should actively encourage people to adopt lossless file formats so we have more freedom in dissemination and use of OUR content. We need to defeat the Labels every way possible. By completely eliminating every reason for their existance we might come closer to their demise.
    • How does having such a large lossless file give us more freedom? Ok, it might sound better, but it's impracticaly for everyone who doesn't live in a colleg dorm (read: most people). Does this make us realistically more free (not fundamentally moreso) then say, 256 kbit ogg's?

      By sharing music, are we really showing record companies they don't need to exist, or are we showing them they need to tighten the reigns on people sharing music so they can top off their profit margin?
    • Like every good lie, this one has some grain of truth to it, but IMHO, it's mostly FUD.

      First off, not all of the record labels out there exist to screw you out of your hard earned cash. While you may think you're 'fighting the man' by swapping music with your buds, ultimately, you ARE doing damage to the artists. The bigger a problem swapping becomes, the more money the labels are going to spend trying to fight it, and legislate it, and ultimately, that means a tighter grip on artist rights and material. The labels are draconian enough, and like enough, as copyright owners, they hold the cards. You're not being Robin Hood by trading those mp3s.

      Next, using 30 megs of space/bandwidth for a single song is more than ludicrous, it's flat out stupid. One, I've got better uses for the disk space (like porn). Two, I've got better uses for the bandwidth (like streaming porn). Moreover, pegging out the pipes on your schools network just costs them more money, and by extension, the students.

      Like as not, there are things in this country you may THINK you have fundamental rights to, but you're operating on borrowed time if you expect to go forward in life with that attitude. Here's an idea: how would you feel if I wandered up to your house at 2 am with a handset, tapped the J box on the side of your house, and spent an hour on the phone to Tibet? How about if I did this every night for a month until you got the bill for it? The usage pattern alone is enough for the phone company to tell you to take a hike when you say it wasn't you. You still wind up paying.. for my usage. While abstract, this is roughly how it works out for colleges and businesses across the country, footing the bill for your playtime.

      You want to give the RIAA the finger? Good for you! Do it by producing your own quality material, and don't license it to them. You want a nice phat digital on-demand archive of quality audio in your home? Pay for the damn CD. Think it costs too much? Wait a few months and buy it used, or GET A DAMN JOB.

      While our nation may be founded on acts of civil insubordination, I hardly find the tyranny of the RIAA to be affecting my life to such a degree that I need to resort to what amounts to petty theft from an artist who spent more than a few years busting ass playing shitty bars and clubs because they believed enough in their music to keep at it. Sure, I've swapped mp3's with people. The things I didn't like, I deleted. The stuff I liked, I bought. Don't screw it for the rest of us because you're a cheap bastard.
      • Two, I've got better uses for the bandwidth (like streaming porn)

        Put up or shut up ;-)
      • I think the best thing to do would be to bypass the RIAA directly -- send a band a cheque for twenty dollars(or a twenty dollar bill if you're paranoid) for every 60-75 minutes of music you download from them. If enough people did this, bands might start realizing that there are better ways to make money out there than getting screwed over by the RIAA.
        • I wouldn't be surprised if the big labels probably have the contracts set up so that their bands aren't legally allowed to collect money for themselves - it has to go through the label's services so that the label can take their cut first.

          If that's the case, sending checks directly to the band probably won't help much either, since they would be forced to hand them over to their label anyway.
    • OK, FLAC is "lossless" but it doesn't compress all that well.

      Start with a 50 MB WAV file. Compress with Flac, and you *might* get 60% cut out. I honestly don't see much advantage over gzip or zip! Why bother with a new format name? ("Oh, our FLAC is better than zip/gzip, because... eh... we have a different name! We offer 2.2% better compression ratios!")

      So now you have a 20 MB file. Lesee, over a 28.8 modem connection, you have...

      A royal nightmare.

      Ogg, on the other hand, compresses comparably to MP3. Your 50 MB WAV file might compress down to 4 MB with reasonable audio quality.

      Lesee, over a 28.8 modem connection, you have...

      Something reasonable.

  • big screen (Score:4, Funny)

    by ottothecow ( 600101 ) on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:13PM (#4384447) Homepage
    what happens when someone hacks it and it starts adding hardcore porn to the paris nightlife?

  • MySQL Control Center (Score:3, Informative)

    by gurnb ( 80987 ) on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:13PM (#4384448) Homepage
    Don't know if you MYSQL users know about the MySQL Control Center application provided by MySQL, but it is pretty cool.

    PROS:

    1) Sleek User Interface (graphically shows PRI keys and I believe you can map relations (FK), but I haven't figured that out yet, also graphically shows indices).

    2) Some queries download faster than web browser and telnet/ssh. Some SQL statements execute quite quickly like DELETE and INSERT.

    3) Multi-window display helps to show historical SQL statements and current actions.

    CONS:

    1) System crashes with "large" queries. Kind of bad that I tried a simple SELECT of one of my "large" tables with 2,500 rows/records and my computer crashed. Yea, I quoted "large" because is is relative between my tables, not to the maximum number of rows that can be stored in MySQL tables. Your mileage may vary as I have really old computer at home - (64 MG/Ram, Pentium I, 32-bit Virtual Memory, Windows 95b).

    2) Not very user-friendly in terms of SQL beginners. You have to know SQL in order to operate the application via the SQL pane.

    3) Compared to other products like MS SQL Server Enterprise Manager, some of the screens are difficult to interpret (related to #2).

    Hope this helps
    • I like dbVisualizer [www.minq.se] . It works with any Java 2.0 drivers to give you TOAD like access to the database. I doesn't have everything TOAD gives you (no wizards), but it does relational mapping and you can have all your databases in one tool (I have Oracle, Postgres, and MySQL on there).

  • Phoenix: Everything I always wanted in a browser! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by thesolo ( 131008 ) <slap@fighttheriaa.org> on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:14PM (#4384453) Homepage
    I'm using Phoenix right now, and seriously, I'm blown away by it. Not only is it lightning fast in comparison to Mozilla, but it already has the things I've been trying to get in the Mozilla trunk for a long time now. (For those of you who browse Bugzilla, you know how frustrating getting something into the trunk can be sometimes!) Some of the notable features of Phoenix are:

    1) Customizable Toolbars

    2) Home button where it SHOULD BE!

    3) Inline form management (Mozilla's form manager is all but worthless unless you've already filled out 20+ pages of forms.)

    4) Theme that respects my system colors! (Go ahead, change your system colors, Phoenix changes with them!)

    5) No bundled on software--I just want a browser! And if you use Mozilla for the mail, don't worry, the Mail client will be getting the same overhaul as the browser. It's a project called Minotaur [mozilla.org], and will be started on roughly when Phoenix hits .5

    There are tons of other things to mention here like the extensions manager, default popup blocking, tabs, worthwhile sidebars, ability to remove the throbber, a clean statusbar that actually works, etc., but it's best if you just see it for yourself! Go grab a copy, and then while you're enjoying it, thank Asa Dotzler, Blake Ross, Dave Hyatt, and the other guys who are making this a reality!

    Thanks guys!

    • From the release notes:

      6. Why would I want to use 0.2?

      It has a cool build ID. 20021001 (October 1, 2002).

      ...nifty

    • Go grab a copy, and then while you're enjoying it, thank Asa Dotzler, Blake Ross, Dave Hyatt, and the other guys who are making this a reality!

      Not sure about the others, but Dave Hyatt is/was one of the principles on the Chimera project and you can really see the similarity between these two browsers -- even to the point of the OS X style slide-out preference sheets. Very nice.

  • Just to show how open MySQL is... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Myuu ( 529245 ) <myuu@pojo.com> on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:22PM (#4384484) Homepage
    they even included the profane name suggestions...

    bastardo 14

    absolutely hilarious

  • Phoenix Review (Score:5, Informative)

    by zulux ( 112259 ) on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:22PM (#4384488) Homepage Journal

    Phoenix is going to be the default browser in all Windows boxes that I admin - simply because it doesen't need to "install". Just plunk the directory over the network when a new version comes out and - wham! New broswer!

    No "Updating Windows Installer"
    No rebooting.
    No IE vunerabilities!
    No Unnesesary features from Mozilla.
    No EULA to click through.

    Oh. No rebooting!

    • Phoenix is going to be the default browser in all Windows boxes that I admin - simply because it doesen't need to "install". Just plunk the directory over the network when a new version comes out and - wham! New broswer!

      Doesn't the .zip version of Mozilla do all this same stuff, aside from obviously the "no unnecessary features" bit? The .tgz version on Linux works fine for me without rebooting or clicking a license; the only problem is having to copy the plugins back over (which is not a problem on Mac OS X, since it uses the /Library folder).
    • Installation on windows is a way to let the OS, and in turn other applications, know of your presence. As such you are hindering what the DOJ has sued for. If your browser does not tell the OS its their, other applications will have to "fallback" on IE for their web content. Such applications include Quicken, MSMoney, TurboCAD, Media Jukebox, etc...

      Windows 2000 was supposed to end all the rebooting. How soon we forget the promises.

      I have learned since I set up a samba PDC at home that some of the installation features play well with network domains. You dont want everything to be on the network. Some things are local to the computer, some things are local to the user, and some things are totally global. For instance, your OE mailboxes can be on the network, but the server information is kept in the registry.

      M$ does not employ stupid people. Their products are nice, but their management is questionable.

  • Red Hat and software patents (Score:3, Troll)

    by JamesKPolk ( 13313 ) on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:28PM (#4384507) Homepage
    Of course Red Hat respects the mp3 patents. Red Hat (through employee Ingo Molnar) is applying for its own software patents, after all. If Red Hat does anything to interfere with the mp3 patents, then they would threaten their own ability to use the courts to quash competitors, should they win their own patents.

    What patents are Molnar and Red Hat applying for? Why, patents on parts of Linux itself. See applications 20020059330 and 20020091868 at http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html
    • 20020059330
      Method and apparatus for atomic file look-up. An atomic look-up operation allows an application to find out whether a file is opened atomically based on whether or not the file path is present in a file system namespace cache. If not, the file open request can be redirected, avoiding or minimizing impacts to the scheduling of various operations involved in executing an application. The request can be redirected by the application to a process that includes blocking point handling. An operating system according to the present invention includes a file system including a file system namespace, and an operating system kernel is operatively connected to the file system. The operating system kernel includes the file system namespace cache and the atomic look-up operation.

      20020091868
      Method and apparatus for handling communication requests at a server without context switching. An application protocol subsystem and protocol modules are disposed within an operating system kernel at a server. The protocol subsystem creates an "in-kernel" protocol stack that stores information regarding application protocol requests, such as HTTP and FTP requests, in a kernel request structure. A user space application can then continue execution while the operating system responds to the application protocol request without context switching. In this way, application protocol requests received over a network are handled and responded to by the server without causing a context switch.

      ---------
      What has Red Hat done to cause you not to trust them? They are a solid GPL supporter, they don't play games like Lindows does with EULAs on GPL software. We have no reason to believe that they will do what they said, use these patents to protect open source, not hinder it.

      They are not distributing the MP3 code because it opens them up to potential lawsuits. They are selling the code, along with distributing it freely, so Frauenwhosit just might have a problem with that, and decide a 200 million dollar bank account like Red Hat has, is a juicy target.
      • What has Red Hat done to cause you not to trust them?

        1) They're applying for patents. Buying a handgun (copyright) for personal self-defense is reasonable. Buying a thermonuclear device (patent) for personal self-defense is not.

        2) They have already stated that only GPL software will have a free ride, regardless of the software freedom other licenses provide. These patents allow them, should they choose to excercise their legal rights, to extort royalty fees out of every other distribution, since every distribution includes non-GPL software such as XFree86, Apache, etc. To reiterate, no one needs a thermonuclear device for personal self-defense.
        • They're applying for patents. Buying a handgun (copyright) for personal self-defense is reasonable. Buying a thermonuclear device (patent) for personal self-defense is not.

          You obviously have no understanding of what patents are, or how they're different from copyrights. Put simply, you cannot both copyright and patent the same thing. Copyrights apply to certain things, and patents apply to other, different things. There's no overlap.

          Before you speak out against something, you should learn about it. It helps cut down on the looking like an idiot.
          • Yes, patenting the idea and copyrighting the implementation are indeed two very different things. That said, patents are indeed a much "bigger stick", with far greater potential for misuse. I don't see how his argument is inherently untenable -- and didn't read him as trying to claim that it would be the same property protected by either.
        • 1) They're applying for patents. Buying a handgun (copyright) for personal self-defense is reasonable. Buying a thermonuclear device (patent) for personal self-defense is not.

          Hand-guns are not very useful if all your opponents have thermonuclear weapons. Anyway, I will always prefer being hit by a patent lawsuit to being hit by a thermonuclear weapon.

  • Sakila (Score:4, Funny)

    by Zakabog ( 603757 ) <john&jmaug,com> on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:31PM (#4384519)
    Linux has Tux the penguin. (Linus Torvalds likes penguins and there's the joke that penguins look like they're wearing tuxedoes which can be seen in many cartoons)

    BSD has the BSD Daemon (sometimes known as Beastie, the daemon story is pretty long and I'm not going to type it here)

    GNU has a Gnu (Well they share the same name so it was a fitting animal)

    So umm why does MySQL have a dolphin? Named Sakila?

    • Because if you pronounce SQL with out saying each individual letter it sounds like dolphin talk :-)

    • Re:Sakila (Score:5, Funny)

      by namespan ( 225296 ) <namespan.elitemail@org> on Thursday October 03, 2002 @09:05PM (#4384629) Journal
      (1)Take the letters S,Q, and L.

      (2) Add arbitrary vowels between them to make it a three syllable word: Sa-Qi-La.

      (3) Observe that people will pronouce the middle term "Chi" or "Qui" or something like that.

      (4) Change Q to K. Reflect on how the KDE project will be happy about this (Symbolic Kuery Language), and also, how it sounds like a Latin crossover star [shakira.com]. Be pleased.

      (5) Think of how cool the name Squall would have been. Masculin, sea-related, implies a disruptive yet powerful force, has S,Q, and L in it...

      (6) Sigh.

  • Phoenix Screenshots... (Score:3, Informative)

    by phatvibez ( 518108 ) on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:37PM (#4384535) Homepage
    I love Phoenix and have been using it as my primary browser since 0.1 was released.

    I have posted severl screenshots on my site:

    0.1 screenshots are here:
    http://www.phatvibez.net/reviews.php?ID=phoenix [phatvibez.net]

    0.2 screenshots are here:
    http://www.phatvibez.net/reviews.php?ID=phoenix2 [phatvibez.net]

  • sakila? (Score:4, Funny)

    by edrugtrader ( 442064 ) on Thursday October 03, 2002 @08:40PM (#4384547) Homepage
    "an african flavor to MySQL??"

    seriously. WHAT THE FUCK.

    the dolphins name is SQUEAL. EVERYONE thinks it should be SQUEAL. i am starting my own form of mysql starting today, and the ONLY thing different is that the dolphin is named SQUEAL!

    on that note:
    ARE YOU A PHP DEVELOPER? WORK WITH ME AND MAKE MILLIONS!
    Web Developer II [sst.com]
    • I am PHP developer and would like to make millions please!

      Education required: BA or BS.

      Yes, I have a bad attitude and I am educated in the fine art of bull shitting.

      -- iCEBaLM
    • About a third of the population of Swaziland is muslim. I'm pretty sure the name Sakila comes to SiSwati from the Arabic word Shakila which means beautiful or handsome (Shaquille is the masculine form of the same name).
  • I asked them a few times over the past few months what was going on with the dolphin naming contest. Never once got a reply. Never once an update on their web site, which HAD said it would be done "in a month or two"... that was back in January.

    Finally, I ended up forgetting about it. All the better. The name that they chose was equally forgettable. A "global" name probably means one that isn't trademarked that you're likely to forget in 5 minutes unless you're bombarded with heavy advertising and brand building.

    So what did the dolphin namer win, anyhow? ;)
  • Is it possible to use them both, do they use the same configuration data?

  • Sakila! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jonny Ringo ( 444580 ) on Thursday October 03, 2002 @09:01PM (#4384615)
    Do we always have to say it as if there's a exclamation point at the end? You know like were excited about db's?
  • Since the patent holders of Mp3 responded to this fictitious crisis by stating that the licensing requirements were the same all along [slashdot.org], there is probably no chance of them attempting to enforce their patents by suing readhat.

    It would be a different story if redhat received notice from Thomson multimedia, requesting that the package be removed. Since Thomson seems to be fine with Linux distros including mp3 player capabilities, why remove it?

  • xmms mp3 workaround (Score:4, Informative)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Thursday October 03, 2002 @09:40PM (#4384735) Homepage Journal

    I didn't go back to the xmms site, I just used the Red Hat xmms RPMs which were included in the final beta called (null). These are xmms-1.2.7-14.mp3 and xmms-skins-1.2.7-14.mp3. I figure I don't need a lot of updates to a basic file player, and I prefer Red Hat authored RPMs for a Red Hat system.

    Yanking MP3 support is unfortunate but not worth crying about. If you like MP3s, you probably can handle the hunt for the appropriate files to get your fix. I only use MP3s because so few hardware solutions support OGG or other formats yet. I'd love it if my SliMP3 [slimdevices.com] supported OGG too, but for now it does a great job of making a household jukebox. If I adopt a similar OGG solution, I'll just re-rip the CDs.

  • so of course, the first thing i see on this screen is steve ballmer's "developers developers developers" dance

    too bad this wasn't around when the ally our base craze got started

  • Phoenix......I'm back! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DeadBugs ( 546475 ) on Thursday October 03, 2002 @10:01PM (#4384810) Homepage
    I installed Mozilla 1.1 on my Win98 machine and it would crash all the time (not so often on Win2k). It got so bad that I had to remove it and install IE. I felt dirty for using IE but I had to get my daily internet fix free of crashes. I grabbed Phoenix just to check it out. It needed no install, just run it from the directory you decompress it in....

    So far Phoenix has yet to crash, is "popup" free, fast and everything I wanted Mozilla to be.
    • on my Win98 machine [...] I felt dirty for using IE

      Sort of like a man swimming in a sewer claiming that he feels dirty because he's got a turd in his hand isn't it?

  • Hmm... I've been watching the Blinkenlights stream for about 10 minutes now, and in that time I have seen 3 ads for the new Mini Cooper. Not that I mind, but it seems it is no longer possible to do anything without staring at ads. What next, half-page ads on slashdot?

    er, wait... We already have those.

  • I've tried for three or four years to do 1394
    style video editing under Windows. I've fiddled
    with every hardware configuration and used every
    capture program under the sun and I still can't
    capture more than a few minutes of video without
    loosing frames. I read the various forums
    occasionally and it seems to me that a weegie
    board has more relevant things to say
    about video editing.

    It's not your motherboard. It's not software X.
    It's all Microsoft. I dual booted RedHat (so my
    other box is debian, I was lazy) and low and
    behold I can capture for HOURS and nary a dropped
    frame. When it did drop a frame, dvgrab politely
    told me why. This stuff works. Too bad I can't edit
    under linux yet. When Cinelerra has the stability
    and feature set of something like Sonic Foundry's
    Video Vegas desktop video will finally stop being
    an aggravating trip through the worst that personal
    computing has to offer.

    By the way, if you are a Windows user frustrated
    with your editing app crashing get Video Vegas.
    Despite the crazy name it has plenty of
    professional features and it's rock solid. Unlike
    Premiere, which I can crash just by blowing on the
    case gently, Vegas let's me get through hours of
    footage with no back talk.
  • Wendy Testaburger: "Dolphins are smart!"

    Eric Cartman: "Yeah, smart on rye bread with some mayonaise."

  • I'd like to give cinerella a try, but unfortunately my camera records in m3jpeg format, and cinerella relies on xmovie which doesn't like that format.

    I tried using mencoder to convert to another format, but mencoder complains about 'illegal instruction' for some reason.

    Anybody have any useful suggestions ? How can I convert the files ?

  • Just out of curiousity. Does anyone know how to pronounce this? Is it Sa ki la, or Sa Kee la, or something else entirely? I doubt I'll ever actually be verbalizing the name of the dolphin, but sometimes it helps to know these things should an arguement arise.

  • Is There A Tool For These Names? (Score:3, Funny)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Friday October 04, 2002 @12:46AM (#4385342) Journal

    Sakila. Avaya. Verizon. Aquent (used to be MacTemps). Akamai.

    Oh sure, they always say it comes from someplace. Akamai, for example, is supposed to mean something in Hawaiian. I forget what. It doesn't really matter because all these names sound the same. I think there is a secret Perl script somewhere that they aren't telling us about.

    I think it has two basic algorithms. One of them takes a regular word and changes the spelling according to an algorithm I've yet to decipher. The other, simpler algorithm uses the folling syllables:

    av, ev, iv, al, el, il, ul, ti, te, vi, va, vey, ty, tra, tri (perhaps others) and strings them together randomly.

    Try it. It's easy:

    Aviva. Eltiva. Altria. Ultera. Tyvela.

    Thank-you.

    By reading this post, and using the information contained herein, you consent to pay an outrageous consulting fee to me for naming your company. Make checks payable to Steven Marthouse, 5308 Oldcastle Ln., Springfield VA 22151.

  • Simply include a program that pops up the first time you are connected to the internet after installation and offer to automatically download and install the RPM from the XMMS web site (after asking permission for xmms.org first, of course)? I'm sure xmms.org would cooperate here.

    This way, they don't violate the patents (instead redirecting the download to xmms.org, which doesn't seem to mind distributing it), while still making it relatively simple and automatic for new users and others who then wouldn't have to figure out what's going on.
  • Sorry, that's "PetsWarehouse," not "pets.com.":

    You'll be sued now, for sure.

  • On a related sidenote:
    I just put a package for RadialContext for
    Phoenix on the usual downloads page.
  • We all know that besides gaming, video editing is the big killer app.

    Uhh, we do? Could somebody explain why please? I've heard it's more popular in the States than elsewhere, but I can count with one hand how many times I've seen (or even heard of) people editing their home movies on their computer: none.

    Apple seem to make a big deal of this as well. Is this some kind of craze that never reached Europe, much like text messaging/sms never made the crossover to the US? Or is it just the latest round of tech industry hype, not actually backed up by substance?

  • What can I do to help?

    We need all the distribution we can get. Tell your family. Tell your friends. Tell your coworkers. If you're a student, get it distributed at your college. If you like Phoenix, please also submit a story to Slashdot about the release. The more interest we show to the editors, the more likely they'll accept the story.

    :-)

  • Interestingly, the i686 build works on my K6-III+ which is technically an i586. Can anyone elaborate on the difference between i586 and i686 in this sense?

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