J5’s Blog

Here is a nice article to read over the holidays. It really showcases what the OLPC project is all about.

Last week I talked about Ogg and stirred up a bit of controversy when I suggested we take Linux.com to task for not providing open formats. While it was very effective in getting people to write in showing their displeasure with propriatary formats, it almost failed at achieving the goal of getting them to switch. The problem with language is it can be very imprecise, especially in written form where tone is often hard to assess. While there is a time and a place for strong words we must understand that words can hurt and push people into a defensive stance where even the most innocuous of statements are misconstrued.

The correct words I should have used with Linux.com was that we should engage them. Simply telling them that they had to switch to Ogg was putting them in a defensive stance because of various factors. From what I had found out, this was a small team of hard working individuals with families, a love for reporting and not enough time or resources to do everything they would like to do. What I needed to do was find an way over the wall so we could figure out a way forward. That way was through politeness and an offer to help.

I had e-mailed Robin “Roblimo” Miller, a senior editor at Linux.com, with my offer to help and he suggested I call him so we could speak as two humans. I spent an hour on Friday talking and more importantly listening to Robin, realizing that this was a man who was willing to help push forward the use as open formats where practical. He had talked to Monty during an interview for a piece on video formats and hashed out the quality issues to his satisfaction. But, he has also talked about the need for delivery systems which would make Ogg as ubiquitous as Flash video and make using Ogg as his primary format and easy choice as it would be able to reach the the wider audience which keeps his site going.

What I picked up out of the conversation that was important to me was that Linux.com was moving forward and had a keen interest in supporting open media. I didn’t expect things to happen overnight, I just wanted to know that they were happening. I was pleased to see their last weekly wire go out with a link to the Ogg Theora download which I promptly watched.

But now it is our turn to be “taken to task”. We need to help out by making it more economical for sites to post open media. To do this we need to help improve the quality of Theora and help complete Dirac. We must also help out writing easy to use software to edit video. Two promising contenders in this area is Kino and Pitivi with Kino being much further along though I personally like Pitivi’s interface better. Delivery systems as I have said are also important, whether it be working on Firefox’s video tag support, various plugin systems, video blogging software or simply setting up a “Got Ogg?” campaign to distribute plugins, content and advice on using open formats.

The ball is in our court and we need to keep running with it. If you really care about open media then find a way you can help out. Happy holidays everyone.

Awhile ago I signed up for Blockbuster.com. At 21 or so dollars a month for three movies out at a time and the ability to return them for movies at the store up the road it just fit my lifestyle. Even when they alerted me that they were changing the plan where they restricted it to 5 in store exchanges or I could pay $4 extra dollars a month for the same unlimited service I was getting I felt it was still a fair deal. The key there was they notified me and gave me the option to pay my current level or opt-in to pay extra.

This time however they have alerted me that they are raising the price by $10 (a whopping 40% or so increase) a month which goes into effect automatically in my next billing cycle. I now hold a service that was once competitive with Netflix but now seems to keep increasing in costs every couple of months or so. What is really interesting is the pricing on their website doesn’t seem that bad (though they have gotten rid of the unlimited exchange option). I have to wonder if that is an unmarked introductory price.

I can appreciate that the program may have been an ill conceived marketing ploy that has been losing Blockbuster a lot of money but then I would have been happy to move to a more restricted plan had this happen just once and they canceled the unlimited plan then (I did move to the higher cost plan the first time). The fact that they did it a second time just has me looking over my shoulder for the next increase. So the value is gone and I will be leaving Blockbuster.com at the end of this billing cycle. Perhaps I’ll start up with Netflix again or just get outside more. I did just join a gym after all.

Davis Square is opening up a new Boston Sports Club and I finally decided to join. The tipping point came last week during the snow storm when I slipped and fell down a couple of stairs at the Porter T stop. Usually I would walk away pretty embarrassed but non worse for ware. This time I thought I actually might have injured myself. In the end I slept it off and felt fine the next day, if a little bruised, but I realized sitting in a chair programming every day wasn’t getting me any healthier. We already have a fitness room at our office but I figured having trainers around and a place to go when I am home and on weekends will get me a bit more motivated. We will see how long this lasts but as things go these days I had to sign a contract so they’ve got me for a year. Being the type of person who skips the ‘fillers’ at a buffet just so I feel I got my money’s worth, I think I will be utilizing the gym quite a bit.

I’ve been so busy lately I just noticed my Decorators on a Dime article was published by Python Magazine.  Pretty neat!

A new D-Feet D-Bus Debugger has been released. Some cool new features have been added and a lot of the code has been reorganized.

• no longer restricted to the System and Session busses
  • using the connection dialog you can attach to any bus address you need
  • 
• each bus tab is restored on startup if the address exists
  • 
• execute button makes executing methods more descoverable
  • button in toolbar become sensitive when you select a method from the introspect data
  • 
  • 
• icons show up if app associated with a name has a toplevel window
  • based on libwnck so the application needs to have mapped a toplevel window
  • 
• initial support for icons on introspect nodes
  • 
• syntax highlighting and nicer formatting for methods and signals
  • unicode arrow used for return values of methods (Ray Strode)
  • 
• support for property lists in the introspect data (Marcel Holtmann)
• move to gtk.Builder for UI
  • requires PyGtk >= 2.12.0 and Gtk+ >= 2.12.0

Get It

• tarball: http://johnp.fedorapeople.org/d-feet-0.1.6.tar.gz
• git: git clone git://git.fedoraproject.org/git/hosted/d-feet
  

It seems Apple is not the entity fighting for a DRM-less world we thought they were and Nokia isn’t such a great patron for open source software either. For those who haven’t heard the news, lobbying by both companies have caused the W3C to strike a provision in a HTML5 draft which would make OGG Vorbis and Theora a standard media format on the web. What baffles me about this is having Vorbis and Theora media formats does not stop Apple or Nokia from distributing content using whatever proprietary format they wish. This just hobbles the web which had exploded thanks to open standards, open formats and open source. In recent years though the web has become more and more proprietary. Allowing companies to remove open formats from an open standard without nominating another equally open format to take its place allows special interests to control the development of the web. This effectively locks out a large portion of the small independent content providers from distributing next generation content such as video while moving us toward a world where a few entities control the distribution of all content.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel though. It is time for us to make the OGG family of codecs ubiquitous with or without the mandate of a standard. A large step in that direction is Firefox developing native OGG support. Easily installed IE plugins would go a long way also. It is also up to the community to post their content in an open format. The next time linux.com post a link to mp3 content that they produced and not have a Vorbis link associated with it I hope people take them to task. The same goes for people posting content on the various planets. Open formats are essential to a free and open web.

Well the unofficial results are in and a new board has been formed. I am humbled by being elected to the board and hope my tenure will exceed the communities expectations. A lot of great people have been elected this year and I look forward to serving with them. A bit of correction however, due to a late night rushed candidacy announcement which copied the format of last years, I am listed as representing Red Hat and OLPC. While I still work on the OLPC project as a volunteer I have moved on to my own projects within Red Hat and no longer officially work for OLPC.

I’ve been playing around with a little tool for debugging applications on the bus. It is far from done but I decided to release it now that it has become useful. Right now you can see all names on the Session and System buses and get information on the objects and interfaces they export.

Current Features

• View names on the session and system bus
• View exported objects, interfaces, methods and signals
• View the full command line of services on the bus
• Execute methods with parameters on the bus and see their return values

Planed Features

• Attach to any address
• Watch, edit and play back method calls
• Watch signals
• Attach scripted actions to triggers
• Profiler for D-Bus calls
• Assistant for creating async call chains

Info

Homepage: http://hosted.fedoraproject.org/projects/d-feet/
Tarball: http://johnp.fedorapeople.org/d-feet-0.1.4.tar.gz
Fedora: yum install d-feet
(Should be built for Rawhide, F-8 and F-7 though it may take a bit to be pushed as an update to F-8 and F-7)

Most of the people reading my blog will have seen the Heroes actor, Masi Oka’s spot advertising the Give One Get One initiative (quick, get your’s soon as the program was extended until December 31’st).

While reading one of the Heroes interactive graphic novels (that’s comic book to everyone else) I came upon this panel. It’s from The Last Shangri-La novel at nbc.com.

BTW Last nights Heroes episode felt a bit forced owing to the writers strike going on. I wish they didn’t try to resolve this seasons plot but instead left it on a huge cliffhanger. I guess they weren’t sure what was in store for the show so they had to wrap it up somehow. Anyway, the next “chapter” as they call it looks like it will be much better since they were able to use the current season to set it all up. There were a number of characters who were side stories. Hopefully we will see how they relate when the show starts up again.