Favourite packages for Ubuntu

This installs Broadcom wireless, evil ATI driver, VLC, DVD reading, codecs for everything -- all on my amd64 install of Ubuntu Hardy Heron.

I don't know if anybody else will care to use this, but it gives me every package I need.

sudo echo "\n## Medibuntu - Ubuntu 8.04 \"hardy\"\n## Please report any bug on https://bugs.launchpad.net/medibuntu/\nsudo echo "deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ hardy free non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 libdvdread3 flashplugin-nonfree smbfs vlc vlc-plugin-esd mozilla-plugin-vlc gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg libxine1-ffmpeg libdvdread3 w64codecs ffmpeg totem-xine acidrip brasero banshee b43-fwcutter acroread mozilla-acroread acroread-plugins xorg-driver-fglrx azureus inkscape mplayer mozilla-mplayer msttcorefonts wine cabextract nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap network-manager-gnome network-manager-pptp unrar rapidsvn audacious meld easytag gtkpod-aac smartmontools xtightvncviewer

and for the SqueezeCenter:

sudo sh
echo "deb http://debian.slimdevices.com testing main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list ; apt-get update; apt-get install squeezecenter

Thanks to:

• Medibuntu for Hardy Heron

The unbearable pervasiveness of radical neoconservatism

I recently re-read Walter Jon Williams' City on Fire, and something jumped out at me: phrasing right out of Milton Friedman's masturbatory fantasies:

“There is a recipe for creating wealth,” he says. “It is simple enough. Reduce tariffs, reduce state spending, reduce controls on borrowing and lending. Protect the value of the currency while allowing free exchange, permit the citizens free access to foreign currencies. Permit the citizens to keep any wealth they earn [...] and tax with a light hand, with a tax code renowned for its evenhandedness and a revenue bureau renowned for its incorruptibility...”_p.114

“The companies will be sold. We anticipate no difficulty with that–they were all remarkably profitable, after all. The profits will help to finance reorganization in various other state enterprises, which will also be sold as soon as they can be made efficient. I convinced them, you see, that it had to be done now, while martial law was still in force, because a popular government would not be able to shrink in size with the proper ruthlessness. So the enlarged army will hold the metropolis together while structural changes take place[...]”_p.65

This is a capsule description of the 1973 Chilean coup and subsequent neoconservative sacking of the country (and of Argentina, Brazil, the US, Russia, Iraq, etc.). It certainly is a recipe for wealth, and for an rocketing disparity between the rich and the poor. As we have recently seen, it is also a recipe for opening the door to runaway corruption in the financial markets. It's a recipe, all right: it is a recipe for an entire smörgåsbord of misery to be visited on a society by its ever-more-wealthy ruling élite. Wealth is always measured as a differential, not as an absolute: a differential in income, in life expectancy, in everything that matters.

When this book was written this may have seemed like inevitable truth, promoted by a political class and media intent on reversing the 20^th century gains of the labour movement. The author is by no means a reactionary twit, but he couldn't help absorb some of the constant stream of bullshit that is constantly unloaded on us all. 1997 was just eleven years ago, but these really do feel like ideas from the previous century.

Affero GPL: fear and loathing, or ignorance and indifference?

A friend of mine tried to set up a project on SourceForge using the Affero GPL. Six months later they got back to him and added the AGPL to their (loooong) list of supported licenses. To date, Google Code doesn't support the AGPL. Granted, Google may not be particularly interested in the AGPL from a business standpoint (they want to make money off hosting and one-to-many-many-many services). SourceForge seems to have gotten over its queasiness. Does Google have something against the AGPL, or do they just not think about it?

The unexpected

Two conceptual artists used public opinion polling to incorporate the most unpopular elements of music into a single song, to create a musical piece that all but 200 people will hate: The Most Unwanted Song. The thing is, the result is rather infectious, and completely hilarious. It had me LOLing.¹

The duo Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid:

made their reputations with ironic critiques of the state-imposed ideologies of their native Soviet Union. [...] Upon emigrating to the United States in 1978, they searched for an American secular religion on par with Marxism, and found it in the psuedo-science of public opinion polling.²

And that's how they made this trenchant commentary on the effectiveness of opinion polling, showing that faithfully following the dictates of an opinion poll will not necessarily correspond with success.

What it reminded me most of was Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films (1988) which presaged the clanky, Disney-soundtrackian feel of Unwanted. Yma Súmac was my gateway drug to more extreme and damaging forms of camp, and she might well have been featured in the song: "Ada Dyer" sounds highly suspicious. (Could it be another anagram?)

The other song that comes to mind is Bohemian Rhapsody. If Freddie Mercury had depended upon poll data for his song, he would have steered clear of operatic stylings and extreme rhythm and pitch changes and instead produced a short, likable but mediocre piece that would not have resonated with such a large audience.

This project renews my appreciation for conceptual art. I am going to make a point of getting out to the galleries so I can be confounded by lunchboxes full of horse hair and swizzle sticks made of frozen napalm. I really don't have enough opportunities to feel insufficiently sophisticated.

Solar powered clothes dryer

About six years ago I surprised my co-workers with the news that I had constructed a solar powered clothes dryer. Most of them said something along the lines of "Wow, cool! How did you do that? How does it work?" Some raised an eyebrow and said, "so you put up a clothesline?" The determining factor was whether the person was raised in an American suburb (the most conformist, appearance-obsessed monoculture in history) where clotheslines are prohibited and as rare as backyard ore-smelters.

Ontario is passing legislation to make clotheslines legal across the province, invalidating priggish municipal regulations and homeowner covenants. They are not hard to build, and they quickly pay for themselves.

AIR delays the inevitable

I've made a bit of peace with AIR since my post earlier. The release notes actually do mention how to install it, and twhirl does work (pretty much, anyhow).

The ridiculousness of blowing away OOo does underscore that folks at Adobe don't work on Linux – doubtless they only really work on Mac and Windows. The fact that they never noticed they had murdered OOo proves it. They don't really understand free software (big surprise, they make their money selling Photoshop discs) and their AIR platform is a roach motel built to extend the life of their Flash development suite. Yes, certain segments are open source: big whoop, as long as the desktop runtime is closed, they can maintain their control. It's all about control. So no matter how shiny and quick and pretty they make AIR, it remains another boring proprietary trap.

Are people really going to fall for it again? Maybe, but they won't do it for long. Competing platforms will race AIR to the bottom, giving away as much as possible to gain developer mind share. Even Microsoft will eventually give away everything on Silverlight in a desperate bid to regain some sort of relevance in the world of developers under the age of 40. Gnash is catching up with Flash. Can Adobe keep running? Yes, but the question is how far.

So eventually AIR won't slag your Linux machine when you install it, and Adobe will have its cross-platform runtime dream. It'll even work, pretty much (those operating system-specific chrome APIs will be the death of them, I swear). But there is no long-term reason the development community will want to paint itself into this corner: there are just too many attractive options. They're going to have to bow to free software sooner or later, and by delaying the inevitable they're missing an opportunity to gather early, unanimous support.

Adobe AIR blows on Linux

I recently decided I wanted to try out twhirl. Since I'm on Ubuntu Gutsy, twhirl runs on Adobe AIR, I knew it was trouble, but I thought I'd give it a try. After all, I recalled reading about an alpha release of AIR. Okay, so I got what I asked for.

So first off, twhirl doesn't work. After installing AIR (which actually wasn't too bad, despite "chmod 777" instructions that would murder a newbie). The webpage-embedded install wouldn't work. So I gave up.

Then, two days later, I try to open an OpenOffice.org spreadsheet (.ODS). Adobe AIR hijacked the .ODS extension! I can't open my spreadsheet? What the FUCK?!? So I right-clicked on my file, went to Properties, Open With, and added OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet. That should work, right? Wrong-o. This thing hijacked the mime type for .ODS and made it "Adobe AIR Application". So now I can't open my spreadsheets, because I get this error:
and when I try to open an AIR application it tries to open it in OOo!

Of course, it installed Goddess only knows what binaries on my machine. For all I know I've been rootkitted. I have no clue how to remove it – the release notes have nothing to say on the subject.

I can fix this. I can fix my MIME types and track down and murder the crapware I've infected my machine with. But word to the wise: do NOT install the Adobe AIR alpha on a machine that you want to do actual work with, because it will be fuxored. Just goes to show you the lack of depth of Adobe's understanding of Linux, their limited capability and exposure to the platform. Furthermore, it goes to show they don't understand the free software universe if they're going to hijack the file extension for frigging OOo.

---

Here's a fix:

sudo "/opt/Adobe AIR/Versions/1.0/xdg-utils/xdg-mime" uninstall "/opt/Adobe AIR/Versions/1.0/support/AdobeAIR.xml"
sudo gedit "/opt/Adobe AIR/Versions/1.0/support/AdobeAIR.xml"

... remove these three lines:

<magic priority="100">
<match type="string" value="PK\003\004" offset="0"/>
</magic>

then:

sudo "/opt/Adobe AIR/Versions/1.0/xdg-utils/xdg-mime" install --mode system --novendor "/opt/Adobe AIR/Versions/1.0/support/AdobeAIR.xml"

... and you're welcome, Adobe. Maybe you could update those release notes? No? I thought not.

Fix slow Ubuntu shutdown with CIFS (SMBFS)

My Ubuntu machine at home always takes a bazillion years to turn off. I've been seeing this "Server not responding" error forever, but I've just ignored it. An explanation from the article "Five things to do on a freshly installed Ubuntu":

CIFS: Unmount CIFS shares before shutting down the network

There is a very nasty bug in Ubuntu, which occurs, if you use NetworkManager and have any active CIFS share while shutting down your system. If you do that, you'll experience a timeout while shutting down, lengthening it by ~30 seconds per share. You'll also get the message CIFS VFS: Server not responding.

There is a bug entry on launchpad, but it is not yet fixed. Fortunately, there is an easy workaround.

Here are my simplified instructions:

cd /etc/init.d
sudo wget http://www.jejik.com/files/examples/umountcifs
sudo chmod ugo+x umountcifs
sudo update-rc.d umountcifs stop 02 0 6 .

That ought to take care of it.

Squeezebox mash note

A couple of months ago I ordered a new home music player, the Squeezebox Duet. I was a little reluctant because it wasn't cheap (nearly $500 by the time you include shipping, import duties, etc) and it requires server software, but I liked the look of it and I liked the fact that the server software was open source. I didn't really look too deeply: I just thought "shiny!" and dug out my credit card. Besides, my bro-in-law loves his old Squeezebox, so I figured it'd be good.

But zOMG, I was totally unprepared for what I got: more than meets the eye. This thing is incredible – a real example of what a great product a company can build when it totally understands how to use open source software to build a platform and build a committed community of users and developers. Everything about it is cool. Yes, I knew I was essentially buying an iPod-style remote control for my stereo which would hook to my network and suck all of my music off my computer (actually, my NAS). But it really is a platform.

First, the hardware is very slick. It is well designed, feels nice, looks very chic, and has tons of room to grow. They built in so many extras that the platform can grow for a long time just catching up with the hardware: 3-axis accelerometer, USB adapter and SD flash slot on the remote, WiFi all over the place... simply spectacular. You could build a bunch of cool things on this platform.

Second, the software is quite capable. It was easy to install (on Ubuntu, I just had to add their repository and the package). Unfortunately, the latest version of the server software, SqueezeCenter, has not yet been adapted to run on the NSLU2 I purchased for the express purpose, but it is doing okay on my four-year-old laptop. Besides, I might be able to put it directly on my NAS200 soon.

Third, they're working quite actively on the software, and they walk the talk when it comes to full disclosure: the whole stack is open. They not only release all of their code, they give you a real toolchain and support in making changes. Unlike other devices which manufacturers churn out and abandon, they've recently released an update to the remote control firmware that addresses issues with seeking through music lists, making it much more friendly and responsive. The remote control software also builds and runs on desktop Linux, OSX, and even ghetto Windows (a true tour de force) which makes it easy to build and debug your add-in modules (in Lua: how very nerd chic) or your own custom firmware. It also just gives you a nice remote control to run on your laptop. The open source firmware makes it possible for a community of hackers to come up with endless cool applications for all of that tasty overengineering that went into the remote.

But here's the clincher: I had an issue with my album images not showing up. I've been compulsively tagging my music collection and applying album images to make the lists look pretty, but the images weren't showing up properly – even worse, it was sending corrupt images to the browser, throwing the format and making it all look weird. So I started looking at it, and reported the problem on their bugtrack system. One of their engineers fixed it fourteen hours later; I grabbed the in-development build the next day and my issue was fixed. Twenty-four hour turnaround.

That is not only great service, it helps them build and take advantage of a community of expert users. Unlike some companies which persecute people who fix their problems, at least one part of Logitech has it figured out.

Speech synthesis on Ubuntu

Text-to-speech (TTS) has been around for a couple of decades, and it keeps getting better. There are a bunch of really fun untapped applications for it, combining RSS, filters (like Pipes), podcasts, telephony, and hidden speakers.

Under Linux there is a nice package available called Festival. To get started, grab an appropriate package, such as:

• festvox-hi-nsk (Hindi male)
• festvox-kallpc16k (american English male)
• festvox-rablpc16k (British English male)
• festvox-mr-nsk (Marathi male)
• festvox-suopuhe-lj Finnish female
• festvox-suopuhe-mv (Finnish male)
• festvox-te-nsk (Telugu male)

Too bad you can't get a female speaker except in Finnish. (I had never heard of the Indian languages Marathi and Telugu, and I consider myself a language buff... sigh.)

The results are pretty good. Here's how to use it from the command line:

text2wave text-file.txt -o audio-file.wav

For extra fun, use pidgin-festival to turn incoming instant messages into speech (use festival-gaim if you haven't made the jump to Hardy Heron yet).

Glass hosting

Google's recent release of App Engine and Amazon's success with EC2 and S3 are apparently bothering the kind folks at Joyent, who pushed out a press release extolling the root access they provide to their virtual machines, and decrying the lack of choice that the competing platforms provide.

Which is kinda funny, because Joyent requires that you run on Solaris. I have nothing against Solaris – I'm sure it's a fine operating system – but I also have nothing for it, and few people who are aching to work on it. EC2 gives you a choice of linux distros, and lets you control image deployment yourself in realtime (without waiting days). And yes, you do get root. So, what's the point again?

All of that having been said, Joyent provides a good, stable service, and I'm a customer. They could instead do a good job of pointing out what is special about their service. But Joyent's flackish attempt at PR differentiation is an embarrassment, a failed attempt to get some press in the firestorm surrounding the Google App Engine release.

Note: I left a much nicer comment along these lines on Joyent's blog, but I guess they didn't think it was too funny, because they deleted it. So why have a comments section at all? Cowards. If they want PR Newswire, they should use it – not a blog. (Besides, maybe they'd spell-check for them.)

---

Turns out they probably didn't delete my post, but their blog has a cute feature: you post a comment and it appears immediately, but if you refresh the page it is gone. Then later (maybe after moderation?) it appears again. No "moderating your ill-considered flames" or "standby while the gerbils spin": comment is there, then it's gone. Then it's back, apparently.

Kudos to Kristie, the nice salesperson who responded.