Planet Open Clip Art Library

This is a small world

2009-11-03T10:28:00+00:00

This morning when going to work I somehow noticed (I usually don't look for such things) this small poster glued on the wall of a building close to my office (less than 50 meters away):

Noting out of the extraordinary, some small firm advertising for pet services, but what drew my attention was the drawing in the top-right corner with a dog head. It was looking familiar, as it is one of my drawings published at the Open Clip Art Library and it made my day!

I made it years ago, exercising original drawing made with the mouse, so the result is not great, but I submitted it to the library anyway, as I do with all my drawings which are not made for a specific project. And I found awesome how a little graphic contributed to an international project found its way back to a few meters away of me. Either the world is very small or what we are doing is really useful for the people.

Now to be honest, I can't say for sure if the image is taken from openclipart.org, from my own website, where the images are also available, or from one of the many other websites redistributing, grace to the PD dedication, the openclipart.org content. But this is irrelevant, the goal was achieved.

PS: is not wise to base your company logo on Public Domain clipart, but for very small companies this is not a real problem, they don't have real branding.

StatusNet FollowUp Press

2009-11-02T19:24:37+00:00

What a hyperactive last few weeks! Life keeps accelerating it seems. If you missed this press, a couple of great posts about community advising I’m doing with Status.Net. ReadWriteWeb wrote:

The news is significant as it reflects the interest in open-source alternatives to the proprietary microblogging services that currently dominate the market in the consumer and enterprise communities.

Also, please read the big news about Status.Net closing another round of investment which allows for myself, Brion, Evan and more all work on such a great project.

Clip Art of the Month: Holiday images

2009-11-02T14:28:24+00:00

November 2009 Clip Art of the Month salutes the Holiday Season!

Businesses shut down. Productivity slows to a halt. Shopping malls are so full of people they’re bursting at the seems. These are just some of the ideas brought to mind as the end of the year approaches and a new Holiday Season is upon us.

A source of stress, at times, the Holidays can also be a time of togetherness and unity for people. Clip art images by liftarn (above) and bloodsong (below) beautifully demonstrate how simple and effective imagery can articulate these same feelings.

Vector graphics have also been stylistically implemented by mcol’s Christmas tree in the spirit of the Holiday Season.

The Open Clip Art Library is always evolving and welcomes contributions from everyone around the world.

Clip Art of the month is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

Autumn bokeh

2009-11-02T12:41:00+00:00

If there is one word to describe the Fedora 12 wallpaper is "bokeh", the miriad of circles of light (and it was even stronger in early iterations), so with this in mind, no wonder I remembered the wallpaper when shooting a beautiful autumn bokeh, even if the composition and tones were entirely different.

Samsung Moment to MacBook USB Connection Problem Solved

2009-11-02T07:29:30+00:00

I posted about my difficulties connecting my Samsung Moment to my Mac laptop. If you want to, you can read those trials and tribulations.

If you just want the solution...

After looking for drivers, doing various experiments, and getting feedback from others with the same problem, I just hunted for any and all settings having to do with USB and one finally worked. It may not be perfect, but this seems to help.

Go into Settings -> Applications -> Development

Turn on USB debugging ("Debug mode when USB is connected"). It will recognize that a USB connection now exists.

A widget will pop up on your Mac saying it's recognized a network device and will want to install the phone as a modem. Don't worry about it. It's a red herring. I never configured that, never connected that.

Go into "Notifications" and you'll see a notification under "Ongoing" that says "USB Connected (select to copy files to/from your computer)". Touch it.

You'll get a dialogue with the title "USB Connected" and the text "You have connected your phone to your computer via USB. Select 'Mount' if you want to copy files between your computer and your phone's SD card." It offers options of "Mount" and "Don't Mount". Touch "Mount".

A removeable drive will appear in Finder called "No Name". That's your Micro SD card and you can begin copying files. You'll need to unmount the card for applications on the phone to have access to it. I created a folder called "Music" in the DCIM folder, put a couple of MP3s in there and I'm listening to them now.

Don't know if this will work with Snow Leopard's built-in sync program or third party sync programs, but I'm happily able to move media back and forth which is HUGE for me.

Samsung Moment and MacBook Pro (Snow Leopard)

2009-10-31T00:48:46+00:00

I got my Samsung Moment this afternoon and have been enjoying exploring it. I finally got around to connecting it to my laptop via the included mini-USB cable. While it is getting current via the connection and shows it's charging, it is not, OTOH, seeming to get data. My laptop doesn't see the phone and the phone is not displaying the USB icon to indicate that it's connected to a computer via USB.

I'll be researching this and trying to figure out how to get my Android phone and Mac laptop to see each other. In the meantime, I figured I'd set a placeholder blog post now so it can get indexed into the search engines. Perhaps if anyone else finds a solution before I do, they'll stumble upon this page and leave a comment with some useful information.

Update: The Next Evening:

If you read the comments below, you'll see some of the things I tried. A USB mounting program still required the phone to recognize that a USB connection existed, which it didn't.

I hooked it to a WinXP laptop and got the two to see each other without a problem, transferred some files. So it's a problem with the Mac or some miscommunication with the Mac.

The image above is a screen cap of my system profiler app. It shows that my Macbook Pro is seeing the phone, identified as SAMSUNG_Android, but the phone isn't seeing the machine. I've rebooted the phone with the machine connected to it. I've rebooted the machine with the phone connected to it. Still I can't get the phone to recognize that it's connected to a computer.

It's definitely getting current via the connection. I charged it from 60% to full via the USB connection to my Mac.

I've posted a query to the community forums at Sprint's site. We'll see if we get a a response.

Update: Sunday Morning:

The thread over at the Sprint forums has delivered in part. We've determined it's not the Mac hardware because other respondents in the thread have been able to pair it up with Windows and Linux running in virtual machines on their MacBook Pro laptops. So there's some incompatibility occurring with Android and Snow Leopard.

So the question is whether the phone's software needs to be patched, whether Snow Leopard needs to be patched, or if (as I'm hoping), there's a simple config change you can make on OS X that will solve the problem. We'll see.

Update: Sunday Night:

SOLVED! I was going deep through the Moment's menus and found a kludge/workaround that is at least getting the phone to recognize a connection exists and giving me the external drive functionality so I can transfer files back and forth through the USB connection without having to pull the battery, pull the Micro SD card, and plug the card into a reader/adapter.

How to Connect your Samsung Moment to your Mac

Recipe: Tater Tot Casserole

2009-10-30T16:16:17+00:00

My son has been disappointed recently because I have decided to boycott Taco Time. Think of it as if you created a Mexican restaurant and applied a Northwestern Scandinavian sensibility to its food. We're not talking Lutefisk tacos, but the food is just sort of boring. That's not why I'm boycotting it though. I'm boycotting it because their drive through is the slowest I've ever encountered, and despite the extra time, they have a tendency to get my order wrong. Last time, they gave me a chicken taco salad instead of a beef taco salad, and their chicken is disgusting. It tastes like it's warmed-over canned chicken and it's just terrible. I'm just done with them.

The one thing was, instead of potato chunks (like Taco Bell) or french fries (like just about everywhere else), they served tater tots (calling them "Mexi Fries"), and my older boy loved to get a kid-size quesadilla and tater tots from them. Since he could no longer have Taco Time tater tots, I thought I'd console him by trying my hand at a recipe I'd only heard of in hushed whispers, a dish that can drive a cardiologist to acts of violence... Tater Tot Casserole. It's the holy grail of fat and starch, and I was pretty sure my kid would love it.

Here are the components:

Equipment:

2.5 quart covered casserole dish
mixing bowl
spoon

Ingredients:

2 lb. bag of frozen tater tots
10 ounce can of condensed cream of potato soup
16 ounce tub of sour cream
6 oz can of french fried onions
2 cups of shredded cheese (packed)
3 bun length hotdogs
1 tablespoon canola oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon onion powder

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Put the oil in the casserole dish and use a paper towel to spread it around the bottom and sides of the dish.

Quarter the hotdogs lengthwise and dice into 1/4 inch bits.

In a mixing bowl, combine the sour cream, soup, half the cheese, half the fried onions, the salt, the pepper, the onion powder, the rosemary, and the hotdog bits.

Create a single layer of tater tots in the bottom of the casserole, laying them lengthwise, and try to fit in as many as you can. Spoon the sour cream mixture over that, creating a fairly even layer.

Cover the sour cream layer with the remaining tots and press them in gently. Cover the tots with the remaining cheese in an even layer. Cover the cheese with the remaining french fried onions in an even layer.

Cover the casserole with its lid and put it in the oven for 1 hour. After 1 hour, remove the lid and let bake for another 10 or so minutes to gently brown the french fried onions on top.

Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes, then serve. It's best if you mash all the bits together once it's on the plate so all the flavors get distributed around. It also stands up well to reheating in the microwave.

Enjoy!

UNetbootWHAT?

2009-10-30T11:57:00+00:00

A friend of mine is using his free time to teach about Linux and FLOSS at a school - he managed to convince the school to do this on Saturdays.

Recently he did an interesting experiment with the kids: got bootable images for a number of distros and they put those on LiveUSB media and tried to boot and play with them. Unexpectedly, only Ubuntu worked and everything else failed to start, including Fedora 12 Beta, so their conclusion was "the school computer only support Ubuntu".

I was shocked to learn this, I had terrible pains with F11, which failed for every install I tried due to the Anaconda storage rewrite, but in my experience F12 was rock solid from this point of view.

But soon I identified what I believe to be the root of the problem, they used UNetbootin to write the live USB media, a tool which is supposed to work with a large very number of distros. I have no idea if Fedora 12 failed to boot because the media was written with a tool not updated for our new hybrid images or due to general suckiness of the tool, but I was really amused to read on UNetbootin web page (emphasis mine):

"Requirements: Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, or Linux. If you are having trouble with the Linux version, try the Windows version, it usually works better."

Hint for my friend Tibi: next time use "dd" on Linux. It will work better (at least for Fedora).

Request for help with Transmageddon

2009-10-29T11:25:51+00:00

One task I been trying quite a few times with Transmageddon is to port it from libglade to gtkbuilder. So far I have always failed for some reason or the other. A big part of it is that I have tons of examples out there for how things are done with libglade, but not so much for gtkbuilder yet.

That said I am also convinced that someone with the right skills could do the port in about 30 minutes or so. Which is the reason for this blog post. Is there anyone out there who would be willing to cook up a patch for me to port Transmageddon to gtkbuilder? (Its written in Python). If so please grab either the latest release or check out git master from GNOME git.

Any help with this would be much appreciated.

Update: Multiple patches received, much appreciated. I will use weekend to try to merge

WWGZ Oct 2009 – Jia Junpeng your mother’s calling you to go to WWGZ

2009-10-28T20:16:40+00:00

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WWGZ Oct 2009 – Jia Junpeng your mother’s calling you to go to WWGZ, originally uploaded by adeh.

Cranking in China on big things! I found at the shanzhai market a stack of stickers used to make knock-off products and had fun converting my phones and other people’s electronics to other devices today.

Web Wednesday Guangzhou massive fun, great work to http://kudelabs.com for great event organizing and more!

Nasty Old People – a great CC-Licensed Feature Film

2009-10-28T14:04:26+00:00

I just downloaded and watched the new CC-Licensed Swedish full length feature film (Nasty old people) and was amazed by the charm and passion of it, you can legally download here.

please consider supporting the producer and the movie http://nastyoldpeople.org

The story of Mette:

Member of a neo-Nazi gang, her day job is to take care of four crazy old people that all are just waiting to die. Her life becomes a journey into a burlesque fairytale, where the rules of the game are created by Mette herself. Mette is indifferent about her way of life, until she one night assaults a man, kicking him senseless. Waking up the day after, she realizes that something is wrong, and in company with the her crazy oldies she longs for respect and love. She can tell that the old folks are marginalized by the modern society, but together they create a world and a voice of their own.

Trailer:

Get the movie:

Nasty Old People is available to download as a torrent file from either THE PIRATE BAY or by using THIS LINK

Movie license:

Nasty Old People has the Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA. This means that you don't need to ask for permission to copy, share or remix this film, as long as you mention the people that have produced this movie (you do this by linking to http://www.nastyoldpeople.org/, as long as you don't use it for commercial purposes and as long as you allow others to remix your remixes. Also, you have to link to the original license.

Mobile linux and the desktop

2009-10-28T10:55:41+00:00

Edward pointed my to this blog today which brought up a point I myself have been making in regards to Android. I spoke to several people at the CE Linux meeting a couple of weeks ago about this for one. To quote from the blog:

Android is an island of its own, and useful code sharing is largely limited to the kernel.

At Collabora Multimedia we are currently working with both Maemo and Android systems and while I can see the appeal of Android from a phone makers perspective I can’t help but be a little saddened by how worthless it is to the general linux eco-system. One of the things I always loved about Nokia’s Maemo effort is that since its using so many of the standard components that we use on the Linux Desktop, it means that when a feature is added or a bug is fixed in Maemo, it directly helps also the linux desktop. Nokia and Maemo has had a strong and direct impact on a lot of open source projects, ranging from GStreamer, D-bus, GTK+, Telepathy, Matchbox, X Window System and more. And Nokia’s work on Qt going forward will of course have a direct impact on the quality of KDE.

Android on the other side has a much more marginal impact. I know they have contributed some patches to Webkit, but apart from that they offer little value to the rest of the linux eco-system. Been even told by some kernel developers that an Android kernel driver is about as immediately useful for the mainstream kernel as a FreeBSD or OpenSolaris driver. Meaning that porting is needed.

So for me personally I can’t help but feel a lot more positive about Maemo (or Moblin for that matter as they too share the same kind of philosophy as Maemo) and getting a N900 is definitely on my TODO list. That said Android is a work in progress and hopefully we can get them to abandon their essentially proprietary stack going forward and instead incorporate more and more shared libraries with the server and desktop. Maemo has proved that for a smartphone these libraries works just as well as Googles homebrew. Some of the efforts we are involved with are pushing in that direction and hopefully Google will realize that the secret to the success of open source is synergy.

Airing

2009-10-28T08:43:00+00:00

I learned the series about Linux and FLOSS will start airing on the Romanian national (public) television, with the first part, where Lucian and me talked about what is Linux, the purpose of distros, a comparison of Ubuntu and Fedora and more being expected tomorrow.

The bad part is the show was moved from Saturday morning to Thursday afternoon, so is hard to catch by someone with a full time job like me, the good part is the show will probably be re-run (again and again, at unknown dates and times) on TVRHD, a channel with smaller audience but better image quality (HD).

So if you have the time, watch TVR2, tomorrow Thursday, 29 October 2009 in between 17:00-17-30 to catch our little segment (I believe around 5 minutes long) in the show called Zon@ IT. I don't own the needed hardware, but if someone have a capture device, please share (I didn't saw the record myself yet, will not be able to catch it directly, so I am curious about it first hand, thanks).

Padding

2009-10-28T07:34:00+00:00

That would normally be a mere comment, but since some people do not like the dialog and close the comment forms on their blog, I had to make it into a full blog post.

I see Matthias is very proud about his 5 tweaks for the F12 desktop (it seems he forgot the 6th, the removal of the "hide all windows" buttons), but as soon as one of them, the padding patch hit Rawhide (post feature-freeze) I started seeing people crying on user forums, wondering if it is a bug and other innocent but clueless people advising to play with the DPI settings or other useless things.

When I point this is a deliberate design decision, people thank goodness the setting can be reverted back to the original value, a sentiment I am totally sympathetic with, since myself also prefer the icons/items grouped close to the corners, not spread all over the panel and making it feel even more busy.

Tip: turn the padding back with:

gconftool-2 --type int --set /apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel/padding 0
gconftool-2 --type int --set /apps/panel/toplevels/bottom_panel/padding 0

Getting Ready for Trip to Damascus, Amman and Beirut

2009-10-28T04:46:37+00:00

السيرة الذاتية بأربع جمل

جون فيليبس يعمل في مجال التطوير الإجتماعي والإقتصادي. وقد شارك في عام 2002 في إطلاق أداة الرسم مفتوحة المصدر إنكسكيب ( inkscape) وقام بتأسيس مكتبة الرسومات العامة Open Clip Art. وقد قام بين عامي 2005 و 2008 بالعمل كمسؤول تطوير اقتصادي وعلاقات عامة لمؤسسة المشاع الإبداعي ( Creative Commons )، وهو حالياً زميل للمنظمة. كما أنه يعمل على تطوير شركة الإعلام فابيركاتورز ( Fabricatorz )، ومعارض ( Cantocore ) للفن، وأنظمة صوت ليوبان، كما يشارك في إطلاق مشروع بيئة التدوين المصغر (Status.Net). كما أنه مشهور ببناء علاقات عمل دولية من خلال قيامه بتطوير نظم إقتصادية حديثة في آسيا وخاصة في الصين، كما يسوق لمفاهيم التسويق المنفتح.

Oh, if you can’t see the above, you need to install some language packs. Here is how you can do markup right-to-left.

Trapped on Windows

2009-10-28T01:55:34+00:00

I was recently approached by a friend of my mothers who was absolutely done with Microsoft, she just couldn't stand Windows any longer. I didn't ask what the specific issues were, but imagine they were the standard problems.

She had heard about Mac, but the problem was that she used some software for her business which was not supported on Mac, which they used to generate labels for products they sold. She was going to check if the software was supported on Ubuntu. I'm not holding my breath.

This is sort of a fascinating niche... people who desperately WANT to change, and most likely would be totally happy with Ubuntu, but they're trapped on windows, locked in by a simple business app.

I don't think this is a very small niche, either. Think of the many small companies built around some pencil ordering app, or that use some wonky windows app to operate their machine tools, or etc.

I suppose every one of us has run up against someone in this niche. Uncle Harry at last year's Christmas party, or that guy you sat next to on the train, or your best friend from college.

This niche seems much like the gamer niche, stuck in a chicken-and-egg situation. The app is developed for Windows because that's what people use. People stay on Windows because that's what the app was developed to run on.

How do we break that cycle and enable these people to gain their freedom?

Arr!

2009-10-27T22:11:26+00:00

Dutch's baby announcement:

It's raining FLOSS conferences

2009-10-27T08:12:00+00:00

If a while ago I thought there is very little of it, now it seems FLOSS conferences show in Romania like the mushrooms after a rain: first this year was eLiberatica, which this year made some steps in the right direction, towards community and openness, but still remain a commercial event.

Then FLOSSCamp, very fun, open and informal, but still a kind of conference.

Now, this week Bucharest is taking place LOAD, which smells like an incestuous way for some local distributor to milk money from a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.

Next, for December is expected BLUG*OS*CON, which is new, at the first edition, so only the time will tell about it (I will be there, expect a report).

And this is not all, I know at least two other groups having on their agenda a „national FLOSS conference”. Isn't this a bit too much? I believe the natural evolution is supposed to filter this on the long term and promote quality over quantity.

Rubbing Pork Chops With My Son

2009-10-26T05:27:05+00:00

My birthday is coming up, so as part of my birthday present, my wife found a parent-child cooking class through one of the local parks and recreation departments and reserved places in it for me and my older boy (who is 4.5). We told him that he was taking me to the class as his birthday present to me.

When I got there, the class instructor was shocked and joyed to have a "daddy" there. Seems men at these classes are a rare and wonderful thing. Out of 9 parents there, I was the only man, and my son was one of two boys out of ten kids. We had some food related games and then the kids helped spread pepperoni and cheese on a class pizza to eat there, then used various items to turn two pieces of naan into "pizza faces" while the class pizza cooked. We took the pizza faces home and cooked them for lunch afterward.

They put out chopped red cabbage for hair, but they also put out big leaves of basil for ears. I borrowed a knife from the instructor's assistant and cut some basil into strips to use as hair. Much cooler... and more flavorful.

Tonight, I defrosted some pork chops and let my son help me do some of the prep work. They're the super-thick chops you get at Costco, so I butterflied them into a more manageable thickness, then he helped me scoop spices to make a dry rub.

1/4 cup brown sugar
1 rounded tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons granulated garlic
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
1 teaspoon kosher salt

I sprinkled the rub onto the chops to make sure he didn't spill it all over or dump half the mix on one chop, but he helped me pat it into the meat. Then we washed our hands, covered the plate with plastic wrap, and let the rub do its magic in the fridge for 45 minutes.

I fried the chops in just enough butter to coat the bottom of the pan. I saw a thing on "America's Test Kitchen" where they said the secret to juicy pork chops it to cook them over lower heat. Bringing them up to the doneness you desire more slowly wrings less of the natural moisture out of them. I've found it works.

And doing it with my rub and some butter leaves this mixture of butter, sugar, pork fat, and just a little bit of pork juices in the pan that's a perfect medium for cooking up a couple of sliced onions while you let the chops rest. I defrosted and drained some frozen chopped spinach, then threw it in with the onions at the end to warm.

Served the chops on a bed of the onion/spinach mixture with a squeeze of lime. Mmmm. This is the second time I've done this rub on pork chops and my wife tells me it's a keeper. The boy likes it too and he likes being a part of the process.

IMVU = Spammers

2009-10-25T09:31:02+00:00

A week ago, I got two e-mails from IMVU: one welcoming me, and one asking me to confirm my address for registration. I didn't recall ever registering there. They said in their confirmation e-mail: "If you did not sign up for IMVU, ignore this email. We will not continue to send mail to unverified addresses."

That appears to be an outright lie. A day later, at exactly the same time of day, they sent me a notice that I had a private message... from them... offering me a special deal on credits. Four days later, they sent two more e-mails about an hour apart, again requesting that I verify my e-mail address. Each one bore the claim that they will not continue to send mail to unverified addresses.

Since you have to start an account with their helpdesk system just to complain, I sent an e-mail off to their press contact asking if they could help so I wouldn't have to out them as dishonest spammers.

Then the day after that, they sent me an e-mail telling me my IMVU pet missed me. So, apparently they send plenty of mail to unverified addresses and just lie to people.

I guess I have to go on the offensive, so I'm calling them out as spammers. IMVU... FU.

UPDATE: The press contact passed on my mail and I received a response from IMVU stating that the account has been disabled and giving me a person to contact if I continue to receive mails from them. They didn't make it easy to stop the flow of mail, but once I got hold of someone, they took appropriate action.

karmic and log rotation

2009-10-24T18:00:30+00:00

In Ubuntu’s Karmic and and Debian’s Lenny, sysklogd was replaced with rsyslog. This is fine, since rsyslog will have converted your /etc/syslog.conf to /etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf. However, if you modified the (maddeningly strange sysklogd-specific) log file rotation in /etc/cron.daily/sysklogd or /etc/cron.weekly/sysklogd, you’ll want to review the new (sane) /etc/logrotate.d/rsyslog. (Note also that savelog uses .0 as the first rotated file extension, and logrotate uses .1.)

Welcoming new team members to Collabora Multimedia

2009-10-23T13:56:02+00:00

We have recently added 3 new members to our growing Multimedia team and GStreamer consulting business. The first one onboard was Thiago Sousa Santos who I think many of you probably already know as he has been a regular GStreamer contributor for the last few years. He also wrote some important plugins for GStreamer as part of the last two Google Summer of Code projects, namely the Quicktime/MP4/3GPP muxer for GStreamer and this year the ASF muxer and ASF RTP payloader. Having been so impressed with his work as part of the community over the last few years we made sure to snatch him up as soon as he graduated from University

The second person we added to our team was Robert Swain. He might not be familiar to people following GStreamer or GNOME, but he has been an active contributor to the ffmpeg project, working for instance on improving the AAC support in ffmpeg. A lot of the work we do at Collabora Multimedia is of course low level multimedia handling and optimisations and Robert will strengthen our capabilities in that field. Also with his experience with ffmpeg we can hopefully use his knowledge to improve the GStreamer ffmpeg plugin where possible.

And finally we have Arun Raghavan, who will be joining us next Month. Arun comes to us recommended by Pulse Audio maintainer Lennart Poettering and will be part of our effort to officially support the Pulse Audio sound server as part of our portfolio of open source projects we offer expertise and consulting services around. Wim Taymans have been moonlighting a bit as a pulse audio developer over the last year, but with Arun on the team we now have a person dedicated to Pulse Audio development, making sure Pulse Audio works great for our customers on their embedded systems. We also hope his efforts will pay dividends for Pulse Audio users on the desktop too in terms of more features and better stability. The synergy we are able to create between the embedded world and the desktop is part of our core mission here at Collabora and with Arun on the team we hope to continue and deepen the great working relationship we have established with Lennart. As a sidenote Arun comes to us from NVidia so maybe we can even have him help improve the GStreamer vdpau plugins

Speaking of synergies between embedded and desktop work, I hope everyone read Guillaume Desmottes blog post about Collabora’s increased effort behind the Empathy chat,VoIP and video conferencing client

Inkscape 0.47pre4 is out

2009-10-23T12:00:15+00:00

Hopefully pre4 is the final prerelease. Please download the files and let us know if you stumble upon any serious bugs except the infamous crash when undoing changes in live path effects. We probably won't release the final version within next couple of weeks, because we really need the LPE bug fixed.

A Book of Inkscape, by Dmitry Kirsanov

2009-10-23T12:00:15+00:00

A very anticipated book on Inkscape called "A Book of Inkscape", written by Dmitry Kirsanov, finally hit the shelves. The book covers features of the upcoming 0.47 version, while explaining how to effectively use Inkscape for many tasks. Both novices and experienced designers will find the book a great help to start using Inkscape.

Better webcam support

2009-10-23T11:18:00+00:00

One of the features listed at every Fedora release is Better Webcam Support and as it does not sound very sexy, it tends to get overlooked, I don't think I mention it myself when translating a summary of the features in a new release. Shame on me.

More than one year ago I got a "free" cheap and poor webcam (read 'crappy', powered by the sn9c20x chipset)- it was thrown by the store at a bonus when purchasing something (IIRC a scanner). My frustration with grew fast and large, wasn't able to make it work on Linux, so I just gave it away to a colleague to use it with Yahoo Messenger on Windows.

Fast forward today, the webcam returned to me and on a whim I said to myself "what will happen it I plug it into my newly installed Fedora 12 Beta?"

Pleasant surprise: it worked! Sure, not the best image quality (the camera is cheap and not new any more), but I don't really need it for anything.

So yes, there are things to complain in F12, but also there are a lot of enjoyable parts.

TPM as RNG

2009-10-23T06:43:29+00:00

I was reminded about some TPM coding I’d done to get random bytes from the pRNG on my TPM-enabled system from Matt Domsch’s recent post. I’m not fully convinced that the pRNG of the TPM is an appropriate source of entropy, but it does pass my simple FIPS-140-2 test.

I had to find the Intel TPM docs to figure out how to enable TPM on my system. It was under “Advanced / Peripherals”. I was expecting it under “Security”, like every other BIOS I’d seen. After that:

$ sudo apt-get install trousers tpm-tools
...
$ sudo modprobe tpm_tis
$ dmesg | grep -i tpm
[676618.167313] tpm_tis 00:07: 1.2 TPM (device-id 0xFE, rev-id 70)
$ sudo service trousers start
...
$ tpm_version
TPM 1.2 Version Info:
Chip Version: 1.2.2.16
Spec Level: 2
Errata Revision: 1
TPM Vendor ID: WEC
TPM Version: 01010000
Manufacturer Info: 57454300
$ ./tpm-getrand | hexdump -C
00000000 61 07 23 ff 71 3e 25 e8 f0 d5 de a7 a3 07 21 dc |a.#.q>%.......!.|

I could run rngd with a named pipe, but it’d be nice to have a new driver that could run a command instead to get the next 20000 bits.

UPDATE: I’ve implemented this in rngd now.

Vision Forum Shenzhen China October 23 – 25

2009-10-23T02:17:22+00:00

[ Updated Laoban Logo Chinese Stylee ]

This weekend I’m in Shenzhen, China to work on the second part of the Vision Forum project with Per Huttner, Robin Peckham and Venus Lau’s Kunsthalle Kowloon project, and other artists to do projects in realtime. This is the follow-up set of events and performances after the last ones at Vision Forum Melbourne, Australia.

The events start tonite, Friday, October 23 in the evening outside of OCAT with the Laoban Shanzhai Soundsystem composed of knock-off speakers to do live performances in realtime. I’m going to be doing some mixing as Kidproto, live. Robin and Venus will be there, and many more Laoban crew!

On Saturday and Sunday, we will use the Shanzhai Soundsystem for performances and events. On Sunday, we will spend the day doing Urban soccer, but it should be happening the whole weekend. Here are the instructions for Urban Soccer: Buy a soccer ball, Play soccer throughout an urban area with people, Create new games and play old ones, and Have Fun!

Here is the basic schedule for the weekend

Friday, Oct 23

Outside OCAT/C:Union (listen for sounds)
* Xiaoban Shanzhai Speakers, anthem remix (jonphillips as kidproto), other performers to be announced! outside of OCAT/C:Union areas

Neighborhood of OCAT
* Performance by Per Hüttner and others (18 -21:00)

OCAT Loft
* Neno (20.00-21:00) (ask for directions at previous events)

Saturday, Oct 24

daytime, 10:00- 12:00 am, 15:00-17:00 pm
* Natasha (10:00-13:00)- lawn
* Yang Zhifei (all day, few number of places please book in advance)-bookbar
* Dinu (unannounced)- maybe supermarket (let me know what you think about this dinu!)
* Per (unanounced)- in underground/subway
* Neno (unanounced)- in the neighbourhood of OCAT
* Hu Xiangqian (16:00-17:00)

Sunday, Oct 25
OCAT Loft
* Yang ZhiFei, OCAT studio sound with xiaoban speakers with drawings

Daytime, OCAT studio D, 12:00-17:00
* Including documentation/installation of Yang ZhiFei and documentation of unannounced projects from the previous day.
* Jon Phillips presents urban soccer

Here is a bit more text about the event, and you can read the working pages on my IDEA wiki:

Program:

The Invisible Generation
- workshop of the Fourth OCAT International Art Residency

The Invisible Generation: a project by William S. Burroughs filtered through time, Daniele Balit and Per Hüttner.

http://theinvisiblegeneration.blogspot.com/

(Close to OCAT – evening)

Jon Phillips presents Laoban Shanzhai Soundsystem outdoors in the evening and used throughout the weekend in Shenzhen. These will then be used to play a series of contemporary sound pieces, and other realtime performances.

http://fabricatorz.com/laoban

(outside OCAT – evening))

Neno Belchev – Bicycle, Suitcase Performance.

The artist has created a special suitcase with a hidden camera that is connected to a monitor. The artist will be hidden in the suitcase and we can follow his tormented life in the claustrophobic space on the screen.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile//15669.html

Various unannounced pieces will take place Friday night as well.

(Close to OCAT – evening)

Saturday October 24

Hu Xiangqian – The Movement is the Music (Working title)

Hu Xiangqian is engaged in a research where he investigates music as a source for movement rather than sound. He will carry out a performance where either non-musicians play with professional musicians or where professional musicians do movements with their instruments.

(Close to OCAT – evening)

Natasha Rosling – Performative Sculptures – various public spaces in Shenzhen.

Natasha Rosling has since the beginning of her career created structures that break the boundaries of clothing, sculpture and performance. For Shenzhen, she will produce a series of interactive sculptures that she will mount and wear in a series of public spaces.

http://www.natasharosling.com/

(Close to OCAT – day)

Yang Zhifei – Dream workshops

Amsterdam-based artist Yang Zhifei will realise a series of workshops that are open to the public and that investigate the similarities and individuality of dreams. She has been researching the nature of human dreams as a part of her artistic practice for many years.

(OCAT library- day)

5. Per Hüttner – Deja-vu

Per Hüttner’ performance will be realised by a series of young, local actors of similar height and appearance. They will be dressed in identical clothes and will perform the same everyday actions, creating a kind of real déjà-vu.

http://www.perhuttner.com

(Shenzhen Underground – day)

Neno Belchev – Zebra crossing performance

One of the things that Bulgaria and China have in common is the fact that everyone crosses the street anywhere and at any time. Belchev has produced his own rolled up Zebra crossing which can be unrolled anywhere and that allows its user to cross the street anywhere and at any time.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile//15669.html

(Close to OCAT – day)

Dinu Li.

Dinu Li will present a Flash mob-like action on the Shenzhen Underground. He will work with a group of workers from a nearby village in Guangdong. case They will appear to be complete strangers will accuse each other of being “the corrupted one”. The performance is totally unannounced.

http://www.dinuli.com/

(Shenzhen Underground – day)

(Big Dinner)

Sunday October 25

Yang Zhifei – Dream workshop exhibition

The outcome of Yang ZhiFei’s workshops in Beijing and Shenzhen will be presented with drawings and sounds in a one-day exhibition in one of the studios at OCAT, using Jon Phillips and Matt Hope’s xiaoban speakers.

(OCAT artists studios – day)

All artists – documentation

All artists will in a very informal way present their documentation and experiences of the previous two days.

Urban Soccer, Jon Phillips presents Here’s the plan: Buy a soccer ball, Play soccer throughout an urban area with people, Create new games and play old ones, Have Fun!

(OCAT artists studios – day)

Ongoing during the weekend and the week that follows

Josefin Wikström – Deep Inside and artist TBA.

Curator Josefin Wikström is developing a project within Invisible Generation where she invites artists to make work in non-traditional spaces in art institutions: toilets, hallways, offices etc. For Shanzhen Wikström will present soundwork by artists such as Yan Jun.

The Invisible Generation: a project by William S. Burroughs filtered through time and Per Hüttner and Daniele Balit is presented in Melbourne, Shenzhen, Beijing and Kiev in 2009 and 2010.
web: http://theinvisiblegeneration.blogspot.com
mail: vfprog@gmail.com

Organized by: Vision Forum in collaboration with OCAT in Shenzhen.

Supporting institutions: French Embassy in Australia, French Embassy in Kiev, Swedish Embassy in Peking, Swedish Embassy in Kiev, the Swedish Institute in Stockholm, The Consulate of Sweden in Guangzhou, Längmanska Kulturfonden in Stockholm and Linköpings Univesitet in Norrköping and FRAC Île-de-France in Paris.

Jon Phillips (rejon) Joins StatusNet

2009-10-23T01:43:05+00:00

Over at the StatusNet blog, I just announced my role in launching some big things with Evan, Brion and crew! Here is a snippet, but please read the rest over at StatusNet blog:

[ photo by-sa asadal ]

Many of you know me as @REJON, my past endeavours growing the open source drawing app, Inkscape, the Open Clip Art Library, Libre Graphics Meeting, making soundsystems and using Identi.ca as my social playground. Most connect to me here as the Creative Commons Community and Business Development Manager where I hacked, started Creative Commons Salons with Eric Steuer, and served as human inbox for Google, Yahoo, Apple, and other organizations for CC. I still lock-down a title as a fellow at Creative Commons, and am still working on various international initiatives with CC in the Middle-East and Asia. We all love CC!

[ Many of you know me as this disembodied head. I actually smile much more like the photo at the top ]

Without further intro, and as Evan mentioned previously, I’m pleased to announce that I’m immediately taking on a role as Community Consultant for Status.Net to ramp up and help with some large projects Status.Net is building, including an upcoming relaunch and adding capacity to fun roles that Evan had been doing Han Solo. By becoming part of the Status.Net all-stars, Evan will be freed up to be uber-CEO rather than having to wear 50 different hats.

Please read the rest over at the StatusNet blog.

Give back my icons

2009-10-22T12:30:00+00:00

To have the party complete, after you installed Fedora 12 [beta] you most likely will want some eye candy back (it was removed during this release cycle), so the first thing you way want to do is to restore beauty/sanity by changing one or two GConf entries:

So check menus_have_icons and your icons are back, not only in applications but most importantly in Places and System. Being at it, you may consider scrolling up a bit to buttons_have_icons and cancel the uglification of various dialogs.

Then you can enjoy F12.

My own Windows 7 party

2009-10-22T09:35:00+00:00

As those Windows 7 parties hosted all around the world I decided to celebrate by hosting my own party by updating the netbook from Fedora 11 to Fedora 12 Beta and sharing the photos:

boot, partitions, software selection, install, multimedia, done
Unfortunately, there was no booze as a) it was too early in the morning and b) I am at the office with some work to do in parallel. And unfortunately no booze this evening either, some of the Fedora guys are out of town and Ceata is caught in a programming workshop. There is time in the following days.

The install was smoother, as the experience with upgrading the desktop last week helped me to avoid wasting time with dreaded experiences GNOME Shell.

I think I may continue the party with upgrading a CentOS box tomorrow.

Take 6: OSM

2009-10-21T14:22:00+00:00

After some pause today went to the television for the sixth part, where following reader suggestions I invited Eddy to talk about Open Street Map, a project I am not very familiar with, but well covered by him.

And there are exciting news: it seems the shows will start airing next week, Thursday 29 October, around 17:00 on TVR2.

Clip Art of the Month: Raulxav’s RSS Music Icon

2009-10-21T13:21:53+00:00

“Clip Art of the Month” honors for October of 2009 go to raulxav for his unique spin on the RSS feed icon.

Regular internet users know that RSS feeds can significantly reduce time spent finding new content on your favorite web pages. With this influx of content flooding users’ RSS Readers, content producers must find ways to attract new subscribers and keep them reading.

While valuable content is the surest way to accomplish this, the importance of catching a reader’s eye cannot be ignored.

Raulxav has demonstrated other ideas for RSS icons, and I encourage you to consider ways in which you might catch a reader’s attention.

Visit the Open Clip Art Library to learn how you can contribute.

Clip Art of the month is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

Farmville

2009-10-21T11:18:26+00:00

My sister laughs that farmville is what got me onto facebook. But hearing my mom talk about "helping other people's farms", I couldn't resist. I hadn't heard of such a socially-oriented game and wanted to give it a go.

Zynga, the company that makes farmville and a bunch of other games, clearly has a good mind about game balance. If you're a total hard core gamer, you can sort out the cost/benefit ratio of all the items and min/max your farm design to get maximum profit. Or, on the other hand, if you're a socialite and just know a LOT of people, you can just make a bunch of friends and get just as much benefit. That's pretty dang cool.

It's also interesting how they set up their games to provide some stuff in-game for free, and other stuff only for "FarmVille Bucks" - which are available for a purchase in real-world cash. At first, I think this is just a "cheat". As a player, if I open my wallet and get the "FarmVille Bucks" it's like I've paid off the dealer.

Ultimately though, I recognize that Zynga exists to make money. They're a for-profit company that wants to pay their employees for their creativity and hard work. It's a business model not unlike the one of the company I work for. So, if they offer something that *I* value, I don't feel guilt in paying them the money for it. Maybe some of my fellow players will consider it cheating, but I think the company is doing a good job all things considered and they deserve a tip.

Ultimately, I'd have liked to see an even more socially oriented game design. I'm a bit surprised that neighbors can't have more of an impact on your farm. I understand there's probably game balance reasons why (who'd want to come back to your farm to find it rearranged by other people?) but it seems a logical direction to go. So far you can fertilize other people's farms, or write messages on stakes. I think you ought to be able to help with other people's harvests.

The way of the dodo

2009-10-21T07:58:00+00:00

Like many others, I couldn't endure the wait and moved my main desktop from Fedora 11 to 12 a few days ago, in my case using the Beta RC2, so I could take advantage of the install DVD and perform a clean install (BTW, 'ext4migrate' as an Anaconda argument was helpful with moving my /home from ext3 to ext4).

The move to the Beta was the perfect opportunity to get a glimpse of the much hyped GNOME Shell preview, you know, is like going to a road you pass next to a horrible accident but you can't avoid looking at it, you are curious to see what is about. The same with GNOME Shell, from seeing screenshots and reading about it I had a good idea about what to expect and was expecting to dislike it, but I hat to see with my own eyes, try it for a couple of days, leave the first impression settle down and only then write about.

The very first impression is created by the color scheme, which feel originated from someone with a serious Vista envy. Hell, if I wanted a Vista wannabe I would have used ...KDE 4. No, thanks.

Then I tried to do some work done and see hot it feel. As an advanced users, I don't use a single application at a time, I have at least 3-4 windows open at any time and switching from one window to another is a very common operation. Not with GNOME Shell, which make this a pain: you get the desktop zooming and jumping all the time, which is very tiring. And needing additional mouse clicks.

It was so painful that I felt the urge to make it go away as soon as possible. Good luck with that! It was impossible to find a way to kill it (later when I built the courage to try it again I found an ugly and huge 'control panel' and logout buttons are available by clicking on your own name, which I find unintuitive) so I fired a terminal, manually started gnome-effect and said goodbye.

Looking at it my best hope is there is enough time until GNOME 3.0 for this experiment to go the way of the dodo and never make as a default, It may be a pretty toy for some and may have an use case for lightweight usage of your computer (isn't Moblin, also included in the Beta, better suited for the task?) but is far from something I could use for real work.

Job Scam: ProLine Games

2009-10-20T13:50:46+00:00

Just got the following scam spam slipping in through my mail filters. I'll post the e-mail, then point out the red flags after it.

From: Arline Hazel <bhufruau5579@hotmail.com>
Subject: ProLineGames_J0B (700).

Company name: ProLineGames ltd.
Job title: Project Coordinator
Position type: Part-Time/Virtual office
Location: US only

Company overview
Company ProLineGames was founded in 2002.

Our company offers solutions for organization of on-line tournaments and launch of on-line tournaments. The company owns excellent resource base and highly qualified personnel ready to solve tasks of any level of difficulty.

Also ProLineGames ltd. focuses particular attention at conduction of off-line tournaments, because there could be nothing better than the best cyber fighters of the continent gather in one place in order to fight face to face.

Job Description
Quite recently our company introduces a new service for companies hosting own Web projects (MMORPG).
Our service supposes conduction of draws and lotteries with real prizes among the MMORPG users.

ProLineGames ltd. is always looking for skilled and talented individuals to join our company.

Currently we are seeking a part-time Project Coordinator to help the winners of tournaments in receiving information about the award, manage issues with them.

Company's provisions:

1. Flexible working schedule;
2. Commission and Bonus Opportunities;

If you are interested to find more about this position please send your resumes to: marshaproivers@gmail.com

ProLineGames ltd.

The first and most common red flag is the sender/reply mismatch. That's when you get the e-mail from some random person at a free mail service (like Hotmail) and then are asked to reply to a totally different person at another free mail service (like Gmail). If this is a reputable seven-year-old company that specializes in online games, why aren't they sending this from their own domain? I've been contacted by agencies where an assistant sends out the contact e-mail and asks me to reply directly to the recruiter, but both e-mail addresses were from the same domain for a known recruiting company, not throwaway accounts at free mail services. The only job e-mails I've received that do this are scam e-mails.

Second, who comes out of nowhere and offers you a good-paying job opportunity with flexible hours, work-from-home, etc., etc.? Scammers, that's who. As the old saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Generally the scams fall into one of three categories:

Payment Puppet: They send you forged checks or payments from hacked PayPal accounts. You cash them out and send them to your employer in Europe, Africa, or China by Western Union. A few days/weeks later, the bank or PayPal discovers the forgery/hack, and you're responsible for paying back the money.
Package Reshipper: They use forged checks, hacked PayPal accounts, and other devious methods to pay for purchases from auction sellers and other vendors. Since most won't ship to Russia, China, or African countries because so many fraudulent orders come from there, the buyers have the packages shipped to you, and you re-ship the packages out of the country to them. When the seller finds out theiy got rooked, they call the cops and give them your name and address. Then the cops want to talk to you about where the merchandise went.
Identity Theft: As part of the application/screening process, they need all sorts of information about you. You provide it and they use it to take out credit cards in your name, empty your bank account, etc. When all is said and done, your credit is ruined and you're fighting to get your life back.

In some cases, it's a combination of the three.

This looks like it might be a different scam. Helping winners of tournaments receive information about awards sounds like they might want to use you as a spam proxy or as a shill for an advance fee scam.

Advance fee scams most commonly appear in your mailbox as the Nigerian widow who needs your help to move 25 million in her husband's assets out of the country, the lawyer who believes you're the heir of a deceased millionaire, the European lottery you somehow won without ever entering, or the dying millionaire who wants your help distributing money to charity. The thing they all have in common is that if you bite, they'll run into some trouble disbursing the funds and need you to put up some money to pay a service fee, pay a bribe, whatever, to get the money released.

I'd reply to find out more about the job, but I dont for two reasons:

I never reply to spam.
These people are CRIMINALS. I'd prefer to keep my distance.

My advice is to toss out this e-mail. Don't play detective, don't think you'll have some fun trying to scam the scammers. Again, these people are CRIMINALS. If you want to report it, you can send it to your local cops, but since the scammers are out of the country, usually the best that could happen is that the authorities might run a sting and take down a domestic accomplice.

I know times are hard and jobs seem scarce. I'm job hunting too. But if you fall for a scam, whatever pain you're in now will be multiplied. Stay safe and God bless.

Education,FLOSS, underage contributors

2009-10-20T08:25:00+00:00

We received a contribution in the form of a few (anime style) character drawing sketches for a Free project promoting software freedom, but the contributor is a 15 years old girl who knows about nothing about licenses and freedom, she probably like do draw and consider the teacher to be a cool guy. Wanting to to "the right" thing, we tried to explain clearly what the free licenses are about and asked the parents to agree with the contribution. For this we put our engineer heads together and composed a text along the lines (rough English translation):

"I, ..........(parent) agree for my son/daughter, ........., to participate in the PojectName project with his/her graphic creations. Those creations will de distributed and modified with the author's attribution, according with the site terms of service"

...you can see how we tried to avoid introducing unknown terms as CC-BY, that would have confused further some parents who are not techies, as we avoided putting numbers or exact descriptions of the contributions, since you can't control those in an open project (I weighted a bit about involving the "blogosphere" into grafting the text but ultimately considered what we got "good enough").

Naturally the mother asked about the possible rewards and worried about her daughter splitting learning time with community work and naturally we answered as a 100% volunteer project we can't provide monetary compensation, we can provide some learning and experience, and if needed, some diploma.

Until now, nothing out of the ordinary to deserve wasting a blog post about, what upset me was a mother reaction like:

"If I would know she will be able later to live well from those drawings, icons, pictures... would not kill her so much with math... geometry and everything... there are so many talented kids with useless diplomas and medals they can not do anything with, they smply sell those for nothing..."

Duh! This is not an OR, is an AND, you cannot become a developed individual without art and community. Education is also culture, is finding you passion and developing it. I remember my childhood under the communist regime, when you were supposed to go to school, learn math, become an engineer, work in a factory, have children who will go to school, learn math, become engineers, work in a factory, have children...

Good thing I am a third party in the conversation above, I would have been tempted to stop it abruptly.

One year of Ceata

2009-10-19T09:30:00+00:00

Sunday a number of contributors meet for the one year anniversary of Ceata, an organization founded by a few students to promote Free technologies and arts (FLOSS), so it was an awesome opportunity to get together.

some of us
We had some surprises and it was frustrating for me to know weeks in advance about some cool [I think] personalised T-shirt designs made for a few key-contributors and not talk about them, so here are them:

Those were based on representative quotes carefully selected by Tibi from the mailing list, a rough sketch developed together by me and Tibi, with me doing the "polished" graphics:

intitial sketch

Then after a huge effort to find an usable print shop, we managed to get to the final "products":

we and our drawings

For me, they selected as a representative quote "Eu am primit 4 imbratisari de la 3 zine" (English: "I got 4 hugs from 3 fairies"), which is supposed to show the reald dreamer I am, it was seconded by a close candidate "Fedora 11 - zeite, voinici, spartani" (English: "Fedora 11 - goddesses, heroes, spartans") which lost by being locked in time to a certain version of the distribution.

me, readying to wear my mark
Of course, everything was sealed in the most traditional style with mulled wine (hell, is autumn already, with cold, endless rain):

is the time for mulled wine

Job Spam: Farmer's Insurance

2009-10-17T08:16:12+00:00

Seems like every time I update my resume on Careerbuilder, I can expect three groups to contact me: franchise consultants, people pushing MLM opportunities, and insurance companies looking for people to become agents. The most consistent of the ones in the third category is Farmer's Insurance.

Whether or not I mention a sales background on my resume, whether or not I express an interest in sales, Farmer's can be relied upon, like Clockwork, to send me a recruiting e-mail.

"Based on my initial review of your resume, I believe you may be an excellent fit for our Career Opportunity in sales..." Like how he capitalizes "career opportunity"? At least it's not in all caps. Still, what about my resume made him believe I'd be an excellent fit? I've e-mailed that question to the sender and I'll let you know what he says... if he responds.

Visual identity - ProLinux

2009-10-16T15:17:00+00:00

The visual identity for Asociatia ProLinux was established after the public announcement, to give the community a chance to get involved. Our motto is Comunitate, idei, ajutor. ProLinux
(Community, ideas, help. ProLinux) and the logo is:

Based on the logo, I quickly made a 140x140 web banner, which can easily be used by any supporter:

Returning home from CE Linux Europe

2009-10-16T12:07:32+00:00

Its been an interesting week here Grenoble, been talking with a lot of people about linux on consumer electronics in general, but also of course about the GStreamer consulting we offer at Collabora Multimedia. It is also always encouraging to see the number of people at an event like this who already have heard about Collabora, be it in conjunction with GStreamer or Telepthay or Webkit or any of the other projects we either have the lead on or are contributing heavily or been told about us by an existing customer.

We ended up having a very nice conference dinner yesterday evening at one of the restaurants on top of the mountain travelling there by cable car.

Getting ready to start my journey back home now, and while I have to say Grenoble has made a very positive impression on me, I am looking forward to getting home to Cambridge.

Job Scam: Business Consultant - JCC Inc.

2009-10-14T17:42:03+00:00

It seems that when the job scam spams reach my mailbox, they come in waves. This one came in about 8 hours after the last one. I'll post the actual mail, then we'll look at the red flags it raises.

From: Lori Sofia <thhyddea3964@hotmail.com>
Subject: Business Consultant needed. (856)
To: patelkunalr.myjobs@gmail.com

Hello.

JCC Inc. is an international company, specializing in management consulting.
We offer a full complex of consulting services to help our clients to start or improve new business. That is why request in JCC Inc. services is growing all the time.

We are looking now for a highly motivated and experienced Management Consultant to work with global company and to represent its interests.

Main responsibilities:

- Settle the legal issues
- Managing the Company’s funds
- Locate the facilities
- Carry out market research
- HR consulting
- Oversee operations
- Support the Company’s strategic goals by formulating and implementing a program for business development within the region etc.

Benefits: high base salary; health Insurance; paid vacation, sick leave, holidays; company car;
training and development programs; bonuses.

If you are interested in this offer, please e-mail us to jacobitecrabtreeln@gmail.com, and include your phone number so that we can contact you for an interview.

HR Department
JCC Inc.
HR Officer,
Imma Raiford.

The first and most obvious red flag is the "To:" address. The better scammers actually go to the trouble of running a program that sends out letters to recipients individually, but when your address is not the "To:" address, it means you're not the only recipient. It could have been sent to a large distribution list or a large number of blind carbon copied (BCC) addresses. Basically, you know this letter went out to more people than just you, and it could have been hundreds or even thousands. That's not a guarantee of a scam, but it should make you wary.

The second is the sender/reply mismatch. When you get the note from one address and are asked to respond to another address, you should be concerned. Sometimes this is legitimate, but in those cases, it's usually addresses at the same company domain (for example, an assistant at Volt mails you and asks you to respond to a specfic recruiter at Volt). In this instance the mail is coming from a free mail service, Hotmail, and you're being asked to reply to another free mail service, Gmail. I can't think of one circumstance under which I'd consider a Hotmail/Gmail mismatch legitimate.

Third... "Managing the companys funds." This is almost always indicative of a check cashing scam. They send you forged checks, supposedly from their U.S. customers, which you're supposed to cash at a bank, then send them the funds by Western Union wire transfer (not via the bank). Checks under a certain amount are usually cashed by banks before they're properly cleared, so you get the money and wire it off to Russia or Africa or China, and then a few days later, when the bank discovers the check is forged, you're responsible for paying back the money. The problem is, you don't have the money because you wired it to criminals, and good luck ever getting it back.

Last, the old adage: If it seems too good to be true, it usually is. That probably clicked in your mind, which is why you searched for more information about this company and why you found this page.

The job market sucks. Many of us are unemployed or underemployed. Money is tight. This job sounds awesome with great benefits including health insurance and a company car. It is really easy to wish it was for real. But it's not. It's cruel, heartless, scumbags who are preying on your desperation, happy to take your bad situation and make it worse just so they can make a quick, dishonest buck.

I'm sorry to disappoint you if you were hoping the job was for real, but better you get wise now than get screwed later. Best of luck to you and God bless.

Box of eyes

2009-10-14T14:38:00+00:00

After people complained about the big table with eyes as being nauseating, I realized there is a problem and a different presentation should be useful. A bit of head scratching and I remembered the old trick of mapping images to a box with GIMP so I decided to write a short piece about it (you can do it with any type of images).

Obviously the first step is to open an image in GIMP:

Then make a crop around the part you want to use, here I was interested in a cube with eye images on all its sides, so my crop was a square centered on the eye:

Open the image for a second face (for me a photo with the eye in a different color) as a new layer. The easiest way it to drag and drop the new image over the editing window, but you can also use the menu (File > Open as Layers):

Move the layer so it is properly centered and crop it again (draw freely a big crop box around the image, it will adjust automatically):

Repeat until you have 6 layers (a cube had 6 faces):

Then go to the Map Object filter (Filters > Map > Map Object):

Here in the Options tab set the image to be mapped to a box. Make sure you set the background as transparent:

And in the Box tab select the various layers as box faces (if you have less than 6 images/layers, you can repeat some of them):

In the Orientation tab, use the Rotation sliders to have a nice view to you box (preview wireframe is useful) and Position sliders to make sure it is centered:

If you want, go to the Light tab and adjust the type, color and position of the light and to the Material tab to adjust the amount of reflected light:

Press OK and you are done, enjoy the result:

At CE Linux in Grenoble

2009-10-14T10:36:34+00:00

I am currently in the town of Grenoble in France, attending the CE Linux conference. Or rather the official conference starts tomorrow, so today I am attending a workshop hosted by ST Ericsson talking about their open source effort around the Nomadik platform, more specfically the NHK-15 platform. Looks like a very interesting piece of kit and I also got a nice development board to take home. Met a few known faces already here, for instance Dave Neary is also attending the workshop today, but I am sure there will be more people when the official conference kicks of tomorrow.

Anyway, if anyone else are attending CE Linux and want to talk about Collabora, GStreamer, Telepathy, PulseAudio and so on, be sure to look me up.

I also noticed that I tend to try to speak Spanish to everyone here. Not sure why, but I guess my mind on some level assume that they might have a better chance to guess what I mean if I speak Spanish and they only speak French. Or maybe its because my new housemate, Abigail, is Spanish, so due to speaking with her my mind is now tuned to jump to trying to use Spanish words

Job Scam: Package Manager

2009-10-14T03:53:14+00:00

Just got the following job scam e-mail slipping through my spam filters. I'll post the mail, then we can look at the scam red flags.

From: Kitty Gay <rurcffah4668@hotmail.com>
Subject: W0RK AT HOME POSITION IN L0GISTIC COMPANY | ID 3673

Logistic company provides delivery services for in different fields of on-line businesses such as: on-line stores, auction sellers etc. We work with more than 35 Sales ?orporationsworldwide. Several american Internet stores find our company the most attractive and reliable to work with as we are always trying to do our best to satisfy our clients.
Lately there was an increase in this sphere of commerce and now we are looking for new staff for the Package Manager position.

We are happy to offer you this career opportunity. It is a remote job and you will be able to get gainings while operating at home.

Position: Package Manager
Job-Type: part-time

For more information please contact our HR department: emp.employeehiring.emp146@gmail.com

Kind Regards
Private company

Okay, the first red flag is the e-mail addresses. When they send you a mail from one free mail service (here it's Hotmail) and ask you to reply to another free mail service (here it's gmail), you should be on your guard. How are they a legitimate company, but they send e-mail from an anonymous Hotmail address and ask you to reply to an anonymous Gmail address? This is VERY common in job scam e-mails, and even if they had some legitimate reason for doing it, the fact that job scammers almost always do it should make you wary.

Second, what company is this? They don't tell you the name? What reason do they have to be secretive when the position isn't sensitive? And why are they spelling logistic with a zero instead of an O in the subject? All of these should make you wary.

Third, two of the most common job scams are check cashing (they send you forged checks to cash and then wire the money out of the country) and package re-shipping. With package re-shipping, they buy stuff off Ebay and other such sites using forged checks, forged money orders, and hacked Paypal accounts. Since most of the sellers won't even accept an order from Eastern Europe, China, or Africa, they get you on the hook for a "job", pretend to be you when buying the merchandise, have it shipped to you, then have you ship it out of the country. When the Paypal payment is reversed or the check bounces, the seller calls the cops and the cops come to your house looking for the merchandise.

The job title of "package manager" makes it sound too much like this is probably a package re-shipping scam. And when you combine it with all the other signs, this letter screams "stay far far away!"

I know it's tough out there. Trust me. I've been underemployed for almost a year. But don't let yourself get caught up in a scam out of desperation. It's easy to want to believe these are real, but they're not, and these people will screw you over exactly because you're vulnerable and desperate. That's why we call them criminal scum.

Best of luck to you all and God bless.

Asses and sharks

2009-10-13T13:12:00+00:00

In case you missed my [bad] sense of humour, here is a quick drawing (mouse, inkscape and less than 5 minutes). If you didn't miss it, safely skip this post.

Indeed, she was driven away from planet (did we become such an unfriendly place?) and, without you knowing, she is putting out beach photos.

Eye photography

2009-10-12T14:55:00+00:00

Saddened to learn how negative feedback and unpleasant members of the community drove tatica out of planet with her photography project, I am stubborn enough to continue posting photography stuff. I have a few friends in the community who will be totally jealous for my latest experience.

Last weekend, working on a half-commercial project (got no money, waived no ownership) for a friend who has a small online store selling cosmetic contact lenses I had the opportunity to learn how close (in a literal sense) is the phrase "I can see the world in your eyes" used by guys to impress girls (ops! I said "guys" and "girls"!)

My friend is trying an interesting experiment: usually the websites selling cosmetic contact lenses use really bad (in GIF format, WTF) and heavily photoshopped) images, so a buyer can't set his/her expectations right, does not know what will get. So he is putting a bet on honesty, showing the unaltered truth.

Beyond the artistic and technical part, we are debating the legalese: I am a huge adept of sharing and Free licenses and he has an opposite point of view, coming from and industry where nobody has any shame in stealing and reusing the photos. So in the end probably the photos will get to the public only at small resolution and bearing watermarks, something making me uncomfortable.

Transmageddon 0.14 released

2009-10-11T21:09:18+00:00

Pushed out a new release of Transmageddon today. It is mostly
about fixing bugs and trying to make things more robust. But I also added the PSP and Google G1 profiles to this release.
Remuxing should be more robust now and if it lacks the plugins it needs it will let you know and let you choose something else instead.

My next step is going to be to combine the device profiles with remuxing, so that if the device you are targeting supports
for instance the audio and/or video format used in the incoming media Transmageddon will just remux it instead of decode and re-encode it. Should eventually in combination with a AC3 parser plugin enable you to just remux Matroska files with H264 and AC3 audio to MPEG TS when you choose the PS3 profile to get a playable file. Only problem there of course is the bitrate requirements of AC3 when used in MPEG TS on the PS3.

Writing code that does nothing

2009-10-11T10:26:17+00:00

My Transmageddon hacking has slowed down a little over the last few Months. But I am still working on it, fixing bugs and adding little features. However a lot of the stuff I have been doing recently is adding code to work around or detect errors. Error handling is nice in the sense its code that help my application work on computers other than my own, but it is also something which I guess people find rather uninteresting. Its like you compare the last 3 versions and from a feature standpoint they are almost identical, even though I added quite a bit of code to handle all the kind of problems people reported to me.

For instance I spent quite a few hours yesterday adding code to make sure I could handle the situation of missing audio and video parsers. Currently if you choose passthrough mode and missed the needed parser plugin the application would just hand, with a lot of ugly spew on the command line. Well thanks to changing 70 lines of code and spending hours coming up with those lines the application now handles it gracefully. Of course for someone not running into this problem the application does nothing it didn’t before.

So part of my feel that these sort of fixes are quite boring and uninteresting, but on the other hand I guess they are exactly the stuff that is the difference between an application that obviously was never meant to work on any system apart from that of the application writer and an application that most people can actually use. And when people tell me they successfully used Transmageddon it do make me more happy than when I am told they tried it and it failed horribly. I mean the point of releasing Transmageddon to the public was not to make them familiar with python error messages

I have a small question to the more python savvy people out there though. I have been trying to set a environment variable for Transmageddon in python, but so far it doesn’t seem to work. If I in the shell do:
export GST_DEBUG_DUMP_DOT_DIR= "/tmp"
that works fine. But if I in my python code do
os.environ["GST_DEBUG_DUMP_DOT_DIR"] = "/tmp" os.putenv('GST_DEBUG_DUMP_DIR_DIR', '/tmp')
neither of them seem to have any effect. Anyone got a clue to what I am doing wrong?
Edit: Turns out I was setting the environment variables to late in my file, I needed to do it before import gst was called Thanks Edward.

Disappearing Chain Restaurants

2009-10-10T02:18:09+00:00

Like a shmoe, I dutifully friended "Woody" on Facebook to get my free burger coupon from TGI Friday's. Little did I know that right around the same time, they were closing the last Friday's in Washington state.

If you look at the reviews of the last Friday's in Kirkland, it seems to have been in a downward spiral before it closed. One review on Yelp described a bowl of their white bean and chicken chili thusly: "imagine cat vomit with some cheddar sprinkled on top - but microwaved on too high a setting, so the edges are solid."

The closing of the Friday's happened right around the time we noticed that the local Tony Roma's had locked its doors and put up a for-lease sign. Checking at the Tony Roma's site, there's only one left in Washington as well, and it's in Kennewick (about a 212 mile drive southeast of Seattle).

The only Chili's left in western Washington is at the SeaTac airport. There are three in Spokane on the eastern side of the state.

I'd check the Ruby Tuesday's store locator, but I keep getting errors that say: The Google Maps API server rejected your request. The "client" parameter specified in the request is invalid. It does that on their front page as well as the store locator. Greeting visitors with an alert error message (the kind you have to click to make go away)... VERY professional.

Chevy's Fresh Mex closed all their stores in Washington last year, and their location on 44th St. in Lynnwood is still looking for a new tenant. But tenantless spaces seem to be abundant in shopping centers and strip malls all around here.

One chain that seems to be pushing closer is Sonic. Used to be there was one Sonic that was 142 miles away. Now there are two within about 70 miles and another coming soon.

I try to patronize the Original Roadhouse Grill on a weekly basis, but I go on Tuesday when it's "kids eat free" night. I can get a sandwich or burger for me, a kid's meal for my older boy, and some apple sauce for the baby for around $12-13, including a generous tip, if I stick to water and don't waste $2.49 on a soda. My older boy loves it and we're such regulars all the waitstaff know his name and the manager always comes out to say hi to us. They're the newest chain in the area and we've been patronizing them fairly regularly for a little over a year now. We do go on other nights occasionally (usually when we have a coupon or my parents are visiting and picking up the bill).

Overall, though, driving by these closed restaurants with for-lease signs out front, going looking for others to find out they've either left our state entirely or are close to it, it's a little frightening. We're supposed to believe the economy is starting to recover, but while all these restaurants keep closing and their spaces stay empty, it gives me a bit of a ghost town feel.

ProLinux

2009-10-09T06:37:00+00:00

It was frustrating in the last months when the launch was prepared (the bureaucracy is a killer) to know but not talk about it, but now all is in the open: Asociatia ProLinux is official, legal and public. It is a non-profit organization founded around the Romanian Linux Users Group, the oldest Linux/FLOSS association in Romania.

As a matter of fact, it was created a couple of years ago, but it was dormant, so it needed to be revived and relaunched, with new energy and new leadership (the mighty and wise wolfy as president, the dangerous rpetre as vice president and the joyful bearded secretary bogdanb).

Is very likely FLOSS people in Romania already used the services provided, if not the mailing list, at least the mirroring system.

Cool Free MP3s at Amazon

2009-10-07T20:36:47+00:00

Found a cool source of free MP3s this weekend... Amazon.com. Surprising but true. While iTunes usually has three free songs a week, Amazon is quietly offering a bunch of sampler albums from small labels. There are all sorts of genres... rock, jazz, classical, world, country...

I downloaded every sampler that looked remotely interesting and ended up with a few hundred songs. So far I've tried a country album (Discover Texas Music: Volume 1) and found two keepers on it. Tried a wedding music sampler (The O'Neill Brothers Wedding Music: Amazon Sampler), but it was all single piano and I wasn't really feeling it. Next I tried the Paper Bag Records Fall '09 Sampler and found 5 keepers on it. Two I really liked were "Shivering Black" by the Josh Reichmann Oracle Band and "Oh, I Can" by Rock Plaza Central.

I've got a bunch more to go through and I'm looking forward to it. I might only end up keeping 40 or 50 of them and it might seem like a lot of work just to get that many songs for free. I don't see the work involved in downloading and listening to all these albums as a "hidden cost" for free music, but what I'm paying for expanding my musical horizons, because I'd probably never have heard of many of these artists otherwise.

And yeah, I kept two songs from the Texas Country album, proof of how this is broadening my horizons, because I never listen to Country radio and wouldn't have gone looking for these songs if I had to buy them. The best one was Deryl Dodd's "Beer & The Belly". Musically it would make an excellent movie soundtrack piece, and the lyrics just resonated with me: "There ain't no dog that don't get smelly and you can't have beer without the belly."

I might post some more reviews as I move through the songs. I figure if the labels and artists are being so kind as to give me this music for free, the least I can do is give them a little promo.

If you want to get some free MP3s from Amazon, you can start your journey by using the links above, or use this link to an Amazon MP3 search for samplers.

Have Fun!

In the interest of full disclosure, the links to Amazon above are affiliate links, meaning that if you buy something while visiting Amazon after clicking the link, I could earn a commission. That said, I would have made these recommendations anyway. I just used the affiliate links because it wouldn't make sense to send traffic to Amazon and not use them.

Larson Scanner on Arduino

2009-10-07T16:58:26+00:00

Inspired by the Larson Scanner project, I finally broke out my Arduino and ported the code from the ATtiny to the ATmega. (The Arduino IDE runs fine with openjdk-6.) I’m sure the power usage is terrible, but I wasn’t after long battery life. I wanted my very own Cylon eye.

Since I was successful with porting the code and wiring up the Arduino, I figured I’d see if the tiny Arduino-clone called the “DorkBoard” would work with it too.

Later in the weekend I grabbed a AAA-battery holder and hooked that up so the eye is untethered from the USB power source. Next up, coding the pesky self-awareness.

Overlap.org Releases Chris McNamara’s “Vague Cities” + Announces Upcoming Overlap Salon SF

2009-10-06T20:21:35+00:00

Over at Overlap.org, we just released Chris McNamara’s new album, “Vague Cities,” along with Ghostly International. We will be doing more co-brandings, partnerships, and other types of co-curation over the next few months to accomplish our mission to be THE experimental media platform.

Let’s talk about this on the overlap discussion list you can join at Overlap.org and or send us your thoughts.

If you review our work, we will post about your reviews. If you send us music to review, we will listen to it.

Dollhouse is brilliant

2009-10-05T13:54:19+00:00

Last weekend I visited Jan and Jaime in Dublin. We had a great time while I was there and they managed to get me hooked on Joss Whedons latest creation, Dollhouse, staring Eliza Dushku and Tahmoh Penikett.

I guess like a lot of people involved in computing I been thinking about the possibility of interfacing with the brain as a computer for some time, mostly in the terms of transferring oneself from the body into a computer and thus achieving virtual immortality. For some reason my thoughts have mostly been about the practical issues of interfacing with a computer (the brain) that was never meant to be interfaced with.

Joss Whedon though with Dollhouse has taken a step back and are instead looking at the social and psychological impact such an option would have. Of course wrapped in an entertainment wrapping, but profoundly interesting non the less. I recommend that if you haven’t seen it you should, the first season is already out on Blu-Ray. Joss should start making series for HBO instead though, think the freedom that would give him would enable him to take his series to the next level.

It also has to be mentioned that Jonatha Brooke has written a brilliant theme song with What You Don’t Know, I even ended up buying it from iTunes.

Brasero FAIL

2009-10-05T08:48:00+00:00

I am usually happy with Brasero, use it all the time and is good enough for the majority of the tasks. Until I get to something like the case below:

FAIL one: my disc, my hardware, there is no reason I am denied to copy the bits. And it should not matter the disc is region encoded to US, I want to copy, not play it. And WTF? Plugins? there is no such thing for Brasero.

FAIL two: big size, it cannot be copied to a nomal (4.7GB) disk. More operations are needed.

My quickest solution: use DVDShrink (it works relatively well with Wine), recompress to an usable file size, drop CSS, drop other unwanted things and then use Brasero to burn it. Now I have an acceptable backup of the disk (a cartoon which got dangerously scratched by being used a lot by a child).

British Regional Accent?

2009-10-04T06:59:23+00:00

The wife and I finally tried "Friday Night With Johnathan Ross" on BBC America and really couldn't stand it. The guy pronounces his Rs like a three-year-old or like the vicar in The Princess Bride: "Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togethaw today.... Wuv, twoo wuv." We were wondering if it was maybe a speech impediment, but in one part when Shakira (or "Shakiwa") didn't understand his pronunciation of "choweogwaphy," he repeated it with the Rs intact and we weren't sure.

We thought that maybe with Peter Cook doing it in The Princess Bride and Johnathan Ross doing it while he interviewed "Vun Twoyah" and "Gwaham Nowton", perhaps it's a regional accent, sort of like certain accents in the northeastern United States where they drop any R that comes at the end of a word and save it for a word that has no R, so "Shiela, I'm going to get the paper" becomes "Shieler, I'm gonna go get the papah." Or perhaps like Emeril Lagasse insists on pronouncing the name of the famed Thai hot sauce Sriracha as "Sirrachee."

In the U.S., no one over the age of six pronounces their Rs as Ws unless they have some sort of impairment, such as being in "wuv."

Regardless, the constant mispronunciation of Rs just "gwated" on our nerves and we won't be watching Jonathan Ross again. It was a good enough talk show, but just merely good enough. And just being good enough isn't enough to make my wife and I keep watching.

Renegade Art and Democracy Announcement + Invitation + New Project Virii 2009 Conficker

2009-09-30T23:39:05+00:00

Awhile back Jane Metcalfe asked me to contribute some artwork for an upcoming art auction this Sunday in Sonoma County. I created a project from my stack of IDEA2009’s called Virii 2009 Conficker which is an annual certification for the most replicated computer virus for 2009, Conficker. The format is a standard RIAA platinum record with the obvious virus contents encrypted on disc, behind glass, and behind a legal disclaimer for whoever collects the piece. Here is a project summary:

Virii 2009 is an annual acknowledgment of the computer virus which has replicated the most, globally, for an annual year. The first Virii 2009 unique plaque, VIRII 2009 CONFICKER, is presented as a certified record of authenticity, framed for hanging on a wall in a secure location. Future certifications are to be only distributed as an annual unique plaque. It is entrusted to a collector to be stored or shown securely. The attached disc and samples contained on the disc are packed in a secure manner that only the artist, Jon Phillips, or his designated agents may discuss.

This is an invitation to attend the art auction this Sunday in Sonoma. Come out and support! I’ll be taking Outscape’s Jeep there along with Barryista.

From the press release:

On Sunday October 4th, 2009 the world of art and politics will come together for one event. Best-selling author Anne Lammot, Academy award-winning director (Wall-e) Andrew Stanton, Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, Survival Research Labs founder Mark Pauline, videographer Lynn Hershman and WIRED Magazine founder Jane Metcalfe will discuss what it takes to create a renegade legacy. Each is a renegade artist in their own right and they will be featured guest speakers at Renegade Art & Democracy, an art auction and reception hosted by Lynn Woolsey — the renegade Congresswoman from Petaluma.

Given the recent battles in Washington DC and the Congresswoman’s leadership within the progressive body (now deemed “renegade”), this conversation could not be more timely. As you know, artists are always the most outspoken when it comes to renegade ideas. Thus, this unique group of artists would make a fantastic study for the Chronicle’s readers. In addition to those listed above, the work of 40+ artists including: Christo, William Wiley, Robert Hudson, David Best, Tiffany Shlain & Ken Goldberg, Jock McDonald, Lisa Kristine, Philip Krohn, Dave Eggers, George Lucas and Jon Phillips will be available in the event’s silent and live auctions.

The link to the Facebook event page

Here are the basic event details:

What: “Woolsey for Congress ‘Renegade Art & Democracy’
When: Sunday, October 4 at 4:00 PM
Where: Cornerstone Gardens, Sonoma

I’ll post more about the piece, which I intend to do every year in this format, to provide acknowledgment over the other software (other than free and open source software!) and the anonymous creators who make it. I’ll talk more about that shortly.

Also, a big thanks to Nicky Bourque for helping with the security aspects of this project.

مفهوم الثقافة الحرة ضمن المشاع الإبداعي، مقدمة تعريفية

2009-09-30T14:12:23+00:00

مقدمة تعريفية عن المشاع الإبداعي والثقافة الحرة

رغم التزايد الهائل لكم الأعمال المتوفرة على الإنترنت وسهولة الوصول إليها، ما زالت الكثير من القيود القانونية تحد من إمكانية إعادة استخدام ( توزيع، اقتباس، تعديل، تطوير ...الخ) نسبة كبيرة جداً من هذه الأعمال، وهذه القيود مفيدة لحفظ الحقوق المعنوية والمادية للمؤلفين ومن في حكمهم.

ويعتقد عدد غير قليل من المحامين والعاملين في قطاع الملكية الفكرية، أن حماية حقوق الملكية الفكرية على الإنترنت تكون بتشديد القوانين وجعلها أكثر صرامة. إذ يجب أن يحصل المؤلف على حقوق كاملة غير منقوصة وتعويضات عادلة لقاء إبداعه الذهني والفكري ويعتبر هذا بمثابة تعويض عادل لقاء الجهد الذي بذله في إنتاج مؤلفه، والحقيقة أننا نؤمن بحق المؤلف في الحصول على تعويض عادل لقاء الجهد الذي يبذله، والذي من شأنه أن يساعده على تقديم ابتكارات ومؤلفات جديدة، ولكننا ضد تشديد هذه القوانين بشكل يضر الحركة الإبداعية والتجديد على الإنترنت. فمن غير المنطقي التشدد في منع المستخدمين من نسخ الأعمال وإعادة نشرها بالرغم من تسارع الكثير من الشركات في ابتكار تدابير الحماية التقنية مثل (DRMs), (TPMs) للحد من ذلك، ثم إن سرعة التطور الحالية لا تتناسب مع الانغلاق ومنع الآخرين من استخدام المعلومات التي يجب أن تكون متاحة للجميع.

تقسم حقوق التأليف إلى شقين: معنوي (Moral Rights) ومادي (Economic rights). فالحق المعنوي يكمن في أن ينسب المؤلف مؤلفه له دون غيره، والحق المادي يكمن في أن يبيع المؤلف مؤلفه ويستغله بالطريقة التي يختارها وأن يجني عوائد مؤلفاته. وبعد انتهاء مدة الحماية الممنوحة للمؤلف أو من يخلفه من بعده ( مدة الحماية هي خمسين عام بعد وفاة المؤلف حسب اتفاقيتي بيرن وتريبس وأغلب القوانين الوطنية) فإن الحقوق المادية تنتقل للملك العام (Public Domain) حيث أنها تصبح غير مملوكة لأحد حتى لصاحبها الذي ألفها، أما الحقوق المعنوية فهي تبقى متصلة باسم صاحبها حتى بعد وفاته. وهناك كثير من المؤلفات التي دخلت في الملك العام ومنها مثلاً كتاب النبي لجبران وكتب التراث القديمة والكثير من الكتب الأخرى. ويعني ذلك أنه يمكن لأي شخص أن يقوم بطباعة هذه المؤلفات وأن يقوم ببيعها من دون أن يعترضه أي شخص مدعياً أن له سلطة احتكار هذه المؤلفات أو أن له الحق وحده في أن يجني عوائد بيعها، ولا يترتب على هذا الشخص الذي يقوم بالطباعة أي نوع من المسؤولية أو المسائلة القانونية عند قيامه بذلك، طالما أنه يذكر اسم المؤلف الأصلي.

إن إشكالات القوانين المتشددة في حماية حقوق الملكية الفكرية وعدم إمكانية تطبيق الكثير منها على الإنترنت، بالإضافة إلى رغبة الكثيرين ببناء مجتمع معرفي تشاركي قائم على العمل الجماعي، أدى إلى نشوء حركة الثقافة الحرة (Free Culture) والتي تهدف إلى دعم الحرية في توزيع وتعديل الأعمال الإبداعية من أدب وفن وبرمجيات وغيرها باستخدام الإنترنت بالإضافة إلى وسائل الإعلام التقليدية. ومع تنامي هذا التوجه، كان لا بد من انشاء نظام قانوني يحدد ما هو ملك للمؤلف وما هو ملك للمجتمع ويرسم شكلاً للعلاقات القائمة بين العمل وجمهوره. وهذا ما دفع نخبة من المحامين والأكاديميين والتقنيين في الولايات المتحدة وعلى رأسهم البروفيسور لورانس ليسيغ من كلية الحقوق في جامعة هارفرد إلى إنشاء منظمة المشاع الإبداعي في عام 2001، محاولين من خلالها خلق بيئة سليمة في الإنترنت تتيح للجميع أن يبتكروا ويجددوا ويبنوا على منتجات وإبداعات الآخرين الفكرية .

المشاع الإبداعي (Creative Commons): هي منظمة غير ربحية تهدف إلى زيادة ودعم الأعمال الإبداعية التي يمكن إعادة استخدامها ومشاركتها بشكل حر وقانوني (Remix Legaly). وقد نشرت المنظمة مجموعة من التراخيص القانونية. وهذه التراخيص تتيح للمؤلف توضيح ما يرغب بالاحتفاظ به من حقوق، وما هي إمكانيات الآخرين لإعادة استغلال عمله وتطويره.

تعد منظمة المشاع الإبداعي (Creative Commons) من أبرز المدافعين عن مفهوم الثقافة الحرة والتي تسعى لبناء عموميات أغنى ( نقصد هنا بعموميات الأعمال الإبداعية كالنصوص والصور واللوحات والموسيقى المتوفرة لعامة المجتمع بشكل حر يمكّن الآخرين من الاستفادة منها بشكل أوسع ) وذلك من خلال تقديم بديل للحماية الكاملة لجميع حقوق المؤلف، وتحويلها إلى حماية بعض من حقوق المؤلف ( كضرورة ارتباط اسم العمل بصاحبه، وإمكانية حصر المردود المادي به) تاركة له إمكانية ترك بعض من الحقوق الأخرى (كالسماح للآخرين بإعادة النشر، وبناء أعمال مشتقة من العمل الأصلي).

هذا النوع من التراخيص متلائم أكثر مع طبيعة الإنترنت، فهو يستجيب للتطورات والتحديات القانونية ويخلق التوازن المطلوب بين حماية حقوق المؤلفين وبين إعطاء الفرصة لنمو الإنسانية وتطورها عن طريق الاستفادة من الإبداعات والمؤلفات الموجودة على شبكة الإنترنت.

إن أحد أهم أهداف المنظمة يكمن في مساعدة الباحثين وتسهيل إمكانية أن يحددوا فيما إذا كان العمل داخلاً في الملك العام أم لا، وتطوير آليات من شأنها أن تسمح للمؤلفين بوضع إشارة معينة على الأعمال والمؤلفات الرقمية بما يساعد الباحثين في الإنترنت على التعرف واسترجاع الأعمال الموضوعة فيها. فقد يرغب أصحاب الأعمال (المؤلفين) بوضع أعمالهم على الإنترنت متنازلين عن بعض حقوقهم مقابل التزام المستخدمين لهذه الأعمال بشروط الرخص الممنوحة من قبل المؤلفين.

وقد أطلقت المنظمة مشاريع متعددة منها مشروع الرخص (Licensing project) ومشروع المشاع الدولي (International Commons) ومشروع المشاع العلمي (Science commons)، ومشروع المشاع التعليمي (ccLearn) ومشروع المشاع الموسيقي (ccMixter).

فمشروع الرخص يسمح للمؤلف أن يختار ما يناسبه من رخصة حسب العمل الذي قام بتأليفه، فقد يختار رخصة نسبة العمل لصاحبه (Attribution)التي تسمح للآخرين بان يقوموا باستخدام أعماله بشرط أن يذكروا صاحبها، والرخصة غير التجارية (Non-commercial) التي تسمح للآخرين باستخدام أعمال المؤلف بشكل شخصي دون إمكانية بيعه من دون أذن صاحبه، ورخصة عدم الاشتقاق (Non-Derivative) التي تسمح للآخرين باستخدام العمل من دون أن يكون بالإمكان تعديله أو إنشاء أعمال فرعية مشتقة منه.

أما مشروع المشاع العلمي (Science Commons) فهو يهدف إلى وضع استراتيجيات وأدوات لتسهيل وتسريع عملية البحث العلمي عبر شبكة الإنترنت. يقوم المشروع بالعمل على إزالة العوائق التي من شأنها أن تحول دون تطوير تقنيات مساعدة لتبادل الأبحاث العلمية وتطويرها بين المختصين.

تم اعتماد مشروع المشاع الإبداعي في أكثر من خمسين دولة من دول العالم، أما في الوطن العربي فقد كانت الأردن أول من تبنى عملية تعريب وإدخال الرخص في عام 2002 إلى النظام القانوني المعمول به في الأردن وسيتم الإطلاق الرسمي للمشروع في شهر تشرين الثاني (نوفمبر) 2009، حيث سيتم توفير جميع رخص المشاع الإبداعي (Creative Commons) باللغة العربية.

إن تطور شبكه الإنترنت واستمرارية التجديد والابتكار مقيدان ومقرونان بخصوبة الملك العام ومرونة قوانين الملكية الفكرية وحرية الأفراد، فكلما كانت الحريات أكبر وكانت القوانين أقل تشدداً كلما نشأت ابتكارات جديدة، فكيف للإبداع أن ينمو في المجتمع إذا لم يمنح المبدعون المرونة الكافية التي تجعلهم يبنون على ما هو موجود في شبكة الإنترنت؟.

إن منح الحرية على الإنترنت له نتائج مذهلة على تطورها وتقدمها. فمن المعروف أن إعادة اختراع العجلة مضيعة للوقت وأن تطور المجتمعات مرتبط بشدة بحجم علاقات التعاون الناشئة بين أفرادها، وهذا أهم ما نحتاجه حالياً في عالمنا العربي.

المصادر:

http://www.creativecommons.org/
http://www.free-culture.cc/

رامي علوان وباسل الصفدي
شكراً لمحمد خضور على التدقيق اللغوي والإملائي

pwn3d again

2009-09-30T13:15:00+00:00

Yesterday was a full media day for me: after filming for television, in the evening I joined the boys from Ceata for an interview with a journalism student to be published in a student magazine, which is freely distributed in a few universities in Bucharest and Constanta (I think "Stud-Life" is the most unfortunate name for a student magazine, coming from someone who speak English even worse than me).

We talked about Linux, FLOSS, Ceata, other FLOSS organizations, events, projects and more, it was an interesting conversations. If you are interested, it is available under a CC-BY-SA license, so you can listen to our "podcast", but be aware is quite long, at about 1 hour and 30 minutes.

At the end, I gave to the reporter-to-be a Fedora 11 LiveCD, so she can try and see directly what Linux is about and one of the guys tried to help her with the BIOS settings for CD boot (Ceata's headquarters in in the university dorms, so her computer was a few rooms away). Unfortunately the BIOS was not cooperating, so she ended with an Ubuntu Live from him :p

My own Windows 7 Party

2009-09-30T07:46:00+00:00

I was amused too by the Windows 7 Party video, which made me think I must have my own event. How? I think I can delay a couple of weeks installing Fedora 12 Beta on the netbook, until October 22. Hopefully I can get some other geek friends needing a Linux install or upgrade (no matter which distro), get together, bring some booze and take photos. That must be a fun party.