http://handyfloss.net Because FLOSS is handy, isn't it? Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:15:24 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en As you might have read in this blog, I own a Neo FreeRunner since one year ago. I have used it far less than I should have, mostly because it's a wonderful toy, but a lousy phone. The hardware is fine, although externally quite a bit less sexy than other ... http://handyfloss.net/2010.03/speed-up-pygtk-and-cairo-by-reusing-images/ This is a continuation post for my Linux World Domination project, started in this May 2008 post. You can read the previous post in the series here. In the following data T2D means "time to domination" (the expected time for Windows/Linux shares to cross, counting from the present date). DT2D means ... http://handyfloss.net/2010.03/lwd-march-2010/ There is some debate going on lately about the migration of YouTube to [[HTML5]], and whether they (i.e. YouTube's owner, Google) should support [[H.264]] or [[Theora]] as standard codecs for the upcoming <video> tag. See, for example, how the FSF asks for support for Theora. The thing is, I discovered [[x264]] ... http://handyfloss.net/2010.01/avoiding-time_increment_bits-problem-when-encoding-bad-header-mpeg4-videos-to-ogg-theora/ Warning: the following rant could be caused by my idiocy, more than by Amarok's fault. See comments. I have been using [[Amarok (software)|Amarok]] as music player even since I had first contact with it. I was really delighted with its capabilities, and everything was intuitive and useful in its [[User Interface|UI]]. ... http://handyfloss.net/2010.01/amarok-wtf/ Ya me perdonaréis que escriba dos posts seguidos sobre el mismo tema. Además en castellano, cuando procuro que el lenguaje del blog sea el inglés, simplemente por mayor alcance entre los lectores potenciales. La verdad es que muchos "artículos de opinión" me salen más naturalmente en el idioma de Cervantes, ... http://handyfloss.net/2010.01/los-piratas-tambien-comen/ Mucho se habla sobre la legitimidad de compartir material audiovisual en redes [[es:peer-to-peer|p2p]], sobre todo en el caso de materiales cubiertos por [[es:copyright|copyright]]. Las discusiones se centran principalmente en dos cuestiones: la legalidad de dicha práctica, y el efecto económico sobre un mercado (venta de copias físicas) que muchos vemos ... http://handyfloss.net/2010.01/el-p2p-no-es-robar-es-compartir/ I guess it is not very uncommon, since it has happened twice to me, in two sites I have worked. "Over-cautious" sysadmins decide that the University, Institute, Corporation, or whatever, would be safer if connections to the [[LAN]] from outside of it were banned, including the [[Secure Shell|port 22]]. In ... http://handyfloss.net/2010.01/reverse-ssh-to-twart-over-zealous-firewalls/ Yes, "Spain is different!" they use to say, mostly in Spain. But our friends across the ocean are different to most civilized countries, in we-know-what issue... I was taking a peek to the trailers for [[A Perfect Getaway]] (La escapada perfecta in Spain), in the FilmAffinity site (a site I ... http://handyfloss.net/2010.01/usa-is-different/ One of the (few, but legitimate) reasons given by some Windows users to not switch to Linux is that many pieces of hardware are not recognized by the latter. Sure enough, 99.9%, if not all, of the devices sold in shops are "Windows compatible". The manufacturers of devices make damn ... http://handyfloss.net/2010.01/hardware-compatibility-is-better-with-windows-not/ Remember plzma.py? I made a wrapper script for running [[LZMA]] in parallel. The script could be readily generalized to use any compression algorithm, following the principle of breaking the file in parts (one per CPU), compressing the parts, then [[tar (file format)|tarring]] them together. In other words, chop the file, ... http://handyfloss.net/2009.12/chopzip-a-parallel-implementation-of-arbitrary-compression-algorithms/