Techtionary
Though I'm a hardcore geek, there's always something I have to lookup or learn when it comes to new techologies. Usually, this means a trip to Borders Books or some serious googling before I can grasp the subject and there's not always time for that. I coworker today showed me Techtionary, a site dedicated to short but to the point tutorials on everything tech. To test it's breadth, I searched for SS7 (old but pretty much only used in proprietary telephony networks) and found:
Check it out at http://www.techtionary.com
The interface is written entirely in Flash and could use some work but it's not bad, especially when trying to teach your non-techie friends in a hurry. Most of the information is very high level but a good place to get started on a topic of interest. This would also be a resource for technical project managers who are managing projects they know nothing about ;)
Firefox 2 Released
Firefox 2 was released today (not yesterday as reported by most of the tech news sites). Get it for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (I'm having a problem compiling it on my Gentoo Linux box though).
Notable Improvements that I think you'll notice:
1) Page rendering speed (I actually noticed)
2) Visual Refresh: Firefox 2's theme and user interface have been updated to improve usability without altering the familiarity of the browsing experience.
3) Improved tabbed browsing: By default, Firefox will open links in new tabs instead of new windows, and each tab will now have a close tab button. Power users who open more tabs than can fit in a single window will see arrows on the left and right side of the tab strip that let them scroll back and forth between their tabs. The History menu will keep a list of recently closed tabs, and a shortcut lets users quickly re-open an accidentally closed tab.
4) Resuming your browsing session: The Session Restore feature restores windows, tabs, text typed in forms, and in-progress downloads from the last user session. It will be activated automatically when installing an application update or extension, and users will be asked if they want to resume their previous session after a system crash. This is already a feature of Opera but is incredibly annoying at work as it tries ot authenticate 15 pages at once upon startup.
5) Inline spell checking: A new built-in spell checker enables users to quickly check the spelling of text entered into Web forms (like this one) without having to use a separate application.
The (FreeBSD) Devil Went Down To Texas…
http://rmitz.org/freebsd.daemon.html
If you use or know of the Free Berkeley Software Distribution of Unix distributions, laugh with me. If not, move along, these are not the droids you're looking for.
(via Reddit)
Flash 9 Player For Linux Released!
Adboe has finally released Flash Player 9 for Linux. Ok, so it's only a pre-release version but seems to work fine for me and it's about time. A lot of sites had migrated to Flash 9 and us Linux users were SOL.
To install the Firefox plugin as root in the CLI:
# cd /usr/src
# wget http://www.adobe.com/go/fp9_update_b1_installer_linuxplugin
# tar -xzvf FP9_plugin_beta_101806.tar.gz
# cd flash-player-plugin-9.0.21.55/
# cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox-1.5.0.7/plugins
The above commands extracts the archive and copies the binary plugin to the Mozilla Firefox plugins directory.
Restart Firefox. Enjoy.
A Studio Finally Gets It
With so much good TV on this year, Amy (and our humble Tivo) hasn't been able to keep up. If the Tivo can't keep up (she won't let me upgrade the DVR to a Linux based MythTV system until I produce a ring, but that's a topic for a different post), the shows must be obtained from other sources. So that's where I come in. I fire up Scrapetorrent and can find just about any show and using Azureus, I can get a HDTV quality digital copy in under 30 minutes or less.
Just last night, a crisis was averted by me being a Hero and downloading the latest episode of Heroes (warning: link contains unsolicited audio) sans commercials. Oops, I just admitted to committing a felony and under current U.S. law, that makes me worse than a terrorist. But here's the thing, I don't want to do it this way, I want to obtain these shows legally or compensate the studios in some way. I-Tunes you say? Screw that. Their incredibly restrictive DRM is their way of thanking me for paying for the content. If I lost the copy or worse yet, I-Tunes is updated in the future that breaks the current protection scheme, well, it sucks to be me. So, no thanks, I'll be a pirate.
For about two years, I've always been wondering why a studio doesnt make it's shows available online with commercials. If they used Flash or a proprietary embedded player, they could control the content and it would be a better product than you can pirate. If you can't sue the hell out 'em and make 'em stop, compete with 'em. Looks like a studio finally figured out.
Now comes news from Disney-ABC that content producers have had a revelation: instead of simply trying to squash piracy, it might be more productive to understand and compete with it. Earlier this year, ABC launched its embedded video player on a two-month trial basis. It was an instant hit (about 7 million episodes viewed in their entirety) and did well enough for the network that they elected to bring it back permanently in September after working out a way to compensate affiliates who were being cut out of the revenue pie.
"So we understand piracy now as a business model," said Sweeney in a recent analyst call. "It exists to serve a need in the marketplace specifically for consumers who want TV content on demand and it competes for consumers the same way we do, through high-quality, price and availability and we don't like the model. But we realize it's effective enough to make piracy a key competitor going forward. And we've created a strategy to address this threat with attractive, easy to use ways to for viewers to get the content they want from us legally; in other words, keeping honest people honest."
The shows ABC is offering aren't the bottom of the ratings bucket either, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty (I think she's actually pretty hot) among others. The player isn't full screen but it is in 16x9 format and the quality is excellent. You don't need to download some spyware riddled software but you do need a broadband connection.
I applaud ABC for finally getting a clue and hope they offer more content this way. Show them support by watching a full show. I think you'll be impressed.
