I'd like one percent of that!

It seems that Microsoft paid IBM USD$775M rather than be sued by them for antitrust violations over OS/2 and SmartSuite. I think they got off rather lightly.

The face Microsoft put on it says a lot about them:

“With these antitrust issues behind us, both Microsoft and IBM can move ahead, at times cooperatively and at times competitively, to bring the best products and services to customers,” said Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith

Not “We’ve been naughty, and got caught, and we’ve learned to not mistreat you” but “Now that this is over, we’re a great company with great products [and implied], we’ve never really done anything wrong, trust us”.

Business as usual — screwing the system, and everyone in it, over — seems to be the order of the day once more. But at least they had to shell out several of their many hoarded billions to resume it. Never mind, they’ll be among the first against the wall [mortgage on soul required], now that the revolution is on final approach.

Comments

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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