Distro: Mandriva & CC-NC-SA

I happened to be “wandering past” (dropping an AV kit to) Jonathan Oxer today, at his Distro Summit, when it struck him as likely that I might just happen to use a Linux distro, so he asked if I might give a short presentation on it.

This, opportunistically, is how I gave a short presentation on Mandriva to about 2 dozen geeks.

Mandriva started life as Mandrake, a derivative of Red Hat, then was forced by Hearst Corporation to change its name. Choosing “Mandriva” to reflect the acquisition of Conectiva, Mandriva shouldered its way through the financial morass caused by this Intellectual Property row, pressing on to remain a useful community presence.

With The Penguin Liberation Front flying in formation, Mandriva offers a range of products from the free/Free, totally Open distribution through PLF-assisted codec-enhanced versions to the Commercial-including “Professional” edition, with associated costs (or lack of) & levels of support.

Also got to ask some pointy questions of Jessica & Kimberlee at the Gaming MiniConf about license issues. Kimberlee’s head didn’t explode (yet) but OTOH a certain performer hasn’t (yet) been convinced to CC license any of her works, either.

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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