Podcast/Vodcast - best thing since sliced bread?

today on my way back home, was watching series of vodcasts(Video podcast for the uninitiated) i had downloaded...'n dint realize when my one-hr journey got over! Its an amazing way to pass time...'n it needn't go waste...you have podcasts/vodcasts in almost any category you can think of! So if you are the kind of person who likes learning new languages, all you have to do is subscribe 'n you are on your way...'n if you digg NG or Discovery, you can subscribe to their informative vodcasts as well...
iTunes website does a neat job of listing the top podcasts/vodcasts...

well Novell used to have NOA, when Ted was there...hmm wonder if its still happening...

Anyways here's da list of my top podcasts/vodcasts -
BestOfYouTube ( Must have!!!)
National Geographic Video Shorts
Flight of Conchords (nice comedy series by HBO...'n u get few entire episodes for free download!)
The Classic Tales Podcast
Discovery Channel Video Podcasts
Learn Spanish With Coffee Break Spanish
Ask a Ninja - iPod
Pandora Podcast Series

'n ofcourse you have ur Techie 'n Sports sections...

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

The iPhone is a piece of shit, andso is your face.No, I'm not going to get an iPhone, quit emailing me about it. I'm not getting one because I already have a phone that's better: it's called the Nokia E70, it's the pinnacle of human achievement, and I love it more than my family:

You've probably never heard of the E70 because Nokia's marketing team is busy finding every last dick in the universe to suck, so I'm going to do their job for them and tell you about this product. And no, I'm not being paid to do this. I'm just tired of the iPhone fanboys shooting huge sticky wads and high-fiving each other (literally) over their stupid cellphones.

First of all, the E70 has a full keyboard, not some shitty stripped down, tap-and-pray smudgy piece of shit. Nokia uses a technology that's even more advanced than the iPhone's tap screen, allowing you to actually feel the keys you press as you're pressing them! The technology is called "tactile response," and it allows you to do things like dial a phone number without staring at your screen like a shit-chucking ape. In fact, every other cellphone ever made has this technology, sometimes called "buttons."

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

This was just too good not to blog it... :)

Blogged with Flock

Apple. DRM, Rand...

This article is long over-due….it all started when I ‘n madcap were discussing about apple, DRM…’n I asked him…how do you think Ayn Rand’s philo will fit into all this….? ‘N the Q got redirected to me…’n due to lack of time? Said‘ll blog about it sometime…. ‘N having nothing better to do, coz of being sent home early due to ppl staging protestations in front of office, here I am inking my thoughts on the subject… 

Disclaimer…

Let me clarify, this post is just to air my views or rather my lack of views, coz ‘m still not sure where I stand on this… ‘n coz I keep seeing this, thought will put in here also, though doubt if this topic is that controversial, anyways here it is –the views are mine alone ‘n not subscribed by my employer :D And all the said things below are based on what li’l knowledge I possess, so if some things are wrong then it is due to non possession of facts rather than any intentional over-looking… 

Ok, let me begin with what started it all…iPod. Now I must confess ‘m a big-time apple fan but in this post I will try to be as un-biased as possible….  It started off with my confusion o’er what mp3 player to buy. Well I had always loved the apple’s click-wheel interface ’n the oh so classy look of ipods but they did have a major draw-back that they dint have any kinda radio support( which was a major major reqmt for me) ’n dint support that many file formats either. But even with these draw-backs I was considering iPod. At this time was asking everyone I knew about other alternatives ’n that’s where madcap came in- ’n he being my total opp. i.e. apple hater… , started off on a tirade against it. His major gripe was the ‘DRM’ of-course, well even ‘m against it but it dint bother me much coz me never plan to buy music off iTunes ’n neither am I rich enough to possess more than one player, so the Q of playing the bought music on other players doesn’t arise at all. :P Probably ‘m being selfish ‘n looking at only my needs, but if ‘m buying the player for myself, then it should follow that I should buy something which suits my needs…rite? ;)

A li’l history…

Anyways his take was ‘apple’ is evil, coz of the DRM, ‘n all that customers who bought the music have no where to go but stick to apple. I totally empathize with the ppl, it’s one sick situation to be in. But let’s start off from beginning….When iPod was launched, did any one ever (cud have) imagine (d) such a situation…? A song for 99c was such a brilliant move that it was instantly lapped up by ppl as well as by the music industry which was then fighting the ‘napster’ ‘n such p2p sharing. It was like, to quote Godfather – “I’m gonna make you an offer, you can’t refuse” ‘n to top that it was perfectly “legal” too….: D The record companies never imagined that iPod would become so bloody popular, I doubt even if Jobs himself imagined it would grow this much…  So now you have ‘Universal’ music wanting a chunk of the cut, coz it considers all music on iPod as stolen!!!

Btw here’s a nice script of a hypothetical conversation b/n Jobs ‘n Doug Morris.

DRM…

Btw why did it take so long for any decent competition to arise for iPod? 2 yrs back I doubt if any one wanted to use any player other than iPod, but that was then. ’N the fact is that now ppl don’t want DRM, they want to pay only once for their music ‘n be able to play it on iPod, zune or any player. So why it is that apple is still sticking to DRM? ‘Coz IMHO it doesn’t need it to lock customers using it, coz iPod is such a gr8 prod by itself that ppl will use it anyway. Probably that explains why there has not been a major customer cry o’er this ‘coz ppl don’t want to use anything else…?  But then as madcap was saying all these big-players ‘apple’, ‘M$’, ‘sony’… can all come up with a DRM standard which allows inter-operability. :D So then is DRM to prevent/disabuse P2P? If so, it’s a total failure coz as long as you have DRM you will get hacks to circumvent it…

Then is ‘Music Tax’ the way to go, like Peter Jenner says? ‘M not sure but what ‘m sure of is that DRM is defi not the way to go….

Artists, Record Labels, free music….

Free music…well rather music for free…are you really depriving an artist’s lively-hood when you d/w a song illegally off the net? When you d/w a metallica song, is it that they will lose one rupee, oh I mean one dollar from their millions? So you see it is really a bad thing to do…

It’s a different matter that new artists/bands don’t mind their music being distributed freely on the net, coz that’s how they will get popular but as soon as they start getting popular and get signed by record labels, there goes your free stuff…

Now record labels are painted across as the evil ppl, which is not entirely wrong considering that not much of the proceeds go to the artists who deserve it. But in this dog-eat-dog world, no one is free of blame: artists sign enormous multi-million dollar deals for a record whether they deserve it or not is another matter altogether. ‘n the consumer, of course if he is get something for free, will he pay for it else where?

Pls: On one hand you have artists like developers of ‘South Park’ whose sole aim of creating is so that people should watch their shows…’n then you have comedy central whose aim is to milk as much money as possible from the viewers…

How much greedy is greedy? Where do you stop? ‘N should you stop at all?...

Well guess this is the crux ethical Q involved in all the above.

All companies start off small; they develop one revolutionary product on top of which they start growing. So you had M$ beginning with MS-DOS, then Windows ‘n then came the Office ‘n IE. Now this is where the things got murkier. You had Netscape a pioneer in the browser ‘n Word Perfect but M$ started shipping IE ‘n Office integrated with windows. A gr8 business strategy some would say, but ethical? But then some ask what is ethics in business?

‘N then you have some companies piling upon patents on patents, which hinders the very purpose of ‘patent’. Patent concept was developed to foster innovation, but with all the patent filing by big conglomerates one never knows when one may use an idea unknowingly, which is already patented ‘n the big corporation comes knocking on your door for royalties.

Free s/w Vs Proprietary….it can be one entirely diff post altogether but for samplers -  if I want to make money off what I code is it a bad thing? ‘Coz if you release the source, any normal intelligent person can compile it himself ‘n use it for free. It seems ppl have no problem with making money but it’s only when one starts to make too much off it they start having problem. They expect you to start allowing others to compete with your own product. This was where I thought of Ayn Rand. Remember ‘Atlas shrugged’ ‘n Hank Rearden's companies? No one should make you feel guilty of being rich when others are poor, when you have earned it. But in what way you earn it is what matters. ‘N in today’s competitive business environment there’s no way you can live without stepping on someone’s toes. So you have company like ‘Google’ with motto – ‘Don't be evil’ getting increasingly into danger areas where it’s being accused of wrong-doing.

Having said so much ‘m still no where near the answer for the above question.

‘Haves’ ‘n ‘Have-nots’ ‘n ‘Doers’ ‘n ‘Non-Doers’…who is black….who is white? But ‘As it always is - there’s only grey….’

pls: tried to post this frm Google docs as the blogger keeps telling me to....but da darn thing doesnt work! hope google stops advertising stuff which dont work...

Kopete 'n iChat

well...after da umpteenth gaim crash today....thought enough...no more sticking to an IM client which dint support GW, doesn't support 'Now Listening' feature da way its meant to be(even for that, u gotta take so much of pains!) 'n one which just loves to crash every now 'n thn...
So even with my dislike for KDE stuff...'n da last time experience being none too gr8...thought will give 'Kopete' one more try...guess necessity does make human open to more stuff... ;)
After getting myself used to da KDE icons...UI(believe me it does take some getting used to...after da 'oh so simple, plain, uncluttered gnome UI' :) )...delved into da vast feature set which kopete offered...
> 1st thing i saw...it supports GW...not like gaim, where its broken...
> 2nd It allowed you to change the interface themes... 'n to my pleasant surprise...found 'iChat' in thr... :) It is a good 'imitation' ... but nothing more thn tht...coz though it implements da cute 'speaking-style' of iChat...its surrounded in da big ugly KDE chat window...which doesnt let u forget...not even for a moment...tht u r on linux...'n it is an imitation afterall...
But seriously i have major gripes abt tht...y do u need to have such big,ugly window , a major content of which is surrounded by unused/of-little use features...y cant it be like Mac...where chat window is just a 'chat window'...pray how many ppl actually use da drop-down menus in a chat window...file,edit,tools,settings...seriously?!
u wanna do some fancy stuff...go to da toolbar...'n another thing which i like abt da mac is da one menubar which changes depending on da application...y cant linux also have something like tht?
> neways 3rd headed straight into the 'now-listening to' plugin...it seriously da best among wht i have seen so far...da ability to configure so many things...so easily...was just too gud...'n da 'best' part was it did that for my GW IM too...so finally got da thing i wanted since da day i joined work...thnx to kopete... :)
> 4th was some 'Text Effect' plugin...'n using it was so much fun...well 'm sure in a few days da novelty will wear off...but had a blast today...playing ard with my friends...who had no idea how/what was going on... :)
well thats all i have checked out so far...it was defi worth it...even if only for da 3rd feature's last part... :)

Amarok 'n Gaim 'n iChat

Yest nite finally configured gaim to display the current playing song on Amarok as da status...but da sad part is 4 tht to happen ur stat shd be set to away...hopefully autoprofile or gaim guys will fix/provide tht soon...

Neways here's a mini How-To, rather few things which i found difficult...'n which others may do well to avoid...
> D/W gaim beta3 'n Autoprofile 2.14 source
for links...plz google
> untar gaim 'n then untar autoprofile to gaim/plugins/
> do a ./configure in gaim dir
> do make in autoprofile subdirectory
> do make 'n make install for gaim
> so far so good...'n same as wht the autoprofile website says. But next step is whr u cud waste considerable time...if you end up following wht da site says...! 'n which sadly wht i ended up doing... :(
Instead of copying da autoprofile.so to ~/.gaim/ as website says...find out the path where the other plugins are installed 'n thn copy it thr...in my case it was "/usr/local/lib/gaim/"...thnx to my friend's suggestion...you can easily do this by grep'ing for "plugin" in ~/.gaim/prefs.xml...
> now that you have da autoprofile plugin installed, all tht is needed is to configure tht to display the amarok status...thnx to some tip i came across googling, this can be easily done thru a shell script.
something on the lines of this -

while [ 1 ]
do
echo `dcop amarok player artist` '-' `dcop amarok player title` > $HOME/Currentsong
done

> In the component settings of autoprofile, for text/songs select the path for this file($HOME/Currentsong)
> thn set ur away status as %x 'n u r done... :)

You can do this by setting %e also...saves you da trouble of running a shell script...but somehow i never got it to work...

Now tht was yest nite...today morn rather noon, i 'discovered' iChat.
For some totally inexplicable reason, i had never tried out iChat before, atleast after gtalk came into existence 'n before tht it was as much use to me as binoculars to a blind man...
Neways configuring iChat for Gtalk was pretty straight forward, thnx to google... 'n it just WOWed me afterwards with its simple 'n so beautiful interface!



'n you just have to select 'Show current iTunes Track' from da drop-down menu...so unlike all da circus one has to do on gaim...'n very much similar to da 'Show current playing track' on google talk...now i know frm whr its 'inspired'... :D
yea i know iTunes is da only player on Mac...whr u have some dozen for linux...but still thts no xcuse for not providing with a gud interface to display da current playing song...

well not only this...Apple takes every small detail to another level altogether...be it changing da display pic or da cute way to show person's thinking while inputting text or da way incoming chat notifications are displayed...
think iChat's gonna be my default IM client for some days to come now... :)