Chris Berg of the Institute of Public Affairs:
It’s a bit embarrassing that we’re discussing censoring the internet at all. What does it say about Australian politics that the reaction of both major parties to such a liberating technology is to demagogue about its dangers? Our politicians rave about evils online more than any other liberal democracy. As a consequence, the Federal Government’s proposal is far more extensive than any other internet censorship scheme outside the totalitarian world.
There is a certain element of Australian political culture that sees censorship and banning as the panacea to almost every social and policy question. But wowserism dressed up in concerned rhetoric about the sanctity of childhood is still wowserism.
Nigel Stewart Australia, Commentary, Internet Australia, censorship, filtering, politics
I came across a Coby MP705 at my local Frys electronics store. It features MP3 and OGG audio and XVID AVI video at 220×176 @30fps.
There is one configuration setting necessary for the player to happily talk to Ubuntu 8.04 Linux over USB:
Setup -> System -> USB Mode -> MSC
I had success converting MPEG and AVI video files using the Avidemux software available for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. I used 160kbps for audio and 1000kps for video.
Reviews:
To-do list:
- Sync podcasts from Amarok
- Built-in encoding profile for Coby MP705 in Avidemux
Diagnostics:
$ sudo lsusb
Bus 002 Device 012: ID 10d6:1101 Actions Semiconductor Co., Ltd
…
$ sudo tail -f /var/log/messages
… kernel: [5763298.121007] usb 2-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 12
… kernel: [5763298.254409] usb 2-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
… kernel: [5763298.286317] scsi15 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
… kernel: [3200583.185711] scsi 15:0:0:0: Direct-Access GENERIC USB DISK DEVICE 1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS
Nigel Stewart Linux, Tech avi, coby, Linux, mp3, ogg, portable player
Man tries to pay bill with spider drawing
Dear Jane,
I do not have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead. I value the drawing at $233.95 so trust that this settles the matter.
Regards, David.
Followup: Spider minus a leg sells for thousands
Nigel Stewart Australia, Commentary funny, recession
Loo paper rationed on bummer of a diversion
QANTAS was forced to ration water, biscuits, nappies and toilet paper – four sheets a person – to passengers who spent more than 24 hours on a flight diverted from Sydney because of a storm. QF32 left Singapore at noon Sydney time on Friday and was due to arrive in Sydney about 8pm. But the Boeing 747 was forced to circle the airport for more than an hour and then spend more than eight hours at Canberra airport after failing to land because of the storm. The unplanned stop at Canberra to refuel turned into a four-hour wait for the fuel truck to arrive. By the time the plane was ready to take off again Sydney airport’s 11pm curfew was in force, prompting Qantas to apply to the Department of Transport for special dispensation to land. It was refused.
“It was a nightmare,” said Francis Chippeck, who travelled with her daughter, Ava, 2, from Singapore. “The plane was hot and sticky and I ran out of nappies at about 1am. “They gave me two extras but by yesterday morning I was down to the last one and I had to say to her, ‘You better not poo.”‘
Ronald Ross and his four children, aged 4 to 15, joined the Qantas flight on Friday morning after travelling from London the day before. By the time they arrived in Sydney the family had spent 72 hours on planes and waiting at airports. “The whole time we were on there they only gave us two biscuits and a bottle of water,” he said. “The crew were great but the only thing that annoyed me was that I had four children and I asked them if we could get them off the plane first and in the end we were the last to get off.”
Nigel Stewart Australia, Commentary airlines, Australia, qantas, travel
Australian research suggests that smoking causes depression. A politically incorrect research study would be titled: depression as a cause for smoking. I don’t suppose there are any research dollars available to support that presupposition? With research funding controlled by various lobby groups, it seems doubtful.
Nigel Stewart Australia, Commentary depression, Research, science, smoking
Glux (OpenGL Utility & Auxiliary Library) is a flexible C++ library to aid development in OpenGL.
- A flexible C++ library containing utility and auxiliary functions and classes to aid OpenGL application development.
- Function and class names try to follow the OpenGL naming convention, making the library easier to use.
- Creation and manipulation of (multiple) windows usable in an OpenGL-based application.
- Built-in support for loading RAW and TGA (RLE compression supported) images.
- Utility functions, such as basic INI loading, figures (gluxWireSphere, …).
- Does NOT entirely take over your main loop like GLUT and its variants do.
- Basic Threading.
- Crossplatform.
Nigel Stewart Graphics, Tech GLUT, Glux, OpenGL
