Cut Slackware some slack...

This recent Slashdot headline noted there was some recent downtime at Slackware.com, .. Slackware, like a lot of free software / open source coding projects, relies a lot on unpaid volunteers. What is unique about Slackware is that it is very much the vision of one man, Patrick Volkerding. He coordinates every new release with a small team of developers worldwide, including Robby Workman and Eric Hamleers. Workman, I believe, does a lot of work on the website, Slackbuilds.org, while Hamleers is a long time developer who is the person most responsible for porting the Slackware to 64-bit Intel processors, and now is working on an important port to the ARM architecture. That will be very important going forward as cellular sized devices continue to displace the personal PC as the platform of choice. The Raspberry Pi devices could change the world! Slackware, as the oldest Linux distribution still being actively maintained and used, is going to be a part of that. As far as lags in development, from my own experience, most of the recent snags have been due to component pieces of the gnu/linux platform being deficient, notably pieces of X and the kernel itself. The shift towards different graphical paradigms caused some disruption, too. Look to those issues before blaming Patrick Volkerding.

Oh, one other thing, allow me to point out one fact about Slackware's perceived lack of popularity. Why does it appear to shine less brightly than the newer, and perceived rising stars of the Linux world? Well, for one thing, it does have a learning curve. That means it can be off-putting to some. However, once it is mastered, it provides the basis for a lean, mean, fighting machine! It is deployed in quantity by people in the know. For example, at some of the linux conferences I have attended, a few devout followers from certain industries, governments, etc. where stability is a primary asset have stated it is their primary go-to tool. And for what it's worth, those agencies may not desire to have their deployments counted.

Herbert Vetoes HB363, the Anti-Sex Ed Bill!

This was a big surprise, given that Gail Ruzika had invested so much lobbying effort to get the bill passed. The Eagle Forum (also known as the anti-sex league) must be crying in their Cheerios this morning.

It was refreshing Herbert stood up for the majority's view, and didn't pander to the ultra-right. Too bad, he didn't show the same courage last year. He should have vetoed the bill designating an official firearm, the 45 caliber long-slide, last year.

On Point: Interview with special effects artist Douglas Trumball

Interview with Douglas Trumball, who created special effects for 2001, Silent Running, Close Encounters, The Tree of Life, etc. Download audio.

NPR: Fukushima Anniversary Discussions

Monday's On Point was a very interesting discussion. There is a real possibility that Japan will mothball all of its nuclear power because the risk the industry poses to all of Japan had been previously underestimated. Download audio.

Likewise, last Tuesday's Fresh Air. Download audio. This is an interview with Dan Edge, the producer of a Frontline documentary about the disaster.

On Point Discussion: New web privacy policies at Facebook and Google

Today's On Point discusses how both Facebook and Google are changing their privacy policies. They discuss the pros and cons of these changes and completely new offerings. New to the Google mix is the Android phone penetration, which enables phone providers and Google to gather geographic and on-the-spot information.

Download mp3 audio

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Fresh Air: Baratunde Thurston

This was an interesting episode of Fresh Air, an interview with Baratunde Thurston.

Download mp3 audio

Here is the audio split into 4 parts.

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Strip audio track from a video file using mplayer

Let's say there is a large file encoded into mp4 and the audio is what is of most interest. Because I am not very familiar with mplayer/mencoder/sox this was a problem in the sort of hard category. First, I tried using mencoder, but I think some frame synchronization data is included in the stream and causes a metronome-like ticking. I tried using mplayer instead, and finally found the right sequence with some googling and trial and error. I'll save my work here for future reference.

Command line sequence to strip audio from an mp4 using an intermediate named fifo buffer
$ mkfifo fifo.wav
$ mplayer -quiet t.mp4 -ao pcm:fast:file=fifo.wav -vc dummy -vo null -channels 2 &
$ cat fifo.wav | sox -t raw -r 44100 -e signed -b 16 -c 2 - -t ogg audio.ogg
$ rm fifo.wav

For my test file, the resulting ogg file was about 5% as big as the mp4 file that includes the video. YMMV

Also, in fooling around with sox, I stumbled upon this misc information. I think this may be equivalent to the "play" command:

$ sox audio.ogg -d