One of the new features of Gnome 2.22 is the fact that Totem now has a plugin to access your MythTV programs. I installed the plugin and found myself wondering what to do next. I checked on Google for totem mythtv and didn’t find anything until today when Google finally got around to indexing a forum post about it on the Ubuntu Forums. I followed the directions about editing Gconf and had success!

Brought to us by Randal Monroe of xkcd:

Also, you much check this one out both for its mention of Python and the Asus EEE PC.

Whenever you’re working with the file directory structure or with text in general, you can’t do any better than using the command line.  For example, I was recently copying a bunch of files off of some old CDs because I was noticing that they were starting to develop bit-rot.  (I couldn’t access all the files anymore)  For reasons I don’t wish to get into right now, it’s easier to not have spaces in filenames in Linux.  It’s not because Linux can’t handle spaces in filenames - it can.  But if you’re a semi-hacker like me, spaces in filenames can wreak total havoc on your scripts.  So I wanted to remove spaces off of around 200 or so files.

Long time readers will know how much I love building computers.  And I have been given the chance to build another one!  This time it’s for Danielle’s aunt who saw the one I built for my father-in-law.  Her old computer is not fast enough for what she needs it to do so she asked me to design her a new one.  I decided to go with a nice, sleak Shuttle case since they don’t have tons of room in NYC for the uber-towers I typically use for myself.  Also, it’s pretty much 100% likely that she isn’t going to upgrade it - ever.

Time and again I’ve warned my readers of the perils of DRM.  (Specifically here and here).  That’s why I don’t buy music on iTunes and have given all of my digital music patronage to Amazon.com.  Even my wife, who’s not as into FOSS and all that as I am, has become disgusted as she’s understood what DRM means for her - regular Jane Consumer.

I’m not the only one who’s made these claims.  Yet others say, “you guys are just using that as an excuse to malign DRM.  It’s necessary for protecting content from piracy and you just want to pirate stuff.”  Oh yeah?  Well, are you prepared to give up your rights to expect your paid content to work when you come back to it in the future?

Despite what the MPAA claims, it’s not us consumers who need to be restrained by DRM, but their own people. This website demonstrates how movies are pirated by the movie companies and members of the Oscar committee.

Here are some key quotes:

For the last few years, the movie industry’s battles with Internet pirates offered an entertaining diversion during Oscar season. Their problem: they need to “leak” their films to Academy members for consideration, but don’t want those official leaks to fall into the hands of pirates. In 2003, the MPAA banned all screeners, causing a massive uproar from directors, actors, critics and indie studios. The plan was eventually scrapped in December 2003

So, readers may remember that when I upgraded to Fedora Core 6, I lost dual screen abilities. Well, after today’s update of the nVidia drivers from livna, it suddenly was working again (after I tried to set it up). But then compiz no longer wanted to work! That frustrated me as I wanted to have both the advantages of dual screen as well as the helpful and fun eye candy of compiz. Well, Yupman in Fedora’s freenode chat helped me through it and showed me how to change my xorg.conf to make it work.

I have finally uploaded my public encryption key to the main pgp server that is the default on KGPG, the encryption program I use on my Linux computer. I also set up my Thunderbird email program to digitially sign all of the messages I send with my public key so that anyone who gets an email from my Gmail account will now have the assurance that I sent them the email and not someone spoofing me. In fact, if they have the ability to check GPG keys on their computer, they will be able to check the key against the server and make sure that the email has not been changed since I wrote it.

I was trying to pay my Verizon Wireless bill a few weeks ago and it kept having problems. I checked the credit card number, the expiration date, and every other field, but it was still not working. Finally I got fed up enough to call tech support rather than risk being locked out or something. So I gave them a call and the lady says to me, “oh, you’re using Firefox aren’t you?” “Yes I am” (because I don’t like viruses and other M$ exploits taking over my computer) “Oh well, I’m sorry, but you can’t use that browser here to pay your bills.” “What?” “Oh, don’t worry, our engineers are working on it.”