LUGRadio Live 2007 BOF Schedule Announced!
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I am pleased to announce the initial BOF schedule for [LUGRadio Live 2007](https://www.lugradio.org/live/) on the 7th and 8th July 2007. We will have two BOF tracks, one of which is scheduled and another which can be organised freeform on the weekend. Below is the schedule for the scheduled BOF track:
Saturday 7th July 2007:
* 11.00 – 12.00 lug.org.uk
* 12.00 – 13.00 Ubuntu UK
* 13.00 – 14.00 Lunch: Keysigning
* 14.00 – 15.00 Cheaper alternatives to vista
* 15.00 – 16.00 KDE
* 16.00 – 17.00 Perl Mongers
Sunday 8th July 2007:
* 11.00 – 12.00 Jokosher
* 12.00 – 13.00 hashlugradio
* 13.00 – 14.00 Lunch: Keysigning
* 14.00 – 15.00 Power Management
* 15.00 – 16.00 Bongo
LUGRadio Live 2007 is shaping up to be an incredible event! Go and [REGISTER NOW](https://www.lugradio.org/live/2007/index.php/Register)!!
Interviewed
Last week I did an interview with the fellas from the [Linux Action Show](https://www.linuxactionshow.com/). We chatted about a bunch of things including [LUGRadio Live 2007](https://www.lugradio.org/live/), Ubuntu, Ubuntu Live, LUGRadio, Jokosher, KDE4, GStreamer and more.
The show is [Episode 50](https://www.linuxactionshow.com/?p=117) (congrats reaching the big 5-0 chaps) and you can [click here to download the Ogg](https://www.linuxactionshow.com/wp-content/plugins/podpress/web/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5saW51eGFjdGlvbnNob3cuY29tL21pcnJvcnMvTGludXhBY3Rpb25TaG93RVAwNTAub2dn/LinuxActionShowEP050.ogg).
LUGRadio Live Freedom March – Registration open!
Get all your LugRadio Live news and updates from the LugRadio Live Latest News Blog!
(if you can’t see the above video, click here to view it)
With [LUGRadio Live 2007](https://www.lugradio.org/live/2007/) only one month away and the action hotting up, we are proud to present the above Freedom March video. Spread the word about LUGRadio Live by [linking to the video page](https://www.lugradio.org/freedommarch/) with its many formats and the script from the video. Blog it, stick it in forums, tell your gran about it…whatever, just spread the word. 🙂
With 40 speakers, a full exhibition, special events, social events, the gong-a-thon, the mass debate, the hour of power and much more, it is the hottest event of the year.
…and now…[REGISTRATION IS OPEN!!](https://www.lugradio.org/live/2007/index.php/Register) Go and register for the legendary weekend. 🙂
**UPDATE:** [Digg the video](https://digg.com/linux_unix/LUGRadio_Live_2007_Freedom_March_video).
Easy content streaming via applications
When I work from home I mainly sit on my couch, with two small dogs sat with me. On my laptop is 26GB of music, and I listen to it through the crap speakers on my Thinkpad. But, about four feet away is a Playstation 3 plugged into a beefcake surround system. Hmmm, I got thinking and had the thought of streaming my music over the network to the PS3 which could spit said tunes out of aforementioned speakers of beef. I heard that something called uPnP can be used for this, and a recent PS3 firmware update can make this happen.
Speaking to Chris, one of our Canonical sysadmins, he told me about [MediaTomb](https://mediatomb.cc/) which I installed. This provides a uPnP server, but requires quite a bit of tinkering in config files with their requisite obtuse configuration directives. I only want to share MP3s, so I set MediaTomb off indexing my music collection but alas it did not work. I could see the server on my PS3, and see the artists abd albums but when I try to get to a song and play it, it says *Unsupported Data*. A bit of Googling late, it seems a number of people have experienced the same problem. I lose.
This is *waaaay* too hard. One of the most beautiful things about Rhythmbox’s DAAP support is that I just switch it on and my content is shared. Thats it. This is the approach we need for uPnP sharing. Sure, uPnP can share different types of media, but there is no reason why each application type could not stream those specific types of media – Rhythmbox exports music, F-spot exports photos etc. If you wanted a unified server for this, there is no reason why there could not be a gnome-sharing-server that these applications plug in to.
Is anyone working on a solution to this very problem? I would to just tick an option in Rhythmbox and see my content appear on my PS3 via uPnP. Or, am I smoking crack? 😀
Introduction to Jokosher testing, this Sunday, be there!
With the recent release of Jokosher 0.9 we are begging the Open Source community to test it and provide some valuable feedback that we can use to fix bugs. The problem is that debugging problems and issues to provide feedback for developers can be difficult if you have never done it before. Well, this Sunday you can attend an IRC meeting to give you a simple introduction to testing Jokosher.
Organised by the new *Jokosher Testing Team, the session will cover how to test Jokosher, provide useful debugging information and submit it to the developers. If you are not a coder and really want to help the project, this is an excellent, nay essential way of contributing.
So, head over to #jokosher on Freenode at 4pm UTC on Sunday 10th June 2007. We look forward to seeing you there. 🙂
[More details on the session.](https://www.jokosher.org/2007/06/06/come-join-the-jokosher-testing-team-on-sunday-june-10th/).
The Opinion Slab: Living Life Online
Ready for another slab of opinion? Need your weekly dose of opinionated ramblings? Don’t we all! This week another interesting question to bend those neurons of yours and raise that blood pressure a little…
*We are all increasingly living our life online. With our weblogs telling our daily stories, Flickr showing our holiday snaps, last.fm showing our appalling taste in music and twitter showing that we are sat on the bog, it seems the grandiose plan is that any random on the Internet can know what we are doing all the time. With many of us in the free software community sensitive to privacy, and actively engaged in debates over ID cards, governmental use of information, personal information use by third-parties and more, should we be concerned? Are we increasingly moving into an age where it is normal to live your life online and share your personal details and life with others? Could the governments of the world suggest that mandatory measures to provide information to others are acceptable due to a culture of blogging, flickring and twittering?*
My take: our personal information is *our own*. We choose how much information we unleash on the Internet. Some people share much more than others. It is wrong for a government to translate an open and inclusive culture with regards to information sharing and force it on others. Openness is an individual trait with hugely different lines drawn in the sand, and as such we cannot judge an entire culture by the small demographic of fully open individuals. The vast majority of the world are not living their lives online.
As ever, leave your opinions in the comments on this article. I am sure we will get some interesting opinion on this subject. 🙂
Remembering the building blocks
I have always believed that the measure of an individual and their success in their chosen profession are down to the people around them that helped them to become who they are. I am pleased with my progress in this rather wacky industry, and the road from when I first fired up Slackware 96 has been unconventional, raucous, strange and unpredictable to say the least.
I am heading to my 10 year anniversary when I first discovered free software and my life changed distinctively, and some key people have been instrumental in helping me to achieve what I have wanted to achieve. Of this group of incredible individuals, there is one guy though who was critical in all of this, but the sands of time have erased his surname from my brain. So, using the magic of the Internet, I am hoping either he will be reading this or someone will know him. Let me lay out the evidence:
* His name is John *something*.
* When I started linuxuk.co.uk back in the day (not the current site which has new owners), *Mystery John* purchased and registered the domain for me. I was 17, wore a Megadeth t-shirt, had long hair, wore a axe pendent (hence my early nickname of AxeManiac) and he put a surprising amount of trust in me after seeing the website and seeing its potential. The domain was registered around 1998.
* Back then he lived in Hinckly in England.
* I seem to remember him working for an ISP, but I may have invented this in my head.
* Back then he bought in Red Hat box sets at trade price and we concocted the rather devious scheme of selling them at trade price to the community so the community could get Red Hat sets without paying a chunk of mark up on them. Cunning, I know. 😛
Anyone know who *Mystery John* is?
On a different note, some other little bits of information:
* I discovered in Germany that *Mind The Gap*, a common uttering on the London Underground, translates in German to *Beim Aussteigen bitte die Luecke zwischen Zug und Bahnsteinkante beachten*. Crazy!
* Thanks to Domenico Marozzi for sending me some photos of me delivering *Growing Ubuntu* at LinuxTag. I added them to the end of my [LinuxTag Flickr set](https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonobacon/sets/72157600295669688/).
Dell machine bares all
Well, it seems the Ubuntu on Dell machines are shipping. See [this rather nice report](https://www.bryceharrington.org/Photos/DellUbuntu/) with pictures. Its like geek porn, it really is…
*Courtesy of Bryce.*
LinuxTag whips some kind of animal’s nether regions
Thanks to all of my German friends for such a warm reception at LinuxTag to everyone in the Ubuntu team. We had an absolute blast at LinuxTag, and I had a number of really useful, productive meetings while there. It was fantastic to see the German Ubuntu community, and also great to hook up with a bunch of other people such as Larry Ewing, Max Spevak, Thomas Zander, all the GNOME and KDE crew, Quim Gill, Marcel Holtmann, and many more.
My new talk *Growing Ubuntu* seemed pretty well recieved for its first airing, and the room was pleasantly full:
*My audience at LinuxTag*
More photos [here](https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonobacon/sets/72157600295669688/).
Thanks also to all the new friends who I met over there in our incredible free software community. I hope I get to meet you all soon. 🙂
Concerned Of Berlin writes in…
“*I have killed, and I’d kill again, because I don’t care.*” — Malcolm Yates, ISV and Partner Programme, Canonical Ltd.