#1: Fortunately the clip is also on YouTube.

google cache link to the site's front page, which will at least take you to the donation sites.

Use it before it gets stale!

Wow, abi, nice framing with the poster remix!

Cory, glad to hear you lust after hand bound copies of your work. :) Is is the hand bound part, or the one-of-a-kind part you like?

Awww, Ghostscript made BoingBoing! The comments section anyway. :)

ImageMagick just runs GhostScript to do stuff to PDFs.

Yeah, but it's not the front end you want for this. It's fond of rendering every page into memory before writing anything out, which accounts for the endless churning. ImageMagick is great for images. Books and videos, not so much.

Antinous: Ideally yes. I was curious about sources for new leather bound books, since you mentioned preferring them in #57.

Anonymous @ 77: A opposed to being open to the idea of learning a new language?

Antinous: Ok, you've mentioned binding twice now. What are the leatherbound editions like Subterranean Press do like? They never talk about the bindings or include a picture. Are the books sewn? Are they actually better objects, or just limited edition and different materials?

Because while one certainly can wrap a paperback novel in leather covered boards, the spine isn't going to be any stronger than it was before, and I'm not convinced it's going to make the book last any longer. And sadly, most hardcover books these days are just paperbacks with cardboard covers.

You know, people who don't read buying and storing antique books is better than people who don't read not buying books at all. Because in 5 or 50 or 200 years when they're sold off, then someone else can read them. No?

Otherwise they're thrown away. Or recycled, if we're lucky.

Rem: That was my impression as well. Fabulous steampunk fantasy, but then it turned into a christian allegory, with little else around to keep one's interest if one wasn't looking to read a christian alegory. And the monkey thing was a bit too...colonial to be great for me.

I'd love to hear a more positive interpretation.

I've fixed the broken links for the Ogg podcast feed. All the episodes should work now.

Sorry, that's parts 3, 12, and 19.

Ogg podcast feed for the whole book.

BTW, links to parts 3, 12, and 18 are broken.

Wow, congrats on completing this. Quite a long read!

Can we get a podcast file for the Ogg version as well?

Link to Ogg version.

Quirks and Quarks have been a long time supporter of free media formats.

The faction description of Nokia's relationship with Open Source has been my experience as well. There certainly are people at Nokia who understand and are committed to open development, but their efforts are counter to established policy and culture.

I've got a Nokia internet tablet too. And I note that while the base of the software stack is open source, and you can install anything you like, it doesn't play Ogg files out of the box!

On the complaint that Ogg doesn't support DRM, I've long suggested facetiously that it does, but I'm starting to wish someone would actually implement that. After all, DRM is a feature of playback software, not data formats, and a simple "DRM=nocopy" in the metadata header is as effective a technological access control as any other.

But I don't know how to unpack statements like "any DRM-incompatible video related mechanism is a non-starter with the content industry". I've heard the opinion expressed that "the content industry" has heard Open Source and DRM are incompatible and therefore they'd never allow their destributors to use a format developed by the open source community. (I understand they avoid having websites for similar reasons. :)

Sun does have an Open Source DRM initiative. It's tremendously vague on the technical details, perhaps to maintain the doublethink that's necessary to think of DRM as a technology. But it might be a way forward with people who still believe they need the snake oil.

I agree this is an excellent analysis both of what the best option are, and what needs to be better. It certainly has been frustrating that we don't have a technically competitive video codec in Theora, the way we have with the audio codecs.

I'm always disappointed when people who say they care about software freedom ignore the patent issues with the MPEG codecs. I could understand civil disobedience, but that's not what I'm hearing here. Content producers are the ones that drive format adoption. And just like software piracy helps Microsoft, and file sharing helps Hollywood, posting your content in encumbered format helps those who can collect royalties on that format, even if they never hit you up personally.

Most of Falk's support complaints are addressed in the linked article, but to balance the discussion here a bit:

* Ogg is the recommended baseline format for the HTML5 proposed <audio> and <video> elements. This is being implemented by Opera, Firefox.

* Wikipedia is using Ogg as their standard media format. See the media commons index for examples of their playback support.

* The Metavid project is another fine example of embedded Ogg playback support. They even have some javascript that lets you use the <video> tag now, dynamically rewriting the page on the client to use the best support option.

Hopefully all these will continue to encourage use and improvement of unincumbered formats.

Congrats Anna and Andy for making Boingboing!

PBS is funded by grants and donations, but over the last twenty years they've been increasingly dependent on large corporate donations. Worse, the management seems to have to control-of-distribution mania as bad as anyone. They certainly don't behave as if their work belongs to the public. You can't download it. If you're lucky, you can buy the popular shows on DVD at fund-raising prices.

From my experience the BBC is more public focussed than PBS.

There are smaller orgs that do produce public work, more in the original vein of PBS, like Pacifica Radio.

Sea Scorpions and regular scorpions aren't closely related. Say Eurypterid if you want to be zoo-cool.

Tim@34: Near as I can tell, it means you don't have to fix your coding practice (and editor) to not indent in a combination of tabs and spaces.

On a related note, I'm also still waiting for a terminal that can use proportional fonts...

Cory@27: Well, gedit certainly gets more love. I use it occassionally when I have lots of cut-and-paste work to do, but normally write everything in nano in a terminal.

People used to roll their eyes at this, but since it's only of the official "favorite editor" options on the LCA registration two years running, I know I'm not alone!

I've been using Inconsolata for the past couple of years. It was designed for print, but at the pixel height I normally use it works ok on screen too.

I still prefer monospace fonts for email, and just checking, apparently also for irc. It just feels like part of the medium, I guess. Apparently script writers still use monospaced fonts exclusively. I've heard both tradition and page-count suggested as reasons.

So, no more bluefish? :)

Note that in addition to the proprietary and patent encumbered formats advertised in the graphic, Miro supports Ogg Theora, which is an actual free and open video format for the free and open video format of the future. :)

I feel your pain.

It was quite the adventure getting our DSL installed in our first flat in London. There weren't enough lines for the building, so the first thing they did was put in some kind of digital aggregator to share the copper to the exchange between our flat and another. Now since this is essentially using a dsl connection to multiplex local voice traffic, it's not compatible with actually having a dedicated data connection. But that didn't deter them, and we had telephone service for a whole extra day before the dsl tech showed up and say, "this will all have to be redone."

He dug under the pavement, then crawled up a pole out back and somehow found a free line pair from which he ran a new cable. And to this day I'm convinced we wouldn't have have a connection if he hadn't spent the rest of the morning parked on our sofa, on his mobile, talking techs at the exchange through wiring up the other end and completing the provisioning.

They were renovating the mews behind our building and adding a bunch of new flats (caused endless trouble with the post). I asked how they were meant to get phones if there weren't any free pairs available, and he patiently explained that first, several people have to call in, then techs would determine that they couldn't get phones, and *then* a flag would be raised with long term planning about the need to get a new trunk laid!

On the other hand, once it was up, the BT dsl line was rock solid, and I got 5 static ips. Even if the pings all went through Manchester. Way better than the high-end "business class" crap I have now from Telus. Something to be said for ISP competition.

So there's good with the bad. And cultural differences. :)