The Silent Number

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Hey YouTube, we want Open Video too!

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_JZ3WyjOTA

From my YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheSilentNumber
Please subscribe!

HTML 5 supports embedding videos with a simple tag, and Firefox 3.5 adds support for Ogg Theora and Vorbis for video and audio, respectively (Midori already supports this as well). Dailymotion has taken advantage of this to create their new Open Video site where all of their users' content will be automatically transcoded into Ogg. They expect to have around 300,000 videos there and they have set up this demo site (requires Firefox 3.5 or Midori using the Firefox 3.5 user agent string) to show a few cool things that can be done without the constraints of Flash. YouTube has their own HTML 5 demo site but it does not (yet?) use Ogg, and since Theora is ahead of H.264 in objective quality, there really is no downside. I hope YouTube will follow in Dailymotion's footsteps, and it's very disappointing that they weren't the leaders here. This is a great direction for the futue of videos online, and YouTube could be a big boost for it. If only P2P streaming could have such significant developments. I'm sure it helps if you will join me in requesting Google uses Ogg for YouTube with HTML5 (Check off "I have another idea" at the bottom).

Update: The test showing that Theora is ahead of H.264 turned out to be flawed but Theora isn't far behind and is actually better than YouTube's videos (although HD was not tested).

Update 2: Theora has now been tested with HD videos and it equals what YouTube currently uses.

Why Choose "Open Source" for Free Software

At this point, the only reason i still use the term "Free Software" is to align myself with the Free Software movement as opposed to the Open Source movement, but to end this stupid naming controversy and make both movements stronger, not only do we have to, but we should for our own benefit use the term "open source" instead. I did a little rant about this a while ago on YouTube. The argument is really very simple.

The term Free Software is good because it emphasizes freedom, or at least it's supposed to. The problem is obviously that people confuse it with freeware (free as in beer, not as in freedom). Open Source is bad because their movement only focuses on practical advantages, and ignores freedom. The distinction between the disadvantages of both terms, is that one is inherent in the term, whereas the other is only a reflection of the group of people that choose to use it. In other words, Free Software will always be confused with freeware because the English language doesn't distinguish free as in price and free as in freedom, and Open Source just ignores freedom because of the movement currently aligned with the term. This means that the Free Software movement could use the term open source, but make sure to always emphasize freedom, so there wouldn't be the harmful confusion around the word "free", nor the lack of emphasis on freedom by using the term "Open Source".

Now, there is Libre software, which distinguishes free as in freedom from gratis, free as in price, but it still hasn't caught on and it keeps the Open Source and Free Software movement arguing about terminology instead of working together to promote their ideals. I'm glad to see the Free Software Foundation Europe has recognized this, but now who will convince Richard Stallman?

What's in a name?

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtgcB8aFit8

From my YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheSilentNumber
Please subscribe!

Do you like your name? Forgetting all the standard conventions of personal names, if you did not have a name and had to choose one for yourself, what would it be, and why?

Top 7 Organizations for Fluid Democracy

If you believe in democracy, then you should care about the current state of our own, here in America (sorry readers from the rest of the world!). If you're really aware, you might know that our democracy isn't in fact very strong at all. Many people barely consider it a democracy. We have much less say in goverment than we may think we do, but if we stand together, we still have the power to bring about great change.

People argue about today's hot topics and promote the causes they care about, but we need to focus on something a little more fundamental: our political process. Without a strong democracy, it might not be the case that the majority wins, but the side with the most influence (money) does instead.

To put into perspective only a few of the problems that still exist today: Why should we have an opinion if congress serves lobbyists instead of us? Why should we vote if our votes are not counted, are miscounted, or are downright manipulated? How can we form valid opinioins if the media serves corporate interests instead of putting journalism first? For all this and more, we need to focus on improving our democracy. Here are my top 7 organizations that are doing exactly that.

Change Congress
http://change-congress.org/
Stop congress from accepting money from lobbyists or PACs, end earmarks, and support reform to increase Congressional transparency
Free Press
http://www.freepress.net/
Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. If the media is slanted, how can you trust what you hear and see?
Verified Voting Foundation
http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/
Ensure our elections are reliable and publicly verifiable
Public Campaign
http://www.publicampaign.org/
Campaigns should be publicly funded to make elections about voters, not lobbyists and campign donors.
FairVote
http://www.fairvote.org/
Our elections need universal access to participation, a full spectrum of meaningful ballot choices, and majority rule with fair representation for all.
Sunlight Foundation
http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/
Open up government and increase transparency by revealing the interplay of money, lobbying, influence and government in Washington.
Free Government
http://www.freegovernment.org/
Empower citizens to engage in government decision making and promoting true representation in congress

I also have to give mention to the American Monetary Institute

http://www.monetary.org/

Economic reform is needed to prevent an inevitable total financial meltdown, take the ultimate power from banks, and ensure a sustainable economy. For a pretty good explanation, check out this video (and forgive the crappy animation).

I hope this reaches the eyes of interested readers, and if you'd like, feel free to join my Democracy FIRST group on Facebook.

Monday, June 08, 2009

Free Software alternatives to Interactive Whiteboards?

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDrqirvM6lo

From my YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheSilentNumber
Please subscribe!

My school is about to invest a lot of money towards this so please post any good arguments against it or open source alternatives!

Also discussed here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1080456

What ever happened to P2P Streaming Media?

To cite this article from 2002:

First there was AM. Then FM. Now, the next evolution in radio broadcast technology could very well be "P2P."

What could be even more controversial than Internet radio/audio broadcasting--which has made headlines this year over the issue of royalty payments--and P2P file sharing? Probably the merging together of these banes of the music industry.

It is now almost seven years later and P2P radio is nowhere to be seen. A few projects have popped up, but seems to have died. PeerCast and FreeCast haven't had a new release since 2007 and 2006 respectively. Then there is IceShare which never even got off the ground.

With streaming to overtake downloads, at least in music, the need for P2P streaming media systems is even greater. The potential is huge. Anyone could start their own internet radio or TV station from their own computer using P2P technology. So i ask all of you, why have these projects died, and how do we get this back off the ground?