Direct download as Ogg (1:18:49, 14.9 MB) | High-quality MP3 (72.2 MB | Low-quality MP3 (9.0 MB)

Summary: Tim and Roy return to an older format wherein they cover many different issues and close with a single track

Today’s show starts with a discussion about broadband speeds, based on some new statistics and interesting factoids. It then discusses some issues like patents, games, Windows, and GNU/Linux. We are currently transitioning into a new generation of episodes with video duality.

“Gary is a Robot” by AmpLive on SXSW 2010 Showcasing Artists is the track which closes today’s show. We hope you will join us for future shows and consider subscribing to the show via the RSS feed. You can also visit our archives for past shows. If you have an Identi.ca account, consider subscribing to TechBytes in order to keep up to date.

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Summary: Pilot for a new show that will come in the form of video

THIS episode is a test which we hope will help us get sufficient feedback before the first episode of the video series/show. Please put comments at the bottom to help us improve delivery. We are already aware that audio and video are a tad out of sync (video lag) and will attempt to address that.

We hope you will join us for future shows and consider subscribing to the show via the RSS feed. You can also visit our archives for past shows. If you have an Identi.ca account, consider subscribing to TechBytes in order to keep up to date.

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Update: we are having a hard time uploading this to YouTube, maybe due to video dimension.

LEARLY, when one writes/maintains a Web site, keeping pages up to date is a tough task and the bigger the site is, the harder it gets. Updates can be made to the appearance of pages, as well as the content. Unlike newspapers, for example, sites can be accessed 10 years down the line and not carry a timestamp to indicate that the information in them may no longer be accurate. This is fine in the case of schestowitz.com because most pages contain some sort of timestamp (most pages here are about 6 or 7 years old). Even when pages get updated if makes sense to keep the old content in tact, at least as a form of legacy. That’s what I did over the weekend with the introduction page, which someone complained about as it was about 7 years old and needed a refresh. The bottom line is, for certain types of sites, keeping them up to date is a monumental task. Webmasters do not deserve hassle for it.

Direct download as Ogg (1:22:55, 15.4 MB) | High-quality MP3 (75.9 MB | Low-quality MP3 (9.5 MB)

Summary: Tonight we spoke about Samsung’s defence against an Apple lawsuit, ACS:Law, torrents for slow networks, and a whole lot more; Rusty joined us from the United States

In addition to the topics named in the show notes, it ought to be mentioned that Richard Stallman said he would love to be in a future show; we are also adding videos over SIP very soon, and the intention is to have them summarise some news, be delivered in decent viewing quality, and maybe have guests in them too. Hopefully our first video episode will be out tomorrow.

“Abyss of Hell” and “Bourbon Lassi” are the tracks in today’s show. We hope you will join us for future shows and consider subscribing to the show via the RSS feed. You can also visit our archives for past shows. If you have an Identi.ca account, consider subscribing to TechBytes in order to keep up to date.

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Summary: Weakness in 3-D desktop effects in KDE4

THERE seems to be a deficiency or a bug that may or may not be present upstream/in Compiz too (I seem to recall it not being present in Mandriva 2008 with KDE and Compiz). Basically, as the screenshots below show, the desktop wall separates the left and the right hand side monitors in a rather awkward way, such that they basically completely diverge and do not align horizontally, either (due to different screen sizes). For visual demonstration, here is what the wall looks like:

Here is what the sphere of my desktop looks like:

The connection between left and right is correct in this case. Scale and the other 3-D plug-ins work just fine, but the split in the wall is clearly a bug.

t has been a very long time since I last blogged about research, but things are going well and inactivity in the blog typically implies a lot of progress elsewhere. At the moment I am just putting the final touches, improving the program that I developed to run future experiments. Here is a new screenshot.

Now comes the CPU-heavy part, requiring perhaps weeks of runtime. The memory footprint of the program sometimes exceeds 3 GB of RAM.

A lot more material, including technical explanations, will be released at a later date when it’s more tidy.

Direct download as Ogg (1:26:41, 16.8 MB) | Direct download as MP3 (39.7 MB | Low-quality MP3 (9.9 MB)

Summary: Except the experimental bits about video, this show covered MeeGo, Angry Birds, FTAs, and much more

We attempted to make this the first episode with video, but due to technical issues it will probably have to wait until the next episode. Tim and I will have hopefully sorted out webcams over SIP by then.

We hope you will join us for future shows and consider subscribing to the show via the RSS feed. You can also visit our archives for past shows. If you have an Identi.ca account, consider subscribing to TechBytes in order to keep up to date.

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