Samsung Transform

I have joined the future with a Samsung Transform.

Detail of note: the rageagainstthecage root exploit works.

Downloading Real Audio

I recently needed to download a Real Media podcast. Here's what was needed:

wget the ram file

Inside the ram is an rtsp URL
Using openRTSP from the debian package livemedia-utils:

openRTSP -S 0 rtsp://...

Somewhere in the output file from that, is an audio tag, referring to another rtsp file.
Run mplayer against that...

mplayer -dumpstream rtsp://....

and you have an actual real media file that vlc will play. Unfortunately, mplayer doesn't (seem) to want to run faster than realtime against an rtsp url.

mozless and ff 3.6

I finally got tired of mozless not working on my Ubuntu 10.04 system.

Brief instructions and how I fixed it:

Download the xpi, unzip and create a file called chrome.manifest in the root of the extension. Fill it with the following:

content mozless chrome/content/
skin mozless classic/1.0 chrome/skin/
locale mozless en-US chrome/locale/en-US/


overlay chrome://browser/content/browser.xul chrome://mozless/content/mozless.xul
overlay chrome://browser/content/navigator.xul chrome://mozless/content/mozless-mozilla.xul

overlay chrome://mozless/content/mozless.js

----

Then in the chrome directory, unzip the mozless.jar file and delete the file itself.

zip up the directory and install your 'new' extension, and delight at 'j' and 'k'.

udev -> xorg.conf.d snippet

More changes.
To support the Trackpoint keyboard with the newer xorg (1:7.5+5) in Debian, the solution is to create a file named /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-thinkpad.conf with the follwing contents:

Section "InputClass"
Identifier "Trackpoint Wheel Emulation"
MatchProduct "TrackPoint"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Driver "evdev"
Option "EmulateWheel" "true"
Option "EmulateWheelButton" "2"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "false"
Option "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
#Option "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

For Ubuntu, try putting the file into /usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d/ instead if the putting it into the /etc/X11/Xorg.conf.d/ directory does not work.

If having that file causes other input devices to die, also add /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-allinput.conf with the following:
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "allinput"
Driver "evdev"
EndSection

(A 3rd conf file for synaptics configuration is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Fixing the Patent System

In US copyright system there is the notion of mechanical royalties where I can use any songwriter's work without a negotiated license. I record my usage, and there is a rate (cents/minute). Now, I am free to negotiate a different rate with the songwriter if so desired, but there is a compulsory aspect where permission from the original author is not required.

How about applying this to the patent system? Like in the copyright system, a collection of patent judges could determine the relative worth of a patent, examining not just the patent itself, but various aspects surrounding it, such as barrier to entry for the market, (non) obviousness, complexity, and usage. A patent on a large-scale industrial manufacturing process would cost much more than a simplistic patent on a method of how to use child's swing. The patent can then be licensed by anybody on a per-unit basis for this rate, but alternate rates can be negotiated, possibly in a lump-sum instead of a per-unit basis.

The largest effect this would have is turn patents from a (per-claim) all-or-nothing game, into a game of degree. It is already up to patent examiners to look at the sheer validity of patents, giving them an additional level of control does not sound infeasible to me. This also wouldn't be cost-prohibitive like requiring a function prototype.

hal -> udev upgrade

I'm running Debian, which recently deprecated HAL for input stuff, so my old fdi file to enable middle button drag scrolling on my lenovo trackpoint usb keyboard was not working.

The fix is to create a file in /etc/udev/rules.d/99-trackpoint that has:

ACTION=="add", \
ATTRS{idVendor}=="17ef", ATTRS{idProduct}=="6009", \
ENV{x11_options.EmulateWheel}="1", \
ENV{x11_options.EmulateWheelButton}="2", \
ENV{x11_options.XAxisMapping}="6 7", \
ENV{x11_options.Emulate3Buttons}="0"