Podcast Season 3 Episode 23

Posted at 5:19pm on Thursday December 1st 2011
Podcast

Title: Extra Strong Mint

In this episode: Linux Mint 12 has been released and it includes an innovative new take on Gnome Shell. Also, lots of smartphones could be running a rootkit-like piece of software and we discover things, read your views and discuss whether a Computer Science degree is worth the investment.

What's in the show:

  • News:
      Linux Mint 12 has been released, and it's a fantastic example of how both Gnome Shell and Gnome Classic can work together, as well as the commitment of the Mint development team. Android 4.0 has been released for x86 hardware. And Trevor Eckhart has revealed what is effectively a rootkit installed on many millions of smartphones, called Carrier IQ, that apparently records everything, from key presses to your phone's current position, and transmits this data back to a secret base on the dark side of the moon (we made that bit up).
  • Discovery of the week:
    • Jonathan:
      • If you want to install the font from the 'My Little Pony' movie, search for 'Celestia' in Arch's AUR repository.
    • Graham:
      • YaCy is a peer-to-peer search engine that's just released version 1.0.
    • Andrew:
    • Efrain:
      • Unity is rubbish.
  • Rants and Raves
      Andrew rants while Effy raves. More than usual.
  • Speak Your Brains:
      Thanks for your contributions. If you'd like this section to continue, email graham.morrison@futurenet.com today.
  • Open Ballot: How valuable is a Computer Science degree?

  • Check to see if we're still on Facebook here.
  • Special offer: subscribe to Linux Format magazine and save lots

Presenters: Andrew Gregory, Efrain Hernandez-Mendoza, Graham Morrison and Jonathan Roberts

Download as high-quality Ogg Vorbis (34MB)

Download as low-quality MP3 (51MB)

Duration: 55:29

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Theme Music by Brad Sucks.

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Your comments

G+?

haakin - December 1, 2011 @ 6:28pm

Hi!

I just noticed that you are in Facebook. Any chance that you could be in Google Plus too? No problem if you don't want, anyway.

Javier

G+ +1

Alex (not verified) - December 1, 2011 @ 6:59pm

Thought the same two days ago but then saw your post on closed source social networks. Still, it'b be cool if you were on Google+.

Alex

I've just done a search on yacy...

Anonymous Pengwyn (not verified) - December 1, 2011 @ 7:50pm

...for "BBC News" and the first result was the Wikipedia article for Wilmslow.

Carrier IQ

Colin G (not verified) - December 1, 2011 @ 11:36pm

Don't know if this is worth anything:

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/dec/01/carrier-iq-uk-mobile-networks?newsfeed=true>

Apparently no UK networks use this software.

Puts me one step closer to installing CMod on my phone though. Had been thinking about it, but now would really like to see that 'root your phone' tutorial.

Colin

Yes! No!

Huw - December 2, 2011 @ 2:52pm

Another great podcast, chaps and chapettes! No video this time though, boooo! Fantastic rant from Andrew though. I still love Jonathan.

fanboys

G4 -7 (not verified) - December 2, 2011 @ 7:24pm

Guardian lol bunch of apple fanboys.

Mr D

David Bentham (not verified) - December 2, 2011 @ 7:54pm

The sad realisation that ubuntu users will recognise that unity is crap and all move to linux mint.

Good show guys!

Computer Science degrees

bananaoomarang - December 2, 2011 @ 8:23pm

Computer Science degrees aren't really the problem here.

The problem here is the 'IT' education really, it's still 'Word, Word, Word', imagine if kids were taught something like basic Python instead, just the basics, just so people can _see_ what Word is made of, begin to imagine it. The tech industry in the UK is falling because of this, and we've screwed over a generation or two already.

If we don't inspire people with technology, how can we expect to have people coming up who have a passion for it? Arm are hiring all their engineers from Asia because they _can't_ _find_ competent young people!! Companies like Rockstar are founded in the UK, then moved to the US because it's simply far easier to exist there (for a variety of reasons, not just the fact that we don't produce competent computer scientists).

People need to be taught about the creativity computers can provide, how someone can express themselves not just through writing and painting, but through emerging mediums such as video games also.

We're slipping from industries we were at the forefront of, being outstripped miles by others (namely the US and Asia), because of an either limited or archaic education. I know several real 'computer scientists'/geeks who went into teaching and hated it, understandably. They're not given freedom to teach anything mildly interesting to them, and end up going through how to format something in word. It's insane, crazy and stupid.

I'm just 15 and I know others in the same position as me, entirely self-taught, dropped IT as early as they could and frustrated with their country for being so short sighted. The current situation is going to hurt us for years, because we had a technological boom, but that generation is drying up (as far as innovation goes), if an industry is going to survive it needs a constant stream of young people with fresh perspectives and ideas.

I can tell you this, 'The Next Steve Jobs' ain't going to come from Britain now, but maybe he could have done, if we hadn't made this mistake.

ebay

Anonymous x (not verified) - December 3, 2011 @ 9:34am

Theres a guy on eBay that rents out an xtc clip 4 10quid but there's a Q

drum roll

Anonymous Drummer (not verified) - December 3, 2011 @ 9:48am

guys, great podcast and everything... but, could you just not play drum on the table while recording? thanks in advance! ;)

Linux Mint 12

johnwick - December 5, 2011 @ 1:24am

i Installed mint 12 just before playing the pod-cast 22 and 23
I have 8 distros on my Sony laptop and use Zorin OS5 for most of my development. the Linux Mint developers went the right direction leaving us the options they did. I tried Unity and couldn't do the things I wanted with a desk top. (setting up launching icons ECT...) also I'm getting spoiled by Zorins 6 second bootup and 3 second shutdown. (my Windows 7 takes 5 minutes to bootup and another 5 to shut down!)

G+ +1 (again)

BobTheLinuxHacker (not verified) - December 5, 2011 @ 4:00pm

Alex wrote: "Thought the same two days ago but then saw your post on closed source social networks. Still, it'b be cool if you were on Google+"

I'll second the second part of that! That said, is G+ any more "closed" than Facebook? Personally speaking, from what I've seen there's more advertising on Facebook than G+.

Will have to catch up with the podcast - got a couple to go through.

.docx

Mark Johnson (not verified) - December 6, 2011 @ 9:53am

Open/Libre office has been able to open MS Office 2007 files since version 3.0: http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.0/#Microsoft_Office_2007_Import_Filters

@Mark Johnson

bananaoomarang - December 6, 2011 @ 8:57pm

Yes, but not very well!

@johnwick

Anonymous Penguinnnnn (not verified) - December 8, 2011 @ 3:12pm

I might be flamed to death but a 5 minute bootup for Windows 7 is quite exaggerated. My dad's laptop (he refuses to switch) takes only 1.30 mins to boot and around 30 secs to shut down. The reason for your slow start up is probably due to you installing all types of crapware. My Debian laptop took me 1 minute to start up and 10 secs to shut down which is after 1 year of installing all types of software on an acer

S-OFF HTC and others

Cricky (not verified) - December 10, 2011 @ 11:26pm

Hi All,

Great podcast by the way!

Jonathan was talking about rooting his phone and said he needed to S-OFF before he could root it. If memory servers me right he said he had an HTC phone. He said that he needed to get hold of an XTC Clip before he could proceed.
Has he tried Alpharev X?

Here's the link:
http://revolutionary.io/

At the moment the tool currently supports:

Revolutionary currently supports the following Android phones and HBOOT versions:

HTC Desire (bravo) 0.93.0001, 1.02.0001
HTC Desire CDMA (bravoc) 1.06.0000
HTC Wildfire (buzz) 1.01.0001
HTC Aria (liberty) 1.02.0000
HTC Incredible S (vivo) 1.09.0000 and 1.13.0000
HTC Droid Incredible 2 (vivow) 0.97.0000 (Gingerbread only!)
HTC Desire S (saga) 0.98.0000 and 0.98.0002
HTC View (express) 1.09.0000 and 1.13.0000
HTC Flyer (flyer) 1.10.0000, 1.11.0003
HTC Sensation (pyramid) 1.17.0006, .0008, .0011 and .0012, 1.18.0000
HTC Evo 3D (shooter) 1.30.0000 and 1.40.0000
HTC EVO 3D GSM (shooteru) 1.49.0007, 1.49.0008
HTC Thunderbolt (mecha) 1.04.0000, 1.05.0000
HTC EVO 4G (supersonic) 2.15.0001, 2.16.0001
HTC myTouch Slide 4G (doubleshot) 1.44.0007

Revolutionary will permanently unlock NAND write protection by default on the following phones:

HTC Sensation (pyramid)
HTC Evo 3D (shooter)
HTC EVO 3D GSM (shooteru)
HTC myTouch Slide 4G

I've successfully S-OFF'd my Incredible S using the tool and it's pretty straight forward.

Best of luck!

S-Off

jon - December 12, 2011 @ 12:54pm

Thanks Cricky -

I checked that out, but unfortunately I have a Wildfire S, about the only HTC phone not on that list!

I asked on their IRC channel too, but their advice was to buy a real phone or use the XTC-Clip. Buying a real phone isn't an option, so I guess I'm back to getting a clip!

Thanks for the tip though :-)

Totally agree with Effy -

dm319 - December 12, 2011 @ 9:13pm

Totally agree with Effy - that unity side-bar is really annoying!!! In fact, I think that using one part of the screen for two things is a bad idea - and that also goes for gnome shell, too. It's so easy to trigger off the unity bar by accident, and then you have to wait until it goes before you can get to the thing you were after. Don't tell me that you haven't triggered off the gnome shell, when all you wanted to do was switch to another tab, or get to the menu?

When is the pubmeet going to be? If you arrange it for when I'm out the country I'll be miffed!

P.S. I am sticking with 10.04 until it is no longer supported, then I'll see what is around at that time!

Unity is awkward to use (for

Michael h (not verified) - December 29, 2011 @ 9:44pm

Unity is awkward to use (for a couple of months, :( )
But now I love how fast I can get around, and the fact it gives a lot more vertical space for my 3d cad system on my small (xxx x 768) screens.

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