Geek with an attitude

I'll let the screenshot speak for itself. But just in case your wondering this is Gentoo GNU/Linux running the beryl Window Manager (WM), on top of KDE desktop environment, with screenlets as widgets/gadgets, kiba-dock for an OSX like dock and kbfx with a dark theme as the next-gen kde menu. That's it really!

Ooops it happened again! The second cross patent licensing deal between M$ and another company - Samsung this time around. While this deal may not be as controversial as the first deal between M$ and Novell, its nevertheless going to have a bad taste with the community. But I just realized GNU/Linux might actually be a ticket out of this whole patent mess we are in. It goes something like this: A claims to B that by using GNU/Linux B is violating patents of A. B in return reminds A that it too might be violating some of B's patents because A also happens to use GNU/Linux. A and B come to an agreement not to sue each other over patents. C comes along and does the same with A & B In other words A, B and C can cross license their patents without actually having to disclose the patents they are cross licensing in the first place. This is because if any company (A, B or C) discloses a patent which Linux is supposedly violating, that piece of code will be instantly removed, leaving

Sure it doesn't beat watching the match on the big screen. But wouldn't it still be cool if you could didn't have to always sit in front of the tv all time as the match went on. Well today I decided to play around with the idea since Sri Lanka wasn't playing anyway. Now my home isn't physically networked in anyway so I have to rely on the slower WiFi to do the job. Worse still is the fact that my WiFi Router is upstairs where our phone line happens to terminate, (it doubles as an ADSL Router) and so the signal reception is pretty bad (about 40%). Its been a while since I played around with VLC and I knew it has improved somewhat since I last had a go at it. Mainly the addition of H.264 for better quality at lower bit rates. So after playing around with several codecs, I settled with h.264 (AVC) after discovering a combination that worked (you can't just mix arbitrary video encapsulation containers with a given codec and expect it to just work). Following are th