Planet Open Clip Art Library
October 13, 2008
One request we get often here at Collabora Multimedia is from people using GStreamer in the embedded and mobile sector and are looking for ways to stream over RTSP with GStreamer, often in combination with various kinds of transcoding and proxying functions. Due to this we have launched a new project, the GStreamer RTSP server. This server is written by GStreamer maintainer Wim Taymans and is tightly based on the RTP infrastructure in GStreamer that he has been working on for quite some time now.
It is a server written in C which can stream any GStreamer supported file over RTSP using any of the wide range of RTP formats supported by GStreamer. It also allows you to take any RTSP or HTTP stream and proxy it onwards over RTSP. The screenshot below is of totem playing a RTSP stream of the Max Payne trailer from Apple’s website. The stream offered by Apple is a normal Quicktime http stream, but our RTSP server repackages it and retransmits it over RTSP on my local network on the fly.
The code is currently only available through a git repository which you can grab using this command:
git clone git://git.collabora.co.uk/git/gst-rtsp-server.git gst-rtsp-server
The reason there is no formal release yet is due to early stage the software is in, while it works it is not very user friendly yet, with media paths having to be edited and compiled in with the server for instance. But for those looking for a RTSP server solution using GStreamer, which is suitable for putting onto embedded and mobile devices, then it might be enough to get you started and of course we at Collabora are available to offer assistance for those who want it. One hope we have is that this code will help people doing DLNA servers support the mobile profile of that specification for instance.
We also plan on moving the code into GStreamer’s code repository once that is migrated to git from CVS.
October 13, 2008 02:36 PM
My cousin Ron e-mailed me some racist anti-Obama propaganda, using out-of-context quotes from his two books to try to make him out as someone who hates whites and hates Christians. I was appalled not just by the depths to which McCain supporters would sink but that my cousing was so amazingly stupid that he'd send something so blatantly racist to someone who is married to a black woman and whose son is half-black (like Obama is half-black).
I replied...
I thought maybe you'd encountered enough prejudice as a Jew not to buy into this, but I guess you've lost that connection to your roots. I guess you've forgotten all the lies the right has spread about our people over the years. Every time you hear a Republican say "Barack Hussein Obama" ask why they don't use Johnny Mac's middle name. It's because they're trying to emphasize Obama's otherness, how he's not like us, and if you don't think that's racist, I don't know what is.
Bad economic times are the greatest recruiting tool Nazi groups have. And you better pray that your racist friends don't turn on you next... jewboy.
Now, calling him "jewboy" was supposed to be ironic, showing him how the "friends" who would send him this kind of racist propaganda could turn on him.
This was his response...
Its a known fact obama has ties to 9 11 as well and he is muslim most muslims hate jews thats a fact ask any jew or israeli
OMFG. He's not just a dumb-ass, but a moron. I have to assume that comes from his dad's side of the family. Known fact that Obama's a Muslim? What? His dad was. But that no more makes him a Muslim than my dad's time in the high school marching band makes me a tuba player.
Then we have the woman on Friday who told John McCain that Obama is an Arab. McCain's actually having to defend Obama because "Republican activists" are spreading fear through a campaign of poisonous lies. And it's even worse than the swift-boating of John Kerry, because they have to do with Obama's ethnicity, his racial identity, and his faith. These are the three things that most are NOT supposed to matter in America. These are things we've tried to protect from this kind of discrimination in the most fundamental foundations of our democracy. And these are the things that the average Republican is showing he/she has no respect for.
It's hillarious how they can use this racist propaganda as a basis for the claim that Obama is unamerican without realizing that doing so is one of the most unamerican things they could do. This is the America of George Wallace and Bull Connor. This is the kind lying and fearmongering more associated with the KKK and the Neo-Nazis... and I'm hearing it from a Jewish real estate broker.
If you want to vote against Obama, vote against him because you don't like his economic policy, because you don't like his energy policy, because you don't like his health care plan. Those are very valid reasons. But if you're uneasy because someone told you he's secretly Muslim, secretly hates whites, secretly Arab, then that says a lot more about your racism (and that of the person who told you) than Obama. And if you're out there spreading these lies, shame on you. You're the one betraying America.
October 13, 2008 01:16 AM
October 11, 2008
While I’m building-up my mental engines in Cao Chang Di (Cultural Industries) in Beijing, I received an invitation to speak at Gnome’s first Asia conference, aptly titled, Gnome.Asia in Beijing. I’m going to take a crack and speak about something I haven’t been directly been involved in hacking, promoting or developing, but have been using massively which is what I’m just calling Autonomo.us Open Software Services, particularly micro-blogging on Identi.ca. I want to zoom out a bit from Creative Commons licensing, Open Source hacking and postulate where computing culture is heading, and how FLOSS developers can surge ahead by looking beyond Gnome 3.0, Gnome Online Desktop, etc. The presentation is called “The Autonomo.us Open Software Services Evolution, featuring Identi.ca” and I start the statement with:
Who provides your e-mail service? Where do you post your photos? Do you download music still? When all of our data is spread amongst multiple devices between multiple locations – home, office, and mobile – then it becomes clear why on-line network services rule supreme over managing personal computers in providing synchronized capable services that don’t require us to update software or hack-in fixes. The modern person’s primary concern in using a computer is to get things done and stay connected with others globally in the most effective ways possible.
And continues…
This presentation looks at the landscape of services like Identi.ca which are adapting the Free and Open Source Software approach to on-line network services publicly championed from the Autonomo.us blog. This is timely because the personal computing shift from the desktop to the web is a hot topic with the Gnome Online Desktop and Gnome 3.0 initiatives. However, with long development cycles, arduous community learning curves and reliance upon cranky software languages, the simple accessible nature of web application development is thriving. This presentation instigates increased development on web services that protect user autonomy by commonly using the GNU Affero GPL 3.0 software license, creating free services to replace popular non-free alternatives, and by replacing centralized services with open distributed ones when possible. This presentation emphasizes the role of the Gnome Desktop to be a lean mean on-line desktop machine and what role Chinese businesses can play in accelerating this next dynamic wave of the FLOSS movement.
The complete description and location details are at the Gnome.Asia site. My presentation is at 3 PM next Saturday, October 18 in Beijing. I posted it up on my wiki with some basic research to get the talk together. If there is anything missing, or research I should jump into please do add to it.
Right now there are very few services committed to the Franklin Street Declaration and I want to use some brain power to investigate what services might be easily converted, services that should be created, with rankings for priority and level of difficulty for replacement. Identi.ca is mind blowing example of openness at its best. So, how can I help push this plan forward more?
I’m thinking a lot right now about my moves in both contemporary culture, art and technology. And, I want to most definitely keep pushing on the FLOSS side of things, but keep in mind the larger picture, cultural priorities, as well as personal priorities 
Yes, we all have those!
October 11, 2008 10:21 AM
If a Republican tells you this race is about character, bring up this point.
In 2007, John McCain made $405,409. That's his own income, separate from Cindy McCain's millions. She filed separately.
Of that $405,409, $23,157 came from Social Security benefits. Here's a link to USA Today that discusses his 2007 income.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-18-mccain-taxes_n.htm">
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-18-mccain-taxes_n.htm">
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-18-mccain-taxes_n.htm">http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-04-18-mccain-taxes_n.htm
A man who earned $31,771 a MONTH thought that wasn't enough and accepted another $1,933 a month in Social Security funds.
You and I are paying into Social Security while being told it will run out of money before we reach retirement age. People who will NEED this money and who have paid in all their working lives, won't have it. John McCain, whose personal income, not including his wife's millions, was 3, 4, or even 5 times the household income for a middle class family last year, takes it when he has no true need for it.
If John McCain loses the presidential race and retires at the end of 2008, he'd be entitled to a yearly pension of $132,160 in 2009.
Need proof? Here's the
">
">
">Senate's public information page on pensions.
Now, the idea that senators don't pay into Social Security is false. They voted away that privelege under Reagan back in 1983 and started paying in at the start of 1984.
But the cap in 2007 was that you only pay in on the first $97,500 of taxable income. McCain likely paid in $6,045 in Social Security taxes on his Senate salary, but then collected $23,177 in Social Security benefits for a net profit of $17,132.
In high-school civics class, I was taught that Social Security was supposed to be a safety net, security in rough times. When you're making $31,771 a MONTH, you're pretty secure. How much more secure is $1,933 a month going to make you?
Even though giving up his $1,933 a month (or net of $1427.67 when you count what he paid in) wouldn't save Social Security, you'd think that while he was still earning 3 or 4 times the income of many middle-class families, John McCain would forego it as a matter of principle. He doesn't need it and the system is in trouble. It would be the patriotic thing to do.
Instead, John McCain, the self-proclaimed enemy of pork, pigs out on taxpayer dollars he doesn't need just because they're there for the taking; making sure they won't be there for the hard-working Americans who will need them in the future.
I can only assume Obama doesn't bring this up because he fears any mention of Social Security in a negative context will cause older voters to have a knee-jerk reaction and vote for McCain out of fear.
But someone has to bring this up. Republicans love to moan about "entitlement programs" and McCain's acting pretty entitled.
If the McCain campaign wants to make this race a matter of character, then this is a side of McCain's character that needs to be exposed. Why, when the Social Security system is in trouble and he's doing just dandy in his own right even without his wife's millions, is John McCain taking tax money he doesn't need out of Social Security and putting it in his own pocket?
The next time a Republican brings up character, you can be glad they did, because you can ask them to defend McCain taking tax money he doesn't need and putting it in his own pocket. Ask them about McCain's personal pork.
After learning about that, the only way I can use the word "character" in reference to McCain is when I say: "McCain... what a character."
October 11, 2008 08:27 AM
October 10, 2008
I’m proud of Ubuntu, but I’m always a little sad when I see news items like this.
I don’t want to see everyone who contributes to the World Resource Institute and the Conservation International Foundation to start giving entirely to the Greenpeace Fund. They’re all doing fantastic work and doing it in slightly different ways. Changing allocation between these organizations doesn’t have any real benefit.
I want to see the news of everyone moving their money out of Exxon and General Motors and putting it into the things linked above or anything like them. Then big stuff starts happening; multinationals have less to work with and environmental groups have more. That’s a win.
Organizations moving from Free Software to Free Software is a distraction. There is no net gain; there is no more freedom; there are no more users and no more chances to create new Free Software developers. It is news when an organization moves from proprietary software to Free. That’s important, and we should stay focused on that goal.
October 10, 2008 06:37 PM
One of the most common complaints I've heard about FOSS4G this year is the lack of information coming out of the conference. As far as I'm concerned, that's down to one simple fact: being held in a developing country leaves much to be desired with regard to connecting to the ...
October 10, 2008 11:00 AM
I finally finished uploading all the photos I took at/around the FOSS4G conference.
FOSS4G 2008 Set
Includes photos from:
Various nights hanging out at the bars/hotels during the conferenceA trip up Table Mountain with OpenLayers/OpenGeo folksGeoDjango WorkshopSessions, exhibition hall, etc.Pictures from the Gala Dinner at MoyoClosing SessionOSGeo AGMOpenLayers WorkshopGeoServer ...
October 10, 2008 10:30 AM
So, the hotel I'm currently staying in uses a classed system of internet access: you can pay $n for so many hours of internet at a certain 'service level'.
After some experimentation, it seems that what this actually does is put you in a QoS bracket for your HTTP traffic, where ...
October 10, 2008 07:00 AM
October 09, 2008
Its' been a while from my last webcomic containing the "U" word, I have to correct this...
![[fedora weekly webcomic: dogfooding]](http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/webcomics/dogfooding.png)
October 09, 2008 01:02 PM
For a long while we had discussions here at Collabora Multimedia about how to push Pitivi forward at a more rapid pace. While Edward has been working on it as time allows, we came to the conclusion that if the Linux desktop was going to have a nice and easy to use video editor any time soon, we needed to do something to increase the pace of development significantly. We have several efforts under way to achieve this and I will announce the first one today:
We just hired Brandon Lewis for the sole purpose of doing Pitivi development. Brandon has been working on Pitivi for a long time now, having gotten involved during last years Google Summer of Code. He brings a lot of python development skills to the table and will let Edward focus his currently limited Pitivi hacking time (we hope to change this too soon 
on Pitivi related improvements in GStreamer and Gnonlin.
Brandon job will be making sure all the features available gets exposed in the user interface and that the user interface is intuitive and easy to use.
So Brandon, welcome to the team and lets make Pitivi rock!
October 09, 2008 10:18 AM
October 08, 2008
As I mentioned in my previous blog post here at Collabora Multimedia we have been working with Canonical and the BBC to create a plugin for Totem which plays BBC content. This work is progressing well and with the recent patches we made for Totem to sort out python threading issues are looking really good. I really recommend that people running the latest Ubuntu test releases grab this for some testing. I attached a screenshot of Totem playing a Dirac stream from the BBC showing Big Buck bunny.
Big Buck Bunny
Update:: I noticed a lot of people commenting on the user interface. We are aware that the current user interface is far from perfect and a lot of the requested features are planed. So far we have focused on getting the base technology working smoothly which I think you will agree is the most important first step. A nice looking user interface is of little value if the application locks up
October 08, 2008 04:40 PM
Just posted this over on the Honda CR-V forum over at edmunds.com. Thought I'd post it here too.
Last week, there was a Shelby Cobra, red with white rally stripes, in the parking lot at the supermarket. My 3-and-a-half-year-old was mesmerized. He spotted it the moment we pulled into the lot and said "Daddy, I want the red car." I could only second the emotion.
I'm turning 40 in a few weeks, have another kid due a few weeks after that, and I'm trading in my Elantra GT (which I bought because it looked like a Saab 93) on a CR-V LX with AWD today.
Instead of getting a Corvette and a pretty new wife with even newer breasts, I'm buying a sensible car and sticking with the gal what brung me to the dance. Best I can do is get it in red and put side steps on it (mostly to help pregnant wives and small children get in and out of the car, but with a bonus of them looking sort of cool).
Is the CR-V really a "mom car" as I saw someone call it on one forum when I was Googling to see what people had done with their V's?
Has anyone done any interesting paint, lowered one, jacked one up, put rally stripes on one? I'd love to see one with rally stripes.
Has anyone strapped on a turbo charger, run a dyno after putting on a CAI, anything?
When I was thinking about the Mazda5, I could find lots of discussions on performance and appearance mods. But for the CR-V... not much.
Help!! Aside from an Obama bumper sticker (he's popular with the young folks, I hear), what can I do to make it look cooler? Do you have URLs for sites where there are pictures of pimped CR-Vs that I can use for inspiration.
Help!
October 08, 2008 10:23 AM
October 07, 2008
Sarah Palin has recently been going on about a tenuous connection between Barack Obama and William Ayers, a former sixties radical, suggesting that Obama's character should be judged by the company he keeps. She's also throwing Tony Rezko and Reverend Wright into the mix.
But what about the company Sarah Palin keeps? Her husband joined a secessionist party. He so hates America that he wanted to make Alaska its own country and stop being an American.
Obama served on a charity board with his America-hater. Sarah Palin sleeps with hers.
But more to the point, Sarah Palin tries to play up her Christian values. I'm not sure, but I thought that two of the biggest tenets of Christianity had to do with man's potential for change and redemption and man's duty to forgive. Considering that Ayers has put the 60s behind him and has done some good works, maybe she could let go of the past. Maybe she could forgive him and believe he has changed.
Ahh, but like most Republicans, Sarah Palin is a politician first and actually living up to the values of Christianity come a far, far second. If it is profitable for her to stop believing in redemption and forgiveness for a while, she's only too happy to chuck them out the window. She picks and chooses which "Christian values" will bring her profit and power and she pisses on the rest. One of the pictures the right likes to circulate is a recent one of Ayers standing on the flag. Wish we could circulate one of Sarah Palin shitting on the bible.
But it's not just this. She's been blaming the media for her own inability to form meaningful or coherent answers to their questions and she's been riling up her "base" against them at her speaking events. She's now got her fans booing and jeering at the reporters who cover her speeches.
This quote from a Washington Post article just made my jaw drop:
Worse, Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."
How can we take seriously her attacks on the company Obama keeps when this is the kind of company she keeps?
October 07, 2008 06:45 PM
So here's one that has signs of being legit and some of the red flags of a scam. Love to get comments on it.
I got the following mail this morning...
From:
Subject: I saw your resume... please complete application. BNR-National
Response to your resume posting.
We have received your name and email from your resume posting service while reviewing your information. We may have some job opportunities that will interest you.
Please go to: BNR-National, Job page.
If your are interested in our open positions you can apply on-line.
To view jobs, click this link. Available Jobs.
This email was sent per your authorization of the terms and agreements you accepted on Hot Jobs and/or Monster and/or CareerBuilder. Your current preferences on your resume account need to be
changed if you Do Not want to receive recruiter and/or employer email messages. -- See instructions below.
Hot Job's - Resume & Email Privacy Options (as seen on hotjobs.com)
Since the Site is a career site, HotJobs gives you the option of putting your resume in the Hot Jobs database. There are three ways of doing this:
1. With our HotBlock feature, you can store your resume in the database, but not allow it to be searchable by any employers or staffing firms. Not allowing your resume to be searchable means that you can use it to apply for a job online, but it will not be searchable through the resume database.
2. You can store your resume in the database, but not allow it to be searchable by certain employers or staffing firms who are members of HotJobs at the time you set your HotBlock preferences. Not allowing your resume to be searchable means that you can use it to apply for a job online, but those employers or staffing firms that you have blocked will not have access to search it through the resume database.
3. If you allow your resume to be searchable, then those individuals or entities that pay for access to the resume database and all prospective customers who are receiving a demonstration of our product will have access to your resume.
These individuals or entities have the ability to distribute your resume to their own hiring systems via e-mail.
Privacy Options - Job seekers can block some or all of HotJobs' member companies from viewing a resume and sending you email messages through the "HotBlock" feature.
Career Builder's - Resume & Email Privacy Options (as seen on CareerBuilder.com)
Managing your privacy is as simple as selecting which pieces of your contact information are displayed. This is done at the bottom of the Review & Submit section of the resume form (shown below).
1. Be Visible. This option gives you the most visibility to the broadest employer audience possible. Select "Make my resume visible..." from the Privacy Settings, and allow employers to see your name, phone, and email.
2. Be Choosy. This option allows you to only display selected pieces of contact information, or none at all. (If you use this option be sure to remove your contact information from the body of the resume.) Select "Make my resume visible..." from the Privacy Settings, and select which contact information you want seen by employers.
3. Be Anonymous. This option allows you to post your resume on CareerBuilder.com without having it searched by employers. The benefit is that you can quickly and easily apply for jobs without retyping your information. Select "Hide my resume..." from the Privacy Settings.
BNR-National.com recruiting services are paid by entirely by the employer. Job Seekers using BNR-National.com recruiting services pay no fee.
Sincerely, BNR-National.com
If you prefer to not receive messages from BNR-National.com, you may unsubscribe by using the link below.
or by mail:
BNR-National.com - Unsubscribe
514 Daniels Street, #342
Raleigh, NC 27605
Now it was sent with Subsrribermail.com and the links within the mail go through a redirect at Subscribermail.com, which is a legitimate e-mail marketing company. So it seems like this may be a legitimate opportunity. But then I dug deeper and all sorts of cracks appeared.
Their site sports a "copyright 2000-2008" statement, but upon checking its registration record BNR-national.com was registered at the end of July of this year. Not only that, but they used a proxy service to hide the name and contact information for the real owner of the domain. So they're claiming to have been around 8 years, but their domain is 10 weeks old, and they're hiding the identity of the owner of the domain.
If you look on their jobs pages, they list some generic descriptions for jobs. It's not even a database, but just a plain HTML listing. If you click on a link for any job, you're sent to their application page which is a form to add your e-mail to their mailing list at AWeber, another legitimate e-mail marketing service which is actually owned by a friend of mine (and boy is he gonna be steamed when I show him this - the reputation of his company is VERY important to him).
So they're using two legitimate service providers, but more cracks show up.
All of the job links on their jobs pages go to their application page without passing a single bit of information about the job you clicked on. I looked at the source code, the link for every job title is a plain vanilla link to "Application.html". They're doing nothing to pass the name or any sort of ID for the job to the application form. And then, on the application page, they don't ask the name of the job, just your "field".
When you fill out the application, you're not filling out an application for the job you clicked on. You're filling out a generic "application" that's intended to gather your contact information.
But that's not the end of it. AWeber (an innocent dupe in this scam, I assure you) collects the form information and then refers you back to the page BNR-national specifies. From there, they say they'd like to recommend a free interviewing skills CD and send you over to a shopping cart for "Interview Concepts".
The cost for your "free" CD is a $6.95 shipping and handling cost. Furthermore, they have a fun little gotcha. They're going to send you more than the "free" CD. They're going to send you all three of their CD's. Then you have a 14-day free trial period... from the date they ship and postmark the package. If you do not call them and arrange to return the extra CDs before the the end of the 14-day trial (with the 14 days starting on the day they sent them, not the day you got them), you will be billed an additional $59.95. And how much do you want to bet that they're shipping via Media Mail or Parcel Post so it takes a week or more for the package to arrive?
All these different red flags tell me that there is nothing savory about this. It looks like a scam designed to build a "suckers" list and sell some overpriced CD-ROMs through a hinky "free trial" offer.
Sorry if any of you got your hopes up when BNR-National contacted you. Best of luck in your job hunting.
October 07, 2008 05:34 PM
The HackergotchiService queue is one task I claim to keep under control, but something happened and I stopped receiving notification changed for that page from the wiki (maybe I deleted by mistake a notification or just forgot to follow the link to re-enable). So today when someone pinged me on IRC about an long-time open request I noticed 4 open requests and one where the requester (Larry) tired of waiting just went forward and did the job himself. Sorry! I really feel ashamed by my sloppiness...
In somewhat related news here is a screenshot of the new GIMP 2.6, installed from a F10 package lifted from Koji (thanks Nils!), running on my EeePC. Neat.... one more reason to jump soon to Rawhide on the desktop too.
![[gimp 2.6]](http://nicubunu.ro/pictures/gimp26.jpg)
October 07, 2008 01:48 PM
This morning when I get out of the house to go at work I encountered a beautiful sunrise: dark clouds with a golden bottom edge, from the warm light coming from below, and a glowing blue background. Amazing colors!
The light was perfect, my camera was close, but I didn't have a clear sight to the horizon: too many houses, trees, pillars and wires. Damn city! wanted a picture of the sunrise, not of the sity skyline...
I could have taken a detour, trying to find a good spot, but that would mean a large detour and getting very late at work (I am late anyway, is hard to wake up so early in the morning).
Now don't get me wrong, I am a city boy, I despise the city but will not like to live outside it, I am just frustrated: the opportunity hits you in the face and you miss it again.
I can draw an optimistic or pessimistic conclusion from that, here is the pessimistic one: in a couple of weeks the sunrise should happen when I am near the Herastrau Park, but I am sure the combination (weather, clouds, light) will not be that good.
October 07, 2008 06:39 AM
October 04, 2008
Just caught this job scam slipping through my spam filters. I'll post the e-mail, then I'll point out the signs that it's a scam.
From: Ferdinand Jamison <hburrows@reaching4solutions.com>
Dear Sir/Madam,
Thank you for paying attention to this letter. We would like to inform you that our company staff management had a chance to get acquainted with your resume at one of the job seeking websites and found it rather impressive and persuasive, so this is the reason why you have received this letter. Your candidacy would be perfectly suitable for the position of the financial department employee in our company.
Here is a quick review of our company. Our sphere of business activity includes working with different types of precious metals purchases or investments. We work with Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium and many other types of today's popular precious metals on the world market. PMI incorporated was set up as a local enterprise in Poland. Since 2004 we provide our services to our customers worldwide. The company clients(physical persons and organizations) come from more than 20 countries all over the world including the USA, Australia and many countries from eastern and western Europe. PMI Inc is an ISO-certified precious metals dealer. We have been in this business for almost five years, have reached serious success and recently expanded to work on United States market. This is the main reason for recruiting many new US employees. We are looking forward to work with intelligent, energetic and responsible people. PMI incorporated can be already considered as a very successful organization, but we have a lot of room to move further, using the basis that we have built and adding the future perspectives.
We do believe that almost half of any organization's profits strictly depend on the working staff, employees and managers, people who handle the business, help and support it. And that's why our strategy includes providing maximum we can for the employee of our enterprise. These are the privileges you get by entering our collective:
-Fixed basic salary with many comfortable ways of payment
-The opportunity of working on the remote basis
-Flexible schedules, gliding hours of work
-Working with a personal manager providing you with all the working instructions timely and clearly
-Worthy bonuses strictly depending on the profit we make together
-We provide the most modern communication devices to all our employees (Apple iPhone 3G/Blackberry devices, Macbook PRO/Sony VAIO laptops) after the first and second trial month of work correspondingly.
-2 weeks paid vacation twice a year
-Company covers all taxes; employee receives an invoice declaring his/her income
As we have already chosen you for this position the only requirements you need to satisfy at this point are:
-To be legally trouble free and have a clean record
-To have a personal and answering cell phone
-To have an internet access during the normal daily working hours
-To be disciplined, attentive and responsible
So please, make your choice and we thank you a lot for reading our letter independently of what decision you made or will make. Please remember that you don't have to make any investments or put any money anywhere to start working for our company, PMI inc does not run business with suspicious individuals or companies, we do not operate checks or money orders, we have a strong security system that helps to protect our customers and employees, helps to reveal any type of bogus. You have a chance to enter the successful, perspective and hard-working team, and we will try to provide maximum for you to not be disappointed and reach a remarkable career growth. We would really love to start our working co-operation with you. So if you have got interested, feel free to write us an email back at prmet.support@gmail.com for the further details
For further details, e-mail us at: pr.met.invest@gmail.com
Best Regards,
Timothy Stasevich,
PMI inc
So the number 1 sign, and most common sign of these job scams is found from looking at the "From" address and the address they want you to reply to. First, the name part of the "From" address (before the @ symbol) is usually a set of random letters and numbers. They're getting smarter and this time it's actually making some sense ("hburrows"), but it bears no mental connection to the sender's name, Ferdinand Jamison. Why would F. Jamison have HBurrows as an e-mail address? Additionally, why would someone at an American healthcare consulting company be sending you a job offer from a Polish precious metals trading company?
The letter isn't signed by Ferdinand Jamison either. It's signed by Timothy Stasevich. So the guy who sent the mail doesn't appear to have any actual relationship to the company and isn't even the guy who signed the letter.
Then, when you get through all those mental disconnects, they want you to reply to addresses at gmail.com, which is Google's free mail service. Sure I use gmail and I'm legitimate, but I'm a blogger, not a corporation. And if I wanted you to reply to me at my gmail.com address, I'd mail you from it, not from a domain totally unrelated to my blog or Google.
The "from" address at a domain totally unrelated to their business, a name totally unrelated to the name signed on the letter, and a request you reply to an address at a free mail service is something I find on almost every single scam that comes through my mail box.
Second big sign is that "we have already chosen you for this position" but they address you as "Dear Sir/Madam". They've picked you for this job out of thousands of potential applicants. They're going to give you money, a computer, and a Blackberry. But they have yet to prove they know your name. They even sent a contract attached in rich text format (RTF), but my name wasn't filled in there either.
Third sign is in the contract.
4.1. The Employee agrees to:
a) perform all business operations timely and within periods discussed with the Coordinator in advance;
b)receive payments from customers ,transfer payments to Enterprise under qualified instructions.
B is your dead giveaway. Most of these scams are ones where they need a representative in your country to cash checks and then wire them the money.
First of all, they could find a U.S.-based financial services company to handle this for them at a much cheaper price than what they'd pay you (plus the Western Union Fees). Usually what they're doing is sending you forged checks to cash.
Most banks will cash checks immediately for their customers if the checks are under a certain amount and/or the customer has enough money in the bank to cover the check. So you cash the check, run over to Western Union and wire off the money, and a week later the bank is calling you to tell you that the check turned out to be forged and they want their money back. You cashed the check so you're on the hook, and your new "employer" suddenly stops answering your e-mails.
Fourth sign is that you're reading this blog post. How many employees do they need? You and I make a minimum of two. But if you can find another person who's been offered this job as easily as you found me, you know you and I aren't the only ones. That means they're offering the job to everyone. And if they're sending a "Dear Sir/Madam" letter to everyone, offering them the job (not asking them to apply, but telling them they got the job), how legitimate can this job be?
Last, but not least, there's the lesson most of us learned from our parents. "If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is."
Sorry to burst anyone's bubble, but if you reply to this and take this job, you'll likely be a few thousand poorer in a matter of weeks. It completely sucks that these people are going to steal from you when you're probably hurting and really need a job, and are at a time in your life when you can least afford to lose that kind of money. But that's why they call them "criminal scumbags." They'd steal your grandma's dialysis money to pay for their champagne and hookers.
And because they're over in Eastern Europe, good luck getting any justice. The only thing you can really do is be aware of the signs of these scams and not get caught in them in the first place.
Best of luck to you all.
October 04, 2008 04:13 PM
Got the contract at Microsoft and it's due to start next week. Since I brought it to Volt, all packaged up, the recruiter who handled it for me sent me a thank you gift. She sent two 5-packs of infant bodysuits, a 4-pack of bibs, a little infant bathrobe, a rattle, and a doll. Apparently the scheduled date for the birth of my son is also the recruiter's birthday, so she went a little overboard.
The manager on the position was cool with me taking some time off around when the baby is born, so we're going to be all set. Now all I have to do is get the baby's room ready this weekend (move back in all the furniture I moved out when painting, plus assemble the crib) and we'll be 98% ready for the baby to come home.
I've been trying to teach our three-year-old to do more for himself. Last night, at bath time, he washed his hair mostly by himself for the first time. The arrival of the new baby is going to require him to become a bit more self-sufficient in terms of bath time, handling buttons/buttonholes on his clothes, getting settled into his car seat, etc. Badsically places/times where we're not going to have as many free hands as we used to, he's going to have to step up. And he's excited about it because it's all part of being a big brother.
And now that I'm going to be employed, I can finally trade in my Hyundai hatchback and get my "family car". Right now I'm trying to decide between a Mazda5 mini-mini-van and a Honda CR-V crossover SUV.
Moneywise, the Mazda would cost about $3,000 less, but would only cost about $7.28 less a month for gas since the Mazda only gets about 1 MPG more. If you want to compare the monthly gas costs for two cars, check out the calculator below from my article at Rough Equivalents, "Do Hybrids Equal Savings". You can set the mileage of two cars, a per-gallon gas price, and the amount you drive every year. Every figure is controlled with sliders, so you can see how two cars compare at various gas prices and annual driving levels.
more calculators
If I figure 70% highway driving and 30% city driving, the Honda gets 24.2 MPG combined and the Mazda gets 25.2 MPG combined. At $3.55 a gallon and 15,000 miles a year (1250 miles a month), the Honda costs $7.28 more a month.
The other advantages to the Mazda are about 9 more cubic feet in the back (about the size of a large cooler), sliding doors (WAY easier to get the kids in and out, especially in tight parking lots or the garage), captains chairs in the 2nd row, 3rd row seats (although they're a little cramped), and really car-like handling with a turning circle only 5 inches wider than that of a 2008 Porsche Boxter convertible (the CR-V's turning circle is 17 inches wider than the Boxter while a Dodge Caravan would be 36 inches wider).
The advantages to the Honda CR-V are that it's got stability control and all wheel drive, so it's going to be a bit more surefooted in slippery conditions and emergency swerves (thought the Mazda might be more nimble in less slippery conditions), plus it has a slightly better resale value. And, of course, it's a Honda, so you have one of the world's best reputations for reliability.
Basically, if you take the money out of the consideration, the advantage to the Mazda is sliding doors, easier-to-access rear seats, and the carlike handling. The advantage to the Honda is better traction and a smidge less worry that it'll break down at an inconvenient time. But I'll get better traction in the Mazda than my Hyundai, just due to sheer weight and anti-lock brakes, and I haven't had any traction-related accidents in the Hyundai in 7 years. So the Mazda is currently leading.
I'm going to go drive both next week while I have those first couple of days of the week off, but I'll probably go buy the winning car in November unless one of them runs a huge cashback promo this month.
October 04, 2008 02:45 AM
October 03, 2008
Axis and GStreamer
Axis got a new camera out these days called the Axis P3301. Axis is well known for having what are probably the best network cameras on the market and this new beauty is especially nice as it uses GStreamer internally. It also supports Avahi, so you can get access to its services through avahi enabled applications, hopefully a feature we can get supported in Totem so you get access to these kind of cameras in your network very easily. Wim got gifted one of these by Axis while at their office in Sweden, which we got up and running at the Collabora Multimedia office now. Axis also got a video server, the AXIS Q7401 which also use GStreamer internally.
Jokosher
Jokosher is making great strides forward currently too. They did their 0.10 release a little over a Month ago and today Peteris Krisjanis told me that they just landed support for multichannel soundcards, which has been a major missing feature for a lot of potential Jokosher users. The mutichanel code is currently hosted in this branch on launchpad, but it will of course move into head once it gets stabilized.
Pitivi
Things are also moving forward with the Pitivi video editor these days. Edward recently merged the two Google Summer of Code projects that had been happening over the summer and also switched to the so called advanced timeline view to be the default in Pitivi. Thanks to Serat’s work there is now a structure in place in Pitivi for handling live sources, like webcams or DV cameras for instance. The simple timeline feature has also been dropped now as it turned out to be a lot less useful than we originally envisioned. So going forward the focus will be on making the previously named ‘advanced’ timeline userfriendly and easy to use instead. We will have some further cool Pitivi related announcements coming soon
Collabora Multimedia
We had our first ever full meeting of the Collabora Multimedia division over the last few days in Barcelona. It was the first time Wim, Edward, Tim, Mark, Sebastian and myself where all together. It was both a social event to get to know eachother, but also a good chance to discuss various technical issues. For instance Tim and Edward managed to solve a painful python threading issue we have been experiencing in a current project we have been doing together with Canonical and the BBC, which is writing a Totem plugin to enable viewing of various BBC content easily through Totem (as mentioned in the Ubuntu beta release notes. The plan is to push this plug-in upstream also, so that everyone using Totem can get it.
October 03, 2008 01:55 PM
October 02, 2008
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October 02, 2008 04:14 PM
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October 02, 2008 04:08 PM
My sons have an African American mother while I come from a Jewish family. My wife stumbled upon the word "Hebro" and decided she liked it to describe their mixed heritage.
The word sort of stuck in my mind last night and I ended up creating this illustration...
October 02, 2008 01:04 PM
Freeze dates are freeze dates and we are supposed to respect them, but also features are features and is natural for us to crave for them... So which crave-worthy application was released recently? GIMP 2.6, of course, I crave for it too!
![[fedora webcomic: bribe]](http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/webcomics/bribe.png)
October 02, 2008 12:41 PM
Just caught this job scam slipping through my spam filters. I'll post the text and then show you why it's a scam:
From: Alyce Christensen <a650504@abraminterstate.com>
Globus Capital Group
Finance Manager
Job Information
Post Date: Sep 30, 2008 Type: Full time
Salary: $5.000/month + 5% of each payment processing operation
Location: US, All States, 00000
Job Details
Description
We are looking for people who can control the payment of our customers from your state / region. The responsibilities of work included compiling monthly reports on the overall turnover of funds, sending documents on each transfer.
Skills
Requirements: Well developed analytical, communication, and interpersonal skills- Broad understanding of financial/accounting principles and systems- Team oriented, results focused individual with hands-on style committed to delivering a very high quality work product. - Creativity and tenacity in analysis and problem solving. 'Can-do' attitude.
Contact Details / Apply for this Job
Please send your CV (resume) to e-mail: joy.chidsey@gmail.com
Now the first way to spot these scams is the most common way. Just look at the "from" address, the company name, and the address they want you to send your response to. The "from" address is a meaningless sequence of letters and numbers (a650504) at a domain (abramsinterstate.com) that has absolutely nothing to do with the business that's recruiting you (Globus Capital Group). And the address to reply to is at a free mail service like hotmail, gmail, or Yahoo.
Now, I do get legitimate e-mails from one person asking me to reply to another. One tech staffing agency here in Seattle does that whenever they contact you off of CareerBuilder. But both addresses are at the staffing agency, not one at a totally unrelated business and one at gmail. And the positions are usually web developer gigs, not "financial representative" gigs.
Second, no company seeking a financial representative overseas is going to spam people for it. Seriously, if you needed someone to handle enough of your money that it's worth paying them $60,000 a year plus a 5 percent commission on the payments they process are you really going to send out invitations to apply for that willy nilly?
Third, if they were a legitimate business, they could find a U.S. bank to handle this for them for less than 5 percent.
Fourth, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
See, here's what happens if you get the job: Their "clients" will send you checks which you take to your bank to cash. Most banks will cash a check for a couple thousand without blinking an eye. You go to Western Union, send your "employer" their money, keep the 5 percent commission for yourself, and maybe treat yourself to a nice lunch. Then, a few days or a week later, your bank calls. They've discovered the check was forged and they'd like their money back, please. You try to refer them to your "employer", but you're the one who cashed the check and you're responsible for paying back the money. You start desperately e-mailing your new "employer" to get them to send you that money ASAP, but they've gone oddly silent. You're on the hook for the money and you're an accessory to check fraud.
The sad thing is that there's nothing you can do. These swindles go on every day. The crooks are in Russia or other Eastern European countries where the FBI doesn't get a lot of cooperation. If you replied, got the job, and they sent you checks, don't cash them. Call the police. Just remember that if you've reached the point where they sent you checks, these criminals know where you live and you need the advice of the police.
If you haven't yet reached that point, just do what they would do when you started e-mailing about the money your bank was demanding you repay... go silent. Don't answer their e-mails.
If you were wise enough to Google them before replying and found this, don't reply. Some people think it's funny to string them along and waste their time, but remember that these are criminals. Just stay off their radar.
I've been out of work nearly 4 months and have a baby on the way. I was supposed to have a job offer on the table on Monday only to find out the company had cancelled the position. I know what it's like to really want these to be real. But they're not and no amount of wishing will make it so. I'm sorry if I've disappointed you.
Best of luck to you all.
October 02, 2008 11:05 AM
October 01, 2008
Are you the person you wanted to be when you grew up?
I could first challenge whether I'm really grown up. I still laugh at farts. Laughing at farts is not a grown-up behavior.
I remember being 3, or 5, or 16, and thinking about who I wanted to be when I grew up. Back then it was simple: cowboy, rock star, fireman, doctor, lawyer, president. The sky was the limit and the job's name was its description.
I'm not the person I wanted to be when I grew up, but when I was growing up I didn't know that who I am now was even possible. I didn't know that you could be someone who wasn't defined by their job, or that you could still have hopes, dreams, and ideals at my age.
The goal now is not to be who I wanted to grow up to be back when the world was simpler. The goal now is to be the person I can be happy being... not merely content, but happy... and I'm pretty darn close.
How about you?
October 01, 2008 10:00 AM
Just watched Bart's presentation on his employer's use of OL + ExtJS: to see a map customized so thoroughly that I can no longer recognize it as OL is kinda neat.
Now watching Tim Schaub explain Vector Styling; "So new many developers don't even know how to use it." I'll ...
October 01, 2008 07:30 AM
I wrote before about what a great Free Software + Free Culture conference would look like. In response to my, “Is anyone interested in this,” I chatted with Mirko Lindner from CC Sweden, the upcoming FSCons conference in Sweden seems to get most of these ideas right!
One of my favorite “get it done” people, Michelle Thorne from CC, wrote a nice plug for the conference on the CC site:
Free Culture, Free Software, and Free Content will join forces under the banner of “Free Society” at FSCONS on October 24-26 at the IT University of Götheborg, Sweden. The orgnaizing trinity, Creative Commons Sweden, Free Software Foundation Europe, and Wikimedia Sverige, see FSCONS as a chance to reach out with their respective communities and build joint projects with like-minded activists and organizations.
A strong speakers lineup provides the rhetorical food-for-thought in the Free Culture track. Mike Linksvayer (Creative Commons) asks, “How far is free culture behind free software?” as he charts key indicators and historical factors in the progress of each. Eva Hemmungs Wirten argues that the digital commons extends back to nineteenth-century London, while Oscar Swartz keynotes the events with the warning that Sweden’s controversial “Lex Orwell” may usher in “The End of Free Communication”.
In chatting with Mirko, he mentioned that they are still seeking travel sponsorships for the conference. In putting together Libre Graphics Meeting over the last three years, it is pretty obvious that the most important thing that a conference like this can do is provide travel sponsorship to the people making free culture happen. It gives the much needed face time that developers don’t get and provides a source of collective memory making to further focus development and personal relationships.
If you can help support the conference corporately or personally, please do contact Mirko and the other organizers to make a nod. Yes, I know this comes at a problematic time with the global economy, but please, contribution brings stability
October 01, 2008 03:19 AM
So, last night was the beginning of Rosh Hashonah, the Jewish New Year. I didn't go to a synagogue and celebrate, but I did take time to have a personal chat with God. I first thanked him. Although the past year wasn't everything I might have hoped for, my family and I were healthy and kept our financial heads above water, plus we began what is so far a healthy pregnancy (wood dutifully knocked). Though we didn't have as much success as I hoped, we had our needs met and then some, which is a lot more than a lot of people can say in this world. Rather than complain about not doing as well as I wished, I tried to be grateful for doing well enough to have so few reasons to complain.
Looking toward the next year, I asked God to help me be a good father to my older son and the son due to be born, to be a good husband to my wife, and to be healthier and more successful in my financial enterprises. I asked him to help me generate some good ideas and find the passion to make them happen. I asked him to give inspiration to the scientists trying to solve the world's climate and energy problems. And I asked God for hope and reasons to be hopeful.
Then I went to bed.
I was up late last night with some ideas about ressurrecting Burgerfinder.com that I had to do some work on before I could get them out of my head. And also because my dog, who sleeps on a pillow under the bed near where I rest my head, was farting in her sleep (major SBD's that went straight up to my nose - let's see you try to fall asleep as those waft in every 15-20 minutes). So I ended up sleeping in since it's not like I had to get up to go to work.
When I got online and checked my mail this morning, lo and behold, there's an e-mail from a manager on a previous contract gig at Microsoft. He knows another manager who needs someone to do a contract similar to the one I did for him and he wants to know if I'm available. I reply that I am. He tells the other manager, we have a phone call, and now I have an interview tomorrow.
It's only an "a-dash" position, meaning it can last a maximum of 1 year before I have to take a 100-day break, but it's work at a good rate of pay. They'll also be flexible about my hours/days in November so I can support my wife during her recovery from giving birth to our new baby.
I asked God for hope and reasons to be hopeful. I wasn't expecting God to deliver so quickly. I mean the period between Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur is His busy time. But even when He's most swamped, He found time to help me when I needed it. That's God for you.
We'll see whether I actually get offered the gig. But just this amazing serendipity, this hope, praying for good news before I go to sleep and waking up to it... big props to the man upstairs.
Hope all of you who are job hunting and have found this site have good luck too. And if you're not praying, perhaps you've stopped believing, try a prayer anyway. What have you got to lose?
October 01, 2008 12:14 AM
September 30, 2008
Lu made a post about the Cantocore Export which I got to the last 15 minutes of after a trip to SF -> KC -> HKG -> Guangzhou Here is a nice glowing image from the opening:
I’m now in Beijing out at CaoChangDi near 798 (DaShanZi) living it up, coming out of my fake retirement and generally relishing the fact that I’m waking up and doing whatever I want to pretty much each day. Its pretty funny to be out here right now in a studio right next to Matt’s studio in nearly similar circumstance to our old UCSD VAF lifestyle of old.
The primary difference is that we are in Beijing, on the outskirts, next to a village from some other era, and have more resources to realize all those dreams. We had a bbq last night and pulled out one of two speakers custom beijing north sound system speakers and blasted it until midnight with no complaints. Fun!
Many fun projects on the horizon as I’m realizing many great things with space to deal with experiments and creativity once more. Cluster speakers, sustainable open source development, and a possible dubstep event are coming up quick!
September 30, 2008 03:07 PM
So, I've been out of work for a bit, using a combination of some investments and unemployment checks to keep my head above water while I looked not just for a job, but the right one... a job that not only paid somewhere near what I believe I'm worth, but that provided challenges I would find interesting and opportunities for growth. All the while, I've had the impending birth of my second child looming on the calendar, motivating me to find something.
So, finally, it looked like I found something. The money was a bit less than I wanted, but the job looked really interesting and the company seemed to be a good place to work. I did a half-hour phone interview on Tuesday the 16th, then went in for 3+ hours of in-person interviews on Friday the 19th, and on Monday the 22nd the headhunter who had been arranging all this called and told me I had the job... almost.
See, this is a small company with a one-person HR department. Their head of HR was on sabbattical in Tajikistan or Kazahkstan and they had a contractor in as a replacement, but that contractor was on vacation and wouldn't be back until today. They couldn't make an official offer until the HR person returned and could both check my references and put together the official "offer letter". So all week, the headhunter is telling me to be ready for the offer letter to come today and let's try to jump on it quickly.
At 3 p.m. today, I e-mailed the headhunter and asked where the offer letter was. About a half-hour later he called me to tell me he finally got in touch with his contact on this and the position had been cancelled. It's not that they had given the job to someone else. They hadn't changed their minds about me or decided they liked someone else better. I hadn't done anything wrong. The upper management cut the money that was budgeted to pay for the position.
Here's the odd part of this. One of the things I asked about in the interviews was the "work/life balance." The answer was that it had been good, but as the workload in the department increased, it had started getting out of hand, and they were really glad to be getting another person in to help it return to sane levels.
So, since the position is cancelled, the work/life balance doesn't improve and possibly gets worse. By cancelling the position, they demonstrated to me that this is a bad place to work. But if they hadn't cancelled it, it would have been a good place to work.
How's that for logic? If it makes your head hurt, the line for aspirin starts behind me.
Sigh.
September 30, 2008 12:10 AM
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