Film Production via Open Source

The recent episode on YSpeak talked about digital vs mainstream on Filipino movie production. There were 2 things that I have noticed in that episode: those who were in favor of digital as an alternative or main medium were still considered as part of the youth and the ones in favor of mainstream were already seniors. It has always been a conflict on change – old people didn’t like it because they didn’t know how to use it whereas the youth takes the opportunity as an advantage to be a master in an early age at a shorter timeframe. On the technical side (which was not so discussed in the episode, or maybe they didn’t really bothered to), using digital medium in film production is cheaper in the long run. In fact, one can even start by just borrowing from a friend that has a digital videorecorder then start recording and earning from it (which one can already use to buy his/her own digital medium). But this is not the point, this is. Open Source Software is obviously cheaper than getting proprietary movie editing softwares such as Adobe’s. In fact, Hollywood had already embraced OSS just like in the creation of the Last Samurai. Go Open!But still, choosing over digital/mainstream as a medium is not the problem. The quality is still the main factor that distinguishes a film from another. How about if Filipino films have some trailers over the web just like this one? Will there be a difference?

CC: Chaos and Convenience

Chaos? Yes.. I had felt this yesterday before and after going to the school where I had experienced my high school life. Our task was yesterday was to install Linux in their internet cafe. I just can’t believe that on my way to Philcoa, I was stuck in a traffic jam that had its head somewhere in Central Avenue and the tail somewhere in the Elliptical Road (No, It’s a circle!). Rallyists were almost ubiquitous that we had encountered them creating the heavy traffic in the Elliptical Road. Anyway, enough of this chaotic stuffs first and I will tell you the convenience and customer satisfaction I my team had experienced yesterday.Installing Ubuntu 5.10 requires only a single CD to run and we had 10 installers composed of 8CDRs and 2 CDRW (the 2 CDRs and 2CDRWs were mine – all placed in a Red Hat cd case). Imagine the convenience of installing the distro at the division or rate of 2-3 CDs per person that did not even took more than an hour to finish. Having the internet connection available, we had managed to get the necessary package updates via Synaptic or apt-get. Even the flash plugin was also included in the package list and the plugin worked like a breeze! One doesn’t need to make symlinks or copy plugins in every browser. Everything just works! After the installation, I was amazed to see the senior high school students enjoying the default screensaver on Breezy Badger while listening to our Linux introduction tutorial.All in all, we had deployed Ubuntu on 20 PCs in a matter of 3-5 hours, complete with the necessary configurations (an informal tutorial included). I had gone home with a friend and had experienced chaos and a feeling of rush hour from the trip. The vehicle that we had primarily taken even bumped another vehicle that made us took another jeepney. I remembered that it was Friday and I shouldn’t have wondered why the feeling was like a rush.

As I sniff over the ubuntuforums, I was fascinated about this thread: Why is Ubuntu better than your previous distro?. You may also look at the image below that shows a poll where most of the shifters or converts were former Fedora users.

Ubuntu 5.10

My old setup (FC3) was running great and was stable until I noticed some errors in one of my system logs – it reflected that i had some bad sectors on my HD. For this reason, I terribly needed to backup my bulk amount of disorganized files to CDRs and USB disks and got myself a new HD. Since I will be having a fresh install, the linux distro that comes into my mind (as a reserve) is Fedora Core 3 again and maybe another distribution, Ubuntu and/or SuSe. I didn’t had the SuSe 10.0 OSS isos yet so I had started downloading them while chatting with some co-SAs. Unfortunately, I had already burned the CD1 after knowing from a friend that the OSS is incomplete. Since it is better to have a complete _new_ system and not an _evaluation_ version, Ubuntu is the key. Ubuntu 5.10 can already be downloaded since the official announcement of their release. People can request here for shipping.Installation is easy for it takes only a single CD for the whole process (not 4 or 7 CDs). After setting the necessary configs, the stuff indeed was a desktop setup which is the default configuration. Everything just works, it was quite impressive for the devices such as USB HD and printers were automatically detected. I didn’t even notice the shift because the usual stuffs that I do on Fedora Core 3 can also be done (obviously) on Ubuntu Breezy Badger. The thing that was cool (or hot) here was the enormous supply of repositories which enabled me to see more applications. Would you believe that it has an Avantgo utility for Palm? Knowing this, I had realized that even my Palm Vx was supported by Ubuntu! Finally, I had left Fedora (as well as Wind0ze) without even pain except for the moving or mirroring of my disorganized files again in my new organized set of folders. Fedora is good if a user doesn’t have a good internet connection and if the packages are also in the 4/5CD installers. Ubuntu has the edge if a user has a constant internet connection.Ubuntu is definitely a breeze. I had tried starting OpenOffice and it loaded in just 5-7 seconds. I had tried burning on k3b (kubuntu-install) and it had ended after only 5-7 minutes, complete with the verification thing. The CD covers were attractive as well. I can’t wait to have my requested packages in hand! Go Breezy Badger!

And the fight goes on..

“For Ballmer, however, the typical corporation offers more than just innovative products. “Our brand means there is someone you can call if there is a problem, and some of these things don’t come out of the non-paid volunteer format.”

Well, if he’s pertaining to customer support on communities, he’s definitely very untrue. After all, Wind0ze isn’t that user-friendly to me. One needs to adjust to it – by being friendlier to the system to be able to get over with the bugs and the old problems associated with the system. So where’s customer satisfaction, on the OS or the games that run on this problematic OS? How about the price or cost of installation and maintenance?

And now, Grisoft predicts linux virus plague as a major threat to the linux community. But if there will be existing viruses/virii (on Linux or even Mac), I still don’t know if those stuffs will really have a chance to inflict that massive damage as compared to the chaotic effects and hopeless problems on Wind0ze.

Yesterday, I just can’t believe that I had spent a lot of time fixing numerous ‘mushrooming’ package dependencies on Mandriva. I really wish that it has good package managers that can simply download the stuffs in the Internet and easily autofix the dependencies just like in Ubuntu’s APT-GET and Fedora’s YUMex. Just imagine that I need to go to RPM search engines just to get the package required and the bad thing is that the problem is like a recursion. Oh well.. I hope that they had already solved that problem and if such an application exists that I didn’t knew yet, Mandriva users, tell me, right here right now.

Mandriva 2006 Hits The ‘Net, Can it hit me?

Quoted from this news article: “Out of three distributions comes one. Mandriva 2006, the convergence of the former Mandrake, Connectiva and Lycoris Linux distributions was released today. Mandrake acquired Brazilian Linux vendor Conectiva in February for $2.3 million. In April, the combined entity changed its name to Mandriva. In June Mandriva acquired desktop Linux vendor Lycoris. And now it’s all together in Mandriva 2006, which is being offered to its “club” members, who pay fees ranging from $66 to $1,320 a year for membership.”

In my view, the club membership thing creates boundaries due to having different types of editions and support as well. Unlike Fedora, as far as I know, Mandriva assures the customer support or maintenance as well as the upgrades _only_ on club membership subscriptions. It doesn’t have demo versions like in the old SuSe and the Open Source Leader, Red Hat, which has RH Enterprise Linux and Fedora – the latter having clear definitions that it offers _full support_ on their 2 release versions. The Fedora Forum has been indeed very successful and it has also been established as an official forum board for Fedora. Right now, I’m thinking if Mandriva could still be deployed on Internet cafes after knowing that club members can share Mandriva Powerpacks as long as it is not for commercial use.On the lighter side, choosing over Fedora/Ubuntu/Mandriva on a new machine, I would rather save money, get a Mac Mini someday and try developing applications on it as well. What makes Apple unique is its strategy as far as customer satisfaction is concerned.

Quoted from another news article: “What are your experiences with the Mandriva Club and Mandriva Linux 2006? Are they worth the investment? Is there room for improvement? Are the complaints on the Club’s forums just some noise by never-happy eternal “moaners” or are they legitimate gripes about poor customer service? Why is it that SUSE has moved from being a mostly closed and somewhat proprietary distribution to a completely free and open project, while Mandriva has shifted in the opposite direction?” – I hope that Mandriva advocates shall notice this issue as well.

Absolute and Relative Reality

There always comes a time where a clash of ideas end somewhere else or nowhere at all. Such a case is like the recent topic of YSpeak: Pinoy Big Brother. IMO, PBB is not educational at all. If it really is, I should expect that it will be fully endorsed by the Dept of Education. For goodness sake, their eyes should be enlightened as well as the definition of the term ‘reality’ should be established even before the start of argument throwing. There are many kinds of realities out there in the wild. They range from the absolute to the relative type but I might be wrong here, besides, everyone has always something to say. Absolute reality might be the case of them as humans and _not as robots_ deployed in the scene. If they are just mascots or dummies, then its sense of reality is gone for the actors aren’t real at all. In the case of having reality reality, seeing them deployed in the _unreal environment_ it is not sufficient to say that it is already reality. For me, the reality would be the thing or situation that is hard to accept. For instance, the reality that people especially children, watch PBB instead of studying is very shocking to see in a world where technological development is faster than the natural or ideal development of a child’s brain. The reality that most of the television viewers are children who easily believe everything that the TV shows tell them especially during noon-time. And for this reason, everyone tends to be a showbiz superstar than be a doctor. Besides, in the Philippines, anyone can run for elections even at the presidential level without having the necessary equips (such as the graduate degrees and educational background). Philippines is indeed the place where actors make rules and the politicians entertain. Do you want to watch an educational and reality TV? Watch the sessions of the Congress.

Reality or Fantasy?

Finally, YSpeak returned to its informative state (unlike the past 2 episodes where I was confused if the show was really or is still endorsed by the DepEd) by talking about the controversial show, Pinoy Big Brother.I almost ROFL upon hearing this statement from a ‘resident psychologist’: “…if you watch the show, huwag ka na lang magcriticize…” Yada-yada, so where’s the point of critical thinking on the first place? The participants even said that they learned ‘values’ upon joining the ‘reality’ show…which only mean that they don’t know those basic values yet before joining the show? Oh, for goodness sake! I really kinda liked the people composing the panel that is somewhat in the opposing side, just like how the newspaper columnist said that PBB was indeed meaningless and pointless to watch.

On the lighter side, the PBB song is great but the PBB show doesn’t reflect its true meaning and reality after all. I would rather watch Final Fantasy Advent Child. Haha.