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Meh, I never "got into the whole podcast thing" but I did listen to lugradio religiously. Figuratively PMSL at most of the episodes and the earlier shows did tend toward being amateurish but definitely improved over time. IIRC, it also sparked the development of Jokosher

That was called LugRadio, it was good whilst it lasted.

heh,

the Funky Pie phenomenon was disguised on the boards a few years ago

http://forums.lugradio.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=306&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

It's an "out of the box" ice-cream tart that many Indians have nowdays :D

Matt

http://planet.lugradio.org/hashlugradio/

They're only quitting because we haven't released for about three months.

Don't forget that you still have the chance to get some of the LugRadio vibe at LRL UK in July.

Details are at http://lugradio.org/live/UK2008/

Roger

there were no licenses to save money on.

They saved the money on not buying the licenses they had intended to buy. So says a Sun employee when interviewed by lugradio. I can't remember which episode, but grep for sun on http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/ and filter out the obvious non-sun related items. I'm thinking it's in season three or four.

(Yeah, crummy reference; I don't have the time to make it better than that, though).

Engadget - All sorts of Tech News Slashdot PC Perspective - All sorts of hardware news, graphics cards, processes and the like http://www.pcper.com/ xkcd - awesome comic website, lots of funny math/love/science comics http://xkcd.com/ Lug Radio - Linux podcast that has lots of open source news http://www.lugradio.org/episodes.rss Severed Fifth - Solo metal band by Jono Bacon, guy from Lug Radio, Promotes creative commons music and soon to distribute free metal music http://www.severedfifth.com/news/ Those are my rss feeds

Here are a few things that have helped me out:

• The big one: go to LISA. It can be tough convincing the boss to send their one-and-only IT guy, but it's an incredibly exciting environment. You'll learn lots, you'll meet lots, and you'll get to rub shoulders with people doing incredible things -- and people in the same boat you are.
• If you can't go to LISA, start reading their proceedings. They've just opened up everything to the public (previously you had to wait a year if you weren't a member), and there are some incredible gems to be found. The MP3s from LISA '07 weren't as good as being there would have been (sob), but they're still damned good.
• You should still get a membership in SAGE. Subscribe to the mailing lists, get a subscription to ;login:, and inhale deeply.
• Look around for professional organizations to join, or other opportunities. There's a sysadmin group at the university where I work; there's also a committee trying to figure out what the university's IT strategy should be for the next 5-10 years. I've been lucky enough to be involved with both, and they're interesting. Sure, I run a small shop, but I've rubbed shoulders with (well, envied from across the room :-) the guy in charge of a cluster of computers that'll be processing data for the ATLAS experiment.
• Start your own techy/sysadmin conference, a la LUGRadio Live. No, LUGRadio Live isn't particularly sysadmin-oriented, but I have the strong impression that the organizers just decided they wanted to hold their own conference, and they did. And if you look at the schedule for their US conference, it's got a damned impressive list of presenters. (I'm considering starting a sysadmin conference next summer in Vancouver, BC...anyone interested?)
• Other sources of info: Planet Sysadmin (disclaimer: they've got my blog in there), ONLamp, and your local LUG.

Hope this helps!

Here are a few things that have helped me out:

• The big one: go to LISA. It can be tough convincing the boss to send their one-and-only IT guy, but it's an incredibly exciting environment. You'll learn lots, you'll meet lots, and you'll get to rub shoulders with people doing incredible things -- and people in the same boat you are.
• If you can't go to LISA, start reading their proceedings. They've just opened up everything to the public (previously you had to wait a year if you weren't a member), and there are some incredible gems to be found. The MP3s from LISA '07 weren't as good as being there would have been (sob), but they're still damned good.
• You should still get a membership in SAGE. Subscribe to the mailing lists, get a subscription to ;login:, and inhale deeply.
• Look around for professional organizations to join, or other opportunities. There's a sysadmin group at the university where I work; there's also a committee trying to figure out what the university's IT strategy should be for the next 5-10 years. I've been lucky enough to be involved with both, and they're interesting. Sure, I run a small shop, but I've rubbed shoulders with (well, envied from across the room :-) the guy in charge of a cluster of computers that'll be processing data for the ATLAS experiment.
• Start your own techy/sysadmin conference, a la LUGRadio Live. No, LUGRadio Live isn't particularly sysadmin-oriented, but I have the strong impression that the organizers just decided they wanted to hold their own conference, and they did. And if you look at the schedule for their US conference, it's got a damned impressive list of presenters. (I'm considering starting a sysadmin conference next summer in Vancouver, BC...anyone interested?)
• Other sources of info: Planet Sysadmin (disclaimer: they've got my blog in there), ONLamp, and your local LUG.

Hope this helps!

I second the call for the return of Geeks in Space. I have very fond memories of that show. There's no reason why there should only ever be one funny free software-related podcast at a time.

I know the Geek Compound is no more, and everybody's scattered across the US, but we have useable VoIP now. Can you imagine that happy day when geeks across the world will be able to unite in fellowship and say as one "I've been listening to Geeks in Space since before it started to suck"?

Miguel de Icaza appeared on the LUG Radio podcast, and gave a really good description of how this sort of thing fits into a coherent business strategy:

http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/69/

Basically, the argument goes like this. If you look at what's locking people in to windows now, it's not so much the big stuff -- office apps, browsers, email programs, etc. We have all of that stuff, and most of what we have is pretty terrific.

The stuff that locks people in is small and narrow -- software to do some odd, specific, business related thing. Some app that's tweaked to run scheduling in a dental office, or whatever. My mom has a travel agency, and she uses an app that manages all of her customers, and that's windows specific. I have a friend who installs burglar alarm systems, and he has software that programs alarms, and which only runs under windows.

There isn't one big thing that's locking people in -- it's thousands and thousands of small things. Everyone has something different, but almost everyone has *something*. And a giant chunk of those little things, now, are running under .NET.

The Mono guys have been using an automated tool that looks at what libraries .NET apps use, and they've been trying to pick off the APIs that will give them the most apps running in the real world on linux.

On top of that, they've been working with .NET people who want to make their apps more portable -- which mostly means doing things one way, using some APIs, instead of another, using other APIs. According to Miguel, they're getting a good response from .NET developers, who would like to see their stuff become more portable -- they'd love to see .NET pick up some of that "write once run anywhere" magic that java has. They'd like to not be locked in.

The point that's getting lost in a lot of the fights over Mono and the infamous deal (about which I personally have many misgivings) is that Novell is mounting an incredibly audacious attack on the Desktop, and this sort of thing is a big part of it. They're not satisfied with servers.

I don't know if it will work, and again, every time I read something about Ballmer talking smack about linux, I get nervous about that deal. But at the same time, I sort of love the bigness of what Novell is doing, the audacity of it.

For whatever reason, Novell is doing an incredibly bad job of explaining all of this to us. Which is why I really encourage everyone to grab that podcast episode, linked above, and listen to what Miguel says about mono.

Exactly. To hear this from the horse's mouth, listen to the latest LUGRadio episode.

I'm looking forward to the special blend of geeky chat with some friends I've met online, learning new stuff from the developers of the products I use every day, beer, a few games of Enemy Territory, listening in on a recording of LUGRadio and generally having a bit of a laugh with some friends. I created a natty PDF which shows what's on in an easily digestable form. Almost time to print out and highlight!

Clan LugRadio (http://clan.lugradio.org/) are providing LAN gaming and I have 4-player Gauntlet on my xmame (http://x.mame.net/) cabinet. Hope to see many old and new friends there. BTW: LugRadio Live 2006 deserves to be front page news!

For Stallman to agree, it would have to also be Free (as in kippers)

For some other insights from Kevin check out this weeks LUGRadio interview from the episode "Pigeon! Like your English!" availible at http://lugradio.org/episodes/50.

Kevin Carmony has a couple of great Lugradio interviews: the most recent is here and the first, much longer one is available here.

They really helped me get a better idea of what kind of community member linspire is. In short, they're a pretty fucking good one, and if they use some proprietary technology to make money, well, RedHat uses a proprietary trademark to make money and so on. I don't begrudge anyone the chance to make a living.

Kevin Carmony has a couple of great Lugradio interviews: the most recent is here and the first, much longer one is available here.

They really helped me get a better idea of what kind of community member linspire is. In short, they're a pretty fucking good one, and if they use some proprietary technology to make money, well, RedHat uses a proprietary trademark to make money and so on. I don't begrudge anyone the chance to make a living.

Acctually in one of the episodes of LUGRadio the top Open Source strategy guy from Sun stated that the main goal for Sun is to eventually make all their software products Open Source.

No, haven't they already said that?

Well just over a month ago on http://www.lugradio.org/ (season 3, episode 10) Simon Phipps said that that all Sun software will be open-source eventually.

Simon Phipps was interviewed in http://lugradio.org/episodes/45 and stated that Sun's policy was to open source everything (including java) within the next 2 years or so; however it was up to each project to come up with their own roadmap to facilitate this.

A high up Sun representative was interviewed on LugRadio a few months back (I'm pretty sure it's this episode but I'm not one hundred percent certain) in which he categorically stated that everything Sun owns software-wise will be open sourced eventually, including Java.

Seriously, Carmony really seems like a decent guy. Listen to him, you'll see what I mean. The Slashdot smart asses usually crap all over Linspire's quality, security, morality, business model, and so on and so on, but give the guy a chance, he's not all bad.

it's just bad business. lately lots of companies got big on open source and seeing how SUN (and others) has openssh based products, it would be freakin common sense to give something back to the developers. "well shit, they threw all that code in the wild, we're using and profiting from it, why not drop them some dosh so we motivate them to keep up the good work, so we don't have to".

some recent examples:

HP donated a 20 node blade monster to the FreeBSD project last year in december "We at HP recognize the important role of FreeBSD in the Internet's global network infrastructure, and we are happy that the HP BladeSystem cluster can contribute to the on-going success of the FreeBSD Foundation"

i was listening to a LUGRADIO episode recently and there's this propylon company which specializes in legal products, and they are the fourth largest contributor to OO.o -- nothing small either, they got like 60 devs on top of shit.

and i'm sure the list can go on and on. so before you blame big bad theo for expecting something back from the `freeloaders' why don't you look around at what other `big bad souless companies' are doing?

--EORant

Lugradio is a fortnightly British radio show that takes a relaxed, humorous look at Linux and open source. Has useful and informative features such as "What the Fook Book Truck", "Hype or Shite". Hosted by Jono Bacon and some others. Language will probably offend.

If you want to laugh out loud about geek stuff, you can't go wrong with http://www.geekdrome.com/ and http://www.lugradio.org/.

The ever wonderful Lugradio interviewed Bill a while back. see http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/39 WARNING: Contains bad language and M$ insults

I wish everyone would make this conviction as I'm sure it would drive more people to Free and Open Source software. It's ironic how history repeats itself. I believe it is inevitable that proprietary software makers will continue to add more and more draconian restrictions on what people can do with the software they have purchased. Including the so-called "Software as a service" movement that aims to charge consumers a subscription fee to access software. The proprietary operating systems, with the aid of insidious hardware, will make third party copy protection and digital rights management unnecessary. Finally, consumers will start to recognise the advantages of software freedom. They will flock to Free and Open Source alternatives. Depending on how the proprietary software makers react, think legislation, and how the Free and Open Source community responds, think funding, we may see a revolution.

What's the historical parallel? Replace "proprietary software makers" with "capitalist bourgeois", "consumers" with "workers", and "Free and Open Source" with "scientific socialism". Unfortunately, the scientific socialists had a major advantage over their modern counterpart: they knew their place in history. Marx was often criticised for declaring that the world was not ripe for a socialist revolution. Few of the followers of scientific socialism took this to heart, and the tragedy of Lenonism was the result. Where is today's Marx? More importantly, where is today's Lenon? The leaders of the Free and Open Source software movements are more like the sentimental communists that scientific socialism, and Marx in particular, pushed aside.

Where's the inevitability of Free and Open Source software being preached as a rational economic alternative? Believe it or not, I think we need to look to the open source companies and, in particular, Sun Microsystems. In a recent interview, Simon Phipps was heard to remark that eventually all of Sun's software will be Open Source. They're currently navigating the legal mine field they created by going proprietary in the first place. It sounds like there's a visionary somewhere in Sun who has seen the inevitable death of proprietary software.

"Microsoft's Linux developer Bill Hilf pulled out of the conference. There has been some press suggesting that this may be because Microsoft does not want to let Hilf in front of the media."

It could be because he can longer put forth the stuff MS was expecting him to spout without curling up in embarassment and dying.

A few weeks ago he was interviewed on the LUG Radio Podcast http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/ (see Epsiode 3) in which
he was asked about how Open Source people could go and work for Microsoft.

He stated the Microsoft was OK really, had learned from it's mistakes and that we should judge the company on what it was doing now.

A couple of weeks or so later Microsoft helped hound the Massachusetts guy out of office http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/ 28/0037246&tid=185 and the comment on a subseqeunt LUG Radio show was , "Well, we've looked at what MS is doing and it hasn't changed at all"

The guy from Gentoo took the honourable way out and resigned. Bill Hilf's mortage is obviously more important to him than his principles. However, being a mortage paying family gut myself can't say that I blame him. It is only software after all.

according to the interview with Jeremy White at http://www.lugradio.org/ codeweavers seems to be doing exactly that. according him it is a bitch to implement because the drm code tries to make it as hard as possible to hide from you what kind of calls it is trying to make.

The latest LugRadio show ( http://lugradio.org/episodes/43 ) features a very interesting interview of Jeremy White about Wine.

It's not realated to the OP but if you like UK comedy that's related to technology, check out LUGRadio, they have a really amusing linux-focused show at lugradio. Let me know if you have any others like that.

Without LUGs, there would be no LUG Radio!

Uncannily, I live in the UK I listen to the BBC World Wervice to help me get to sleep at 1am. If I want to stay awake at night then I listen to http://www.lugradio.org/

No doubt there'll be loads of postings when people finally manage to dl the programme (I've still got about 5 hours left).

Personally I'm just hoping it's better than LugRadio

Ralph Giles of Xiph.org did an interview, where if I remember correctly he said that Microsoft, or rather Bungie, which Microsoft owns, used Ogg in Halo 2 and Speex in Xbox Live.

Transcriptions are under way and are stored on the wiki at http://wiki.lugradio.org/index.php/Main_Page

Unfortunately it doesn't look as though episode 34 has been transcribed yet.

Listen to the audio, they are great :)

This episode of LUGRadio has an interview with Henrik Nielsen Omma, who maintains the OpenCD project. Its well worth a listen, particularly when he talks about his collaboration with Ubuntu.

Many podcasts are less commercial than radio shows, but it doesn't mean that quality would have to suffer. Net is full of great quality podcasts, like Spacemusic spacemusic.libsyn.com and some lowsy low quality ones (and still interesting) like lugradio

... in sunny Wolverhampton, the fleshpot of the UK.
See http://www.lugradio.org/live/2005/ for all the exciting news, blogs and photos.
bah!

http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/
  Season 2 Episode 19

Linux User Group Radio interviewed some of the people from Nokia, you can find it in S2E19 from the link above. Warning: adult language content!

The interesting thing, for me, was the timescale they discussed to get the N770 approved and out of the door. I'd have thought it'd be a year at most, given that linux on arm is well understood, used on iPaqs, Zauruses, etc. But the were talking nearly two years!

Embedded linux has come a long way in the last few years, but the lack of linux smartphones on the supermarket shelves hints that it's not a trivial process.

Trolltech have a QT package specifically for phones, and yet Nokia rolled their own. Are Nokia re-inventing the wheel, or do they think they can bring something new?

Actually, I'm a fan of listening to lugradio on my drive to work. If not that I usually just randomly switch through the Podcast Directory.
A couple more to wet your tongue would be to dig through archive and legal torrents.
Alternatively, I know you said you wish to save a bit of dough by doing it the freebie way, but I've gotta tell you Sirius is one hell of an offering.

Why should you care? Because buried in the crappy sea of angst-ridden podcasts you occasionally find some really good diamonds... Personally, I absolutely love the Rock and Roll Geek Show by Michael Butler (and there are a few other gems I listen to regularly). I also recommend you hunt down the Gillmoor gang podcasts, as well as the absolutely hilariouis LUG radio shows.

Podcasting is still in it's infancy, but the concept of anyone making content available to anyone is pretty cool. Yes, it's like audio blogging... but there are some real gems in the blogging world as well.

-- Gary F.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "IHBT, IHL, IWTTHAND". Apologies if you're not trolling.

Firstly, emule is open source.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Give me a valid use for bittorrent, apart for things like Distros?" Bittorrent has many legit uses... from your post it seems you realise this, but I'm not toally sure. However there are cases where there aren't official torrents, or the official torrents are being heavily hit after a release and so can't be accessed. I do agree that, sadly, the majority of usage is likely to be for copyright infringement, but I can still see it being useful for non-infringing purposes, and hopefully - unlike many other torrent sites - it won't be geared towards illegal content.

LUG Radio is rather enjoyable. It's Linux centric so don't bother listening if you don't know what Linux is.

Lugradio has an interview with Alan Cox in the latest episode (28th March) where he talks about being a kernel hacker, DRM, and how Linux doesn't need Linus.

Exactly...So here a couple that I like:

• Lug radio. This is good linux news mixed with humor. Some good interviews and views.
• It Conversations. Just started listening to these a couple of days ago. Seems like good interviews with high profile people.
• On The MediaWell I can't get NPR in New Zealand so I download OTM which is pretty good commment on the media industry.

Way better than I'd imagined, I'm hooked. Recent excellent geeky interviews include Jeff Waugh (of GNOME and Ubuntu) and Mark Shuttleworth (founder and funder of Ubuntu.)

lugradio.org

LUG Radio