January 2013 - luv-talk

Demuxing an MPEG TS from a USB PVR where the TS is prefixed with invalid data
by Anthony Hogan 16 Jun '13

16 Jun '13

Hi all, I have a TV which has a built in USB record feature (which basically dumps DVB-T MPEG TS in 2GB chunks). I'd like to pull the audio track out of something I recorded. VLC happily plays the file and identifies the video, audio and EPG info in the transport stream, but if, for example, I run: avconv -i ... -acodec copy audio.mp3 ... I end up with about 2 seconds of silence. It seems there's a couple of dummy streams and also that the overall file is prefixed with what looks like null garbage. I know that if vlc can play it, there's gotta be a way of extracting it, but must admit that I haven't had any luck thus far. Any ideas on recommended tools for stubborn MPEG TS demuxing? Anthony

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Remote controlling an Android 4.2.1 device
by Anthony Hogan 20 Apr '13

20 Apr '13

Hey folks, Anyone use an Android remote control solution? Not using Android to remote control something else, but another device to control Android? Preferably over WiFi.. I've used Airdroid and SSHDroid to do file, SMS etc. access, but looking for something that'll provide remote GUI access. There are a few things about that I found, but some seem to be rather old and unmaintained, of dubious background (not many reviews etc.). One even suggested "chmod 777" on one of the Android system areas... Uh.. NO.. How do you folks go about remote control of Android devices? Anthony

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Dial-up modems anyone?
by Duncan Roe 05 Feb '13

05 Feb '13

Hi guys, I have 4 or 5 33Kb Maestro dial-up modems curently destined for the next hard rubbish collection. I think at least one was upgraded to 56Kb. Can anyone suggest a better home / charity / recycling outfit for these? Cheers ... Duncan. -- Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html

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Re: [luv-talk] remote list of changed files
by Russell Coker 04 Feb '13

04 Feb '13

On Thu, 24 Jan 2013, Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan(a)affinityvision.com.au> wrote: > Whilst I did learn a thing or two with this thread, thank you very much, > I am astounded that you can seem to have no trouble reading Wikipedia > articles to attack people, but you can't seem to read a man page? Andrew, your problem is that you seem to believe that there are no facts and that anyone who disagrees with you is attacking you personally and rejecting your opinion. However in the real world there are facts and we should all try to discover them not just make things up. Wikipedia is really easy to read, that's one advantage of having lots of people read and edit it. A common difficulty with Unix man pages is that the terms which are used by the program differ from the plain English terms that some users use, this makes a search of the man page unlikely to find the desired answer. A man page which is more than 3000 lines long is difficult to read at the best of times, the rsync man page is about the length of a 9 page magazine article! Also you don't get to criticise people for having "trouble reading" after you cited a conspiracy theory site and said "I'm not going to verify it's correctness or otherwise, please don't ask me to". If you aren't going to try to verify that your references are correct (or even sane) then you have no right to criticise anyone else. > It's not the first time something so basic about a Linux tool or > operation has escaped your vast experience and that really surprises me. Linux and the software which runs on it is actually very complex. No-one can know everything about how it works. For example when I was at university I spent dozens of 8 hour days reading man pages to learn about Unix (mostly Solaris and HP-UX) and still only learned a fraction of it (I did have professors and post-grad students start asking me for advice on Unix issues though). > The other most significant oversight from you was the checkarray > processing of software RAID. Just the same, interesting, I'm sure you > are a very knowledgeable Linux user, but sometimes I just wonder in > total amazement. If you want to demonstrate your skill then you could try answering questions on the main LUV list. You could offer to give lectures on topics that you know well. You could write blog posts which teach people about things related to Linux and have them syndicated on Planet Linux Australia. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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Lift to Melbourne Available on Saturday
by Daniel Jitnah 01 Feb '13

01 Feb '13

Hi All, I have a seat available in my car to Melbourne on Saturday after LCA. Leave around 1pm arrive late evening. Travel along Hume Share fuel cost (~$30) and driving if possible. Call/txt me on 0413 082 049 or email back asap. Cheers Daniel

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Of climate skeptics funding
by Mark Trickett 30 Jan '13

30 Jan '13

Hello All, Just found, via G+, a link to an article about the finances of the climate change denial organisations. One major source is Koch Industries, who are heavily involved in the fossil fuel industry. They are funneling it through a "charitable" fund, getting tax deductability, and anonymity. The approaches are very similar to what the Tobacco industry tried, denial of real effects, and puppet "independent" voices. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-billionai… Still seeing "quibbles" that the science is in dispute, but that is only from paid mouthpieces, and others out of their fields of expertise. I do not have the knowledge and skills to do the original work, but what I learnt from my Engineering degree does provide the necessary grounding to comprehend the reality of climate change. You can speed and if the police do not catch you, they do not charge you. The laws of physics are far more watchful, you cannot break them. The wealthy fail to realise that the human rules can be bent, at least temporarily, but that the real world of physics and the laws of thermodynamics are not to be fooled. Unfortunately, they have less wealthy supporters who are severely misled and fail to have open minds. The planet will continue to exist, and to circle the sun, but what life will continue is debatable. For those here who disbelieve, consider the example of Venus, that is the effect of an atmosphere that traps more heat. It verifies the effects of CO2. The issue on earth is the increasing concentration. Things were stable, but we have "kicked" an otherwise stable system rather hard. There is evidence of the change, if you really want even more incontrovertible, then it will be more than past time to be able to correct things. There are other gases and soot that we are pumping into the atmosphere that have even bigger effects than CO2, some that will stay there longer, some that will wash out quickly. The US Geological Service has done a valid assessment of the effect of volcanoes, and they are not small, but compared to the effects of billions of people, they are small beer. For those here who would dispute this, if you really have an open mind, then read the material that puts the case. if you will not consider, then stop claiming to have an open mind. Regards, Mark Trickett

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headless PMP recommendations
by Trent W. Buck 27 Jan '13

27 Jan '13

The battery in my PMP is dying, and as it's not user-servicable, I'm looking to replace the whole PMP. It was an IBM freebie, so I can't just buy the same unit again (nor is its USB device ID informative). I'm after recommendations that will meet the following requirements -- they basically describe my old device. - can walk into a local store and buy it. IOW not a DIY project and not "order online from <some gizmo site>". - MUST play MP3s (yes, opus/speex/flac/tremor would be nice, but I doubt they're available in commodity hardware). - MUST have 3.5mm headphone audio out. - SHOULD charge over USB. - MUST last at least 2h playback between charges at time of purchase. SHOULD be a lot more, so that as the battery slowly dies, I don't care. Once it drops below about 40min playback between charges, it becomes useless to me. - SHOULD cost less than A$200. - SHOULD be small and light -- on the order of a couple of USB keys. - SHOULD be headless (no screen). All I need is play/pause/off, next-track, and vol-up/down buttons. If I want to know what I'm listening to, I'll bolt backannouncing into the audio stream. If I want to go to a specific track, I'll plug it into a "real" computer. SHOULD use mechanical (not touchscreen) buttons, so I can skip tracks by hitting next-track through my jacket, rather than having to open it and reach in. - MUST talk to a computer over USB mass storage (or, I guess, simply take an SD or microSD card). I should be able to plug it in, drop a bunch of MP3 files into a folder, and it should just play them. SHOULD play them in the order they hit the disk, so that - streamripper of a radio station into individual MP3s will play them back in the order recorded, so streamripper's unreliable track-edge detection becomes a non-issue; and - a simple cp -a of an album will play it back in track order (because cp will copy the tracks in lexicographic sort order). SHOULD NOT need a magical "index" file for the onboard OS to "see" tracks, as the old gen2 & 4 iPods did. (Anything that needs iTunes or similar is *right out*). MAY use a FAT filesystem. NTFS or HFS+ would actually be an inconvenience for me at present. - if onboard storage (cf. SD card), SHOULD be at least 2GB. The key words (in uppercase) are per RFC 2119. A glance at jbhifi.com turns up a A$52 Sony B-series Walkman which looks close to what I want. Does anyone have experience with it? PS: no, I don't have a cellphone, so I can't use that to play music.

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Bush-fire protection of buildings using external water-spray systems
by Rohan McLeod 24 Jan '13

24 Jan '13

Assembled cognoscenti; it being the bush-fire season my thoughts turned to the practicability of protecting buildings , using external water-spray systems. My thoughts went something like this 1/ If one knows the air temperature , humidity, wind velocity, distance to, and composition and dryness of surrounding bush . 2/ Can't one calculate the radiant heat in KW/m2 impacting on the building ?; and 3/ the likely duration in the event of a bush-fire ? 4/ Can't one then calculate the minimum spray flow in litres / sec and the total volume of water required ? 5/ Can't one then make an informed decision about, whether such a system is physically and financially practical in a particular situation? Because such systems don't seem to receive much attention from media or insurance companies ; I assumed the answer must be that they are usually not practical. So I was somewhat surprised on reading : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_water_spray_system to find: "Issues There is a lack of scientific research regarding EWSS..........." I am contacting the CSIRO because I seem to recall they did something on this years ago; but would be interested in actual research if anyone has come across it ; regards Rohan McLeod

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O'Reilly Open Government, released as part of #PDFtribute
by Rodney Brown 23 Jan '13

23 Jan '13

https://github.com/oreillymedia/open_government (epub, mobi, pdf) (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) http://radar.oreilly.com/2013/01/open-government-files-released.html We’re releasing the files for O’Reilly’s Open Government book A #PDFtribute to Aaron Swartz. ...

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dns error
by Brian May 17 Jan '13

17 Jan '13

Hello, If I try to resolve oss.trac.sara.nl from work (aarnet), it works. If I try to resolve it from home (internode) it doesn't work. WTF? brian@webby:~$ host -C sara.nl. Nameserver nsauth1.sara.nl: sara.nl has SOA record nsauth1.sara.nl. nic.sara.nl. 2012122001 14400 7200 604800 86400 Nameserver nsauth2.sara.nl: sara.nl has SOA record nsauth1.sara.nl. nic.sara.nl. 2012122001 14400 7200 604800 86400 Nameserver ns2.surfnet.nl: sara.nl has SOA record nsauth1.sara.nl. nic.sara.nl. 2012122001 14400 7200 604800 86400 Maybe this is the reason? brian@webby:~$ host -r -a oss.trac.sara.nl ns2.surfnet.nl Trying "oss.trac.sara.nl" Received 82 bytes from 2001:610:3:200a:192:87:36:2#53 in 332 ms Trying "oss.trac.sara.nl.pri" Using domain server: Name: ns2.surfnet.nl Address: 2001:610:3:200a:192:87:36:2#53 Aliases: Host oss.trac.sara.nl.pri not found: 5(REFUSED) Received 38 bytes from 2001:610:3:200a:192:87:36:2#53 in 334 ms (the other two DNS servers are fine) Thanks -- Brian May <brian(a)microcomaustralia.com.au>

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