As you may be aware the latest versions of Flash depend on XEmbed support which Konqueror lacks without various patches to KDELibs and KDEBase which haven’t been applied by my distribution and I couldn’t get working even when I manually patched the necessary parts of KDE myself. I was using the older versions but it appears they have outstanding and actively exploited security holes that they have only fixed in the XEmbed-supporting versions.

Mike needs his YouTube fix without haxors running rife on his box. Who can save him?

KMPlayer to the rescue!

KMPlayer is my media player of choice as it allows you to trivially switch between XINE, MPlayer and GStreamer backends and, as of version 0.10.0, has a nifty backend that allows you to use XEmbed-supporting plugins, including Adobe’s Flash plugin, which can then be embedded in Konqueror to allow Flash to work trivially.

HOWTO:

1. Install KMPlayer (version 0.10.0c or higher). It is included in all the major distributions I’ve ever used. Ensure it is installed/compiled with the “NPP” backend enabled which allows the playback of Netscape XEmbed plugins (this depends on your distribution).
2. Run KMPlayer so it creates its config file. Close it. (This step probably isn’t necessary but it won’t do any harm)
3. Run the following commands:
   

   kwriteconfig --file kmplayerrc --group "application/x-shockwave-flash" --key player npp
kwriteconfig --file kmplayerrc --group "application/x-shockwave-flash" --key plugin /usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so

4. Change the “libflashplayer.so” section depending on where the Adobe Flash plugin was installed on your distribution. The above example is where it is installed on Gentoo. (People have replied below with where it is stored on various systems. If you can’t find yours, you probably have a locate program installed so trying running “locate libflashplayer.so” for an idea.).
5. Open Konqueror and click “Settings > Configure Konqueror…”. In the new window navigate to “File Associations” in the left-hand panel and select “application/x-shockwave-flash“. Click the “Embedding” tab and click “Add..“. Select “Embedded MPlayer for KDE” from the new window. If it is not there then you may need to restart KDE or run “kbuildsycoca” from a terminal. Close all the opened windows.
6. Enjoy a working Flash in Konqueror!

What is wrong? You’re running a x86_64 machine (like me) so the above doesn’t work? Never fear! If you manage to get a 32-bit version of “knpplayer” (the small program that runs the plugins) and install that in your $PATH before the 64-bit version then it will all just work like magic! Note that you’ll need 32-bit versions of the various dependent libraries also (it seems just to be GTK, Cairo, X11 and DBus stuff).

Have a good day people!

So far I’m pretty impressed with the stability and the new features. KWin’s AIGLX support is a welcome addition giving some of the “bling” of Compiz/Beryl on top of a featureful and stable window manager. The only real thing I’m missing so far is some of the old features of Kicker such as allowing me to change the size of the taskbar but this is not a big deal and I think the new panel is far more attractive than Kicker ever was.

Now that I actually have a working desktop of this stuff I think I’ll be committing more often as I’ll be eating my own dog-food for a change. I attempted to post this post using KOrganizer which unexpectedly crashed so I’ll work ASAP on fixing that and improving it to meet my purposes, hopefully managing to resist the temptation to do so tomorrow/today!

You can see some pictures here.

It was a good night and I enjoyed myself. My KDE t-shirt got a few odd looks earlier on in the evening with people being evenly spread between calling me a huge nerd as a compliment and calling me a huge nerd as an insult
Anyway, heading to Liquid was pretty good banter, got to dance like a fool with some mates and get high on Red Bull whilst trying not to pass out from the really bad body-odour.

I’m far from easily shocked or a particularly morally conservative but I was pretty disturbed by the majority of videos for the dancey songs being just women dancing insanely suggestively in their underwear. I just don’t really see why they are like that. There tends to be more women than men in clubs and certainly more women than men actually dancing so I’m surprised more women aren’t bothered by how insanely one-dimensionally they are being portrayed by the flashing images above the dance floor. I don’t really know what I think should be done or even if anything should be but I find it a bit odd.

Perhaps I’m just not the target audience but I find absolutely nothing attractive about the videos at all. Looks are important but when they are focused on so soley (as in the videos) it is a massive turn-off to me .

I like going out clubbing and dancing and having a laugh with mates but it really bothers me sometimes. If men (outside of early-era Take-That, Relight My Fire is the gayest video ever) can seem to produce videos where they aren’t mindless sex-objects then why is the role reversed seemingly every time a woman is on screen?

Discuss!

Firstly I recommend you download the CellSDK-Devel-Fedora_3.0.0.1.0.iso and CellSDK-Extras-Fedora_3.0.0.1.0.iso (current at time of writing) from here.

Then when you have downloaded them mount them somewhere on your filesystem.

mount -o loop $HOME/CellSDK-Devel-Fedora_3.0.0.1.0.iso /tmp/CellSDK-Devel-Fedora/
mount -o loop $HOME/CellSDK-Extras-Fedora_3.0.0.1.0.iso /tmp/CellSDK-Extras-Fedora/

We’ve downloaded the two RPMs by IBM. If you install these on Fedora they will provide you with some yum repositories for the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre. These will need to be downloaded manually as we aren’t on a RPM-based system.

If you are running Ubuntu Gutsy on x86_64 or x86 run:

apt-get install ppu-gcc ppu-gdb spu-g++ spu-gdb cell-programming-primer

If you are running Ubuntu Gutsy on the Cell run:

apt-get install cell-sdk

Otherwise run the following:

apt-get install wget #Install wget if it is not already
mkdir openrpm
cd openrpm
wget -l 1 -c -np -nd -r http://www.bsc.es/projects/deepcomputing/linuxoncell/cellsimulator/sdk3.0/CellSDK-Open-Fedora/x86_64/ -A .rpm

The aboveassumes you are on an x86_64 machine. If you are using the Cell, a regular x86 or a PPC 64-bit machine change the ‘x86_64‘ to ‘cbea’, ‘x86‘ or ‘ppc64‘ accordingly.

The following instructions apply regardless of your Debian/Ubuntu variant or architecture.

Next, if we are on x86_64, we want to create a nice little script to handily convert the i386 architecture files to amd64 so they will install nicely when we convert them to debs. This is safe as all the stuff these packages install gets chucked into /opt/.

I recommend we name it “fixcelldebsarch.sh” and stick it in your $HOME. This is only necessary if you are on x86_64 not x86 and (probably) won’t work on the Cell or another PPC64.

#!/bin/bash
#~/fixcelldebsarch.sh
OWD=`pwd`
for i in `ls -d */`
do
cd $i
sed -ie ’s/Architecture: i386/Architecture: amd64/’ debian/control
dpkg-buildpackage
cd “$OWD”
rm -r */ *.gz *.changes *.dsc
done

(Thanks to Jon for the fix to avoid mess when using symbolic links.)

Next we want to convert the various RPMs into DEBs for our Debian system so the dependencies are nicely handled and they can be uninstalled. Install the ‘alien‘ package if you have not already.

On the following lines replace the occurences of “/x86_64/” with ‘/cbea/’, ‘/x86/’ or ‘/ppc64/’ using the same criteria as above.

cd open
for i in ../openrpm/*.rpm; do alien --scripts $i; done
~/fixcelldebsarch.sh #Only needed on x86_64
dpkg -i *.deb

cd devel
for i in /tmp/CellSDK-Devel-Fedora/x86_64/*.rpm; do alien --scripts $i; done
~/fixcelldebsarch.sh #Only needed on x86_64
dpkg -i *.deb

cd extras
for i in /tmp/CellSDK-Extras-Fedora/x86_64/*.rpm; do alien --scripts $i; done
~/fixcelldebsarch.sh #Only needed on x86_64
dpkg -i *.deb

It should have been fairly obvious what was going on above. This should have installed all the necessary packages for the Cell SDK without breaking your system and allowing Debian/Ubuntu packages to override these versions.

I hope this all works; if anyone spots any typos, has any suggestions or needs any help then give me a shout!

Updated: Added Gutsy information. Thanks Bart!

I had the chance of seeing the film this afternoon and enjoyed it. The story is fairly predictable (in the film anyway) and the trailers I had seen ruined some of the twists and turns for me but this didn’t detract overly from my enjoyment of the film. The main reason I went to see it, to be honest, was for the CGI which met far exceeded my expectations. I wish my grandparents were still around so I could show them some of the imagery that we can create with computers now, I think they’d be pretty blown away.

Apparently the novels are a lot more directly anti-Church but this doesn’t really seem to come across in the film. From what I’ve read from Wikipedia even the novels aren’t that controversial, being more anti-dogma and encouraging free thought rather than blind adherence to what those in authority tell you. I don’t find this to be a negative message really at all, in fact I think it is a good one to give to our children.

When I’ve worked with children I’m always amazed by those who seem to want kids to stop thinking and just accept what they are told. This is the way to mental stagnation and the decline of the sciences and, ultimately, halting the advances in our society.

I want to try and read the books for myself rather than relying on second-hand summaries but, as far as I can see, Philip Pullman doesn’t attack my faith but he challenges me to form my own beliefs rather than relying on others to find the answers for me . There was another guy who liked to criticise and rebuke the guys in authority around 2007 years ago. It’s his birthday soon….

I’ve been toying around with the ideas of free speech the last few weeks and how free is free enough. I don’t have the right to make rascist insults or violent threats. Is this a bad thing or simply sensible?

I was reading James the other day and it talks about the tongue being “a restless evil, full of deadly poison” and sometimes I feel mine is certainly like that. So much of we say can upset others or make us look foolish. How does this affect free speech though?

“Sticks and stones will break my bones but words shall never hurt me” is told to children in the UK. This can’t be further from the truth. The question is not whether free speech can be a bad thing; it is clear it can hurt and cause damage, violence and hatred, but what limits we put on it and what sacrifices are acceptable in its name.

There was some controversy two weeks ago with two controverisal speakers at an Oxford debate being allowed a free platform to speak at the prestigious university. Some claim this gave legitimacy to their views and furthered their movements. Also we saw Aaron Seigo ask for people to give constructive criticism rather than just “sucking lists” for the KDE4 release and there was some heated discussion about whether this was a fair ask or not.

Even although these two discussions probably hurt some people and annoyed others I feel both were beneficial. Abraham Lincoln once said “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt” and I feel this is pertininet in these days when free speech is under discussion and heated debate fills the internet.

If you try and force people not to say certain things; be they complaints, rascist comments or denial of history then these views don’t simply die, instead they tend to occur behind closed doors and cliques and this is far more dangerous than being aware of them. The best way to confront idiotic or bigotted views is through public debate where they can be reasoned with rather than ignored.

With this in mind I personally think anyone should be able to say what they want, where they want and to whom they want. If it isn’t true, if it is offensive then they should be verbally repremanded but I don’t believe words and ideas should be punished simply for being.

With this in mind I’m glad to see the amount of heated discussion that occurs on Planet KDE and elsewhere on the internet. It may appear brash or rude but people only argue when they care and I think KDE is lucky to have a bunch of developers that cares so much about the software being great, even when sometimes their methods of vocalising it could be improved.