Pinoy Python User Group -- Pinoy PUG

This is an update to my post entitled “Will Real Python Hackers Please Stand Up”.

I would like to inform everyone that our Pinoy Python User Group (shall we call it Pinoy PUG?) is finally up and running. Thanks to JM for having the initiative to kick things off. JM is currently managing the group and is now sending invitations to those who are interested. You can comment here or drop me an email if you want to become a member of Pinoy Python User Group.

We’ve only just begun, so we need more Python enthusiasts to help take this group into another level.

That's all for now. Thank you and happy hacking ;-)

If Gates, Jobs, and Torvalds Were to Run for President…

The US Presidential Election is still several months away, but the race for the White House is already heating up. Currently, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the most serious contenders (sorry Republicans). Either one of them will someday lead the free world. But, what if tech leaders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Linus Torvalds were to run for president? Who will you vote for?

You can answer our poll/survey question located at this site’s sidebar. You may want to read the following short intro first to better know our geek presidentiables:

Bill Gates
Evil or not, he brought immense wealth to Microsoft Corporation and to himself. However, he is also considered as the world’s biggest philanthropist. If ever elected as president, he could make the United States an even richer and more dominant country.

Steve Jobs
The charismatic co-founder of Apple Inc. created some of the most innovative and sleekest-looking consumer electronic products the world has ever seen. If elected president, his creativity could be indispensable as a commander-in-chief, and his magnetism could help bring peace to Iraq.

LinusTorvalds
The kernel man, ‘AKA’ benevolent dictator of the free/open-source Linux operating system has legions of passionate followers. Though his current nationality is still Finnish, he now lives in Portland, Oregon. If eligible to run, and then if ever elected president, his free-software-for-all policy could greatly reduce government spending, thus creating huge budget surplus that can be spent on other more important matters.

You may now vote, and you can also share to us your views via ‘comment’.

Ubuntu, Now with PulseAudio

The third alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04, codenamed Hardy Heron is out. It now comes with PulseAudio enabled by default. PulseAudio is a sound server that allows you to do advanced operations on your sound data as it passes between your application and your hardware. Things like transferring the audio to a different machine, changing the sample format or channel count and mixing several sounds into one are easily achieved using a sound server. PulseAudio is compatible with Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

It was no surprise to me since I have experienced using PulseAudio and even wrote about it when I reviewed Fedora 8. I said on that review that all other Linux distributions should adopt it because it will give the users the ability to configure their audio system like never before. I expect all other distros to follow Fedora and now Ubuntu in implementing PulseAudio.

I would like to enumerate some of the killer features of PulseAudio:

* Per-application volume controls
* An extensible plugin architecture with support for loadable modules
* Compatibility with many popular audio applications
* Support for multiple audio sources and sinks
* Low-latency operation and support for latency measurement
* A zero-copy memory architecture for processor resource efficiency
* A command-line interface with scripting capabilities
* A sound daemon with command line reconfiguration capabilities
* Built-in sample conversion and resampling capabilities
* The ability to combine multiple sound cards into one
* The ability to synchronize multiple playback streams

You can visit PulseAudio's website @ www.pulseaudio.org.

MEPIS Receives an Early Christmas Gift from Distrowatch

About a week ago, my post was in part regarding some MEPIS community members sending unkind emails to DistroWatch and how it was righteously responded by Ladislav. Just recently, DistroWatch did another honorable thing. They announced that the November 2007 donation was given to MEPIS.

The given amount was worth US$300 in cash courtesy of DistroWatch and two online shops selling low-cost CDs and DVDs with Linux, BSD and other open source software - LinuxCD.org and OSDisc.com. MEPIS founder Warren Woodford was very happy about the said contribution and quickly sent a message of gratitude to Ladislav.

Since the launch of the Donations Programme in March 2004, DistroWatch has by now donated a total of US$15,590 to various open source software projects.

I am also especially pleased about the recent development. Now I can say that life will go on for MEPIS partly because of that financial assistance and great inspiration that came from DistroWatch. Hopefully, others will also carry out what is righteous, by doing their share in helping their favorite open source projects survive.

I can smell Christmas already. :)