HOWTO: Rip videos off RTE's iPlayer clone (linux)Posted: Tuesday 02nd of February 2010 at 01:03:59
iPlayers and their look-alikes, they are the latest iteration of Web 2.0 annoyances and represent the broadcasting industry's attempt to keep control of their files and keep you dependent on their distribution platform. RTE, unlike some state broadcasters fill their iPlayer rip-off with ads. First they want your money and now they want your eyeballs too, but thats a rant for another day.
Get the clipID
This is in the little popup window, look through the source and you will find something like javascript:playClip(1234567, null,228)
Thats your clipID
Next download your .smil file
While looking through their mountains of JavaShit code they use several functions to come up with the url but really its simply
http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/1234567.smil
Mplayer doesn't really like .smil files (not my version anyway) so you will have to manually extract the URL of the stream from the .smil, it looks a bit like this
rtsp://od2.rte.ie/1890/0501/name-of-shitty-tv-show.rm
mplayer likes this format better. now you can simply run mplayer rtsp://url-goes-here.rm -dumpstream
and the resulting "stream.dump" gets placed in the current directory, for me it comes in at about 60kb/s but since rtsp is UDP-based packets can get lost if your connection is congested, so best to leave it alone while its doing it's thing.
(optional) Convert to another format
Now you should have a perfect copy of the video on your PC but some might like to use something besides the much hated RealMedia format. This can be done using ffmpeg, for example
ffmpeg -i stream.dump -vcodec libtheora -acodec libvorbis -ab 112000 -vb 512000 test.ogg
Slashdot subculturePosted: Saturday 30th of January 2010 at 01:33:29
A list of Slashdot memes used to be on its Wikipedia, but has since been removed. It definitely seems like a list worth keeping but unfortunately the resident horde of bureaucratic pedants on Wikipedia wanted it gone, so they got rid of it. Of course there is still a copy in the revision history so I dugg it out
As Slashdot has existed for so many years, it has developed its own subculture, especially running jokes and gags, and the continued obsession with repeating certain quotes or phrases, as well as the use of obscure puns. These include:
* Goatse (For years, a common tactic of Slashdot pranksters was to place comments with links which appeared to be article-relevant sites but were in fact links to the goatse.cx site, which featured nothing but a shock image.)
* Natalie Portman (Referencing her attractiveness, a meme that began on Slashdot around the time of the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace)
* "Hot Grits" Troll (Referring to a probably apocryphal story about Southern women pouring hot grits mixed with lye into the pants of unfaithful male lovers to maim them; usually combined with Natalie Portman references)
* In Soviet Russia... (Referencing a hackneyed joke form popularized by the '80s comedian Yakov Smirnoff)
* Al Gore References (Joking references to Gore's semi-apocryphal claim to have "invented the internet", when the subject is the Internet. Headlines referring to Gore are also frequently tagged with "manbearpig", in reference to episode 145 of South Park.)
* “Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those” (Slashdot's early history coincided with the rise to prominence of the Linux-based parallel computing Beowulf system; speculation about powerful new computers arrayed in a Beowulf cluster quickly became an overused comment.)
* “You must be new here.” (Invoked frequently after a poster complains of a common Slashdot issue such as duplicate stories or perceived bias by certain editors)
o This is sometimes answered with "No, I'm New Here" by a user named New Here.
* “But does it run Linux?” (especially regarding Linux devices)
* I, for one, welcome our new overlords (Referencing the famous quote from newscaster turned would-be alien invasion collaborator Kent Brockman of The Simpsons)
* “I , you insensitive clod!” which originates from a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip dated 1986-02-14.
* 1) « some action » 2) ??? 3) profit! [7]. Originates from the South Park episode involving the Underpants Gnomes and Harbucks Coffee
* Defective by Design (Referring to Microsoft products, DRM, or any technology that undermines the user's best interests)
* Series of tubes variations (Referencing Alaska Senator Ted Stevens's infamous explanation of the Internet as being a "series of tubes")
* ". Cancel or Allow?" (Referring to Windows Vista’s User Account Control, which is reputed to frequently ask for permission to perform an action.)
* "Stephen King is dead" variants (Referring to a popular early Slashdot troll which claimed to be posting breaking news that author Stephen King had died)
* "Move along, nothing to see here." (Referring to a frequent line by Officer Barbrady on South Park, sometimes to discourage rubbernecking and other times hoping to cover up his own incompetence. This line is actually from when articles were posted to the front page, but the 'more' page had not yet been created and thus displayed only the text "Move along, nothing to see here."
* Using "Young Sebastian" to refer to an innocent child.[8]
* The high system requirements for Microsoft Windows Vista.
* Reference to Steve Ballmer throwing a chair [9].
* References to William Shatner's halting vocal style when a user is deemed to have either overused or incorrectly used commas.
* Most of online polls seen on Slashdot include an option involving CowboyNeal.
* “In Korea, only old people use ” (origin)
* References to the Back to the Future trilogy.
* "itsatrap" tag and comment (sometimes "I have a bad feeling about this.."), reciting quotes from Admiral Ackbar and Han Solo from Star Wars. Usually used with articles describing a "generous" or "benevolent" act by a company or entity not usually known for either, and maybe as an allusion that the act has a negative ulterior motive. (example: "Microsoft To Open Source Some of Silverlight")
* “There. Fixed it for you.” Used after humorously or insightfully modifying the parent post.
* “All your are belong to us.” quoting a mistranslation from the video game Zero Wing for the Sega Genesis video game console.
* "Sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads." Quoting Dr. Evil in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Inevitably appearing in comments on any story involving laser technology. Often alluded to simply as "fricken' lasers".
* "BSD is dying" lengthy, frequently repeated troll post which explains that the BSD family of operating systems are moribund. The general form "Netcraft confirms it: is dying" might also be spotted. Example: [2]
* Libraries of Congress as a measure of data capacity. Such as in an article about a new hard disk capacity breakthrough "How many Libraries of Congress is that?". Relates to the amount of data that would be required to store a digitized version of the library.
* Car analogies.
* References to the release of game Duke Nukem Forever, which was first promised in 1997. This took the place of the earlier long delayed but eventually delivered Daikatana.
* Schrödinger's cat.
Additionally, the ID of the Slashdot user is sometimes regarded as a sign of how 1337 the user is, although this is not taken very literally. Having a user ID that is a prime number or other significant mathematical number is also valued. Some people have successfully sold their Slashdot ID (usually because it was a low 4 digit or smaller), although the website's policy on this isn't exactly clear. Slashdot assigns user ID numbers in the order that the user registered; i.e., lower user ID numbers correspond to older accounts. A 3 digit user ID was among a number of items that were auctioned for the benefit of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Recently, a Slashdot community poll indicated that the 'In Soviet Russia...' meme is considered the most popular in Slashdot's first 10 years. The grits meme received the least votes.
WoW-themed Mountain Dew energy drinkPosted: Monday 25th of January 2010 at 02:11:20
When I saw something so ridiculous as a dedicated WoW drink I had to try it. Of course it is made of cheap, substandard mass produced American ingredients so it's never going to be healthy.
The taste was also rather disappointing, it tastes like a long discontinued red version of Wrigley's sugar free chewing gum that I used to be mad about in the early 1990's when I was just a wee boy. I would buy them from the local shop off a woman called Chrissie who used to give my neighbour free stale bread for the "doggeen"
Its horrible, artificial and never seen a real cherry much like the 90's chewing gum. Of course the average World of Warcraft player won't be bothered by such minor details as it tasting like ass or being made from industrial chemicals because it's endorsed by Blizzard and therefore it has to be good.
Prosody XMPP serverPosted: Thursday 21st of January 2010 at 05:27:03
After the jabberd14 server being almost not maintained anymore for quite a while now it was starting to cause trouble and after trying to get TLS working in the thing I decided to give this ' Prosody' thing a go.
A monkey could set up this server, much easier than things like Jabberd2 and ejabberd, despite being written in an obscure scripting language called 'lua' which I never heard of. Config files are much more readable since they were not designed by the original bunch of overzealous XML loving fanboys who wrote the original Jabber servers.
It also comes with its own multi-user chat module, rather than some obscure unmaintained separate service one would need for jabberd14 and doesn't depend on MySQL.
Happy Saint Stephenseseses day!Posted: Saturday 26th of December 2009 at 15:01:29
Everyone always seems to forget St. Stephen, the poor fecker can't be happy about Jesus stealing all the fun from his day and all that's left for Stephen is a pile of stinking turkey bones and a distinct lack of presents.
Anyone who calls it "Saint Stephen's day" is obviously a West Brit who complains about how backwards this country is as a real Irish person would call it Saint Stephenses day or even better, Saint Stephenseses day
Of course the worst part about Saint Stephenseses day is the horrible dish of Stephenses Day Pie. You look at it and think, 'there's a nice Shepherds Pie I can't wait to tuck into'. But then you do and you discover whats inside
Little bits of left over turkey
And I hate turkey!
O2 giving away free sim cards at Gatwick airportPosted: Wednesday 16th of December 2009 at 19:52:46
You'd think there would be something against giving away free SIM cards in the police state that is the UK but apparently not. For a 10GBP top up they give you an extra 50 free international minutes.
Except the international minutes do not count for satellite phones - they specifically mention on the packaging that calls to satellite phones are not included. Not only that but they specifically mention Thuraya. It's almost like the person who wrote that notice did so purely to annoy me.
Still it is not a bad deal at all. Over here for 10e a month (bill paid) I only get a meagre 50 nationwide minutes that for some reason don't even count for "Lo-call" 1890 numbers and 076 VoiP numbers
People arriving at Gatwick from other countries with iPhones will be pissed off that they bought into the whole perma-locked phone thing.
Demonoid is back!Posted: Wednesday 16th of December 2009 at 18:38:30
Well has been for 3 days now. Its about fecking time :)
As usual I will be giving out the free invites until I run out.
web@pineapple.vg
Ryanair explicitly forbids satellite phone usagePosted: Monday 14th of December 2009 at 00:05:47
Looks like they have updated all the annoying announcements on all Scum Air flights, forbidding the use of satellite phones even when ordinary folk are allowed to use their GSM phones, which just so happen to be routed through the popular satellite phone company Inmarsat.
Except of course Scum Air will add on their own decent sized profit margin onto this, which they can no longer pick up if people decide to bring their own sat-phones. I expect that Mike will have all his trolley dollies trained on how to spot a satellite phone. Just as well recent satphones such as the Thuraya XT don't stand out from the crowd quite as much anymore.
The only good that can come out of this is that a whole bunch of clueless people will be tempted to google what a satellite phone actually is, to reduce the number of "wtf is this satellite phone thing you speak of?" replies when I mention them to other people.
Fuck you Michael O'Leary
Ancient Dutch proverbPosted: Sunday 13th of December 2009 at 02:33:17
"Poep je niet dan rust je toch, komt de baas dan poep je noch"
.. and the utterly hopeless translation Eric "Nothing to hide" Schmidt comes out with: "Poo you do not then you rest, the boss shit you not". Surely someone who'se surname is Schmidt should be able to make a better attempt than that. I love the way "Poep" is translated to "Poo" the first time around, but "shit" the second time.
Every song ever madePosted: Friday 11th of December 2009 at 23:54:39
... can be traced back to Pop goes the weasel
|
Statististics
Hits: 48,973
Today: 120
Uptime: 33 days, 11:18
Page loaded in 0.084s
|
