links for 2009-11-01

So how can the music industry seek to capitalize on the potential customers rather than trying to put them behind bars?
'A new British independent poll conducted by Ipsos Mori concluded that the people who do the most illegal downloading also buy the most music. This is in line with many other studies elsewhere and is easy to understand: people who are music superfans do more of everything to do with music: they see more live shows, listen to more radio, buy more CDs, buy more botlegs of live shows, buy more t-shirts, talk about music more, do more downloading — all of it.'

Interesting round of comparisons between warriors across the world. Kind of reminds you of the special units in Age of Empires with Samurai, Vikings & all.

So much for thick skinned politicians. A critical 3 year old blog leads to a series of resignations forcing a new election.

Interesting way to tie it up.
'…Yes, go ahead and pinch yourself: this is unit testing described in 1986 by the Feynman we know and love. Not only unit testing, but 'step by step increase' in scope and 'adversarial testing attitude'. It's common to hear we suck at software because it's a "young discipline", as if the knowledge to do right has not yet been attained. Bollocks! We suck because we constantly ignore well-established, well-known, empirically proven practices. In this regard management is also to blame, especially when it comes to dysfunctional schedules, wrong incentives, poor hiring, and demoralizing policies.
…
With respect to software, I take out four main points:
* Engineering can only be as good as its relationship with management
* Big design up front is foolish
* Software has much in common with other engineering disciplines
* Reliable systems are built by rigorously tested, incremental bottom-up engineering with an ‘attitude of highest quality’

Possible solution for multiple proxy authentication prompts in Firefox. The thread is for version 1, but seems to work in 3.5 too. So should work in earlier versions 2 & 3
In about:config, set:
network.automatic-ntlm-auth.allow-proxies=false
network.proxy.share_proxy_settings=false

If you thought VLC was only for playing back content, think again.
'Cross-platform media player VLC is often referred to as the "Swiss Army knife of media applications" for good reason: Not only does VLC play nearly any file you throw at it (you even voted it the best desktop media player), but it can do so much more. From ripping DVDs to converting files to iPod-friendly formats, let's take a look at the four coolest things you can do with VLC and start you on your way to becoming a VLC ninja.'

Includes SUPER, FormatFactory, MediaCoder, Handbrake & FFmpeg
SUPER is pretty feature rich, but the interface is a total mess without much help. Their website is not much better either with the download link being really hard to find. Easier to find it on filehippo – http://www.filehippo.com/download_super/
Handbrake is kinda slow at conversions, but has a nice interface.
I've also used Any Video Converter that uses the mplayer engine for conversions – http://www.any-video-converter.com/