Archives de catégorie : Mozilla

Thank you Ubuntu Québec and Facebook

Télévision de Radio-Canada is a Canadian French language television network. It is owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, known in French as Société Radio-Canada, or just « Radio-Canada », for the rest of us. – from Wikipedia

A couple of weeks ago they launched a new web site, tou.tv, making « available » all their TV shows (or most of them)… in Flash 🙁

Never mind it’s 2010 and HTML5, Ogg Theora and in general open standards and formats are the talk of the day on most web development sites… Flash 10 is a bad enough choice as it is, but apparently tou.tv’s team just forgot that Linux existed.

Within hours of the launch Ubuntu Québec team members started complaining on the mailing list and on tou.tv’s Facebook group. We wrote to their admins, provided details, wrote to the ombudsman, got canned replies for all communications. We then put together a Facebook group, and started inviting people to join and we shared our findings (now all on a public wiki). 451 people joined the group which is an amazing number for Quebec province, given the context. I never ever thought I’d use Facebook for open formats and Linux support advocacy in such a way!

Only one programmer from the tou.tv’s team first acknowledged the problem, then asked for testers. That’s it, total silence from the tax-payers-funded TV network and website.

Within hours of the initial launch people on the mailing list had analyzed the streaming protocol, the Javascript code, etc. and ruled out problems there. To our amazement, a single commented line was preventing any shows to be displayed. Someone put together a GreaseMonkey script, someone else tested it… we went online on IRC to coordinate testing + blogging. Bottom line is we came up with a workaround. A week later tou.tv finally applied minimal fixes to unblock the Flash display on Linux systems.

The site is not perfect and now other minor issues subsist, and yes, I wish open formats were an option. For now I just wanted to thank Ubuntu for providing not only an incredible operating system but also an amazing community that made all this possible 🙂 I also wanted to thank the Free Software Foundation as we used several resources from them such as the Defective by Design web site to explain the problems associated to using DRM-like implementations of web TV sites, and the problems of not using open formats, such as Flash.

I also wanted to send a big FAIL to Radio-Canada and tou.tv’s team. To this day they don’t even mention Linux on their FAQ.

You can also find more details about this little victory of ours in my original blog post in French.

Your taxes at work!

 

My Thunderbird extensions

In no particular order…

  • Bugmail

    Thunderbird 2.0 – 3.0b2pre

    A bugtracker bugmail companion – provides a nice header with bug status, upstream links, etc. work nicely with Launchpad bug mail

  • Buttons!

    Thunderbird 2.0b1 – 3.0

    Adds buttons! Not sure how to explain them all…

  • Compact Menu 2

    Thunderbird 2.0 – 2.0.0.*

    Duplicates the menubar on the toolbar as a menu of menus.

  • Delete Junk Context Menu

    Thunderbird 0.5 – 3.0

    Adds ‘Delete Mail Marked as Junk’ to folders’ right click menu

  • Diccionario de Español/España

    Thunderbird 2.0 – 3.0a2pre

    Diccionario de Español/España

  • Dictionary Switcher

    Thunderbird 2.0b2 – 3.0a1

    Displays the currently selected dictionary in the status bar and allows to change it.

  • Dictionnaire MySpell en Français – part of Ubuntu

    Thunderbird 1.5 – 2.0.0.*

  • Display Mail User Agent

    Thunderbird 2.0 – 3.0a2pre

    Displays the mail program with which the selected mail was written – always useful to give some context to email – is the author using Windows, Linux, a Mac ?

  • Duplicate Contact Manager

    Thunderbird 1.5 – 2.0.0.*

    Facilitates handling of duplicate contacts in your address books. You know you have some.

  • Enigmail – provided by Ubuntu, but I install it manually

    Thunderbird 2.0 – 2.0.0.*

    OpenPGP message encryption and authentication

  • Extension List Dumper – produces this list in nice HTML

    Thunderbird 1.5 – 2.0.0.*

    Dumps a list of the installed extensions.

  • Lightning – I install this one manually too.

    Thunderbird 2.0 – 2.0.0.*

    An integrated calendar for Thunderbird (build 2008091718)

  • Mail Redirect – a must to save some « here’s this email I got but it should go to you  » intros.

    Thunderbird 0.7 – 2.0.0.*

    Allow to redirect (a.k.a. « bounce ») mail messages to other recipients

  • Provider for Google Calendar

    Thunderbird 2.0a1 – 2.0.0.*

    Allows bidirectional access to Google Calendar

  • Quicktext – great for multiple signatures and templates

    Thunderbird 1.5 – 3.0a1

    Adds a toolbar with unlimited number of text to quickly insert. It’s also possible to use varibles like [[TO=firstname]]. With settings for everything.

  • QuoteCollapse – you know, some people just looooove to quote.

    Thunderbird 0.7 – 2.0.0.*

    Collapse quotes.

  • Remember Mismatched Domains – yes I use Dreamhost and SSL.

    Thunderbird 1.5 – 2.0.0.*

    Adds a ‘don’t ask me again’ option to the Domain Name Mismatch Security Error window.

  • Remove Duplicate Messages (Alternate) – no comment!

    Thunderbird 1.5 – 3.0a1

    Locates duplicate messages in mail folders and removes them.

  • Sender Verification Extension

    Thunderbird 0.6 – 2.0.0.*

    Protects you from phishing with SPF and DomainKeys.

  • Tag Toolbar

    Thunderbird 2.0b1 – 2.0.0.*

    Add toolbar for toggling tags.

  • Xpunge

    Thunderbird 1.0 – 2.0.0.*

    Empties the Trash folder and compacts folders in multiple Thunderbird accounts.

If you have any that make your Ubuntu life easier, let me know!

 

Software Freedom Day au Quebec – Kiosk at Berri-UQAM in Montreal

Un peu dernièrne minute – appel aux volontaires!… voyez les détails à:
Software Freedom Day – Quebec Team

Last minute call for volunteers! See details at:
Software Freedom Day – Quebec Team

 

Que faire en cette belle journée de pluie

Si vous êtes à Montréal, on vient d’ajouter deux autres activités pour cet après-midi, en tout je vais tenter d’être à trois endroits en même temps.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Deux autres party / rencontres Edgy Eft à Montréal
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2006 11:28:24 -0400
From: F. Rodriguez <>
To: ubuntu-quebec@lists.ubuntu.com

Salut,

En discutant avec Marc Angles de FACIL, je me suis appercu qu'il y avait
pas mal de monde qui seraient disponibles en soirée ou après-midi pour
se rencontrer et échanger.

Comme nous serons probablement à une ou l'autre de ces rencontres, je
les ai ajoutées au party Edgy:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EdgyReleaseParties

En résumé:

  • 12:00 (MIDI): Hurley’s Irish Pub au 1225 CRESCENT
  • 13:30 (en même temps ou presque)*: Ateliers du libre Linux Quebec – 13:30 à 17:30 au LabCMO, Pavillon Judith-Jasmin, 4e étage, Local J-4430, 405, rue Ste-Catherine Est, Montréal, Métro Berri-UQAM (sortie Berri)
  • 20:00 (Dress in PINK)*: Hallowwen Firefox+Edgy partychez FACIL, 8655 Saint-Denis Montréal (Québec) H2P 2H4

Au plaisir de vous y rencontrer… Je vais amener le rouleau d’autocollants Ubuntu 😉