As Villu Arak reports 4 days after the “impact” on Skype network the network downtime was triggered from a loss of network resources, i.e. users around the globe not using Skype. And this, again, was caused by to many Windows machines rebooting after MS automated update and hence a flood of log-in requests to Skype servers. So it really was Microsofts’ fault

Now it’s your turn to think about it in terms of global users’ power vs. dependency…

If you have closed-source applications installed like Opera (I do), Skype, or whatever than AppArmor should be engaged. Especially for Skype Linux it’s irresponsible without it, since Skype Linux reads /etc/passwd, Firefox profile and other files. For Ubuntu Feisty it’s meant to be in Universe and in Gutsy it will be installed on default (without profiles, though). On the community help there is an instruction on how to install and use it for Feisty and Gutsy.

References:

• on launchpad and ubuntus’ complete specification in wiki
• Ubuntu’s online help on AppArmor
• small tutorial about generating a new profile for evince
• detailed usage of apparmor

Carlos from Flash Enabled kindly offered an invitation to joost. Since I was looking for a way to watch the AC2007 matches online with a fairly slow connection (512 kB/s) — hence looking for quality video caching — I gave it a try (I haven’t afforded a digital tv card, yet). Discovering a broadcast for those races was disappointed. Instead I was solaced with “X Force – Episode 5: The Science of Sailing“, a report on 1998th Sydney Hobart Yacht Race (630 nm).

During the 50 min episode I noted down features and conspicuities to give everyone who couldn’t be bothered to invest 25,3 MB of disc space.

• Very little configuration opportunities via GUI (see right). And even that little bit is accessed not quite intuitively (full screen mode only -> “My joost” -> Widget Menu -> Advanced Settings).
• Commercial integration works quite well — in technical termes that is, since it’s pretty annoying! With conventional television one gets kind of alerted. On joost the clip comes right in the middle of a sentence, totally unexpected. That’s the price for free availability. At least it can be muted during ad playback.
• I also noticed with ads they seam to stick with playback percentage or absolute position of the program because when rewinding they occur at exactly the same video content. So if you’re interested in the content, i.e. want to listen over to a sentence to understand what’s been said: No chance! I couldn’t figure out, though, if they are “compiled” into the video itself
• Crashes happened only once right after the second start of joost. During playtime everything worked smoothly (a couple exceptions due to heavy processor load I assume). Not bad for a 0.10 version number.
• Caching works with slow connection, i.e. videos are saved locally so smooth playback is guaranteed even after program restart.
• Commercial breaks occurred 3 times during the 50 min playback. Between breaks it felt as 10 min, though. The first one was after probably 30-35 min.
• Also every now and then there is a small (about 2 by 4 cm on a 17″ screen) picture ad in the bottom right corner.
• Video quality in this example episode was fairly good as you can see in the screen shot.
• Peculiar are the similarities in directory content between joost and songbird. The later beeing based on the mozilla project (notably xulrunner) and vlc code.

Since I have some spare invitations you may write me via the form to ask for one. But I cannot promise to come back to you as quickly as Carlos managed (Thanks for that, Carlos!) even though I’ll do my best.

For background on joost, eg. that it’s in part a foster child of Skype inventer Janus Friis, let me point you to wikipedia for starters. Or you might suck in another first timer from Joe.

Sidenote: Skype has been sold to ebay in Sept. 2005 for US$2.6 Billion plus additional stock options. Why?

And speeking of commercials if you love irony than watch this: