4 January 2007 – 10:44 pm
My primary computer at home has an AMD64 processor so I’m using the 64bit edition of Ubuntu Linux (currently release 6.10). I recently set it up to run Adobe Flash 9 (beta 2) using nspluginwrapper. It worked out really well, but I had to do one thing I didn’t see on the PluginDoc page at MozDev.org so I thought I would document it here.
I installed nspluginwrapper using alien as described at MozDev.org (making sure that linux32 was already installed via Synaptic). I downloaded the Flash 9 installer and put the enclosed libflashplayer.so in /usr/lib/browser-plugins. And, again as described at MozDev.org, I ran nspluginwrapper with that file.
The Firefox about:plugins page indicated that the Flash 9 plugin was loaded. However, when I tested it on a site with Flash (in this particular case it was MPtv) the movies played fine but there was no sound. I wasn’t sure why that was because Flash 9 uses ALSA and so does Ubuntu.
I searched around on the web a bit, but didn’t find any solutions that really fit my problem (or were within my level of expertise). I decided to look in Synaptic to see if maybe I didn’t have all of the ALSA packages installed. This led me to the lib32asound2 package which is labelled as a 32bit version of the ALSA library. Once that was installed the Flash sound worked perfectly fine.
So now I’m able to properly waste time with YouTube and its many siblings. 
As a FIFA World Cup newbie and soccer fandom outsider, I was more or less neutral for most of this World Cup. Personally, I’m in the habit of supporting underdogs but I also have a weakness for the story of sports as much as the games. In today’s final I didn’t know which side could be thought the underdog, and I really like the storyline of this being Zinedine Zidane’s final game. On top of that, I didn’t know the players on the Italian side that well. The conclusion of my meandering thoughts is that I cheered on Les Bleus during the game, but was not at all disappointed to see the Azzuri win.
I know there’s a lot of debate about how exactly to decide these matches when a clear winner does not arise from regulation time. I’m not up to speed on the details of that debate, but it occured to me while watching the penalty shoot out that it might be more interesting to have a different challenge to decide the winner. It would be fun to see something the highlighted some of the other skills of the game, like maybe a two on two challenge. In any case, I do still like the penalty shootout but I understand why some folks do not.
In short, it was a great game to watch with some very exciting play from both sides. And, although Zidane left the game ignomineously he did contribute to the Germany 2006 final highlight reel before his red card moment of madness. In the end, it was a great game to my inexpert eyes and a joy to watch. I’m very much looking forward to South Africa 2010.
Even following it through the MatchCast it was a pretty interesting game. A really unfortunate way to end, but all credit to the Socceroos for strongly challenging a much higher ranked team.
Attack Ads
Lately, there has been a lot of jostling and talking about a federal election here in Canada. With a minority government an election is going to happen sooner rather than later. Personally, I’m not convinced there will be one this spring, but the exact timing of the pending election isn’t all that important: all parties are campaigning now and they all know it.
The Tories (who have a lot of money to spend on such things) have created an ad campaign that tries to sell the fact that Grit leader Stephane Dion is not decisive enough to do the job. It would appear they’re trying to raise the specter of the Tories’ greatest asset from the last round: Mr. Dithers, a.k.a. former Liberal PM Paul Martin. From my perspective, the party machinery is trying to strengthen their base before the official campaigning starts. Once the election is called they can come out with their focused five (or whatever number they choose) priorities message and appear more positive. And, the truth is, it will probably work out very well for them. That’s regrettable, but that doesn’t mean much in politics.
There’s been some commentary about how this is an American-style campaign. I disagree that the Americans have a monopoly on this stuff; I think this is a very Canadian-style campaign. The only thing that might make this an American-style campaign is if the Conservative Party were to run these ads (and only these or similar ads) during the official election period. Negative personal attacks have been common enough in every election I’ve experienced. The only difference in the US elections is that down south nearly every ad is a personal attack whereas here in Canada the parties seem to prefer mixing in more of the warm and fuzzy positive messages.
I don’t disagree with the fact that past negative campaign ads have ad little or even negative effects, but there have also been other factors at play. For example, in 1993 I think the Tories were cooked no matter what they did.
All of that aside though, I still hate these kinds of ads; they always strike me as incredibly juvenile and arrogant. Like a lot of political statements and Question Period “questions” it tends to come out sounding like a middle school playground. Did too, did not, did too, etc. And, on top of that, these particular ads come across very elitist. That is, the common folk are not able to figure out on their own whether Dion is a good leader or not. As for the flip-flops: every politician in a prominent position (and who wishes to hold onto said position) has done some flip-flopping. It’s the nature of our system.
Oh well, no one has yet convinced me it’s worth my time and energy to vote whenever they do get around to calling another election.