LINUX Unplugged - Episode 5: Wrath of Linus | LINUX Unplugged 5

Episode Date: September 11, 2013

We break down what has Linus so upset, and the Internet in an NSA induced fever. Plus GOG makes a public statement about Linux that has us scratching our heads, and your feedback.Then if we had a format, we’d be breaking it with our review of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s first episode, Emissary.

This is Linux Unplugged, Episode 5. This is the show, probably the only show, airing on a Tuesday that won't be talking about the new internet phone 5S because we're Linux users. My name is Chris. My name is Matt. Hey there, Matt. Welcome back, man.

Episode number five. We've crossed the month mark. And we've got an interesting show coming up because we're going to try something new. Later on in the show, we're going to do a recap of DS9. Just because I've been re-embracing DS9, I thought this would be a good spot since we have a no-format show to just talk about it. And I grabbed some clippy clips. So we'll be talking about that later on.

But up first, we've got some follow-up to last week's show. And also today, Linus was causing a ruckus on the internet. We're going to talk about that. And then maybe we'll kind of tuck and roll into a little chat about the NSA. These NSA topics have been blowing up on our subreddit and the Linux subreddit and on discussion forums. I think it's really particularly affecting Linux users because we're a little more savvy. And then one of our favorite companies, GOG, or Good Old Games, made a proclamation about their future Linux support.

And it's not very good. So we'll talk about that. Not so much. No, no. Not too happy about that. But Matt, I thought maybe just kind of just going to spring this one on you, okay? Okay. You and I have been debating.

We're doing a Friday Linux Action Show this week because we're going to give you a little time off for the up-and-coming birthday, and I'm going to enjoy myself a Sunday off. So it's kind of nice to just change it up from time to time. And we've been kind of debating, like, well, what should we do as a topic? Because really Friday and Saturday are kind of the days that are used to put, you know, an episode of Linux Action Show together. Because there's a lot of work that goes into it. And so, yeah, we're trying to find something that's going to basically be of interest,

but at the same time not create a problem. Right. Yeah. Because there's other shows that have to be in production. So there's not like there's a ton of time. And so we come up with two topics, possible topics this week. And I like them both a lot. And obviously, I'm particular to one,

but I got to acknowledge maybe the rest of the audience wouldn't. So I thought, maybe what we could do is put it to a straw poll. Like we put it to the audience right now, listening live on the show, and they vote on what the topic is on the Friday edition of the Linux Action Show. What do you think? Are you down for that? I like that. I think that's a great democratic way to do it. All right. So not only can people bang suggest to help vote for a title in this week's episode, but now you're going to pick the big show's topic on Friday. I just put the straw poll in the show notes. Okay, here are your topics.

Are you ready? Chat room, your choices are on a Friday edition of the Linux Action Show, should it be Trek meets Linux or taking great notes on Linux? So we have two topic ideas. The Star Trek one is sort of like Star Trek meets Linux. Here's a bunch of great Star Trek themes, Star Trek apps, Star Trek oriented things around Linux, sort of in just having fun with the fact that Unplugged just kind of started the Star Trek segment. So in the big show, we'd do a bunch of Star Trek related

stuff in Linux. Tons of fun there. Or should we focus in on taking great notes on Linux? There's a couple of different options out there, some really, really good open source projects that are trying to tackle this. And to be fair, there's a lot of closed source competition like Evernote and even things like Google Drive can be kind of starting back up, that could also be a popular topic. And also for people who are using Linux in the professional space or for people who just want to get a little more organized. So kind of, you know, not that we wouldn't necessarily do one or the other down the road. But this Friday, just this Friday, you guys get to pick in the chat room and then we'll check back on this as we go. Right now, we've got only 12 votes. So we're going to let it we'll let it flesh out for a while. And then we'll check back in towards the end of the show. Although I got to tell you that sometimes early votes are an indicator yeah yeah the warp

speed ahead is pulling ahead right now with 69 i wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't uh if it doesn't really if the overall percentages don't change much it could yeah it's really gonna be interesting to see where that plays out and i could be totally wrong and i could go the other way if you're listening to the audio feed or or something like that and you're not in the chat room, go to strawpoll.me and it's 42-14-77. And then you can vote. And part of the notes thing too has kind of been that getting off

the other cloud services. So that could always be a topic we touch on in the future. In the future. Alright, Matt. Well, this week I thought we'd kind of start with Linus sort of lighting up the internet again, like he often does. He's got sort of a way of words, you might say. He's like a digital fart with a lighter sometimes.

He just lets one go and he just ignites it and it just happens, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm not sure which part is the fart and which part is the lighter, but I think you might have gotten it. And some people just like the fart and lighter joke. Some people love a good fart and lighter joke. I personally do. I think I can watch that several times a day on YouTube. But before we get to that, and this is even better, this also is lighting the world on fire because, friends, Ting is mobile that makes sense.

Ting is my mobile service provider and Matt's. We're both rocking some pretty nice Android devices on Ting. And one of the great things about Ting is you only actually end up paying for what you use. And this is pretty powerful because often a lot of us geeks have multiple devices. Well, guess what? Unlimited devices on your account all with a pooled plan. So if you've got a family plan, a business plan, if you need to test multiple devices, if you're a developer or support specialist, you need to have several types of devices. I used to have three BlackBerrys back when BlackBerrys rang. I still have a BlackBerry.

I still have my AT&T BlackBerry. Now, thankfully, back then, I was an employee, so my work paid for it. But they were probably, they would have been a perfect company to take advantage of this plan for a small business that Ting has. First of all, they just break out your minutes, your text messages,

and your megabytes, and they bill you at the end of the month whatever bucket you fall into. Okay, well, so if I don't use a device, I'm six flat dollars for that line. There's no guilt there. That's less than me buying two apps in the Android marketplace this week. I don't really have a big issue with that, and I think it's a really fantastic way. We could have phones on standby.

If you've got somebody going out in the field, you send a phone with them if you need to test for an application you're developing on. One of the things that we do here at Jupyter Broadcasting is a ton of video streaming. Well, guess what? Video streaming behaves extremely differently on different mobile devices. You wouldn't think so, but it does. HLS support is a little spotty. So it's been nice from time to time to have multiple Android devices to test on. If we were going to go on to a big mobile push, this would be a must do. And Ting really makes this possible. And if you go to linux.ting.com, you're going to save $25 off your first device or $25 off your first month.

If you bring your own device, they've got a spot on their website that tells you all the different devices you can bring. If you've got a Sprint phone, there's a good chance you can get it ported over and they'll tell you how that works. Now also, this is really interesting. They'll also sell you some used devices. They've got the LG Optimus Black for $68. That's not a bad entry Android phone. They've got a Ting Personal Shopper that'll find you a device that meets your requirements. They've also got the LG Marquee Refurbished, which is a great little kid's phone for $87. It still plays all the modern Android games. There's a lot of options. They've got new and used. And of course, new, they've got the LG Optimus Purple, which is a great deal.

After your discount supply, it's like 230 bucks contract free with no early termination fee, no ride along services, nothing you wouldn't expect, just your rate that you pay and any taxes they legally have to charge. Ting is a really great and very transparent company. You should check out their blog too. They talk about a lot of the stuff and sort of the thought behind a lot of what they do. It's pretty cool. So go to linux.ting.com to save $25 off your first device. And thanks to Ting for sponsoring Linux Unplugged.

Remember, people love Ting. And I'm pretty sure you're people too. So it's a good fit. It's a good fit. All right. So, Linus, are you following the NSA revelations that have come out regarding potential backdoors into crypto standards? Have you caught any of this? It's kind of one of the more later revelations.

Yeah, I've been following some of it. After a while, it just almost becomes depressing. It does, right? But I've been passively following, just so I'm at least Yeah, and I've been interested, too, to see this stuff continue to roll out, even though Syria's been dominating the headlines. This NSA stuff is still getting some coverage. Well, so about four days ago, with

42 upboats in our subreddit, this one hit the subreddit. NSA foils much internet encryption, and this one's actually from the New York Times, too, which kind of gives it an extra little stamp of credibility because a lot of times the New York Times is almost an authorized leak in some senses. But so this stirred up this big concern about the NSA working with standards bodies to sort of weaken the standard so that the NSA knew how to actively attack it and then foil that encryption. So it's sort of a it's sort of a combinated approach where the NSA is getting keys from some service providers. So they just have the SSL key. So that's one way they can decrypt it. And it's also a combination of weak encryption,

improperly implemented encryption, and then encryption where they have influenced the standard in such of how it's performed. Now, there's a device in Linux which will generate random numbers that you can use to seed something new, like a generation of a new key or something like that, right? And so the concern that the community came up with was that the standard that influenced how these random number generators was affected has been implemented in Linux. And so people were kind of like banging on Linus's door. Mr. Torvalds, could you please wake up and smell the coffee, Mr. Torvalds? Please. In fact, and I kind of agree with him, Vertamunda in the subreddit said, it's time to start taking RMS seriously. For decades, he's been warning us that this is what will happen if we court proprietary software and services to the detriment of privacy and freedom to express ourselves in an unfettered fashion, i.e. people buying these fancy smartphones that are essentially listening devices.

In fact, in a separate report that ran, some new NSA slides came out about their ability to track smartphones. And they had three slides up where they were making references to how smartphone users are zombies. Particularly, they're making fun of the location bug that was in iOS that was keeping your location indefinitely. And the NSA was actively exploiting that. They knew about that and they were using that. And they had on a slide, they had 1984, who knew he would be Big Brother. And they had a picture of Steve Jobs

implying that the implementation of the iPhone has ushered in Big Brother. However, I believe that's a bit of a misdirection because really it's the NSA who's Big Brother. They're just exploiting that technology to do it. And they're exploiting Android. And they also have an active group that exploits BlackBerry. And so all of this has just made everybody explode. Has cryptology been sabotaged? Well, and here's my view of it. There's two real important things to consider.

For one thing, if someone wants into a home or into a file or into whatever, maybe badly enough, they're going to get in. I don't care what you're using, how you're doing. It does not matter. And we're seeing that now. At some level, the right people will be influenced, the right set of circumstances will be laid out, and things will be overcome. So that's the problem I've always had with really getting heavy into the encryption and

stuff like that is that it's great if you want to keep ISPs out of your back door, if you get my drift. But as far as the government, they're always going to find a way. It's just I don't see any way around that. I mean, it's a novel idea that I would love to think happens. But we're a nation here in the States that has been very vocal in that, oh, please, we're more than happy to trade our security and give you our freedom. We don't need that freedom. We want our security. We want ease of use. We want sexy phones. We want a fun experience. Security, we'll talk big about it,

but we won't actually take it seriously. That's my opinion. And that's why RMS has never really been taken seriously by the mainstream because it's not a sexy argument. It's not attractive. They almost just don't really care. Yeah, I mean, they do passively,

but not enough to act on it. It's like, you know, you got to stop eating junk food. Well, I can do that. Oh, wait a minute. You mean I can't have a Big Mac? It's that kind of mindset of you don't get to do those things that were enjoyable. It's a tough call.

Right, you're right. Yeah, in some ways it is all these warnings about sugar, about unhealthy lifestyles, and yet here I am sitting 10 hours a day minimum, maybe more, in my seat. Exactly. Yeah, not getting the right exercise and often cheating on a diet because I want to. And yeah, it is sort of the same. It is hard to have that same – it's almost the same kind of weakness in a sense. My solution, honestly, is a very simple one in that, you know,

RMS is pretty much a hard line, hard direction. That's really a tough act to follow and stuff to follow up on. But I think we can make personal choices and personal decisions in our life to minimize our participation in that kind of police state. We're not going to eliminate it. That's not going to happen. But you can you can minimize that. I don't think there's any going back, really. No, but you can, you know, be aware of who you're voting for. Be aware of what you're participating in. Really, you know, be aware of it. My new campaign is unplugged from the surveillance grid. Go local first. Whenever you can go local first, go local, unless it's not private. Now, so, but there are enough people who started banging

on Linus's door. And there was a petition for him to remove the RD-RAND from DevRandom, which is where this implementation was that people are concerned about. So it gets on Hacker News, and Linus, which I believe this comment's now been deleted by him or by somebody, responded to this petition with, Where do I start a petition to raise the IQ of kernel knowledge of people? Guys, go read the drivers of charrandom.c. Then learn about cryptography. Finally, come back here and admit to the world that you were wrong. Short answer, we actually know what we are doing. You don't. Long answer, we use rdrand and one of

many inputs into the random pool, and we use it as a way to improve that random pool. So even if rdrand were to be backdoored by the NSA, our use of RD-Rand actually improves the quality of the random numbers you get from dev slash random, and the really short answer, you're ignorant. God, I love Linus. And the great thing is, it's open code. So of course, shortly after that,

people went and posted what they found, right where Linus told them to look. And from the couple handful that I have read of people's take on it, they're all extremely impressed. They're like, oh, yeah, these guys really knew what they were doing. And what it is is what Linus' essential argument is is even if they have one part of an implementation that has an NSA backdoor, it's one component in a chorus of data points that are used to generate something random. So it's not really a big deal. But people are still concerned about it.

And I'm curious. I thought maybe we'd go over to our mumble room where we have a fine group of paranoids and ask anybody in here, you guys, are you concerned about NSA backdoors and Linux and now that we know that maybe it doesn't have to be a code that's been compromised but it could just be a standard that a good programmer is following

that's been compromised. What do you think of Linus' response and are you concerned? I open it to the room. Floor is yours. No? Nobody has anything? Well to be honest it's kind of hard to keep track of the live stream versus the... Oh, you guys are on delay? It is. There's a bit of lag.

You don't hear us in here? No, you mute yourself when you deafen yourself. I don't hear anything. All right, well, I won't do that again. I'm sorry. I hear you now. Okay, so the question is, are you concerned about NSA backdoors because these standards have been influenced in Linux, and are you current on what Linus' response to all this was,

and what do you think of it? Was he over the top? Was he being too hard? A lot of people have said that this is redirecting the conversation from the actual concern about the NSA having a backdoor into a standard, and the conversation is now about Linus' behavior. Typically, Linus has always been very direct, hasn't he? And very open with his comments that he's made in the past. But like, I have to touch on what Matt said, if anybody needs to get your information bad enough, they will get it regardless of what your

cryptography is or security measures that you're using. So in a way way i kind of agree with linus as well yeah so do i i mean there's a lot of fud going on about this nsa thing as far as i understand it and uh linux users despite their their expertise are not are not immune to fud so that's the thing i mean linus stowall's built the kernel literally from scratch. He knows what he's doing. I think people should trust him more rather than, you know, just say that, oh, no, he's sold out to the NSA standard in when people were pushing against it. So there has been a bit of name-calling in this whole thing and accusations. I really don't think that Linus would sell out to anybody because he's very protective of the Linux kernel itself. And like Davos said, he built it from the ground up himself, more or less.

And so I really don't think he would sell it out to anybody. Yeah. Okay, I'm kind of along the same lines. Any more thoughts on that one, Matt? No, I think everybody about covered it. I mean, at the end of the day, unless his family is being held in a bunker somewhere, I don't see him budging. Unless his family is being held in a bunker somewhere, I don't see him budging. And if that happens, we will, on that moment, send in a SWAT team of Linux ninjas to rescue his family so he can get back to the kernel development.

We could assemble it right here on Mumble. That's right. The rescue operation right here. You bet. Even if we have to wear monkey suits to do it. Absolutely. That could be our call sign. That could be our uniform.

I like it. Monkey suit one, monkey suit two. All yep all right mumble room thanks for the thoughts stand by we'll have more here in a minute um so one story i want to touch on that just sort of hurts my heart deeply came up i didn't get a chance to talk about in linux action show because i think it did come out before uh let's see it came out on the 7th. So what, and today is the 9th, and last was, so yeah, it came out on Saturday. So Good Old Games made a public statement about their plans to support Linux. And Good Old Games is actually a former sponsor of the Linux Action Show, so that might have influenced some of this a little bit.

The fact that they sponsored a Linux show might have maybe set the wrong expectation. But, you know, at the time, the point we were trying to make was that, you know, there's a lot of great DOS box games that work, too. So people continue to push GOG and they say, quote unquote, for the foreseeable future, they don't plan to support Linux due to fragmentation. Here's the quote. And this is the head of PR speaking from Good Old Games. He says, for every game we release, we provide a money-back guarantee. If we

can't get the game working on the customer's computer with the help of our support team, we return the money. He goes on to say, the architecture of Linux, with many common distros, each of them updating fairly often, makes this incredibly challenging for any digital distribution company to be able to properly test the game in question

and then provide support for the release, all of which our users are accustomed to. So no plans for the foreseeable future, because there's no way the economics of Linux support makes sense for us. Good Old Games is investigating how to do it on a variety of issues beyond Linux support, so don't give up hope,

but just don't expect it tomorrow either. So here's my interpretation of it. Like comparing them to, and this is a bad comparison, but it gives you an idea. Comparing them to Steam, for example. Steam basically is a catch-all working with, if I'm understanding correctly, a multitude of different developers, each developing their own games. GOG, if I'm understanding correctly, basically is a – not only the distributor, but is also porting these games so that they will run on the operating systems that they support.

So basically, they're in charge of supporting multiple titles, where Steam is not. Steam is basically the distribution arm. That's really all they're... Okay. I mean, fair point. You're right. Google Games has a lot more hands on a game. I mean, they're not really porting so much as... They're generally packaging it up, maybe

into an emulated environment and making it so it's just like a double click experience when in the past it was like load multiple CD-ROMs. Yeah, but you're right. They're more hands-on than Steam is in some ways. Absolutely. Yeah, so Steam's got off easy in the fact that the really deep development is the developer's problem from what I'm understanding. And so for GOG,

I can see it from their perspective of that they're a completely different business model. I mean, there's no way that they can possibly go to that level. Now, backtracking a little bit, I do think that if they felt it was worth it, they could absolutely choose to support Ubuntu or OpenSUSE or whatever. Why not Ubuntu and these dozen games? Does it have to be – because honestly, there's probably about 30 games I want to buy from GOG. It would have to be – because honestly, there's probably about 30 games I want to buy from GOG. And see, I think that they would need – if I was GOG, I'd say, look, we're not ready to make that financial investment.

But at the same time, we don't want to drop the ball on you guys completely. We're willing to put in the man hours to do maybe a Kickstarter campaign or something like that. I guess. Something to kick some cash around. I think what your argument is is a lot is quite reasonable the problem is is when i read that and i think a lot of people just based on the reactions i've been seen online is you know when i read that i it honestly sounds ignorant of the of the market realities because i think now i guess you can't quite say steam has proven anything just yet but which you because it really hasn't i mean it's been very it's been awesome at the beginning but it's the the the stats are so messy messy that they're really hard to interpret.

And when you're the numbers guy, the CEO can be amped all to hell and he goes to the CFO and the CFO is going, yeah, are you nuts? It's not going to happen. It just seems like to me a lot of these developers, like we played the clip in last week where they said they want to move away from DirectX because they need to move away from Windows. in last week where they said they want to move away from DirectX because they need to move away from Windows. We see Steam and Valve actively trying to push an alternative viable marketplace on Linux because they're concerned about Windows. Shouldn't good old game be kind of sitting in their seat right now

going, gosh, we're making old DOS games and we're making some of these old Windows 95, 98, and now beyond that too, they also do new games now too, but we're making a lot of these games to work on Windows and that is moving fastly away from their target market. I think the problem is that they look at their existing numbers

and they're probably pretty comfortable with it. And they basically say, look, Steam is very much a bleeding edge company. They're really going for the bleeding edge. They're looking five years down the road. GOG is probably looking at next month and saying, eh, you know, when it's a problem, we'll address it.

But why do this when we can let other folks pave the way? And if it starts looking like the tide's shifting, we'll jump on board at that point. I can't necessarily, if I was a non-Linux user, I would totally agree with them. As a Linux user, I think it sucks. But as a non-Linux user financially, I get it for their business model because they're not like other development companies. They are very much – they have something they're comfortable with, and they see no reason to change that. And they're a smaller shop. They're a smaller shop, yeah.

And they're just a totally different model. I would love to see – if they ever listen to this, if they ever hear this, here's Chris's advice to you. Pick your top five, ten games. Focus them on Ubuntu, but do it in a way, like Steam has, where the community can step in and make it a flawless experience on their preferred platforms. I

am an Arch Linux user, and I have never had a problem with a Steam game that is actually in full release. I've had games with very early games. And I understand as an Arch user that I might run into an issue at some point, because the supported platform is Ubuntu, but I'm making that choice. And I'm still willing to throw my money at Valve even if I have some issues. And then I guess the other upshot to this is a lot of the GOG games work fine under VirtualBox.

See, this is what I'm talking about. So when they're pitching this to their financial guy, the financial guy is going, but you can do it this way already, right? Why are we having this conversation? It becomes a numbers pitch. And so the idealism goes right out the window. And it sucks, and I wish it didn't, but financially, that's probably where they're at. They're a small shop, and they're going, this financially doesn't make a lick of sense to them. All right.

I could have predicted this outcome. You guys got to get in there and shake this out. The straw poll is split down the middle. Our audience is split on every single thing we ever do. It is always split down the middle on every topic, and here it is, in living proof, right here, 21 votes for notes,

20 votes for Star Trek. 49? It's like, people gotta go in there and vote. Worst case scenario, if for some reason we find ourselves in a position to where it is literally a split tie, you and I in there and vote. Worst case scenario, if for some reason we find ourselves in a position to where it is literally a split tie, you and I each cast a vote. That's true.

Yeah, that's true. Well, I think the chat room can help us here. Go to strawpoll.me, 42-14-77. Get it done, people. Get it done. It is in your hands. All right. Well, I want to spend a little time on email because that's one of the main things that the show is kind of.

Oh, yeah. That's what we're going to do for the show, right? And we just there's been so many interesting things to dig into that, you know, it's we've been spoiled, really. However, this week I set aside a bunch of emails ahead of time to make sure we got to some. So I'm going to I'm going to start with a couple. Are you ready? I'm ready. So the first one comes in from John. He says, Hi, Chris and Matt. I caught some of your

conversation today on Linux Unplugged. This is last week's episode. I just want to add my opinion that I agree Linux users can be cheap, but I think that most people who use software are cheap to an extent. Most people have a real life and real money concerns, and they don't want to pay for software if they don't have to. The only difference between Linux users and everyone else is that on Linux, there's a ton of functionality that's just given. That functionality is purchased on other platforms. I suspect that the reason why the Ubuntu App Store doesn't sell software

is because people don't really need it. Same for Steam. Games by nature are a luxury. When people have money problems, games are not purchased. Now, for my other related topic. Linux needs more proprietary software. I posted this on Reddit. It may be a badly written post that I'm sick of not having important programs on Linux. I think talking about professional-grade, commercially-supported software that businesses have confidence in deploying.

For me, in my field, engineering, this includes CAD software and simulation software. I think that it's a real reason why Linux is not taking off big time. I'm sure there are companies that would be willing to switch to Linux if they had their employees' workflow not broken. And just from a technical standpoint, I think that most people will agree that Linux is superior. The problem is the workflows are broken using Linux. He mentions he refers to, you know, Jupyter Broadcasting as a dependence on using a Hackintosh for our video editing. Anyways, I wanted to suggest somewhere within your domain, we could build a list of programs and brand names that your viewers need available on Linux

to have completely working workflow. And, you know, I was thinking, that would be an interesting wiki thing on the subreddit. That'd be fantastic, actually. Good thoughts. I do agree that Linux distributions have a lot of built-in functionality. But over the years of using Linux, I've purchased a good handful of software.

I've definitely purchased more software for the commercial platforms, even though I use them a lot less. Yeah, and see, for me, I found the opposite to be true. It's definitely made me more cost-conscious. I'll go to other operating systems and look at software that I would have readily available in Linux and think, oh, wow, you people pay for that? It changed my expectations. But as far as what he was talking about with AutoC Linux and think, oh, wow, you people pay for that? It changed my expectations. But as far as what he was talking about

with AutoCAD and things like that, applications, proprietary applications at that that are available for their existing workstation and then asking them to drop that and then go to something that may not be as good on a Linux distro, I can understand where they're coming from. And I think with Jupyter Broadcasting specifically,

we use the operating system experience that's best for that particular need. We use a lot of Linux. We do use some OS X. But we mostly, by and large, are using more and more Linux than we used to. And so I think that it doesn't have to be an all or nothing kind of situation. I think that you can, in fact, have your dedicated setups for what works best for that particular situation. But if someone's just working in an Office document, there's no reason why they can't – and we've seen this in other countries – why they can't look at open source alternatives. Yeah, and I'll tell you, especially for Unplugged, as I've moved more production onto all of these audio-based shows, almost the majority, except for just clipping the ends, is done on Linux now.

However, for the video shows, it's still not quite there yet. And I'll tell you, though, as I've moved more of the work process over to the Linux box, it's so nice. One of the things that's really kind of nice is there's so many ubiquitous ways on Linux to mount a file system. So the easiest way for me to get to one box is NFS, and on the other box, where maybe I'm grabbing a source file off the Hackintosh, maybe I'll do it because Samba sucks on Mac OS X so badly. But on Linux, no begs, not a problem, not affected. I just do an SFTP mount, and boom, I pull the files.

It's nice to have all of this extra versatility that is useful in Linux in general also is great in a production workflow. And I feel like I've made more of a custom workflow now because of the flexibility that it gives me. It's kind of happened around the same time that I'm implementing that storage system in the studio. So I've been able to integrate NFS

at a much deeper level now into the production workflow, and it makes switching between the different systems so awesome. And BitTorrent Sync is now doing a lot of the lifting behind the scenes so if I create an asset on the Hackintosh because I need motion you know that's there's an example of an application motion and after effects there's just literally nothing else to do Blender is not the Blender is great but Blender is not the type of you know Blender doesn't create what I needed to create to do our motion intros and things like that. That's right. But I can create that motion intro on a Hackintosh, export it out onto the NFS share, Bob's your uncle, I open up on the Linux box, and now I'm slapping it down and I'm good to go.

So it's getting easier to move between them, but it's definitely, there's certain things that are locked up into different operating systems. But a common back-end file system and a common name working space for everything where everything can you know knows how to connect to each other it it kind of just it really feels like well that's not so much a mac that's the motion output machine right that's exactly it's like it's like this it's almost like if i'm in a shop like you've got it you've got machines that puts errors and you've got machines that puts air in tires and you've got machines that take oil out. That's what it feels like to me. Well, it's like a POS system sometimes they run.

Sometimes they run other stuff. You don't care it's a POS system. It really is an appliance. If I look at it right now, this thing is running OS 10.7.4. It's never once been. Nothing on it has, except for some of the applications, but like none of the operating systems, none of the main production software has been updated since the moment I went

into production because it, that is a, that is generally how it works in a business. You get a stable functioning system. And because I don't have to do security updates on final cut, it's not a huge issue. You get a stable workflow where everything's compatible and all the scripts work with everything,

where everything goes out, all that kind of stuff. It becomes an appliance in a lot of ways. Exactly. So I move on, but thanks, John, for the email. Zaytek wrote and he said, I did not see this addressed in Linux Unplugged, so I'm just going to send it in to you guys. As for Linux users that are cheap, I would say, yeah, that's why we picked a free OS and love it. Not much Linux users are able to completely give up Windows either, and that's where the wallet drains go. I have, however, been running Linux and only Linux for

four years, and now I've decided that the money that would have gone to some big corporations will go to small shops and give me something at a good price. Donations are one way that Linux users spend money, and that may not be properly accounted for. I donated to several products and bought a new oh, the LN Sync, which is a great Google Drive client. And I'm also addicted to purchasing the Humble bundles. Also my netbook just died, so I'm going to get a System 76

machine soon. He's got to work out some shipping problems. Well, I can help you with that. Love the show. Hope to chat with you on Mumble someday. Well, I wonder if he's on Mumble right now. Yeah, that'd be awesome. It'd be a good timeumble someday. Well, I wonder if he's on Mumble right now. I don't know. Yeah, that'd be awesome. It'd be a good time for it, you know. Yeah, I don't see him on there. Alright, we'll get to our last email, or actually it's not our last

email, it was the second to last or so. Hi Matt and Chris. You were talking about a lot about self-hosted cloud storage, e.g. OwnCloud and BitTorrent Sync, but you never talked about the open source tool C-File, which is at cfile.com. It uses a version control model similar to Git.

While own cloud sucks at syncing a lot of small files, C-File is rock solid in this area. Maybe you should have a look at it. Greetings, Marcel from Germany. Interesting. I haven't checked out C-File yet, but that's like the second or third person who sent in an email kind of recommending it.

They might have to check into that. Yeah, I would be curious to hear people's experiences with it. I'm pretty happy, though, now with my current implementation. It's going to be hard to break me away from that. We also, in the subreddit, somebody sent in a service that looks pretty interesting. I don't know about the security, so I'm not going to say I vouch for it,

but the concept is pretty cool. It was a BitTorrent Sync remote storage. It was submitted by Army1 or arm army i guess it's in cloud in cloudably in cloudably um boy i'm not exactly sure how you say that in cloudably in cloudably it's like incredible only cloudably cloudably.com and it's a whole they do a whole bunch of um like ddos protection and storage stuff but one of the products they are offering now is like you you know, you can go buy it, is a BitTorrent sync remote hosted. So they are reselling like a sync dump location and you use that as backup.

Now the transfer is AES-256 encrypted, but I don't know what the storage is, where SpiderOak is pretty explicit about that. So I don't know. You can check it out. We have a link to that in the subreddit. It'd be worth checking out. I mean, like I said i said we can't necessarily recommend it but it's certainly worth investigating on your own accord so now the big question matt before we get to the poll actually maybe we'll save the poll for the end of the ds9 stuff i don't know we'll see i don't know we'll see if people

want to go do one more vote you guys get a chance if anybody wouldn't mind pasting that link in the chat room okay matt now the big question of the day. What is Chris going to wear on Monkey Suit Day? Oh my goodness. So this is a great question. So for those of you that aren't aware, I have a birthday wish list that's been put out there on Amazon. And one of the items on there was in fact – Which is at MattHartley.com slash birthday. That's right, MattHartley.com slash birthday.

There's still plenty of stuff on there. I'm desperately trying to get the Zone Alarm stuff put together – or Zone Minder stuff put together. Yeah, that'd be a great segment. Oh, and I've got an idea for that. I'll get to later. But anyway, getting back to the monkey suit, and I don't want to take away from that. So the monkey suit was on the list, and that was totally more for you guys

than it was for me, because I'm basically just going to sit and sweat in this thing. But I put it out there, and sure enough, someone did pick that up, and that's awesome. And what we're trying to figure out now is I'm going to be wearing this for both Halloween as well as later on in 2014 so is that a good idea though or should you save it for the big event because it's kind of like uh it's kind of like seeing the bride the bride before the wedding i i think i think they've been patient enough i'm willing to do it i think it'd be fun for halloween to do okay you're right you know do we have is the

episode on halloween or is it i don't know where it falls, but I think it would be kind of fun to do. Okay. And I did throw that out there. Well, I should wear a costume if it's on Halloween. Well, a few people suggested Banana. That seemed a little phallic and strange. So I decided to maybe sidetrack off that, maybe go for another – I don't know. Not sure what a good alternative would be. So maybe we should put it to a vote. Oh, okay. All right. Well, we'll have to come up with options.

We'll have to come up with options and see where everybody falls down. you know, Tux Penguin would be cool. I wonder if there's a Tux Penguin. If you guys find, if you guys find good costumes on Amazon, link them to us, like in the,

in the, okay. So, well, you know, we put the feedback thread in the subreddit for this show, in the comments in there. If you guys,

if you guys uh if you guys find it put it in there or i guess you could submit it to matt monkey suit or so go to reddit.com slash r slash matt monkey suit or matt monkey suit.reddit.com yeah someone someone made a subreddit i couldn't believe that so i you know i i peered in there it's like all right that's cool oh wow well i like that big clock they got off you up there too that's awesome okay so i think maybe maybe what we'll do is, since we're going to get into a bunch of Star Trek stuff. Yeah.

Oh, I know where you're going with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a few clips I want to play to kind of warm us up. But I think maybe we should let the Linux, people who don't want to talk about Star Trek, maybe we'll just say, okay, this is where you can sign out. So I'll leave you with a couple. If you're going to leave us and not join us for the awesome DS9 chat that is about to ensue,

I want to let you know that you can contact us by emailing us at linuxactionshow at jupyterbroadcasting.com or popping the contact link at the top of our site. Or even better, we've got that subreddit over at linuxactionshow.reddit.com. And we'd love to have you join us over there. The Unplugged show is live at 2 p.m pacific which is 9 p.m utc over jblive.tv and jblive.info that's the audio stream we've got mobile versions of that and don't forget to go to linux.ting.com to save yourself something um and uh yes we have we have uh i think that's probably all the business to cover before we get into the star trek stuff but

i just wanted to say officially we are now getting the Trek stuff. We will unveil the poll at the end of the Star Trek stuff. So you guys still have a chance to vote on the poll, though. So we're not all Star Trek stuff. Okay, Matt. All right. So last week, I said, hey, you know, I've kind of been getting into DS9 and trying to find where it fits in my Star Trek lineup. I've been questioning my Voyagerness and my DS9s lately.

And after just recently re-watching a lot of TNG because they went on Blu-ray, I felt like it was perhaps the greatest Star Trek of all time. And then I thought, well, I really can't make that declaration without digging into DS9. Right. And so I should have waited until the DS9 Blu-rays came out, but I just decided we had to go into it.

Oh, by the way, just a quick mention, Nexu is working on a Samsungsung smart tv app how cool is that whoa yeah so people have samsung smart tvs which is probably a lot of people i would think will soon be able to watch uh the uh the jupiter broadcasting goodness on the samsung tvs so thanks to next year we'll give you guys a heads up when he gets that okay so uh So we decided to pick Emissary. That says DS9, Season 1, Episode 1. This is actually a two-parter. So it's actually Episode 1 and 2. So next week we'll be watching Episode 3, technically. I thought maybe I'd just give you a little bit of trivia about this episode before we got rolling, okay?

All righty. As is in tradition of one of my favorite podcasts, Mission Log, which if you guys are Star Trek fans, go listen to Mission Log podcast. So a little trivia. Did you know, but you didn't, the sequence of Dax and Sisko within the wormhole where they're flying through the wormhole was actually one of the last sequences filmed, and that was filmed on October 24th, 1992. This is the 20th anniversary. This year is the 20th anniversary of Deep Space Nine.

By the way- Hard to believe, isn't it? Yeah, it really is. anniversary of Deep Space Nine. By the way... Hard to believe, isn't it? Yeah, it really is. By the way, this is the only episode where in the intro, they don't show the wormhole because they didn't want to give it away in the opening credits.

Right. So in the opening credits, it's all just stars. And then in syndication later on, and in some foreign language versions, they just went right to wormhole. But in the intro credits for this episode, there is no wormhole. So also for the scene depicting Sisko where he's idling in the wormhole with the prophets, they, you know, that really super crazy white effect they had. The director of photography used diffusion filters and overexposed the image as to achieve the effect of the white bleeding into Sisko's skin. And the big big number here 250 special effects shots were created for this

episode of star trek deep space nine and one of the things that's quite interesting about deep space nine is uh oh i'm gonna have to i'll see can i well i have to mute sorry mumble room i have to mute you guys again because i have to play some clips but uh we'll be back soon um one of the uh one of the things that is pretty interesting about Deep Space Nine is it actually opens, the first lines spoken are by Picard, which means Picard opens TNG and Deep Space Nine. Resistance is futile. You will disarm your weapons and escort us to Sector 001.

If you attempt to intervene, we will destroy you. Renovate! So pretty epic opening just right there. That's the first line spoken in this episode. And they're Locutus, which is one of the strongest moments in Star Trek The Next Generation. The Borg were huge during this time. Oh, yeah, it was big time. So that's a strong opening.

You open with the Borg, you open big, right? And it moves quick. It moves quick. What was important about that entire piece right there is that it not only established the interchange between TNG and this now new show, but it also helped a critically important character building for Sisko. I mean, you know, his history and so on and so forth. So it was a big deal. It's really, and it's an interesting

way to intertwine into Trek lore, a really pivotal moment with the new character, to really make those universes come together. And of course, these first few moments are pivotal throughout the entire episode. They come back to it over and over again. And one of the things that, honestly, at this time, I remember, and I was curious to see if it would have the same effect now.

After watching this, I really didn't like the character of Sisko. And one of the things that put me off about Sisko is he seemed a lot more concerned about his wife than his whole crew. I mean, he's supposed to be the commander of the ship, of his crew, or even of his son. I'm gonna get your mom. You're gonna be okay. Jennifer. Okay, Jake. We'll get your mom out, and we'll get out of here. Commander! Help me! Jennifer. Jennifer, hold on.

Sir, just help me to get her free. She's gone. There's nothing we can do. We have to leave. Warning. Damage to warp core. Containment failure in two minutes. That's it. Take the boy.

Aye, sir. Got to go now, sir. Dammit. We just can't leave her here. Oh! Oh! And then they abandon ship. And he's, this whole time, as the commander of a starship, he's completely worthless. Like they're dragging him to the ship.

He's not helping. He's not giving any orders. He's completely incapacitated. Well, so here's the thing that – and I've heard other people mention similar things, but they don't take into account. Remind me again how many other captains in the Star Trek series, various series, were married and had their spouses on the ship. Yeah. Kirk didn't. And so we never got to see that side of them. various series were married and had their spouses on the ship. Yeah. Kirk didn't. Kirk didn't.

And so we never got to see that side of them. Well, and actually, yeah, it was until this episode, it had only been established that galaxy class vessels had children on them. That's right. And this was the first time we'd seen a non-galaxy class. Now, you know. And also look back at Picard with TNG. Remember when he thought he had a son? Right.

Right. Yeah, yeah. How quickly he, his whole mindset of everything just did a 180 completely changed so i mean realistically yeah my wife and i have days where we want to kill each other but you put us on a ship and if it's between my crew my and my wife it's been fun crew but you know what um you know i think i see that now see at the time when i was watching this i still feel like he's a little dismissive with the kid like the kids oh yeah here you go again he just hands the kid off yeah and the kid's alive the wife's dead and he's like freaking out about the wife uh but i agree with you now

like with the perspective on that is yeah that you could see but back then i was a kid i wasn't really married so uh but uh the other part that really kind of put me off about cisco is he was mean to my buddy jean-luc i have a son that i'm raising a lone captain this is not the ideal environment unfortunately as starfleet officers we do not always have the luxury to serve in an ideal environment i realize that sir and i'm investigating the possibility of returning to earth for civilian service and perhaps starfleet command should be considering a replacement for you that's probably a good idea i look into it in the meantime however in the meantime i will do the job i've been ordered to do to the best of my ability sir oh snaps dismissed dismissed so i was like dude he's being harsh on picard but i didn't really

appreciate that from cisco's perspective at this time he's got a boy and he's got a nice desk job the boy's got a good safe life and now he's been put out in the frontier he's been put on the front lines he's not too happy about it well he's essentially put out into the you know siberia tundra siberian tundra it's essentially what's happened here and you've you're basically again He's not too happy about it. the next exploration, the next conflict. In the first season especially, especially the first episode, it's very much about the people and the interaction and how different events change how we look at stuff. And someone who might have otherwise been a dedicated first officer, I guess he would have been one commander, how quickly that can change when they're confronted with someone that potentially not only killed the life of the crew but also basically got off.

I mean really, what kind of slap on the wrist did the man get? He got nothing. Yeah, I mean, you can totally see it now. Back then, I was like, why doesn't he like Picard? I get it now. And things then kind of pick up and move real quick, right? He makes a trip down to the Bajorans. In this really odd commander, it's time to go. And all of a sudden, he goes down to see the most holiest Bajoran of all Bajorans. And he goes down there and she touches his ear a little bit and then gives him a little bit of acid, a.k.a. one of the prophet orbs, and gets him kind of motivated. So he takes this orb back to the station. This is where we meet Dax.

We find out that Dax is a Trill. All these characters are getting some pretty good setups. Lots of flashbacks are used to show Dax getting surgery. And so they go off to find a location of where these orbs came from and they discover a wormhole the first known stable wormhole now this is going to be the show's hook because this adds a little spice because now they've got they're on the very border of this brand new frontier and that's why they're supposed to be that's why supposedly the concept works it's a stationary station because people are coming to them. And more importantly, this is the – to borrow from Star Wars, this is like the cantina on Tatooine. This is a non-federated area.

This is no federation presence really. It's a western and it's a frontier town. Odo's the sheriff, right? Exactly. Got it. Yeah. And so it's – and they're on the frontier. So of course Cisco has got to go into this wormhole and he ends up getting trapped. Dax,

Dax gets taken out, but Cisco gets left behind for some reason. And what's the crew decided to do? They're strapped on the station. The station's currently orbiting Bajor. I love the logic. So they immediately say, well,

Cisco's not here. Let's move the whole station to go rescue him. But the problem is, and I don't understand how this works. Maybe the chat room does. The problem was that darn station is too heavy. What would it take to move this station to the mouth of the wormhole? This isn't a starship, Major.

We've got six working thrusters to power us and that's it. A 160 million kilometer trip would take two months. It has to be there tomorrow. That's not possible, sir. That wormhole might just reshape the future of this entire quadrant. Oh, Dax. generators just enough to create a low level field around the station oh dax so we could lower the inertial mass if you can make the station lighter those six thrusters will be all the power we need this whole station could break apart like an egg if it doesn't work i love that line there this whole station could break apart like an egg it's kind of feels like an homage to scotty a little bit it totally does it totally does but now if you listen carefully now you can under you

they actually tell you why they're bothering to do this to to to rescue him yeah yeah it does actually because he's the face of the yeah he's face of the federation they they they have a rapport the uh the start of a rapport basically he doesn't kira's not liking anybody but she's liking him a little more than she was before and you know she's kind of warming up to him a little bit and then doesn't really want to break in a whole new guy one of the things that happens is uh there's kind of interaction between cisco and quark to get quark to remain behind which kind of impresses kira like oh he actually handled that pretty well oh yeah yeah totally totally owned him because you know this is our first real in-depth uh you know experience with fringy that isn't based on tng logic where

they run around grunting with whips yeah you know you know, in TNG, they wrote them in there because they wanted them to be the new Klingons before they came up with the board concept. They wanted them to be the new Klingons, and they realized very quickly, oh, these guys are laughable. But I think Quark single-handedly turns that image around

and makes them into cunning, conniving capitalists. Oh, Quark is my hero. I mean, the dude's awesome. And Sisko kind of has a real slow period during the show where he ends up in the wormhole, just like explaining time to aliens. My species lives in one point in time. And once we move beyond that point, it becomes the past, the future. All that is still to come does not exist yet for us. Does not exist yet?

That is the nature of linear existence and if you examine it more closely you will see that you do not need to fear me it's it's it's a high level strong concept but it's just a little slow it felt like it dragged things down a little bit for me i i was okay with it in that it was i i considered it part of that character building process you know you, calling the prophets characters. And it allowed them to kind of – it kind of intermingled a little bit. So I was okay with it. Yeah, it was a little boring.

And it's actually a pretty good description of what time is. Because one of the concepts is what is time in this movie? And these aliens have – they live in a reality where there just is no time. Everything is what it is. It exists. And so having to explain – because sometimes with my son, he's asked me, can I explain something? And I have to explain it without using another word that needs to be explained.

And they did a pretty good job there. But meanwhile, the real fun is actually still back on the station. There's a great O'Brien character creating scene where he fights with the station computer to get the station to actually move. And this is like a thread that continues throughout the first or even second season, and I love it. Partial field established. Instability at 12%.

Partial field. Is station's inertial mass low enough to break orbit? Procedure is not recommended. Dammit, I didn't ask for an opinion. Just tell me whether or not we can get enough thrust with only a partial field established. Affirmative. All right, thank you. Initiate transit mode, three axis stabilization.

Aye, sir. Engage thrusters. Warning. Field integrity declining. Instability at 21%. We've got to close that gap in the field, or we'll tear ourselves into a million pieces. Warning. Subspace field collapse in 60 seconds. Computer, transfer energy from the inertial dampers to reinforce the subspace field. Procedure is not recommended. Dammit, transfer the energy. Unable to comply. Level 1 safety protocols have cancelled request.

Cancelled? Warning, subspace field collapse in 30 seconds. I'm going to transfer it manually. On my mark, redirect the flow to the deflectors. Now keep the power balanced. Aye, sir. Field to the deflectors. Keep the power balanced. Aye, sir. Field collapse in 15 seconds. Now!

Field energy now within flight tolerances. Good work, sir. I love it. And there's also a great scene where he's trying to get the transporter to work and he ends up just kicking it. Well, and that's what's awesome is that this is the series, even through season one, that really established his character. Yeah, yeah. And there's an awkward yet appropriate goodbye between him and Picard. And I couldn't quite understand what they were trying to tell me uh O'Brien visits the bridge spends time looking at the uh at the uh ready

room but doesn't go in to say goodbye then goes to the transporter but Picard stops him before he beams out to say goodbye and like Picard is being more emotional than O'Brien like he's trying to say like you know this is your favorite transporter room blah blah blah and O'Brien's like yeah whatever sir and then and then and he gets up on the pad and gets and tells him to beam him out Like he's trying to say like, you know, this was your favorite transporter room, blah, blah, blah. And O'Brien's like, yeah, whatever, sir. And then he gets up on the pad and gets and tells him to beam him out. And meanwhile, Picard's like sitting there heartbroken. But I guess, you know, they were just trying to do a handoff. And that is how two guys would do it.

Like it would be awkward because it would be two guys, right? Well, Picard's acting like a girl. I mean, no offense, but I mean, he's acting much more, you know, in that mindset of he has things he wants to express. Guys, of course, don't want to express anything, and that's kind of how we're wired. And it's interesting because they kind of come back on it later on in DS9 where every now and then you wonder if maybe O'Brien wasn't always totally happy on the Enterprise.

Now, there is another really strong character moment, and this time it's with Kira. Their lead ship is hailing us. Gul Jasad wants an answer. Are you ready, Mr. O'Brien? Yes, sir. When they penetrate our Thurlok field,

it should raise a few eyebrows over there. All right, then let's give them our answer. Fire six photon torpedoes across Jasad's bow. We only have six photons, i love that we're not gonna win this battle with torpedoes chief hi sir an urgent hail from jasad looks like we got his attention Looks like we got his attention. On screen. This is your answer? You don't think Starfleet took command of this space station without the ability to defend it, do you?

Defend it? Your space station could not defend itself against one Cardassian warship. You're probably right, Josiah. And if you were dealing with a Starfleet officer they'd probably admit we have a hopeless cause here but i am just a bajoran who's been fighting a hopeless cause against the kardassians all her life so if you want a war, I'll give you one. Love that. And it's so perfect.

She plays it so well. The chat room picked up on something. Everybody calls her Sir, and DS9 followed that a lot more closely. Like when Dax took over the Defiant later on in the series, everyone called her Captain, even though her rank was like Lieutenant Commander. They followed a lot of more naval traditions.

In fact, another example of DS9 having some really smart dialogue that kind of keeps you in that world, keeps you in that reality, they're creating a universe, is right after that line from Kira, the camera pans over to O'Brien and he starts to talk. And before he even finishes the sentence, you know what joke he's going to make. And these types of jokes, they often bug me on Star Trek because they're essentially a joke that we make using current 20th century references. But instead, DS9 takes it as an opportunity to enrich the reality. Major, remind me never to get into a game of Aladdin Wild Draw with you.

So, you know, you know he means poker. I'm never going to play poker because you got a good bluff. You got a good bluff face, but they don't say poker because that's a human reference for the, you know, 2021st century. But I think it's a truism that, you know, while the verbiage may be different, I think it dates back further. It probably uses a different language, I'm sure. It's like exactly like that turn of phrase is still used, but they use different things. Like in DS9, instead of using coffee, they get Ractaginos, right? A lot of things like that. I just appreciated that.

And then, of course, after the tension has been mount and built properly, there's only one person who can come back and save the day at this point. Of course, it's the last few minutes of this episode, and that would be Captain Sisko coming back from the wormhole. And remember, at this point in the show, the Cardassians believe that it wasn't a wormhole that took away Dukat's ship. It was perhaps the station. And so that's why they're threatening to attack the station, and they want to take it over again. And just as their attack on the station is reaching a climax... Signal the lead Cardassian ship that we will proceed with Major.

I'm picking up a huge neutrino disturbance 15 kilometers off the forward docking ring. It's the wormhole. On screen. Hail the lead ship. What did I tell you, Jassad? There's your wormhole! He's got to cot ship in a tractor beam.

Real grand to dance night. Which for Cardassians is a big statement because that's a show of weakness. That's a lot like a dog being on a leash seeing to other dogs. Exactly. And it diffuses the situation. He's like, hey, I've noticed you have a few problems. Of course, he doesn't say,

why the hell have you moved my station? Right, which I had a problem with that. Yeah, yeah. But then at the end of the episode, Cisco talks to Picard and makes good. Well, you've put Bajor on the map, Commander. This will shortly become a leading center of commerce and of scientific exploration. And for Starfleet, one of our most important posts. Captain, regarding our conversation about someone to replace me. Now it's all conscious. And for Starfleet, one of our most important posts.

Captain, regarding our conversation about someone to replace me... Keese, now it's all conscious. Yes, I'm sorry I haven't had time yet to communicate that to command. I would prefer you ignore it, sir. I'm not sure that I can. Are you certain that's what you want? Because we cannot afford to have a commanding officer who is... I'm certain, sir. There you go. He's certain. He was energized by the experience, and now he's ready for the challenge.

And I was kind of surprised at how often Picard actually popped up through this episode. You know, I just expected a quick cameo and that would be it, but he actually had a reoccurring role throughout this two-hour episode. throughout this two-hour episode. True. This is true. And I think it definitely sets... Because I think all these events needed to happen for that first season to make any sense. We needed to understand his psychology. Yeah, exactly.

And that's kind of why we spent a little extra time on this episode because it really is the foundation for the rest of the series. That's one of the things that's kind of interesting about DS9, although in TNG they managed to bring it back home too. So before we go to the mumble room and get their thoughts on all of this, give them a time to catch up on the stream. Matt, after watching this again, how did it land on you? A, does it hold up?

And B, does it – where does it leave you as like your overall review? I maintain that – of course, we haven't gotten to where we really got to enjoy Quark in its fullness yet. We haven't even touched on Nog or any of these other things. But I think as far as the characters that really made their shining moment in this first episode, it really drives home for me that this was a piece of Star Trek that needed to happen without the utopian stuff, without the just explore, explore, explore. More stuff that we as humans in the 21st century can relate to. I think that we – it's more relatable in our day-to-day struggles, in our war conflicts, all these things. I think it lets us know that Star Trek isn't just utopian. Yeah, I guess.

And that actually caused some internal strife because you still had the TNG crew around, a lot of the people who were there in the original Roddenberry days. Oh, yeah. There was some internal strife about that, if Gene would approve of it or not. But, you know, you touched on something kind of, you know, one of the things that DS9 was really good at was taking current events and reflecting them into the future, abstracting them away so that way we could have a rational conversation without special interest getting their feelings hurt. away so that way we could have a rational conversation without special interests getting their feelings hurt. And one of the things that struck me through this, and it's not a direct parallel at all, but there is a lot of similarities between what the potential outcome could be in Syria and the state of the Bajoran people.

Like there's an oppressive regime. There is a falling of that regime. There is a civil government that is established. And then that civil government requests that this larger empire, a.k.a. the Federation, comes in and brings in military to help them. And then a local aggressor in their backyard, a.k.a. another Middle Eastern country, Iran, something like that, is an aggressor in their backyard

who the new hired guns have to constantly keep an eye on i mean there's a lot of reflections in modern day politics intertwined into this first episode of ds9 too and in my mind that makes it hold up even stronger oh i would say so and i think the entire set of circumstances both in the past now and even in the future is a timeless thing um i've seen it time and time again you know it seems like it's a constant cycle. It's interesting that even in a whole other part of the universe, or another part of the galaxy in this particular case, that something so

familiar can still unravel despite the fact that it doesn't involve humans. History continues to repeat itself. I'll ask the Mumble Room. Guys in the room, I'll open the floor to you. Did anybody get a chance to watch along with us? What were your impressions of the first episode

of Deep Space Nine? How does it hold up as a Star Trek premiere? Think of it now. At this point in time, we've seen every Star Trek premiere there's been. We've seen Enterprise, TNG, Voyager, even TOS, if you've got the gray hairs to prove it. Where does DS9 fit into those

other Star Trek premieres? Mumble Room, I bring it to you. Well, I watched it. I never really got into DS9 when it was on TV. It never really grabbed me, but I watched the first

episode this time and really watched it. And yeah, I do enjoy it. It has some weaknesses for instance the moment that Cisco was in the wormhole and was stuck there I felt that it was going on

it was dragging along a little bit at least that's my opinion but I did like the episode it was a strong start. Yeah, I think it was a pretty strong start. Anybody else want to chime in before we wrap up? Yeah, go on.

Yeah, I have to admit that the beginning of the episode, it kind of showed what was going to happen, especially later on in some of the later episodes, with a fast pace of action, which you didn't normally see in the previous seasons and series of Star Trek. The good thing about this is it's a bit grittier.

You could definitely see what was going to be happening in the future. Excellent point. Excellent point. Alright, guys. Any last thoughts? Anybody else? All I'd like to say about DS9 is that it has diversity to start with. It says that it's not just about flying about in space and exploring new worlds or whatever.

There is a universe there. There is a people there. There is a culture. There is everything. There is depth here. There is diversity here, which you cannot ignore. Yeah, I think I would maybe argue that it is the absolute, and I'm going to – I'll wrap it there because we're running a little long. But thank you, Mumble Room.

I would argue that I think it is maybe the strongest premiere of any Star Trek. And it does – the show, like all Star Treks, gets better as it goes on. But I think if you look at TNG, there's a lot. You've got Deanna in a cheerleader uniform. You've got Wesley who's just derping up all over the place, right? And by the way, I got a lot of respect for how they handled Jake throughout this whole series. But specifically here, there's a strong connection. Like when Sisko gets back on the station and Jake sees him for the first time.

I mean, that was touching to me as a dad. I thought they'd handled that really well. And instead of making Jake Wesley 2.0 or Icheb from Voyager, they handled him really well. Typically, Star Trek really screws up kids really bad. They get it wrong a lot. I don't feel like they did. Icheb's a great example there because that was just that was terrible. Yeah.

So I felt like as far as strong openings go, yeah, some of the acting was a little rough because it's their first episode. But the effects were solid. The concepts were great. And the execution was powerful. And except for it moved, moved, moved and then wormhole. except for it moved moved moved and then wormhole and then it moved moved wormhole all the scenes outside the wormhole i really like as soon as we get into the wormhole i don't know maybe i just need to get really stoned and maybe have a few beers or something i would enjoy it but as i'm sitting there watching this i'm like come on this

is two hours you really gotta spend this much time on here but overall i enjoyed it all right matt so i know this hasn't been popular with everyone, so we will do another straw poll. I have linked it in the show notes right now. So we will have two straw polls this week. The one that the people in the download and stream versions can watch later will have the voting poll to see if we should do this again. So in the Deep Space Nine challenge, there will be a link

at the top of that for the straw poll. And you go there and you vote if you want us to do this again next week. And if we get... If the yeses have it, then we will do episode three of ds9 if the nopes have it we'll drop it there and we'll just stick to other stuff but i thought it was kind of fun and it's i think there's benefits from time to time to taking our same community and uh all the all of the people who hold similar interests and exploring other topics and and and going into other things that we all enjoy because it is good to get out of that bubble,

and it is still good to have the chat and the discussion and get people thinking. And it's also just kind of a fun way to get people to get into DS9 if they haven't been there before. But I understand it might not be popular, so if people don't like it, we don't have to do it next time. Super quick piece of advice before I let it go. If you watched it back when it aired, forget everything you ever watched. Watch it commercial free on Netflix. It's a completely different experience. I really felt like I really felt like I watched a different show in some way.

Yeah, I really did. All right. So here we go. But before we run our final our final tally for Sunday's topic, Friday edition or I'm sorry, Friday's topic, Friday edition of the Linux action show Trek meets Linux or taking great notes on Linux. And the notes have it. I did not expect that with 43 votes, 56%. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a few Star Trek app picks that work their way into the episode anyways. You know what I'm saying, Matt? I know what you're saying.

Okay. All right. I can do the note thing. I got a couple of good note apps. I got a couple of good note apps. You and I will share notes after the show, Matt. All right. You get what I'm saying, Matt? I get what you're saying. Okay, all right. I can do the note thing. I got a couple of good note apps. I got a couple of good note apps. You and I will share notes after the show, Matt. All right. You get what I'm saying, Matt?

I get what you're saying. So, yeah, just a little reminder. We'll be doing Friday edition of Linux Action Show at 10 a.m. Pacific over at jblive.tv. No show on Sunday, but it actually should be available for download hopefully around the regular live time. So you'll be able to just watch it on demand and enjoy it that way. All right. Well, thanks to the Mumble Room. Hey you guys, thanks for joining us today. You guys were awesome.

I'm going to mute you here in a bit, but we'll chat some more after the show. We keep going a little bit after the show and we'll share some more thoughts. And don't forget, we'd love to get more topics, more concepts to kick around. You can submit a lot of those, any of those really, to linuxactionshow.reddit.com. That's a

great place to get things into the show because now that we've got two places to cover some of this stuff, stuff that doesn't make it into the big show might still make it into here, so stuff's got double the shot to make it into the show. Matt, you have a great week. Enjoy your ramp up to the big day. I will, I will, I will.

Alright everyone, well thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Linux Unplugged. I hope we see you back here. Don't forget to go vote in that straw poll if you liked it or didn't like it Because it's going to depend on your vote So you've got to show up and vote, we'll have a link to that in the show notes Right under the Deep Space Nine challenge As well as links to where you can stream Deep Space Nine online If you have access to US servers

If you get what I'm saying With that Alright everyone, thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Unplugged See you right back here next week.