I went to the cinema yesterday evening, and not having a clear idea of which film we wanted to watch, we decided for Manuale D'Amore, an Italian movie. It was great, funny almost all the time but with very emotive moments, all them mixed very well. The history is very simple. The movie introduces different couples that are in four different moments of their love: falling in love, the crisis, the traition and being abandoned. Every chapter is very well driven, and the actors play fairly well their roles. This movie, and the last one I watched, Los 2 lados de la cama, are good examples of European cinema very well made. In my opinion, if European cinema had followed this path more often, and with a bit more advertising, it will get more success than now, in which there are a lot of movies made trying to be different. P.S: I HATE people eating nachos in theaters.

Woody Allen. Again, a great movie by him. Of course it has the same schema that most of his films, with a short number but great actors, and as with Melinda and Melinda, he does not play any role in it, but I am sure that main role is written for him. Anyway Jonathan Rhys-Meyers plays it wonderful. Special mention deserves how Scarlett Johansson is introduced in the film. First scene of her makes you jump in your seat. This movie has been filmed completely in London. Not a bit of New York. Even, the american girl is from Colorado. And Woody Allen makes a great picture of London city, showing nice locations, and transmitting well a "London feeling". When a ball hits the net, there is a moment when it can fell in any side.

Diesen Abend war in meinem Wohnheim, der Insterburg, ein kleines Festivalchen, mit drei Lifebands. Und da ich gerade eh warte, bis die ~150 Bilder skaliert und hochgeladen sind, kann ich auch gleich dar ber bloggen.Die erste Band, die aufgetreten ist, wurde von mir vermittelt: Peer Pressure kenn ich noch aus Herrenberger Zeiten, fand sie damals schon toll, und sponsere nicht umsonst auch deren Webseite (Domain/Hosting). Man merkt deutlich, dass die vier Jungs inzwischen doch schon einie Routine haben, und die neuen Songs sind wirklich h renswert. Besonders gefiel mir “On the inside”. Leider hatten sie das undankbare Los des ersten Auftritts, und so kam das Publikum nur schleppend in Schwung - ein wenig mehr B hnenshow w rde hier nicht schaden.Das konnte daf r die n chste Band sehr gut: Los Elektrodomestikos ist eine Ska-Band in Anz gen (naja, zumindest am Anfang) und komplett mit Trompete und Posaune und war das Highlight des Abends: Nicht nur die Musik war gut, sondern vor allem lieferten die Jungs eine klasse B hnenshow, was unter anderem dazu f hrte, dass die meisten der Bilder, die ich von dem Abend gemacht habe, von den Jungs sind. Auch die Ausdauer war ausgezeichnet, was wohl auch daran lag, dass sie regelm ig die Positionen durchgewechselt haben, und so bekamen wir f nf Zugaben.Und es w hren vielleicht noch mehr geworten, h tten wir nicht die Zeit f r die dritte Band gebraucht: Brehon, eine in Karlsruhe wohl nicht unbekannte Irish-Folkrock-Band, die (ger chteweise) schon auf “Dem Fest” gespielt hat. Leider war die Musik nach der Ska-Band etwas unpassend und die Masste tobte nicht mehr. Vielleicht h tte man die Reihenfolge der Bands anders w hlen sollen, aber das ist wohl vorher schwer abzusch tzen.Insgesamt ein gelunges Fest (und die Konserven-Musik f r hinterher h re ich immernoch in den siebten Stock), das erste Lifekonzert bei mir zuhause (und ich mit Hausschuhen mitten drin) und die, die wegen einem Heizungsleck nicht kommen konnten haben leider wirklich was verpasst.

Well, shame on me, this is again a meme I participated in, probably because Axel mentioned that this quizz gives more interesting results. It appears that I should be a Chemistry major, which I actually am (my career in computing began after a PhD in Materials Science and a the french equivalent of a Master in Chemistry).. I should also by graduated in Linguistics, what a surprise...:-) Also scored 75% for Theater which kind of a surprise as I'm sometimes a bit shy in public. Art and Dance scores are very low which is not a surprise at all as well. Quite an accurate quizz indeed.

You scored as Chemistry. You should be a Chemistry major! As if that isnt clear enough, you are deeply passionate about Chemistry, and every single chemical reaction and concept fascinates you. Pursue that! Chemistry 83% Linguistics 75% Theater 75% Engineering 58% English 58% Sociology 58% Biology 50% Journalism 50% Psychology 42% Philosophy 42% Mathematics 42% Anthropology 42% Art 33% Dance 17% What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3) created with QuizFarm.com

I usually try not to blog every meme I take (heay, that’s a line from “I’ll be blogging it”), but Alex’ positive view on this one made me interested. And indeed, this quiz seems to be relatively well done. So here it is:

You scored as Mathematics. You should be a Math major! Like Pythagoras, you are analytical, rational, and when are always ready to tackle the problem head-on! Mathematics 92% Theater 92% Philosophy 92% Engineering 67% Psychology 58% Biology 58% Journalism 50% Linguistics 50% Sociology 50% Dance 42% English 33% Anthropology 33% Chemistry 33% Art 25% What is your Perfect Major? created with QuizFarm.com

Nice result, so far, as I’m currently studying mathematics, and sometimes have a tendency to what we Germans call “Theater machen”. Personally, I’d expect Journalism a bit higher...PS, to the readers of planet.debian.org: I’m sorry for the random pop ups of old and/or German postings. I have no idea what causes them, and I’m glad to hear hints. The posts seem to actually come from the cache of the planet software itself, and something (me?) caused planet to dig them out again.

Although the recent Inner European quiz meme is currently much more popular on Planet Debian, the following quiz somehow shows how the result of such a quiz should look like and what the quiz system, which the Inner European quiz used, misses: Having more than only bit-like answers. With answers like this, neither I would have had to change answers to see how close I was to different answer nor would have Christian Perrier had to do the quiz with worst fitting answers.

You scored as Engineering. You should be an Engineering major! Engineering 100% Philosophy 92% Journalism 92% Art 83% Mathematics 75% English 75% Biology 75% Chemistry 75% Theater 75% Psychology 67% Sociology 67% Linguistics 50% Dance 42% Anthropology 25% What is your Perfect Major? created with QuizFarm.com

Since I always saw computer science more as an engineering discipline than a derivative of mathematics (at least the way I studied and like it ;-), I seem to have taken the right major. But also most of the other highscorers aren’t that unfamiliar:

Philosophy

Well, if you see how much philosophy is behind open source or politics, being engaged in open source software and interested in politics doesn’t seem to be that wrong. ;-)

Journalism

I like journalism somehow and I sometimes think about if this could have also been (or even be) a nice profession for me, especially since I managed to combine journalism and computer science in being an editor at Symlink.ch, a Swiss based and German written news and discussion site all around Open Source, IT politics and privacy. Sure, it’s no professional journalism and also not classical journalism, since it’s built on the same ideas (and software) as Slashdot.

Art

If I would have more time and leisure, I probably would also try to draw, paint or sculpture more again as I did during my school time. And since my brother and my mother are both active artists I expect that the results wouldn’t be that bad either. ;-) On the other hand, I also like to design CSS styles which IMHO can also satisfy my artistic bone…

Mathematics

Although I see more the engineering than the mathematics in computer science, mathematics still was one of my two majors in school (the other was physics) and in comparison to many other people I can say that I like maths.

English

That’s the only thing IMHO not fitting in here in such a high position since I’m neither good at foreign languages (see my English in the blog… ;-) nor do I like studying languages. And even if I should see that as “Literature” or “German” (my mother tongue) instead, it just doesn’t seem to fit. (Ok, journalism also has to do with language(s)…)

Biology

Biology was the voluntary science course at school I took until I finished school. At university it became my minor subject. I wonder why it’s that deep down in the statistics?

Chemistry

That was my second voluntary science course at school, but I dropped it before I finished school.

Theater

Well, no, I don’t think that actor would be good idea for me…

Psychology

I’m not sure, if sometimes being glad not to understand how my brain works is a good base for diving into psychology. (On the other hand: Would I write so much text about this quiz, if I’m not at least a little bit interested in psychology? ;-)

Sociology

That’s again more interesting.

Linguistics

If this can include computer linguistics, than it’s definitely something interesting for me, since it usually involves artifical intelligence and I wrote my diploma thesis about an AI subject and our research group did work a lot in the area of computer linguistics.

Dance

No. I’m glad it’s that far down there. Just wonder how it got even 42%.

Anthropology

Well, that’s again an interesting subject, but probably not a subject I would work in. So being that far down is completely ok.

So in general, I think the quiz works mostly fine as well as I probably did choose the right subjects for me. *grin* Only thing I missed in this quiz was Physics as a possible result since I don’t think, it’s impossible (especially compared to the rest of the result) that I haven’t scored for anything typical for physicians.

Now Playing: Falco — Mutter, der Mann mit dem Koks ist da!

College is not the launching pad for a job. It's the launching pad for the rest of your life. High school is a mini-jail with strict standards that everyone must live up to. College is when you get to make your own choices. This is the sentiment behind this article. I agree with it on principle, but not completely on content. Computer Science in the past 7 years has gone through an evil transition - almost all of the Colleges out there shifted to a Technical style curriculum because that was what was in demand. While TAing the introductory classes here at the U of M, the most common complaint was that they weren't learning things which will be useful in the future. The classes are taught in Scheme, for reasons that I completely agree with - the students would rather have them taught in Java, because that would be useful in the market when they leave college. What were they missing? The knowledge that programming concepts are what make good programmers, not language skills. Students want cookie cutter code which solves the problems that they are given. That is why people are lambasting the teaching of Java: people aren't learning hard thinking concepts. In my opinion, college is not supposed to teach you the skills you need for your job - instead, you are there to learn your specific learning style. This will allow you to learn anything you need for your job. Most jobs which exist in the Real World™ aren't looking for people from a specific major, they're looking for experience. I also share the views that you don't need to get perfect grades - the effort required to get an A over a B+ or a B is not worth it for the slight bump in your GPA, and you will have much more fun in college. Meeting friends in college is just as important as your actual classes. The Real World ™ calls this "networking". Choosing your major in order to get a job is also such a crap shoot otherwise - you're betting that in 4 years, the market will need the skills that you learn in a major.

You scored as Engineering. You should be an Engineering major! Engineering 92% Chemistry 75% Mathematics 75% Philosophy 67% Linguistics 67% Psychology 67% Sociology 58% Biology 58% Theater 42% English 42% Anthropology 33% Art 33% Journalism 25% Dance 17%

What is your Perfect Major?
created with QuizFarm.com

So following Florian’s chastisement of my “threatening” fellow Debian developers, Charles Plessy becomes annoyed by a bug in apt-file (its default configuration expects curl, but wget is what’s installed on most systems), at which point Luk Claes then starts threatening to NMU whether the maintainer likes it or not. Naturally that’s not the correct thing to do for a report the maintainer’s addressed and said is not a bug, 0-day NMU policy or not. Naturally, pointing this out brings Charles back into the fray, to complain further. A followup to that produces this off-list reply from Charles:

On Fri, Jan 13, 2006 at 05:13:15PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote :
> I'm not disputing whether it's a bug or not, the maintainer is. If
> you are *helping* the maintainer, then fine: do an NMU.
Dear Anthony,
I would love to, but I am not a developer. And I am amazed to see that
more energy is spent in arguing rather than solving the problem. I hope
Luke will NMU this package and close those shameful bugs.
> In my experience you almost always get a better response from people if
> you assume they've got a good reason for doing what they have been doing,
> rather than just trying to add extra punctuation to your sentences.
> Admittedly, punctuation is pretty cool...
That kind of sentence reflects your inclination for ad-hominem attacks.
They poison the -devel list.
Best,

So yay for people who aren’t developers, in the n-m queue or maintaining a package, who don’t understand Debian’s processes, yet still think it’s great to pontificate about what Debian’s processes are, go on about how developers are “arrogant experts” and who think “punctuation is pretty cool” is a “poisonous ad hominem attack”. But what I hate most is people who think they’re contributing to Debian by mailing people privately to tell them how horrible they are. Gag. For those playing along at home, the proper process to follow in a dispute with a maintainer is to bring it up to the technical committee, not to try forcing the situation, whether that be by reopening bugs or playing bug ping-pong. It’s really not complicated. It’s even documented (5.8.3 of the Developers Reference).

So following Florian’s chastisement of my “threatening” fellow Debian developers, Charles Plessy becomes annoyed by a bug in apt-file (its default configuration expects curl, but wget is what’s installed on most systems), at which point Luk Claes then starts threatening to NMU whether the maintainer likes it or not. Naturally that’s not the correct thing to do for a report the maintainer’s addressed and said is not a bug, 0-day NMU policy or not. Naturally, pointing this out brings Charles back into the fray, to complain further. A followup to that produces this off-list reply from Charles:

On Fri, Jan 13, 2006 at 05:13:15PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote :
> I'm not disputing whether it's a bug or not, the maintainer is. If
> you are *helping* the maintainer, then fine: do an NMU.
Dear Anthony,
I would love to, but I am not a developer. And I am amazed to see that
more energy is spent in arguing rather than solving the problem. I hope
Luke will NMU this package and close those shameful bugs.
> In my experience you almost always get a better response from people if
> you assume they've got a good reason for doing what they have been doing,
> rather than just trying to add extra punctuation to your sentences.
> Admittedly, punctuation is pretty cool...
That kind of sentence reflects your inclination for ad-hominem attacks.
They poison the -devel list.
Best,

So yay for people who aren’t developers, in the n-m queue or maintaining a package, who don’t understand Debian’s processes, yet still think it’s great to pontificate about what Debian’s processes are, go on about how developers are “arrogant experts” and who think “punctuation is pretty cool” is a “poisonous ad hominem attack”. But what I hate most is people who think they’re contributing to Debian by mailing people privately to tell them how horrible they are. Gag. For those playing along at home, the proper process to follow in a dispute with a maintainer is to bring it up to the technical committee, not to try forcing the situation, whether that be by reopening bugs or playing bug ping-pong. It’s really not complicated. It’s even documented (5.8.3 of the Developers Reference).

NVIDIA legacy packages are now availble in the old repository or my new one. I haven't uploaded them to the archive yet cause I need them tested first. Please email rdonald@debian.org if you've tried them.

nvidia-glx-legacy-dev_1.0.7174-1_i386.deb
nvidia-glx-legacy_1.0.7174-1_i386.deb
nvidia-kernel-legacy-source_1.0.7174-1_i386.deb

Also the amd64 packages are available. Modules will follow.

I eventually moved my Planet Debian feed away from Advogato to my old .plan file that now has an RSS feed. I had not been posting very much on Advogato for the last two years anyway, mostly because it did not let me sort the feed by keywords. Everything I posted was appearing on Planet Debian but I would like to be conservative about what I send and stick to Debian-related content here. Of course I still have my LiveJournal to tell the universe how much I like blogs. Advogato is still a very interesting place. It is quite dormant nowadays and has lost the initial momentum now that everyone has their own blog, but the content remains reasonably on-topic and there are quite a few skilled people who still use it as their main developer s diary.

I am really disturbed by this one. Voting would be acknowledging the fact that a GR can be used for ludicrous purposes, and not voting would mean that it has a chance to pass and set a dangerous precedent that a GR can be used for ludicrous purposes. Hopefully there is a third possibility, such as adding an amendment demanding that the ftp-master crew all shave their heads.

School: Grrr. One of the school's lawyer is a real moron. He wants us to register every available domain (videolan.tm.fr, videolan.com, videolan.net, videolan.com.fr), to buy the trademark, and to register the source code at a notary. He is also considering suing the other videolan trademark owners, and looking for possible patents for our software. Absolute bullshit. I think people like him are really perverting our legal system. Fuck, fuck, FUCK ! Can't he understand we are doing a research job, that we want to publish it as free software, show it, share it, instead of preventing people from using it or even pronouncing its bloody name ? The craziest of all is that they'd prefer to have the project die in a corner (which is what it's virtually been doing for more than two years) than to take the risk that someone claims property on its name. Just the fucking name ! Next Badvogato plan: kill all lawyers. Linux Expo: it starts on wednesday and I still haven't seen many people volunteering to stay at the Debian booth at LE-Paris (I won't be able to, since we already have a booth). I have a bad feeling about this... Geek stuff: got my geek frog yesterday. It's so cool.

Heute stattete ich der Sneak-Preview der Schauburg einen Besuch ab. Gezeigt wurde der Film “Terkel i Knibe” aus D nemark, in deutscher Synchronisation. Da wohl die wenigsten von dem Film geh rt haben (und das wohl auch so bleiben wird), dazu etwas ausf hrlicher.Terkel i Knibe ist ein Animationsfilm, der in etwa wie eine 3D-gerenderte Version von Southpark anmutet. Erz hlt wird die Geschichte des 9-j hrigen Terkel und seinen Problemen in der Schule, vor allem mit Mobbing. Um dem Mobbing zu entkommen, beginnt er selbst zu Mobben, was eine in ihn verliebte Mitsch lerin in einen u erst spritzigen Selbstmord treibt und seine Freundschaft zu Jason gef hrdet. Das Ganze spitzt sich dann auf dem Zeltlager, von einem furchtbar beliebten ko-Lehrer organisiert, dramatisch zu...Einiges hat mich gest rt. So waren mir die animierten Gesichter zu steif und die M uler zu breit, so dass viel Mimik verloren ging, und die Muskeinlagen h tte man sich sparen k nnen - obwohl sie immerhin eher im Stile von “Charlie und die Schokoladenfabrik” als dem grausamen der Disney-Kinderfilme gehalten sind. Ich mag halt kein Rap, und das war es meist.Die meisten Meinungen im Foyer des Kinos schienen in Richtung “Rausgeschmissenes Geld” zu gehen. Ich selbst fand den Film eigentlich recht gelungen: Er stellt die Wirkung von Mobbing auf Kinder zwar bertriebern, aber doch glaubw rdig da. Auch die d nische Skrupellosigkeit, wie man sie aus “In China essen sie Hunde” kennet, was Gewalt und Sprache angeht, passte gut ins Bild. Da lernt man sogar nach 13 Jahren deutschem Schulalltag noch neue Beleidungen, und bisweilen machte die graphische Darstellung den “Happy Tree Friends” konkurrenz. berhaupt war der Film bisweilen so bizzar, dass kein l stiger moralischer Unterton aufkommt, ohne jedoch die Aussage zu verraten.Fazit: Wer die Gelegenheit einmal haben sollte: Warum nicht, macht euch ein Bild. Zum Lachen werdet ihr kommen! Nur allen wird es sicherlich nicht gefallen.

So it looks like we’re finally getting a vote to issue the long-awaited GFDL Position Statement, and explain why Debian does not consider this license suitable for its main section (gr proposal, latest version). After asking around in -private, I proposed an amendment to allow GFDL-licensed documents with no invariant sections to remain in main; as of now, this amendment has received exactly zero seconds. (In case this needs mentioning, an amendment needs at least 5 seconds to appear in the ballot. And if someone wants to point me the legal flaws of my amendment, please read this first.) I’ve surprisingly found myself getting quite upset and enraged (quite political?) about the whole GFDL story. I have very clear feelings about the whole situation, and they’re best explained in this post. But well, I’m finally starting to digest that most likely Anthony’s text will pass, and managing to not get tragic about it. I guess it’ll go away, and that I’ll then continue with my Debian tasks as usual. Heck, if I one manages to be friends with people that vote conservative (and, heh, they manage to be friends with me), I guess this is about the same. NP: The Cranberries, Dreams

"Through its Science and Technology Directorate, the [US] Homeland Security Department has given $1.24 million in funding to Stanford University, Coverity and Symantec to hunt for security bugs in open-source software and to improve Coverity's commercial tool for source code analysis."

Link

"The United States Patent and Trademark Office plans to announce today that it will cooperate with open-source software developers on three initiatives that it says will improve the quality of software patents."

Link

Two optimistic things in US Gov't.... (It's not April 1 yet, right?)

Given the posts on diverse planets, this seems to be a common nerd disorder...

Your Social Dysfunction: Happy You're a happy person - you have a good amount of self-esteem, and are socially healthy. While this isn't a social dysfunction per se, you're definitely not normal. Consider yourself lucky: you walk that fine line between 'normal' and being outright narcissistic. You're rare - which is something else to be happy about.

); background-repeat: no-repeat;">

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com Please note that we aren't, nor do we claim to be, psychologists. This quiz is for fun and entertainment only. Try not to freak out about your results.

Another quiz meme: You scored as Mathematics. You should be a Math major! Like Pythagoras, you are analytical, rational, and when are always ready to tackle the problem head-on!

Mathematics		100%
English		100%
Engineering		92%
Journalism		92%
Philosophy		67%
Theater		58%
Linguistics		58%
Psychology		42%
Dance		33%
Sociology		33%
Chemistry		25%
Art		25%
Anthropology		17%
Biology		0%