Search Results: "Martin"

29 December 2006

Martin-Éric Racine: RFA: utf8-migration-tool -- tool to migrate a Debian system to UTF-8

From the Debian Bug #374997 department: 
* Package name    : utf8-migration-tool
  Version         : 0.4
  Upstream Authors: Tollef Fog Heen, Martin- ric Racine
* URL             : http://q-funk.iki.fi/debian/pool/u/utf8-migration-tool/
* License         : GPL
  Programming Lang: Python, GTK2+
  Description     : tool to migrate a Debian system to UTF-8
This wizard upgrades legacy system locales to their UTF-8 equivalent. It 
also informs users whenever files in their home directory still utilize 
legacy encodings.
This started as an Ubuntu tool to enable easy migration to UTF-8 for both locale settings and user file encodings. Tollef says that since Ubuntu has been UTF-8 by default for a few releases already, they are not likely to further develop it and invited me to take over development, so I have. I have found this tool very useful to help me locate remaining files in my home directory that are still in a legacy encoding and to check system files for UTF-8 locales utilization. Given how Etch is going to be the first Debian release with UTF-8 locales by default, I figure that it could be a useful migration tool for others as well.
Since I'm currently paring down my involvement in Free Software, I never got around fixing the GTK annoyance reported by Denis Barbier and thus enver uploaded the package to the NEW queue so, if anybody is interested in picking up this package's maintenance, please do so by responding to the above bug.

25 December 2006

Jose Carlos Garcia Sogo: Python tips for vim

I am using Vim a lot to code in Python. One of the most important thing in Python is indent code properly as t uses indent to mark code blocks, and making that right is a bit painful, as you usually end mixing tabstops with white spaces, which makes code almost unreadable when you open it with an editor with a different tabstop setting. To avoid that, using whitespaces is recommended, but it would be nice that those could be inserted automtacally, and that is what the following lines of code added to your ~/.vimrc file make. 
" Tip: set indent parameters for python files.
" Version: 0.1
" Date: 13 May 2006
"
" Description: most python scripts use four spaces for indenting, but
"              sometimes you will end up editing a script where tabs
"              are used; in these situations it can be useful to
"              automatically detect whether spaces or tabs were used,
"              and set some parameters (or call some functions) consequently.
"
" Usage: you can put this script in you vimrc and call the PyIndentAutoCfg
"        function with an autocmd associated to python files, or call
"        it manually, or put it in the python.vim syntax script, or... :-)
" Function to set parameters for python scripts that use
" spaces for indention.  This is also the default.  YMMV.
function PySpacesCfg()
  set expandtab " use spaces in place of tabs.
  set tabstop=8 " number of spaces for a tab.
  set softtabstop=4 " number of spaces for a tab in editing operations.
  set shiftwidth=4 " number of spaces for indent (>>, , ...)
  set smarttab
  set autoindent
  set smartindent cinwords=if,elif,else,for,while,try,except,finally,def,class
endfunction
" Function to set parameters for python scripts that use
" tabs for indention.  YMMV.
function PyTabsCfg()
  set noexpandtab
  set tabstop=4
  set softtabstop=4
  set shiftwidth=4
  set autoindent
endfunction
" This function returns 1 if the file looks like a python script
" that uses tabs for indenting, or 0 otherwise.
function PyIsTabIndent()
  let lnum = 1
  let max_lines = 100 " max number of lines to check.
  let got_tabs = 0
  let got_cols = 0 " 1 if the previous lines ended with columns.
  while lnum = max_lines
    let line = getline(lnum)
    let lnum = lnum + 1
    if got_cols == 1
      if line =~ "^\t\t" " at least two tabs, to prevent false-positives.
        let got_tabs = 1
        break
      endif
    endif
    if line =~ ":\s*$"
      let got_cols = 1
    else
      let got_cols = 0
    endif
  endwhile
  return got_tabs
endfunction
" Check the file, and run the relative function.
function PyIndentAutoCfg()
  if PyIsTabIndent() == 1
    call PyTabsCfg()
  else
    call PySpacesCfg()
  endif
endfunction
" Call the PyIndentAutoCfg function.  Uncomment this line if you've copied
" this script in the python.vim syntax file or something like that.
" call PyIndentAutoCfg()
au BufNewFile,BufRead *.py call PyIndentAutoCfg()
Also, if you want to convert a file using tabs to spaces, you can do it by using the following Vim commands.: 
:set expandtab
:%retab
Update: Stefano posted about using filetype hook files instead of au groups. I think it is smarter, and I didn't knew about after/ dir in ~/.vim. So following Stefano's advice, you should put the ebove script in ~/.vimrc/after/ftplugin/python.vim, so it gets loaded automatically when you open a Python file.

22 December 2006

Evan Prodromou: 1 Niv se CCXV

I'm pretty happy about the way the 'Ten Web 2.0 APIs you can really use' episode of the LinuxCast came out so well. I'm not very used to talking for recording, and like everyone I don't particularly enjoy hearing my own voice recorded (do I really sound like that?), but it was fun to do, and I think it's a nice adjunct to the Ten Web 2.0 APIs you can really use article itself. tags:

Tijuana We're on a trip in Southern California this week, so we decided yesterday to go to Tijuana for the day. Maj, Amita June and I got out of the condo we're staying at in Encinitas early in the morning -- well, early for a vacation day -- and headed down to downtown San Diego. It's a trip of about 25 miles, with one tricky turnoff at highway 805 that seems to get me every time I visit this part of the world. Going into Mexico with a car can be a bit of a hassle. Many American insurers don't cover cars going into Mexico, and you'll often get asked about insurance when you cross over. There are some quick-and-dirty insurers on the border that can give you one-day insurance or other short-term coverage, but we have a rental car right now, and most (all?) rental car companies forbid with bitter, mouth-foaming forbiddance driving the car across the border. Fortunately for us, San Diego has a great way around this problem. Their trolley system goes from downtown San Diego right up to the border in San Ysidro. So, we picked it up in the Civic Center downtown, after a brief stop at the Downtown San Diego Vistors Center (to get tourist material), a shopping foray at a stall outside of the downtown Macy's (to get Amita June a pair of purple Crocs), and a side trip into the Westin for a bathroom break. Man, the Westin in San Diego has nice bathrooms! I'd heard about these trolleys in the past, and I guess I'd expected a kind of fancy tourist train, but it's really just the Blue Line for typical light-rail trains for San Diego and its suburbs. The seats were comfortable, but the train right-of-way went through some of the least scenic parts of Southern California I've ever seen. There's something about this corner of the United States of America that's depressing and end-of-the-world; I get the same feeling about other borderlands, like around Plattsburgh and Laredo. The end of the line for the trolley is completely opaque as to how get into Mexico. We wandered around past some ugly strip malls until Maj spotted a tiny oblique walkway that said "US PROPERTY SUBJECT TO SEARCH AND FINE" and in much smaller letters "a Mexico - to Mexico". We went through a wiggly walkway and across the no-man's land between the scary metal fence at the US border and the actual Mexican customs area. Nobody was there, but we got the feeling we were being watched. At the end of this weird walk was a very nice tourist info center, where we got some maps and brochures and such. Another 10 minutes walk through the streets up against the fence, we got to Avenida Revolucion, the central way through the Tijuana/Zona Centro. It had been a while since we'd been to a city with aggressive touts, so getting yelled at by people in shop doorways or in the street was a bit of a jolt. I hate the invasion of my anonymity, and I'm pretty reflexive about saying "NO NO NO NO NO" to everyone, but Maj is a little more practical. "If everything is run by aggressive sideshow barkers, you're going to miss out on everything," she points out. "Sometimes, you have to say 'yes', even if you don't like the way the question was asked." By the time we hit av. Revolution, we were pretty tired, so we stumbled into the first restaurant we found -- El Torito, a big nightclub with go-go cages, a mechanical bull, and a tattoo parlour on premises. I was attracted by the racy Absinth Mexico posters. "Family restaurant, family place," said the touts, seeing the baby in the stroller. Sure. The food wasn't bad -- I made the mistake of ordering the fish Vera Cruz, but the waiter made a smelly-face and suggested I get the shrimp instead -- and the cocktails at 1PM were generous and inexpensive. Probably the nicest part was a guy with a guitar who came over and asked to sing. "We've got enough music," said Maj, pointing at the ceiling where loud disco tunes were booming. But he was insistent, so we let him play, and he sang a loud Besa Me Mucho that drowned out the Ricky Martin and had us, the waiter, and nearby diners singing along by the end. Amita June was fascinated by the sounds, and clapped along when he was done. After lunch we walked down av. Revolucion, which had a dense layer of souvenir shops and discount pharmacies offering Viagra and Cipro without a prescription. One weird repeated theme was donkeys painted as zebras, hooked up to carts where you could sit and get your picture taken for $2. Some of the donkeys looked pretty good in their zebra stripes, but most looked pretty bummed out. I'm not sure why tourists would expect to get their picture taken with a zebra while in northern Mexico. It got a lot nicer as we got down to the end of the block, and we kicked ourselves for being so lazy when we passed Chiki Jai, a charming little restaurant with tiled walls and rough wood furniture. Much more to our tastes than El Torito. We stopped at the monumental Jai Alai courts, with a beautiful facade and a nice statue out front. Ducking into the Tia Juana's next door, we did a diaper-change break and had some chips and salsa and pineapple juice (and Dos Equis Dark on tap for Papa). Then we started walking back to the border. On our way back, we got off of Revolucion and walked over to the city's Cathedral. It was a much more realistic part of the town -- shopping and bars and restaurants, true, but less ridiculous touristy crap. When we got to the cathedral, there was a holiday street fair going outside, with games and food stalls and people laughing and walking around with kids. It felt a little more human than the pressure-tactics-dense world of Revolucion. On our way back to the border crossing, we dipped briefly into the red light district at the head of av. Constitucion (who knew?), then made the long slog back to the USA. We didn't get much in the way of souvenirs, but Maj bought a nice set of luchador dolls for her brother, complete with a tiny wrestling ring. The line at the border was huge, and we had to wait at the trolley station for another 30 minutes before one left for SD again. By the time we got back downtown, around 5:30, we really weren't up for a dinner in the San Diego/Gaslamp Quarter like we'd originally planned. So we piled into the car, paid the $20 parking to get out, and headed right into rush-hour traffic that led to the over-populated and under-networked North County (San Diego County). Would I take the trolley to Tijuana again? Maybe. Next time, I'd probably go to one of the stops between San Diego and San Ysidro, where there are free parking lots and a little less hassle. tags:

Hazards of vacation homes I was just rifling through the fridge here at the condo in Encinitas and found what I thought was a delicious Abita beer, the fine drink you have when you can't handle another hurricane in New Orleans. But it turned out to be an Abita Purple Haze, a gross raspberry-wheat beverage. Unfair! It has probably been stuck in the back of the fridge of this condo for years. Fortunately there was still another Stone Pale Ale, from the North County local microbrewery, to satisfy my lunchtime beer needs. tags:

20 December 2006

MJ Ray: SPI gives away opensource.org and opensource.net

For various reasons, Software in the Public Interest (SPI) owned the domains opensource.org and opensource.net, which have been managed by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) for most of their life. This supported various SPI goals and also gave a possibility of community control of opensource.org/net just in case it was ever needed. OSI does not offer much opportunity for community control, as it is a self-appointing board. (Regular readers may remember that the principles of democratic member control, autonomy and concern for community are important to me.) I was watching as the SPI board voted in favour of giving away the opensource domains, proposal 2006-11-18.dbg.mjs.1 on the agenda. The vote happened without any discussion in the meeting. From memory (I guess logs will appear on the SPI site eventually):- David Graham ("SPI must also be involved in the promotion of and education about open source") proposed and voted for this action that stops SPI being involved in this promotion and education about open source; Michael Schultheiss ("I look forward to SPI's future expansion") (amended and?) voted for this action that reduces SPI; Neil McGovern ("achieve a greater degree of involvement [...] from the community in general") voted for this action that lessens SPI's involvement; Jimmy Kaplowitz ("It is important that it continue holding in trust the money and other legal assets belonging to its member projects [...] fulfill some more of its stated corporate purposes, involving education of the general public about free software and about computers in general") voted for this action that drops these assets and reduces involvement in education of the general public; Bdale Garbee ("would like to close this issue one way or another, once and for all") seemed willing to vote for anything which prevented further discussion - of course, only surrendering the domains could close it once and for all, as this is a one-way trapdoor topic - but had apologised for absence from the meeting; Martin "Joey" Schulze had apologised for absence from the meeting; Josh Berkus (nothing obviously relevant in his platform) abstained - consistent but disappointing; I think Branden Robinson was missing. Ian Jackson ("SPI's role is to provide a stable legal entity which can hold assets") voted against this action so that SPI would keep holding these assets. Bravo! Sources: The quotes above are the board's own promises in their election platforms, as listed on the SPI site in 2003 2006 apart from Bdale Garbee's platform which wasn't at the link given in 2004 so that quote is from the minutes of the previous meeting If some board members are willing to give away assets for no good reason, that strikes at one of SPI's core methods: holding assets for the community. What can we trust about this board? Their platforms are full of fine sentiments, but how do their actions reflect their platforms? This may be a mostly-dormant issue until the next election. If you want any of SPI's assets, just ask. If your request is rejected (as SPI rejected the opensource domain give-away before), just keep asking new sets of voters until they agree.

19 December 2006

Daniel Baumann: Mozilla Locales Packaging

Mozilla Firefox Locales In 2004, we had for every individual localization a dedicated source package in the Debian archive, such as: mozilla-firefox-locale-ar, mozila-firefox-locale-ca, etc. This is a mess from every point of view. First, it creates much overhead on the archive infrastructure side as well as on the maintainers one, and second, since it often results in localization packages out of sync with the browser, it is a major pain in the ass for the users. Mozilla Firefox Locales All In January 2005, Cesar Martinez Izquierdo introduced the common source package mozilla-firefox-locale-all which included most of the available localizations. That was the inital step to clean up the mess. Later, David Moreno Garza and Luk Claes took the package over and accompanied it through the Mozilla Firefox to Firefox transition. Iceweasel l10n In September 2006, I jumped in as the new maintainer. Since then, the package did continue to evolve: Additionally, iceweasel-l10n as of 2.0+debian.1-1 supports 43 languages in total. That is more than any other distribution (yes, including Ubuntu :) contains. Icelizard Currently, the locale packages for iceape and icedove are not unified. This September, I was writing to the some of the maintainers but they seemed not interested to fix it for Etch. I will try it again in 2007, my aim is to have proper unified localization packages for all icelizard applications in Lenny. Update: iceweasel-l10n 2.0.0.1+debian-1 adds Valencian localization, so supporting 44 languages now.

16 December 2006

Martin Michlmayr: Debian QA meeting in Extremadura

The last few days I attended a Debian QA meeting in Badajoz in the Spanish region of Extremadura. I worked on a number of QA tasks, like cleaning out bug reports for removed packages and tidying up some WNPP bugs. I also started another compilation run of the archive using GCC 4.2. In general, I worked on a number of TODO items I had, such as updating my Debian on Cobalt pages for etch, and responded to some email. My inbox is actually empty right now and there are few specific things I need to do, even though there's a lot in general, just like always. Tomorrow I'll head back to Madrid to meet up with some friends. Apparently we'll go bowling. On Monday I'll briefly visit the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos where I stayed for three months earlier this year before catching a flight to Austria where I'll spend New Year.

7 December 2006

Martin Zobel-Helas: Preparation for r5 started

I just sent the first preparation mail for r5, which will either happen end of December or 48h before the release of Etch, whatever comes first. It currently does not cover all packages, as there are still quite a couple (more then 20) packages that need to be accepted from p-u-new by ftpmaster. Stay tuned for more information during the next days.

6 December 2006

Matthew Garrett

Regular viewers may have noticed a reduced frequency of updates lately. This is due to unfortunate circumstances.

But anyway.

Fed up with Bruce Perens claiming to speak on your behalf? Object that someone who hasn't written any useful code in approximately forever wants to class you as being in the same category of people as him? Think it's a bit off for him to claim random things about the meaning of the GPL? Irritated that there's no way to make this clear to journalists?

Now there's a solution!

Visit Bruce Perens does not speak for me and let the world know that when Bruce says that the Open Source community is fighting the same sort of battle that Martin Luther King did, you'd rather not be included.

MJ Ray: ippimail: Free Software web-mail with a feel-good factor

Cutting Free reviewed ippimail: Free Software web-mail with a feel-good factor as a googlemail replacement. Steev commented:
"Nothing against ippimail, I do like the fact that it uses ad revenue to fund charities, even of my choosing, however, the difference between ippimail and googlemail IS the interface. No offense to the developers, but squirrelmail/horde really needs to be updated. There are many issues with it, which is why any time I use a webmail service that has squirrelmail/horde installed, I immediately look for a way to download the mail and read it in a mailclient of my choice, the thing is - that is going against the whole point of webmail. I haven't researched a lot of your arguments against Google, and I plan to, but just wanted you to know that even though I like what ippimail is doing, I simply cannot stand the interface."
I can't comment much on that: I've used squirrelmail without problem in the past. I tried to look at googlemail soon after its launch and was defeated by its totally-WCAG-busting interface. Simon Martin responded with a comment:
"Steev, The interface to Squirrelmail is being updated slowly. To speed the process, help spread the word about ippimail so we can afford to spend more time/money on it." "Hula also seems to be gathering momentum since the community got their hands on it properly..."

3 December 2006

Andree Leidenfrost: Upgrade Testing with QEMU

I have been really busy until two weeks ago [Shameless plug: If you need a (technical) project manager and/or hands-on Basis person to get your SAP R/3 system upgraded to ECC6, get in touch.]. Which means I've been a bit slack - so slack in fact that Andreas Barth had to resolve an RC bug in one of my packages - mea culpa.

Ridden by guilt I decided to finally do what I've been wanting to for some time: Putting the steps together to do a Debian test upgrade using QEMU. I chose QEMU because it is free and readily comes with Debian. It is slower than VMware, at least without the non-free kernel module, but still usable on somewhat reasonable hardware. The actual upgrade steps given below are independent of the virtualisation technology used, so they will apply to VMware as well.

Without further ado, here goes:
All in all, things seem to work ok. However, this is far from hitting the friendly green upgrade button and it just happens. So, I thought I try the next best thing to the friendly green upgrade button which is synaptic. Doing an upgrade with synaptic does actually work quite smoothly. It needs to be restarted a few times, leaves some cruft in terms of obsolete and orphan packages and the reboot doesn't really work from within Gnome, but other than that it is ok. Most notably, it didn't leave me with an unusable system in the middle of it all.

Robert Collins made some interesting remarks about the challenges of upgrades last week when we had dinner with Martin Krafft and a number of other great people. It looks like the Ubuntu folks are working on improving update-manager but also the underlying infrastructure to smooth out the upgrade process. Maybe there could be an opportunity to work together on this and achieve a situation where upgrades become as smooth as installs are now due to the fantastic work of the d-i people.

27 November 2006

Jon Dowland: Thecus

Yesterday I installed debian on my thecus n2100. Thanks to Martin Michlmayr for putting up with my neurotic questions during this process. Normally, this would take about 2 hours. Unfortunately I hit a bug in the r8169 network driver (or the hardware) which made the process excruciatingly slow: over 8 hours. I did delay the process somewhat by going for a stable installation first time through. You need to go for etch, for anyone following along at home. I have two hard discs in this box and I wanted to use RAID-1 for the root filesystem. Actually, the two discs were already in a linux RAID-1 set, with superblocks, an ext3 filesystem and some files, from when I was using the default thecus firmware. The following approach lets you setup RAID in the installer and preserve any existing data. You will need to have at least one connection to the installer running a shell, in addition to the one running the installer. When you enter the disc partitioner stage, you will need to fetch the udeb which gives you the md module. For the current thecus installer image, that's md-modules-2.6.18-3-iop32x-di_1.5_arm.udeb. wget it from a mirror (path pool/main/l/linux-kernel-di-arm-2.6) and udpkg -i it. Then restart the partitioner. To preserve the contents of the RAID-1, you might be able to select "don't wipe this partition", and just make sure nothing on it would clash with the directories that Debian will create. I didn't take this approach. Instead, you can drop one of the discs from the mirror, continue with the installation as normal, copy the data back across after, and re-add the disc to the mirror set. Before you select your filesystems in the partitioner: Now feel free to let the installer stick a new filesystem on the RAID set, and install the base system etc. Once the thing has booted: Periodically check on the rebuild status with mdadm -D /dev/md0. One other thing I would strongly advise is getting the installer's debconf priority to medium or lower before you get the base system installed, so you can skip the bootloader / flashing stage. Update: I've clarified the following paragraphs. At present, the default etch kernel is 2.6.17. The network device in the Thecus is not supported by this kernel, so you have to manually install a particular 2.6.18 kernel prior to rebooting, or you will not be able to communicate with the machine once it boots. Martin makes this very clear in his instructions. However, if you have no experience using a d-i which flashes the kernel (as appose to say, the bootloader prompts you get when doing an x86 install, for example) you may not be aware that by default, the flash stage proceeds without prompts. That means that if you do not prevent it from doing so, there will be a window between the installer flashing 2.6.17, and you manually installing 2.6.18, where the thecus will be in an unbootable state, should you suffer a power cut or similar problem. In my case, I left the base system being unpacked overnight (due to the fact the network was so slow). So, that window was several hours wide. This is only a temporary situation, as the release team plan to have 2.6.18 available for Etch, and the patches for the Thecus hardware are steadily working their way into the mainline kernel.

23 November 2006

Christian Perrier: I cheated...

...a little, Jesus. I just sent 3 bug reports in a row, in name of the French translation team and the last one (which happens to be my translation for libroxen-imho debconf templates) won (yeah, I cheated twice). Considering that Michel Grentzinger already got #200000 in the past, we couldn't make less, indeed (yes, Noel). Funnily, looking at these old bug reports, I found that #100000 was fixed by a future DPL (Branden) and #200000 by the then DPL (Martin Michlmayr). So, if you dream to run for DPL, you should consider NMU'ing libroxen-imho with the patch offered in #400000, or you should be Turbo Fredrikson, the package maintainer. Interesting stats: So, the bug reporting rate is indeed more or less constant during last years.

20 November 2006

Andreas Barth: Bugs to sell

There are a couple of bugs around where it would be a shame to remove the package (or where it is next to impossible), which are hard to fix for outsiders but should be way easier for people inside: There are a couple of more such bugs available, please feel free to visit our RC bugs list yourself.

18 November 2006

Martin F. Krafft: Online in the skies

I am sitting on Singapore Airlines flight SQ 25 from Frankfurt to Singapore and have wireless connectivity, reasonable for SSH usage. The service provider ConnexionByBoeing is phasing out of business, and in a move to appease the passengers, made the service free of charge in October, throughout the end of the year. This is definitely a first for me, to be able to "surf" several thousand metres above the ground. And while it certainly makes the next twelve hours seem like a lot less [*], I do wonder whether I'd even want broadband on every (long-distance) flight. Flying has always been relaxation to me, time off to read or watch movies I'd otherwise never see, to sleep, dream, stare at clouds, talk, think, be, drift. With the Internet available, work could creep into this time for those who lack control over their use of time. While I tend to disagree that I fall into this group, my dear friend Hanspeter seems to think otherwise. And isn't it great how in such situations, denial does nothing but reconfirm the position of the proponents? It's like smoking, which I do on the occasion. Tell someone that you're "only an occasional smoker" and you'll likely earn an expression of pity and averseness as your peer marks you down as a smoke addict.
[*]

Singapore Airlines is making this a very enjoyable experience. Asian hospitality really amazes and captures me every time. I only wish I had more time than a few days in Singapore.

We're flying in a Boeing 747-400, either very new or completely redone. The in-flight entertainment spans 80 on-demands movies, 90 TV shows, about 200 audio CDs, and several documentaries and live news channels. Add the Internet and those long hours are history.

12 November 2006

Andreas Barth: Experimental and autobuilding

Experimental is autobuild, but on an best-effort basis (which is a different thing than what happens with unstable). In other words, it can happen that a package is not build on all architectures, and nobody does anything to fix that. If that happens to one of your packages, please contact us (Martin Zobel or me), and we'll try to fix that. I just have rescheduled glibc in experimental on two architectures.

11 November 2006

Aurelien Jarno: Experimental is not autobuilt (at least for glibc)

Martin, I can’t let you say that experimental is autobuilt. I have uploaded a few versions of the glibc to experimental in the last few months and only arm, hppa and alpha have tried to build them. Before the summer mips and mipsel also have tried to build the experimental glibc. And the last version has not been tried on alpha, despite the fact it includes a fix and should now build correctly on this architecture.

Hopefully I have most Debian architectures at home, but alpha, m68k and ia64, so I can build the glibc on my own machines. For m68k and ia64, I can use debian.org machines. Concerning alpha, the debian porting machine, ie escher.debian.org, is locked down since the compromise about 4 months ago. And no answer to my mail to debian-admin… Hopefully a user kindly gave me an access on his machine, thanks. The glibc 2.5 is now building correctly on this machine, but I can’t upload the package because I can’t trust the machine. That really sucks. What about removing alpha from the release architectures? After all, it fails to comply with the etch candidate release architecture criteria for months. Update: Some build daemons had glibc in “weak-no-autobuild”. Thanks Martin for fixing that.

10 November 2006

Martin Zobel-Helas: Does anyone actualy read mails from the release-team?

Yesterdays statistic from debian-devel-changes: 17x “New upstream release” with only 2 packages actualy fixing bugs! 5x “Initial Release“! Guys, that close before the release, use experimental, that is what it is for. And it gets autobuilded for almost all architectures (1 buildds (s390) currently down). Thanks for helping to get the release out in time. No Tags

9 November 2006

Martin F. Krafft: Get out while you still can!

Via interesting-people and from sianews:
Forget no-fly lists. If Uncle Sam gets its way, beginning on Jan. 14, 2007, we'll all be on no-fly lists, unless the government gives us permission to leave-or re-enter-the United States. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (HSA) has proposed that all airlines, cruise lines-even fishing boats-be required to obtain clearance for each passenger they propose taking into or out of the United States. It doesn't matter if you have a U.S. Passport - a "travel document" that now, absent a court order to the contrary, gives you a virtually unqualified right to enter or leave the United States, any time you want. When the DHS system comes into effect next January, if the agency says "no" to a clearance request, or doesn't answer the request at all, you won't be permitted to enter-or leave-the United States. [more...]
Here's a PDF with more information about this proposed regulation. Next thing we'll see is American officials travelling to Germany in the hopes to find how-to documents in the archives of the former Stasi. Disgusting. Update: the original NPRM (whatever that may mean) by the DHS is available from here. The IP thread is here and this post has some more information. NP: Amplifier / Insider

6 November 2006

Martin F. Krafft: Alternative, innovative search engines

These days (and for quite a while now), the populace equates "search" with Google. If you're like me, you'll also use alternatives. For instance, I've been quite happy with the clustered sorting provided by Clusty, which produces pretty good search results, but it isn't the fastest of all. Also, Eurekster's Swicki technology looks promising, and I am currently investigating whether it could make a good search platform for the Debian project. What do you use as alternatives to Google? What I am after aren't answers like "Yahoo" or "A9", but rather more innovative search approaches. The days of index searches and even "Page Rank" are over, IMHO. What's next? Let's hear it, please! NP: Proto-Kaw / Before Became After Update: Fabian Greffrath pointed me to Metager2, which is a meta search engine (meaning it lets others do the search), which also inspects the pages in the search result set and thus promises better quality of the results. I could not yet find more technical details except that it's Linux/Python-based. It seems to be rather centred on German contents, and the way it displays linked pages in the search results consumes too much screen estate for me. Update: Steve McIntyre contributed Trexy, which is also a meta engine that records your previous searches or lets you profit from other people's search "trails". I am not a big fan of meta searches, since those are really good at screwing up the sorting order by the engines they use, but I might try this one.

Martin F. Krafft: Fascists in the air and on the ground

The EU has published the new guidelines for hand luggage on flights, following the foiled, alleged "terrorist" attacks at Heathrow airport in August of this year. Let's all raise our hands and cheer to the great authorities with their far-sighted wisdom for making flying so much safer. As of today, you're not allowed to transport any liquids in your regular hand luggage, because, as we all know, it's trivial to blow up a plane with liquid explosives. Previously, only the UK, as the little brother of the Excited States of America, bought this obvious security enhancing measure; today all of the EU followed. I am not claiming they had to or were forced, I think our "leaders" in Brussels are stupid enough to make the move themselves. From now on, liquid containers have to be transported in zip-lock bags, which you're expected to bring yourself. Every container holding less than 100ml has to be placed into that bag; if the bag is full, that's it, you can only take one (I wonder how long it'll be until you can buy zip-lock bags big enough to hold, say, 20 litres...). And of course, the bags have to be scanned separately, at participating airports only, of course. Just like some airports don't care about your laptops while others make you switch the thing on, I am sure those bags will be scrutinised differently depending on where you are. Containers of more than 100ml are simply not allowed anymore, including drinking liquids, unless purchased at the overpriced airport stores (which account for roughly 30% of an airports revenue), of course. Our ladies will be able to bring lip stick in their pockets, but the "softer" chap sticks (Labello etc.) are considered dangerous and thus must go into the bag. Confusing? Expect even longer delays! Ample time to think about it all! All this is obviously only being done for our safety, and to shield us from the mean "terrorists". Thank you, you smart decision makers. If it weren't for you, we might all live freely and die happily. NP: Amplifier / The Astronaut Dismantles HAL Update: Kevin Fullerton points out that at least in the UK, the bags are limited in capacity to one litre, and that "verified" prescription medicine and baby food are exempt. I shall now go to my doctor and get a recipe for a two litre water bottle. I doubt I'll pass as baby any longer. In spirit maybe, but I don't think they'll care. Update: Andreas Schuldei points out that a friend of his with a Ph.D. in chemistry tells the opposite from what Perry Metzger claims in the article linked above. I'd be interested to hear more about that. But I agree with you: you don't need liquid explosives or bombs at all to wreak some havoc in the skies. All this security theatre hardly improves security there will always be a hole, and someone will find it. On the other hand, with the publicity around "heightened security" (and related fairy tales), the average passenger is more likely to feel safe when s/he is not. Similar to the story of the boy who cried wolf, I wonder whether the authorities are not making it easier for the "terrorists". Note that I am playing their game, the game in which our authorities are trying to win, the battle long lost before it even started. I don't think the threat is airplanes crashing into football stadiums, important landmarks, or buildins with many people; I think the real threat is terror, and I am not the only one to claim that on this front, the terrorists have long won. Our politicians either don't get it, or they do and are now furiously attempting to piggy-back intelligence measures for greater "internal control", while using the public excitement as a platform for their policitical campaigns. For a leader to be able to push his/her own agenda, s/he can do a whole lot of talking and fail, or instill fear among the people and boldly forge ahead, for them to follow. I don't recall who said that which I freely quoted. Update: Wouter van Heyst pointed me to this film, which is a three part documentary. screened by the BBC in January 2005 (see Wikipedia). IMDb user ratings of 9.2/10 with 675 votes... just means I'll have to get that film. You can download it for free from archive.org, see it at Google Video, or just read the argument summary.

Next.

Previous.