This morning started with a call from my mom. She was calling to let us know that my grandmother had apparently taken a turn for the worse, and we didn t know how much time was left. Terah, Jacob, and I got dressed and went to the hospital to visit. Grandma had been in a partial coma that left her able to hear, nod, and hold hands, but unable to speak. Apparently she came out of it overnight, and was talking and even singing with my mom and aunt some. She seemed happy, loved to hear the old German prayers she grew up with. She said some memorable things I ll have to write about later too. By the time we got there, she wasn t that active anymore, and was about like she was yesterday. She could see us, and give our hands a squeeze, maybe nod occasionally. She drifted asleep often. One time when I saw she was awake with her eyes open, I lifted up Jacob to where she could see him. Immediately her face brightened, and I saw the biggest smile on her face that I d seen in days! She smiled and waved to him, and with a small bit of coaxing, he waved back. Then she wiggled her foot, and when Jacob noticed, he wiggled his foot back at her. He s 92 years younger than her, and they still managed to communicate just fine. Grandma held my hand for awhile this morning; she loves to have a hand or two to hold. My cousin showed up for a visit, and I was going to get up to let her sit down, and when grandma felt my hand leaving, she grabbed on tighter. I went around to the other side of the bed and held the other hand. In the last couple of days, grandma s hearing has become much sharper than before, and I m pretty sure her memory has too. When it was time for us to leave and go to church, I was holding her hand, looking into her eyes, saying goodbye, and how much I loved her. I got a hand squeeze, and saw a few tears at her eyes the first I can remember seeing that. As I pulled my hand away to leave, she once again grabbed tighter and was still looking at me. I think she thought this was the last time she d see me, and didn t want the moment to pass too quickly. But that also guaranteed that I d be back in the afternoon. It was Palm Sunday in church today, and as every year, the Palm Sunday celebration ends with Bill singing I walked today where Jesus walked while Dale carries in a heavy cross. Right when Bill is singing I climbed the hill on Calvary, where on the cross He died! , Dale is climbing the steps to the stage and laying the cross there. Hardly a dry eye in the room at that. For lunch, my parents were still hosting their monthly college student get-together/home cooking event which we usually attend too. After that, I dropped off Terah and Jacob at home, and went back to the hospital. By the time I had left, grandma had 27 visitors just today. When I arrived, my great uncle (her brother) and aunt were there, along with her pastor and a deacon from her church, plus my mom and my aunt. More people came and went throughout the afternoon, and I enjoyed visiting and hearing stories about the family and grandma all afternoon. She was sometimes awake and able to look at people, and sometimes deeply asleep. I heard her say God bless you to several people. It was awhile before I had a chance to go be with her, and when I did, she was asleep, so I sat beside her bed and held her hand for quite awhile, maybe an hour, while visiting with family in the room. At one point, a nurse came in to give her some more morphine by IV. I got up to get our of her way, but the nurse said, Don t think of it; I can work around you, and what you re doing is more important than what I m doing anyway. Some of her old friends from church came by, and prayed with her in German, and recited the words to some German hymns and poems, which I think she really enjoyed. Her eyes were closed through most of it, but when they got to the end of each item, they opened, saying thank you, I believe. Eventually things calmed down, and it was time for me to head home. Grandma was awake by then, and I looked at her and said goodbye, and that I was glad I got to see her again. We gave each other a final hand squeeze, and then she let go of my hand this time. I m glad I came back for sure. They say sometimes that people that are dying feel like they need permission to die, before they will let themselves go. I wondered if grandma was feeling that way today. But then I hear that my uncle, who is driving in from 8 hours away through wintry weather, called and ask that she be given this message: Tell mom that I m coming, but if Jesus gets there first, she should go with him. That might not work on everybody, but for her, it s the best way I could think of to give her permission.

New York City is home to fantastic set of libraries, including the the mothership of libraries, the NYPL. My favorite library is one that is much smaller, located in the north of Manhattan on the campus of Columbia University: East Asian Starr. Quiet and compact, there are tall ceilings, dark wood, stained class windows, and reading nooks. When I enter, it feels like I step back in time (if I ignore the laptops, at least). When I was an undergraduate there, it was my library of choice and I logged many hours there and have yet to find a library I so love. I also was fond of the place because of their discreet open door policy. When I was a student there, over a decade back, they were supposed to ask for you ID but they never did. When I returned back to NYC in 2007, I was thrilled to find this practice of ethical inattentiveness was still followed by the student works behind the desk. I always wanted to find out more about what sustained this practice but I never dared or was too lazy to do so. So I was pretty saddened when I popped in the library on Friday to discover a new security system that requires you to scan your ID to get in. There were large signs also indicating such, clearly seething with some passive aggressive anger expressing disbelief that this library had managed to evade security for over decade. So while it is a real shame that this gem is no longer a place that one anyone can enter at will, it is nice to know that it took so long for someone to notice.

Creating /srv/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/unstable/main/binary-kfreebsd-i386 ...
Creating /srv/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/unstable/main/binary-kfreebsd-amd64 ...
Creating /srv/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/unstable/contrib/binary-kfreebsd-i386 ...
Creating /srv/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/unstable/contrib/binary-kfreebsd-amd64 ...
Creating /srv/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/unstable/non-free/binary-kfreebsd-i386 ...
Creating /srv/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/unstable/non-free/binary-kfreebsd-amd64 ...
Creating /srv/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/experimental/main/binary-kfreebsd-i386 ...
Creating /srv/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/experimental/main/binary-kfreebsd-amd64 ...
Creating /srv/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/experimental/contrib/binary-kfreebsd-i386 ...
Creating /srv/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/experimental/contrib/binary-kfreebsd-amd64 ...
Creating /srv/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/experimental/non-free/binary-kfreebsd-i386 ...
Creating /srv/ftp.debian.org/ftp/dists/experimental/non-free/binary-kfreebsd-amd64 ...
[...]
BEGIN;
INSERT INTO architecture(arch_string, description) VALUES ('kfreebsd-i386', 'GNU/kFreeBSD i386');
INSERT INTO architecture(arch_string, description) VALUES ('kfreebsd-amd64', 'GNU/kFreeBSD amd64');
INSERT INTO suite_architectures(suite, architecture) VALUES(
       (SELECT id from suite WHERE suite_name = 'unstable' ),
       (SELECT id from architecture where arch_string = 'kfreebsd-i386' )
       );
INSERT INTO suite_architectures(suite, architecture) VALUES(
       (SELECT id from suite WHERE suite_name = 'unstable' ),
       (SELECT id from architecture where arch_string = 'kfreebsd-amd64' )
       );
INSERT INTO suite_architectures(suite, architecture) VALUES(
       (SELECT id from suite WHERE suite_name = 'experimental' ),
       (SELECT id from architecture where arch_string = 'kfreebsd-i386' )
       );
INSERT INTO suite_architectures(suite, architecture) VALUES(
       (SELECT id from suite WHERE suite_name = 'experimental' ),
       (SELECT id from architecture where arch_string = 'kfreebsd-amd64' )
       );
COMMIT;

Yes, this means Debian is finally gaining support for two more architectures which should have been done shortly after etch already, I think. The request for it certainly is old enough, and AFAIK it would have been ready for inclusion and possibly for Lenny too. Sucks it wasn t done back then. Anyway, now we have them and the porter team is working on catching up with unstable, so they can, at some later point, ask for testing inclusion to end up in squeeze. Note that right now unstable is about empty for them. Following our archive criteria, we are just doing an initial import of the minimal set of needed packages and require all the rest to be rebuild. And as soon as that is done, the initial imported packages also have to be rebuilt. But I do expect them to catch up pretty soon. The porters also already talked to our wanna-build people and DSA. Inclusion into w-b will be done today and I guess there will be official DSA maintained machines sometime soon after enough is build so they can be installed from .debian.org packages only. At least thats what I got from IRC, none of the two is my place to work on. :)

You are wondering if forgot my password of the blogging account? No I didn't, I just don't have much time to do blogging. I try to invest more time to just do things than to talk about what I have done or will do. Blogging needs time: you need a topic to blog about, you have to login, make a point, do spellchecking and so on. The result: you see about every 3 months a blog post from me. Don't get me wrong, I am doing geeky stuff every single day (except when I am on vacation maybe, but that was how many years ago, eh?).
Micro-Blogging to the rescue! You probably know micro-blogging ala twitter.com already, but for me thats something new You just post a single message with no more than 140 characters and you are done. So if you want to follow my activities, feel free to subscribe to my micro-blog found on twitter: http://twitter.com/meebey Smuxi is doing nice progress now, I made 2 important changes to archive constant progress: switch from Subversion to Git and with that switch from Trac to Redmine. Now everything is kept in feature-branches and I can switch more often between features and bug fixes without messing all up. More details about this can be found in this Smuxi blog post.

While Linux and Debian are plenty of programs for backing up your system, things change when you need a backup system for a common desktop user. In this area there is a lot of room for improvement, as programs for KDE and GNOME are years behind what programs for Windows and Mac OS X are offering.
There has been some programs intents of writing a good program, full featured and with a nice graphical interface, as Simple Backup, and its fork Not So Simple Backup, pybackpack, or TimeVault, an intent to clone Apple s TImeMachine, and it s fork TimeVaultNG written for KDE. Those are projects that start with a great impulse, even some of the mentored by Google Summer of Code, and when they reach some basic functionality, they get abandoned or not being properly maintained.
What I would like to see for a backup system for desktop user is:

• Desktop independent backend. Why implement and reimplement and reimplement again. A lot of effort is lost in early stages, until program starts to be functional. For this, using yet written utils as rdif-backup, duplicity or rdup would allow this step to get ready faster, and being more reliable.
• Frontend integrated with desktop, being it GNOME or KDE. This will imply implementing two desktop clients, so they can use technologies available to each one.
• Using dbus for communicating frontend and backend.
• Backend should be able to detect removable devicies as well as network based backups (think on NAS), and only perform the backup if they are present
• Allow to store backups also in Amazon S3. This could be in raw or even better, with a system that would allow mounting the remote device as a local HDD. This is something JungleDisk makes, and using fuse should not be hard to implement

A lot of improvement and innovation has taken place in Linux Desktop during all these years, but backups are also important for SOHO users, and they need a well integrated program for doing that, as console based solutions usually require configuration skills which desktop users don t have.
Updated 6th April 22:26 CEST: I have been recommended in comments to try Back in Time and D j Dup. Both are in active delopment, which is a bonus. The first one works in a similar way to TimeVault, while the second one works using duplicity as backend, but has support to upload the resulting files to a remote server using SSH or to Amazon S3. I will investigate more on these apps.

Here I am, utterly disgusted. Last Thursday, around 11pm, two dozens of members of Assembl e Nationale (one of the two parliament chambers in France) voted the infamous law nicknamed HADOPI. Great... For the record, this chamber in principle counts 577 members. This law is an awful blow to the Internet, the freedom of expression and the legal system in France. The official aim of this law is to put a stop to illegal file-sharing within France. With this law, specially appointed private companies will file accusations saying: this IP downloaded something illegal at this date to a central authority, and this authority will send two warnings before cutting the Internet connection of the alleged illegal downloader for up to a year. You will notice that there is no mention of what the incriminated person allegedly downloaded. There will be no possibility of appeal until the sanction is executed. This scares the hell out of me. This spits upon so many aspects of the French legal system that it is honestly impressive... What about the French principle that says that everyone is innocent until proven guilty ? Here, you are declared guilty based on a rather weak evidence (on IP address !), and you'll have to prove your innocence. What about the principle that there needs to be a fair trial before the execution of the sanction ? You'll have to prove you are innocent after the execution, with the additional fun that it will turn almost impossible to prove it. Not to mention the fact that the companies harvesting IP addresses of alleged offenders will have a great deal of access to data you're exchanging; what about privacy ? For the record, this privilege, violating the way justice works in France, had only ever be granted to anti-terrorist cells. The fun thing is that this law is useless, at least in terms of the its official goal: the day it comes into application, illegal file sharers will encrypt their exchanges or fake their IP addresses, or do whatever else they might want to do to guarantee their anonymity, and no company will ever be able to find out what it is they exchange. I won't even mention the number of false positive of these automatic accusations: many innocent French web surfers will have their connection cut without ever knowing why and without any possibility to fight back. So, what is the real goal ? Or what will be the use ? I can only speculate, of course, but it is tempting to think that this law could be used to regulate what is being expressed from France on the web. Someone is saying disturbing things ? Well, easy to shut him/her up: either fake downloads from his/her IP address or bribe a company into filing false accusations, and you'll effectively remove his/her connection while having the opportunity to further discredit the person by publicly disclosing that he/she is such a pirate that their connection was cut... Sounds neat, doesn't it ? In my childhood, teachers kept on saying that France is the country of human rights, but I can't help thinking this is less and less the case[1]. Well. That was a long rant. But I can't keep it inside: this is touching me too much. I'll add that I'm not downloading anything, and I don't have anything a priori against laws which would tend to regulate illegal file sharing. I just don't think that the (small) profits of a few justify spitting upon the freedom and the elementary rights of all people living in France. Further information, in French, can be found there. The full text of the project can be found on the website of Assembl e Nationale. [1] Please don't get me wrong. There are many countries where life is definitely more difficult than here, and where human rights are constantly scorned upon, which is fortunately not the case here yet.

I ve written twice recently about my grandmother s failing health. Yesterday, she was taken to the hospital due to severe pain. After many hours of tests, I believe her current diagnosis are: pneumonia, congestive heart failure, diabetes, gangrene in the gallbladder, and nonketotic hyperosmolar coma. She is able to hear and to see, but can t eat, drink, or talk. She can communicate a bit in other ways though. She has made it well known over the years that she doesn t want heroic measures to be taken to try to save her life in a situation like this. At this point, her treatment is focusing on making her comfortable, and she probably has a few days to maybe a week or two of life left. I went to visit her today. I walked in to her room, and she was visibly worse off than she had been a week ago. I said Hi Grandma as I went to her bedside. She with effort turned to look at me and managed to say hi back. Apparently that was the first word she said all day. She was clearly in pain, sometimes grimacing from it. It was hard to see, but I am glad I got to be with her. She wanted to hold my hand, and I sat by her bed for quite awhile doing just that. Sometimes my mom would comment that we all love each other, and I d see grandma nod, or she d give my hand an extra squeeze. My brother and his wife showed up just as I had to leave. Grandma said hi to them too, and gave them a little wave. I said goodbye as I left, and she was able to look at me and understand what was happening. I don t know if that will be the last time I ll say goodbye or not. They seem to have found better ways to treat her pain by this evening, and she is resting comfortably by now. If her condition stays like this, she will probably be moved back to her nursing home room with hospice care on Monday. She s 94, and all of us knew that this moment would come someday. I think she is the most comfortable with the idea of her death of anyone, and utterly ready for it.

Richard Glover has written a polemic about fads on the net [1]. His points are essentially good, but he does over-reach them a bit (which is part of the polemic style) and he also seems a little unimaginative about the future of technology. He starts by suggesting that Twitter [2] is a fad. Twitter has grown in popularity very rapidly, and I believe that the company is not guaranteed to last forever (the business model could fail or a better implementation of the concept could take the users). But the basic premise of Twitter (SMS length messages being published on the net in a similar manner to blog posts) is something that has been proven to work well. So even though I have not felt inclined to use Twitter (either as a reader or a writer) I don t think that the class of service will ever go away. He also cites an example of watching TV news on a mobile phone. While I believe he is right about that not being a viable business, it s because TV news itself isn t a great thing. Before the Internet was commonly used the only ways of getting news of something that happened in the last few hours was via TV or radio, if you want pictures with that then TV was the only option. If you wanted quality news (in-depth coverage, insightful analysis, and a depth of detail) then you were probably out of luck, but the best option available to you was the the newspaper. Watching a TV news segment on a mobile phone (or on a PC connected to the net) is not effective. What I want is a newspaper that is updated as soon as events happen and which contains full color pictures and video. There are a number of web sites which provide this service, The Sydney Morning Herald (which employs Richard Glover) [3] is one example. I think that the current fad for mobile phone TV is like the fad for WAP [4]. Many years ago I worked for an ISP that installed a WAP server, one of my duties was to keep the WAP server running. Everyone who knew anything about technology knew that the project was going to fail, WAP phones were horribly expensive (you could expect to spend an extra 200 guilders or more to buy such a phone) and the features of WAP were not particularly exciting. Also requiring that everything be re-written for WAP was just insanity. The problem with the WAP fad was managers who knew nothing about technology making technical decisions. I m sure that the TV on mobile phone fad is driven by managers in TV companies that are greedy for more revenue opportunities and don t stop to think about the implications. I might watch a news show on free TV, but I m certainly not going to pay by the minute to watch it on my mobile phone. Instead I can just go to a web site such as the SMH and read news items, see pictures, and even watch the occasional video (most TV news doesn t really require any video - they just re-enact scenes or use stock footage to have something on screen). Finally he makes a sarcastic reference to chocolate fondue. That reminds me, someone gave me a fondue set years ago that I haven t used yet. I ll have to make a chocolate fondue! For those of you who live in Melbourne, the restaurant of the Melbourne Swiss Club [5] offers cheese fondue for the main course and chocolate fondue for dessert. Fondue is still with us!

• [1] http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/you-could-bring-back-the-hula-hoop-if-you-found-a-way-of-connecting-it-to-the-net-20090320-94bi.html?page=-1


• [2] http://twitter.com/


• [3] http://www.smh.com.au/


• [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol


• [5] http://www.swiss.org.au/page.php?ID=249

Following the ACCEPT on packages on NEW during my vacations and the ack from the release team, I've just uploaded all Xfce 4.6 packages to unstable. Packages for your architectures should arrive on your mirror along the weekend. the NEWS.Debian (which will be displayed if you use apt-listchanges (which is a good idea)) will warn you about some upgrade precautions to take. I'm reproducing it here:

xfce4 (4.6.0.1) unstable; urgency=low

Xfce 4.6 includes multiple changes which are not directly visible to the
user but might cause problems in rare cases.

Settings management have been moved from the old MCS Manager to the xfconf
system. User settings will be migrated automatically at first Xfce 4.6
startup using the /usr/lib/xfce4/xfconf-migration/xfconf-migration-4.6.pl
script contained in xfce4-utils. Once those settings have been migrated,
the automatic run will be disabled but the script will stay (for future
users).

Menus are now managed using a dedicated library, used by various Xfce
components (including xfdesktop4 and the menu panel plugin). This library
tries to support the freedesktop.org specifications, but is not totally
complete and thus lacks the support for some items, like .
This renders useless the menu editor previously shipped with Xfce 4.4.
Solutions for menu editing can be found at the following address:
http://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu

As the upgrade is pretty invasive, it is recommended to quit Xfce before
doing so, but it's not required and upgrades have been made from the
desktop environment without problems. In that case, be sure to quit Xfce
not long after the upgrade.

-- Yves-Alexis Perez <corsac@debian.org> Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:19:53 +0200 The xfce4-goodies will be updated soon to match the new goodies present for Xfce 4.6, and the desktop task (the standard install when you choose desktop=xfce in the installer) will be updated too (there's an ongoing discussion on pkg-xfce mailing list to select which packages should be part of that install). Have a good upgrade!

Well, I'm not dead buddies. I was overbooked. Last weeks have been a bit busy for me. I've also been on holidays, so I gave up on computers stuff a bit. awesome Big news: awesome 3.2 has been released some weeks ago, and seems to be a success so far. We're working on the new 3.3 release, which will have some new sexy feature you'll love. More on that later. Debian I've uploaded a new awesome-extra package with third party modules such as shifty or wicked. startup-notification I just managed to be added in the startup-notification group at Freedesktop. I moved the CVS repository to git and merged my set of XCB patches.

I finally got this released. I'm very sorry for the long delay; life has been ridiculously busy lately. This release updates the list of valid sections, fixes a few annoying bugs (particularly in diversion handling and some problems with file 5.00 and analysis of source packages), and has some additional checks for correct package sections. Many thanks to Frank Lichtenheld and Raphael Geissert for their work on this release. I've also started the full archive run for lintian.debian.org, so it will finally be up-to-date again. Apologies to everyone for the out-of-date results there; I kept meaning to update it after the next release, and then kept finding another bug or not having a moment to do it. Lintian development will probably be slow for the next couple of months (unless my co-maintainers end up with more time to drive it forward), since I have a huge pile of work that I need to do, including deploying a virtualization environment and lots of upgrades to lenny. Things should start settling down again sometime around mid-June.

The car safety tests that are required for every new mass-market passenger vehicle are flawed in many ways. Here is a list of the most obvious flaws (please point out any that I ve missed):

1. There has been no research to make accurate crash-test dummies to represent women and children, and I believe that there has been no research to make crash-test dummies to accurately represent people of racial groups that are not common in the US. Basically the medical research used to make crash test dummies was performed on male cadavers that were readily available in the US.


2. The standard tests involve a direct collision with a centrally targeted stationary object, a direct collision with an offset stationary object, and solid objects (representing cars) hitting the vehicle from the read and the side. These simulate crashes where there is little or no attempt made to avoid the collision, they are probably really good for protecting drunk drivers. But any sane and sober driver is probably going to make some effort to avoid the collision and the resulting impact will not be at a multiple of 90 degrees. Note that when a car directly hits the side of a moving car it is quite different to hitting the side of a stationary car (which is what is tested).


3. There are no standard tests for the probability of a vehicle rolling in the event of a crash or of what would happen to the occupants if it was to roll. Rollover crashes are among the most dangerous


4. The tests do not take into account the ability of the driver to avoid a crash or minimise the damage. The ability to avoid crashes is a major advantage for cars with a low center of gravity, AWD, and traction control. It s a major problem for vehicles with a high center of gravity and with tires that are not designed for road use (IE 4WD/SUV vehicles).

But generally the crash-test results are of some use provided that you start by looking at the results from vehicles that have good safety features such as the Audi Quattro, the AWD version of the VW Passat, a Mercedes with 4MOTION, or any other vehicle with constant four wheel drive, road tires, four wheel traction control, and a low center of gravity. The RACV (the main car owners advocacy organisation in Victoria and also a major car insurance company) [1] has published the used car safety ratings report [2]. This was produced by the Monash University Accident Research Centre and is based on the analysis of 3,000,000 crashes reported to police in Australia and New Zealand. Results are only available for cars which have been in common use on Australian and New Zealand roads for some time (so there aren t many entries for vehicles that are less than 5 years old or for particularly expensive vehicles). The report also includes estimates on the purchase prices of some of the safest vehicles. A vehicle that is significantly better than average can be purchased for as little as $5000! Now if you want to buy a new vehicle then choosing the latest version of a model that has rated well on the used-car tests should be safe if the new car crash tests also report good results. It seems likely that the latest Mazda 6 or VW Passat will also rate well on the used-car tests in a few years time. It s a pity that the report didn t note which of the vehicles that rated well have models that have good features to avoid collisions such as EBA, ABS, AWD, and traction-control. A friend who is active in the free software community recently had a very lucky escape from a significant crash. From his description I doubt that car safety features had much to do with him escaping without injury, I think that it was mostly luck. While his car did have a good range of safety features (and was rated well on the used-car tests), a high-speed collision that involves a truck can easily result in a car being squashed flat. I have already sent him the RACV link which he is using as part of the process to decide what new car to purchase. But I think that this information needs to be spread more widely. I have not searched for information on such analysis of crashes being performed in other countries, please leave a comment if you know of any good research that will be useful for other people. One thing to note however is that given the global scope of car manufacturing, results from one country will have some validity in others. I expect that a VW Passat that is sold in Germany or the US will be almost identical to the Australian version.

• [1] http://www.racv.com.au/


• [2] http://www.racv.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/Internet/Primary/my+car/car+safety/used+car+safety+ratings/

Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn. Huston Smith

This is perhaps one of the most enlightening books I ve ever read, and yet I feel like I ve only grasped a small bit of its meaning. It is with that warning that I attempt this review. I should add at the outset that this is one of those books where no matter what you expect it to be, after reading it, you will find that it wasn t what you expected. I heartily recommend it to everyone, from the devoutly religious to the devoutly atheistic. Science and Scientism Smith begins with a discussion of science and scientism. He is a forceful defender of science and of the work of scientists in general. But he is careful to separate science from scientism. Paraphrased, he defines scientism as the belief that science is the only (or the best) route to truth about everything. He points out that, through no explicit fault of scientists, scientism has become so ingrained in our modern psyche that even theologians have started thinking in terms of it. Yet there are some pretty glaring flaws in scientism, particularly where it comes to matters of philosophy, conscience, meaning, and religion. Smith argues that the foundation of science is the controlled experiment and logical inferences derived from it. He then proceeds to make strong case that it is not possible for humans to set up a controlled experiment to either prove or disprove the existence of something more than our material world a transcendence, a metaphysical reality, a spirit, a God. We, with our existence trapped in this finite world, cannot possibly hope to capture and control something so much more than us in every way: intelligence, versatility, and finiteness . Thus science can t even address the question. That hasn t stopped people from claiming that religion is just a helpful delusion, for instance, despite not being able to prove whether it is in fact a delusion or reality. Worldviews Smith then asks us to indulge a moment in considering two different worldviews: one the science-only worldview so common these days, and the other a more traditional religious worldview with a rightful place for science. He defers supporting evidence for each for later chapters. The science-only worldview is pretty familiar to many, and I have even heard parts of it articulated in comments left on this blog. It goes roughly like this: The universe is x billions of years old. It is, so far as we presently know, a vast expanse with mostly dead matter. Earth is the only exception, which contains some living organisms and even sentient beings, though these make up a small fraction of even the earth. This life arrived by accident through physical and biological processes, some of which are well-understood and some aren t. In the end, the universe will again become entirely dead, as our planet will be incinerated when our sun goes nova. Or, in any case, the entire universe will eventually expire in one of various ways. This worldview suggests that it is an accident that we are here and that we have consciousness, and that our actions have no ultimate meaning because the earth will eventually be incinerated anyhow. The traditional worldview holds the opposite: that instead of having our origins in the tiniest and simplest of building blocks, and eventually improving over time, we should more properly think of ourselves as being derived from something greater than ourselves. That greater something is part of our world, but something much bigger than it too. It does not rule out science, but neither is it something that science can ever explain. It suggests that our lives have a purpose, that our work has meaning, and that there are ultimate ends to seek. Smith is a scholar of world religions, and draws on his considerable experience to point out that virtually all world religions, before the Enlightenment, drew essentially the same picture of our world and the more . He reminds us though perhaps less effectively than Marcus Borg that there are other ways of knowing truth besides science, and suggests that we pay attention to what the vast majority of humanity had to say about the nature of existence before a human invention started to squelch the story. The Stories The book is filled with personal stories (Smith spent at least a decade each researching and practicing at least four different religions), quotes, and insights. I consider it the most enlightening book on religion I have yet read. Smith has more than a passing familiarity with physics, and the physicists in the crowd will probably be delighted at his discussions of quantum mechanics and the claim that nonlocality provides us with the first level platform since modern science arose on which scientists and theologians can continue their discussions. One passage reads like this:

Again I will let Henry Stapp say it: Everything we [now] know about Nature is in accord with the idea that the fundamental process of Nature lies outside space-time, but generates events that can be located in space-time. Stapp does not mention matter, but his phrase space-time implies it, for physics locks the three together.

He says that quantum theory of course can t prove that there is a God, but that recent research seems to disprove the old notion that, given enough time, all questions will be answerable by science. Even if you disagree with every one of Smith s conclusions, you ll be along for a fascinating ride through physics, biology, philosophy, and innumerable religions. One of my favorite anecdotes concerns noted physicist David Bohm (who studied under Oppenheimer and worked with Einstein, among others). He gave a lecture at one point, apparently touching on his hidden variable theories to a great extent. At its conclusion, a senior physics professor asked derivisely, What does all this philosophy have to do with physics? Bohm replied, I do not make that distinction. How s that for something to ponder? The Writing The book is fun to read, and the stories make it all the moreso. However, it is not a light read. Houston Smith wrote this near the beginning, without any hint of irony:

The first of these differences is that Gass s is an aristocratic book, written for the literary elite, whereas mine is as plebeian as I can render its not always simple arguments.

I can think of a few simpler ways to express that thought. In any case, it isn t light reading, but it is accessible even if you, like me, have little formal training in philosophy, theology, or quantum physics. Conclusion I would do such a poor job trying to paraphrase Smith s main points that I haven t even really attempted to do so here. Get the book you ll be in for a treat. Incidentally, I had been thinking of buying the book for awhile. What finally made me do so was an NPR story about how he helped preserve the sound of the Gyuto Monks Tantric Choir back in 1964, when he (of course) was sleeping in a monastery in the Himalayas and awoke to investigate something transcendent the holiest sound I have ever heard. I pressed the Buy button for the Kindle edition a few minutes later.

When bugs in launchpad are forwarded to some upstream bug tracker, please put a comment on those upstream bug reports specifying which Ubuntu bug is related to the upstream bug.

That way, I can fix those Ubuntu bugs when the upstream release containing the bug fixes is uploaded to Debian and then migrated into Ubuntu.

All it needs is a one-liner:

This is Ubuntu bug #123456 https://bugs.launchpad.net/....

It s common to hear a complaint of the form I get paid to keep computers running not hack an OS coming from someone who uses an Open Source OS such as Linux, BSD, or Open Solaris. It seems to me that part of the job of keeping computers running when using Open Source software IS to hack the source and fix bugs. This takes the place of praying, begging, and having your employer pay arbitrary extra amounts of money to the vendor when you have problems with proprietary software. It s well understood that a good system-administrator will anticipate problems and implement solutions to them in advance. You don t wait for a system to run out of disk space and then fix it - you install cron jobs to compress and remove old log files and have a monitoring system to tell you if disk space really runs low. It seems to me that the approach that many companies take towards fixing software bugs goes against this ideal. They wait for software to fail in production and then file a bug report and hope that someone else will fix it. When allocating time for various tasks it s not uncommon to have various amounts of staff time devoted to different servers, departments, or projects. I believe that having a fixed amount of time devoted to finding and fixing bugs in Open Source software (both current versions and pre-release versions) would save money for a company in the long term. If 10% of the time of the most skilled programmers was assigned to finding and fixing bugs in the OS then the overall quality would improve. If a company depends on Debian then it would make sense to have this 10% time include testing out the production programs on Debian/Unstable, it if depends on Red Hat Enterprise Linux then it would make sense to test them out on Rawhide. This would increase the ability of the future releases of Debian or RHEL to support the applications in question, and might also discover some application bugs. Also it s very important to submit patches with bug reports. It s not uncommon for a bug report to be critically important to a user but not overly important to the rest of the world. Such bugs can stay in a bug tracking system for a long time without getting fixed. But if there is a patch submitted that includes necessary documentation patches and a description of the tests that it has passed then it will probably be easier to include it than to debate whether it s really needed. If a project is only running for a matter of weeks or months (EG a consulting company that comes in, deploys a solution and then leaves) then there is probably no benefit for doing this. But if a company is going to be running servers for many years which will periodically be upgraded then it would be a real benefit to have bugs fixed in future versions.

batteries approaching Beta 1: now in unstable It's been a while, but work on OCaml batteries included has continued steadily in the past months. We are now approaching the first Beta release, which is due in a few days. In the meantime, a couple of days ago I've uploaded the Debian ocaml-batteries package to the unstable archive for the first time (it was only available from experimental thus far). It is an almost Beta release which you are encouraged to test both for packaging aspects and for having a feeling of what batteries will look like in its final shape. To get started just do the following:

# aptitude install ocaml-batteries-included
$ ledit ocaml-batteries

Cnet has an article on the design of the Google servers [1]. It seems that their main servers are 2RU systems with a custom Gigabyte motherboard that takes only 12V DC input. The PSUs provide 12V DC and each system has a 12V battery backup to keep things running before a generator starts in the event of a power failure. They claim that they get better efficiency with small batteries local to the servers than with a single large battery array. From inspecting the pictures it seems that the parts most likely to fail are attached by velcro. The battery is at one end, the PSU is at the other, and the hard disks are at one side. It appears that it might be possible to replace the PSU or the battery while the server is operational and in the rack. The hard disks are separated from the motherboard by what appears to be a small sheet of aluminium which appears to give two paths for air to flow through the system. The thermal characteristics of the motherboard (CPUs) and the hard drives are quite different to having separate air flows seems likely to allow warmer air to be used in cooling the system (thus saving power). Google boast that their energy efficiency now matches what the rest of the industry aims to do by 2011! The servers are described as taking up 2RU, which gives a density of one CPU per RU. This surprised me as some companies such as Servers Direct [2] sell 1RU servers that have four CPUs (16 cores). Rackable systems [3] (which just bought the remains of SGI) sells 2RU half-depth systems (which can allow two systems in 2RU of rack space) that have four CPUs and 16 cores (again 4 CPUs per RU). Rackable systems also has a hardware offering designed for Cloud Computing servers, those CloudRack [4] systems have a number of 1RU trays. Each CloudRack tray can have as many as two server boards that has two CPUs (4 CPUs in 1RU) and 8 disks. While I wouldn t necessarily expect that Google would have the highest density of CPUs per rack, it did surprise me to see that they have 1/4 the CPU density of some commercial offerings and 1/8 the disk density! I wonder if this was a deliberate decision to use more server room space to allow slower movement of cooling air and thus save energy. It s interesting to note that Google have been awarded patents on some of their technology related to the batteries. Are there no journalists reading the new patents? Surely anyone who saw such patents awarded to Google could have published most of this news before Cnet got it. Now, I wonder how long it will take for IBM, HP, and Dell to start copying some of these design features. Not that I expect them to start selling their systems by the shipping crate.

• [1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10209580-92.html?tag=nl.e703


• [2] http://www.serversdirect.com/


• [3] http://www.rackable.com/


• [4] http://www.rackable.com/products/dsheet_pdfs/CloudRack_ds.pdf

After numerous frustrations being unable to get an SVN account at svn.gnome.org, drivel upstream has moved back to SourceForge and I've been folding the Debian and Ubuntu changes into the upstream for the next release. I'm also feeding the translations upstream as 2.0.3 was released with an outdated POT file and all the PO files are out of date. debian-i18n has already been asked for updates - more will follow.

(Yes, this is actually just a test post of drivel 2.0.4 - why not?)

It was 2 years ago when we started working in KDE 4 packages, and exactly 20 months ago when we started uploading KDE 4.0.0 beta 1 to experimental. Finally, we are working in packages that are targeted to unstable \o/. As announced in the users mailing list, we will be uploading KDE 4.2.2 to unstable in the next days, so look carefully at what you update :) We have worked very hard in providing a smooth upgrade, but given the change is so big, some new (little!) problems will be discovered. One of the most problematic points is we were using .kde4 to store user data and settings of KDE 4 and now it is time to switch back to the default .kde. There are several possible migration cases here and for allow users select the case they prefer, a migration wizard tool named Kaboom has been created inside the Debian KDE team. Be aware that there will be some inconsistencies in unstable the following days after KDE 4.2.2 reaches the archive. So please, be patient. We are still testing and we are not uploading until we think it is good to go, so next days could become 2 weeks. Again, be patient :) If you want to keep using KDE 3.5.10 for a few weeks more, just do not upgrade yet. But if you want to keep using KDE 3.5.10 for months, maybe you should consider become a Lenny user. If you have questions, doubts and/or suggestions, you can check our Debian KDE Team website where we try to add information and the archive of the Debian KDE users mailing list. Time for a personal note. KDE 4.2 is a huge change from KDE 3.5, and it is normal if you do not fully like it in the beginning. But I do think most of users of KDE 3 will feel very comfortable in KDE 4 after some days using it. You just need to discover the new ways of doing some tasks. Also, once KDE 4.2 is sitting in unstable, a lot of third party applications (specially plasma widgets) for KDE 4 will be finally uploaded to the Debian archive, making KDE 4 even better.

In a setup where we use Apache FastCGI with PHP through mod_fcgid and suEXEC, we experienced the problem that long running scripts always resulted in a 500 Internal Server Error after exactly 40 seconds. This is due to the IPCCommTimeout setting, but changing that setting didn't seem to yield any effect. I stumbled on a blog entry saying that they only work within the VirtualHost block. I tried this for my test-vhost but it also didn't work. It took me a while to find the complete solution (workaround): you need to specify IPCommTimeout in every VirtualHost block, because a later VirtualHost will globally reset your setting in a previous one. So until this bug is fixed the neat workaround is to place the mod_fcgid settings in a separate configuration file and Include that file inside each VirtualHost.