Recently there has been some discussion and controversy about a 15yo boy being allowed to perform a Caesarian operation on a woman (without her consent). Don Marti seems to think it’s OK and gives some examples of what 15 year old people used to do in past times. However he misses a couple of significant points, one is that the knowledge of surgery was much lower a few hundred years ago and the expectations of the patient were a lot lower, the other is that the patient in this case did not consent to being operated on by a 15yo. If the boy’s mother thought that he was capable of doing the job correctly then she could have allowed him to deliver a younger sibling… Given a choice I would rather have someone like Doogie Howser operate on me than a random surgeon - but I would be extremely unhappy to discover after an operation that it had been performed by a different surgeon than planned who didn’t have a medical license and who’s motivation was to invade my privacy by making a movie of the event! Don cites the interesting essay Against School by John Taylor Gatto which makes some really good points about the state of the education system in most first-world countries. An interesting point that John Gatto doesn’t mention is that in Japan school-boys wear uniforms that are based on Prussian military uniforms. From all the evidence that I have seen the Japanese school system is more Prussian (IE worse by many objective measures) than most countries. The Sydney Morning Herald has an interesting article comparing education systems which claims that a major cause in lack of academic performance is unjustified praise. I first became aware of the extent of this problem when discussing education with a misguided university lecturer. He told me that he felt that his purpose was to make the students believe that they had achieved something and that this was much more important than actually teaching them. My response was to point out that heroin and cocaine are both good options for people who would rather feel successful than succeed and to enquire as to whether he thought that they should be advocated for children. The conversation ended soon after that and he requested that I not name him or his university when blogging about it. I take this as an admission of guilt, if you act decently in public then you should not be afraid of appearing on a blog - decent actions will either be too boring for a blog entry or things that you are proud of.

Share This

Note: This article is part of my Testing stuff with QEMU series.

From the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD port page:

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is a port that consists of GNU userland using the GNU C library on top of FreeBSD's kernel, coupled with the regular Debian package set.

Q: Why would anybody want to do that?
A: Why not? [1] So, after we have talked about that, let's start:

1. Install QEMU:
   apt-get install qemu
2. Download the latest Debian GNU/kFreeBSD installer ISO image (either for i386 or amd64):
   wget http://glibc-bsd.alioth.debian.org/install-cd/kfreebsd-i386/20070313/debian-20070313-kfreebsd-i386-install.iso
3. Create a QEMU image which will hold the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD (i386) installation:
   qemu-img create -f qcow2 qemu_kfreebsd_i386.img 5G
4. Boot directly from the ISO image and install Debian into the QEMU image:
   qemu -boot d -cdrom debian-20070313-kfreebsd-i386-install.iso -hda qemu_kfreebsd_i386.img
5. The FreeBSD installer will now start. For more detailed instructions see the Installing Debian GNU/kFreeBSD manual.
   First you can choose between an "Express" or "Custom" install (I used "Express").
6. Next you end up in the partitioning tool. Type "a" to use the entire (QEMU) disk for the installation (the disk is called "ad0", not "hda" as on Linux). Type "q" to quit the partitioning tool.
7. You are now asked which boot manager to use. For QEMU you should use "BootMgr", the default FreeBSD boot manager. If you install on real hardware you can also use GRUB; in that case choose "None" here (see the manual for more information), but note that the installer does not install or configure GRUB for you! You should do that beforehand!
8. Next up: The disklabel editor. Here you'll create a partition ("slice" in FreeBSD-speak) for the root filesystem and a swap partition.
   Press "c" to create a new slice (will be called "ad0s1"), enter "4GB", choose "FS" (filesystem), and enter "/" for the root filesystem. Per default the UFS2 file system will be used. To create the swap partition, press "c" again, enter "1023MB", and select "swap". The new slice is called "ad0s1b". Press "q" to quit.
9. Choose "minimal" when asked which distribution to install.
10. Installation media dialog: select "CD/DVD" and "acd0" (for QEMU's ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM drive).
11. The installation will now begin, and after a while you're asked to switch to console 3 using ALT-F3. Do it.
12. You'll have to answer a bunch of questions: geographic area + city you're in (for timezone), whether you want to participate in the Debian popularity contest, whether module-init-tools should load additional drivers (no, so press ENTER three times). The installation will soon be finished.

At the end you must select "No" as you're told to do, then reboot via "Exit Install". You can then shutdown QEMU.

1. Restart QEMU with the newly installed Debian GNU/kFreeBSD:
   qemu -hda qemu_kfreebsd_i386.img
   
2. Press enter at the FreeBSD boot manager prompt, then login as root (there's no password).
3. First things first: Set up a root password:
   passwd
4. Now let's fix networking, update the system and install a bunch of packages:
   nano /etc/network/interfaces
   Yes, there's no vi, not even a symlink to nano! Uncomment the two "ed0" lines ("ed0" is the equivalent to "eth0" on Linux, I guess).
   /etc/init.d/networking restart
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get install vim xorg icewm xterm
5. You can fix your console keymap using the kbdcontrol package (just select your keymap from the menu):
   apt-get install kbdcontrol
6. Finally, let's fix X11 and start it. But first we create a new user, as we don't want to run X11 as root:
   adduser uwe
vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
   The mouse device is "/dev/psm0", the protocol "PS/2", and the graphics driver should be "vesa":

  Section "InputDevice"
      Option "Device" "/dev/psm0"
      Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
  [...]
  Section "Device"
      Driver "vesa"
    

That's about it. Login as "uwe" (or whatever your username is) and start X11:
startx

Wasn't all that hard, eh? Now, if you've got some spare time, head over to the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD wiki page and help improving this port ;-) You should probably start with reading the PORTING guide. Both kfrebsd-i386 and kfreebsd-amd64 seem to be reasonably stable already (and more than 70% of the whole Debian archive builds fine on these architectures, see kfreebsd-i386_stats and kfreebsd-amd64_stats). I'll quite likely install kfreebsd-amd64 on one of my boxes soonish and start using it, maybe I'll even find some time to fix/patch/port some packages... [1] More elaborate answer(s) and reasons are available in the Debian wiki.

We've had a lot of great blog traffic about Vinismo. I thought I'd try to pull together a few of the better ones.

• vinismo! wiki wine compendium from Hugh McGuire.
• Vinismo Opens Its Doors to Wine Lovers Everywhere from the Creative Commons Weblog. Thanks, guys!
• Vinismo: Wiki + Wine from Zach Copley
• Vinismo from Wendy Copley.
• DemoCampMontreal3 report from Montreal Tech Watch
• DemoCampMontreal3 Report from Josh Nursing
• Vinismo Presentation at DemoCampMontreal3 on the SearchAnyway Blog. Probably one of my favourite pieces, although it makes Niko real mad since it cuts off just before he starts talking. Make mental note: don't say "Uh" so much.
• Bienvenue sur Vinismo, le guide des vins libre by Niko. Niko also bemoaned the difficulty of keeping our project under wraps in Mon lourd secret bient t d voil . What a drama queen.
• Vinismo : un wiki sur le vin by Olivier Niquet. He's suspicious that we are sponsored by J. Lohr, because there are so many J. Lohr wines on our front page.

All in all it's been pretty good. I hope we'll get some more, though! tags: blogs vinismo

DemoCampMontreal3 report So, it's been a couple of days and I should probably get around to posting my own DemoCampMontreal3 report.

• Niko and I started off with our own demo for Vinismo. It was a lot of fun: we talked about the reasons for starting the site, the technical, information architecture and graphics/UI design challenges, and what our future extensions are going to be. At the end of it, we took some questions, which was fun. The most interesting for me was from Roberto Rocha, whose TechnoCit is one of my favourite tech columns in Montreal. He asked, "Your typical contributor will be much older. What will you do to make your wiki more accessible to them?" It was a good question I don't have an answer to yet, but I want to think about it more.
• The second demo was by Heri Rakotomalala, who showed off his social-networking GTD tool, WorkCruncher. It's a TODO list with a twist: items that you don't get done age off the list. You have to re-commit to doing a task on an almost daily basis. I think it's a great and refreshing design; my TODO list gets depressing long and filled with unfinishable tasks, and I get too intimidated to work on ones that really matter. I think Heri might have to make some concessions to people's expectations for TODO lists -- maybe a way to automatically archive tasks, rather than deleting them entirely...?
• The third demo was by the gang from Defensio, who are providing an great anti-spam Web service similar to Akismet. They had a few examples of where they're different, but I'm not well-versed enough in comment spam issues to understand them. My guess is that since they're getting into the market after Akismet, though, they have the opportunity to make a smarter technology. Their one downside? They used slides -- which the rules of DemoCamp. They did demo the service, though.
• Fourth up was the indefatigable Simon Law. Simon's project? To turn back time. Talk about ambitious! His effort consisted of making a typical kitchen clock turn backwards. He disassembled the clock and explained how it worked to the audience. It was great, except for two things: the clock didn't work at the end of the demo (although he got it working by the end of DemoCamp), and he took a few minutes to draw a diagram of the clock; in my mind, that's just a low-tech PowerPoint slide.
• Fifth, and quite fascinating, was a tool that Jerome Paradis showed off. It was a Google-Maps mashup that filtered special emails for an informal private jet sharing network. Apparently, companies who charter private jets often have space in the jets, so they'll make that space available. People who need a last-minute charter jet can send email from their Blackberries and such, and if there's availability they get contacted by the charter companies. The interesting part? These people use a highly structured lingo ("O/W" = "one way"), and Jerome's tool scrapes these emails to make the data into a mapping app for his customers. Very interesting!

All in all, it was a good night -- probably made better by the Argentina Cabernet Sauvignon I had. There's a DemoCampMontreal4 scheduled for August 17th, but I won't be in town for it. Too bad for me! tags: democampmontreal3 defensio workcruncher simonlaw jeromeparadis vinismo

About the recent blogs on planet debian about debian maintainers, I guess I have a couple of comments also. About me: I am currently in "waiting for DAM" stage. I have been 10 months getting there and has now waiting for 6 weeks there. Looking at the DAM queue, people have been waiting in more than 6 months. What would make the process faster for me ? Getting processed by the DAM - and then the keyring maintainer is the obvious answer. A thing that would have made my 10 months at AM stage shorter would be if the "reward" for getting the AM stage done wouldn’t have been queueing in maybe to 6 months. It wasn’t like the most motivating factor for answering my AM. The fact that it took 10 months is mostly my own fault. So what am I trying to say here? Fix it it at the DAM stage (and maybe at the keyring stage also) and see people becoming DDs faster. Without lowering the barriers - except the barriers for the ability to stand in a queue. Debian Maintainers seems mostly like a ugly hackaround this. And I kind of find my self being in the target group for some of the use of Debian Maintainers. - and I am eagerly waiting getting processed in the DAM queue. And back to development Who wants to test & fix kdm on sparc ? (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=433801)

Here’s a guide to supporting Xen servers for people who are not Linux experts. If your job means that you have root access to a Xen server that someone else installed for the purpose of fixing problems when they are not available then this will help you solve some common problems. Xen is a virtualization system that is primarily used for running Linux virtual machines under a Linux host. It is mostly used as a Paravirtualization system in that the virtual machine knows that it is running in a virtual environment - this allows some performance benefits. The host environment is known as Dom0 and root in that domain has the ability to control the other domains (which are known as DomU domains). If you perform an orderly shutdown of the Dom0 (via the shutdown or reboot commands or notification from the UPS of an impending power failure) then when the machine is booted again the DomU’s will be automatically restarted (if the on_reboot setting has the value restart - a common configuration). If you run the command shutdown in a DomU then the domain will be destroyed, and the command reboot will restart the DomU with the same settings - if you want to change the settings for a DomU you need to shut it down and create a new instance. The main sys-admin command related to Xen is xm. Here are the main xm options that are useful in support:

1. xm list provides a list of running domains. For each domain it gives the name of the domain, the ID number, the memory allocated to it, the number of virtual CPUs allocated to it, the state, and the amount of CPU time used in execution. The ID numbers are allocated sequentially, if you reboot a DomU by running the command “reboot” inside it then it will get a new ID number when it re-starts. Many xm operations that may take the name of a domain will also take a Domain ID number. Generally you never use an ID number and ignore it - the only relevant thing about an ID is whether it is 0.

Here is a sample of the output of xm list:
# xm list
Name        ID Mem(MiB) VCPUs State  Time(s)
Domain-0    0    1236    4 r---–  14116.3
wind        13    2999    3 -b----  60114.1
wind-f7    52      519    1 -b----  3329.9 You can see from this output that the domain named wind has 2999M of RAM, 3 virtual CPUs (out of 4 physical CPUs in the machine) and has 60,114 seconds of CPU time used (that is 114 minutes of CPU use - the equivalent of almost two hours for a single CPU). Here are the values you might see in the state field (from the man page xm(1)):

• r - running
  The domain is currently running on a CPU - note that Dom0 will always appear to be running because you are running the xm utility!
  
• b - blocked
  The domain is blocked, and not running or runnable. This can be caused because the domain is waiting on IO (a traditional wait state) or has gone to sleep because there was nothing else for it to do.


• p - paused
  The domain has been paused, usually occurring through the administrator running xm pause. When in a paused state the domain will still consume allocated resources like memory, but will not be eligible for scheduling by the Xen hypervisor.


• c - crashed
  The domain has crashed, which is always a violent ending. Usu ally this state can only occur if the domain has been config ured not to restart on crash. See xmdomain.cfg for more info.


• d - dying
  The domain is in process of dying, but hasn t completely shut down or crashed.

If you see domains that are running which normally aren’t busy then make a note of this. If you see domains that are paused, crashed, or dying then contact the sys-admin. Also know which domains are expected to be running so that if a domain is missing then you will recognise it as a problem!

xm top is similar to the top command in Unix but displays Xen data, by default it displays the same information as xm list but also includes the amount of data read and written from network devices and disks. If your terminal is less than about 145 columns wide the lines will wrap and it will be confusing - stretch the width of your xterm before running it.

If you have multiple network interfaces then you can see the transfer counts for each of them separately by pressing the N key. If you have multiple network interfaces in DomU’s then this can help diagnose some network problems (although you may find that tcpdump is more useful). If you have multiple disk devices in a DomU then you can see their transfer counts separately by pressing the B key. One problem that can be partially diagnosed through this is excessively poor performance. If a DomU is running extremely slowly then it may be impossible to login to diagnose and/or fix the problem (it could take tens of minutes to login), in that case seeing where the disk access is going from outside the DomU can shed some light on the problem. VBD  768 [ 3: 0]
VBD  832 [ 3:40]
VBD 5632 [16: 0]
VBD 5696 [16:40] Above is the identification of the virtual devices /dev/hda and /dev/hdb in a DomU. The numbers inside the brackets are the device node numbers in hexadecimal, so 16:40 means the device 22,64 as a pair of decimal numbers (22*256+64=5696). # ls -l /dev/hd?
brw-r---– 1 root disk  3,  0 Jul 23 17:24 /dev/hda
brw-r---– 1 root disk  3, 64 Jul 23 17:24 /dev/hdb
brw-r---– 1 root disk 22,  0 Jul 23 17:24 /dev/hdc
brw-r---– 1 root disk 22, 64 Jul 23 17:24 /dev/hdd Above is the result of a ls -l on the devices in question from inside the DomU. When I set up a Xen DomU I generally use /dev/hda for the root filesystem and /dev/hdb for swap. So if the machine is performing poorly and /dev/hdb ([3:40]) is being accessed excessively then it indicates that the machine has some memory hungry programs running and is paging heavily.

xm list –long [domain] gives detailed information on all domains, or it can be run with the name of a domain such as xm list –long wind to give the detailed information on only one domain. Generally this is something that you will log to a disk file before restarting domains, in the short-term there is little use for this.

xm console <domain> gives you the console of a domain. If a domain is not working correctly and it is impossible to login via ssh (either due to a network problem or a problem with ssh) then you can access the console (equivalent to a serial-port login on physical hardware) to diagnose the problem. Often the kernel will log messages to the console, such messages will be stored by the Xen system until they are read. If you suspect that there may be many such messages then use script(1) to log the output to disk, if you are unsure then use script to make sure that you don’t miss any data. Even if you don’t understand it the sys-admin probably will!

If the system is half-working then you can login as root to investigate problems. You can escape from the console by pressing CTRL-].

xm dmesg gives Xen logging data comparable to the dmesg command in Linux. If you ever have to reboot the machine (run reboot from Dom0) due to a problem with Xen then you MUST save the output of xm dmesg to a file for later review by the sys-admin.

xm destroy <domain> will kill a specified domain. It’s a last resort for stopping a domain that is not working correctly - it is greatly preferrable to login to the domain via ssh or xm console and give an orderly shutdown.

xm create [-c] <domain> creates a new domain. The configuration for the domain will be taken from a file of the same name in the current directory or in the /etc/xen directory - if /etc/xen is not the current directory when you run xm create then make sure that there is no file-name conflict. You can use this command after destroying a domain or to start a domain that was not previously run.

If you want to change a configuration option of a domain (such as the amount of RAM used) then the usual procedure is to edit the configuration file, run halt or shutdown from within the domain, and then create the domain again with xm create. Note that the -c option is used to attach to the console after starting the domain (you usually want to do this).
I will probably update this post when I get some feedback. I may write more posts of a similar nature if there are requests.

Share This

Remember when sponsoring packages was implemented in Debian? Imagine if we had felt the need to vote on whether we were allowed to do that. Instead of just doing it. I'll bet that some people would have argued against, citing reasons such as:

It appears to me that the sponsorship as sketched in the GR is mainly meant to let NMs upload earlier, i.e. it tries to fix the fact that front-desk or DAM approval take too long. I think the fix for that is just to find someone besides Joerg to also read the AM reports. Sponsees as in the GR are a workaround, not a solution.

or:

But the GR micro-manages too much and on the other hand doesn t make the current NM process any easier for Sponsees than for any non-Sponsee applicant to the NM process. Also, like some others said before, I seriously doubt that a big part of the current DD-applicants (i.e. those in the NM queue at some level) would prefer Sponsee status over DD status. What is the difference between a Sponsee and a Debian Developer? Who is interested in becoming a Sponsee and not a Debian Developer and why? Will this Sponsee class really improve the situation for New Maintainers?

or:

I suppose most of our New Maintainers will aim to become a Sponsee just to bridge the time until they re full Debian Developers. And I predict that this is also the major target audience for this new Sponsee class. Some people said on -vote that there are people actually interested in becoming a Sponsee and not a Debian Developer. Personally I find their reasons questionable, but after all I suppose there won t be many people going this route. On the other side, I don t see how this new class enhances the situation for the New Maintainers. Now they not only wait for the Application Manager, Front Desk and Debian Account Managers No, now they will also search for someone who sponsors them. So my question is: If this General Resolution mainly helps New Maintainers, why must it be so complicated? Why another class of contributers, all those complicated rules to set it up and this additional layer of bureaucracy?

or:

If you think the NM process is taking too long, then it's probably better to help out there rather than to try to create a system to bypass it in this way.

But instead, we somehow made the enormous change that sponsorship entailed in how Debian works, without voting on it. Make no mistake, it was a big change on both a technical as well as a social level. Now IMHO, the DM proposal is just fixing a bug in the current sponsorship process. The interesting thing to consider is, if this vote fails, how can the bug be fixed without another vote? I personally believe that any DD has the power to fix this without dragging the project through a vote. They may put their status as developer at stake in fixing it, if they take what seems like the obvious approach, but if one feels that this bug in sponsorship is a bad enough bug and is hurting Debian enough, that might be worth it.

First off, this guy is walking around handing out free fudge. Neat idea, but I can't quite figure out why!

Bill Hilf from Microsoft spoke today. He started by saying "I guarantee you won't agree with a lot of things I say today."

Nat introduced him as "our man on the inside."

Microsoft is submitting their Shared Source license for OSI approval. I don't know if this means that MS will have to actually make any modifications.

New website today: http://www.microsoft.com/opensource.

Bill invited feedback from anyone at billhilf at microsoft dot com.

He got some fairly pointed questions from Nat about software patents. Bill said two things about that: 1) Microsoft flubbed the communication with the press and that their intent isn't to sue, and 2) Microsoft is learning and he's working to help them learn.

Rick Falkvinge from the Pirate Party

Funny and informative talk about why they've started a Pirate Party in Sweden.

Originally copyright only impacted public places, but now it impacts people's private lives as well.

Copyright is protecting the entertainment industry -- funded by luxury purchases -- at the expense of privacy and individual freedoms.

"The Norwegian Liberal Party forked our platform into Norwegian"

www.piratpartiet.se/donate

"Political donations in Sweden are not regulated", so you all can contributed

Steve Yegge (Google)

"Google will probably fire me for this talk"

Neither Steve's mic nor his laptop appear to work... after his line about being fired, someone shouted "Google is very powerful!"

"A brand, in geek terms, is a pointer."

GTE was, for a time, the most reviled brand in the US. Then they invested in improvements and ran commercials basically saying "we don't suck anymore", but nobody believed it.

"The single biggest branding problem in Open Source is the name 'Open Source'."

I've taken my camera around OSCon and Portland a bit. Here are a few photos that I've taken so far.

At OSCon Itself

(click here to see all)



Overflow from breakfast. Most tables had powerestrips and laptops on them.



Debian booth at the expo hall. And the only one with beanbags. Sign reads "The developer is in."



Filing in for the keynotes. Everyone seemed to want a seat either at the very front or very back.



Simon Peyton-Jones explaining how locks with traditional threading can be improved upon with transactional memory.



Run for your life! The bell will attack at any moment!

I didn't hear it ring all week.

Around Portland

(click here to see all)



The Japanese Gardens were beautiful and tranquil. Jacob actually feel asleep while being rolled around on his stroller.



For some reason, this one reminds me of the Jedi Academy in one of the Star Wars video games.



One of the many bridges in Portland.



Terah's favorite find: Sweet Masterpiece Chocolate and Coffe.

We went there after the Blossoming Lotus Cafe, which was an interesting experience but not quite as good as I had hoped.

All contributing members of SPI should make time RIGHT NOW to go vote in the SPI Board Election currently underway. We have 13 candidates from a variety of SPI's associated projects running for 6 open seats this year. The election closes at 2007-07-28 23:59:59 UTC, so don't delay!

Last year I spent several months living on one side of Melbourne and working on the other and travelling by train to work. Every day I had to catch two trains each way with an average wait of 5 to 10 minutes for each train to arrive giving a total of at least half an hour a day spent waiting for trains. The obvious solution to this problem is to have trains not go back and forth on one line but instead go from one side of the city to the other. This map shows that there are 14 train lines out of the city with about 5 major lines. The smart thing to do would be to have every major line have one train every 5 minutes during peak hours and to have every train go back out on a different line. Then if you are on one of the major lines and want to travel out on one of the other major lines then every 20 minutes there would have a train that would take you straight there without changing trains! Currently we don’t even have such frequent trains, during peak hour the trains on most lines run no more often than 5 per hour, the Sydenham line has trains 4 times per hour during peak hours and the trains are crammed full before they get half-way to the city. If the trains ran more frequently and were routed through the city then commuters who travel through the city would save 20+ minutes per day without going to any effort and 30+ minutes a day if they chose to start their journey at a time to avoid changing trains. This would be a significant incentive for catching the train instead of driving! For the commuters who travel to work via a single journey then having trains run every 5 minutes at peak times would mean that an average of 2.5 minutes was spent waiting for a train each way (an average of 5 minutes per day) instead of the current situation of 15 minutes per day or more. This would mean triple the number of trains on the Sydenham line which may sound excessive. However the trains are currently so crowded that there could be twice as many trains and all seats would still be full. If there were three times as many trains then I expect that more people would catch the train (surely some people would be convinced to drive to work by the idea of spending 20 minutes with barely room to stand), it’s not inconceivable that there could be three times as many trains and all seats could still be full! The next issue I have been considering is the time taken for a tram ride to/from the central city areas in peak hours. Peak hour trams stop at every stop because there are always people getting on and off. If a tram could stop less frequently then it could make a slightly higher average speed. One way of achieving this would be for the peak hour trams to stop at every second stop outside the center of the city. On the way in half the trams would accept passengers at each stop (each tram would be designated as either odd or even and labelled as such - the tram stops are already numbered). But if you have twice as many trams then the average wait would be the same while the duration of the trip would be reduced. On the way out of the city the tram driver would announce that after stop 10 (to pick a random number that might work) the tram would only allow passengers to get on or off at even/odd stops. If you knew that your stop was on an even number and the tram was an odd-numbered tram then you would change trams to an even tram. The small delay in changing trams would be made up by a faster trip overall. Politicians are always talking about ways to alleviate the water shortage caused by climate change and to improve the economy. Having people spend an extra 10 minutes a day working because of saved time on the trains would help the economy. Encouraging people to catch the trains via more frequent and efficient service as well as less overcrowding would help reduce climate change - which is the best way of improving our water supply and the only way of helping the farmers long-term!

Share This

When voting on the current Debian Maintainers General Resolution, I think it’s worth to think about the following questions: What is the difference between a Debian Maintainer and a Debian Developer? Who is interested in becoming a Debian Maintainer and not a Debian Developer and why? Will this Debian Maintainer class really improve the situation for New Maintainers? I suppose most of our New Maintainers will aim to become a Debian Maintainer just to bridge the time until they’re full Debian Developers. And I predict that this is also the major target audience for this new Debian Maintainers class. Some people said on -vote that there are people actually interested in becoming a Debian Maintainer and not a Debian Developer. Personally I find their reasons questionable, but after all I suppose there won’t be many people going this route. On the other side, I don’t see how this new class enhances the situation for the New Maintainers. Now they not only wait for the Application Manager, Front Desk and Debian Account Managers — No, now they will also search for someone who advocates them to become a Debian Maintainer and have to wait for their key being added to the Debian Maintainers keyring. So my question is: If this General Resolution mainly helps New Maintainers, why must it be so complicated? Why another class of contributers, all those complicated rules to set it up and this additional layer of bureaucracy? Why don’t we aim for something simple, like improving our New Maintainer process. I would rather see some of those Debian Maintainer rights granted to New Maintainers after a certain point in their New Maintainer career, but not in this complicated and overengineered way the Debian Maintainer class proposes.

In the lands where the camel roams, the white (albino) camel is a rare and revered individual. The White Camel Awards recognize the many significant contributions made by the unsung heros of the Perl community. The efforts of these volunteers collectively make the Perl language and the Perl community better for all of us. – The Perl Foundation. 2007 Recipients

Allison Randal

Allison is at the center of the Perl community. She’s been president of The Perl Foundation, a leader and manager of various parts of the Perl 6 and Parrot efforts, as well a Perl author and editor. Her latest contribution to Perl is version 2 of the Artistic License, under which most open source Perl code, and Perl itself, is licensesd “under the terms of Perl itself”.

Tim O’Reilly

You may think of Tim as the guy who published Programming perl and Learning Perl, but he also kick-started the current form of the Perl community by giving it a place to come to together once a year. O’Reilly & Associates started The Perl Conference in 1997. Perl Mongers, the organization that helped start Perl users groups all over the world, started at that first Perl Conference. O’Reilly Media has been incredibly gracious and helpful to the Perl community.

Norbert E. Gr ner

Norbert help start the German Perl Workshop in 1999 and now is involved in several of the Perl conferences and workshops that take place in Europe. He’s the chair of the YAPC::Europe committee.

Peter Brown replied:

"Thanks for the message. Here are some comments on the issues you raise:

"> - On the Radio New Internationalist show "Up in Smoke", during an interview with Peter Brown of FSF (about 43 minutes in), I was surprised to hear the following revelation that FSF uses Skype and the failure to challenge the claim that Skype is free software:"

The FSF doesn't use Skype. I would appreciate if you would clarify that on your blog post. The interviewer used Skype to telephone me on an FSF telephone. I agree that from what I said, it would be easy to infer that FSF uses Skype, but it doesn't. The interview lasted about an hour and we covered a lot of ground. Also, in this exchange I didn't clarify for the listener that when the interviewer remarked that "Skype was free", they meant as in price, but not as in freedom.

"> - I was disappointed not to find much on the FSF web site about the need for free VoIP software, building on GNU oSIP and other free software, instead of Skype's proprietary software, which has contained spyware and worms already. Will you be adding such information soon? What is the official FSF view of Skype and similar proprietary VoIP systems?"

Skype is proprietary and we don't use it. In that section of the interview we were discussing telecoms monopoly and net neutrality, and I lost the focus on the free software issue - my bad. As far as adding an article about VOIP on fsf.org I think that's a great idea. Unfortunately, I don't think we can cover that immediately, as we have some campaigns we have other campaign activities to focus on. We would be glad to take a contribution though, if you would like to write such an article - we might also want to think about using such an article as a basis for a campaign.

"> - Nevertheless, well done for covering DRM, net neutrality and the privacy problems of Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft in a relatively short interview."

Thanks. I actually used to work at the New Internationalist in Oxford, and they are a great coop. I have been working with them now for a couple of years, tying to encourage them to cover free software related issues for their audience. Have you seen the article Bruce Byfield (Newsforge) wrote that I got placed in the November issue of the magazine? all the best peter"

Thanks for the reply! To my shame, I'd completely forgotten that Skype can also call ordinary telephones and the interview didn't remind me. I guess that might be because my main awareness of Skype is when it's a problem, when someone gives a skype: address instead of a sip: one or a real phone number. However, I'm not sure a called person would usually say that they were being called over Skype, rather than being telephoned. FSF people are smarties, though, so can hear the artefacts, or maybe the interviewer had mentioned it beforehand. Anyone else want to summarise the benefits of free software VoIP compared to Skype systems? I won't get time before next month. kris commented:

"There's openwengo, it has more features than skype (i.e. video), is encrypted, open and free. Enjoy."

I keep meaning to try openwengo, but each time I look at it, I fail to find the source tarball for the latest release. It also seems to be Qt-only, which I also try to avoid installing (as it'd be a fourth set of desktop widgets). At the moment, I'm using linphone from the command-line. I sometimes consider replacing it with a stand-alone telephone adapter. I wonder: are any running free software? (2007-07-27: 7 comments)

I'm sure few would disagree with me when I say that power outages suck. But on the bright side it gives me a chance to test the resiliency of my server setup. I haven't bought a UPS yet, mostly because I'm waiting until my next bulk purchase of hardware.

When I logged onto my home system from the office ssh gave me a friendly notice that a new IP for this hostname had been added to the list of known hosts. This flagged my attention since although I have a dynamic IP with my ISP, they haven't given me a different one for months. But it's reassuring to know that the program for updating automatically the DNS entry is working. I quickly figured out that there was definitely something wrong when my screen sessions were gone and PIDs were small. Sure enough, w reports the system has only been up for an hour and a half. Good to know the Full On BIOS setting works as well. Really aside from losing screen sessions, there was no real notice of the power outage. Well, that and I had to reset my alarm clock when I got home.

But back to the topic subject of summer of code, vlosuts is just about out of alpha now. For anyone wanting to try it out, here's the set of commands that'll build and install the package.

cd /tmp
svn co svn://svn.debian.org/vlosuts/vlosuts
cd vlosuts
debuild
cd ..
sudo dpkg -i vlosuts_0.1_*.deb
sudo vlosuts upgrade --config=/usr/lib/vlosuts/default.cfg

I haven't added debootstrap as a dependency yet, so make sure you've got that. Also make sure you have qemu/kqemu/kvm installed (depending on what backend you want to use; default is QEMU). Notice that vlosuts needs to be run with superuser privileges. This is a consequence of needing to mount and bootstrap the image. The "upgrade" part of the command line instructs it to perform an upgrade test (as opposed to just building an image or creating a vlosuts mirror file of the system).
You'll probably want to copy that config file and change the mirror to something local. Also make sure you've modprobed kqemu (or else it could take far longer than necessary) and if you're running amd64, either change the target arch to amd64 or set the qemu path in the config to /usr/bin/qemu-system-x86_64 (as of writing, kqemu on amd64 only works with this binary, not qemu). man vlosuts can also provide some information.

Sometimes the mad libs way we have software fill in the blanks and make a sentence can be unintentionally interesting. Like this old but good one, that sadly doesn't work with GNU make:

% make war
Don't know how to make war. Stop.

I was pleased when ikiwiki made up this sentence when editing a discussion page. Creating discussion sounds like a fine goal for a wiki. But I was startled to see this in Gnome, after I picked "Windows" from the "Preferences" menu: Yipes!

Retiring from Debian In response to the inactive developer ping, I have decided to retire from the Debian project. Between my job and the new baby, my time for hacking on other projects is nonexistent, or possibly negative. I have already passed Audacity maintainership to the debian-multimedia team. I still use and like Debian, and I hope someday I'll return from "emeritus" status to become an active developer again. Cyclone While browsing through some very old backup files, I rediscovered one of my first real software projects, an IRC client for BeOS. This was a neat collaborative effort, but we weren't really on the ball with project hosting or version control. This is from a file I wrote documenting what was left of the project after it stopped:

Cyclone was started in spring 1998 by a group of developers who hung out in the #bedev channel on EFNet. The original Cyclone team included Jason Gosnell (Avatar), Jeff Hamilton (Pyrus), Matt Lewinski (mattl), John Wiggins (prok), and Matt Brubeck (mgb), with contributions from several other #bedev regulars. The Cyclone project produced a small, elegant IRC client. Unfortunately, the team dissolved as several members moved around the country to go to new schools or jobs at the end of summer 1998. Along with the loss of some important pieces of source code, this prevented Cyclone from ever seeing a public release.

I also found some poetry I wrote in middle school, but it's compressed using a version of StuffIt that does not seem to be compatible with any open source tools. This is probably a good thing.

Nat Torkington, program chair, started off the day. He commented that one of the most interesting trends these days is the expansion of the Open Source ideals beyond software.

Tim O'Reilly commented about the FSF's four freedoms, and asked how we maintain them. We have to think about preserving freedoms -- questions such as Free Software that relies on proprietary services, data, or business processes. It's important to remember to pay attention to freedom and not just to the success of businesses. But businesses matter and have enormous power and will always be related.

Tim really pushed expanding the boundaries of Open Source and thinking ahead: wikipedia, OpenID, etc. He also asked: does Congress need a version control system?

He suggested there are four open source success factors: frictionless software distribution, collaborative development, freedom to build/adapt/extend, freedom to fork.

Hadoop is an interesting FLOSS project to build some infrastructure like Google has. Apparently Yahoo is very interested.

Back to Nat... hardware is cheap and everyone keeps buying more of it.

James Reinders from Intel talking about multi-core parallelism. Saying that parallelism is going to be more and more important. Intel released threading building blocks, a series of templates for C++, as GPL'd software at the conference this week. I'm not all that excited about a C++ project, though, since I think languages like Haskell have more promise here anyway.

The other Intel guy mentioned Intel's open source involvement: intellinuxgraphics.org, intellinuxwireless.org, linuxpowertop.org, kernel,org, moblin.org. Linux laptops have the longest runtimes compared to other laptops.

"It's amazing how many people you can make paranoid by showing up with a tie and a suit to do a keynote at OSCON." -- James Reinders

Simon Peyton-Jones is up now, and Nat says he will "stretch your brain until only tiny bits are left."

State of the art in parallelism is really 30 years old with locks and condition variables -- like building a skyscraper out of bananas.

Locks are difficult to do right and have "diabolical error recovery".

Let's do transactions against memory instead of against a database. Implementation can even be similar to databases. The idea is transactional memory, and it sounds very, very slick.

Mark Shuttleworth and Tim for an interview...

Mark was fine, but I wish Tim had more interesting questions for him.

I went up to the front a few minutes after the event to talk to Simon PJ. He was talking to someone, who saw my nametag, and said, "Hi John, nice to meet you." He looked familiar but I couldn't quite place him, so I asked who he was. "Mark Shuttleworth." Yep, I was sitting just far enough back from the stage that I wasn't behind one of the large TV screens and couldn't make out faces real well, and I didn't recognize him. Erg..

At DemoCampMontreal3 last night, I quoted Ward Cunningham, who once said that making a wiki link is a great way to ask a question. A year or so ago, I got interested in citizens arrests. What are those, anyways? How do you do it? Is it even really legal? So I started How to Make a Citizen's Arrest on wikiHow. Just a little while ago, it became a featured article on wikiHow. And just a few days ago, it was quoted in an article on Time Magazine's blogs: We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges. Interesting to see how these memes gather momentum. tags: wiki wikihow citizensarrest time

Alex Fletcher: “The blogosphere, or at least the hemisphere which cares about such things, has been busy producing references to the latest series of events surrounding Sun Microsystems’ Project Indiana, the binary distribution of the company’s OpenSolaris operating system. For example, last week Enterprise Linux Log featured a story about the state of affairs at a recent NYC UNIX user group in Manhattan where things didn’t seem to go well. However, what I took from news of the event, including commentary from those who attended was entirely different from the way in which the article was seemingly framed.” It’s interesting how different people can take away very different things from the same presentation. If you’re at OSCON, come hear it firsthand—I’m speaking about Project Indiana today at 11:35 in room E141. And judge for yourself.

There have been many (too many) social networks coming and going out of fashion in the last years. I got quite excited when I first learnt about them. Advogato was as cool as it could be, and having somebody label me master (even though most had me as a journeyer, IIRC, and that was my level as far as I tracked it) was really inspiring.
Then came friendster, and then orkut. I spent far too many hours in them, and was really happy (and surprised!) to find the many ways to my friends, some of them have been out of my radar for too long.
And then, everybody started creating their social networks for remembering birthday dates, and for finding who likes the same music (and books and whatnot) as you do. And this silly thing called Twitter.
I'm sorry. I don't play anymore. I'm fed up with it.
Maybe it's that I've grown old and cranky, but I don't even answer to invitations to social networks nowadays. And I'm sorry - It's not that I don't care about you, it's not that I don't like you - I don't like losing my time creating yet-another-mapping of still-the-same group of friends.