Uwe, you are not the first to request that I add a comment feature to my blog. Its consideration is on my to-do list, but I am somewhat against it already. Why? Because I do not want to deal with yet another point of attack for spam, and I am really not fond of web interfaces; there are probably nice ways to tell pyBlosxom to integrate comments well with the filesystem, allowing me to e.g. reply via SSH rather than a browser (or better yet: email), but as it stands, all I know are comment forms on the blogs' web interfaces, which require a browser and cookies enabled to be able to add one's opinions. As blog owner, I have to continuously check my blog for new comments with a browser, and leave answers to comments immediately as I am checking them, but tracking forums with browsers is a royal PITA. Thus, an RSS feed would be the right way to do it. However, RSS only alerts me of new comments; I then still have to fire up a browser (or a shell) to leave an answer. Anyway, I am already drowning in emails, I don't need another medium requiring attention and feedback. There's also another reason against comments on my blog: it's my blog. Apart from legal obligations in the EU, I have not fully grasped the pros and cons of giving other people a space to express themselves. If an entry of mine solicits feedback, I include an email address, and I summarise what I learn from the numerous responses I receive in a second blog entry. I will look into ways to integrate my blog with my email traffic, so that comments come in as emails, and replying to them publishes my response on the blog. Anything else I would not want, I think.

Uwe, you should be mounting crypted_sda3 under /media, not /mnt. :)

Switzerland is bloody expensive, you surely don't want to be shopping here. For instance, I wanted to get myself the Lonely Planet Guide for Laos and Myanmar, both of which have had new editions released in 2005. Their price is a little more than 20 each, including the German VAT of 7%. If you buy the book in Switzerland, it's between 40 and 50 CHF (incl. 7.6% VAT), which is almost 10 more than the German price. Despite the fact that I cannot find the 2005 editions neither in Swiss stores nor on amazon.de, I'd be looking at a slight problem. Either, I can pay the higher price in Switzerland (in addition to shipping), or I can order with amazon.de (or the like) in Germany, who will subtract the VAT and ship it to Switzerland for free. Sounds great, huh? Well, it isn't really, because in Switzerland, receiving packages might mean you have to pay VAT, and not only that, they also make it unnecessarily complicated: If the goods you receive are valued less than 75 CHF, you do not have to pay VAT. However, if you do have to pay VAT, the VAT and a nominal service charge of 10 CHF count towards those 75 CHF, which means you effectively have to stay below (75 - 10 - VAT) CHF, which is 60 CHF or thereabout. Translate that to Euros, we're talking about 38 . Thus, if you want free shipping and no VAT, you have to place orders between 20 and 38 -- 20 is the minimum price to get free delivery if your order is not entirely made of books, in which case delivery would be free even below 20 . You do not want to place orders higher than 38 ever, because VAT in Switzerland is higher than the VAT for books in Germany, and the additional 10 CHF charge is not going to make up for it. So the only way for me to obtain the two books is either through the overpriced Swiss bookstores, or via two separate orders to amazon.de so as to not exceed the 38 limit. The maths gets more fun when you get away from books. For normal goods, VAT in Switzerland is still 7.6%, but 16% (and maybe soon 19%) in Germany. Thus, you will want to stay below 38 , unless the total value of the goods exceeds an amount where the cheaper 7.6% VAT + 10CHF service fee is lower than 16% VAT. This drives the limit up to 121 CHF, or about 77 . Now, if you think this is complicated, stay put. I am looking to buy myself the DrayTek Vigor 2900VG router, for which is around 265 in Germany including the 16% VAT, and 421 CHF including the 7.6% VAT in Switzerland. These prices square, but they're not including shipping, and if I would order the German product for delivery to Switzerland (which they are not willing to do, but anyway), I'd have to add the 10 CHF service charge and the 7.6% VAT. I also would not be able to claim the 16% VAT paid in Germany with EU customs because I am not a full resident of Switzerland. Man, no wonder taxes have had a long history of violence. Now I also received a 35% rebate offer from the Swiss distributor, driving the price down to 274 CHF, which is clearly a hell of a lot cheaper than the German product. So what am I waiting for? Well, Germany being an EU state and all, the German shop has to give you a 30 day return warranty and a 2 year product warranty. In Switzerland, you get no return warranty and only 1 year of product warranty. My dilemma thus becomes: are 30 days return warranty and an addition year of product warranty worth the difference of roughly 150 CHF? Seems like the answer must be "no". But I know that if I order it in Switzerland, it will break after 366 days, by the laws of Murphy. I have now asked the German distributor to match the 35% rebate. If they will, I'll order the device to my parents house in Germany. If they don't, I'll take it up with Mr. Murphy. PS: If you think the DrayTek Vigor 2900VG is not a good choice, speak up now!

It's about time I encrypt my home directory. So far, I've found two tools for the job: dmcrypt and encfs. dmcrypt links in between the VFS layer and the data store. For an encrypted partition or image, it creates a device under /dev/mapper, which you then mount. Think cryptoloop. Encryption covers the whole scale of symmetric encryption, but I didn't find anything related to public key crypto. I am also not entirely clear yet on why a damaged block on the storage medium doesn't screw the encryption block (partially) stored on it, as well as all following ones, given a chaining mode like CBC for instance. However, as this thread shows, I am wrong and technology is right (and works), and I still just don't get it. It feels like another Monty Hall problem to me (which I also never really understood to the point of being able to convince someone else thinking 50/50 is the answer of the alleged 2/3). So then there's encfs, a FUSE-filesystem that seems (I have not tried it) to create a virtual directory for an existing one, transparently encrypting filenames and contents as they are written to the existing directory (via the virtual one), and decrypting them when requested through the virtual one. So it's a 1-to-1 mapping, which has its pro's and con's. encfs seems equally strong on the symmetric crypto side, but seems to lack public key support. For each, there's a proper PAM module: libpam-mount can mount a cryptoloop filesystem upon login (though the README says it cannot do so for OpenSSH logins. If that's right, well, one candidate less...). On the other hand, there's libpam-encfs, which creates the virtual directory on login (and removes it on logout). I can well imagine how any of the PAM modules would do their job just fine on a machine where xdm is the primary/only login method. However, what about SSH? What happens if I log in through xdm, then SSH, then quit X? How do you solve the problem? I am curious and will blog about the things I hear... Update: After rereading my thread, I am understanding, I think. We're talking encrypted block devices (or loop devices). It's not difficult at this stages to tie IV chains in with storage blocks. I am still curious why my 8M file was still all zeroes after changing the cryptotext. Update2: Sesse points out that CBC uses the ciphertext of the previous block as an IV, not the plaintext. So if some block gets corrupted, that messes up the next one's plaintext, but not its ciphertext, so the one after that is OK. Thanks.

... or rather the lack thereof: I love my dentist (Dr. Felkel in We ling b. M nchen). At his recommendation, I got myself one of those ultrasonic toothbrushes. What I need now is ultrasonic toothpaste to go with it. The regular toothpaste just doesn't cut it, it won't foam quite enough. And that tarnishes my toothbrushing experience.

If you experience network problems related lost nameservers about ten seconds after establishing a link (e.g. with DHCP), you are being hit by #350995. I don't run GNOME (or KDE), but I do need gucharmap, which is such a complicated programme that it needs to link against 33 libraries:

lapse:~> apt-cache depends gucharmap   grep -c Depends:
33

Among these, libgnomevfs2-0. Don't ask me why gucharmap needs VFS support, I probably didn't find all the hidden features yet, especially the one that requires me to have a 169.254/16 address on my interfaces: going further down the chain:

libgnomevfs2-0 depends on libavahi-compat-howl0
libavahi-compat-howl0 depends on libavahi-client3
libavahi-client3 recommends avahi-daemon

avahi-daemon!!! WTF? I have a wonderful infrastructure with DNS records automatically updated, why in the world would I want ZeroConf. If I wanted ZeroConf, I'd be running 1-click Windows wizards! Yes, I am pissed right now. A temporary fix is dpkg -P avahi-daemon. The long-term fix should be a little more care when deciding which features are necessary and which would be nice to have. Something tells me that GNOME (and KDE) have somewhat twisted perceptions of this. This isn't a personal attack on anyone donating time to make GNOME (and KDE) happen in Debian. However, it's a plea to everyone not to forget that we're Debian. We have the most complex dependency graphs (see e.g. xserver-common/xserver-xorg/xorg-common/...) just to make it possible for people to install exactly what they want and no more.

Either Lars really publishes Gigabytes worth in a single image and my provider is the fastest on earth, or the Extended Statusbar plugin for Firefox has some other issues:

We got together tonight in a small group to start watching the Twin Peaks (warning, spoilers on that webpage) series by Mark Frost and David Lynch. For me, it's the best soap opera ever produced, and it's just beautiful and warms one's heart to watch. We're through the pilot and episode 1, so we have 28 episodes and a sequel movie (Fire Walk With Me) to go. I am excited.

If you've been on the web for long, you will know Justin Hall and his infamous links.net. I know Justin from college and I've always respected him for the freak that he is -- which is not supposed to sound derogatory in any way. I've often envied him for what he was capable of. ... and we lost contact a while ago. So much that I didn't even take note of his breakdown. If it had been anyone else publishing this movie online, I'd have hit 'q' about 10 seconds in. As it stands, seeing it really had an impact on me. I don't know how, time will tell, but I feel it. Dropping him a note now.

Working on the German translation of my book, I find myself swearing loudly at the translation from time to time (German just sucks, and the deadline is tomorrow. ARGH!). Since we all know that swearing isn't nice, I've set out to find something else, possibly even more relieving. The solution comes via the tpb package:

$ cat ~/.tpbrc
THINKPAD /usr/bin/aplay /usr/lib/openoffice/share/gallery/sounds/cow.wav

Now all I have to do is bounce on the blue Access IBM key of my lovely X40 whenever I need fast relief. And if that isn't going to be enough, I'll implement more variety. MOO! PS: Thanks to astronut for the title.

Thanks, Norbert and Per-Arne. Maybe you also want to forward emails like "send this on to seven people in one hour and you will win a million" avalanches to your feeds as well? Please. Stop. It. And memes too.

Sinead O'Donovan, product unit manger for networking at Microsoft, believes IPv6 offers securer data transmissions through longer IP addresses. Ah, I can hardly wait for "new application experiences," "richer collaboration," and all the other buzzwords MS uses to tout their next failure. Here's more from the article, this time about NAT: "If you had to route all the file-sharing traffic in MSN Messenger through your server it's very expensive to build that application because they must have a lot of servers to support the application. IPv6 allows them take advantage of end-to-end connectivity, so if it makes sense for the traffic to go between two peers they can." Yeah, granted, InformationWeek.com seems to be pretty crap too. But someone tell Donovan about routing, please? At the end of the article Donovan is also proud to address problems with Vista's connectivity features with IPv6: "The connectivity features in Vista must have a reachable IP address from remote locations. If the connection is initiated from outside the home the NAT locks up and you don't have a way of addressing the PC. Reaching the devices isn't possible unless you custom configure an application." Can anyone else picture trojan authors rubbing hands?

I saw the operetta Gr fin Mariza by Emmerich Kalman tonight in Budapest. It was an awesome performance with great dance elements and a lively audience -- quite unexpected for someone who knew only stiff German and Austrian operas. Seeing the piece really lit up a flame for the Hungarian culture. I am glad I have the entire weekend left in this city!

"Due to safety regulations, please ensure that all your electronic devices are turned off during takeoff and landing while the fasten seat-belt signs are on". Hearing this on today's flight to Budapest really makes me wonder: how could my little laptop possibly have an effect on the safety of the airplane? And if it really does, why the heck am I sitting inside this metal bird which can apparently be grounded or otherwise negatively affected by something like a plain laptop. I could even understand bluetooth and/or wifi having effects on the navigation systems, but these are both turned off. And I really don't think that my screen radiates a GPS signal or the spin of my harddrive exerts a radial force on the plane (c't readers can refer to the 1 April edition of 2004).

I just completed the three day course about Zope and Plone at the Humboldt Universit t in Berlin, which was successful despite my initial reservations. I think I managed to convey almost all topics they requested starting with basic ZPT and scripting to custom content types with Archetypes, and ending with mass-import, 2.0->2.1 migration, and topics in performance and optimisation to an audience of 10, with skill levels ranging from absolute beginners to intermediate. One of the students even came up to personally thank me for "finally making her understand" the Zope basics. I would like to thank many of the Plone folks for helping me out during the preparation and the course itself! And optilude, it looks like they'll migrate to 2.1, after I was able to reduce many of their performance problems to typical 2.0.5 issues.

at least it did this one time, Jesus: My family and I were on our way to Granada. My father was completely stressed out and suffered an epileptic seizure on the plane. Even though we were able to stabilise his condition, Iberia took us down in Barcelona to go to a hospital. We landed, had the ambulance come up immediately, and found an Iberia driver outside the hospital waiting for us when we came out; he drove us all the way to our final destination (Granada, about 4 hours I recall) and set us off. We never saw a bill from them. We sent a letter to thank them for the professional handling of the situation, and as a response got to hear that it was their duty and that their glad my father was doing better. Apart from this, none of the passengers on the plane, who all got a two hour delay due to my father, would have thought to say a word. They just all quietly waited while we were doing our thing. Imagine that in Germany or Switzerland! Ha! And Clint: there's a Swiss tel right next to my flat. You'll just have to visit me more often than you do. :)