From random IRC stuff: “Class of 2010″ means that one would normally graduate in 2010. I.e., since it’s at least assumed that a normal university bachelor’s will take 4 year to complete, the Class of 2010 would be the class entering in fall 2006. It seems some people were confused.

I'm miraculously on my way back from London, after spending a week with daf, mvo and two guests, abel and thep, from Hong Kong and Thailand, working on improving some l10n aspects of the upcoming Ubuntu release, dapper. The most visible result of the stuff that we've been doing is that if all goes well, users of the Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Bengali, Lao or Korean languages will get their required input methods, fonts and dictionaries Just Working as soon as their drives spit their dapper install CDs. We've learned quite a bit about the state of many of the Asian languages in the Free Software world today. Daf and I can certainly tell when an app renders Bengali or Thai correctly and when it doesn't, after closely comparing how different browsers do the job on various websites and font test pages. We've learned more than we probably like about fontconfig, and thanks to mvo, there is now a mechanism to get custom fonts.conf snippets depending on the default language of the system set by language-selector, so users get the right fonts installed and used by default. Thep's and Abel's help to get this straight is invaluable. On Friday, daf and I went to the ExCel Novotel where the Launchpad team is having a sprint, in order to lend a hand with the dapper translation import that is going on right now, but for a series of reasons we ended up working on l10n sprint stuff. At least I got to see the team again, and specially kiko, who greeted me with a "Qu pasa, hijo de puta!" The real life side of this sprint has been less exciting than on other occasions, as due to being few in number and being quite tired, we haven't gone out of Earl's Court area until today. Still, our exploring around the hotel has yield some nice discoveries. On Sunday, mvo and I were looking for a place to have dinner, and stumbled uppon the Troubadour a place which can either be a pub, a restaurant, a social club or a theatre, depending on your mood. The food was excellent, and the staff was really friendly. I found a Dictionary of Slang in one of the book shelves, and learned a few funny phrases. Other days we've been to good Italian, Indian or Chinese restaurants, but we couldn't resist to go back to Trobadour again. On our last night, Mark took us to a place in the South Kesington area, with again was very good. Abel left just after dinner as his flight was at 5AM from Stansted, and we hope he made it OK to the Netherlands, as at 00:30 or so he phoned us and seemed to be pretty lost somewhere. mvo left early in the morning, so daf, thep and I went to visit some bits of the city. My plane was at 16:45GMT, and we calculated that I should be leaving the K&K at 15:00 to be well on track for my flight. We went to Monument to see the tower, went up and enjoyed both the great views over London and the Thames river, as well as the really cold wind which made me swear once again about the %*@!# lack of Spring in the UK. It was getting quite late for me, so we went to China Town for lunch. Despite the restaurant people being really quick, I only managed to leave the place at 14:50, but given my travel plan was pretty conservative, I was supposed to be safe still. Daf left me at the tube station entrance, and there I started my way too stressful journey back to Val ncia. If on our way to London Carlos and were quite close to find our flight closed, this time, I think I hit the limits. I really don't know how daf and I arrived to the conclusion that leaving Earl's Court at 15:20 was acceptable to get in Heathrow on time. I ran up and down the tube stations, grabbed by luggage, and rushed back to the station, but I had just missed a train to Heathrow and that made me lose some precious 10 minutes. As stations passed by, it became clearer that we had fucked up somewhere when deciding at what time I needed to leave. At 15:35 I was still in the Hammersmith station, with half of the Picadilly line ahead before arriving to the aiport. I sent a message to daf, so he started to get prepared about me staying to sleep somewhere in London. As soon as the train's doors opened, a number of people rushed out. Someone ahead of me fell when climbing the automatic staircase and I somehow managed to jump over him, with luggage and all. After a run that seemed like half an hour, I arrived at the Iberia desk and, panting, I could only articulate "Tarde para Val ncia?". The guy at the counter looked at me, and with a "this can't be true" expression in his face, he picked up a phone and asked "Is it already closed? [...] Can you open it for one more piece of luggage? Thanks." In the meanwhile, I had been busy removing a 500 ml yoghourt from my bag, fearing having all my clothes smelling like strawberry back in Val ncia. The guy handed me a boarding pass, and gave me instructions about the "Iberia Room" near my gate. I asked him what that was about, and he says "oh, of course, you're in Business Class". For a second, I was reminded of stargirl's tricks to get free upgrades when flying, and immediately I was reminded that I was still in a hurry, and I should rush to my gate. And so I did, forgetting to thank the guy for being so kind. I left my yoghourt there though, so at least he could get some food if he was hungry. The long line before the security check was exasperating, and when I finally went past it, I had to run all over terminal two to my gate, where everyone appeared to be waiting just for me. The doors closed as soon as I entered the aircraft, and I sat in the first row, got a free newspaper and a free meal. I couldn't believe my luck. As I write this, we've gone over the Pyrenees, which are not as snowy as a month ago, but they still look beautiful from up here. I'm glad to be back in Val ncia.

This year was the first time I think I watched the debate live, and didn't just read the logs. We had some fun in the discussion channel, and one question of mine was actually posted to the candidates. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get my point across (the "size barrier" question, it wasn't about Debian not growing any more, but about wether we could need some structural changes - e.g. bugmasters, first-level supporters with some privileges, but not the full DD requirements - to use our resources (that is mostly the time of our developers, i.e. us) more effectively. E.g. by preventing flamewars somehow. I hadn't really made up my mind yet. But some trends are there:

• Krooger. He definitely lost my vote in the debate; I had the impression that all he cared about to bring across was that all those who say he misbehaved are evil. When it came to financing, he seemed very naive; he suggested Debian should pay someone to optimize Debian for the Desktop.
  However, we should have plenty of people interested in optimizing Debian for the Desktop already, so if we were able to spend the money as easily (and I don't want to see anyone fighting over money...) we certainly should spend it on something we don't have sufficient volunteers for. Maybe processing the NM queue, ftp-master or security work. But there is tons of stuff that can go wrong if we pay any developer, anyway.
  So krooger will be below NOTA.
• Bill seems to be a nice guy, but I don't think he's that deeply involved in the project yet; I think the DPL should have been more visible before and maybe more involved with the core tasks. So above NOTA, but not first.
• Andreas seems to know a lot on how stuff works. No wonder: he's been in the DPL team before. Having a wife and children is a plus, this gives Debian a more "mature" representation, good for a DPL IMHO.
  In the debate, he had a realistic approach to running things and also on the financing stuff. He was involved in organizing DebConfs IIRC, and I think I already ranked him high last year, can't remember hearing anything bad about him. I liked his response to the expulsions question best IIRC. He currently is my favourite.
• AJ: above NOTA, but I can't really imagine him as DPL.
• Steve: don't know yet. Above NOTA likely, but no idea where either.
• Ari: although he just fixed my gaim bug, I mostly remember him as being a clown on IRC; but I don't give too much on that. Sometimes you're pushed into a certain role, and this definitely feels like a "running gag" during the DPL elections. Above NOTA likely, but can't really rank him yet either.
• Jeroen: DPL-team is a bonus with me, this means a smoother handover, and also means he probably is used to distributing responsibility in the new DPL team. Probably around 1-3, so above NOTA, too. Can't tell you yet how I'd rank him compared to Andreas, Steven, AJ, Ari yet.

Today, at 12 noon EST, I was sitting at my computer staring at http://decisions.mit.edu/, adrenaline rushing, pondering whether to click the magic button. At 12:01, I closed my eyes and gave in.

Dear Christine, On behalf of the Admissions Committee, it is my pleasure to offer you admission to the MIT Class of 2010. You were identified as one of the most talented and promising students in one of MIT’s most competitive applicant pools ever. Your commitment to personal excellence makes you stand out as someone who will thrive within our academic environment as well as contribute to our diverse community. At MIT, you join kindred spirits: scholars, builders, entrepreneurs, and humanitarians. We believe that you and MIT are very well matched for each other.

Tell me if that’s not the biggest adrenaline rush you can get from clicking a button. MIT, you will never be forgiven for that experience. Never. I spent the next half hour running around trying to find people to talk to. I could not type. I could not talk properly. I called people on the phone, I IM’d people, I tracked my Dad down and handed him a printout of the letter. I hugged him. He tracked my mother down at the door when she got home an hour later. Now that I’ve gotten over the initial rush, I’m actually sitting here laughing. Why? Because I was completely myself in my application. I think that’s all you can really do for these things. I talked about Shadows of Isildur in part of my admissions essay. I put Debian GNU/Linux work, roleplaying, and all my music stuff under my activities. I talked about my amazing real life friends when they asked what you do to unwind. I talked about the family building a giant kite from house wrap at my grandparents farm in the optional “tell us about something you have created” section. I can recall having a lot of fun writing up my responses. As for the rest, I have excellent grades, though only decent, far from perfect SATs (no 800s for me). My SAT IIs were better than my SAT I. My day has been made a thousand times over. There are so many people I need to track down and talk to, to say “thank you!” to. My alumnus interviewer. The two teachers who wrote my recommendations, and my guidance counselor. Various other people, some of whom I’ve already spoken to. I say again: thank you. Ironically, I was supposed to be in New York City this weekend, but the friend I was going with is very sick and the trip had to be cancelled. The very friend who has always told me “of course you’ll get in!” I love my friends. From all that I’ve seen so far, including posts like this and this which have some nice thoughts on the admissions process, I’m fairly sure that MIT is my #1 school choice. Apparently this year only 13% of all applicants were accepted, wow. I’m excited about hopefully attending their Campus Preview Weekend from April 6-9th to see what things are really like. Excitement.

As I've had to use Windows on a daily basis, I've found that I am no longer able to maintain my air of detached tolerance for the foibles of the system. In fact, I'm starting to get really infuriated with the utter boneheadedness of so many facets of it. Not so much things that are broken, as things that are done badly, and done so in the face of widespread examples of how to do it right.

Here are two simple examples that are emblematic of what Windows users have to suffer through.

(a) Mandatory file locks.

On Windows, every access to a file, by default, acquires a mandatory lock on it. Want to recompile the program you're working on? Sorry, you have to track down and kill all its running instances. Want to read that file on the network server? Sorry, you'll have to run around the office and ask all the people using it to close it.

Last week I got an email asking me to unlock a directory on our local fileserver so it could be renamed. It turned out that I was running an acroread process to view a PDF file...and that locked the directory from being renamed. Because, of course, the universe would implode if someone were to rename a file I had already loaded into memory. This is, however, better than how shared libraries are treated; trying to register a new version of a shared library with the system (the Windows version of ldconfig) will silently fail if programs have the old version mapped into memory. WTF? No, really, WTF?

Windows users get around this by having tools to find out which processes have a file open so they can terminate them with extreme prejudice. This is considered normal and acceptable behavior for a computer in the Windows universe. After all, in the real world two people can't use the same document at once, so why should they be able to do so on a computer?

(b) C# events.

They've been invented many times. Signals, events, hooks, whatever you want to call them, they're collections of function objects that are invoked when some particular condition occurs. It's a great way to make it easy to connect together objects that don't know about each other, they're simple enough that your average CS sophomore could implement them in a half hour, and the concept is so obvious (besides having dozens of examples of working and deployed implementations) that there's no way to screw it up, right?

Wrong.

Now, C# is generally a somewhat clunky language, but this is nothing to do with that (I am not, for instance, surprised that it's cumbersome to bind extra parameters to an event in a language that has little support for higher-order programming anyway). No, this is one of those utter idiocies that just make you scratch your head and go what the *@&# were they on when they did that? You see, when you call an event with no attached listeners, C# throws an exception. Just, you know, as a friendly way of letting you know that you didn't connect to that event.

But wait! It gets better! In order to test whether the event has any connected delegates (the Microsoft term for a function object), you ... compare it to the null pointer. Yes, that's right. Every time you call an event, you have to do this:

if(Event != null)
    Event();

...because, of course, an empty collection of events is clearly the same thing as a nonexistant object.

I really wish I could be a fly on the wall at the meeting where this was decided. My imagination supplies a scene along these lines:

Scene: A smoke-free office somewhere deep in the sterile labyrinth of the Microsoft campus

Programmer 1: "...and we call this bold new innovation 'events'! It's a way for you to perform method calls without knowing which method you're calling. We've found that it's amazingly useful when doing UI programming. I'm sure that introducing this new idea to the world will be yet another chapter in the Microsoft story of advancing technology!"

Programmer 2: "Have you checked the corner cases? What happens if there is no method available to call?"

Programmer 1: "Oh, of course! In that case, the list of methods is null, so we throw a NullPointerException. We thought about adding an IsEmpty property, but who would want to look up properties on the null pointer? Besides, hardly anyone will ever want to create an event that might not get connected to."

Programmer 2: "Uhhh, sure, that makes sense to me."

...!!!?!?!?!

So this is what I'm working on regarding the NVIDIA packages for Xorg 7.0, currently in experimental: First I already have patches sent in to address the new directory structure. Second I'm going to move the GL headers in nvidia-glx-dev back to /usr/include and thus have it confict with libgl-dev. Thirdly, I am relooking at the whole libGL.so mess (#208198)again as the other diversions will have to be changed. I will entertain solutions to the problem.

This post is going to be a little handwavey, but here goes. I really want to know what other Debian developers (and users, too, they’re in the same boat) think about this. So here’s the situation. You’re at a party — a college party, if you’d like to be precise, where all the things you saw in ‘Old School‘ happen — and by chance you are wearing a Debian t-shirt. There is consideration that doing this was a bad idea in the first place, but nevertheless, you’re there, and then the people you’re talking with start going on… First question from the peanut gallery: What’s Debian?
Second question, for those are looking closely at the words on the t-shirt (indicating that they have not quite had enough to drink yet): What’s Linux? For me, at least, it feels a little odd talking about heady stuff like Linux at parties like this. Not only is it awkward, it makes me feel like I’m getting a large ‘NERD’ stamp on my head no matter how I try to dilute it and explain it. It’s true — I am a geek. But I think it’s a bit of a faux-pas to flaunt it at a party where you’re more likely to see lots of “Mass Communications” and Political Science majors who, seriously, don’t give a damn. I’ve often tried to tell it off with “it’s a long story, not worth telling,” but all drunks love a good story. Just that this story isn’t particularly interesting! “So uh, to make a long story short, a lot of computer nerds got together and put together a lot of free software together, and it got called a ‘distribution’! Debian’s one of those distributions.” At this point, the hippies will have totally bought into it, because free is good, and free is love, etc. But they’re usually downstairs smoking pot and singing songs of liberation or whatever the hell it is that hippies do these days, so you’re still talking to the Mass Comm majors. So the question I’m really asking is: Is there a graceful way to explain Debian to people who don’t really care about it, but want a plausible answer? Should I just lie through my teeth and say it’s something they can identify with, like a band or a fraternity or something? That just sounds wrong, but if I try to sort of explain what it is, it’s hard to figure out how deep to go with it. This doesn’t just happen at parties, but it’s a notable example. Are there others in my situation? Am I the only DD in college in the USA who also has social interaction on a regular basis and inevitably stumbles on this dilemma? Help me out, guys…

Hm, it appears our provider has not thought of a small detail in their VoIP offer: I would like to see it working before I cancel my ISDN line, however I'm supposed to convert my old numbers with the same order form, and I'd conclude that I will not be assigned temporary numbers in the meantime.

This is probably one of the worst flames I've seen in a long time. The funny part is that he complains about "AA zealots", while he clearly is a "non-AA-zealot" just as bad as any "AA zealot" can possibly be. I know a few (definitely a minority) of people who dislike AA fonts. But as far as I can tell, it's really easy to disable them. And from all I the average user will like them better, so it makes for a sane default to enable them. So, yes, you zealot, I want my fonts blurry, because I find them easier to read. Sorry for having a different personal taste. Oh, and then there is an explanation why AA fonts can actually be easier to read then black-and-white fonts. Because they grey levels are more consistent (which btw, is one of the tings LaTeX does very well, keeping the grey level) than if you have to make each pixel either black or white. Let's say we want to make a line 2 pixels to the right and 1 pixel down. In fonts these things happen... Here are your options: (Sorry, I forgot one: the hole in the middle...) the right one is obviously using AA and is "blurred". The left one is "too dark in the middle" and the other two are deformed. Now let's blur them a bit, like the average non-eagle would see them: The last one clearly is the best representation of the intended shape (a diagonal line of even thinkness). This is of course different if the intended shape was that it becomes slightly "fatter" here, or deformed. The only sane default for vector fonts is to assume that lines should well, not become deformed or thicker. I agree that a excellently made black-and-white pixel font might be done in a way that these deformations don't hurt. It doesn't apply to your favourite Helvetica font IMHO, because that font was designed for printing quality. Now go, and play configuring your "window manager", while I get some work done with openbox as my WM of choice. Because it just sits there in the background and allows me to have all my windows maximized on their own desktops except for my terminals which tile nicely without any zealot WM.

Just about everybody hates backing up computers. But it's important. With more of our information being stored digitally -- even photos -- it's critical to back them up. At home, I've been using rdiff-backup for years now. Very slick. It stores backups on the filesystem -- they look as if you had used rsync. It also stores metadata (owner, mode, etc.) in separate files, so you don't have to back up using root. But the neat thing is how it handles incrementals. Incremental backups will update the backup image files to the current state, and store binary diffs to the past state. So you can access the latest backup instantly, and re-generate the previous state if needed. Very nice. I had just been backing up to a regular IDE drive. But this week, I ordered two Seagate ST3400601CB-RK external drives. The drives support both USB2 and FireWire. We will get a safe deposit box at a bank. At any given moment, one drive will be at home, and one will be safely at the bank. They'll be rotated periodically. At work, we've been using Amanda for years. It does its job well. (Except on AIX, where both dump and tar are broken in obscure, hideous ways, but that's not Amanda's fault.) Recently, I discovered Bacula. This looks very slick. It seems to be the direction Amanda would evolve, if it would ever evolve. We're going to test it out soon. And besides, who wouldn't love a program whose slogan is "Bacula: It comes in the night and sucks the essence from your computers"?

My DOAP (Description of a Project) vocabulary has been one of those slow-burning projects. A gentle increase in interest, followed by plenty of pleasant discoveries of where its been deployed.What I feel to be one of the best considered and implemented deployments of DOAP has been launched on the Apache Software Foundation projects site. Apache are using DOAP as part of a project to describe and map out the vast array of projects that are part of the foundation's activities.In addition to the DOAP vocabulary as specified by me, Apache have added an extension to describe which standards a project implements. They've done this in a well-documented and non-intrusive way. Also, the categories mechanism has been used in just the way I envisaged, allowing a convenient navigation of Apache actitivies. The tips for authors on how to put together the DOAP file are also a great resource.Lastly, Apache's version of a DOAP-a-matic enables people to hit the ground running. There are already many Apache projects with a DOAP description, making the initiative useful from the get-go.Reading around the site, it looks like having a DOAP file in place for each project will also reap big adminstration benefits for the foundation. I look forward with interest to seeing how this grows. I'm really impressed with the quality of the implementation.

This year, we're dealing with the worst DPL election I've known. Despite the high number of candidates, none of them makes me really feel like voting for him.

Summarizing the general tendencies of the candidates:

• Jonathan Walther is a populist who's saying anything that could bring him any vote, after having spread infamous political ideas on Debian lists two years ago.


• Andreas Schuldei is a pure teletubby, fed with rainbows and sunshine.


• Steve McIntyre talks like something that's between a teletubby and a commercial guy with ultra-bright shining smile.


• Ari Pollak likes cats and Samuel L. Jackson. There can be nothing wrong with such a guy.


• Anthony Towns has a very appealing platform, but his past behavior when occupying a key position makes me very reluctant to see him as the DPL.


• Jeroen van Wolffelaar wants to force developers to be nice to each other. Teletubbies can also have fascist tendencies.


• Bill is a very nice guy with good ideas. He's also the only candidate who hasn't voted for option 2 in the GFDL GR - read, the only one who seems to be interested in truly free software. Sadly, he's not very good with public relations.

That makes only 2 candidates I can decently put above "None of the above": Bill and Zeke the cat. I know many developers disagree with my analysis for the other ones, but when filling your ballot, you shouldn't forget that behind their words, there is what they will actually do if elected.

Another move, another new address, another new phone number, another (snail) mail forwarding form, another city, another flat. Packing boxes and bags again ... I am once more on the move. (And slowly getting good at it ;)) This is my last day in Leipzig. *sigh* My internship here is over. Can't say much on how the internship was, since I signed a whole pile of NDAs, but I guess I can say that is has been a very educational experience and I learned a lot. Leipzig itself is still awsome and I'll miss it badly! It is such a great place to live at and I hope I'll return here one day. But for now I am returning to Hildesheim to finish my studies and write my thesis. No idea yet what will come after that. A few vague plans, but nothing ripe for decision. So, no prognoses yet. Nothing endures but change ... :) I'll probably be offline for the next few days, since the phone/net connection isn't there yet. I'll occasionally check mail/irc at the uni but please allow for a little lag until I have settled in properly. For now, a last good bye from Leipzig. Be back soon.

After listening to a lecture by the illustrious Dr. Gabriella ("biella") Coleman on the ethics of Free Software hackers yesterday, I read the expulsion thread on -devel. Hearing what biella talked about makes me think that Debian, as a culture, isn't ready to start expelling people based on their ability to get along with the rest of the project. It conflicts far too much with our ideals. On the other hand, drumming a person out so they feel so unwelcome that they choose to leave is pretty well Ok with us. If we're going to make interactions between developers more civil and friendly and less personally hostile then we need a different kind of stick. Maybe a carrot of sorts is in order too?

In other news, I've proposed a mechanism to "facilitate communication" so that the DPL candidates can stop repeating it every year. This mechanism is inherent in the constitution, and if we start expecting that the DPL assume this responsibility and exercise this right, it'll actually happen and the DPL will at least have some more concrete way in which to do some leading. Maybe it'll help the whole project gain some momentum and not get bogged down by some of the long-running debates that have plagued us in the past.

Man, Bill Gates is pissed that the OLPC project isn't using Windows (from Reuters):

"If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type," Gates said.

Interesting, considering just a few months ago his opinion of OLPC was subtly different (via New York Times, quoted in Linux Pipeline):

According to several people familiar with the discussions, Microsoft had encouraged Mr. Negroponte to consider using the Windows CE version of its software, and Microsoft had been prepared to make an open-source version of the program available.

For the potential market of a million schoolchildren Microsoft will do anything. Take that market away and give it to Linux of all people, and they'll FUD you to death. NP: Motion, Cinematic Orchestra

The ICQ number 264908634 (I have no idea who this is, she claims she is a "lisa", uses tons of annoying and not working smileys and thinks she loves me, but I'm confident she doesn't know me either. She was very eager to give me a probably false email, though.) is causing trouble with ICQ. The ICQ "whitepages" print an error, and when you add this ICQ number to your block list in gaim, it will crash on login to your ICQ account. Oh, and if you think of chatting up to me on ICQ/whatever, please respect a "I don't know you, please leave me alone", or I might not bother asking you before publishing your broken ICQ# in my blog either. ;-) I think the fault of gaim is just not having proper error handling when not being able to block ICQ numbers. The ICQ homepage displaying this error (for a week now, that is when I first received and ignored a "Hey" from this ICQ number) however suggests ICQ (read: AOL) sucks seriously at fixing bugs. ;-)