Search Results: "will"

31 December 2005

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho: New year

Thirty years ago I was not born yet. Twenty-five years ago I was having an adventure in the student village. Twenty years ago I lived in a red house (there was no potato farm, though). Fifteen years ago I started noticing politics. (It was hard not to.) Ten years ago I was nearly burned out because of both the demands of school and all the extracurricular activities I enjoyed. Five years ago I was doing my best to graduate to Bachelor’s Degree. Four years ago I had succeeded. Three years ago I had just finished my Master’s Degree. Two years ago I was trying to expand my Master’s Thesis into a postgraduate Licentiate’s Thesis. I eventually got sick of the topic. One year ago I had just barely lost my first elections and was fretting about getting elected as one of the local district court’s lay judges. Six months ago I was fretting about going to Debconf.
Today, I’ve been thinking about tidying my room. In 2006, I hope to graduate to Licentiate’s Degree. I also hope I will be able to make some good progress in some of my bigger hobby projects. And to teach good courses. Maybe even improve dctrl-tools further.
Happy new year 2006!

Dirk Eddelbuettel: Quantian in VMWare Player: Create a virtual disk with qemu

A few days ago, I blogged about booting/running the Quantian iso via VMware Player, a 'free as in beer' virtualization tool. Over the last few days, I have experimented a little more, perused the VMware Player Forum and googled a bit. It turns out that you can employ the 'free as in speech' virtualization tool qemu (using version 0.7.2 from Debian unstable is fine, looks like a newer 0.8.0 it out upstream) to create a virtual disk image in vmdk format suitable for VMware. For example, the command
qemu-img create -f vmdk Quantian.vmdk 512M
creates a 512mb file of the given name in the in required vmdb format. By the way, qemu is smart and creates a much smaller file -- an 'empty' 512mb partition occupies only 12mb. It is then only a matter of updating the previously posted Quantian.vmx file to add the 'new disk'. I.e. instead of defining just one ide device, we now use two as per
# CDROM Info
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.fileName = "quantian_0.7.9.1.iso"
ide0:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

# edd 31 Dec 2005 adding a virtual disk file
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"
ide1:0.filename = "Quantian.vmdk"
ide1:0.redo = ""
ide1:0.deviceType = "ata-hardDisk"
On the next reboot, Quantian will display a disk symbol for hdc. It it then a matter of starting a root shell in Quantian, running cfdisk or fdisk to partition the new "empty" disk drive and to add a /dev/hdc1 partition (or more), running mke2fs -j dev/hdc1 to add a filesystem --- and on a subsequent reboot, the disk is ready for use. It should thus be possible to create a suitable disk file of, say, ten or so gigabytes (given that Quantian expands to around seven gigs), create a filesystem and then run knx2hd to install Quantian onto the new virtual disk, make the disk bootable and, presto!, have a virtual instance of Quantian on stateful read/write media. While my tests have been limited to using a Linux host, this procedure should work just the same way in Windows. Oh, and as it's still early afternoon here: Best wishes for 2006 to everyone!

Aigars Mahinovs: New Year's Eve. No party to go to. Lots of time to...

New Year's Eve. No party to go to. Lots of time to spend reading up on my mailbox and working towards 1.0 release of sbackup.

However I will stop for a moment for a meme from my friend, Yume

The idea is to put all of your music collection into a player, put it on shuffle, ask a question and press next. "Me" is myself, "PL" is the player with my interpretation of results on the next line.

Me: What do I think about myself?
PL: Aqualung - Strange and beautiful
I like that, nice start! :)

Me: What do my friends think about me?
PL: Rammstein - Moskau
Old, yet new. Known, yet strange. Open, yet with lots more to explore. Money uber ales.

Me: What does my family think of me?
PL: Weezer - Buddy Holly
"...I don't care what they say about us anyway..." :)

Me: How will the next year be for me?
PL: Gloria Estefan - Turn the beat around
dynamic and revolutionary?

Me: Hmm, nothing comes to mind ...
PL: Madonna - Secret
"...Happiness lies in your own hands..." or "..my baby's got a secret.." ?

Me: Will this year be more romantic then the last?
PL: Jackson Browne - Sky Blue and Black
??? strange love song about the edge between lovers and friends

Me: Do I have a bright future?
PL: Roxette - Dangerous
lol. "Hold on tight...", "...You pack your bag, you take control..." sounds nice even if "a little bit dangerous" :)

Me: Will I become a President (or at least a MEP)?
PL: Celine Dion - If you asked me to
so it is possible, if I want it to and ask for it

Me: Will I get my Master's degree?
PL: Shiro Sagisu - Destiny avaits (From "Bleach" OST)
Good, so that is my destiny :)

Me: When will I buy myself an apartment or a house?
PL: Dream Academy - Life in a Northern Town
Not positive - "all the work shut down" and mentions of the Salvation Army and "they sat on the stoney ground", but "everyone else came down". On the other hand, living outside Riga in some more northern towns is much cheaper, so that's an option.

Me: What about renting, I hear that is more reasonable now, ne?
PL: Anastacia - Pretty Little Dum Dum
"illusion and deceit" mostly about self illusion, sounds like you want to say that I myself will not be satisfied with a rented place.

Me: Ok, that brings another question - if I start a company, will it be successful enough for me to buy/build a house without taking a mortage?
PL: Diana King - Shy Guy
song says that shy guys are sexy, is that a potential marketing pitch :$
Me: I didn't quite get it, could you a bit more clear about that?
PL: Anastacia - Time
"one day at a time", "timing is everything". now that is better.

Me: Now, should I really publish this blog post?
PL: Avril Lavigne - Not the only one
If you do it, do it now.

So I will.

Zak B. Elep: OMG

A few days ago in IRC… 
*       zakame would love to have wifi, laptop even, but no, haven't tried weroam yet :/
<iandexter>   who knows, zak? santa just might hear you. ;) 
<zakame>      I am crafting my wishlist right now :) 
*       iandexter thinks zakame's been a good boy and santa will surely see that. :) 
<zakame>      I pray St. Nick will :D
Now, this post pushed itself into my Inbox. Hmmm, I can’t even afford getting a USB stick like every good dev… and with the hardness of the times, I’m hard-pressed to even get a new desktop… =( /me gets back to work on gtklp, ecb, and lighttpd, and posts debdiffs…

Zak B. Elep: Going on, and on, and on

Deep breathing here. Finally, sem break! Well, actually, it already is sem break since the 15th, and only now at the end of this month did I felt it. I was so busy doing things, both online and offline, that I didn’t even realize that the next sem will be up in the week after next. Sigh… So, what have I been doing since school’s close? Mostly Ubuntu work: Aside from hacking, I’ve been busy baking as well, and preparing for next sem. The only thing I’m quite missing is the “traditional” Halloween get-together with my High School batchmates; hell, it is only 1 year to go before a Homecoming… PS: My Ubuntu work has paid off. Thanks to Kamion, Seveas, smurf, dholbach, tseng, and ogra for voting me in as a Ubuntu Member! And to Jerome Gotangco and the Ubuntu-PH team: mabuhay kayo! :)

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho: Independence Day repost

The following is a repost from my old blog, originally written one year ago. As I start to write this, it’s the last minute of my country’s 87th birthday (the Finnish Independence Day). It got me thinking about nation-states and independence and whatnot. And I came to a threefold conclusion: First, there is some value in independence. Getting rid of the status of a Grand Duchy in personal union with Russia was certainly a good step for Finland, in light of the rough road the Russians themselves have since travelled. For the same reason, the two wars Finland fought against the USSR were quite worthwhile. Similarly, if Finland were to be threatened by a neighbour again, armed defense would certainly be justifiable. Second, there is no intrinsic value in independence. If a humanly life (including freedom and local government) can be guaranteed even if there is no Finnish state in itself, I see no reason to hold on to the old-fashioned concept of a nation state. Third, I am in favour, as a long-term goal, of a world government. Of course, a single government becomes a single point of failure in case of a coup, for example, but if the global state is arranged properly, the danger of a successful coup is minimal. On the other hand, a world government is in far better position to institute necessary policies to combat the global problems of poverty, climate change and other such issues than the current system of competing and cooperating nation-states. In the current system, the big issues are easily put aside in name of local opportunism. Finland is by no means immune to that problem. The great crises of the 20th Century were its devastating wars. Fortunately, we have overcome them to a sufficient degree. The great crisis of the 21st Century is not terrorism – though it is a symptom. The great crisis is caused by the limits of growth, and we are already feeling quite concretely the nearness of those limits. If something is not done, our current civilization will crash spectacularly. The human race will probably survive – but do we really want to live through another Dark Age? Long Live the Earth!

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho: Pain and suffering and other immaterial personal damage

Martin- ric Racine asked in the comments to my previous mini-essay on crime-related damage compensation about how immaterial losses, such as pain and suffering, are given monetary value in court. In this essay, which is again part of my essay series on Finnish criminal justice, I will try and sketch an answer. As usual, I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, and this is not an exhaustive treatise on the subject. Finnish law is very vague about how immaterial damage is compensated. It basically only gives a list of the forms of immaterial loss for which compensation can be ordered by a court. The main categories related to physical injuries are kipu ja s rky (usually translated somewhat inaccurately as pain and suffering) and pysyv haitta (permanent handicap). Kipu refers to the instant pain suffered when the injury is created, and s rky refers to the longer-term but not permanent pain present after the kipu has ended until the injury is healed. A new act of parliament will amend this at new year, specifying these in greater detail. It amends the existing Damage Compensation Act by defining a list of things that are to be given special weight when measuring the monetary value of personal damage. For pain and suffering, those things are the type of the injury, the type and duration of medical treatment it required, and how long the pain and suffering lasted or is expected to last. For permanent handicap, however, the list is a little different: the type and extent of the injury, and the age of the injured person at the time of injury. This is basically just writing out the existing legal praxis. There is currently no specific standard against which the courts compare individual cases. However, since one is desperately needed, the courts generally use a substitute. There is a governmental board whose job is to set a standard monetary valuation for different types of injuries sustained in traffic accidents. That standard is intended to be used by insurance companies, but in practice, courts also use them as a guide when considering injuries caused by criminal acts. In relation to pain and suffering, the standard categorizes injuries as follows:
Category A (petty injury)
will heal fully leaving no marks in a week or two, requires no hospitalization, causes at most two weeks’ inability to work – scratched skin, small cut, minor bruises etc.
Category B1 (minor injury)
requires no resuscitation nor intensive care, requires up to a week of hospitalization without surgery, causes at most two months’ inability to work, causes only insignificant permanent disability – significant bruising, loss of few teeth, simple bone fractures etc.
Category B2 (medium injury)
may require resuscitation but not intensive care, requires one to three weeks of hospitalization, no complications in treatment, no need for reconstructive surgery in later care, causes at most seven months’ inability to work, causes only minor permanent disability – simple fractures of the long bones, fractures of facial bones, etc.
-Category C1 (major injury)
requires cardiovascular or pulmonary resuscitation, requires short-term respirator use or tracheostomy, in the case of a limb injury, requires demanding surgery, requires reconstructive surgery in later care, requires up to eight weeks of hospitalization, causes up to eight months of inability to work, causes significant permanent disability – loss of all teeth, complicated bone fractures etc.
Category C2 (especially major injury)
requires long-term mechanical respiration or resuscitation, major complications in treatment, requires extensive surgery, requires hospitalization for longer than eight weeks, causes a year of inability to work, causes major permanent disability – loss of limb, significant brain damage, loss of fertility, severe burns etc.
Category C3 (extraordinary injury)
extraordinary complications in treatment, long-term hospitalization, causes complete disability, causes helplessness – extreme brain damage causing dementia, loss of both upper limbs or both lower limbs, causes permanent pain, permanent quadriplegia, causes complete blindness
As you can see, all categories are described both by the treatment required and by listing sample injuries. These descriptions are complementary, and not identical. In categories A and B, the treatment-based descriptions are conjunctive (all requirements must apply), and in C, they are disjunctive (at least one must apply). I did not translate the descriptions completely; see the Finnish original source if you need more detail. The traffic injury standard currently specifies the following monetary values for each category:
Category Compensation
A see below
B1 200–1,000
B2 1,000–2,900
C1 2,900–7,300
C2 7,300–16,700
C3 at least 16,700
Due to a quirk in the traffic injury ccompensation system, Category A is not compensated in the case of traffic injuries. This does not apply in criminal cases, where Category A is usually taken as “up to 200 ”. Of course, the specifics of the case will sometimes require departing from this standard in criminal cases (the aggravation in the crime often is taken as a reason to up the monetary damage estimate). Permanent damage is similarly handled by courts by referring to the standard set for the statutory employee’s accidental injury insurances (see the Finnish sources 1 and 2 for details). I already mentioned above a new act of parliament. That act, which will enter into force January 1, 2006, creates a new Personal Damage Advisory Board (henkil vahinkoasiain neuvottelukunta), which will follow legal praxis and give recommendations, much like the above-described standard, which courts and other instances deciding on compensation for personal damage can take as a base standard against which individual cases can be measured. The advisory board’s recommendations are likely to supplant the traffic damage standard described above in the future.

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho: Not again!

When you protest political decisions, please – pretty please! – have some perspective! As bad as the new data retention decision is, it is not even in the same ballpark as 1984. There is no thought police, there aren’t thousands of people rewriting history books according to the political leadership’s whims, there is no newspeak whose vocabulary is constantly shrinking. Nobody will take you seriously if you overreact. You only hurt the good cause.

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho: Phishing Amazon user data

I’ve seen from several sources messages of the following kind: 
Subject: Please verify and update your Amazon account !
Dear Amazon    member , 
    It has come to our attention that your Amazon account information records are
out of date. That requires you to update your account information . If you could
please take 5-10 minutes out of your online  experience , and update
your account , you will not run into any future problems with Amazon
online service.                                       
   However, failure to update your records will result in account termination.
Please update your records in maximum 48 hours.  
   Once you have updated records, your Amazon session will not be
interrupted and will continue as normal.
      To update your Amazon account information click on the following link: 
        (link suppressed)
 Best Regards ,
Amazon Security Departament
Disregarding the very sound general rule of thumb telling us to distrust any mails that ask us to “reconfirm” our account details at whatever company, this mail is fairly convincing. The greatest clues that this is a forgery are such that Grandma Pihtipudas will unlikely notice them: the mail has been sent to several addresses I know are not registered with Amazon, and the link uses a well known URI spoofing technique. Beware!

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho: Christmas balance

I calmed down for Christmas on Friday. Calmed down is exactly the right verb, as I ended up sleeping through most of it. I slept though Friday, hacked during the late evening and night, then slept again most of the Christmas eve. My father came around six to drop me his (other) gift. It was a book on European history 1600–1800, nice, what I had asked for, for I have this dream of writing something in the 163x-verse some time (though I doubt it’ll ever happen). I had received (and opened) his other gift earlier, which was Star Wreck’s soundtrack (probably better than the movie, though the movie was very good too). Opened also my mother’s package which I had picked up earlier in the week from the post office’s local agent: a Heidi Hautala scarf, a long scarf made by my mother herself, and some writing material. Thank you! I slept through most of Sunday, too. Advance subscriptions to Jim Baen’s Universe opened also on Christmas eve. Picked up the Titan membership, for even the other membership classes appealed to me (extensive Tuckerization rights, yessss!), they would have posed cash flow problems. So I took the Titan one, hoping that it will help the magazine at least a little. However, I started reading one of the books that came with the advance subscription package, Empire from Ashes by David Weber, and helped me spend most of the time I wasn’t sleeping (of course, I realized later that I already had that book, since it came with the At All Costs hardcover bonus CD). Today’s minus fifteen degrees, along with the threat that it might actually go below twenty today, made me finally look for my long johns. Surprisingly, my current trousers have been warm enough without long johns even slightly below minus ten; but I knew I’d have to look for the long johns eventually, as a Finnish winter at Jyv skyl ’s longitude just isn’t complete without at least a few days of minus 25 degrees. All Celsius, naturally. All in all, it was a most relaxing Christmas :)

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho: Upgraded Wordpress

Just upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.0. It looks everything went quite nicely, I see no major problems and considering how coolly the Finnish blog list service Blogilista took the upgrade, it is likely that Planet Debian will no throw a fit either. First impressions: the admin interface looks cool. The new editor is usable. Update: In the upgrade, I followed the instructions with a twist: I made the following changes to my server config prior to the upgrade so that any transitional problems would not be visible: RewriteEngine on RewriteCond % REMOTE_ADDR !^130\.234\.192\.228$ RewriteCond % REQUEST_URI !^/503.cgi$ RewriteRule ^/newblog /503.cgi The effect of this was that I (having the IP address 130.234.192.228) would see the blog as it is, but others would see the 503 ‘Service unavailable’ error message that my 503.cgi created. Update(2): Argh! The new editor handles pre tags badly. Had to hack around it in the ugly way seen above. Update (3): Fixed the WP2 link above. Update (4): It seems I was wrong about Planet’s sensibilities. However, now I’m blaming Planet, not the upgrade, since Blogilista handled the upgrade without thinking I had made any new posts!

Uwe Hermann: 22C3: Final Stuff

More Bandwidth OK, I will make this short because a gazillion of other people will probably blog about the 22C3 for several days or weeks to come... Today (last day) I only attended one talk — Bluetooth Hacking - The State of The Art. Funny stuff you can do with Bluetooth... All in all it was a great conference. Get the proceedings or browse the list of talks (most of them have PDFs attached) for more details. Videos of all talks should be available anytime soon (I hope!). Oh, and the 22C3 is probably the only event where you will see such signs (attached to walls by the congress staff!)...

30 December 2005

Erich Schubert: Why does Intel pick bad slogans: "limp ahead"?

No more "Intel outside", but now now a "limp ahead"? Intel has a new annoying marketing slogan. Congrats. Now, could you stop sueing poor users for using regular english words such as inside? (No, I'm not affected, just annoyed) Will you now fight anyone using the word "ahead"?

Uwe Hermann: Why you should read your log messages from time to time

I didn't notice this for months. I was only able to use ca. 900 MB of my 1024 MB of RAM. It only happened accidentally that I read through my logs and noticed this:

Dec 26 19:33:37 localhost kernel: Warning only 896MB will be used.
Dec 26 19:33:37 localhost kernel: Use a HIGHMEM enabled kernel.
Dec 26 19:33:37 localhost kernel: 896MB LOWMEM available.
 After setting the "High Memory Support" kernel option to 4GB and a quick kernel recompile, I can now use my full RAM. Nice, eh? Update 2005-12-31: Thanks a lot to all the people pointing out (via comments in the blog and emails) that there's a better way to do this!

Simon Law: WvDial 1.55

My day at the office has been pretty grand. I got to talk with a whole bunch of people about their problems and promised to look into some of them. Then I talked to someone about sales and marketting. Then I talked to Chris and we struggled with PHP. And finally, a chat with Tim about release management. It was like a day at the Montr al office, but with people who are less bouncy. I tried to smile at people and make them feel happier, at which I think I was mildly successful. Perhaps my motivational poster will help? I had some tasty ph for lunch at Ph Vi t which is a Vietnamese restaurant run by Cantonese people. It is also within walking distance of the office. Their soup was rather filling for a small portion and they had delicious spring rolls. Alas, they are not UltimateSpringRolls, but one can't expect to find those everywhere. A special bonus was that I got to talk with Deidra, in between happy bites of noodles and soup. It is now late and I guess I should be heading out. I was hoping to hang out with people after work, but they seem to have gone home. Oh well. So to pass the time, I released WvDial 1.55. Hurray!

29 December 2005

Jeff Bailey: Will bomb for food

CBC reports that fisheries around the world combined consume the same amount of oil per year as the Netherlands. They go on to explain:
  1. Depletion of fish stocks because boats are travelling further out to sea in order to meet demand causes higher fuel consumption.
  2. The fishing industry is still more efficient than other meat based industries.
Another way that your dinner can contribute to global warming and US-style "anti-terrorism".

Emanuele Rocca: s/websearch/smartbookmark/

It seems that an Xfce plugin called websearch already exists. I renamed mine to xfce4-smartbookmark-plugin. I will use Google before choosing project names.
I will use Google before choosing project names.
I will use Google before choosing project names.
I will use Google before choosing project names.
I will use Google before choosing project names.

Joey Hess: Call for lightning talks for DebConf 6

My proposal to use one of the talk slots at DebConf 6 for a series of lightning talks has been accepted. Now I need to find some people (besides me) to give some of the 7 or more talks, each under 5 minutes long, that will fit into the time slot that I hope will be the most intense 45 minutes at DebConf. If you're interested, I've set up an amusing page in the wiki where you can propose a lightning talk.

Decklin Foster: lastfmsubmitd

Apparently, tis the season to be writing your own Last.fm plugin. So here is mine. I finally got fed up with finding and causing bugs in mpdscribble (I am a bad sponsor!) it s written in C with libsoup, blah blah, can t stand C, and so I revived the MPD pseudo-listener I had started on as a replacement for that awful orphaned cacheless one-off we were all using before mpdscribble. I also fixed a few issues that were bugging me, like failing to detect restarts and tag changes. Not wanting to muddy up any of that logic with HTTP gar, I decided to write a separate program to queue, cache and send along song submissions. They re two or three hundred lines of Python each, and single-threaded (yes, that means child writers blocking and hanging around if the network code is in the middle of timing out or backing off. Deal with it! This is UNIX). I m pretty happy with the design, although the implementation is still very rough. This also mimics the model they want to move to for player plugins in general, which is good, because it will be less work for me to implement version 2.0 of the protocol once that is finalized. Additionally, I was able to find a more satisfying way to solve the disconnected-CD-player problem than my previous dreadful method of either using a few kludgey scripts to frob around in my primary plugin s cache or dealing with using cdscrobbler and having to be very careful about one plugin not stepping on the other s toes and invalidating my backlog. So this is the second example program included. (Oh yes, that part uses the Python bindings for MusicBrainz. MB is awesome. The Python bindings are hideous, however straight port of the C++ API. I d probably be better off just dumping the RDF into a real RDF implementation and doing my own cross-referencing, instead of prying it out piecemeal with select queries and non-polymorphic getters and all the other absolute nonsense you have to deal with when writing in a language without high-level data types or garbage collection. But regardless of implementation woes, this has kept me close to the MB metadata for my favorite CDs, and so I ve been busy all week entering and voting on mods (and doing research to justify my changes), which is very satisfying. I have yet to begin the gargantuan task of adding MB tags to my Ogg collection (I know, this is really just a matter of babysitting tp_tagger, but I ve got some work cut out for me to even get to that point).) And of course, once this becomes less prototypey, anyone who likes it can knock all the networking code out of their plugin and use it as their system service . Perhaps if I m agile enough this can become official code! It is at least a mootable proof-of-concept that UNIX systems don t necessarily need a heavyweight libscrobbler to abstract the service stuff out of the player plugin. I won t get my hopes up though. Still a bit unsure about the name. Theoretically it seems the service (you know, the thing we pay money to if we like it) should be Last.fm, while the software and protocols should still be Audioscrobbler, but the distinction does not seem to be drawn very clearly in practice. With the analogous situation of livejournal vs. ljcom you had a grokkable technical delineation (different repositories) as well as other widely used installations besides ljcom (DeadJournal, etc). I really can t see there ever being a competing installation of Audioscrobbler, because licensing the streamables is a formidable investment hurdle, and there s a negative market effect (also, the web site is not open source). But I am also bored of just sticking scrobble onto something else, so I wanted to grab sticking last onto something else before it got old. I haven t the faintest clue what makes me prefer whimsical names for some projects and prosaic ones for others. Note to actual MPD users (all, like, 5 of you): the stuff in the package will not handshake at the moment, as I have not yet gotten Russ to bless the client ID I made up. Will try to catch him tomorrow. Or later today I suppose. It s ready to go now. Next up: Because it s either this or Sound Juicer, I think perhaps it s time to bid adieu to abcde and write a MusicBrainz plugin for jack (jack is nice enough, I just haven t had a truly compelling reason to switch, and there have always been lots of good eyeballs on abcde). FreeDB delenda est.

Amaya Rodrigo: Merry... whatever

I will survive Xmas!

(Not safe for work)

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