Dear Lazyweb, since yesterday s daily update, my laptop runs really sluggish. Is there a way to list all packages which where updated or installed yesterday to track down the problem?

I'm glad you asked, since I've been pondering this for a while. $subject is my new project slogan. Now I'm not sure whether we can actually use it, because a) it's stolen from Debian, and b) another (commercial, proprietary) database product already uses the "universal database" line.

I have come to appreciate that the "universality" of a software proposition can be a killer feature. For example, Debian GNU/Linux, the "universal operating system", might not be the operating system that is the easiest to approach or use, but once you get to know it, the fact that it works well and the same way on server, desktop, and embedded ensures that you never have to worry about what operating system to use for a particular task. Or Python, it's perhaps not the most geeky nor the most enterprisy programming language, but you can use it for servers, GUIs, scripting, system administration, like few other languages. It might as well be the "universal programming language". A lot of other software is not nearly universal, which means that whenever you move into a new area, you have to learn a lot of things from scratch and cannot easily apply and extend past experiences. And often the results are then poor and expensive.

The nice thing about PostgreSQL is that you never have to worry about whether to use it, because you can be pretty sure that it will fit the job. Even if you don't care whether something is "open source" or "most advanced". But it will fit the job. The only well-known exception is embedded databases, and frankly I think we should try to address that.

Lucas asks about how free the N900 is, whether he can download and recompile and reflash. I'll try to answer some of those questions. No, you can't download all the source. Part of it is just not open. I am not privy to Nokia's decisions on why or why not to open up, but it seems like the user interface bits are only partially open. Hildon itself is open so you can poke at widgets and see how those work. The address book is not open. The telepathy component that talks to the cellular modem is not open. As for having to accept EULAs, I honestly don't remember accepting one of those, but I'm not going to say there are none. There's at least one which is every time you install a package where you have to check a box saying "Yes, I know this package is third party and will not sue Nokia if it causes my house to burn down, my wife to divorce me or causes somebody to steal the car". It's annoying, but I'm willing to live with it. The contents of apt's sources.list is:

deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/ssu/apps/ ./ 
deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/ssu/mr0 ./ 
deb https://downloads.maemo.nokia.com/fremantle/ovi/ ./ 
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras/ fremantle free non-free
deb http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel/ fremantle free non-free

(technically, it comes from /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hildon-application-manager.list, not sources.list.) I believe the built-in applications are generally not free, so rebuilding everything that is free will for instance leave you without any address book UI, the built-in map application or camera. Sadly, the X driver is also proprietary, so you won't be able to see anything either. I don't think you can usefully install another free distro on the N900. You might be able to, at some point, assuming somebody goes to the effort. The last question is "- Besides the non-free telephony stack, are there any other antifeatures I should be aware of?". The telephony stack is implemented around Telepathy, which is LGPL-ed free software. While it's correct that telepathy-ring (which talks to the cellular modem), the call UI and most of the address book are proprietary, the rest of Telepathy is free. There are SIP and XMPP connection managers that are free, and you can install more connection managers for MSN, IRC and so on. Also, I think it's important to emphasise that the telephony stack does not contain any antifeatures. The closest thing you would be able to find is probably the restriction to one active and one held call at the same time, but as one of the developers said: "That's to prevent the UI from going mad". While I like to tout the N900 as a free phone, it is in no way completely free. Large parts of it are free, and almost as importantly: most of the programming interfaces are free and at least somewhat documented, so if somebody wants to replace the built-in camera application with a free one, they can replace the DBus interface that the camera app provides. Ditto for maps applications, the address book and so on.

Dear readers, So, I ve been looking into buying a Nokia N900. However, what it provides regarding freedom is still not completely clear to me. And given that it is significantly more expensive than other smartphones, I d like to make sure that it s not a loss of money :-) - Can I download the full source, recompile it, build a firmware from it and re-install my Nokia N900 from scratch? Is the process documented? It seems that you need to accept a EULA to download updated firmwares, and I couldn t find the source for them. What exactly is available from firmware that is not available through normal repositories? (Are normal repositories only for extras apps, or is the base system also installable / upgradable from them? - What s the content of /etc/apt/sources.list? What exactly is http://repository.maemo.org/pool/maemo5.0/nokia-binaries/? What does Nokia need to hide? :-) - Would it be possible to develop a Centos-like distribution, installing the Maemo firmware, but then upgrading everything to rebuilt versions using an unofficial repository? Are there some applications that are not packaged, or that would break if re-installed that way? - Could I install Debian or Ubuntu on the N900? Is the process documented? Is it possible to dual-boot between, say, Maemo5 and Debian? (I m not talking about setting up a chroot, of course) - Besides the non-free telephony stack, are there any other antifeatures I should be aware of? Thanks.

Recently, Eclipse started ignoring clicks on dialog buttons for me. This seems to be due to some changes in gtk 2.18. It does not use native windows for all widgets anymore, and SWT seems to rely on it. Thanks to this blog post, I have this fix in my bashrc: The Debian bug tracker also knows about this problem, which is partly fixed for the eclipse packages. Bad luck that I am using a download from eclipse.org.

The XML-Editor Serna by Syntext has been published as Free Software a few months ago. This was very good news, because there was a lack of a good free XML editors with a good graphical view on DocBook documents, which I needed to recommend to users of zpub. Therefore, I investigated packaging Serna for Debian. I had to patch a few things to make it compile on and64 and to use components shipped by Debian where possible. Today, I could finally close the RFP bug filed by W. Martin Borgert, as the serna package was accepted by the ftp-masters. The first bug (SEGFAULT on startup on lenny) is already filed. I hope this is a good sign, as it shows that there is interest in the package. For my packaging workflow, I used git-svn to import the upstream SVN branch into a git repository. I then use git-dpm by Bernhard R. Link to manage my changes as patches in the new 3.0 (quilt) debian source package. I must say that I prefer this approach to git-buildpackage, as there is only one git branch to publish. I hope that Bernhard uploads git-dpm to Debian soon. Serna is quite a big software project and uses stuff that I know little about (Qt, C++ with python interaction etc.). Also, the package currently bundles the DITA-OT package, which should rather be packaged separately. Therefore, I d be glad if co-maintainers would join the effort.

I m running Debian/Unstable on an EeePC 701, I ve got an SD card for /home etc but the root filesystem is on the internal 4G flash storage which doesn t have much spare space (I ve got a full software development environment, GCC, debuggers, etc as well as running KDE4). On some of my systems I ve started the practice of having two root filesystem installs, modern disks are big enough that usually it s difficult to use all the space, and even if you do use most of the space the use of a second root filesystem only takes a fraction of a percent of the available space. Today I discovered a problem with my EeePC, I had upgraded to the latest Unstable packages a few days ago and now when I run X programs the screen flickers really badly every time it s updated. Pressing a key in a terminal window makes the screen shake, watching a video with mplayer makes it shake constantly to such a degree that it s not usable. If that problem occurred on a system with a second root filesystem I could upgrade the other a few packages at a time to try and discover the root cause. But without the space for a second root filesystem this isn t an option. I hope that Btrfs [1] becomes ready for serious use soon, it seems that the btrfs snapshot facility might make it possible for me to preserve the old version in a bootable form before upgrading my EeePC (although even then disk space would be tight). So I guess I now need to test different versions of the X related packages in a chroot environment to track this bug down. Sigh.

• [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs

I decided to try a little experiment with Flippa.com, a site where you can auction off domains or web sites. I put http://www.innsbruck-apartments.com up for auction:
http://flippa.com/auctions/83341/Innsbruck-Austria-rental-listing-site---Ski-Season We'll see how it goes and whether the site is worth using for other sites that I'd like to sell on. It's a good test case, because it's a site I threw together years ago simply to aid our search for a new apartment in Innsbruck, and then requested by friends.

My Google Bugs page started off as a blog post back in 2006, but I ve moved it to a more permanent home and started to bring it up to date. Recent additions include the China Controversy updated, a recent search bug added andDNS service added. In just over a month, BathLitFest will be holding a debate on Is Google Good For You? Sunday 28 Feb, 1pm 2pm. The key questions are:

In the data-sharing and database age, how much information are we prepared to give away about ourselves and who, ultimately, controls that information? Is the price of convenient, high-speed communication an almost total loss of privacy? And is it right that one company knows more about us than our government, or even than we know ourselves?

Tickets are on sale, priced 7. That s pretty much what I was pointing out back in 2006. I don t hate Google or anything, but we should be realistic: it is a for-profit company, so probably won t be doing anything truly for free. There s always a payback and we should recognise it as part of making an informed choice about whether to trade with them. It s nice to see these questions getting a more mainstream airing. If you ve got any updates for the Google Bugs page, please let me have them.

Coming to New Zealand for an extended period of time, I figured it would make sense to purchase a prepay mobile plan to make it easier to mix with locals. Not knowing better, I went with Vodafone, which I whole-heartedly regret: their website is a massive pain in the ass, their price plans completely over the top, and their customer service representative incompetent and unfriendly. My latest experience eclipsed all previous encounters, and makes me want to tell you about it: Between all the obscure add-ons Vodafone threw at me when I bought this SIM card, two weeks ago I couldn t figure out how my balance had decreased from $30 to $0 when I rarely ever made calls. I wrote an e-mail to their customer service hotline, and it took them a week to get back to me, with the following text:

Due to being a Prepay Customer, unfortunately usage details are not available as per terms and conditions. I have although checked your usage and can confirm that all charges are correct.

Obviously, I wasn t going to accept this claim of omniscience, so when last weekend, $20 disappeared over the course of a day, that was the catalyst for me to reopen the ticket and reply along the lines of:

Only I know when I used my phone and thus only I can determine whether the charges are correct. Please show the full records to me, or else

This seemed to convince the representative, and 8 messages and 11 days after my initial request, I was told I could request the records at $5/30 records. Yes, you read that right: they wanted to charge me to view the records. I thus replied:

I am NOT willing to pay for that. If you are unable to comply with my desire for transparency, then I shall terminate the contract and make sure to inform the media as well as the consumer institute of this conduct. As stated previously, I shall also consult with a lawyer. Charging consumers to view data that is obviously available is a strong indication that you do not want me to see it. I can t imaging why this would be the case other than the data being inconsistent with reality.

That worked, and I finally got an Excel sheet with my usage data, which allowed me to track down the depletion of my account: to lure customers in, they promise free calls to other Vodafone numbers for the first four weekends. There are three problems with that though:

1. Having purchased my card on Saturday afternoon, I was annoyed to find out that the remaining 34 hours of that weekend would be counted as a whole weekend.
2. They don t provide a way by which to find out whether a given number actually belongs to Vodafone or not. The 021 prefix is not enough of an indication.
3. They don t actually tell you anywhere but the aforementioned horrific website that the addon has expired.

So thanks, Vodafone. You ve lost a customer, who should have gone with 2degrees in the first place, who have much lower rates, even though their data coverage doesn t seem as good. I don t need data anyway. I ll still insist on Vodafone providing the data in a Free format. You can find more information about NZ mobile phone providers on the LCA2010 wiki page. NP: Age Pryor: Shank s Pony

So, a while back, Google started providing location services. This seemed pretty cool, but I kind of ignored it until recently when I was playing with my Android s location API. With the GPS off, and no cell towers visible (my basement gets terrible cell service), my phone knew within about 500 feet of where it actually was. All I was connected to was my wifi. Bottom line: it seems that Google, among other methods, is likely wardriving while photographing for Street View. They are now able to pinpoint wifi access points if they happened to see it while driving through your city. I m really rather astonished that no one is freaking out about this; I m a bit unnerved. I implemented the location-of-your-wifi API quickly, so I could terrify myself further. You can do lookups via my location website too, if you want. UPDATE: yeah, it would seem to be crowd-sourced wifi and cell tower triangulation data. I should say Google is WarCrowding .

Moving today went as about as well as you could possibly ask for. The movers arrived at a few minutes to 9, had most of the place packed up within 30 minutes, and I think we headed to the new place in a little over an hour. Mad props to Handle With Care Moving. The guys were really great. The rain also held off for the duration, thankfully. There's just dregs left at the old place, oh and the entire kitchen. I think we're both subconsciously dreading (and therefore avoiding) moving the kitchen stuff, because we really don't want to unpack at the new place, because the kitchen is going to get totally destroyed in hopefully a couple of weeks time. I'm finding wall space to be a bit of a premium at the new place. We're trying to keep the second bedroom as usable as a bedroom as possible, while primarily using it as a study, so that when we have house guests, we can throw some sort of bed down in that room and not have it all become ridiculously cluttered. When you've got desks all against one wall, a built-in wardrobe against another wall, and a full length sliding door on the other wall, that doesn't leave too many options for a bookshelf and retaining space for a bed. I think we might have to avail ourselves of some more elfa shelving and ditch the Ikea bookshelf we currently have. On the other hand, our bedroom is looking pretty good. For the first time in ages, it's just going to be a bedroom. No desks, no filing, no storage. The wardrobe has less space than our old place, so we're having to be pretty ruthless with clothing. Oh, and the bathroom storage: way less. Not sure how we're going to sort that one out at the moment. The phone and cable TV should get hooked up tomorrow, and then I'll get the DSL moved over, so hopefully by Wednesday, we'll have Internet connectivity. We brought the cats over this afternoon. They're still confined to our bedroom at the moment until they calm down a bit. We have until next Sunday to officially be out of the old place.

In the past I have had parents ask for advice on buying a digital camera for a young child. For some years there have been digital cameras on sale for much less than $100 cheap enough that no-one will be THAT bothered if the child breaks it, so digital photography is a good hobby for a young child. Such cameras are however quite bulky and require AA batteries which often don t last that long between charges. Some of the cheap phones are large enough that a 3yo child can have trouble carrying them. I recently gave an old LG U8110 phone to a young child for use as a camera. The phone has a 640*480 resolution camera and a display that is a few centimeters wide. It s no good for any remotely serious photography, and among other problems I never managed to get it s USB connection to work so the only way I ever managed to get a photograph off it was to MMS it to a newer camera. But it s quite adequate for a child to play with, it s small, light, and the battery stays charged for ages. Also the phone has a clock built in which is a handy feature it seems that nowadays the trend in society is away from wearing a watch and towards using a mobile phone to discover the time. Also a phone is a fairly capable computer, I think that the first two computers that I owned had significantly less CPU power and RAM than an LG U8110 and lots of newer phones compare well to PCs that were manufactured in the mid 90 s. The trend has been towards having an increasing number of applications and games on phones which of course gives more things for a child to play with. I believe that playing with computers that have a variety of different user interfaces and sets of applications is good for the education of young children. Now to make a phone work you need to have a SIM. If a phone was designed by someone who was intelligent and who was acting on behalf of the owner of the phone then it would support the camera etc without a SIM. But it seems that mobile phones are either designed by idiots or they are designed to act on behalf of the phone companies to the exclusion of the customer s interests, so I haven t seen a camera-phone that is usable for any purpose other than calling the emergency services when there is no SIM installed. Fortunately it is possible to get old SIMs, I had one that was replaced due to an intermittent fault that caused calls to drop out. I also have some SIMs from other telcos that would probably work (I m not sure whether a phone that is locked to one carrier will take photos if a SIM from another carrier is installed). Update: It seems that there is a range of phones that operate without a SIM, a Nokia N900 (if you consider it to be a phone rather than an Internet tablet), an Android, or a phone running the Symbian OS. I suspect that the majority of phones that are currently in use and due to be replaced soon will require a SIM though. One final notable aspect of giving a phone to a child is the possibility of it being used to call emergency services (which will work even when there is no SIM or a SIM that is not associated with an account). If you are planning to give a phone to someone else s child then you should ask the parents first, some parents believe (either correctly or incorrectly) that the chance of their child making prank calls to the emergency services is too great. A present that a child receives which is undesired by their parents will probably get lost or broken quickly When such a phone gets broken by a child (they are tough, but almost everything that is used without restriction by a child gets broken) the next thing to do is to disassemble it. With modern design and manufacturing probably all that a child could really learn from a phone is how the keyboard works and not even that for a touch-screen phone. But it s still a good experience for a child to take apart old machines. When I was young my father gave me many old machines to take apart, I had a lot of fun and learned some interesting things. I find it really sad to see those boxes for recycling old phones at the mobile phone stores which are full of 2yo phones that are mostly in good condition. Almost everyone has some young relatives or friends who have children who could find a good use for that stuff. Send the bits to be recycled AFTER the children nearest to you have finished doing things to the old phone!

I enjoyed being at FOSDEM last year, so I'll be going there again in two weeks' time. & I'm really looking forward to meeting some nice people again!

during the last two weeks I focused on the FTBFS bugs in the Debian Perl Group, only one NMU:

• #560643 src:libbsd-resource-perl: "libbsd-resource-perl: FTBFS: tests failed"
  add a comment to the BTS (pkg-perl)
• #562033 xxkb: "xxkb: segfaults on startup"
  apply patch from BTS, upload to DELAYED/2
• #562384 src:libcoat-persistent-perl: "libcoat-persistent-perl: FTBFS: tests failed"
  finish upgrading to new upstream release (pkg-perl)
• #564411 src:libdatetime-format-iso8601-perl: "libdatetime-format-iso8601-perl: FTBFS: tests failed"
  upload package prepared by carnil (pkg-perl)
• #564412 src:libpoe-component-irc-perl: "libpoe-component-irc-perl: FTBFS: tests failed"
  upgrade to new upstream release (pkg-perl)
• #566368 libauthen-krb5-admin-perl: "FTBFS: Admin.xs:1228: error: too few arguments to function 'kadm5_init_with_skey'"
  upload package prepared by ansgar (pkg-perl)
• #566373 libcatalyst-modules-perl: "FTBFS: Test fails for Catalyst-Plugin-SubRequest-0.14"
  upgrade some components to new upstream releases (pkg-perl)
• #566407 libhtml-template-compiled-perl: "FTBFS: test fails"
  add a comment to the BTS (pkg-perl)
• #566502 liborlite-mirror-perl: "FTBFS: tests fail"
  add a comment to the BTS (pkg-perl)
• #566505 libpod-elemental-perl: "FTBFS: tests fail"
  upgrade to new upstream release (pkg-perl)
• #566583 librrdtool-oo-perl: "FTBFS: tests fail"
  add a comment to the BTS (pkg-perl)
• #566587 libvideo-info-perl: "FTBFS: tests fail"
  add a comment to the BTS (pkg-perl)

Recently some Mozilla developers (1, 2) have been trying to justify the lack of support of the HTML 5 <video> element in Firefox for the system-provided codecs (e.g. GStreamer, DirectShow and so on). While I fully agree that patented codecs like H.264 are very bad for the Internet, it is not clear to me how watching H.264 video with the proprietary Flash plugin would help promoting unencumbered codecs more than watching H.264 video without using non-free software. Beware: if your position is that there is no need to watch H.264 Youtube videos then please refrain from wasting your and my time with a reply, because you are missing the point (and probably many others as well).

Slaughter

I received my first patch to slaughter today, which made me happy. (I've made a new release including it, and updated the list of primitives to actually document the file-deletion facilities which previously I'd omitted to avoid encouraging mass-breakage.)

Signing Binaries

Andrew Pollock mentions that the days of elfsign might be numbered. This is a shame because I've always liked the idea of signing binaries. Once upon a time, in the 2.4.x days, I wrote a kernel patch which would refuse to execute non-signed binaries. (This was mostly a waste of time; since it denied the execution of shell scripts. Which meant that the system init scripts mostly failed. My solution in the end was to only modprobe my module once the system was up and running, and hope for the best ...) Right now, having performed only a quick search, I don't see anything like that at the moment.

• elfsign will let you store a binaries MD5 hash.
• bsign will let you sign a binary with a GPG key.

But where is the kernel patch to only execute such hashed/signed binaries, preventing the execution of random shell scripts and potentially trojaned binaries? Without that I think signing binaries is a crazyish thing to do. Sure you can test that a file hasn't been modified, but even without those tools you can do the same thing via md5sums. (ObRandom: Clearly if you mass-modify all your binaries the system md5sums database will be trashed.)

Perl UTF

I've received a bug report against chronicle, my blog compiler. It seems that some versions of perl fail to run this:

     #
     #  Run the command, reading stdout.
     #
    open( FILTER, "$cmd ;utf8" ) or
       die "Failed to run filter: $!";

Removing the ;utf8 filter allows things to work, but will trash any UTF-8 characters from the output - so that's a nasty solution. I'm not sure what the sane solution is here, so I'm going to sit on it for a few days and continue to write test scripts.

ObSubject: 300

The following was written by Stefano Cosentino in regard to the ongoing efforts of the Australian government to censor the Internet with protecting the children as an excuse. All these Internet filtering ideas that have been in the news lately has made me voice my own opinion on the matter as a non-expert. I m an IT advisor. I take someone s problem and help them fix it. I have a few clients who provide laptops to their students, everything is done with these laptops. The students have no books. The school provides laptops to their primary school students as well as their high school students. They have done this long before the public system started to hand out laptops to a select number of high school students. When you provide a child with anything, there are always areas where a child will find that you may have overlooked. In fact, a young kid will probably find a host of things that you might have totally missed or didn t ever know about. One of these things is the inappropriate nature of information you may find that are associated with computers. This can be anything. But specifically, what the filtering argument has been about has been leaning towards Internet pornography and I would imagine, more specifically content of a pedophiliac nature. I m not against child pornography being banned or filtered. I personally think this is one of the most cruel, inconsiderate, disrespectful and self centered behaviors a person could display. Their psychological makeup isn t the scope of this article. However these ideas must be conveyed when discussing the Internet as a modern technological device that can be used for both good and bad. The primary school students that I attend to aren t very interested in this stuff and as it has been mentioned long ago by others who have joined this argument, are more interested in online flash games that include characters such as Ben 10, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. When I m called in to scan these computers during the school holidays and hand the laptops back to the kids or when they get handed back after 3 years for new ones, I find that the older primary school kids computers are usually more prone to the adult orientated content. To me this is the first sign of a filter s failure. This customer of mine spends more money on the filtering devices they use on campus than I charge them for a few days of work. Does it work? Sadly, I hate to report that no, it does not. It s completely useless. The kids still have files and traces of files on their computers that isn t suitable for young children. Not only pornography but also content of a violent or morbid nature. As young and impressionable people, everything they read, see and hear is absorbed. This shapes the way society will become in years to come. Since no one can realistically tell the future, wouldn t it be nice if we could make sure that the people looking after us and our lives forty or fifty years from now have a sane mind free of blemish? It s a different story for the high school children. While scanning their laptops I have to contact the police on a daily basis because of the nature of the content I find during my day. Some things you can let slip, today s version of a pinup girl, or a provocative pic of whatever skimpy clad girl the record companies are flogging off these days as musicians. But sadly that s rare. I won t go into detail of what I find on these laptops of 14 year old boys, but it ranges from some innocent growing up curiosity right to perverted, sick and most if not all of the time, illegal content. The filters fail again. The kids find a way around it. And they find it easily. I ve seen filters work and not work at all with young kids right through to young adults. All the filters do is either hinder the poor kids actually trying to do research of scholastic nature or prolong the inevitable and temporarily block a determined child s interest in the search for some adult related material. The filter might prevent accidental viewing but it doesn t stop the deliberate finding of pornography and other illegal content. How does a filter stop this from happening? How does a filter stop a child taking their parents adult videos and copying them to their laptop or finding dad s stash of Penthouse? How does it stop a school mate bringing this stuff to school to show everyone at lunch time or to trade for other content they found by other means. Remember back to when you were their age and caught a glimpse of your big brother s room wall. How many times did you try and catch a peak at that Samantha Fox poster hanging off the wall? Where s the filter now? Here s some thing to think about. The filter shouldn t be a thing, it should be a person. They re called responsible . They re called parents. What priorities do parents have if their child feels that what they look at online that is of an adult nature is acceptable? Or maybe the kid knows better, knows it isn t acceptable but still goes out of their way to get the stuff on their computer? Sneaker Net still exists, USB memory sticks are cheap and can now have two or three straight DVD rips on them, or perhaps five or six encoded films on there. Hundreds and thousands of images and so on. Filter failure again. When the kids go online, they know of the technology used to block them from gaining access to what they want to see. Chances are, they ll know what a proxy server is and does. Then they ll figure out what they need to do to get around the filter. I, myself did this back in high school and TAFE when I couldn t find photographs of a particular device I was researching. Turns out the name is also a form of sexual activity, in another language, but still. The filter stopped me from not only looking the offending content but also to look at the legitimate data that I needed to complete an assignment. I got around the problem by researching some more information and the following day I was breaking through firewalls and proxy servers with easy. Filter failure. How do I get around this issue when speaking to younger kids that need guidance and knowledge on how to deal with this situation? I hold talks at the school I provide my services to. I talk to the parents, no kids. The talk costs less than a broken filter they keep throwing money at keep up-to-date. The school puts these filters in place to appear responsible, because while the kids are attending their school, the school is in fact responsible. In fact, there is nothing more the school can do. They could educate the children, but you can tell someone what to do, and the chances of them doing it are pretty dismal. Music is not allowed on their computers either. Yet we constantly find iTunes on there and a host of music that traces to certain peer to peer applications where they acquired the stolen music. If a kid can learn how to do that, imagine what sort of influence can be placed on them from a more positive angle. Like maybe parents providing an explanation for starters of what it is they re looking at. What it is they ll find online. What material is inappropriate. What material should you tell an adult about. Why do I get stupid emails with Russian girls wanting to marry me. Kids absorb everything. Parents have relegated responsibility but not delegated it. This filter idea might help slow down a child s enthusiasm to learn about everything, both good and bad. But educating the kids from an early stage in life about morals and the modern world where lets think about it, we have absolutely everything we need and want at our finger tips will be more valuable than any filter. But the fact that we have so much available makes it difficult to say what is and isn t appropriate for a child to see. It is up to us to inform the children of what s out there is the world. It may or may not stop them from seeing the adult related content, but it will help them respond to it in a mature and adult manner. We all know, kids aren t stupid. So, if the filters worked, why am I called in once a year, every year to give my talk to parents?

There's a release critical bug (that severity is debateable, in my opinion) in elfsign, a package I maintain. It seems to my casual observation, that switching it to generate SHA1 signatures wouldn't be too hard, given it's using OpenSSL, and OpenSSL has a sha.h file. I really wouldn't know where to start, though, and ideally it should continue to verify existing MD5 signatures, so it's more than just changing an include and a few function calls. To boot, upstream seems to have disappeared, so it's looking like removal is the best option. The popcon numbers for this package aren't very high either, which is another nail in the coffin. So if someone reading this cares about elfsign in Debian enough to send me a patch to use SHA1 in the next month or so, I won't file a removal request.