This week I have been primarily looking over ticketing systems. So far I've looked at the following:

roundup

Initially this was the package that I liked best. It is small, self-contained, and easy both to install and manage. The significant downside was that it expected all users to create an account first, prior to submitting a ticket. If they didn't and they mailed submit@example.org they'd receive a reply back which read "Unknown user: sender@example.net". Shame because it was reasonably featureful.

otrs2

This was a little fiddly to get going with, but actually suprisingly good. Had I not experimented with roundup I'd have said it were the best I looked at.

request-tracker

Big. Heavy. Intense. It looks ugly, but provides a bamillion (metric) configuration options and can be used to do almost anything you'd like. If it didn't such up so many resources I'd have had no qualms about using it. Even the mail-gateway was nice and simple to get working.

I'm going to take a look around some more and see if there are any non-packaged systems to look at. Pointers welcome. All I want is for incoming emails to appear in some sort of queue where they may be assigned to an owner. If the original submitter can view the ticket online great, but no big deal if not. I'd expect that replies sent to the ticket would be routed back to the submitter, and that replies to those would similarly update the ticket. I guess thats standard though?

New Jersey is one of the states holding presidential primaries on this Super Tuesday and since you asked, I voted for John McCain. The chief reason for my vote is of course the war against Islamic terrorism. Now that we are finally gaining the upper hand in Iraq, we can't afford to elect someone who will fail to see victory through. Mind you this isn't necessarily a reason not to vote Democrat. The anti-war wing of that party has been thoroughly marginalized. Hillary atleast has a commendable reputation for viciousness. Even Obama has made some encouraging remarks (ok that was probably a red herring but I have the audacity to hope you see.) But while the Democrats do not take the anti-war crowd seriously, they do depend on them for a great deal of their funding. A Democratic president might feel the need to throw them some bones inadvertantly screwing up things in the process. On the Republican side, Huckabee might leave tactical planning to Jesus. Romney would toe the line but there is no sign that he has any original thoughts on the matter. While I continue to support the President, it must be admitted that this whole war is stretching out as long as it is because mistakes were made. We need options beyond "staying the course" and "cutting and running" and McCain a military hero and early supporter of the surge could be the one to find them. The other big issue is supreme court appointments. One, possibly two justices may need to be replaced in the next four years. We need to ensure that the court does not veer leftward again as it will inevitably do during a Democratic administration. Here there is a big split in the Conservative establishment. Ideologues consider McCain to be insufficiently pure and worry he will end up appointing another Souter or O'Connor (both appointed by Republicans it should be noted.) Pragmatists point out that McCain is viewed more favorably than Romney or Huckabee amongst the independent and moderate voters who will be crucial to victory and that even the slight chance of a bad choice is better than the certainty of a bad choice if Clinton or Obama get to make it. Social issues are important to many Republican voters and in this area too there is some grumbling about McCain being too liberal. Some have even suggested that if McCain beats Huckabee or Romney, a Democratic victory and four years out of power would be preferable in order to bring the GOP back to the straight and narrow. Although this contingent is loud I frankly don't think they have the influence people think (As evidenced by the actual performance of Huckabee or previous champion Fred Thompson.) When push comes to shove, they will rally behind the party candidate especially if McCain makes a bona fide social conservative (Huckabee himself?) his vice-president. On economic issues, the president's job is to not interfere and let business run itself. I don't see any of the Republican candidates being much different in this regard. Or the Democrats for that matter. [Careful readers will have noticed I have avoided mentioning Ron Paul. Paulestinians, consider this carte blanche to send me your long, rambling, incoherent screeds about how Dr. Paul has the answers to everything. Because God knows I haven't read enough of them lately.] Update: Kevin asks what I think about the candidates in terms of "geek" issues such as net neutrality, DMCA etc. IMO there is not a whole lot of difference between the major candidates on these issues. Republicans one would think would be more beholden to corporations in general. Democrats on the other hand have a closer association with the media who are behind many of the sillier IP laws. Overall, I don't think it ought to be much of a factor in choosing the president even for Free Software types. Rather we should focus on the legislative branch (in Congress as well as the states) which holds the real power here and in the court of public opinion.

The author of the xkcd comic has endorsed Obama for president. Among other things, he wrote:

Obama has shown a real commitment to open government. When putting together tech policy (to take an example close to home for xkcd) others might have gone to industry lobbyists. Obama went to Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons (under which xkcd is published) and longtime white knight in the struggle with a broken system over internet and copyright policy. Lessig was impressed by Obama s commitment to open systems for example, his support of machine-readable government information standards that allow citizens groups to monitor what our government is up to. Right now, the only group that can effectively police the government is the government itself, and as a result, it s corrupt to the core. Through these excellent and long-overdue measures, Obama is working to fight this corruption.

Having Larence Lessig as an advisor, instead of some RIAA shill, speaks volumes about the candidate.

I've been thinking about this for awhile, so time to put down some thoughts.

First, what is socialized medicine? If we listen to the politicians that label health care as "socialized", it seems to be "anything that is paid for by taxes and delivered free or cheaply to citizens." Putting aside the question of whether that meets the academic definition of socialism for the moment, let's look at things in the United States that are already socialized:

• K-12 education
• Police
• Fire fighters
• Public Libraries
• Roads
• Airports and air traffic control
• Military defense and offense

That's right. We trust the government with our children all day long for 13 years. For free!

Yet this is a country in which hospitals dump the homeless in the gutter for being unable to pay their bills. Even insured Americans find claims turned down for arbitrary reasons. People are afraid to change jobs for fear of losing health insurance.

Why is it bad to have the government pay for health care?

Here in the United States, our health care system is far from best in the world. It's not even top 10. Or 20. Our system encourages minimizing health care, and doesn't encourage preventative care.

I'd suggest that, in a democracy, it's best to have the government pay for health care. That's because, in a democracy, we are in control of the bureaucrats. If we wish to exercise common sense and pound into their heads that paying for preventative care makes good long-term sense, then we can do so at the ballot box.

So why the scare tactics about government being involved in health care?

Perhaps our real problem is that we have let government get out of our control? Perhaps we are too frightened of change to vote. Perhaps we've given up on a responsive government. Perhaps we think that the insurance companies and drug companies will never let us have a good health care system.

Yes, the lobbyists have a lot of power. But we have the power to remove it, and it's high time we used it.

The audacity of Obama to have hope. To say that we can do better. When Hillary Clinton falls in line with the Republicans and accuses him of having "false hope", effectively saying that we can't do any better, then is she -- or any Republicans -- really a candidate of change? I think that all these accusations from conservatives and Hillary that Obama has "false hope" has finally convinced me that he's the one to vote for. If everyone else claims that his ideas are too good, that his dreams too big, then I like him.

Oh, and you could substitute "college education" for "socialized medicine" everywhere in this article and get equally valid arguments.

Last night I watched Obama’s speech on the night of the New Hampshire primary. Pretty impressive and emotive stuff - good aims, positive campaining and the kind of delivery that evokes some of the great orators.

The Frontal Cortex provides an astute explanation as to why he shies away from political blogging in this election season:

My hypothesis is that political judgments are like moral judgments. When you see a candidate, you experience a visceral, instinctive, inexplicable response. Your brain generates an emotion - Obama is uplifting, Hillary is commanding, McCain is honorable, etc. - and then the rest of your brain goes about explaining your emotion. The inner interpreter gathers together bits of evidence, post hoc justifications, and pithy rhetoric in order to make our automatic reaction seem reasonable. But this reasonableness is just a fa ade, an elaborate self-delusion.

Personally, I haven’t done much (any?) such blogging lately for lack of time, but I also generally agree with his conclusions. “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” Technorati Tags: Politics, Elections, Neuroscience

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Went to see Alabama 3 in concert in Cambridge last night. The support act were dreadful, doing over-amped reggae mixing for far too long. Tedious. But when the headliners came on, they more than made up for it. Incredibly good fun, danceable music, a mix of gospel, techno, blues, country and good old-fashioned rock. And they're awesome to watch live - a great stage show where you can tell the band were enjoying themselves just as much as the audience. My only gripe is that they didn't play "Mao Tse Tung said", one of my favourites. Meh...

<eddyp> anyone knows of a quick way to reformat a text to a certain with in vim?
<eddyp> width, even
<liw> !fmt -w 42
<pkern> Something along the lines of gq I think.
<pkern> Visual gq says :help gq
<eddyp> liw: ":%!fmt -w 42" should be correct
<eddyp> thanks
* eddyp notes the fmt command for future reference
<liw> fmt is a pretty handy command at times
<ricky> Wow, that is handy.
* seanius is a fan of the J and fmt combo
<pkern> (gq has the advantage that textwidth is obeyed. And fmt could be specified with formatprg.)
<eddyp> pkern: that gq is handy, too
<eddyp> "gggqG" and bam, everything is refromatted
<eddyp> does anyone mind if I post this on my blog?
<eddyp> pkern, liw, seanius, ricky ?
<liw> eddyp, nah
<pkern> eddyp: Please enlighten me why you could possibly need our approval (apart from copying the log verbatim perhaps).
<eddyp> pkern: exactly :-)
<eddyp> verbatim copy; irc is the best source of documentation :-)
<ricky> eddyp: Go ahead :)
<pkern> eddyp: Then please correct the obvious mistake of mine: ":help gq says Visual gq", hah. And I disagree on the usefulness of IRC logs as documentation. :-P
<ricky> As a side note, the -u option seems cut words at spaces properly, which I'd been looking for :)
<seanius> eddyp: if you find my armchair opinions valuable for some reason, then by all means :)

Yesterday we had first night for the play Lysistrata in which I also have a role. It can be called a success—people congratulated us and laughed a fair bit. Babsi and me even got a special applause for our scene. I was a fair bit astonished to see Bamschabl from the Austrian comedy duo "Muckenstrunz und Bamschabl" in the audience. It seemed like he enjoyed it, at least. If you don't know what to do tonight or tomorrow—there are still two nights left that we play. It's shown in the Scala (no, not Mailand but Vienna) on Wiedner Hauptstraße 108, starts at 20:00 and the admission fee is € 5,— (or € 3,— for pupils and students). See you there!

Anne Betty commented:

"From your report, OCO = Our Customer Offer I work on labelling of The Co-operative brand products, and it is our policy to always include the origin of the main characterising ingredient(s) of the product. It's not required by law though!"

Thanks for the clarification on OCO - I understand that means the aim is for those stores to promote the co-op's distinctive features more clearly. Sometimes us simple new members get bamboozled by the Co-op Group jargon. I think the law on labelling should be changed. It's almost as important to know where our food has come from as to know what it contains, else we cannot make an informed choice. I'm glad the Co-op takes a lead on this.

Desde su concepci n, Planeta Linux ha exhortado a sus participantes a sindicar contenido exclusivamente relacionado con tecnolog a, computaci n, software libre y Linux, en orden incremental de preferencia. Pronto se determin que la exhortaci n no era suficiente y se pas al requerimiento. H ctor Colina y Milton Mazzarri, por nombrar dos venezolanos, estuvieron involucrados en los Lineamientos y las Preguntas Frecuentes de Planeta Linux Venezuela. Como para ese momento ya hab amos hecho un grupo inicial de “venezolanos con blog que hablan de Linux” (b sicamente gente de VELUG, SOLVE, Debian Venezuela y de unplug.org.ve), no tuvimos la oportunidad de requerirles que tuvieran una categor a dedicada a Planeta Linux. A las nuevas personas que se inscrib an por la lista, en ocasiones se les requer a la categor a si su blog conten a, a primera vista, contenido no relacionado con Linux. En todos los casos, se requer a estar de acuerdo con los Lineamientos. En el caso de las personas que me solicitaban a mi directamente (que desde hace no mucho tengo acceso al SVN de Planeta Linux) yo les requer a una categor a particular, a menos de que su software no lo permitiera. En este ltimo caso, muy a pesar de los quejones de oficio, elimin bamos a la persona de PL. Es el caso de Luigino Bracci, quien en alguna ocasi n lleg a llenar todo Planeta Linux con contenido pol tico parcializado, y quien manifest que su sistema de blogs no le permit a agregar categor as. Hay casos en los que una persona que escribe poco o que suele escribir de Linux llega y hace algun desastre al estilo Alberto Capella con su foto a tama o gigante. En esos casos alguien se da cuenta y me avisa (aunque es un error, al final de la p gina hay direcciones de contacto y en Venezuela somos varios que administramos!) pero estoy involucrado en muchas cosas como para dar respuesta inmediata a ese tipo de casos. Y ah viene otro problema. En Planeta Linux NO PODEMOS moderar un post o a una persona. Solo podemos suspenderlo o eliminarlo. No podemos borrar una imagen ni un post ni nada, porque en 15 minutos perdemos los cambios. Espero que eso de algunas luces cuando haya algo de que quejarse en Planeta Linux. El ltimo caso es particular. Jes s Lara hizo varios posts no relacionados con Linux en su blog. Particularmente hubo gente que reclam que hab an recien escrito algo relacionado con Linux y los posts de Jes s “empujaron” los posts relacionados con Linux hacia el final del Planeta. Por lo tanto suspendi la suscripci n de Jes s y lo contact el 9 de Abril. Cre una categor a y me lo comunic . Eso es suficiente para volver a reactivar su suscripci n (en este caso me tard unos d as porque el commit fall y nunca me enter de ello, ni Jes s me lo inform , realmente) Ya hay mucha gente que sindica categor as en PL, y pronto ser n muchos m s. Cont ctenme si quieren hacer el proceso pronto. Por favor, la pr xima vez que encuentren un problema en Planeta Linux:

• Av sennos a Milton Mazzarri, David Moreno Garza o a mi, o a trav s de los medios de contacto de Planeta Linux. Podemos ayudarles, y el trabajo voluntario no nos excluye de responsabilidades.
• Den ideas y soluciones, que son muy bien recibidas. No den cr ticas ni flameen, porque recibir n lo mismo de vuelta (aqu son bienvenidos todos los que usen Linux en Venezuela, no traigan los vicios de los grupos de usuarios y las listas de amor y dolor)
• Descarten la teor a de la conspiraci n. No todos los que est n involucrados en proyectos comunitarios de Software Libre tienen problemas de cari o ni necesitan pensar que otros los atacan o necesitan meterse en la vida de los dem s. Lo m s probable es que lo hayamos olvidado o no tengamos tiempo. Usen el sentido com n.

More comments, which I think help to narrow my choice to OpenWRT or FreeWRT. Kris Marsh commented:

"I can't comment on dd-wrt, as I've never tried it. I can, however, say that OpenWRT is great. Personally, I don't see the point in X-WRT, as I use vi and /etc/ to modify configs. Assuming you're handy with Debian (;-)), then you should be just fine without X-WRT. Tip: If you want to use WPA, you need to install the "nas" package: "ipkg install nas". I believe this non-free package is what a previous commenter was referring to."

Yes, I want to use WPA (I think some of the machines here can't do IPSec and WEP just isn't good enough) so I guess I have another freedom problem. I'd be happy with ed, but I might try X-WRT just to see how it copes with my web browser (I expect badly, like many embedded web apps, but then I could file bugs or fix it up). ranf mentioned:

"There is also a OpenWRT fork named FreeWRT ."

Argh, another candidate! Seriously, thanks for the tip. I'm not sure what it offers me over OpenWRT, as FreeWRT doesn't list either my router (Belkin POS) or my office host system (gobo) as supported and I don't intend to install svn any time soon. I'll probably try its Web Image Builder. Taneli commented:

"I believe Kamikaze has open source broadcom drivers (it's using 2.6). No idea if backport exists, but I'd venture no. Using Kamikaze sounds quite dangerous, but I haven't tried."

nbd wrote:

"Hi there. A few comments on your blog post: The main reason why the free Broadcom drivers haven't been included yet is because they're simply not ready. The Broadcom SoC needs to be handled differently than the MiniPCI cards and I'm working with the bcm43xx on that. Actually the new 2.6 based port is almost complete. As to which Firmware you want: As an OpenWrt developer I very much recommend installing X-Wrt on OpenWrt :) Anyways... Have fun!"

Yes, this is definitely a "fun" choice! I guess I won't know what works until I JFDI and pick up the pieces. Glad to hear the Broadcom drivers are still being worked on: I've met a lot of Broadcom cards and some of them can only be coerced with ndiswrapper, which isn't good. I wish I knew enough about network hardware to hack sensibly, but I don't know where to start and there's so much else to do. Finally, it looks like dd-wrt isn't a good choice. Yammering (Clint Adams) linked me to this rant and Simon Farnsworth commented along similar lines:

"X-WRT is just an easier UI that installs over OpenWRT. DD-WRT is a competing project to OpenWRT, based on the OpenWRT code, but using such "free" software techniques as product activation, and per-seat licencing to stop you "misusing" your GPL rights. I'd recommend OpenWRT/X-WRT, just because they tend to be more respectful of licences, and less prone to demanding money with menances."

I've no problem with commercialism itself, but I dislike broken promises and playing fast-and-loose with copyright. If there's evidence the other way, please let me know!

The latest addition to the mutt CVS tree is PKA support via gpgme. While trying to figure out how that works in mutt (I haven't yet...) I configured my DNS server for PKA and CERT records. PKA PKA (public key association) puts a pointer where to obtain a key into a TXT record. At the same time that can be used to verify that a key belongs to a mail address. The documentation is at the g10code website (only in German so far). I put the following into the df7cb.de zone: cb._pka IN TXT "v=pka1;fpr=D224C8B07E63A6946DA32E07C5AF774A58510B5A;uri=finger:cb@df7cb.de"

$ host -t TXT cb._pka.df7cb.de
cb._pka.df7cb.de descriptive text "v=pka1\;fpr=D224C8B07E63A6946DA32E07C5AF774A58510B5A\;uri=finger:cb@df7cb.de"

Now gpg can be told to use PKA to find the key:

$ echo foo   gpg --auto-key-locate pka --recipient cb@df7cb.de --encrypt -a
gpg: no keyserver known (use option --keyserver)
gpg: requesting key 58510B5A from finger:cb@df7cb.de
gpg: key 58510B5A: public key "Christoph Berg " imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1
gpg: automatically retrieved  cb@df7cb.de' via PKA

CERT CERT records work similarly. Records are generated by make-dns-cert (from the tools directory in the gnupg source). cb.gpg is a stripped-down gpg keyring (created with pgp-clean -s and converting from .asc to .gpg).

$ ./make-dns-cert -f D224C8B07E63A6946DA32E07C5AF774A58510B5A -n cb
cb      TYPE37  \# 26 0006 0000 00 14 D224C8B07E63A6946DA32E07C5AF774A58510B5A
$ ./make-dns-cert -k cb.gpg -n cb
cb      TYPE37  \# 1338 0003 0000 00 9901A20440 [...] 509C96D4BFF17B7

With a new bind and host (backports.org!) the format looks a bit nicer, that's also what I copied into the zone file:

$ host -t CERT cb.df7cb.de
;; Truncated, retrying in TCP mode.
cb.df7cb.de has CERT record PGP 0 0 mQGiBECBGdAR [...] UDlCcltS/8Xtw==
cb.df7cb.de has CERT record 6 0 0 FNIkyLB+Y6aUbaMuB8Wvd0pYUQta

Again, gpg can be told to use that:

$ echo foo   gpg --auto-key-locate cert --recipient cb@df7cb.de --encrypt -a
gpg: key 58510B5A: public key "Christoph Berg " imported
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:               imported: 1
gpg: automatically retrieved  cb@df7cb.de' via DNS CERT

Thanks to weasel for some hints on using CERT. SSHFP I'm also mentioning SSHFP records here since it fits in the topic - I have been using them for some months now:

$ host -t SSHFP tesla.df7cb.de
tesla.df7cb.de has SSHFP record 1 1 EE49B803541293656C33B86ECD781BD8F1D78AB5
tesla.df7cb.de has SSHFP record 2 1 3E82FB5EE8AA0205305F0D0186F94D6FB3E0E744
$ ssh -o 'VerifyHostKeyDNS yes' tesla.df7cb.de
The authenticity of host 'tesla.df7cb.de (88.198.227.218)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 5a:c9:38:ca:c0:2b:11:c1:c8:fb:f1:ad:73:a1:9c:8b.
Matching host key fingerprint found in DNS.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

The records are generated with ssh-keygen -r.

Our despicable prime minister said "I think that would just encourage those who wanted completely to destabilise and destroy Iraq, and create chaos and victory for the terrorists to hang on and hope for (an) Obama victory".

That statement is wrong in many ways, firstly the US (with Australian help) has destabilised and destroyed Iraq already. Claiming that removing US troops at this stage will do any further harm is unproven (and except for the Kurdish area extremely unlikely). Trying to link a presidential candidate with a terrorist organisation is the worst type of dirty politics.

Texas Republican senator John Cornyn requested that the Australian government stay out of US politics. It sounds like a reasonable request. But I wonder whether John Cornyn got involved when the US ambassador spoke out against the leader of the Labor party at the last Australian Federal election...

Senator Obama suggested that if John Howard wants to criticise his policies in Iraq then he should first send another 20,000 Australian troops (there are currently 140,000 US troops compared to 1,400 Australians). According to the CIA World Fact Book Australia has a population of 20.3M while the US has a population of 298.4M. If the ratio of serving soldiers was to match the populations then Australia would have 9,500 troops in Iraq. If Australia was to be a full military partner of the US (but scaled down due to the smaller population) and therefore had troops in South Korea, Japan, and Germany then the number of Australian troops committed might be closer to the 20,000 number cited.

But this is no criticism of Senator Obama. For a number that was made up to demonstrate his point that Australia is not pulling it's weight in Iraq it's a quite reasonable estimate.

The US Democrat Senator Ron Wyden correctly described Howard's comment as "bizarre". This may become a catch-phrase for the Howard regime (as the Bush regime is described as a "miserable failure").

Johnny seems to think that it's in his best interests to send Australians to fight a war that has no benefit for Australia (or the US for that matter), but he doesn't have the guts to do it properly. Fortunately for him the Bush regime understands his position and allows him to send a token force to demonstrate support without the risk of any significant number of casualties or having to conscript soldiers.

This mutual meddling in elections is a demonstration of the way Bush and Howard conspire against the interests of the Australian and US citizens. Both countries need governments that look after the interests of their citizens at home and let the UN take a larger role in world issues.