Search Results: "rul"

25 July 2006

Andree Leidenfrost: I really enjoyed reading this...

Greg must have given an amazingly insightful, inspiring, and amusing keynote at OLS:
:

http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html

I truly enjoyed reading this, maybe you will, too...

24 July 2006

Bdale Garbee: Paperless?

For a couple years, I've routinely used Ampad Quad Ruled Steno Books to make notes to myself on just about everything. This morning I realized I'm using the last one from my most recently acquired package of 12... so, naturally, I tried to order some more. They're gone. Apparently, nobody sells a quad-ruled steno pad any more. I even called Ampad corporate customer service, where a very helpful woman poked around on her computer and confirmed that the product has been discontinued, and the last case in their inventory shipped out as part of an order to a university bookstore in early April. There aren't any more in stock, and they probably won't ever print any more. Grumble. At least I can still buy quad-ruled engineering pads, even if they are clumsier to carry around...

23 July 2006

Steve Kemp: I swear I don t know how

Collection Management I like to collect things, books, audio cds (which I buy exclusively second-hand/used then rip), and films. I’ve had a lot of fun putting my film collection online (Warning image-heavy). Although I admit the reason I did it in the first place was because I found myself buying DVDs I already owned more than once. I do the same thing with books. I can recognised covers easily, so if I see a book which is by an author I like I will look at the cover and think “Hmmm got this”, or “Hmmm thats new”. This leads me to buy duplicates too often. This leads me to wanting to organise the hundreds of books I have, so I can lookup what I have/dont have easily. My recent query the other day about scanning ISBN numbers with a barcode reader seemed to suggest that using the hardware is trivial. However the next step is hard. I can’t find a decent tool for using storing the data in. So far I’ve looked at:
alexandria
I loved this when I started it up and imported a few books by ISBN. It found the title, the publisher, a cover image, and more. However the backend seems to be a bit hit and miss. Picking books at random I soon found major gaps. e.g. Adding Terry Pratchett’s Mort gave me all the details. Adding Witches Abroad gave a blank image and just the title, all the other details were wrong/missing.
tellico
Tellico I’ve just ruled out. It allows you to create collections of things, but you must enter all the details yourself. I’ve neither the time nor the patience to do that.
So I’ll postpone this project for a while. Probably just as well since I’ve discovered that a suprisingly large number of my books do not actually contain ISBN numbers! Mostly the older paperback fiction books I have such as “H.G.Wells the valley of the spiders & other stories”, but even modern books like some of Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series are free of ISBN numbers.

22 July 2006

Steve Kemp: This is how it feels to be lonely

Ugh. I broke my blog, but I think I’ve fixed it now with a quick hack to redirect people to the correct RSS2 feed. I was enjoying everything until the serendipity import gave me bogus HTML, and the rewriting rules made all my entries 404s.

21 July 2006

Mike Hommey: Firefox 2.0b1 in experimental

After quite some work on packaging it, Firefox 2.0b1 is finally being uploaded to experimental. It is linked to the system libmyspell instead of the bundled one, and can use system dictionaries like Thunderbird already does. I’m also working on using the system libsqlite3, but it first requires some build changes in the debian sqlite3 package and some more work to see if it’s really feasible… you see, they like to take external libraries and modify them so much as adding symbols, changing some internals… and these changes only exist in the mozilla codebase… (the 2 main examples of that being expat and sqlite3) It also includes a working DOM Inspector which upstream didn’t include in their release because they are in the process of moving the component in the core. I also had to fix some more the build system so that some things would be installed by make install (they tend to forget it), others would just be installed (mistakenly removed rules…) or make clean would do its work: cleaning (they tend to forget to flag files for removal when they create it in a Makefile). All that makes me wonder what their review/super-review thing is worth. Anyways, please give it a try, especially if you reported a bug on earlier versions, it would be helpful if you closed bugs that are fixed by this release (don’t forget the ‘Version:’ in the closing message so that the BTS version tracking would do its work). Update: Upstream Firefox 2.0b1 has a working DOM Inspector. It only appears it just doesn’t build correctly the way we build Firefox… might be some missing changes to the Makefiles. Again. *sigh* Update 2: It was trickier: missing something to make the inspector symbols public instead of having a hidden visibility… Update 3: It was actually my fault. /me goes hiding under a rock. And I managed to remove a comment to this post when removing spam… *sigh*. I think I need to take a break.

20 July 2006

Evan Prodromou: 1 Thermidor CCXIV

Happy 1 Thermidor to everyone -- I'm sure you're all busy meditating on the virtues of epeautre (wp:einkorn wheat), the wild grain to which this day is dedicated on the French Revolutionary Calendar. Thermidor is best known for wp:Lobster Thermidor, but also for the so-called wp:Thermidorian Reaction, a revolt by moderate revolutionaries during the French Revolution against the bloody excesses of the Committee for Public Safety. I think about this because I've just been reading Bob Sutton's blog today based on the reference in Ross Mayfield's blog. Sutton is the author of an upcoming book called the No Asshole Rule (pardon my French, but that's just the name of the book). It's about how poisonous, unhealthy personalities can ruin a workplace, and how beneficial it is to support your reasonable, human employees by kicking out the jerks. They're happier, more productive, and more loyal if you show some compassion and get rid of the a-holes. Coincidentally, I also saw the Top 5 reasons why The Customer Is Always Right is wrong on reddit. It also recommends against allowing unpleasant people to ruin your workplace environment -- but here, the culprits are the customer, not other employees. I especially liked the stories from Southwest Airlines. I think I'm going to have to pick up this Nuts! book about SWA business theories. Why all the thoughtifying about jerks and meanies in business? Because I think the same principles might be applicable to Open Source and Open Content projects. Specifically, with Debian, we've had a few personalities who generate a lot of discussion and attract a lot of attention, causing some real Excedrin headaches. The project as a whole has tended to bend over backwards to respect these individual's rights and personal values and blah blah blah, but maybe it's best to just say, "You're causing more conflict that you are providing value and no matter whose fault it is, we as a group will do our job better if you leave." In another realm -- that of wikis -- I know that I personally lean on longtime Wikitravel administrators, experienced users, etc. to be "the bigger person" and treat obnoxious personalities with respect and decorum. The theory is that every user counts, and any contribution is worthwhile. But maybe it's better sometimes to show some loyalty to the established contributors with a proven track record, and let the occasional mouth-foaming weirdo go wander off and bother someone else. We've got a real conflict-averse culture at WT, but sometimes it might be good to say, "We welcome everyone's input -- except yours." tags:

19 July 2006

Matthew Garrett

Mark:

You've been somewhat disingenuous in your quoting. The full phrase is "Since Debian has no authority to hold money or property, any donations for the Debian Project must be made to SPI, which manages such affairs". That is, the "Any donations for the Debian Project must be made to SPI" isn't saying "Money must be given to SPI because we don't trust anyone else", it's saying "Money must be given to SPI because we can't accept money ourselves". It's a historical bug, much like "Debian's Developers are currently members of SPI by virtue of their status as Developers" (untrue and the sort of thing that you'd normally complain about".

it looks to me like the DPL endorsing someone not approved by SPI maybe isn't a properly-made decision

"SPI has no authority regarding Debian's technical or nontechnical decisions" could be used to argue against that, since it clearly indicates that the approval (or not) of SPI can't be used to block decisions made by the rest of the project. Perhaps this section of the constitution was badly written? Good Lord, etc.

Advocating expulsion! For wanting to avoid involvement with an unethical, buggy business venture of some UK DDs!

Or, alternatively, for going on and on and on and on and on and on and on about an argument that you've already lost and wasting absolutely no opportunity to bring it up in any possible new vaguely related forum. Sort of like your "religious hate campaign" and "violation of the UN human rights declaration" routines. Entirely coincidentally, I've been facing the latter from a co-worker who keeps accusing me of having stolen her Windows XP CD. I mention this merely as an amusing aside.

I would have commented rather than making a post of my own, except that you don't seem to have any mechanism for providing publically viewable comments. Coincidentally, this is the same reason that I didn't comment to say that I didn't like the way you fold your posts.

(Edited to fix spelling)

MJ Ray: Debian UK Society

In June 2005, Ian Jackson chastised me for directing a UK donation away from Debian-UK Society (DUS), quoting a chunk of debian rules: "In particular, the Constitution says that [a person] must not actively work against these rules and decisions properly made under them'." Then I looked and I found the Constitution also says: "Since Debian has no authority to hold money or property, any donations for the Debian Project must be made to SPI, which manages such affairs" so anyone directing them elsewhere is actively working against that rule. I hate bureaucracy, so I find it amusing when the rules appear to support actions that I didn't check beforehand.

Ian Murdock

More Cote’: “What most desktop applications lack now-a-days are features that are fully web-enabled, in a bi-directional sense.” Exactly. And “fully web-enabled, in a bi-directional sense” needs to extend to the mobile device as well. Software above the level of a single device may be a key tenet of Web 2.0, but current Web 2.0 applications are doing an absolutely miserable job of fulfilling it. We need to get synchronization right (with full support for disconnected operation!) before this new platform can truly replace the fat client, though as I’ve said before, I see the new platform as more of an extension to the fat client than as a replacement for it. Trust me. I was just in Moscow for nearly a week without reliable Internet access. I don’t care how nice Gmail is, it was utterly useless to me sitting there in my hotel room trying to get the finicky WiFi to work. Guess what? I’m back on Thunderbird now, even though I like Gmail better. (No, POP doesn’t count as “web-enabled, in a bi-directional sense.”)

18 July 2006

Ben Armstrong: XPilot change of upstream growing pains

XPilot development has changed hands over the past several years. While the original website at www.xpilot.org continues to be run by the original developers, XPilot-NG (xpilot.sf.net) is where all of the new development has been happening. But xpilot.org still performs an important function for the user community: they run the meta servers1 that list all public xpilot servers around the world. Recently, we (the XPilot-NG developers on #xpilot at irc.freenode.net) noticed quite a number of uncontactable servers popping up on the meta servers. This is annoying, to say the least. Users don’t know they can’t connect until they’ve tried (unless they’ve bothered to try pinging the server first) and besides which, having all those “junk” servers in the list makes it harder to locate contactable servers. Now, naturally, we wanted to know where all of those servers were coming from, and why now, at this particular time? I knew my Debian package (and presumably any derivatives) do not report to the metaserver by default. Any admin starting an XPilot server would have to explicitly configure it to do so, so the incidence of uncontactable Debian XPilot-NG servers should remain relatively low and have a constant growth rate. Then I found the Fedora package, and started poking around inside. After a shallow review of the package, I concluded there was a good chance it was the culprit2, especially since it recently (FC5) had an init script added. Such a bug, coupled with the relatively recent release of FC5, would account for the sudden spike in number of permanently running non-contactable XPilot-NG servers. Bingo! I found some helpful folks at #fedora-games at irc.freenode.net, including the XPilot NG maintainer, which led to filing this bug. I subsequently invited the maintainer over to #xpilot and had a nice time introducing him to the other upstream devs and chatting about our current issues. Ultimately, we know we need to fix the problem at the metas, but in the meantime, I am pleased to have established contact with my counterpart in the Fedora project, expanding the diminishingly small XPilot developer community by one.

1 They deliberately never released any source code for those metas to try to keep the user community unified at the centralized servers. While I see the reasoning behind the decision, given the problems we’re facing now, it’s clear the XPilot community would be better off with meta server source that is actively being maintained.

2 Admittedly two problems with the +reportMeta option upstream set us up for this problem. First, counterintuitively, +reportMeta disables reporting to the metaserver (following the rule ”+” negates the meaning of an option starting with ”-”). Second, -reportMeta is a stupid default. Most people starting servers are behind firewalls these days, so unless they consciously decide to make their server public, making the corresponding adjustments to their firewall, the option should not be set (not to mention the security implications of making a server public by default).

Enrico Zini: Fifth day in Addis

Setting up a mail server
Background Some terminology:
MTA
Mail Transport Agent
MUA
Mail User Agent
MDA
Mail Delivery Agent
SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
MX
Mail eXchange
POP
Post Office Protocol
IMAP
Internet Message Access Protocol
With SMTP you connect to a server and send two things: envelope and message. The envelope looks like this: 
MAIL FROM: <enrico@enricozini.org>
RCPT TO: <rms@fsf.org>
RCPT TO: <linus@linux.org>
The message looks like this: 
From: <enrico@enricozini.org>
To: <rms@fsf.org>
Cc: <linus@linux.org>
Message-ID: <1234567@enricozini.org>
Subject: Test mail
Hi Richard,
this is a test mail.  I'm also writing
Linus to show how to send to more people.
Cheers,
Enrico
There is no authentication. There is no encryption. Two usual types of access control:
  1. Outbound e-mail is normally only accepted from an internal network
  2. Inbound e-mail is normally accepted from anywhere
The DNS is used to find the SMTP server to use to send a message: 
$ host -t MX yahoo.com
yahoo.com MX 10 smtp1.yahoo.com
yahoo.com MX 20 smtp2.yahoo.com
yahoo.com MX 20 smtp3.yahoo.com
The process of sending an E-Mail:

  1. Enrico writes an E-Mail: 

    From: Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org>
To: Richard Stallman <rms@fsf.org>
Subject: Hello from Addis
Hi Richard,
Addis is a wonderful city, even if
it rains a lot.
Bye,  Enrico

  2. Enrico's MUA connects to the SMTP server (for example, port 25 of smtp.aau.edu.et): 

    HELO enricozini.org
200 OK Hello enricozini.org
MAIL FROM: <enrico@enricozini.org>
200 OK Mail from enrico@enricozini.org
RCPT TO: <rms@fsf.org>
    Here, the SMTP server performs relay control: "do we relay mail to rms@fsf.org?":
    • Outbound e-mail is normally only accepted from an internal network
    • Inbound e-mail is normally accepted from anywhere
    A target address could be refused: 
    413 ERR I don't relay for rms@fsf.org
    In this case, the destination is not local but the recipient is accepted because I'm inside the local network: 
    200 OK Destination rms@fsf.org
DATA
200 OK Please send message body
From: Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org>
To: Richard Stallman <rms@fsf.org>
Subject: Hello from Addis
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 09:49:45 +0300
Message-ID: <124372643@enricozini.org>
Hi Richard,
Addis is a wonderful city, even if
it rains a lot.
Bye,  Enrico
.
200 OK Message accepted
QUIT
200 OK Bye.

  3. The SMTP server needs to find out where to send the message, using the DNS: 

    $ host -t MX fsf.org
fsf.org MX 10 mail.fsf.org
fsf.org MX 20 mail.gnu.org

  4. So the SMTP server tries the first one and connects to port 25 of mail.fsf.org: 

    HELO smtp.aau.edu.et
200 OK Hello smtp.aau.edu.et
MAIL FROM: <enrico@enricozini.org>
200 OK Mail from enrico@enricozini.org
RCPT TO: <rms@fsf.org>
    The destination is accepted because it's for a local user: 
    200 OK Destination rms@fsf.org
DATA
200 OK Please send message body
From: Enrico Zini <enrico@enricozini.org>
To: Richard Stallman <rms@fsf.org>
Subject: Hello from Addis
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 09:49:45 +0300
Message-ID: <124372643@enricozini.org>
Received: by mail.aau.edu.et
  on Mon, 17 Jul 2006 09:55:53 +0300
  from 10.4.15.158
Hi Richard,
Addis is a wonderful city, even if
it rains a lot.
Bye,  Enrico
.
200 OK Message accepted
QUIT
200 OK Bye.

  5. Now, mail.fsf.org will invoke a MDA to write the mail in Richard Stallman's mailbox.

Example of problems with mail handling:
  • Accepting inbound connections:
    • Malicious input:
      • logic errors
      • buffer overflows
      • DoS (Denial Of Service) attacks
      • Connection floods
  • Performing outbound connections:
    • Programming errors:
      • Flooding of connections
  • Performing routing:
    • Unauthorised relays
    • Mail loops
  • Writing to the local hard drive:
    • Filling up the hard drive
    • Writing to the wrong files
  • Writing to the local hard drive as root:
    • In case of error or attack, any file in the system can potentially be compromised
RFC-822 is the original standard for E-mail. RFCs are standard Internet documents. Have a look at RFC documents released the 1st of April.
postfix Common setup: "Internet site with smarthost". More difficult to maintain: "Internet site". A smarthost is a machine that will relay e-mail for you. Questions asked with "Internet site with smarthost":
  • Mail name: aau.edu.et (name used to publicly identify the mail server)
  • Smarthost name: smtp.telecom.net.et (SMTP server that will relay our e-mail)
To test a mail server: 
$ telnet localhost 25
HELO me
MAIL FROM: <a@b.c>
RCPT TO: <mail@of.a.local.user>
DATA
hi
.
QUIT
By default, you find locally delivered mail in /var/mail/username. Postfix configuration files:
/etc/postfix/master.cf
configures how all the postfix components run together (man 5 master)
/etc/postfix/main.cf
Main postfix configuration (man 5 postconf)
To rewrite addresses:

  1. In /etc/postfix/main.cf: 

    canonical_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/canonical

  2. Then in /etc/postfix/canonical you can add the rewrite rules, like: 

    enrico   enrico@enricozini.org

  3. When /etc/postfix/canonical is modified you need to regenerate the index: 

    sudo postmap canonical
    (same is when you change the alias file: sudo postalias /etc/aliases)
(see file:///usr/share/doc/postfix/html/ADDRESS_REWRITING_README.html) Manipulating the message queue:
mailq - List the mail queue.
Example: 
mailq
postqueue - Postfix queue control
Examples: 
# Like mailq
postqueue -p
# Tries to send every message in the queue
postqueue -f
# Tries to send every message in the queue for that site
postqueue -s site
postsuper - Postfix superintendent
Examples: 
# Deletes one message
sudo postsuper -d 7C4D2EC0F5D
# Deletes all messages held in the queue for later delivery
sudo postsuper -d ALL deferred
Different mail queues in postfix:
incoming
mail who just entered the system
active
mail to be delivered
deferred
mail to be delivered later because there were problems
hold
mail that should not be delivered until released from hold
Mail logs are in: 
/var/log/mail.log
/var/log/mail.err
/var/log/mail.info
/var/log/mail.warn
Mail delivery Mailbox formats:
  • mbox: single file, mail separated by "From " lines
  • maildir: one directory per folder, one file per mail
  • mh: similar to maildir, but not really used
Alternate MDA: procmail: allows to filter mail automatically into different folders. Mail forwarding with ~/.forward: allows to redirect mail to a different address: just put the address you want to send to in the file ~/.forward.
POP or IMAP server Installation: 
apt-get install dovecot
Configuration is in: 
/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
The main thing that is needed is to enable the mail protocols you want: 
protocols = imaps
Server monitoring To make all sorts of graphs: 
apt-get install munin munin-node
Example: http://munin.ping.uio.no To compute more statistics:
  • anteater
  • isoqlog
  • mailgraph
Monitor system logs: logcheck:
  • sends you mail with abnormal log lines
  • It's important to customize what is normal and you do it with regular expressions
Filtering viruses and spam clamav - Virus scanner Virus scanning:
  • Postfix gives the mail to clamav that scans it and gives it back if it's clean.
  • Strategies for infected mail:
    • silently delete it
    • refuse the mail and send a notification to the sender
    • refuse the mail and send a notification to the receiver
    • quarantine the e-mail
    • refuse delivery with a SMTP error
    • deliver with an extra header that says that it's a virus
spamassassin - Spam filter Spam scanning:
  • Postfix gives the mail to spamd that scans it and gives it back with some spam information.
  • Strategies for spam mail:
    • silently delete it
    • refuse the mail and send a notification to the sender
    • refuse the mail and send a notification to the receiver
    • quarantine the e-mail
    • refuse delivery with a SMTP error
    • deliver with an extra header that says that it's spam
  • New techniques:
    • greylisting: when you receive a mail from a host you've never seen before, refuse it with a temporary error, and accept it the second time (after some time delay). Spammers normally don't retry, and implementing retry would increase their cost of sending e-mail.
    • crossassassin: if more than some amount of your users receive a mail with the same message ID, throw it away. Sending mails with different headers would increase the cost of sending e-mail.
Man pages and sections Man pages are divided in sections:
  • man man shows all the sections of the manpages
  • man 5 postconf shows the postconf manpage in the "configuration file" section
  • Normally manpages are referred as manpage(section) (e.g. postconf(5) )

14 July 2006

Evan Prodromou: 26 Messidor CCXIV

I keep my Google Alerts keyed for news about Wikipedia, so I just got a link this morning to an article in the Guardian about Larry Sanger. Sanger was the original editor of Wikipedia, when the project had some semblance of editorial organization. When he was laid off from Bomis in 2002, Sanger left the project, and has been a gadfly for the project ever since. His article on Kuro5hin, Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism, was a call for better quality on the project. I think Sanger is wp:Stuart Sutcliffe of Wikipedia -- the wp:Fifth Beatle who missed out on the project's success. I'd be a pretty bitter Herb myself if it was me in that position. I also think his criticisms are way off the mark. Not that Wikipedia doesn't have quality problems -- it does. Grievous ones. But the quality problems aren't with the factual accuracy, but with the poor level of writing, kitchen-sink compositional strategy, and sloppy logical development. Sanger makes the same mistake that many Wikipedians do -- overemphasizing the characteristics and needs of contributors. Wikipedians are great, and their generosity of time and energy has made one of the crowning achievements of the Internet. (Disclaimer: I've been a Wikipedian since 2002, and I'm an admin on the English Wikipedia, so I have some bias.) But their value comes from serving readers, not from serving themselves. Many of Wikipedia's quality problems come from a feeling of entitlement on the part of editors -- that the most important thing is to make sure every contributor gets their say. Too often, we use the wp:NPOV rule as a conflict-resolution mechanism rather than as a guideline to writing good articles. Sanger's solution -- putting "experts" back in the driver's seat -- will drive his new Digital Universe project. But I'm not sure he's focusing on the right part of the problem. Sure, scientists and historians know their subjects in-depth, but that typically means they don't have the perspective to create accessible articles for the general public. The hoi polloi probably do a better job writing their own summaries at their own level than the Ivory Tower can. Grand plans for saving Wikipedia are like favorite characters on the Simpsons -- everybody's got one. Still, I'll give mine (plan, not favorite): what Wikipedia needs isn't scientists and historians, but writers and editors (in the traditional sense -- r dacteurs, redactors). Engaging that community's time and energy is going to be crucial to the project's success. Oh, also: Manjula. tags:

13 July 2006

Martin F. Krafft: Pearls and Dents

In Germany's pharmacies (and all around the world), you can buy a tooth paste with "pearls". These are little, soft grains, and the combination of the seemingly suggested concept "sandpaper" (they even have to deny that on the front page of the product's home page) with the clean and beautiful image of "pearl" seem to lead people to believe that these particles will make your teeth twinkle in the dark. I am not in the capacity to judge whether those actually perform better deplaquification. The tooth paste goes by the name of "Pearls and Dents" (for non-German speakers). That's another German product carrying a name made of English words, which appears to be cool these days. I find it a sad development how English replaces German all over the German media and every day language use (second only to the germanification of English words, like "downgeloadet" -- the use of English words according to German grammar rules). But that's not the point, at least not this time. What I find even more disturbing is the stupidity of the masses that go with the flow, or even try to be creative at designing captive slogans, regardless of the widespread lack of command of the English language. "Dents" may be close to "dental", but it does not actually mean teeth. Thus I am left to wonder whether the manufacturer is trying to hint at what those little pearls actually do to your teeth, or whether it's just another instance of a crap marketing team (who'd probably be better off learning proper German first, before venturing into the domain of another language). Along similar lines, is it only me who thinks that Adidas' slogan "impossible is nothing" is just plain stupid. Are they trying to be extra clever by giving the all too common phrase "nothing is impossible" a witty twist (and failing at it)? Or are they instead hinting that "impossible" is for others -- wear Adidas and you'll encounter even less possible situations? PS: This post is dedicated to helix.

11 July 2006

Clint Adams: Where's Max Headroom when you need him?

[Coca-Cola disfruta]

Matthew Garrett

A while ago, some people were delegated to make a decision about debconf. The final decision was meant to be made at a meeting, at which various vaguely disturbing comments were made by a couple of the delegates.

Shortly before the second meeting that was supposed to really, certainly, no questions this time arrive at a decision, the project leader removed the delegations and altered the way that the meeting was going to be run.

Unsurprisingly, this resulted in some unhappiness, including accusations of power grabbing.

So. Let's take a slightly closer look at things. Some facts:Or:

In the worst case scenario, the response to certain outcomes of the meeting may have been a general resolution with the aim of overturning an existing decision

Such a GR would have been horribly divisive. It would have been open to accusations of prejudice or vested interests against all involved. It would have wasted vast quantities of time that could have been better spent, and whatever the outcome it would have left a shadow over next year's Debconf.

We'll never know whether this would have happened, but it's hardly unrealistic. Anthony was left in an awkward position - remove the delegates (an action that would undoubtedly result in some people being very unhappy), or allow things to continue and risk all-out warfare within the project. Was it the right call? Maybe. Maybe not. But he was willing to take the personal popularity hit in order to reduce the probability of intra-project conflict. That's the sort of thing that we elect leaders to do. We should be happy that a leader actually shows a willingness to make difficult decisions, rather than crucifying them for it.

5 July 2006

Martin F. Krafft: The Nokia E-series cell phones (E60 and E70 specifically)

I am on the look for a new cell phone, and now that the Nokia E60 and E70 are out, I went to the shop to had a close look at them, and one thing I can say up front is that they're both quite okay for people who like Series 60 (v3) phones and all the colourful navigation stuff you (have to) do with them. I personally don't really care as long as I can quickly learn to find my way, and as long as the physical aspects of navigation are okay and responsive (which rules out Sony Ericsson for me). With that I can start at one difference between the two E series phones: the navigation nipple on the E60 seems a lot easier to use than on the E70. That said, the two phones are otherwise very similar under the hood (see this link for details, in the following are only the points I consider important):
  • both are triple-band with WCDMA support.
  • both come with bluetooth, infrared, GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA, and WLAN (incl. WPA/WPA2 and EAP support).
  • both have a VoIP client, though the store manager didn't know for sure whether I could connect to a SER (SIP express router) on the 'Net over a WLAN connection. They say that you can connect to a local gatekeeper [0], so I'd assume it's possible, but that's something to try out; read on...
  • both can assign ring tones per contact. Nokia heard my cries...
  • both can reuse my 6230's battery and charger. This is really a major selling point of Nokia -- all of their phones have the same charger, and batteries are compatible across many!
  • both run Series 60 v3, Symbian OS 9.1, which is somewhat outdates (9.2) is current, but it does give you "improvements in the OS [which] mean that applications and content, and therefore a developers investment, are better protected than ever." (Wikipedia). Boy am I glad!
  • both can run ScummVM, meaning I can play all of the best games ever released! If this is not a selling point for a business phone, what is?
Obvious differences include:
  • the E60 has no camera, while the E70 comes with a 2 megapixel one. I am actually not sure whether this is a plus or a minus, given that it is nice to have a camera handy when your life isn't all cubicles and security-conscious companies.
  • the E70 sports a keyboard that you can fold out (as does the 6822). Unfortunately, here in Switzerland, all they offer is a QWERTZ version, which I'll avoid if at all possible. I don't think I'll be using the phone for "working" (as in word processing or spreadsheet editing; who does?), and I avoid SMS when I can, so even though the keyboard is certainly cool qand usable, I won't draw too much benefit.
  • the E70 seems to have better battery life (according to the specs), but that's something that can be addressed with a more powerful battery, I'd say (plus, I can use my 6230 battery with both).
  • the E60 is 3 cm smaller and weighs 10 grammes less than the E70. That said, it's still a lot bigger than the 6230 I now have.
You can compare the specs of the two phones as well as the 6822 (which is like the E70 in some ways, but without WLAN and VoIP) at this link. Oh, and then there's the Motorola A910, which runs Linux, comes in a little heavier and at about the same volume as the E60, doesn't include infrared support, and doesn't seem to provide a VoIP client, which I'd say is less of a problem given the Linux basis. Unfortunately, it does not seem to available in Switzerland. Together with a contract extension, I can get either of the E series phones at about half the street price. In addition, the shop manager told me he'd allow me to return the phone within three days if it didn't meet my expectations. All of this, and the above combined makes me want to sleep for another night, and then try out the E60 over the weekend. I have to make a decision whether to prolong my contract by 24 months, or only 12 months and pay CHF 100 more for the phone. That comes down to around 5 /month, which is around 10% of my monthly bill. Given that I was always happy with Sunrise as provider, it would seem natural to bind myself for 24 months. However, prices are expected to drop substantially over the next year, and I am not sure whether a provider could lock you in to an existing contract, even if the government ordered a price decrease. So in the light of the expected availability of more and enhanced WLAN phones, such as the Motorola A910, I think a 12 month contract will be the better choice.
[0]"gatekeeper" is an H.323 term and I brought it up in the conversation because I am new to SIP and, well... He said it would be able to connect to a company-internal "thing, like a Cisco router," so this leads me to assume it will be able to connect to any SER out there. Thanks to Mark Brown for bringing this to my attention.

2 July 2006

Mike Hommey: Long live the battery

After playing around with gnome-power-manager so that it can support spicctrl (which is to be done in hal, actually) to be able to adjust LCD brightness according to whether the AC adapter is plugged or not, I wanted to go a bit further in my quest for battery life. To be honest, I was already adjusting the LCD brightness with a custom acpid event script, but it’s still nicer to have it out of the box. Anyway, the main issue I remembered for battery life, apart from LCD backlight and Wi-Fi, is CPU power states. When on battery, the CPU in my laptop can handle 4 such states. From C1 to C4 (According to the acpi docs there’s actually a C0 state, so that’d make 5). But when on battery, the CPU never goes past level C2. I did some basic check a long time ago, by removing modules, and after removing Firewire, PCMCIA, and USB support, the CPU would go in C3 and C4 states. Though this definitely saves battery because it turns off parts of the computer, I wanted to know exactly what was sucking the CPU, and to keep at least USB, that I use more than the rest. After selectively removing the modules, it turns out the uhci_hcd support (USB1) is somehow responsible. Which is sad, because my USB mouse is USB1. But it also turns out there’s always a peripheral connected to the USB1 hub on my laptop. Indeed, the internal bluetooth support, which is activated at the same time as Wi-Fi, is connected internally through USB1. If I turn off Wi-Fi, it disconects the BT USB device. It appears that in this configuration, having uhci_hcd loaded doesn’t have an influence on the CPU. It still reaches C3 and C4 levels. Problem is I don’t want to turn off Wi-Fi. So, with the help of my friend google, I found out that it’s possible to unbind drivers from devices, and successfully unbound the USB port the BT device is connected to, without deactivating all the other (external) ports. The sad thing is that when doing such, it also automagically disables the Wi-Fi device (an ipw2200) IRQ, but modprobing ipw2200 again enables it without enabling the BT device. Next step was to find a way to have this set-up applied automatically at boot-time. I tried to add the following to my udev rules:
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="pci", ID=="0000:00:1d.2", ENV UDEV_START ==1, OPTIONS="ignore_device"
which i’d have expected to do what i want, but it doesn’t. I also tried:
ACTION=="add", DRIVER=="uhci_hcd", RUN+="/bin/echo -n 0000:00:1d.2 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/uhci_hcd/unbind"
which doesn’t work either. But:
ACTION=="add", DRIVER=="uhci_hcd", RUN+="/some/script/containing/the/previous/echo"
does. Well, it does work when you restart udev, but not when you reboot. Unfortunately, the initramfs (built with the initramfs-tools) loads a lot of modules, including USB. Meaning that udev doesn’t load these and doesn’t apply the rules then. Unless I write my own list of modules to load at boot time, initramfs-tools won’t produce a useful initramfs for my case. Yaird, on the other hand, did what I wanted it to do, except that it still lacks support for resuming from suspend-to-disk. In the end, I put a script in /etc/rcS.d. This script unbinds the uhci_hcd driver from the BT device port and re-modprobes ipw2200. I got a bad surprise, though. After a fresh startup, the CPU would be stuck on C2 state again. Remember how the OpenGL performance would drop if I switch to console and back to X ? It also turns out that it also makes the CPU able to reach C3 and C4 states. There seems to be something odd with the radeon driver…

Evan Prodromou: 5 Messidor CCXIV

Good news for us: Wikitravel was selected as Featured Commoner for June 2006 by Creative Commons. There's a long interview with me and Maj about the origins of Wikitravel and why we think it's so cool. It may be the best interview I've seen about the project yet; I really recommend it for curious people. tags:

Creative Commons plugin for Microsoft Office I'll say it right now: kudos to both Creative Commons and Microsoft for the new Creative Commons Add-In for Microsoft Office. I'm not a frequent user of Microsoft Office, but I do get lots of .doc and .xls and .ppt documents over the transom, and it's good to know that Creative Commons is doing something to make it possible to Free works in these formats just a little bit. There's been a bit of controversy on the cc-community list about the move, but I think it's great. It took me a while to warm to it, but I really like Creative Commons's approach to Open Content. It reminds me of wp:harm reduction theories. I think they're not universally loved for this, but I also think it's been a big part of the success of the project. tags:

Sucks-Rules-Votes-o-Meter I keep forgetting to ask Don about making a microformats-oriented version of the Sucks-Rules-o-Meter. After all, the VoteLinks microformat isn't much more than a semantic-web-formalized SROM, is it? I figure a plugin for Nutch to look for vote-links would do the trick; and I bet Technorati would be cool about adding an SROM system to Pingerati. tags:

100M We were driving from wt:Culver City to wt:Santa Barbara yesterday, and we stopped in wt:Calabasas for a soda and some breastfeeding. I had on K-RTH 101, the soi disant "soundtrack for Southern California", when on came a commercial for HP laser printers. We were astounded to hear that there have been 100 million HP LaserJet printers shipped since 1984. Yes, one hundred million. That's one HP laser printer for every 60 human beings on Earth. Do we really need that many laser printers? Why? What the hell are we printing so much? It's pretty obvious that 100 million people haven't bought laser printers; much fewer people have bought more than one laser printer over and over. HP seems to think this is something to crow about, but I've looked into a lot of laser printers, and they're full of some pretty heavy iron. Those old ones aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Some quick math suggests that that's about one million metric tons of trash generated principally by HP. Probably the majority of HP printers have been smashed to bits, like the one in Office Space. Whose fault is it that we've gone through 100 million of these poisonous, heavy, clunky metallo-plastic whizzbangers in 20 years? Does the company have a responsibility to make machines out of reusable, recyclable materials? To not make its growth based on wp:planned obsolescence? If you're marketing the machine as a disposable device, shouldn't you have a plan for where they go at their end of life. Why aren't more machines upgradeable in small chunks, so you don't have so much material going into landfills? One hundred million laser printers, buried under piles of banana peels and diapers, or embedded in the ocean floor, or rusting in basements and warehouses. It doesn't seem like something to celebrate; it seems to me to be pretty depressing. tags:

Evan Prodromou: 13 Messidor CCXIV

Honk honk honk! honk honk honk honk! I guess Portugal just won the quarterfinals against England for the wt:World Cup 2006. We have a huge Portuguese community in Montreal, and the team's victories this year at the Cup and in 2004 for the Euro cup have been a huge source of pride. I'm not a big soccer fan, but I do love the fact that Mtl's cultural communities literally fly the colors, packing the bars and cafes and driving around honking after a win (or even a big goal). Italy, Portugal, Brazil (mostly Portuguese again), France... I even saw some cars with Ukraine flags. It's a cool part of being in such a multiculti city. tags:

Moving Day One of the things that's crazy about being in Montreal in the summer is that there's just too much to do. On any given day, there are just a billion jillion activities and things to do. Around May, the vegetation here just explodes into frenetic growth -- trying to get a full cycle of life in in our small sub-arctic growing season. Quebec's forests are as dense and overgrown as any Amazonian jungle. I think humans' social schedule during the summer is like that, too: trying to get a full year of fun into 4-5 months. Take today, for example. It may be 13 Messidor to us citoyens, but for the people of the North today is 1 July, officially wp:Canada Day. The national holiday of Canada, it's celebrated from Coast to Coast by lots of people who love Canada and want to celebrate their Canadianness. And then there's Quebec. Sure, Montreal has some nice Canada Day events, but there's something furtive about them. Even though somewhere north of 45% of Quebec's population wants to remain in the union, it's still rare to see overt Canada Day celebrations, outside the sponsored events. But for most Quebecois, July 1 is wp:Moving Day -- the day when everyone's lease is up, by government mandate, and those people who are going to move this year go to their new homes. There are moving vans in the street and people queued up at the rental places -- typical time to rent is 2-4 hours. We moved on Moving Day last year to our new, great apartment, and it's nice to be here. This may be the first Moving Day we've been here that no one's asked for help moving. That might say something about the stage of life we're in -- people are buying their own homes and settling down -- and it may say something about our reliability as friends since we had a baby. In any event, here's one Moving Day when any moving I do is on my own. tags:

Jazz There was a Canada Day parade this morning on the other side of town (where the anglophones and federalists live...), but we were too tired to go. So we instead skipped down to Place des Arts to visit the free outdoor parts of the Montreal Jazz Fest. Case in point with Montreal festivals in the summer: it was big, with tons to do, and we were totally unable to deal with doing it. We had some Molson Dry, saw some music playing and Amita June clapped along (she's a great clapper!), then we had quiche and a salmon wrap and some Molson Dry, then Amita June went and played in the kids' area, then we saw some more music, then some samba, then klesmer, then off to home. Good time, but tiring. I feel obliged to enjoy Montreal summers, but sometimes it's just too much. tags:

France Honk honk! Honk honk honk honk honk!! So I guess France just beat Brazil to get into the semi-finals. Is it actually allowed to have a World Cup without Brazil in the semi-finals? I thought it was a rule. Niko, my French Friend, was complaining last week that the French fans were just loitering around the bars on St. Laurent rather than being boisterous like other fans did when their teams won. Not today: on our way back from Jazz Fest, we saw a huge tow truck with a gigantic tricolor draped from the back trolling up and down Mont Royal. Kind of a bummer for the Brazilians -- and the rest of us who enjoy Brazil fans' antics. But I guess that's the way it goes sometimes. tags:

Fancruft I don't remember what I was looking up on Wikipedia, but there was some fancruft on the page and I ended up wasting half an hour reading Simpsons articles. I want my half hour back, Wikipedia! tags:

Marilynne Robinson When I was a freshman in college, one of my favorite instructors, Michael Near, assigned "Housekeeping" by Marilynne Robinson as an English 1B assignment. I found the story haunting and beautiful and altogether excellent. I tried digging up more of her work at the UC Berkeley main library, and all I could get was "Mother Country" -- her indictment of stratified society and nuclear energy. In it, she promised never to write fiction again. So I was stunned to read a quote by Robinson in Shannon's Livejournal. Wow. Apparently wp:Marilynne Robinson has written a book of essays in 1998 and a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel in 2005. Incredible. Why was I not informed? I've got some reading to do. tags:

Full-text feed So I've got a full-text feed now. Hopefully it works for those folks with Planet aggregators or whatever, and especially for Joey Hess, who hates the stuff below the fold. Some corrections that I made to older posts seem to have fudged up some planets, notably Planet Debian, for which I'm kind of bummed. But I think I've fixed the problem, and this should be the only time it happens. Unfortunately, since I write a lot, it means a lot of scrolling. tags:

29 June 2006

Adam Rosi-Kessel: Timbl on Net Neutrality

Tim Berners-Lee (whose blog has a curiously inconspicuous URL) has weighed in on the net neutrality debate with an entry entitled “Net Neutrality: This is serious.” Tim Berners-Lee seems to be fairly cautious about taking public positions on political issues, so when he does, it’s worth listening. His opinions carry a fair amount of credibility — he is probably the only person who can legitimately start blog entries with phrases like, “When I invented the web…”
When I invented the Web, I didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA. … Yes, regulation to keep the Internet open is regulation. And mostly, the Internet thrives on lack of regulation. But some basic values have to be preserved. For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can’t photocopy money. Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it.

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