It's been a long time since I wrote about aptitude-gtk. Mostly that's because I haven't been doing any work on it, due to a combination of several holidays, sickness and (last but certainly not least) an unfortunate relapse of WoW-addiction. But we have moved the ball forward since the 0.5.0 release. Some of the changes since then are just polishing, with no major changes in functionality, but there are a few things that are very visible: Status pipe support aptitude now supports the dpkg status pipe. This means that it can display a progress bar showing how far through the install process it is. In fact, if you are using the Gnome frontend for Debconf, you don't even need to display the terminal at all, unless a package is so uncouth as to prompt directly on standard input. I'd like to thank the Synaptic developers -- although this is all my own code, their implementation of this functionality was very valuable documentation of how apt frontends use the status pipe in practice. Incidentally, the aptitude implementation is modularized and available in src/generic/apt/parse_dpkg_status.cc and src/generic/apt/parse_dpkg_status.h. If you want to parse dpkg messages in your own GPL project, you might want to take a look at that code. And if I don't forget, I'll ask about including this in apt once the lenny freeze is lifted. [0] Here's the dpkg progress bar in action, showing that dpkg is configuring libmad0: Clicking the "View Details" button on the dpkg progress bar will pop up a terminal in a new tab; you can close the tab and dpkg will go back to running in the background. And yes, I know that the progress bar for the download shouldn't hang around after the download completes. Searching for partial strings As noted in the release notes for 0.5.0, incremental searching from the curses frontend was broken by the 0.5.0 release. I've created a new match term named ?term-prefix which matches against any extension of the term; for instance, searching form ?term-prefix(comp) will find any package that matches the term compiler, the term computer, the term compromise, or any other extension of comp. The upshot is that incremental searching should work again. Editing the list of visible columns The current package list doesn't show very much information. That's deliberate: I don't want to clutter the default view with a lot of stuff that's only necessary from time to time. But until now, there was no way to change which columns were visible. Now there is: This is a very rough proof-of-concept dialog that I've just checked into the source tree. The checkboxes are fully functional (clicking them shows and hides columns), but the buttons to save the current setup or to apply it to all the active tabs are not working. With this in place, we can think about creating columns for most of the interesting information about a package (archive, maintainer, etc). [0] By which I mean, I'll say does anyone object if I add this utility code to apt?, and when no-one says no I'll commit it.

40319 An e-book reader where I can click on any word and enter a definition for it. The definition will then appear as a tooltip when I hover over the word. Take that, Iain Banks, and Neal Stephenson! 32 I want Deskview X's terminal program. The one that resizes the font when the window is resized. Except free and modern. With modern (ie, auto-layout tiling) window managers, this is less of a wishlist and more of a missing necessity. Ideally, it would always keep the window 80 columns (or some other user-defined value) wide. I've poked around in gnome-terminal's source, and this looks fairly doable, but I have not found the time to get down and do it.

The Debian Python Modules Team is discussing which DVCS to switch to from SVN. Ondrej Certik asked how to generate a list of commiters to the team s repository, so I looked at it and got this:
emilio@saturno:~/deb/python-modules$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
865 piotr
609 morph
598 kov
532 bzed
388 pox
302 arnau
253 certik
216 shlomme
212 malex
175 hertzog
140 nslater
130 kobold
123 nijel
121 kitterma
106 bernat
99 kibi
87 varun
83 stratus
81 nobse
81 netzwurm
78 azatoth
76 mca
73 dottedmag
70 jluebbe
68 zack
68 cgalisteo
61 speijnik
61 odd_bloke
60 rganesan
55 kumanna
52 werner
50 haas
48 mejo
45 ucko
43 pabs
42 stew
42 luciano
41 mithrandi
40 wardi
36 gudjon
35 jandd
34 smcv
34 brettp
32 jenner
31 davidvilla
31 aurel32
30 rousseau
30 mtaylor
28 thomasbl
26 lool
25 gaspa
25 ffm
24 adn
22 jmalonzo
21 santiago
21 appaji
18 goedson
17 toadstool
17 sto
17 awen
16 mlizaur
16 akumar
15 nacho
14 smr
14 hanska
13 tviehmann
13 norsetto
13 mbaldessari
12 stone
12 sharky
11 rainct
11 fabrizio
10 lash
9 rodrigogc
9 pcc
9 miriam
9 madduck
9 ftlerror
8 pere
8 crschmidt
7 ncommander
7 myon
7 abuss
6 jwilk
6 bdrung
6 atehwa
5 kcoyner
5 catlee
5 andyp
4 vt
4 ross
4 osrevolution
4 lamby
4 baby
3 sez
3 joss
3 geole
2 rustybear
2 edmonds
2 astraw
2 ana
1 twerner
1 tincho
1 pochu
1 danderson
As it s likely that the Python Applications Packaging Team will switch too to the same DVCS at the same time, here are the numbers for its repo:

emilio@saturno:~/deb/python-apps$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
401 nijel
288 piotr
235 gothicx
159 pochu
76 nslater
69 kumanna
68 rainct
66 gilir
63 certik
52 vdanjean
52 bzed
46 dottedmag
41 stani
39 varun
37 kitterma
36 morph
35 odd_bloke
29 pcc
29 gudjon
28 appaji
25 thomasbl
24 arnau
20 sc
20 andyp
18 jalet
15 gerardo
14 eike
14 ana
13 dfiloni
11 tklauser
10 ryanakca
10 nxvl
10 akumar
8 sez
8 baby
6 catlee
4 osrevolution
4 cody-somerville
2 mithrandi
2 cjsmo
1 nenolod
1 ffm
Here I m the 4th most committer And while I was on it, I thought I could do the same for the GNOME and GStreamer teams:
emilio@saturno:~/deb/pkg-gnome$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
5357 lool
2701 joss
1633 slomo
1164 kov
825 seb128
622 jordi
621 jdassen
574 manphiz
335 sjoerd
298 mlang
296 netsnipe
291 grm
255 ross
236 ari
203 pochu
198 ondrej
190 he
180 kilian
176 alanbach
170 ftlerror
148 nobse
112 marco
87 jak
84 samm
78 rfrancoise
75 oysteigi
73 jsogo
65 svena
65 otavio
55 duck
54 jcurbo
53 zorglub
53 rtp
49 wasabi
49 giskard
42 tagoh
42 kartikm
40 gpastore
34 brad
32 robtaylor
31 xaiki
30 stratus
30 daf
26 johannes
24 sander-m
21 kk
19 bubulle
16 arnau
15 dodji
12 mbanck
11 ruoso
11 fpeters
11 dedu
11 christine
10 cpm
7 ember
7 drew
7 debotux
6 tico
6 emil
6 bradsmith
5 robster
5 carlosliu
4 rotty
4 diegoe
3 biebl
2 thibaut
2 ejad
1 naoliv
1 huats
1 gilir

emilio@saturno:~/deb/pkg-gstreamer$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
891 lool
840 slomo
99 pnormand
69 sjoerd
27 seb128
21 manphiz
8 he
7 aquette
4 elmarco
1 fabian
Conclusions:
- Why do I have the full python-modules and pkg-gstreamer trees, if I have just one commit to DPMT, and don t even have commit access to the GStreamer team?
- If you don t want to seem like you have done less commits than you have actually done, don t change your alioth name when you become a DD (hint: pox-guest and piotr in python-modules are the same person)
- If the switch to a new VCS was based on a vote where you have one vote per commit, the top 3 commiters in pkg-gnome could win the vote if they chosed the same! For python-apps it s the 4 top commiters, and the 7 ones for python-modules. pkg-gstreamer is a bit special

So my current Apple PowerBook is now 4 years old, and starting to show its age. Some parts of it have been replaced (keyboard, hard disk, bottom cover, and battery), and now it's starting to have issues again. It's not breaking down completely just yet, but seen its age, I might as well start looking for something new rather than having it fixed. I bought this PowerBook because I wanted a laptop that did not have an Intel or AMD processor at its core, which at the time meant either apple or tadpole; since, however, tadpole is only for the rich and famous (seriously well, perhaps being famous is not a requirement), and apple now also only has intel-based laptops, I guess I'm stuck with intel stuff. Besides, a 1.2Ghz SPARC is slower than my current 1.3Ghz PowerPC. So, dear lazyweb, I'd appreciate any suggestions about good laptops. What 'good' means, in my eyes, is the following:

• Long battery life. And I mean long. My current laptop has 4 hours on a new battery, which is not really short, but I find that to be somewhat unsatisfactory.
• Good Linux support. The days when I used to enjoy fiddling with software configuration for three months until everything works just about right are over. I'd prefer to buy, install Debian, and be there 99% of the way.
• A wireless chipset that does not require ndiswrapper, binary kernel blobs, or similar kludges. This is really part of the previous item, but important enough that I thought I'd mention it.
• Bluetooth. I guess this is somewhat standard these days, but one can't be too careful.
• No nvidia. I don't want to have to deal with their braindamage again.
• A full-sized keyboard. That is, it doesn't have to be a 17" laptop with numeric keypad and everything, but I do not want smaller keys than normal. I'll be using this laptop as my main workstation for several years to come and I do not like the prospect of developing RSI, so it had better have a good keyboard.
• Durable. As my business partner likes to say: "wouter is an expert in breaking laptops". Obviously I don't do that on purpose, but a laptop that is to be my laptop ought to be able to survive a few bumps here and there.

I guess the above list is quite long, and realize that my ideal laptop might just not exist; but hey, it never hurts to try, right? If it does not come preloaded with Windows, that's a plus; but OTOH, wiping a hard disk is not hard. I should also note that I'm not really interested in the low-price laptops that are available everywhere these days. Those usually have much lower performance, too small a screen, and other cutbacks that make the laptop be less than interesting for me. This is for work, not play.

This morning, Alan sends me the link to the subscription form. We are now ready to accept participants for OCaml Meeting 2009. Last week, I was at the annual CAML consortium meeting. We talked about OCaml Meeting with M. Leroy and other participants. Most of us, think this meeting is a real great way to make OCaml user meet. This can be the start of great projects, just because people realized that a real OCaml community exists. The INRIA seems really enthusiast about the meeting, maybe INRIA team will be directly involved in the organization in 2010. I hope 2009 meeting will be as good as the former. At least this year, we are doing things quite in advance and the whole organization will be a little bit more "professional". OCaml Meeting webpage

I'm posting way too much to debian-vote right now, which I realize and which I'm going to try to cut back on. (I at least did start the lintian.d.o upgrade process today, so I got non-discussion Debian work done.) The reason why I keep reacting, though, is that I'm finding it frustrating that people seem to be asking the wrong question for resolving the firmware freeness argument. We currently have a strong disagreement over what the implications of the Debian Social Contract and DFSG should be for our release process. Some Debian Developers believe that releasing lenny as-is requires a special exception to the Social Contract. Some Debian Developers believe that releasing lenny as-is is consistent with the Social Contract. We've tried and failed to achieve consensus. That's the first point of my frustration: some people don't seem willing to accept that this has happened. They are apparently having a hard time understanding how anyone couldn't agree with them, and are therefore repeatedly reopening the discussion on which we don't have consensus. Once it's clear that consensus doesn't exist, this is very counter-productive. The discussion is futile, which frustrates people, and then in that frustration they become increasingly angry and harsh. Once consensus fails, all interesting decision-making processes start. A decision-making process basically reduces to "who decides?". When you have a dispute and consensus is not possible, some body has to make a decision. If people believe in the decision-making process, they can then support, or at least live with, the decision because they respect the process, even if they disagree with that particular outcome. The most important output of a decision-making process is closure: you stop debating and move on. If that doesn't happen, the decision-making process has failed, even if it makes a decision. Why does this all matter and why am I going on at such length about it? It's simply this, which I think is so important I'll highlight it:

Even people who strongly disagree on some issues can work together cordially and well in the same project provided that they can agree on a decision-making process in those areas where they disagree.

Agreeing on how decisions are made in Debian is important because that's how we continue to work together when we disagree (and we will disagree). If we can agree on how disputes are resolved, we can all respect and honor the outcome even if it isn't what we would have wanted, and then move forward. If we don't agree on how disputes are resolved, we'll keep re-arguing them rather than accepting the outcome. The discussions will get more heated, more people will get upset, and more people will not have fun working on Debian. What I've been trying to analyze on debian-vote is the "who decides" part of this question. We have a decision-making process outlined in the Debian constitution for non-technical decisions (of which this is one). That process is somewhat scattered through the document, but bringing it together in one place, it seems to go like this:

1. Developers are empowered to make decisions about their own work. That means that, according to the constitution, the primary people who get to decide how the SC and DFSG should apply are every Debian Developer in the tasks on which they're working.
2. The project leader can define an area of ongoing responsibility and delegate to a developer or a group of developers responsibility for making decisions in that area. There are two relevant delegations here. The ftp team has the delegated authority to determine what packages may enter Debian given, among other things, licensing and DFSG issues. The release team has the delegated authority to decide what goes into the next stable release and when that release happens. (Let's put aside quibbles over whether or not that authority was formally delegated; I think that we can all agree in practice that it's close enough.) The ftp team has accepted the relevant firmware packages into Debian main and hence have made a decision in their area of responsibility. The release team, through the lenny-ignore tag, has decided that the relevant packages can be part of the next release. Those are delegate decisions that have already been made, and neither of those teams seem to want to change their mind.
3. The final decision-making body in this case, therefore, is the developers at large, who can override any delegate decision via a GR. That's what Robert Millan proposed, although he doesn't seem to have realized he was doing that, and it's not marked as such on the ballot.

Now that this has happened, we all vote whether or not to override the delegate decision. The only option on the ballot that does so, by my reading, is the first one, so if the first option does not win the GR, the delegate decision is not overridden and both the ftp-master and release team decisions stand. This is why Further Discussion means we continue the release as previously planned. We have a decision-making process, which has been followed, and the current decision is to release including those packages. In order to change that decision, it has to be overridden. A result of Further Discussion on a GR means that GR does nothing, and hence the decision stands. The second point of frustration is the decision that option four on the ballot (delegate to the release team the power to make decisions about how DFSG issues affect what is included in the release) needs a 3:1 majority. They have already been delegated the authority to do that as part of their delegated authority to manage the release. The effect of option four on the project is therefore identical to Further Discussion; the only difference is whether we make a positive statement or fail to make a negative statement. It makes no sense to treat it as supersession of a foundation document when it just supports the existing decision-making process in the constitution. A third point of frustration is the apparent feeling that foundation documents like the DFSG are outside of the normal decision-making process described in the constitution. I can find no evidence of this in the constitution, but more fundamentally, the people arguing this are not stating what decision-making process they believe does apply other than "my view of the DFSG is obviously the only reasonable one and hence you should follow it." This reduces to a plea for consensus, which we've already established that we don't have, and hence, as mentioned above, is horribly unproductive to keep raising. There will never be a policy document that is so clear that everyone will agree on its implications in every situation. I find it much more useful to analyze governance processes by looking at who decides disputes rather than looking at position statements. The decision-making process is what will determine the outcome of all the really interesting cases.

I am sure this is making the rounds but this seems like an appropriate place for this list: If Programming Languages Were Religions. My favorite description:

Lisp would be Zen Buddhism - There is no syntax, there is no centralization of dogma, there are no deities to worship. The entire universe is there at your reach - if only you are enlightened enough to grasp it. Some say that it s not a language at all; others say that it s the only language that makes sense.

Speaking of computer languages and projects and religious holy wars, in the last few weeks I have been totally intrigued by the culture being built by the Ruby on Rails guys. As a researcher of Free and Open Source Software, I, like others, actually tend to see the similarities more than the difference between these two poles (in part because I focus on practice, not on the purist ideologies or two ideologues, you know who I am taking about) but it seems to me -and I could be wrong here but I suspect I am not -that Ruby on Rails is producing a unique Open Source culture, one that really diverges from some of the core principles of Free Software, much more so than other Open Source projects like Apache. The rail guys as I have heard, are Open Source evangelists of a certain stripe, who are quite cultish (you know, it is weird if you don t use github, a Mac, TextMate). What do you think of Ruby on Rails? Are the attacks fair? Are they a bunch of douchebags, as this (very incisive) post argues? Is it where Open Source meets and marries, for better or for worse, the Web 2.0 craze? If I could clone me, this is definitely one line of research, I would love to dive into right now but since I can t, your opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry Bastian, but that marthyrdon thing doesn't work. Debian has no shortage of talkers, GR-proposers, etc. We have shortage of people of actually doing stuff. Therefor it's only fair that people not bothering fixing bugs get criticized too. And not to mention that there is enough RC bugs open that you could *easily* fix one of them before making another blog post.

This post has been brought to you by fixing #508781 and #496104. (Can I has a meme plz?)

ps, that said, pretending reaching 0 RC bugs means we have a perfect release is delusional. Bugs are found at constant rate. If we fixed bugs faster and reached 0 RC bugs a month a go, the released lenny would now have all the RC bugs found during this month. Therefor it would make much more sense to align the release schedule based on something else, such as d-i schedule and fix any RC bugs left at that point with stable release updates. update: As noted by Dato, the release update essentially says the same.

It's not really "news" that Dr. John Ousterhout is no longer the Tcl leader, that happened years ago, but it's finally been formalized: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.tcl/browse_thread/thread/99e2693293b3c945/f4932ae01d74f8e1#f4932ae01d74f8e1 And people at large have taken notice, something that doesn't happen with Tcl very often. What I think is actually interesting about it is to consider the governance models for various programming languages. It seems that Tcl is something of an exception to the "benevolent dictator" model prevalent in the world of scripting languages. Python still uses this, with Guido van Rossum being the "BDFL", or Benevolent Dictator For Life). Perl used to, with Larry Wall, although I'm not up to date on what they do now. Ruby has Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto. The really big, established, popular languages like C, C++ and Java have committees that run them, although even there, the original development was often by small teams or individuals. What about other languages, like Lua, Erlang, Scala, Clojure, Haskell, OCaml, and so on and so forth? Which governance model is in use? How does it help or hinder the language's growth and adoption?

So I replaced my Latitude D410 with a shiny new Latitude E4300 (Intel Core 2 Duo SP9400 2.4 Ghz with 4 Gb RAM). Here are some notes about this laptop that might be interesting for others. SSD disk I now use an SSD drive for my main disk (Dell Ultra Performance SSD, it s the second generation of Samsung SSD) and I m satisfied with that choice, I can boot (an unmodified Debian desktop install) from the SSD in less than 30 seconds while the same system booting from a traditional hard-disk takes more than 45 seconds. X server The Intel GM45 graphic card is not auto-recognized by Xorg 7.3 (or rather by xserver-xorg-video-intel 2.3.2 which is in lenny) so you end up with the vesa driver by default. It s possible to force the usage of the intel driver by adding a Driver intel line in the device section of xorg.conf but I have opted to use Xorg 7.4 (available in experimental). With this version, I can successfully use the DVI output in the associated dock and I have working suspend/resume. It does create some interesting problems however since that version of the xserver relies on HAL to detect the keyboard layout and doesn t use the Keyboard section of xorg.conf. You have to create /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-keymap.fdi by using /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-keymap.fdi as template and reload HAL then restart X. Wifi support The Intel 5100 Wifi chipset requires Linux 2.6.27 at least for the new iwlagn driver. This driver also needs a new firmware (the iwlwifi-5000 one) that is not yet integrated in the non-free package firmware-iwlwifi (see #497717). Sound support It works ok with alsa and the version integrated in linux 2.6.27 but it still has some rough edges when used in combination with the dock. Using the output jack connector on the dock doesn t stop the output in the integrated loudspeakers and the volume on that connector is so low that you could think that it doesn t work at all if you don t pay attention. Using the microphone works fine. For reference, if you play in the mixer, Front mic means the microphone connected on the dock while Mic means the one connected on the laptop. Each Analog loopback X option goes pairwise with the corresponding Input source X setting. In order for the recording to work, I have to set Digital Input Source to Analog Input , Digital must be activated and Input source 1 defines the default input used for the recording. Bluetooth support Contrary to the previous laptop, Dell offered no choice on the bluetooth chipset, they only propose the Dell 365 Bluetooth Card so I took it but it doesn t seem to work out of the box. In fact I can t even see it with lspci or lsusb so I wonder if they did something wrong during the assembly. Googling on the topic didn t gave me any good result, let me a comment if you know how to get this working. Update: so apparently the bluetooth component is there (ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp.), it just appears as an USB hub so it s somewhat difficult to guess that it s effectively a bluetooth card. Freezes, in particular with an amd64 installation I first installed the system in 64 bits mode (amd64 architecture) but I had very regular freezes of the system (I couldn t finish a single kernel compilation for example). Since I switched to an i386 installation, the system is more stable but I still get an occasional freeze every other day. It might be that a more recent kernel fixes this or maybe it will be fixed with a future Dell Bios update we ll see, but it s my biggest complaint with this laptop so far. Links Lucas Nussbaum bought the same laptop, you might want to read his remarks as well. More details Load the full article only if you want to see the lspci and lsusb output on this laptop.


rhertzog@rivendell:~$ lspci -nnk
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 07)
Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel
Kernel modules: intel-agp
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a43] (rev 07)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10f5] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: e1000e
Kernel modules: e1000e
00:1a.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:2937] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
Kernel modules: uhci-hcd
00:1a.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 [8086:2938] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
Kernel modules: uhci-hcd
00:1a.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 [8086:2939] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
Kernel modules: uhci-hcd
00:1a.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:293c] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
Kernel modules: ehci-hcd
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller [8086:293e] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:2940] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 [8086:2942] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1c.3 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 [8086:2946] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:2934] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
Kernel modules: uhci-hcd
00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:2935] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
Kernel modules: uhci-hcd
00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:2936] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
Kernel modules: uhci-hcd
00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 [8086:293a] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
Kernel modules: ehci-hcd
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller [8086:2917] (rev 03)
00:1f.2 RAID bus controller [0104]: Intel Corporation Mobile 82801 SATA RAID Controller [8086:282a] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: ahci
Kernel modules: ahci
00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller [8086:2930] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: i801_smbus
Kernel modules: i2c-i801
02:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller [1180:0832] (rev 05)
Kernel driver in use: firewire_ohci
Kernel modules: firewire-ohci
02:01.1 SD Host controller [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter [1180:0822] (rev 22)
02:01.2 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller [1180:0843] (rev 12)
0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100 [8086:4232]
Kernel driver in use: iwlagn
Kernel modules: iwlagn
$ lsusb
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 019: ID 046d:c03d Logitech, Inc. M-BT69a Pilot Optical Mouse
Bus 004 Device 018: ID 0424:2228 Standard Microsystems Corp. 9-in-2 Card Reader
Bus 004 Device 017: ID 0424:2602 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 004 Device 016: ID 0424:2502 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 004 Device 007: ID 045e:00dd Microsoft Corp.
Bus 004 Device 006: ID 0c45:63fe Microdia
Bus 004 Device 004: ID 413c:2513 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 004 Device 003: ID 413c:2513 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 413c:8162 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 413c:8161 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0a5c:5800 Broadcom Corp.
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
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Wouter replies to my blog post:

Well, we did, and we did. It's just that in two years, several new kernel releases came out, and that also resulted in some new firmware blobs entering the kernel. This, in a way, is a relatively new issue.

Having said that, I do agree with his sentiment; even if they're new issues, they could and should have been fixed ages ago. As I said in my 'no more hitting' post, too.

Well, yes, even if those firmware blob bugs from Etch have been sorted out some time ago, the problem itself still exists: there will ever be new firmware blobs and apparently there was no way found in the past 2 yours to deal with that. Otherwise there wouldn't be a new GR about it - again. ;)

So, I think Wouter and I basically agree - and probably many others as well.

It would be really nice if Debian would find a solution that fits the users needs until the freeze of lenny+1 instead of fighting the problem with short time workarounds.
With solution I mean a proper way to enable the user to actually use the hardware s/he bought. I faced that kind of problem myself earlier this year when I realized that I couldn't install Debian on some new Dell T105 out of the box.

It's a longstanding bug that java programs show empty gray windows when being used in many window managers. As there is OpenJDK now, I thought: It's free software now, so look at it and perhaps there is a way to fix it. As always, looking at java related stuff is a big mistake, but the code in question speaks volumes. The window configure code has:

        if (!isReparented() && isVisible() && runningWM != XWM.NO_WM
                &&  !XWM.isNonReparentingWM()
                && getDecorations() != winAttr.AWT_DECOR_NONE)  
            insLog.fine("- visible but not reparented, skipping");
            return;
         

and if you wonder how it detects if there is a non-reparenting window manager, it does it by:

     static boolean isNonReparentingWM()  
        return (XWM.getWMID() == XWM.COMPIZ_WM   XWM.getWMID() == XWM.LG3D_WM);
      

Yes, it really has a big list of 12 window managers built in for which it tests. And this is not the only place where it has special cases for some, but it does so all the time in the different places. But what Sun did not think about: There are more than 12 window managers out there. And with this buggy code it would need a list of every single one not doing reparenting (like ratpoison as when I read the bug reports correctly also awesome, wmii and a whole list of quite popular ones, too). Or it means that you are not supposed to run graphical java applications unless you use openlook, mwm (motif), dtwm (cde), enlightenment, kwm (kde), sawfish, icewm, metacity, compiz or lookinglass or no window manager at all. As I did not yet had realized that the old workaround of AWT_TOOLKIT=MToolkit no longer works in lenny before reading some debian-release mail, which means I haven't use any graphical java program for a long time, it seems I have decided for the latter. P.S.: I've sent a patch that one can at least manually tell java that one would like to see windows' contents as b.d.o/508650

King Politics thinks the GOP anti-bailout faction has the politics of the day wrong:

The time for pragmatism is now, but Senate Republicans don t recognize that. Senate Republicans have yet to realize that the GOP lost so many seats in 2006 and 2008 because the American public has a greater desire for pragmatism than ideology.

I think that s true to a point but I suspect it has more to do with post-Katrina George W. Bush than any coherent definition of ideology. As much as the Democrats would like to pretend otherwise, ideological is not a term I d readily apply to the bumbling nature of Bush s second term. Nor am I really convinced that the average voter is doing much more than engaging in post-hoc rationalized-as-something-else economic voting, which doubtless makes me no fun at parties when I play a public opinion scholar. ( Yes, all this crap matters at the margins, and occasionally elections are won at the margins, but most of the time it doesn t matter. ) But I digress. There is a broader lesson, though, in that to the extent the Democrats believe that their recent success is due to their ideology it is at their long-term peril, particularly if they bypass pragmatism in favor of catering to the cobbled-together collection of rent-seekers that passes for the Democratic coalition. To the extent bailing out Detroit is seen as a Democatic handout to its paymasters particularly with the emerging frame of the greedy unions are standing in the way trumping any sort of concept that any deal that tells the UAW to can their contract is essentially an impairment of the obligation of contract (which, believe it or not, is unconstitutional) the auto bailout won t go over well in the 48 or so states that don t host significant Big Three production. On a related note, Steven Taylor notes the defining-down of the filibuster by the media to mean failure to win a cloture vote. While I accept the point graciously, I think this may be more a failure of us as a profession than the media per se; modern congressional procedures (not just filibusters and holds, but also esoterica such as the Rules Committee and UCAs), even superficially treated, aren t a strong point of most American government textbooks, and more often than not that s the only real government orientation budding journalists will get. I make a point of assigning Barbara Sinclair s Unorthodox Lawmaking in my Congress classes, but I doubt the average journalist gets that in-depth in their undergrad days. So here at least I think the blame falls somewhat closer to home than we might want to admit.

King Politics thinks the GOP anti-bailout faction has the politics of the day wrong:

The time for pragmatism is now, but Senate Republicans don t recognize that. Senate Republicans have yet to realize that the GOP lost so many seats in 2006 and 2008 because the American public has a greater desire for pragmatism than ideology.

I think that s true to a point but I suspect it has more to do with post-Katrina George W. Bush than any coherent definition of ideology. As much as the Democrats would like to pretend otherwise, ideological is not a term I d readily apply to the bumbling nature of Bush s second term. Nor am I really convinced that the average voter is doing much more than engaging in post-hoc rationalized-as-something-else economic voting, which doubtless makes me no fun at parties when I play a public opinion scholar. ( Yes, all this crap matters at the margins, and occasionally elections are won at the margins, but most of the time it doesn t matter. ) But I digress. There is a broader lesson, though, in that to the extent the Democrats believe that their recent success is due to their ideology it is at their long-term peril, particularly if they bypass pragmatism in favor of catering to the cobbled-together collection of rent-seekers that passes for the Democratic coalition. To the extent bailing out Detroit is seen as a Democatic handout to its paymasters particularly with the emerging frame of the greedy unions are standing in the way trumping any sort of concept that any deal that tells the UAW to can their contract is essentially an impairment of the obligation of contract (which, believe it or not, is unconstitutional) the auto bailout won t go over well in the 48 or so states that don t host significant Big Three production. On a related note, Steven Taylor notes the defining-down of the filibuster by the media to mean failure to win a cloture vote. While I accept the point graciously, I think this may be more a failure of us as a profession than the media per se; modern congressional procedures (not just filibusters and holds, but also esoterica such as the Rules Committee and UCAs), even superficially treated, aren t a strong point of most American government textbooks, and more often than not that s the only real government orientation budding journalists will get. I make a point of assigning Barbara Sinclair s Unorthodox Lawmaking in my Congress classes, but I doubt the average journalist gets that in-depth in their undergrad days. So here at least I think the blame falls somewhat closer to home than we might want to admit.

Yes, this is just to bookmark what Romain contributed. VPNs can be created by ssh plus tun devices; debian-administration.org has a very nice write-up including proper set up of the authorized_keys file to not allow generic ssh root access. Please, can everybody add big disclaimers on all ssh + ppp based HOWTO's that this is obsolete? Or is there a reason I'm still doing it that way other than the omnipresence of said documentation?

On Saturday I went to the British Library's Taking Liberties exhibition on "the 900-year struggle for Britain's freedoms and rights". The majority of the items on display were truly iconic, including a copy of the Magna Carta, Ms Davidson's return ticket from Epsom as well as Charles I's death warrant - with Cromwell's signature easily identifiable in third position. In contrast, the video interviews that were scattered around were rather distracting at best (isn't it a library?) and embarrasingly biased at worst. I wonder how many visitors need convicing that detaining suspects without charge for forty-two days isn't a good idea. Near the exit was a wonderfully lo-fi anonymous commenting system based on a wall of bulldog clips and postcard-sized bits of paper. Fascinating in itself.

I have not sat behind the helm of teaching for very long but I already have a few tricks up my sleeve. One of them is that I assign some of my favorite readings at the end of the semester so as to counter the downtrodden and tepid spirit and mood (not to mention attention) of my students, which drops precipitously with each passing day. Let’s face it post Thanksgiving, we are all a little tired and I try to find the readings, which uplift, intrigue, and challenge cherished assumptions about marriage and sex. So far it seems to pay off and I often can tell because the conversational pitch and excitement in class is high and the student writings are good, great, even exceptional, which, again, is hard to produce/induce this late in the semester. Readers of this blog would probably be most interested in one of these lively readings, Ben Nugent’s American Nerd (and it might be interesting to hear how the European Nerd story would diverge or converge with this one). One of my students, an audio geek and Free Culture President/Free Software junkie, by the name of John Randall produced a very nice little response (not research) paper on the Nugent reading as well as a short piece by Sarah Seltzer from Bitch Magazine
The(Girl) Geek Stands Alone (and thanks to Joe> for cluing me into this piece). Seltzer piece basically argues, in her own words, the following:

Imagine this scene from a comedy: a group of female friends sit around smoking a bowl and working on the Wikipedia page for Lord of the Rings. Their fashion sense is decidedly iconoclastic and several sport thick-rimmed glasses. Without a trace of self-consciousness, they have a hilariously ribald discussion on the relative traits of elves and orcs.
Awesome as it is, you’ll never see this scene onscreen. No mainstream movie or TV series would dare group so many female nerds together, or celebrate them so unabashedly

So John’s whole response paper is here and here is the pdf. In the paper, he makes a number of excellent points but what I loved most about it was his very geeky move at the end of the paper to prove Sarah (somewhat wrong) by listing all the girl geeks that do and have appeared in mainstream (and not-so mainstream) entertainment venues/shows, etc. They are as follows and in his own words:

I will now showcase my own geekiness through my knowledge of geeky female characters. Why? Because I can. But also because I want to demonstrate that if you look hard enough for representations of female geekyiness in pop culture, you will find plenty. Moreover, if you pick the right ones, you can make them support your argument about gender relations, whatever that argument might be. Some of these charters and personalities are hardly gendered, some are hyper-sexual. Some are incredibly attractive but completely asexual. Some undergo a transformation into/out of geekiness, while others to not. Some are powerful, while some are powerless. Some (most?) celebrate their geekiness, others are tortured by it. They are all geeks take your pick: Aeon Flux, a sexy geek who’s technological gadgets give her super powers (Comic drawings then Charlize TheronAeon Flux) Wonder Woman, attractive pilot of an invisible plane Lara Croft, a female Indiana Jones in short shorts, wielding guns and cracking computer codes (CGI and then Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider) She-Ra, who was way smarter than He-Man (Masters of the Universe cartoons) Gadget Hackwrench, beautiful chipmonk technician for Chip and Dale (Rescue Rangers cartoon) Velma, featuring eyeglasses, awkwardness and brains (Scooby Doo), Hermonie Granger, a geek who is temporarily rejected because she is a geek, remains a geek, and finds love and happiness (Harry Potter) Barbarella, who, through comic strips and a 1968 film, helped introduce science fiction and sex to young women (Barbarella) La Femme Nikita, a skillful, savvy, and very feminine girl who doubles as a covert spy Kate Libby, aka ‘Acid Burn’, uber-sexualized hacker (played by Angelina Jolie in Hackers) Kathryn Janeway, smart and powerful captain of the USS Voyager (Star Trek Voyager) Starbuck (Battlestar Galactica), Dana Scully, FBI agent with encyclopedic media knowledge. The bizzare subtex of non-realized sexual tension was part of the magic The X-Files. Willow Rosenberg, geeky sidekick turned geeky supervillian (Alyson Hannigan in buffy the Vampire Slayer) Michelle Flaherty, hyper-sexual band geek (Alyson Hannigan in American Pie series) Dr Ellie Sattler, heroniene scientist (Jurrasic Park) Ellie, scientis hero (played by both Jenna Malone and Jodi Foster in Carl Sagan’s Contact) Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo in Welcome to the Dollhouse Enid and Rebecca (Thora Birch and Scarlett Johanson in Ghost World) just about every charater ever played by Jenna Malone (Donie Darko, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, The United States of Leland, Saved!, etc) half of the charaters played within the last decade by Jodi Foster (Panic Room, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Flightplan, The Addams Family half of the charaters played by Christina Ricci (Mermaids, The Addams Family, Little Red Riding Hood, The Ice Storm, Buffalo ‘66, Prozac Nation, Pumpkin, Speed Racer) half of the characters played by Natalie Portman (The Professional, Mars Attacks!, Star Wars, V for Vendette, The Darjeeling Limited, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, Garden State) Molly Ringwald. characters played by Molly Ringwald. Rock musician Ani DiFranco and geeky Riot Grrls everywhere. Sarah Vowell, NPR commentator celebrating her geeky life. Voiceover for geeky cartoon characters. Rachel Maddow, for being Rachel Maddow.

First, awesome list, though he forgot a few (like one of my favorites, Bionic Woman and a more recent one, Juno) and it is nice to have it in one compact place. But, I have to say, I still agree to some degree with Sarah Setlzer, though I also agree with John. On the one hand there are representations and it is as important just to strut this stuff publicly as it is to claim that there is not enough female geeky representations in mainstream media. This is what John has done quite nicely. One the other hand, as he himself says ” if you look hard enough for representations of female geekyiness in pop culture, you will find plenty.” I think those words, “if you look hard enough” also speaks volumes of the continued disparity that does exist. One should not have to look “hard,” and the only blockbusters, so to speak, which feature a female geek, is Tomb Raider, which for being so hyper-sexualized is not so geeky to me, no matter how good she is with the gadgets. That said, what I find so important, and have emphasized in different contexts, is the need for what I think of simultaneous positive and negative form of critique, the former being about pointing to already exisitng examples to get people jazzed and excited and to put things in perspective. The later form of critique, negative critique, identifies a lack, a void to fill, just the type of excellent commentary in the Seltzer piece… But now for the most important question, who has John overlooked?