Search Results: "beh"

30 May 2006

Adam Rosi-Kessel: Yahoo Qmail Daemon and Mailman

My server’s mailman (or postfix) installation is mysteriously rejecting mail from one Yahoo! mail user. I don’t get it: 
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following
addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
:
72.1.169.10 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 : Recipient address rejected: undeliverable address:
unknown user: "[list name]"
Giving up on 72.1.169.10.
72.1.169.10 is, in fact, the IP address of my server. [list name] is (in the real version) the real live name of the list. The list seems to work for everyone else. And it’s certainly not true that I, or my server, doesn’t like this recipient (or sender). Aside from this anomalous behavior, it’s also funny that Yahoo! provides plain old unfiltered qmail bounce messages to its users. Wouldn’t you think a fully matured webmail service like Yahoo! would, by this point, have somewhat customized their mail error reporting messages? In fact, wouldn’t you think they would want to hide the fact that the use qmail at all, if only for security purposes? Couldn’t they hire an intern to write a few replacement error messages? Maybe I’m missing something. A propos, I discovered this nice piece from McSweeney’s, entitled YAHOO’S MAILER-DAEMON AUTOMATED REPLY FOR FAILED E-MAIL DELIVERY IS GETTING A LITTLE TOO INTIMATE. Update 5/30/06: Figured it out. Oddly, Yahoo! was looking up the CNAME DNS record for the domain name and replacing that in the mail header. While the original email went to e.g., listname@lists.mydomain.com, the message as delivered was addressed to listname@servername.mydomain.com. Because only lists.mydomain.com processed email for lists, the message bounced. The solution was to change lists.mydomain.com from being a CNAME entry to its own A entry with the IP address specified directly. That fixed the problem. I’ve never seen any other mail service work this way — gmail certainly doesn’t.

29 May 2006

Joey Hess: bashing bash

Madduck, the thing you're not seeing in your examples, which is pretty painfully obvious to people who do write a lot of shell code is that the shell starts a subshell for any shell code on the right hand side of a pipeline. So when you do: 
echo -e "1\n2\n3"   while read i; do
    blah
done
You're running the whole while loop (not just its body) in a subshell, just as if you'd written: 
echo -e "1\n2\n3"   (
    while read i; do
        blah
    done
)
This is indeed occasionally annoying. (BTW, any posix shell will behave the same way. I'm suprised zsh doesn't, but then I don't generally write significant code for zsh since it's so different.) (PPS, can I delete Biella's drive now?)

Martin F. Krafft: Shell sucks

Shell programming must be the most depressive waste of time out there, and if only because things sometimes just don't work the way you'd expect from a scripting language. Take the following simple examples in bash (3): 
for i in 1 2 3; do
  echo $i
  exit 1
done
echo END
==> 1
echo -e "1\n2\n3"   while read i; do
  echo $i
  exit 1
done
echo END
==> 1
==> END
WTF? The result of the first -- the whole script exits entirely after the first iteration -- is what I expect. After all, I did not call break, but exit. The result of the second is totally unexpected. I understand that for and while each execute their iterations in a subshell, but why don't these behave in the same way? The fix here is a exit $? following the done keyword. Urks! Here's another one: the task is simply to output the number of 1's in the output (yeah, I realise grep -c can do this too): 
cnt=0
echo -e "2\n1\n3\n1"   while read i; do
    case $i in
      1) cnt=$((cnt + 1));;
    esac
  done
echo $cnt
==> 0
The reason? The while subshell receives a copy of the caller environment, so when it updates $cnt, it only updates a copy of the actual variable, leaving the original untouched. Similarly, a variable defined inside the subshell won't be available after the while loop is done. I cannot find a fix that's not bash specific. Of course, it works fine when I replace the while loop by a for loop: 
cnt=0
for i in 2 1 3 1; do
    case $i in
      1) cnt=$((cnt + 1));;
    esac
  done
echo $cnt
==> 2
Great, isn't it? And I am not surprised that zsh gets it right. Why would anyone actually want to use bash? Update: here's Joey's explanation for the behaviour, and Clint's account for why zsh does it right. I still can't figure out how to count the 1's. Update ^2: Axel Liljencrantz sent in this message. Update ^3: Alexander Sieck showed me that process substitution ("<(command)") instead of the pipe does work (for both cases): 
while read i; do
  echo $i
  exit 1
done < <(echo -e "1\n2\n3")
echo END
Of course that's nowhere near POSIX compliance... Update ^4: my solution, which allows for spaces in the lines: 
IFSOLD=$ IFS:- 
IFS='
' # yes, a newline
for i in $(the_command): do
  IFS=$IFSOLD
  ...
done
What a hack!

Norbert Tretkowski: Remaining photos uploaded

As promised before, I uploaded the medium and high quality photos from DebCamp, DebConf, the daytrips to Teotihuacan and Xochicalco, and LUG Camp into my gallery. Have fun. Update: Unfortunately I forgot to adjust the date on my digicam from CDT back to CET, so the time in the exif tags from the photos I made at LUG Camp was 7 hours behind. This problem can be fixed using the -ta option of jhead, thanks Colin for the hint.

27 May 2006

Aigars Mahinovs: Debconf6 day 5: Formal dinner.

May 18th. The fifth day of Debconf6 started for me with a very detailed overview of the debian installer. I have already been quite familiar with the system, but did not really know how to debug the debian-installer system, which was a good part of today's presentation. Many were still tired from yesterday's evening's "testing" of international hard liquors. (Or the pancake party?) At the lunch I discovered on my own skin how hard it was to announce something in the restaurant where we were having food - the room had very high ceiling with high an thick separation beams, so the acoustics of the place were just terrible. I had almost enough volume to fill the room, but after many reflections it was incomprehensible. I had to revert to walking around the tables to remind people about the group photo next day and about the place to meet for today's formal dinner. The rest of the day flew by fast and it was soon time for the dinner itself. People slowly gathered at a parking lot behind the hotels and idly chatted while waiting for the boarding call. After a while people stopped minding me and that resulted in several good portraits. We boarded the bus and went to the place of the formal dinner. The place was a large hall where local volunteers had placed the tables in the form of a swirl. That was a very nice touch. People wondered round and round 'till they choose a place they liked. AJ sat at the very inner end of the swirl and I somehow got to sit at his right hand. Not that it matters. At one moment some person took a crown of Ted's head and rushed to put it on AJ's had. Many photos were taken at that moment (most of them very blurry), but I feel this one to be a bit of an irony: CLUE hanging over Ted, but he doesn't quite get it. But enough about him - there was enough fun at the dinner to satisfy anyone. After a while of nice chatting time food started to appear. First the glasses came, then there were the huge 3l bottles of Cola. I managed to avoid the Mexican version of Cola before that, but now when I tried it Mexican Cola tasted very much like the Estonian version and slightly different from UK's or USA's versions. I guess the sugar type used and the water might be of the difference. Few attempts at simulating a spiral "Mexican" wave along the tables were conducted. Only when AJ personally controlled every part of the way by running along the length of the table, the wave succeeded. :) A Mexican band came in to lighten up the mood. They were met with a huge wave of applause and a burst of flashlights. The music was great - lively and exciting. Spanish speaking people knew most of the songs and sang along. But after a short while the music was started to being drowned out by the sound of a rain hitting the roof. Soon after the food was served I heard scream of surprise with a hint of fear. When I turned, I saw that one of the wall of the hall strangely turned into a waterfall - gush of water was streaming from the roof into the building. People looked at the water, took a bunch of pictures, made a few water related jokes, picked their bags up from the floor and ... continued with the fun. I must say that I was slightly scared, but although others might have been scared as well, most did not show it and the event just went on with a half of the hall having a couple centimeters of water. Water also dripped down on some parts of the tables, so people shifted from there to other places. Meanwhile, outside the rain became stronger, wind became faster, thunder became louder and came closer. The climax of the evening was the sudden loss of power. I was jsut standing on the stage when all the lights inside and outside went out at once. For a moment there was a bit of confusion and the evening became slightly scary in a single instant. Then people took out their mobile phones, PDA's and other devices and lighted the place up with the light from their screens. Some others had handlights, and others made slightly more light for a shorter moments by taking flash photographs, for example, of the ceiling. In a few minutes the emergency light went up and after 15 more minutes the main lamps started coming back on. For most people that was enough excitement for the night, so when the rain calmed down and Gunnar announced that first buses are ready go back to the hotel if some people want that, two buses were overfilled with people wanting to get back. Some stayed. More fresh food was cooked then, including some cooked cactus leaves and some grilled meat after which a desert followed with a rollcake that included a swirl of some red jam. Very Debianish :) After a quick local-optimal packing session the hall was left almost empty in a few minutes. The packing algorithm was interesting - one person was collecting all forks, other person was collecting all spoons, other people were only folding tables, while others were handling chairs. The work division was very effective and allowed people to share the work without any kind of central coordination. And we went back .. to work. On the way to the hotel I noticed pixie sitting in the walkway in a very careful was - it turns out she got one of the kittens to trust her and was holding it in her lap. It was sooooo cute. Kawai! Ted: Many questions were raised about Ted, the "fight" at the formal dinner and the following expulsion of Ted from the event and from the Debian project. An I have a unique perspective on that as I was sharing a room with Ted and talked to him and his friend John after the dinner, but before the expulsion notice. I barely noticed the, now widely speculated about, events at the dinner itself. I noticed that at one point in time the lump of people around the door became a bit bigger and that Ted and John were in the middle of it. I heard no screaming and saw no struggle or fighting and did not see anything strange regarding Ted except this and the other event described higher above. Ted was siting by his table with a woman that I for some time believed to be his wife because of the very caring way he was handling her. After considering that he was from Canada, I assumed (with a though of the twisted humor) that she might then be his Mexican lover (either paid or not), but I did not care enough to find out about it or to raise any conflict about it. I remember thinking that it would sound quite funny in context of his latest blog post about killing of prostitutes which might also be the reason why people where very ready to believe the joke that one of Ted's companions said of the woman being paid to come here with Ted "or maybe not". After the event I wane to sleep to be awaken around 5 in the morning by a discussion going on in my room about the dinner. I went into the discussion slightly irritated with a simple argument - inviting people to a party without an explicit permission of the organizer is a bad thing to do. That point sank in quickly and Ted soon was ready to apologize for that. After that a discussion about individual people and motivations went on for another hour. Ted's action were deeply rooted in the confusion of terms with "bravery" and "cowardice" versus "aggression" and "non-confrontational behavior". Ted's motivation was clearly based on avoiding anything that could be considered to be cowardly and putting emphasis on brave actions, however the most of the rest of Debian project is much more in line with the modern world and prefers non-confrontational behavior to any action causing trouble. Most of the time such behavior is essential for comfortable survival of any geek living in non-geek environment. The difference in values between Ted and the rest of our project was just too immense. When I was walking out of the room at around 7 in the morning next day my final sentence was "Ted, even if you spend rest of the Debconf apologizing and making friends, I do not see a future for you in this project." and the most important was that Ted and John seemed to agree with me on that. I soon found out that DAM's agreed with me too and took action just when I was talking to Ted expelling him from the project. He was also advised to leave the Debconf to avoid any further confrontation. It was harsh, but kind of expected for a long time. This event spoiled my mind for a few hours, but ... the Debconf must go on!

Junichi Uekawa: cowdancer and its limitations.

I've been expecting a fewdesign problems with cowdancer; and I was hoping that theseproblems are going to be minimal that normal packagebuilding isn't affected.One thing that cowdancer cannothandle is that because it plays tricks with replacingi-nodes when writing to a file, any application that expectssame i-nodes before and after 'open' syscall will fail.Apparently, this is a popular behavior to avoid symlinkattacks. So, if an application does lstat, open, fstat, insequence, and checks the dev/inode number of the lstat/fstatresult, the application will be confused when running undercowdancer, which will change the inode number hooking'open'.For cowdancer with pbuilder, if dpkg/apt andpreinst/postinst works, that's fine, and it seems to befunctioning; which is good.

Erich Schubert: Next generation of office suites

I have the impression that OpenOffice is still busy with cleaning up the code inherited (and e.g. porting to GTK2 and such things). Given the screenshots posted in the much respected Office UI blog by Jensen Harris, I think OpenOffice will run into trouble when Microsoft actually releases their new Office. Microsoft seems to have a really neat and productive UI there - there is only one thing really wrong with it: it's completely different than anything else people are used to (and people have learned to use). While there will obviously be migration issues, companies will probably delay switching to the new office to save licensing costs and such things, marketing people will be all crazy about the new features in there. You might remember the research with the aggressive title "PowerPoint makes you stupid"... actually this will become even more true with the new Office, I fear. It comes with default styles for common diagrams used in presentations, like a flow sequence or a circle sequence. While these aren't particularly smart things, they'll be presented even more prominently (because the gfx is so great), and the actual contents will probably be pushed back even further... Anyway, these new styles look really hip, so people will be eager to use them. And use them. And use them again. And use them really big (eventually forgetting about the contents behind them)... and OpenOffice can't keep up with that so far. Maybe OpenOffice needs a huge scale UI contest. Maybe with some abstraction scheme to be able to run different UIs on the same engine. OpenOffice in particular should try to become a technology leader, and not just try to copy Microsoft as much as possible... the UI changes in Impress are said to be pretty similar to what people expected when they think PowerPoint. There are good reasons to stick with the established UI standards (even when that might mean 'cloning' the UI) since that keeps migration costs low. But I think it's a pity OpenOffice can't show many large technological improvements to put more pressure on Microsoft. Ah, and yes, I guess many people at OOo are well aware of that, and like so many projects (commercial ones probably even more than FLOSS) they're just short on development resources...

26 May 2006

Jos Parrella: News from the KSP

After reading this thread in debconf-discuss, I think we all agree in the following items: Now seriously, I think the whole point behind key signing is, as Holger philosophed about and Vorlon answered, to know who is the guy behind the key. If I sign your key, I won’t trust you and give you my money for you to keep it, but if I had to do this and you steal me, I can blame you. And the whole point behind a party is to have fun. So it’s a time to take profit of a useful tool while having fun, so please don’t panic.

25 May 2006

Wouter Verhelst: IceWM

I had been an Enlightenment user for a long time—halfway the Summer of 2000 up to the early fall of 2004—before someone finally decided to pick up the pieces where they were left somewhere around 2000 and restart its development. Unfortunately, that also meant causing #219925, which was irritating me more and more each day. Eventually, in the early fall of 2004 (almost a year after I filed that bug), I gave up and started looking for something else. The problem, of course, was that I'd grown so accustomed to using Enlightenment and its way of doing things that I felt at a loss. I wanted to be able to move windows above the upper edge of my screen again. I needed focus-follows-mouse. I was having a hard time without edge-flipping. Eventually I found that there was functionality for all of the above, but it wasn't flawless. Especially not the edge flipping—GNOME implements that in a truly horrible way1. Not to mention the fact that brightside, the application which implements edge-flipping for GNOME, segfaulted on me an annoyingly high number of times, sometimes even taking away my entire session with it. Even Enlightenment never did that; it would just misbehave instead. Apart from that, of course GNOME also had some extra annoyances that I didn't get rid of. The fact that it insists on mucking with my keyboard settings, to name just one example. Even so, I used it for about nine months. Then, slightly after DebConf5 in Helsinki, I realized what the true horror of GNOME is: not the fact that they hide away features or try to make the desktop void of superfluous options; the fact that they remove features that are critical to some of its users. I know I was horrified to find out that something I really used a lot had been removed in that new release. I kept using it for three more months before I threw in the towel and tried something totally different. Ion3. After coming from the mostly mouse-oriented interfaces that GNOME and Enlightenment were, ion3 was truly different. I liked it at first; it was a welcome change from what I'd previously been doing. Eventually, though, I found that the ion way of doing things just wasn't my way. The fact that, by default, it puts new windows right in front of the window you're working on was rather offputting. Any serious attempt at configuring the thing involves learning lua which, though supposedly not hard to do, is not something I ever found the time for. In the end, I discovered that I disliked working with ion, as I often felt that it gave me a fragmented and tunneled view on the world, and that it was working with me instead of the other way around. In short, it was getting the fun out of computing for me. Which wasn't good, at all. So that's when I started looking for something else again. When I'd made the decision to move way from ion3, I didn't want to keep using that "until I'd found something else"; instead, I quickly installed IceWM instead—which I still knew from back when I had a Yopy YP3000—and used that until I had found something better. Little did I know the beaty of IceWM. I've decided, by now, that it does all I need, and more: By default, it tries the best it can to put a window on your screen so that it overlaps with as little other windows as possible. I can have it not focus a new window by default. I does focus-follows-mouse, if enabled. It even does edge-flipping. Of course it's not perfect—the edge-flipping, though not as horrible as the GNOME implementation, can still use some improvement. As if to prove my point, I accidentally closed the window in which I was writing this very post before it had been written to disk, the cause of which could be described as an interface problem in IceWM (though it's more likely an example of PEBMAC (Problem Exists Between Mouse And Chair). But, all in all, using IceWM feels like finally coming home. Thanks, Marko and Mathias, for a truly wonderful piece of software. 1 I know that there are a lot of people who dislike edge-flipping. I am 99% sure that this is because they've never seen it implemented right. Edge-flipping is great, if done right; it's nightmare if done wrong. GNOME does it horribly wrong. IceWM does it better, though not perfect. The implementation in Enlightenment is perfect. I'll discuss the details in another post.

24 May 2006

Neil McGovern: Wings and Roundabouts

Well, I've finally got back from DebConf6 and am quite nackered, especially considering I've just done a full day at work.

I could amuse you with the usual 'lists-of-memorable-dc6-events', or a 'review-of-each-day', or even a 'bits-from-the-orga-team', but there's pleanty of other posts on planet.d.o about that, so instead, I'll recount my experiences of the return trip, starting in Oaxtepec.

I'm also putting up all my photos, but it'll take a while. They'll be appearing over the next few days at my Fotopic site.

I wake up fairly early-ish (10am. It's early for me, ok? I'm not German :P) and pack my suitcase. I take the padlock keys out of the case and lock it. Except I got the wrong keys. So, the keys are now inside the locked case. Fortunately, I'd already taken everything out of the case I'd needed and put it in my rucksack.

Next, it comes to time to check out. I find out that we need out room checking to ensure that we haven't stolen a wall or ceiling or something. One of the cleaners has a look around and spots a missing lampshade. We (me + Fil Hands) try to explain in broken Spanish that it was missing when we arrived in the room, but she doesn't seem to be having any of it. Mind you, there is the vague possibility that "Si","Fruta","Cafe" and "Hola" isn't quite enough knowledge to explain the situation. Feh.
So, we manage to accost the lovely Amaya to do some translation for us. The cleaner lady calls her boss, who tells us it'll cost 860 pesos (£43). We politely decline. So, she then calls her boss. This all takes some time. Eventually, she opens a huge book, looks inside and sees that the shade was taken away by maintainance. Why this wasn't done before, I don't know.

Anyway, our bus was leaving at 2:00pm, so we had to rush to the reception. The journey was quite pleasent, and we eventually arrived at the airport at 4:20pm. There was a small altercation with the Taxi driver over the tip, as it was already included in the fair, and he said it wasn't. We then pointed out that tolls were also included in the fair, and the driver didn't take a toll road. At this point, he seemed to dissapear quite satified.

I approached the Air France desk, and was told I coudn't check in until 7:30pm (my flight dind't leave until 11:30pm). Bugger. So after waiting around quite a while, and getting something to eat, I went to check in. There was a huge queue, but it didn't really matter, as I was flying under a Flying Blue - Silver level card, so I could use the express queue. They did, however, want to check my luggage. Broken Spanish did work this time, as I wildly gestated towards my suitcase, making key symbols.

So, after another long wait, we (me and Daniel Baumann, we're on the same flight, and indeed sitting next to each other by some freak coincidence) wander off through to the gate. I manage to find some free wireless (ESSID: co_admeralty_club) and surf for a bit. Flight ends up being delayed for 30 mins, but it didn't matter too much.

Then, I hear an annoucement over the intercom, that a group of passengers should contact the gate staff, and my name is mentioned. A little worried, I approach.
"Hello, I'm Mr McGovern. My name was called on the intercom."
"Can I have your boarding pass please?"
"Sure..." *worry*
"Thank you.... ok, we'd like to invite you to fly business class with us today sir."
"Thank you very much"
I then proceed to whistle the 'Kill Bill' tune, as for some reason, it's following me everywhere I go in the airport, be it a cleaner, or another passenger. I think it's like some sort of virus, infecting one person and moving on to the next host.

We still had a little while, so we popped back to the waiting area to, well, wait. We saw some of the Brixen gang, and one of them had his laptop stolen : That's the second laptop down then. The first was run over by a car in Oaxtepec.

So, I board the plane, and am immediately offered lots of alcohol and other free thingstm. Which was nice. Unfortunately, the plane was further delayed. This means that on arriving in CDG, my connecting flight was already boarding. It was at this point that I had dounts about my luggage arriving in MAN at the same time as me.

So, I board the plane in Paris, and it's a straightforward flight. But lo and behold, at the other end, no baggage. No suprises there then.

Today, my luggage arrived at 8:00pm, just after I've got home from work. I'd also got a nice letter from the Inland Revenue, with a £215.67 tax rebate \o/

As my subject: S^HWings and Roundabouts.

23 May 2006

Ian Murdock: Nat Friedman, CFO

Tectonic: “Friedman recalls going to the ATM after the $2 million was deposited and getting a statement. ‘It ran off the edge of the page!’ He then tried to transfer the $2 million from one account to another through the ATM, which the system couldn’t handle. Eventually with a good queue growing behind him Friedman moved the money in $500 000 increments. A week later they hired a CFO, who banned them from moving millions of dollars around through the ATM.”

21 May 2006

Andrew Pollock: [life/americania] Time flies when you're having fun

Half a year ago yesterday, I stepped off a plane in the United States. It's been an eventful 6 months, as can be seen from reviewing my blog, and I thought I'd summarise the top 10 things I like and dislike about living in this country as opposed to Australia. Ten things I like about living in California:
  1. Plenty of sunshine Love the sunshine. It was a bit wet in winter and early spring, but I'm told that it should be pretty much rain (and cloud) free for the rest of the year. Daylight saving also helps make enjoying the copious amounts of sunshine easier, it doesn't get dark until well after 8pm.
  2. The public transport options, particularly in San Francisco are vast Particularly in San Francisco, your options for getting around the city are huge. You've got the BART, the Muni (which covers about three distinct forms of public transport in itself), and the VTA overhead electric and petrol powered buses. Elsewhere in the Bay Area, you've got the Caltrain, and VTA light rail and buses.
  3. Petrol pumps You need never darken the door of a petrol station. Everywhere has pay at the pump (with plastic of course), and the pumps all have the automatic latch, so you don't even need to stand at the side of the car holding the handle while it fills up.
  4. Free parking This was a big change, coming from Canberra, which has a love affair with pay and display parking. Even the multi-storey and underground carparks in the downtown areas are free.
  5. Pedestrian crossings that countdown No excuse to get skittled because you thought you could make it in time. You known exactly how long you've got before you'll get mowed down before you step off the side of the road.
  6. The postal system Saturday delivery. Every mailbox is an outgoing mailbox (just put the little flag up).
  7. Right turns on red This is a real time saver. I can't see why Australia couldn't adopt this for left turns. The only downside is you can spend so much time looking to your left for a break in the traffic to dart out in, that you miss your green arrow (but that's what the guy behind you and his horn is for).
  8. Corporately run rental apartment complexes Instead of having an apartment complex where individual landlords own each apartment, the entire complex (and they tend to be larger) is owned by a mega-corporation that employs half a dozen people to maintain it and run it as a business. The upside is they tend to have better facilities, an onsite office (great for receipting packages delivered during the week), onsite maintenance (some places even have a service-level agreement). This offers some economies of scale that you wouldn't otherwise have.
  9. At least the perception of a low cost of living I haven't done the sums, and it's probably partially because the bills come monthly instead of quarterly, but all the utility bills seem fairly low and reasonable. Dollar for dollar, petrol is also cheaper, even though it's jumped a dollar a gallon in the time we've been here.
Of course, one must take a balanced look at these things... Ten things I don't like about living in the United States:
  1. The currency Not a big fan of the notes. I miss the one and two dollar coins, and the distinctiveness between each denomination. I figure that vending machines over here must be so much more expensive because they have to have a note reader, and even then, the treasury decides to produce some new oddball note that half of the readers don't recognise... I blame tipping. If there were no tipping, the utility of one dollar bills would diminish enormously.
  2. The government bureaucracy As my blog records, I haven't exactly had a smooth run with the system over here...
  3. The banking system The banking system in general is woeful by comparison. The cheque (or check) still reigns supreme, whereas it's nearly obsolete in Australia. There's no such animal as BPay (and oh how I miss it). In fact, the equivalent system here often involves the bank cutting a cheque on your behalf and mailing it to the biller. How ridiculously antediluvian is that? Oh, and I miss vaguely decently authenticated electronic payments. I've been at cafes were I've paid by credit card, and haven't even had to provide a signature. Given that the credit card is actually a debit card, it's pretty disturbing how easily someone can clean out your bank account.
  4. Ex-tax pricing I'm so glad that when they introduced the GST in Australia, they required by law that all prices include it. Most prices here don't, but the occasional food outlet does (like Subway for example), so it's sufficiently confusing that you can't budget for how much you're going to actually fork out.
  5. ATM fees The ATM fees are more in your face. Instead of the bank charging you a fee at the end of the month for every transaction conducted at an ATM that isn't theirs, the ATM itself tacks on an extra amount to the withdrawal and effectively skims the money. I've seen fees as high as $5 a transaction, but $2 is fairly common. It's kind of weird seeing an ATM withdrawal of $42 on your bank statement... So having a bank account that doesn't charge you feeds for non-bank ATM withdrawals is all well and good, but it doesn't stop the ATM from charging you.
  6. Inaudible pedestrian crossings Oh, the number of times I haven't been paying attention and missed the walk light at a pedestrian crossing... In some places, they do make noises like birds, or talk to you when you can walk, but they're definitely not the norm.
  7. The road surface For the highways, they seem to have gone for quantity and not quality, or they're too busy to take offline to resurface. Either way, the road surface quality is pretty poor.
  8. Sugar Everything is loaded with sugar. Absolutely everything.
  9. Alcohol labelling Light beer is low calorie, not low alcohol. I miss Australia's concept of "standard drinks". Makes it very hard to drink and drive responsibly.

19 May 2006

David Moreno Garza: Great DebConf!

Just as Tore said: “This is the best DebConf ever”. Isn’t it great? I started really enjoying this DebConf once I stopped worrying about bullshit, once I stopped worrying about senseless things and started to really give a shit about almost anything. Why do I need Gunnar to tell my girlfriend Ana, “you picked up the irresponsible one”? Why do I have to worry about the DPL giving a shit or not on the Latinamerican Debian community, even after being invited to meet the guys or to attend our BOF? Why do I need to worry about people skinny dipping, since finally it’s up to them? I started to meet people and to hang on with several old friends and began enjoying the meeting here. Why do I need to worry if people are watching the unpleasant and poorest side of Mexico (bad Internet connections, towns lost in the desert, hookers, rain breaking roofs, etc, etc, etc)? Why do I even have to worry if people get sick or not by drinking water or whatever? I enjoy people here, thanks to all the organization cabal, thanks for your effort and your time on this. I surely cannot hide my displeasure on some of the things here, but I didn’t do anything to make it better, obviously, since I’m an irresponsible person. But after leaving all of this behind, I think Ana and me are having a great time sharing time with friends around us (the friends, los cuates, we are here for).

Josselin Mouette: A great dinner nevertheless

The night started great. Tables arranged in a swirl, happy geeks gathered around a good meal, it was going to be a great formal dinner.

Then came AJ and his megalomania. Well, it was kind of fun at the moment, although I still haven't cooled down after seeing his contribution to the Java in non-free thread. He even compromised himself by showing up hand in hand with Ted Walther.

After that, Ted tried to spoil the dinner, and almost managed to do it. Please people, correct me if I'm wrong as I was a few meters away from the incident and didn't follow everything. It seems the person Ted is calling a "local businesswoman" was a prostitute. As he doesn't want to name people, I'll do it: when learning that, Holger tried to throw Ted out of the building. Unfortunately some people stopped him from doing it. Holger, thanks a lot for having the courage to give this guy what he deserves, and already deserved before the provocation, when most people (including me) just stand still when facing such unbearable behavior.

Of course Ted tried to act as a martyr, as shows his blog entry. Ted, I do hope things won't be "resolved to your satisfaction". And anyway, you won't need to denounce the people who deserve to be awarded instead. Why have you come to Debconf for, anyway? Uploading broken versions of your packages, or writing stupid and provocative blog entries?

Then, the mariachis tried to improve the ambiance but only managed to prevent people from talking to each other. The real fun came from the rain, which fell so hard it entered the building in a magnificent cascade, leaving us eating and walking in a few centimeters of water. Another great moment was the power outage, during which we were lightened by camera flashes.

The food had so much success that I didn't have time to taste more than one dish before everything was wiped out. Still, despite Ted and despite the lack of food, this was a great evening, one of those I won't forget for sure.

I'll upload pictures later, but in the meantime you can have a look at Barry Hawkins' blog.

Aigars Mahinovs: Debconf6 day 4: The Daytrip + some hard liquor

May 17th. Just before the daytrip an idea to go for a breakfast came, so at around 8:30 a small group went off to the local market in search for some food. We were seated by a counter and the food was prepared on a large coal heated metal sheet just in front of us. Learning from the last experience of such kind I ordered two tortilias, but I barely ate one of them - it just did not feel right. (Later I was kind of glad that I didn't because my stomach felt a bit funny until the next morning. I guess the body can feel what is good for it.) After we came back to hotel, the buses arrived - large, metallic buses of the GMC (General Motors Company, I assume) that looked like they came straight from 1960s - 1970s. I expected that they will fell like frying pans in the hot midday sun, but in the end the buses turned out to be very nice and comfortable. A half an hour before the leaving time people started to group up. Some took the time to chat, some took the time to take random group photos. The drive to the place was two hours long. The guide told us a bit about the region where we are and its history. I do not remember much of it except that this state has always been the rich farming valley that provided food to many other regions. We also found out the name of the volcano whose picture I took earlier - it was the active Popocatepetl. I have heard that name before. That is the first name that I know here. On arrival to the Xochicalco archaeological site we left our buses and wen into the on-site museum. The museum was built in a barren place without electricity and any water installations, so it was decided to make the museum to be very ecological - sunlight is used wherever possible, electricity is gathered by solar panels, rain water is gathered, collected and purified using natural treatment methods. ALso the building materials are very strange - the buildings look very green. The museum was of the classical site with texts and scenes and bunches of artifacts and a "no flash" requirement. That kind of impacts the pictures. Additionally the glass behind which the artifacts were was way too reflective. After we were done with the museum we went on a 5 minute walk under the midday sun to the site itself. It was really, really hot. People got sunburns later But the view was great. On the site there were some kind of containers that were masked as stones. They might be local trash containers or something else. The whole excursion on the site took around two hours and was spent slowly walking from one shade to another while listening to the explanations of our guide. There were 6 groups in total, our group (the Pink 3) had around 20 people. The ancient city was a well protected multilayer city where people of certain social status were basically locked inside on of the levels and people of the higher level governed them. At all levels there were pyramids and temples and places for parties. Our guide said that having a party almost every week is traditional for people of this region, it is a tradition derived from calendars of the ancient times. There were several ball courts on the territory. Very fascinating game (judging from the available data). The winner was seen as becoming closer to godliness. We have no idea what happened to the loser. But there was a sauna where players went before the game. The excavations at Acropolis section (the rich people section) is still going on. But the main religious place - the temple of the feathered serpent was restored magnificently. It is relatively small (compared to my previously visited pyramids), but very well preserved and restored. Most of the carvings were fully visible. In the end the site was nowhere near as impressive as Teotichuan. Not even close. The final temple was a nice piece, but the rest ... After that we went for a lunch at an all-you-can-eat Mexican buffet. They were obviously notified of our arrival because seating and feeding 300+ people otherwise would be very hard. We sat in our seats and then went for the food at table by table basis. Th food was nice and simple. I had a lot and really considered skipping dinner when we came back. There was also some local fauna at the place: a extremely friendly and lovely chameleon, a meat eating parrot, a hamster, a dog and a pair of pigeons. Apparently all of them were up for adoption. A lot of cuteness ensued. After lunch we drove for an hour to the capital of the Morero state and went to the local market for souvenirs. The shopping was fast and productive even despite the soft rain. In the evening after the daytrip and after the dinner there was a hard liquor party. Hard liquor from multiple countries was presented. I could not evaluate it properly, but I could evaluate the properly prepared Japanese green tea. It was really magnificent. This party was slower then the wine and cheese party - you can't rush with hard liquors. In parallel a pancake party was also taking place in the hotel's kitchen. I looked very nice but I was very full by then.

Ted Walther: Report from Debconf, Day Five


Me and Anthony Towns
A Debian Pope is born. Tonight was Debians formal night. Fabio drove John Sokol, Hilda, and myself to the auditorium where the dinner was being held. Fabio owns the local internet cafe and provides the internet connection to Debconf. Hilda is a local businesswoman, who owns a dental supply company. Very nice people; a real slice of the real Mexico. Hospitable, friendly, and helpful. We arrived just after the buses arrived and people chose their seats. As a formal diner, I had to wear my official costume, the crown and the clue bat. If anyone wants a genuine replica of the clue bat, the price is $50. If you don't buy it for your office, buy it for your kids; the foam is four inches thick and cannot bruise, cut, or hurt anyone. As soon as I entered the auditorium where the dinner was set up, Juan Diaz from Argentina took the crown from my head and raced away. I chased him with the clue bat. Then I saw that his intention was to put the crown on AJ, Debians newly elected project leader. He did it hastily, illegitimately, and backwards. Reaching AJ, I put down my clue bat and told him to hold still. To the cheers and applause of the entire auditorium, I lifted up the crown, and then placed it on AJ's head correctly, in a style befitting a pope crowning an emperor. Immediately after, we hugged and waved to the happy crowd. By the act of crowning, I am now the Debian Pope. This isn't the cushy job it might seem; some members of Debian really hate popes of any sort. Mariachi rain dance. Soon after the crowning, the food and drink started arriving. The mariachi band started playing their trumpets and guitars, starting off with the Mexican national anthem, which is a fun song to sing but I didn't understand a word of it. The newly crowned AJ came along the tables and organized "the wave" like at a football game. We all stood up and sat down as the wave came around, and made the low moaning WHOOOP sound as it came by us. A few minutes after this the food was set on buffet tables, so everyone got into line to get their meals. The meals were simple. Some meat, some rice and bread, and some salad. A nice meal after a week of rich eating. Beer flowed freely, and toward the end some wine was passed around too. The mariachis must have been a signal, because the rainy season started right after they started playing. First the rain bounced off the tin roof so we could hardly hear the band. As dinner went on the clattering of rain got louder, then flashes of lighting showed through the windows. The roof leaked onto many peoples dinner plates and heads, so we all got cozy with each other, finding places out of the rain. At one end of the hall the rain gushed out of the roof so strongly that the entire wall became a waterfall. Finally the lights went out. Cell phones and cigarette lighters quickly waved around, lighting up the place. Strobe lights from digital cameras gave the place a disco atmosphere. Slowly the emergency backup lights came on, then a few minutes later full power was restored. The rain did stop after that, but many people chose to leave shortly after, including yours truly. The Pope is assaulted. Several acts of rudeness and aggression were committed against myself and my guest, a local businessperson. I'm going to wait until tomorrow to see how Debian responds to this inappropriate behavior. If it is resolved to my satisfaction, I'll see no need to name names or post the details in public.

Kai Hendry: vim7

Vim7 omnicompletion in a normal uxterm! Christmas has come early and vim7 has finally made its way on my unstable machine thanks to the miracle of dist-upgrade. I’ve made some notes on my faq. So far the feature that might change my life forever, is omnicompletion. Spelling is a little disappointing. In the help page it says hitting CTRL-X after a misspelled word will present some alternatives. Doesn’t work for me. Starting spell support is quite ugly: :setlocal spell spelllang=en_gb Am I supposed to put that in my .muttrc? As it doesn’t setup automatically when editing mail. Might just stick with aspell for the time being. Tabs are cool. I’ll use them. Before I used to split and minimize windows. Kinda ugly really. I am still desperately looking for something that can close HTML tags or something that can assist me writing HTML. Some basic well formedness check would be nice. :hardcopy looks cool, but it doesn’t seem to be able to hardcopy Korean letters. Perhaps I am missing some Korean fonts in my postscript path. After peeking at “postscript-cjk-printing”, it looks like I need to install some fonts. Argh! How in Debian? Ok good luck vim7 users. Update:

18 May 2006

Ted Walther: Why didn't King Solomon kill the two prostitutes?

On the long bus ride back from the Mexican pyramids, I got to think about a long standing problem. If Israel's laws forbade prostitution, why didn't Israel's greatest judge enforce those laws? We've all heard the story of King Solomon and the two harlot's, where he finds the real mother by threatening to chop the baby in two. Since the laws of Israel carried a death penalty for adultery, why didn't Solomon enforce it? People today equate prostitution with adultery, but the Bible does not. Not always. As the wisest man who ever lived, a walking embodiment of true justice, Solomons judgement deserves a deeper look. Here is the text of the whole incident:
1 Kings 3:16-28 Then came there two women, that were harlots, unto the king, and stood before him. And the one woman said, O my lord, I and this woman dwell in one house; and I was delivered of a child with her in the house. And it came to pass the third day after that I was delivered, that this woman was delivered also: and we were together; there was no stranger with us in the house, save we two in the house. And this woman's child died in the night; because she overlaid it. And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom. And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck, behold, it was dead: but when I had considered it in the morning, behold, it was not my son, which I did bear. And the other woman said, Nay; but the living is my son, and the dead is thy son. And this said, No; but the dead is thy son, and the living is my son. Thus they spake before the king. Then said the king, The one saith, This is my son that liveth, and thy son is the dead: and the other saith, Nay; but thy son is the dead, and my son is the living. And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king. And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other. Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof. And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged; and they feared the king: for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him, to do judgment.
Whoredom, harlotry, prostitution; they defile the land. When Judah thought his daughter-in-law Tamar had become a harlot, he ordered her to be burnt. The problem was not with the sex for pay, but with violation of Judah's property rights. Tamar had been bought and paid for, and belonged to his family for the purpose of increasing their manpower. Biblically, sex for pay is fine. A ketubah (marriage contract) guarantees a woman a certain financial allowance in return for performing her sexual duties. The problem is that prostitution lowers the birthrate of the population, thus reducing its manpower, thus reducing its brainpower, thus reducing its ability to protect and defend itself. The connection between prostitution and lower birth rates isn't obvious to the layman, so just take it for granted right now.
Leviticus 18:20,28 Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour's wife, to defile thyself with her. That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you. Leviticus 19:29 Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.
Prostitution can fall into two categories; the woman is still the property of her father, or she belongs to a husband. Widows, divorced, and single women fall into the category of belonging to their fathers; they have a right to return to the family home and be supported there. How would a father prostitute his daughter? If he treats her harshly, refuses to marry her off to a suitable husband, does not feed or clothe her, train her or discipline her, she may well turn to whoredom to support herself. Look closely at the story of the two harlots. They say they have no man. They fall into the category of single women. Sex with a single woman is not adultery. Adultery carries the death penalty, but as single women, their prostitution was to be regulated by different laws. If a girl took up the prostitution trade, and then got married under false pretenses, pretending to be a virgin, the penalty was death. However no death penalty is indicated for the circumstance where the woman and her family were up front about her past. A man taking a wife needs to be able to accurately assess the risks of disease and future infidelity.
Deuteronomy 22:13-21 If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel's virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: And the damsel's father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter's virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him; And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.
Suppose a single woman was to work as a whore. What is the penalty? For the girl, no penalty at all. If she is a virgin turning her first trick, the man has to pay a hefty fine of fifty shekels to her father, who has the choice of giving her in marriage or not.
Exodus 22:16,17 And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife. If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins. Deuteronomy 22:28,29 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.
When she is no longer a virgin, her father either allows her to be a prostitute, violating the law at Leviticus 19:29, or he doesn't allow her. If her father allows her, then he becomes liable for her behavior and she is not punished, as described in Hosea 4:13,14 quoted below. If her father doesn't allow her, she is again subject to the death penalty, as set forth in the next set of verses:
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.
In the case of Solomon's two harlots, there is no evidence at all that their father disciplined or otherwise acted to prevent them from their trade. Perhaps their father was dead, but in that case his responsibility to his daughters would have fallen on his next of kin. It really is a matter of family responsibility, not of persecuting individuals. There is one remaining corner case; what of the married woman who becomes a prostitute? What if the two harlots had been married after all? It is a principle of the Torah that it must be applied equally. You cannot hit one party with the full penalty then let another get off free for the same crime. It is better to err on the side of mercy, so if you do not convict one, you should not convict another. This is violated daily by un-Godly governments who selectively enforce their laws to "make examples" of people. Such selective enforcement is neither fair or just. In Solomon's case, assuming the women were married, the other parties to the crime of adultery were missing. Without them, there was no way to proceed. This is why Jesus was able to say "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." The two witnesses rule also comes into it; before a person can be put to death two witnesses to the crime are required. Solomon's two harlots had no witnesses against them. When people engage in false worship, and use the services of whores, God will not punish the women who turn to adultery and infidelity. He will punish those who are responsible; the men, who failed to take their patriarchal prerogative in setting a good example of just, fair, respectful, and temperate behavior.
Hosea 4:13,14 They sacrifice upon the tops of the mountains, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and elms, because the shadow thereof is good: therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom, and your spouses shall commit adultery. I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall.
If you have any Torah questions, feel free to write in to ted AT reactor-core DOT org.

17 May 2006

Matt Brown: Playing With ZoomIn

I signed up for a ZoomIn API Key (not that it seems to be needed atm…) the other week and finally got a chance to have a play this past weekend. My test case was to build a map of all the CRCnet sites and the links between them to use as a plugin in the CRCnet Configuration System. Either as a dynamic status display (colouring links to show traffic loads and status etc) or as a network planning tool to get a feel for the relationship between existing sites and potential new locations. Obviously the lack of topographical information makes the second case far less useful than it could be, but I think even in 2D it would still be a useful tool. Getting the points onto the map was relatively straightforward, but adding any sort of hover event to them was another matter. The GEvent class currently only supports the click event and markers are not added with any other identifying attributes (such as an ID or Name) which could be used to hook an event into them. After a quick squiz at the Terms and Conditions, I grabbed a copy of the API javascript and after unobfuscating it (basically just adding back in line breaks and running in through indent(1)) started to have a squiz at what was happening. The API code is very nice and clean and it wasn’t at all hard to work out what was going on. Mozilla’s Venkman javascript debugger absolutely rocks for this sort of work. It allows you to step through all the scripts on the page line by line and quickly get a feel for the flow of the code. Adding support for the hover (onmouseover) event doesn’t look like it would be too hard, but the T&C didn’t explicitly mention whether I was allowed to actually modify the API code, so I choose to simply create a CRCnetMarker class (see below) that creates GMarker object and then pokes id attributes onto the internal objects of that class before returning it. Then once you’ve called addOverlay you can use the basic DOM functions to hook in an onmouseover event handler on the ID of the marker. 
var CRCnetMarker = function (sitename, point, icon)
 
    var marker = new GMarker(point, icon);
    marker.icon.id = "crcnet_container_" + sitename;
    marker.icon.firstChild.id = "crcnet_icon_" + sitename;
    marker.addEventListener = function (eventname, handler)  
         b = document.getElementById(marker.icon.firstChild.id);
         b.addEventListener(eventname, handler, false);
     
     return marker;
 
var marker = new CRCnetMarker(new GPoint(2704685.21,6367057.51), "mph");
map.addOverlay(marker);
marker.addEventListener('mouseover', hoverHandler);
That worked like a charm and I now have nice little info boxes popping up next to each node when you hover over them. I also discovered in the process of implementing this that Prototype and ZoomIn do not play nicely together. It appears to be Prototype’s fault as it messes with the Array type by adding new methods (like each for enumeration) which break the builtin for (i in array) syntax when the array contains non-numeric keys (like each). This has been reported in the prototype bug tracker as breaking Yahoo Maps but the comments don’t seem to offer much hope for Prototype’s behaviour changing anytime soon which is a pity. The next roadblock was a lack of support for drawing lines! This put the kibosh on the whole animated network status idea. Trolling through the source again reveals a GPolyLine class that appears to be semi-implemented, so hopefully support for drawing lines is coming very soon. The only other thing I found slightly annoying was having to supply all the co-ordinates in NZGD49 format. Most of our GPS information for CRCnet is stored in WGS84 format (as that’s what our older GPS unit puts out). NZGD49 has been deprecated in favour of NZGD2000 (which is near enough to identical to WGS84 for normal use) so I’m not really sure why ZoomIn is still using NZGD49. Maybe that’s all TerraLink can supply? Some quick googling turned up the proj library (apt-get install proj in Debian) which provides the cs2cs utility which can convert from WGS84 (aka NZGD2000) to NZGD49 to feed to ZoomIn. The magic peice of information is the transformation parameters which LINZ helpfully provide. Punching those (I chose the 7 parameter version) into cs2cs via a command line like

echo "$lat $long" /usr/bin/cs2cs +proj=latlong +datum=WGS84 +ellps=WGS84 +towgs84=0,0,0 +nodefs +to +proj=nzmg +datum=nzgd49 +ellps=intl +towgs84=59.47,-5.04,187.44,-0.47,0.10,-1.024,-4.5993 awk ' print $1" "$2 '

performs the magic conversion. The conclusion?
Overall I think ZoomIn rocks and it’s really cool to see a small NZ company filling in where Google and friends have failed miserably. The biggest weakness at the moment is definitely the API, which doesn’t really allow you to do much more than add points at this stage. Given that ZoomIn is still relatively young the leanness off the API is understandable. Given the API a few more months to mature and fill out and I think we’ll be able to create some really cool applications on top of the ZoomIn platform. Screenshot:

16 May 2006

Norbert Tretkowski: Geeks...

Geeks start to behave strange when the network is down for a few minutes.

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