Search Results: "ema"

20 November 2012

Pablo Lorenzzoni: Decision-making by flipping a coin

Yesterday I was discussing in an online board how to break a decision deadlock in life. There are real deadlocks, but I don t think they are very frequent most of the time, doing a pros and cons analysis is enough to decide what to do. Sometimes our judgement is impaired by lack of objectivity or by our inability to see things from a different point of view (it s hard to think straight when everything seems to be falling apart around you); talking to a friend or relative can help in these situations. But there are times when nothing helps. When you are really stuck and nothing seems to break the deadlock. At these times I give it one or two days, sleep on the issue and if I cannot come up with a decision I assume the alternatives are equivalent to me and just flip a coin. Of course, this will do if you can postpone the decision, giving yourself (and your inner self) time to decide on a course-of-action. But is there some way to speed up the process? During the discussion, someone came up with a rather smart quote by Rothstein character in Boardwalk Empire TV series:
Flip a coin. When it s in the air, you ll know what side you re hoping for.
I found it an interesting way to give your inner self an ultimatum: decide or luck will decide instead. I ve never did it like that, for I would not flip a coin unless it s my last resort. Being such a clever psychological idea, I doubted it originated in the TV series itself, so I went on pursue of the original idea. I found a Danish poet and mathematician called Piet Hein, who wrote a poem about it circa 1969:
A PSYCHOLOGICAL TIP Whenever you re called on to make up your mind,
and you re hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you ll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you re passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you re hoping.
And also, there are a Donald Duck comic called Flip Decision circa 1953 that introduces Flipism philosophy, which supports a rather radical anecdotal variant: make all decisions by flipping a coin. Piet Hein or Rothstein character idea is much better than Flipism, of course. Does anyone knows any older sources of the same idea?

19 November 2012

Russ Allbery: Review: Inversions

Review: Inversions, by Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Pocket
Copyright: 1998
Printing: May 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-1196-X
Format: Mass market
Pages: 376
Inversions poses a special challenge for book metadata for reviews that try to avoid spoilers. If you've looked at my index of reviews, I may have arguably already spoiled you. I'm going to discuss the book with that spoiler, as most reviews do, because I think it's a better book knowing that information up-front. But if you want to avoid any spoilers, stop reading here, and avoid looking at its placement in my review index. Inversions consists of the interleaved stories of two people: a strange female doctor to the king of Haspide, and the bodyguard of the Protector of Tassassen. The doctor's story is told in the form of letters written by the doctor's apprentice to his "Master," who has clearly told him to spy on the doctor. (The identity of this person is revealed during the story.) The bodyguard's story is told in the third person and presented as a reconstruction of events. The stories never meet, although the two countries have some indirect political exchanges. The doctor becomes entangled in court intrigue and several murders, and the bodyguard protects the Protector (a general in charge of what was effectively a military coup against the former regime) during a war with neighboring barons who had initially supported him. Both stories reach conclusions, but somewhat unsatisfactory ones. The two characters never meet in the book. All of this is set among countries at a medieval level of technology. The doctor faces scorn and derision, not to mention outright opposition, both because she's a woman (she's only permitted to claim the title of doctor due to the king's favor and her claimed citizenship in a far-away land with strange customs) and because she uses more effective and more modern techniques. Other physicians still bleed patients, but the doctor is clearly aware of the germ theory of disease, dismisses contageon via bad odors, and otherwise strikes the reader as someone with advanced medical knowledge trying to practice it in primitive conditions. The spoiler, which is never stated outright but which is relatively apparent from various hints and allusions dropped by the characters, as well as at least one event that would otherwise have to be supernatural, is that Inversions actually takes place in the Culture milieu. How this planet and these stories fit into that milieu remains unexplained throughout the story, but we do get some clues in supposedly made-up stories that the bodyguard tells the son of the Protector, stories that are recognizable to Culture readers as less fictional than they sound in a medieval context. Banks has a tendency to play with unusual narrative structure and to fall on the mainstream side of SF plot construction. Inversions is a very closely-observed pair of entwined stories told in a way that downplays most of the dramatic structure and rising action and that undermines feelings of conclusion or catharsis. Despite having, on later reflection, two clear plots with clear conclusions, it feels more like parallel slices of life and stubbornly refuses to advertise any conclusions or deeper meaning. Whether that works will probably have a lot to do with the reader's tolerance for trying to draw one's own conclusions. I found it frustrating and unsatisfying, but knowing going in that it's a Culture novel helped by adding some deeper structure to give the story a modicum of meaning. Insofar as there's a larger theme, it's the exploration of the conflict between the two Culture citizens that is presented, thinly disguised, in the bodyguard's stories. This connection is not obvious; even determining how to map the two characters into the stories is a touch challenging. But if one is aware of it and looking for it in advance, it provides a bit of broader structure and some basis for judging the actions of the doctor and the bodyguard against a larger plan. I needed that to wring enjoyment from the book; I never cared enough about the characters otherwise to fully engage with either story. With the puzzle, and the constant search for connections to Culture concepts, it's somewhat more interesting, but it's still maddeningly indirect. (And, from various other Internet reactions, I don't think I'm missing something obvious.) It's possible that I went into the book with some incorrect assumptions that undermined my enjoyment. Hopefully this review will help other readers. Knowing that this is a Culture book and enjoying the process of finding references makes it more fun (and most of the references aren't too hard to find). But don't expect lots of closure from the stories, and don't expend to find out "what's really going on." It's not that sort of book. If you enjoy the individual stories for themselves, you'll have the best chance of enjoying the book as a whole, with the Culture references providing a fun additional layer. If the basic stories don't appeal, the Culture material probably isn't enough to make the book engrossing. Rating: 6 out of 10

18 November 2012

Sven Mueller: Ingress

As some may have noticed, Google launched something that is unusual for the company: A game. A mobile alternate reality game, to be precise. See allthingsd article for a bit more information. In my opinion this game is most interesting to people who are mildly interested in geo-caching. You spend most of the gaming time either looking for the right portals (geo-location that is an interesting place for one reason or another, many located at sculptures, murals or (more scarcely) interesting local businesses), or trying to solve the puzzles that appear in the game itself or on http://www.nianticproject.com/. I was one of the beta testers and really enjoy the game, especially in areas with more players. As the game is most fun when people coordinate a bit, I started a google group for the munich area for one of the two teams (the enlightenment), but I will only let people enter that group who can be verified to be on that team. On a side note: I still have a few invites to the game left, so if you are interested, please leave a comment and enter your gmail.com email address (you need a Google account to play anyway) while doing so. I will send out invites in the order I received the requests (which I admit might not always be the same in which they were submitted. First come first serve and no guarantee to get an invitation though. Your email address you enter when commenting isn t shown to anyone and I don t share them with anyone but the game (and thus Google). EDIT: So short time went past, but I already ran out of invites (note that I didn t approve comments that really only were like please send me an invite , but still did sent one out). Feel free to still ask me for an invite, I will send some out as I get new ones, but this might take anything between a few days and some weeks. PS: For the lucky ones who got invites: You don t strictly need to do the training offered when you start the game for the first time, but I strongly encourage you to do so.
PPS: I m opening my group to any enlightened players in Germany. I will share some useful information about some game details there in the near future (nothing company confidential of course, just information anyone can gather in the game or from the published information). EDIT: As noted before, I don t have any more invites to give away. As I still get like 4 requests for invites per day, and now have more than 30 unfulfilled requests pending (with no new invites to give in sight), I m now disabling comments. Disclaimer: I work for Google since a few months ago, but this post solely represents my own opinions and hasn t been endorsed by Google in any way.

Neil Williams: Long term maintenance of perl cross-build support in Debian

After prompts from Wookey and Steve McIntyre, I decided to look at #285559 and #633884 for perl cross-build support and then port that support forward to the current perl in Wheezy and on to the version of perl currently in experimental. The first patch is for perl 5.8, the second for perl 5.12, neither of which is available currently in Debian. snapshot.debian.org provided the 5.12 source but then that no longer cross-builds with the patch.

The problem, as with any cross build, is that the build must avoid trying to execute binaries compiled within the build to achieve the test results required by ./configure (or in the case of perl, Configure). dpkg-cross has one collection of cache values but the intention was always to migrate the package-specific support data into the packages themselves and keep the architecture-specific data in dpkg-cross or dpkg-dev. Therefore, the approach taken in #633884 would be correct, if only there was a way of ensuring that the cached values remain in sync with the relevant Debian package.

I'll note here that I am aware of other ways of cross-building perl, this is particularly concerned with cross-building the Debian configuration of perl as a Debian package and using Debian or Emdebian cross-compilers. After all, the objective is to support bootstrapping Debian onto new architectures. However, I fully expect this to be just as usable with Ubuntu packages of perl compiled with, e.g. Linaro cross-compilers but I haven't yet looked at the differences between perl in Debian vs Ubuntu in any detail.

I've just got perl 5.14.2 cross-building for armel using the Emdebian gcc-4.4 cross-compiler (4.4.5-8) on a Debian sid amd64 machine without errors (it needs testing, which I'll look at later), so now is the time to document how it is done and what needs to be fixed. I've already discussed part of this with the current perl maintainers in Debian and, subject to just how the update mechanism works, have outline approval for pushing these changes into the Debian package and working with upstream where appropriate. The cache data itself might live in a separate source package which will use a strict dependency on perl to ensure that it remains in sync with the version which it can cross-build. Alternatively, if I can correctly partition the cache data between architecture-specific (and therefore generated from the existing files) and package_$version specific, then it may be possible to push a much smaller patch into the Debian perl package. This would start with some common data, calculate the arch-specific data and then look for some version-specific data, gleaned from Debian porter boxes whilst the version is in Debian experimental.

The key point is that I've offered to provide this support for the long term, ensuring that we don't end up with future stable releases of Debian having a perl package which cannot be cross-built. (To achieve that, we will also end up with versions of perl in Debian testing which also cross-build.)

This cross-build is still using dpkg-cross paths, not MultiArch paths, and this will need to be changed eventually. (e.g. by the source package providing two binaries, one which uses MultiArch and one which expects dpkg-cross paths.) The changes include patches for the upstream Makefile.SH, debian/rules and the cache data itself. Depending on where the cache data finally lives, the new support might or might not use the upstream Cross/ directory as the current contents date from the Zaurus support and don't appear to be that useful for current versions of perl.

The cache data itself has several problems:

  1. It is tightly tied to the version of perl which generated it.

  2. It is, as expected, architecture-dependent

  3. It is, unfortunately, very sensitive to the specific configuration used by the distribution itself


That last point is important because it means that the cache data is not useful upstream as a block. It also means that generating the cache data for a specific Debian package means running the generation code on the native architecture with all of the Debian build-dependencies installed for the full perl build. This is going to complicate the use of this method for new architectures like arm64.

My objective for the long term maintenance of this code is to create sufficient data that a new architecture can be bootstrapped by judicious use of some form of template. Quite how that works out, only time will tell. I expect that this will involve isolating the data which is truly architecture-specific which doesn't change between perl versions from the data which is related to the tests for build-dependencies which does change between perl versions and then work out how to deal with any remainder. A new architecture for a specific perl version should then just be a case of populating the arch-specific data such as the size of a pointer/char and the format specifiers for long long etc. alongside the existing (and correct) data for the current version of perl.

Generating the cache data natively

The perl build repeats twice (three builds in total) and each build provides and requires slightly different cache data - static, debug and shared. Therefore, the maintenance code will need to provide a script which can run the correct configuration step for each mode, copy out the cache data for each one and clean up. The script will need to run inside a buildd chroot on a porter box (I'm looking at using abel.debian.org and harris.debian.org for this work so far) so that the derived data matches what the corresponding Debian native build would use. The data then needs slight modification - typically to replace the absolute paths with PERL_BUILD_DIR. It may also be necessary to change the value of cc, ranlib and other compiler-related values to the relevant cross-compiler executables. That should be possible to arrange within the build of the cache data support package itself, allowing new cache files to be dropped in directly from the porter box.

The configuration step may need to be optimised within debian/rules of perl itself as it currently proceeds on from the bare configuration to do some actual building but I need to compare the data to see if a bare config is modified later. The test step can be omitted already. Each step is performed as:


DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="nocheck" fakeroot debian/rules perl.static


That is repeated for perl.debug and libperl.so.$(VERSION) where $VERSION comes from :


/bin/bash debian/config.debian --full-version


The files to be copied out are:


There is a lot of scope for templating of some form here, e.g. config.h.debug is 4,686 lines long but only 41 of those lines differ between amd64 and armhf for the same version of perl (and some of those can be identified from existing architecture-specific constants) which should make for a much smaller patch.

Architecture-specific cache data for perl

So far, the existing patches only deal with armel and armhf. If I compare the differences between armel & armhf, it comes down to:

  1. compiler names (config.h.*)

  2. architecture names (config.sh.*)

  3. architecture-based paths (config.sh.*)


However, comparing armel and armhf doesn't provide sufficient info for deriving arm64 or mips etc. Comparing the same versions for armhf and amd64 shows the range of differences more clearly. Typical architecture differences exist like the size of a long, flags to denote if the compiler can cast negative floats to 32bit ints and the sprintf format specifier strings for handling floats and doubles. The data also includes some less expected ones like:


armhf: #define Netdb_host_t		const void * /**/

amd64: #define Netdb_host_t		char * /**/


I'm not at all sure why that is arch-specific - if anyone knows, email codehelp @ d.o - same address if anyone fancies helping out ....

Cross-builds and debclean

When playing with the cross-build, remember to use the cross-build clean support, not just debclean:



dpkg-architecture -aarmel -c fakeroot debian/rules clean


That wasted quite a bit of my time initially with having to blow away the entire tree, unpack it from original apt sources and repatch it. (Once Wheezy is out, may actually investigate getting debclean to support the -a switch).

OK, that's an introduction, I'm planning on pushing the cross-build support code onto github soon-ish and doing some testing of the cross-built perl binaries in a chroot on an armel box. I'll detail that in another blog post when it's available.

Next step is to look at perl 5.16 and then current perl upstream git to see how to get Makefile.SH fixed for the long term.

Jamie McClelland: New Privacy Arguments are Needed

Another decent article on online privacy was published by the NYT this morning. The article documents the collection and centralized aggregation of consumer data online. It ends with a strong message about consumers becoming the "product" - which echoes what Noam Chomsky and Ben Bagdikian have been saying for decades. The problem with this critique is that it doesn't go far enough. Chomsky and Bagdikian didn't say readers are the product of modern journalism and that's bad because nobody wants to be a product. They critiqued the model because it produces terrible journalism and democracy suffers as a result. Similarly, the online trading of audiences and the invasion of our privacy that results has more important implications than "don't be a sucker" which seems to be the gist of the privacy argument these days. Honestly, I don't stay awake at night worrying that Nike knows I'm looking for a pair of sneakers, or even that they know my income. I do stay awake at night worrying that people are tagging my photo on Facebook, which could allow the New York Police Dept to submit a photo of protesters to Facebook and get a list of names and addresses of the people in the photo. Or it could allow the police to track my movements via existing networks of surveillance cameras by matching my image to my name. Would that require a search warrant? How would that impact my trust in my government to know that my movements are being tracked? Or worse, to know they might be tracked but I'll never know if they are or aren't? Many governments (including the US) have sordid histories of infiltrating political organizations and intentionally sowing dissent. Having access to activists' purchasing habits provides a treasure trove of material for this purpose that previously was labor intensive for cops to collect. It also provides leverage during interrogation, a time of heightened emotional vulnerability where the mere mention of a private detail of one's life can have a powerful impact. How can we prevent law enforcement from having access to these details of our lives? And then there's the dragnet. A central database of consumer habits provides a tantalizing collection of information that could be searched for people who fit a profile of a crime. Is solving the crime at hand worth the invasion of privacy that results from people being investigating only based on their consumer habits? How would we measure the impact an investigation like this would have on our confidence in democracy and government? The corporate advertisers promoting this kind of data collection argue that these problems are the price of progress. However, the ideology behind these technology developments is capitalism, not some intrinsic aspect of the Internet or network communications. Historically, the Internet has developed based on a drive toward de-centralization. Email and web sites, the bedrock of Internet activity, are based on these principles: anyone can add their own email server or web server and everyone can seamlessly access it. In contrast, the logic of capitalism as it relates to the Internet, is one of centralization and aggregating data. Facebook and Google want you to use their platforms for all your online activities so they have as complete a picture as possible of what you like and do. As the New York Times article describes, companies like Rubicon want to track all your movements and aggregate that data for profit. We have a choice. We can carefully evaluate our use of corporate services and consider the implications it has not only on our lives but on society as a whole. And, we can choose to use and support services that promote open standards and interoperability that will respect our personal privacy values. Want a practical example? Friendica is software designed to allow you to post status alerts, photos, videos and other information about yourself in a way similar to Facebook. However, it has one big difference: you can host your account on any server running the software anywhere in the world. You can still "friend" people on different servers, but we don't have to all trust the same organization to host it. Furthermore, Friendica allows you to post once and automatically cross-post to your Twitter, Facebook or other similar services. Sound good? You are welcome to try out an account on the May First/People Link install: https://friends.mayfirst.org/.

Russ Allbery: Review: A Hero's Tale

Review: A Hero's Tale, by Catherine M. Wilson
Series: Women Were Warriors #3
Publisher: Shield Maiden
Copyright: 2008
ISBN: 0-9815636-3-5
Format: Kindle
Pages: 301

This is an ebook, so metadata may be inaccurate or missing. See notes on ebooks for more information. A Hero's Tale is the third book in the When Women Were Warriors trilogy, which is best thought of as a single long novel. Reading it independently will miss most of the significance of the plot, since one wouldn't know many of the important characters. A Hero's Tale follows the pattern of the second book: even less quiet contemplation, and even more in the way of events and plot. Tamras completes her training, in a somewhat unexpected way (and in a rather interesting reworking of gender roles), but then both Maara's past and the problems of A Journey of the Heart catch up with them. There is, accordingly, quite a bit more action, or at least war councils and political maneuvering, than the previous books, and somewhat less time for thoughtful wisdom. That also means that A Hero's Tale shifts a bit more towards the traditional fantasy coming-of-age story, where the heroine is able to shift armies and win conflicts with an understated and self-deprecating skill that comes inevitably but indirectly out of all of her previous experiences. I think Wilson is still fairly original in how she presents those tropes, with an interesting focus on empathy and compassion that is all too rare in this sort of story, but this book does feel a lot more like a story that one has read before. If you're particularly allergic to that story shape, you may find this entry somewhat disappointing. One of the things I loved about it, though, was Wilson's avoidance of traditional villains. There is one, so it's not a complete avoidance, but nearly everyone in this story has their own viewpoint and perspective and is on the side of right in their own way. Wilson uses Tamras's empathy and willingness to listen and understand to let the reader see various different perspectives without moving away from the first-person perspective. It's very nicely done. I thought the handling of the emotional arc of the story was more mixed. Tamras is seriously tested in some moments that aimed for heartbreaking, but I thought they fell short of the emotional punch they were supposed to carry since the story shape had already made it obvious that everything would turn out okay in the end. The story is so gentle that Wilson hadn't established any willingness to end something badly, which robs a lot of the punch from emotional turmoil. I also had quite a bit of trouble with the principle of love above all else, particularly for someone in Tamras's position. Maybe that's because I'm still too entrenched in the attitude towards politics that this series argues against, but I had a hard time not seeing her as personally indulgent. Both of those factors blunted the emotional climax for me, leaving it moving but not as heartbreaking as I think Wilson was aiming for. (This is the point where a friend will tell me that I think too much about books while I'm reading them.) That said, Wilson continues to write one of the best mentoring relationships that I've seen in fiction. The dynamic between Tamras and Maara is just beautiful, and remains so through the end of the book. So many traditional issues with rivalry, growth, replacement of the mentor, and relative social position that are ignored or dealt with ham-handedly in other stories are handled adeptly and quietly. Maara is by far my favorite character of this series, largely because of how she handles that relationship. I could identify with her more easily than with Tamras at various points in the story, and I thought the understated ending was quietly beautiful. If you enjoyed the rest of the series, definitely read A Hero's Tale for the conclusion. If you've been hungry for more typical action, you'll get some of it here. I wish a few deep emotions other than love had been in play, but, despite that, When Women Were Warriors is still quietly and delightfully different than most things I've read, and worth the price. Rating: 8 out of 10

17 November 2012

Craig Sanders: done

OK, I m finished my experiment. It s over now and I can break character . First, I have to offer special thanks to tshirtman for being the first to unambiguously exemplify one of my main points. well done! In case it s not blindingly obvious (as it should be), the reason for my post was that I was outraged by the spectacle of one fairly high-profile member of the linux community trying to rally support to shun and exclude another fairly high-profile member because a nightmare had upset her. WTF? Is that really all it s going to take to destroy someone s reputation and perhaps their career? even with the shunning target s own words available and archived to disprove the ridiculous straw-man mis-characterisations of what he actually said? Not one of the arguments against him actually addressed anything he said, they ALL attacked him for things he didn t say, for things that other people claimed he said. I was further outraged by seeing everyone who even suggested that questioning of stats (or, indeed, ANY claim of fact or evidence) may be, in some small way, a valid and reasonable thing to do get instantly put in their place and dismissed as Yet Another Rape Apologist. Are we supposed to be anti-science, anti-scientific method now? or are rape stats a special case like religion where we are just supposed to switch off our analytical brains and accept what we are told on faith, without question? Surely we are capable of better than that? i know we are capable of better than that. Or, at least, i used to know that. Now i m not so sure. In 2011, all it took was Ted Tso ( TT ) making some fairly reasonable statements about the need for any claimed evidence or statistics to be viewed skeptically and that dissenting research should also be considered and he was instantly vilified as a rape apologist . Sorry, but questioning extremely dodgy stats (that even in feminist circles are viewed more as ideological propaganda than as serious research) is NOWHERE NEAR SUFFICIENT to earn the label of rape-apologist. That is not how debate works you can t just refuse to engage with someone s point and simply accuse them of being the enemy for not agreeing 100% with whatever you say at least, not if you have any intellectual honesty or self-respect. (sure, some people are complete jerks and deserve to be told to FOAD in no uncertain terms but a) jerks like that are self-evident and obvious, and b) TT s participation in that thread was at all times civil and reasonable) But that thread is ancient history it was over and done with nearly two years ago.
In October this year, for reasons which are not at all clear, Valerie Aurora ( VA ) decided to revive the issue (which had been resolved back in 2011 with a resounding fuck no, we don t want misogynist shit or porn in our conferences from pretty much the entire linux community including near-universal support for improved anti-harassment policies both for linux.conf.au and for geek conferences in general) and use it to attack TT. And she did so by twisting his words and claiming in a post on The Ada Initiative blog that he said something which he didn t, that rape was impossible if both people were drunk enough . If he chose, he could quite easily win a libel case against her and TAI on that. It s not what he said, it s not even close to what he said, and VA is clearly too smart to honestly believe that it is what he said. In another post on her personal, blog she talks about how what he said was so terrible that it even now gives her nightmares, and that she can t bear the thought of working with him. Again, WTF? VA can say I had nightmares and was upset and furious and THAT is enough to justify a call to shun TT?? He didn t attack her, or threaten her (explicitly or implicitly), he was polite and civil. What he did was disagree with VA by referring to other research that disputed VA s preferred studies. I agree with and support many (perhaps most) of VA s and The Ada Initiative s aims, I certainly believe that linux and open source etc should be very welcoming and supportive of human diversity (including gender and sexuality, identity, religion, politics and so on), believe that it s a good thing that The Ada Initiative exists as part of that diversity welcome to be particularly supportive of women in geekdom. And i wholeheartedly agree that Linux leaders should not make public statements belittling and condoning rape BUT: a) I haven t seen one instance of that happening, ever and b) I find VA s choice of tactics here to be despicable. as i do when anyone else uses similar tactics, because they ARE despicable tactics. They are exactly the same as accusing someone of being a child pornographer for being against net censorship: You dared to disagree with me so I m going to accuse you of being a monster. (and, i must admit, the enthusiasm level of my support for The Ada Initiative is somewhat .diminished by this tactical blunder by the spokesperson and co-founder) There are far more deserving targets of VA s ire than TT. And there are far better ways for the Ada Initiative to achieve their aims.
Why? So why did I decide to comment when I knew that I was inevitably going to be accused of hating women and being a rape apologist? Mostly because I thought it would be gutless of me not to. Hardly anyone else had, and they quickly backed down under the accusations of misogyny and since I consider myself to be psychologically fairly strong, I felt that I am capable of wearing a little shit (or even a lot) for a while. In my egocentric fashion, I thought if I can t do then it s no wonder that no one else dares . And also because anyone who cared to make even the slightest effort to find out what my actual views on sexual harassment, rape, women s rights and numerous inter-related issues are can fairly easily see a very consistent record of the kinds of things I argue for and against, and my scathing responses to actual misogynists when they appear on lists that I participate in. they are not my kind of people. and even then, i hesitated. it s scary and intimidating to be putting yourself forward to be accused of being one of the things you hate. this is, of course, an instance of the chilling effect. So, I found the prospect scary, almost terrifying .and I can t think of a single person who has met me online or in real life who would even remotely describe me as being any kind of delicate or sensitive wall-flower. again, if i can t do it, it s no wonder no one else dares . so i clicked the Publish button. an ego is useful for some things. Also, I took VA s words but don t be silent as inspiration. In the process, i discovered why it is that some people just simply refuse to engage in rational discourse. I ve seen it many times from the other side, but i ve never experienced the seductive pleasure of indulging in it myself before there s a liberating freedom in just ignoring any and every point that someone makes and simply accuse them of being the enemy. You don t have to try to understand what they wrote, hell you don t even have to really read it you just need to quickly scan it for overall tone and if they don t seem like they re 100% supportive, you just accuse them of being the enemy or an apologist for the enemy. it s that fucking simple and easy. well, sort of easy. easy for some, perhaps. i personally found it extremely difficult a struggle to refrain from engaging, to remain in character (i m not much of an actor). especially when i kind of agreed with whoever was arguing against my experimental character or if i thought they made a good point. and even more so when i thought that some comments skirted a bit too close to being the kind of misogynist crap that i didn t want to tolerate having on MY blog. (i resolved that issue by just approving any reply that didn t squick me or that i could squint at and think hmmm borderline, give benefit of doubt ) but even though i don t like it, i can recognise the attraction it holds for some people.
Other thoughts: I m particularly disgusted by the men who intervene way too early without an explicit invitation or request for help or a clear need such as an immediate threat of violence in womens issues. Many or maybe even most may not realise it, but they are just taking over and asserting male strength and control by protecting women rather than giving them the support and space to discover and practice their own strength and their own voices. These uninvited interventions do not help women, they weaken and undermine them, they perpetuate dependence, they steal strength from the movement. It is patronising and enfeebling. But mostly, they just re-assert male dominance and are an attempt to make women s spaces more comfortable, more palatable, for men.(*) (it s also quite often very transparent self-serving and ingratiating behaviour from blokes who want to lay the groundwork for perhaps getting laid one day) IMO this goes far beyond a problem with men over-involving themselves in feminist causes i feel the same way for any relatively less-privileged group with a need to find their own voice and their own power they ll never find it if members of the privileged class (i.e. white males like me) just ride roughshod over the movement and speak FOR them rather then just silently lending their strength in support. For the most part, they (we) should just shut up and listen we already have more than enough opportunities to have our say. (*) yes, i m well aware of the difficulty in writing something like that paragraph as a member of a privileged class, without coming across as either self-hating or patronising or both. if i ve failed here, it s not for want of trying. done is a post from: Errata

Antoine Beaupr : First stable release of the Drupal OpenID Provider

A short announcement to mark the release of the first stable OpenID provider for Drupal. Started by James Walker around 4 years ago, I have since then got commit access and taken care of the module for the last 2 years. And while it was not an easy task, with the help of the community, this module was able to mature to a fully featured, flexible and standard implementation during that time. One has to wonder however, is it too late for OpenID?

A bit of history Drupal was one of the pioneers in OpenID support. Back in 2006 when the protocol was still in its infancy (less than a year old!), Drupal was adding OpenID support to its 4.7 release through a contrib module and two years later, the Drupal 6.0 release was sporting OpenID in core, although not without significant interoperability issues. Still, we could say that rapid adoption by such a popular CMS as Drupal really boosted OpenID's adoption. At about the same time, Yahoo, Sourceforge, Myspace, Microsoft and Google would all join the OpenID bandwagon. On the OpenID "provider" side of things, things were not so great however. Back when I started experimenting with this, it wasn't actually that easy to host your own OpenID provider, to allow your users to login to other OpenID-enabled sites. While there are a lot of different libraries to provide OpenID support in your application there was not (and still isn't) any software that gives you an OpenID provider and is dedicated to that. No official reference implementation either, other than the code from the one of the founding companies of OpenID, JanRain. There was an OpenID provider module in Drupal, but there was no official release done until a two beta releases in 2010.

Koumbit's community involvement It is about that time I started getting involved in the project. Koumbit needed an easy way for our workers to log into multiple sites without too much trouble, so I started looking at OpenID provider implementations. The lack of dedicated software somehow made the Drupal implementation a natural fit, and I started experimenting with the module, filing bugs and reviewing patches, as there were a lot of interoperability and design issues with the provider. After a while, walkah was kind enough to give me full access to the project and I started doing regular releases (every few months), culminating in today's official 1.0 release for both Drupal 6 and Drupal 7, which I am very proud and happy about. While I am here, I want to send many thanks to the people behind the Drupal 7 port: paranojik, mikecar, xamanu and testing from neizod. A lot of issues were also patched, reviewed and tested by numerous contributors that are unfortunately difficult to track down other than reading the commit log. So we at Koumbit have been running our own OpenID provider for a good while now, and it has the key advantage of being connected to our LDAP directory (with the D6 LDAP integration module so it is, in a sense, a central point for authentication at Koumbit. Very often people don't clearly understand what their LDAP password does, and I can easily remind them "it's the OpenID thing", or "try your password in the OpenID site" if they think they have forgotten it. So much goes on in the web browser these days that it makes everything much easier.

The problem with Drupal's OpenID provider However, it is kind of embarrassing that it took so long. More than 6 years after the OpenID protocol was written, we have a stable OpenID provider. Now, this may be because I am overly conservative about stable releases, but I don't think so: the OpenID provider module had, for a long time, serious interoperability issues with OpenID sites. There was also a clear lack of features on the OpenID provider, a gap that various third party modules, now documented on the OpenID provider homepage are now trying to fill. There is also serious security issues with the protocol itself. The complexity and lack of clarity of the OpenID specification have rendered my work quite difficult at time, as the protocol has significant ambiguities and no clear reference implementation. OpenID is unfortunately renowned to be vulnerable to phishing and while Koumbit's use of the HTTPS protocol alleviates some of those issues (especially the redirect session hijack), tools like sslstrip can bypass those protections easily. The privacy aspect is also problematic, as the user is usually not free to choose which information from his or her profile is divulged to the site they are logging into. Of course those issues may be overlooked if the security trade off is not worth it. In the case of Koumbit, we use OpenID on a lot of client sites, but usually nothing critical, and we train our users to pay attention to the HTTPS icon when login in their OpenID account.

Are there alternatives? But unfortuantely, the reality is that there are not really any alternatives to OpenID out there. Mozilla's new BrowserID initiative (now rebranded Persona, boy those guys sure love rebranding..) is interesting, but actually has even more flaws than OpenID itself. Not only is it not resolving the phishing problem, it actually creates new problems, including my personal favorite, trusting server-side Javascript code, which OpenID is not using that much. I should also mention the Shibboleth module which has a surprising number of installs recorded on Drupal.org, but that depends on the much more complicated Shibboleth federation, for which there is no server implementation for Drupal, from what I understand. Oauth, on the other end, is even more widely used, and has server-side components like Oauth Login Provider and Services 3.x. We could also simply give up and use our souls stored at Facebook, Google and Twitter for authentication everywhere. Maybe OpenID opened the door for those corporations to see that there is a real opportunity in leveraging user's profile to track their online activity. It is not something that OpenID was necessarily designed for but it's an idea that certainly permeates Facebook connect and "like" buttons or Twitter and Google online business strategies, where you are the product sold to advertisers. I personally believe we should keep the struggle for distributed and standard identity mechanisms for the web that respect users' privacy. With Drupal's OpenID Provider, it is possible to create a secure, privacy-aware identity provider, although I still have to perform that damn security audit. Experiments with those third party modules should also be encouraged and I welcome any feedback on those modules. While I do not plan to attend OpenID conferences or do significant development on the OpenID provider right now, I will certainly make sure Koumbit keeps its commitment to maintaining stewardship on the OpenID provider module in Drupal. I encourage people to try it out, submit issues and patches to make it even better. Long life to OpenID! PS: if people are interested in funding that security audit, I would be happy to perform this through my regular work at Koumbit.org, just file a request at services@koumbit.org.

Raphael Geissert: Better routing, less bad apples

Another month, another update to http.debian.net. This time around most of the work was done outside the redirector's code base, as strange as it may sound.

The redirector heavily relies on the mirrors doing at least a couple of things right, for the rest it can and does compensate. When it needs to compensate, certain requests are redirected to automatically-detected good mirrors, thus avoiding mirrors that might work fine for some parts of the day but cause headaches during the rest.

So, part of the work done since the last update was to prod more mirror administrators to upgrade to the latest version of ftpsync. This reduces the number of mirrors for which compensation is needed in order to avoid errors during installations and upgrades. Hopefully, no additional work is needed for the redirector to notice the upgrades. This results in immediate improvements.

However, not all mirrors comply with the bare minimum requirements. As stated in my previous blog post, running rsync once is not enough. When mirrors break these assumptions they lead to the "bad apple" effect. The effects in this case are temporary errors, as experienced by some people. The interesting part of those issues is that the affected population may quickly change given the redirector's use of geo location and the way it creates mirror subsets.

As interesting as the distribution of the effects may be, they are not really welcome. So I put together some code to attempt to detect the bad apples. This resulted in a list of mirrors that have now been disabled in the redirector and whose administrators are going to be contacted so that they comply with the minimum requirements. Given that detection is time-sensitive, there's no 100% guarantee that all of them have been identified so far. The code to detect them will have to be adapted and integrated into the redirector's code base to be proactive on avoiding this kind of issues.

Last but not least, the redirector is now using a database of AS peers for better (re-)routing. This is the next move towards a decision making based more on network location/topology than in geographic location. This first use of a peers database is limited to IPv4 and is based on a recent routing table dump and on feedback provided by interested people. If you are a mirror or network administrator, or you are familiar with the topology of your network please drop me an email so that the redirector can make a better use of your peering agreements.

N.b. in the case of the database, the term peer may also include transit providers. It is used to refer to and establish a relationship between two AS(N)s.


Feedback is, as always, welcome. I read each and every email but it may take me some time to get to it, or reply.

Sylvestre Ledru: Mini Debconf & merchandising

Next week end, November 24th and 25th, the mini Debconf will take place at EPITA in Paris. Mehdi Dogguy and I worked hard on the organization and on building a great program for this 2012 conference. This mini debconf will cover many subjects like Gnome (both as upstream and downstream), the Release team, how the Linux is packaged in Debian, etc.
The keynote will be "Free software and Debian, 20 years after" by Roberto Di Cosmo. Also, some merchandising will be proposed during the event by the association Debian France. Here is a quick list: Polos
long-sleeved polo
Long-sleeved polo
40 euros - 10 pieces Sleeveless polo
Sleeveless polo
25 euros - 100 pieces Thanks to Tanguy Ortolo for taking take of the order. Buff
Buff Debian
Buff Debian
18 euros - 75 pieces. It is described as Original Multifunctional Headwear. Real life example in video.
I love them! Finally, we will sell two kinds of Debian branded Sticker Portable:
Sticker Debian
Sticker Debian
1 euro - 100 pieces. They can be also ordered on the it2l website. Thanks to J r me Lemaire for providing these great products. If these products are successful, we will probably produce more for FOSDEM! For more information about the conference:
The official website
Wiki page for subscription

Russell Coker: Geeky Jeans

It s likely that most people make things like comfort, style, and price the main criteria when purchasing clothes. But there are other things that can be more important such as the ability to fit a phone in the pocket. My last pair of jeans was from Rivers (one of the more affordable Australian clothing stores which also has online sales) [1]. They were the long leg version and have front pockets that are 28cm deep (measured from the bottom of the pocket to the lowest part of the lip) and 15cm wide (a 15cm ruler will barely fit sideways in the pocket). I ve just got some new jeans from Rivers which are the regular leg length, they have front pockets which are 21cm deep and slightly more than 16cm wide. The old pair could fit a Nexus 7 tablet in the front pocket. The new pair should more easily fit such a tablet in the pocket but it might be less comfortable to walk with the tablet in the pocket. I don t plan to try using my front pocket for a tablet (I d be more likely to use a backpack or my Scott e vest [2]), but a Galaxy Note 2 (which is about the largest device that most people would want in their pocket) would fit nicely. I find the Rivers jeans to be quite comfortable and I like the way they look. They also only cost $25 online or $30 in the store. When I bought my first pair before I even had a 4 phone they were good value and they will be even better value early next year when I get a bigger phone. Even though Rivers jeans may wear out faster than more expensive brands, for $30 it s easy to just buy a few pairs at a time. During an email discussion of geeky clothing the issue of women s clothes having fewer and smaller pockets was raised. Unfortunately I didn t think to measure the pockets in women s jeans when I was at the Rivers to discover whether they have big pockets too. I ll do that next time I m in the area.

15 November 2012

Craig Sanders: I had a dream

I had a dream that many prominent members of the Linux community were dressed in Nazi SS uniforms on the Arctic ice, clubbing baby seals to death. I can t bear the thought that so many Linux people may secretly be Nazi seal murderers, so I demand that they be excluded from any future Linux-related events or conferences that I might wish to attend. My nightmare and the strength of my personal reaction to it are conclusive proof that they are guilty. I can t remember all those who were identified in my dream right now, so I need to be able to point the finger at any time in the future and have any individual shunned excluded and banned from events, conferences, mailing lists, and open source projects in general with any who communicate with them (or, worse, support the evil-doers by pretending to a moderate, reasonable, rational, and/or evidence-based stance) being likewise exiled. After all, remember that even in these enlightened times there is still a seething culture of penguin-supremacism in the Linux community overtly pushing the agenda of the pure penguin race over the pernicious and corrosive evil of seals .this culture of seal-murder must be stamped out by whatever means necessary. Zero tolerance for seal-murder apologists! Thank you for understanding and supporting me in my very real fears. You make the world a safer place for everyone. I had a dream is a post from: Errata

14 November 2012

Petter Reinholdtsen: Debian Edu interview: Angela Fu

Here is another interview with one of the people in the Debian Edu and Skolelinux community. I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email. After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of the people behind the German "IT-Zukunft Schule" project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview. Give a warm welcome to Angela Fu . :) Who are you, and how do you spend your days? I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son. At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids. Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-). We are also in the middle of buying a house and moving to it. In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there. Besides that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer relationship management and the communication processes in the project. Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener and a yoga teacher. How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu project? I fell in love with Mike ;-). Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into Free Software. At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for their IT environment. Often when Mike came home from working at the newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about several points where the communication with the schools head or the teachers did not work. So we were clear that he would not work for one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the parents. Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt Gramlich in G tersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building networks of people and in being in communication we dived into Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern Germany. For information about our school project you can read the interview with Mike Gabriel. What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian Edu? First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My answer comes rather from a social point of view. The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large and strong international community of Debian Developers in the background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well ;-). This is of course a user experience. What I also get as a big advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students, teachers, parents... What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian Edu? I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of Skolelinux / Debian Edu. What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good and helpful. I am also missing some kind of contact between the Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Which free software do you use daily? On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop on. As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin, LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of my N900 running with Maemo. Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to get schools to use free software? I am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the strategy has three crucial pillars:

12 November 2012

Stefano Zacchiroli: Debian newcomer experience survey

In recent times we have worked quite a bit to improve the NM process, i.e. the process newcomers go through to become members of the Debian Project. As it happens, I've just read Nathan's recent post on his NM experience and I think it is a perfect example of the joining experience we are trying to offer to all newcomers. But examples, be them positive or negative, are only anecdotal. To evaluate a process one needs actual data and someone analyzing them, ideally with a scientific approach. This is why I'm happy to host below a guest blog post by Kevin Carillo, who is doing a pretty thorough scientific study about how newcomers join a wide range of Free Software projects, including KDE, OpenSUSE, GNOME, and Debian, of course! TL;DR: if you started contributing to Debian after January 2010, there's a survey for you; participating will help us improving the NM process even further. Kevin's guest blog post follows.
Newcomer experience in Debian and other FOSS communities - Survey My name is Kevin Carillo. I am a PhD student currently living in Wellington (New Zealand) and I am doing some research on Free/Open Source Software communities. If you have started contributing to the Debian project after January 2010 (within approximately the last 3 years), I would like to kindly request your help. I am interested in hearing from people who are either technical or non-technical contributors, and who have had either positive or negative newcomer experiences. The purpose of the research is to work out how newcomers to a FOSS community become valued sustainable contributors. The survey is online and will be available until Tuesday, 27 November, 2012. Inspiration from Debian New Member Debian is a successful community that keeps attracting new contributors and that relies on a very unique way to handle the integration of new contributors: the New Member process. The idea behind the NM process is that it is some sort of filtering procedure allowing to only retain the individuals who have the potential to become valued sustainable contributors in Debian. Within Debian, there is a lot of enthusiasm and pride around the NM process as it seems to be functioning pretty well but the question is: Is this really enough to ensure that Debian remains a healthy and growing community? How does it compare to the way newcomers are integrated in other large projects such as KDE, GNOME, or in other non-Linux related communities such as Mozilla? I have to admit that the Debian NM process has been among the main sources of inspiration that made me embark in this research project. I have kept being quite impressed when talking to people who had gone through the process as all of them came out of it with a real passion for the project and love for its community. When reflecting on the reasons why the NM process succeeds, I have a feeling it is some instance of ritualized socialization. In other words, barriers and initiation rituals that require some effort from newcomers, generate members with higher commitment and sense of identification towards the Debian community. What do newcomers really experience? The main assumption that motivated this project is that attracting new members has become crucial for a large majority of FOSS communities but this is not a sufficient condition to ensure the success and prosperity of a project. A proportion of a community's newcomers must contribute to the well-being and growth of the community. Keeping all that in mind, FOSS projects have thus to do a good job at "socializing" their newcomers and turning them into 'good' contributors. Doing a good job here means that FOSS projects shall ensure that they help generate citizenship-like behaviors from newcomers by designing appropriate newcomer programs and procedures. FOSS communities rely on a wide array of initiatives to facilitate the integration of newcomers but it seems like the other side of the coin is less understood: What do newcomers really experience? And how does this influence their contributions and actions within a project? How is this study going to help Debian? The data will help gain insights about the experience of newcomers within the Debian community. In addition, it will allow to understand how to design effective newcomer initiatives to ensure that Debian will remain a successful and healthy community. The dataset will be released under a share-alike ODbL license so that Debian contributors can extract as much value as possible from the data. Since this survey also involves other large FOSS projects such as Mozilla, KDE, Gnome, Ubuntu, Gentoo, OpenSUSE, and NetBSD, it will also be possible to compare practices across projects in order to identify what works from what does not work when facilitating the integration of newcomers. About the survey This survey is anonymous. The raw dataset of everything one fills in the survey will be released under the ODbL. Since all the questions but one are optional, one is free to control the amount of information they are giving away about themselves. I expect the survey to take around 20 minutes of your time. If you know members of the Debian community who you think would be interested in completing it, please do not hesitate to let them know about this research. I will post news about my progress with this research, and the results on my blog. Don't hesitate to contact me. --- Kevin Carillo

11 November 2012

Nathan Handler: Debian Developer

Today, I officially got approved by the Debian Account Managers as a Debian Developer (still waiting on keyring-maint and DSA). Over the years, I have seen many people complain about the New Member Process. The most common complaint was with regards to the (usually) long amount of time the process can take to complete. I am writing this blog post to provide one more perspective on this process. Hopefully, it will prove useful to people considering starting the New Member Process. The most difficult part about the New Member Process for me had to do with getting my GPG key signed by Debian Developers. I have not been able to attend any large conferences, which are great places to get your key signed. I also have not been able to meet up with the few Debian Developers living in/around Chicago. As a result, I was forced to patiently wait to start the NM process. This waiting period lasted a couple of years. It wasn't until this October, at the [Association for Computing Machinery at Urbana-Champaign's Reflections Projections Conference], that this changed. Stefano Zacchiroli was present to give a talk about Debian. Asheesh Laroia was also present to lead an OpenHatch Workshop about contributing to open source projects. Both of these Developers were more than willing to sign my key when I asked. If you look at my key, you will see that these signatures were made on October 7 and October 9, 2012. With the signatures out of the way, the next step in the process was to actually apply. Since I did not already have an account in the system, I had to send an email to the Front Desk and have them enter my information into the system. Details on this step, along with a sample email are available here. Once I was in the system, the next step was to get some Debian Developers to serve as my advocates. Advocates should be Debian Developers you have worked closely with, and usually include your sponsor(s). If these people believe you are ready to become a Debian Developer, they write a message describing the work you have been doing with them and why they feel you are ready. Paul Tagliamonte had helped review and sponsor a number of my uploads. I had been working with him for a number of years, and he really helped encourage and help me to reach this milestone. He served as my first advocate. Gregor Herrmann is responsible for getting me started in contributing to Debian. When I first tried to get involved, I had a hard time finding sponsors for my uploads and bugs to work on. Eventually, I discovered the Debian Perl Group. This team collectively maintains most of the Perl modules that are included in the Debian repositories. Gregor and the other Debian Developers on the team were really good about reviewing and sponsoring uploads in a very timely manner. This allowed me to learn quickly and make a number of contributions to Debian. He served as my second advocate. With my advocations taken care of, the next step in the process was for the Front Desk to assign me an Application Manager and for the Application Manager to accept the appointment. Thijs Kinkhorst was appointed as my Application Manager. He also agreed to take on this task. For those of you who might not know, the Application Manager is in charge of asking the applicant questions, collecting information, and ultimately making a recommendation to the Debian Account Managers about whether or not they should accept the applicant as a Developer. They can go about this in a variety of ways, but most choose to utilize a set of template questions that are adjusted slightly on a per-applicant basis. Remember that period of waiting to get my GPG key signed? I had used that time to go through and prepare answers to most of the template questions. This served two purposes. First, it allowed me to prove to myself that I had the knowledge to become a Debian Developer. Second, it helped to greatly speed up the New Member process once I actually applied. There were some questions that were added/removed/modified, but by answering the template questions befrehoand, I had become quite familiar with documents such as the Debian Policy and the Debian Developer's Rerference. These documents are the basis for almost all questions that are asked. After several rounds of questions, testing my knowledge of Debian's philosophy and procedures as well as my technical knowledge and skills, some of my uploads were reviewed. This is a pretty standard step. Be prepared to explain any changes you made (or chose not to make) in your uploads. If you have any outstanding bugs or issues with your packages, you might also be asked to resolve them. Eventually, once your Application Manager has collected enough information to ensure you are capable of becoming a Debian Developer, they will send their recommendation and a brief biography about you to the debian-newmaint mailing list and forward all information and emails from you to the Debian Account Managers (after the Front Desk checks and confirms that all of the important information is present). The Debian Account Managers have the actual authority to approve new Debian Developers. They will review all information sent to them and reach their own decision. If they approve your application, they will submit requests for your GPG key to be added to the Debian Keyring and for an account to be created for you in the Debian systems. At this point, the New Member process is complete. For me, it took exactly 1 month from the time I officially applied to become a Debian Developer until the time of my application being approved by the Debian Account Managers. Hopefully, it will not be long until my GPG key is added to the keyring and my account is created. I feel the entire process went by very quickly and was pain-free. Hopefully, this blog post will help to encourage more people to apply to become Debian Developers.

9 November 2012

Gunnar Wolf: Road trip to ECSL 2012 in Guatemala

Map of our overall driving for six days
Road trip to ECSL 2012 in Guatemala
Encuentro Centroamericano de Software Libre! Guatemala! During a national (for us) holiday, so it's easy to go without missing too much work time! How would I miss the opportunity? Several years ago, I started playing with the idea of having a road trip Probably this was first prompted with the UK crew and the Three Intrepid Motorcycle Riders arriving by land to DebConf 9 I don't know. Fact is, I wanted to go to DebConf10 in New York by land, as well as to DebConf12 in Nicaragua. Mostly due to a lack of time, I didn't Although we did start making some longish trips. Of course, my desire to show Regina what Mexico is like also helped! So, up until a week ago, our (according to my standards) long distance driving experience included:
  • M xico Guanajuato Puerto Vallarta Guanajuato M xico, in early November 2011, for Festival de Software Libre and with Regina and our Blender friends Octavio and Claudia. Totalling almost 1900Km, mostly consisting of wide, toll highway.
  • M xico Xilitla San Luis Potos M xico, in April 2012, just for fun and for a nice short vacation, alone with Regina. Totalling almost 1200Km, but through Sierra Gorda de Quer taro, a very tough stretch of about 250Km which we did at about 50Km/h on average. Beautiful route for sure! We didn't originally intend to go through San Luis Potos , and it does not appear to make much sense, as it adds ~350Km to the total, but it was even quicker than going back by the same route and according to those who now, even faster than our planned route, via Tamazunchale and Ixmiquilpan!
  • M xico San Luis Potos Zacatecas Aguascalientes Guanajuato M xico, in May 2012, for Congreso Internacional de Software Libre, again with Octavio and Claudia. Totalling 1250Km, and following very good roads, although most of them were toll-free.
But there is always a certain halo over crossing a border, maybe more so in countries as large as Mexico. We convinced Pooka and Moni, and granted, with some aprehension, as we knew of some important security risks in the more rural areas we wanted to go through we decided to go to Guatemala. And, although we wanted to go with a bit more time, Real Life took its toll: We could not take more time than the intersection of what our respective jobs offered. So, here goes a short(?) recap of our six day long, 3200Km trip. Of course, we have a map detailing this. Mexico Veracruz I came to my office early on Wednesday (31-oct), and left with Regina around 10AM towards Veracruz. We agreed to meet there with Moni and Pooka, who would take the night bus, and continue together. Crossing Mexico City proved to be the longest obstacle We arrived to Veracruz already past 3PM, and spent a nice evening walking down the center and port of the city. Veracruz port can still be seen as part of central Mexico; I knew the road quite well. Veracruz San Andr s Tuxtla Catemaco San Cristobal de las Casas We met with our friends at the iconic Gran Caf de la Parroquia at 6:30AM. Had a nice breakfast with coffee, and by 7:30 we were heading south-west. The reason to have a road trip was to get to know the route, to enjoy the countryside So, given we "only" had to make 650Km this day, we took the non-toll road A narrow path stretching along the coastal plains of Veracruz, until Acayucan. Doing so, we also saved some money, as the equivalent toll road is around MX$300 (~US$25)! Veracruz is a hot state. We ended up all sweaty and tired by 19:00, when we reached San Cristobal. We had agreed not to drive at night, due to security issues, but fortunately there was quite a bit of traffic both ways between Tuxtla Guti rrez (Chiapas State capital, around 1hr from San Cristobal, where darkness got us) and our destination, so we carried on. Now, San Cristobal is a high city, almost as high as Mexico City (2100m), and being more humid, it was quite chilly. We went for a walk, and were convinced that at a later time, we had to stay for several days there. The city is beautiful, the region is breath-taking, there is a lot of great handicrafts as well, and it's overall very cheap. Really lovely place. San Cristobal de las Casas Cd. Cuauht moc La Mesilla Guatemala Once again, this day started early. We woke up ready to leave at 7AM, and not earlier because the hotel's parking didn't open earlier. After a very quick visit to San Cristobal downtown, to take some photos that were not right the night before, we took the road to Comit n, stopping just for some tamales de bola y chipil n for breakfast. Central Chiapas is almost continuously populated, differing from most of my experience in Mexico. It is all humid, and has some very beautiful landscapes. We passed Comit n, which is a much larger city than what we expected, went downhill after La Trinitaria, crossed a plain, and continued until hills started taking over again. We stopped in a very chaotic, dirty place: Just accross the border, where Ciudad Cuauht moc becomes La Mesilla. This border was basically what we expected: There is no half-official place to exchange money, so we had to buy quetzales from somebody who offered them on the street, at MX$2 per Q1 (where the real exchange should be around 1.50 to 1). While on the road, I was half-looking for exchange posts in Comit n and onwards, and found none (and being a festive day, they would probably be closed anyway). But we were expecting this, after all, and exchanged just the basic minimum: MX$600 (US$50, which by magic became Q300, US$40). The tramit consists of:
  • Spraying the car against diseases (which has a cost of Q18)
  • Each of us has to go through migration. Note, in case you cross this border: We didn't expressly cross Mexican migration, so officially there was no record of us going out. Be sure to go through migration to avoid problems at re-entry!
    Migration has no cost.
  • Customs. As we were entering by car, I had to purchase a permit for circulation. I don't remember the exact quote, but it was around Q150, and the permit is valid for 90 days.
  • That's it! Welcome to Guatemala!
La Mesilla is in Guatemala's Huehuetenango Department, and from all of the Departments we crossed until Guatemala city (Huehuetenango, Quetzaltenango, Totonicap n, Solol , Chimaltenango, Sacatep quez and Guatemala), this is the largest one. Huehuetenango is home to the Cuchumatanes mountain ridge. We found beautiful, really steep, really fertile mountains. It is plainly amazing: Mountains over 60 , and quite often full with agricultural use Even at their steepest points! The CA-1 highway is, in general, in very good shape. There are however many (many, many) speed bumps (or topes, in Mexican terminology. Or t mulos in Guatemalan), at least a couple at every village we crossed, not always painted. The road is narrow and quite winding; it follows river streams for most of the way. We feared it would be in much worse shape, from what we have heard, but during the whole way we found only three points where the road was unusable due to landslides and an alternative road was always in place when we needed it. After Totonicap n, the narrow road becomes a wide (four lane) highway. Don't let that fool you! It still goes through the center of every village along the road, so it's really not meant for speeding. Also, even though the pavement is in very good condition, it is really steep quite often. It is not the easiest road to drive, but it's (again) by far not as bad as we expected. We arrived to Guatemala City as dawn was falling, and got promptly lost. Guatemala has a very strange organization scheme: The city is divided in several zones, laid out in a swirl-like fashion. East-west roads are called Calle and North-south roads are called Avenida (except for zona 4, I think, where they are diagonal, and some are Rutas while the others are V as). I won't go into too much detail). Thing is, many people told us it's a foolproof design, and people from different countries understand the system perfectly. We didn't... At least not when we arrived. We got quite lost, and it took us around one hour to arrive to our hotel, at almost 19:00 Almost 12 hours since we left San Cristobal. Went for a quick dinner, and then waited for our friends to arrive after the first day of work of ECSL, which we missed completely. And, of course, we were quite tired, so we didn't stay up much longer. Antigua Guatemala On Saturday, ECSL's activities started after 14:00 so we almost-kidnapped Wences, the local organization lead, and took him to show us around Antigua Guatemala. Antigua was the capital of Guatemala until an earthquake destroyed it in the 1770s; the capital was moved to present-day Guatemala city, but Antigua was never completely abandoned. Today, it is a world heritage site, a beautiful city, where we could/should have stayed for several days. But we were there for the conference, so we were in Antigua just a couple of hours, and headed back to Guatemala. Word of caution: Going from Guatemala to Antigua, we went down via the steepest road I have ever driven. Again, a real four-lane highway... but quite scary! The main focus for this post is to give some roadtrip advice to potential readers... So, this time around, I won't give much detail regarding ECSL. It was quite interesting, we had some very good discussions... but it would take me too much space to talk about it! The road back: Guatemala Tec n Um n; Cd. Hidalgo Arriaga So, about the road back: Yes, we just spent three days getting to Guatemala City. We were there only for ~36 hours. And... We needed to be here by Tuesday morning no matter what. So, Sunday at noon we said goodbye to our good friends in ECSL and started the long way back. To get to know more of Guatemala, we went back by the CA-2 highway, which goes via the coastal plains Not close to the Pacific ocean, which we didn't get to see at all, but not through the mountains. To get to CA-2, we took CA-9 from Guatemala. If I am not mistaken, this is the only toll road in Guatemala (at least, the only we used, and we used some pretty good highways!) It is not expensive; I don't remember right now, but must have been around Q20 (US$3). Went South past Palin and until CA-2, just outside Escuintla city, and headed West. All of Escuintla and Suchitep quez it is again a four lane highway; somewhere in Retalhueu it becomes a two lane highway. We were strongly advised not to take this road at night because, as the population density is significantly lower than in CA-1, it can get lonely at times And there are several reports of robberies. We did feel the place much less populated, but saw nothing suspicious in any way. Something important: There are almost no speedbumps in CA-2! The terrain stayed quite flat and easy as we crossed Quetzaltenango, and only in San Marcos we found some interesting hills and a very strong rain that would intermitetntly accompany us for the rest of the ride. So, we finally arrived to the border city of Tec n Um n at around 16:30 Approximately four hours after leaving the capital. The Tec n Um n Cd. Hidalgo cities and border pass are completely different from the disorderly and dirty Cd. Cuauht moc La Mesilla ones. The city of Tec n Um n could be just a nice town anywhere in the country, it does not feel aggressive as most border cities I have seen in our continent. We stopped to eat at El pollo campero and headed to the border. In the Mexican side, we also saw a very well consolidated, big and ordered migration area. Migration officers were very kind and helpful As we left Cd. Cuauht moc, Regina didn't get a stamp of leaving Mexico, so technically she was ilegally out of the country (as she is not a national... They didn't care about the rest of us). The tramit to fix this was easy, simple, straightforward. We only paid for the fumigation again (MX$60, US$5), and were allowed to leave. Anyway, we crossed the border. There is a ~30Km narrow road between Cd. Hidalgo and Tapachula, but starting in Tapachula we went on Northwards via a very good, four lane and very straight highway. Even though we had agreed not to drive at night... Well, we were quite hurried and still too far from Mexico City, so we decided to push it for three more hours, following the coastline until the city of Arriaga, almost at the border between Chiapas and Oaxaca. Found a little hotel to sleep some hours and collapsed. Word of warning: This road (from Tapachula to Arriaga) is also known for its robberies. We saw only one suspicious thing: Two guys were pushing up their motorcycle, from which they had apparently fallen. We didn't stop, as they looked healthy and not much in need of help, but later on talked about this Even though this was at night, they were not moving as if they had just crashed; nothing was scratched, not the motorcycle and not their clothes. That might have been an attempt to mug us (or whoever stopped by). This highway is very lonely, and the two directions are separated by a wall of vegetation, so nobody would have probably seen us were we to stop for some minutes. Be aware if you use this road! The trip comes to an end: Arriaga Niltepec Istmo C rdoba M xico The next (last, finally!) day, we left at 6:30AM. After driving somewhat over one hour, we arrived to Niltepec, where a group of taxi drivers had the highway closed as a protest against their local government's tolerance of mototaxis. We evaluated going back to Arriaga and continue via the Tuxtla Guti rrez highway, but that would have been too long. We had a nice breakfast of tlayudas (which resulted in Pooka getting an alergic reaction shortly afterwards) and, talking with people here and there, were told about an alternative route by an agricultural road that surrounds the blockade. So, we took this road the best way we could, and after probably 1hr of driving at 20Km/h, finally came back to the main road. We planned on crossing the isthmus using the Acayucan-Juchit n road We were amazed at the La Ventosa ("the windy") area, where we crossed a huge eolic plant for electricity generation, so of course we got our good share of photos. From then onwards, not much more worth mention. Crossed the isthmus via a quite secondary road in not too good shape (although there is a lot of machinery, and the road will much likely improve in the next few months/years), then took the toll freeway along Veracruz until C rdoba. We stopped for a (delilcious and revigorizing!) cup of coffee in Hotel Zeballos, where Agust n de Iturbide signed with Viceroy Juan O'Donoj the treaties that granted Mexico the independence. Traveller, beware: When crossing between Puebla and Veracruz, there is a steep slope of almost 1000m where , you will almost always (except if it's close to noon) find very thick fog; taking the highway from C rdoba, this is in the region known as Cumbres de Maltrata. We had the usual fog, and just as we left it, a thin but constant rain that went on with us up until we got home. Crossed Puebla state with no further eventualities, and arrived to Pooka and Moni's house by 22:00. Less than one hour later, Regina and me arrived home as well. This was four days ago... and I have finally finished writing it all down ;-) Hope you find this useful, or if not, at least entertaining! If you read this post in my blog, you will find many pictures taken along the trip below (Well, if you are reading the right page, not in the general blog index...). If you are reading from a planet or other syndication service... Well, come to the blog! Dreamhost woes Oh, and... Yes, it sometimes happens: My blog is hosted at Dreamhost. This means that usually it works correctly... But sometimes, specially when many people request many nontrivial pages, it just gives an error. If you get an error, reload once or twice... Or until your patience manages ;-)

7 November 2012

Russell Coker: Rape Apology and LCA 2011

After a lecture at LCA 2011 included some inappropriate slides there was a long discussion on several mailing lists about the issues related to this. In February 2011 I wrote a blog post debunking some of the bogus arguments in question [1]. Of course the matter didn t end there, at LCA 2012 I was drawn into a few debates IRL about the issues, as long as there are more than a few men who want such porny pictures used in LCA talks the issue can t be properly resolved. The most serious aspect of the discussion in question is that of rape apology, the bad ideas that were presented have a real impact on the way people behave, merely making public statements saying that something is OK is going to increase the incidence of it happening. The Geek Feminism Wiki has a good page summarising the issue [2]. The Finally Feminism 101 post about Rape Culture is also worth reading in this context [3]. Recently Valeria Aurora wrote a post for the Ada Initiaive blog about the rape apology issue and how the community needs to act to prevent such behavior [4]. This inspired Matthew Garrett to write about the issue and state the position that In the absence of an apology and explanation from Ted, I ll be interacting with him to the bare minimum that I m compelled to as a result of my job [5]. I agree with Matthew s article, everything he writes is logical and I believe that it is all for the benefit of the FOSS community as a whole. I think that most guys have quietly defriended guys who are rape-positive in the past (for example when I was 12 I refused to play D&D with boys who were raping NPCs). But blogging about it, explaining the problem, and giving the offender the possibility to reform is a good idea and it s something that should be done more often. Sam Varghese has written about the issue for ITWire [6]. He has taken the wrong approach to this, he specifically claims that Matthew Garrett has kicked off what could be a damaging episode . I think that Matthew s approach is necessary and the situation demands it. If Matthew had been on holidays and I had read the TAI post earlier then I would probably have written a blog post which Sam could have described in a similar manner. So I don t think that Matthew kicked anything off (I think that someone had to do it). I also don t think that this has to be damaging it depends on how everyone reacts. On her personal blog Valerie says When I first read Ts o s comments, I couldn t sleep for two nights. I wanted to throw up every time I thought about it. I was furious and frightened at the same time. Every time I think about this, even now, I literally have nightmares. I can t bear the thought of working with him even over email, much less attending the same conferences [7]. I don t think that any of us who are seriously involved in the FOSS community have a way of avoiding this issue, allowing Valerie and other women who have the same understanding of the situation to go through that without any support is not a neutral action. I think we need to consider whether someone who gives other delegates and speakers nightmares should be welcome to attend a conference. Valerie s post makes sense to me and I can understand why she doesn t want to associated with Ted, my understanding of the issue isn t important or even required, I merely note this because I m sure that there are lots of readers who will ignore anything that a woman might say. ITWire has a follow-up article with Ted s response, Ted fails to address all the issues and seems to think that the people who disagree with him merely don t appreciate his nuance [8]. The thing is that the issue of the incidence of rape was raised in discussion to consider the probability that rape survivors would have been in the audience for the Mark Pesce talk in question. None of Ted s claims indicate that rape could be rare enough that a crowd of 500+ random people could be expected not to have multiple rape survivors so his comments weren t even relevant to the discussion. Ted seems unwilling to try to understand the position of all the people who disagree with him.

6 November 2012

Stefano Zacchiroli: bits from the DPL for October 2012

Freshly baked, bits from the DPL for October 2012.
Dear Project Members,
another month, another periodic report of DPL-ish activities, this time for October 2012. Highlights Debian on public clouds I've spent quite some time to improve Debian presence on the so called "public clouds". Following up to an inquiry of a fellow developer, I've reached out to Microsoft to investigate the possibility of having Debian as an option on Windows Azure. Around the same time, I've been approached by Amazon to have Debian as an option on the AWS marketplace. In both cases, we will need to overcome challenges of various kinds, at the technical (e.g. image preparation), bureaucratic (e.g. terms of the agreements we'll need to accept to be present), and political (e.g. chain of trust, platform freedom) levels. Up to now, discussions have been going on mostly in private, simply because they started as 1-to-1 inquiries and continued from there, but there is no good reason they should remain so. Hence, thanks to the listmasters and in particular Alexander Wirt, we have setup the new debian-cloud mailing list. If you are interested in these topics please join the list. For both Azure and AWS there is good progress on the technical part already; summaries will soon be posted on the list so that we are all on the same page. Similarly, I'll post there status reports about the bureaucratic requirements. And of course there is no reason to focus on specific clouds, if you'd like to support others and are willing to put some work to that end, please join the list and let us know. DPL helpers meeting I've already bothered you at least in my last platform and DebConf13 talk with observations about how non-scalable the DPL job is. After having collected applications of DPL helpers for a while, I've finally sat down and tried to put those applications into good use. The idea is simple: to the extend of possible, we should shift from a one-man-band job to a more "board-like" job, with people sharing an agenda, a list of outstanding tasks, and public communication. We have started slowly, setting up the #debian-dpl IRC channel and running periodic bi-weekly meetings there. You can find the meeting minutes and full logs at the usual place. We are still ramping up, so we don't have yet "fancy" stuff like a mailing list or an issue tracker entry, but they're in the working. Some of the outcome are starting to show, too (e.g. as part of recent discussions on 3rd party orphaning, or on our inbound trademark policy, or even in the forthcoming DMCA policy to make mentors.d.n an official project service). It's an experiment and a big challenge. I'm, for one thing, not yet convinced there are enough people interested in sharing the load of DPL duties (that look boring, for many tech geeks) in the long run. But I'm also convinced that the sustainability of the Debian organization model depends on this, so it's worth trying. If you're interested in the challenge and willing to volunteer some of your time, please join us on #debian-dpl . I'll take care of keeping the project informed of further evolution, in particular about the communication channels we will pick for day to day activities and accountability. Events / public communication I've spent most of my remaining Debian time in October attending events on behalf of the Project, in particular: On the topic of public communication, I've also coordinated with the press team an answer to a press inquiry about Secure Boot (which has become part of this article), and happily vouched for the Ubuntu charity marathon, adding some Debian challenges to it. Delegations As largely overdue matters, I've finalized the delegations mentioned last month, namely: FTP masters, New Members Front Desk, and Policy editors. Assets and legal stuff Miscellanea Now let's all go back to RC Bug squashing to make Wheezy a reality. SPAM-my link of the month is http://udd.debian.org/bugs.cgi and its various "views" at the bottom of the page. Cheers.
PS the day-to-day activity log for October 2012 is available at the usual place master:/srv/leader/news/bits-from-the-DPL.txt.201210

Russ Allbery: Review: Cerebus

Review: Cerebus, by Dave Sim
Series: Cerebus #1
Publisher: Aardvark-Vanaheim
Copyright: August 1987
Printing: July 2003
ISBN: 0-919359-08-6
Format: Graphic novel
Pages: 546
Cerebus is something of a legend in comics. Begun in December of 1977 by Dave Sim, it was one of the first entirely independent, self-published comics in a field dominated by the large work-for-hire companies like Marvel and DC. It ran for 300 issues and nearly 27 years and became one of the most influential independent comic books of all time, in part due to Sim's outspoken views in favor of creator rights and his regular use of the editorial pages in Cerebus issues to air those views. This collection (the first "phonebook") collects issues 1 through 25, with one of the amazing wrap-around covers that makes all of the phonebooks so beautiful (possibly partly by later Cerebus collaborator Gerhard, although if so it's uncredited so far as I can tell). Cerebus reliably has some of the best black-and-white art you will ever see in comics. There is some debate over where to start with Cerebus, and a faction that, for good reasons, argues for starting with the second phonebook (High Society). While these first twenty-five issues do introduce the reader to a bunch of important characters (Elrod, Lord Julius, Jaka, Artemis Roach, and Suenteus Po, for example), all those characters are later reintroduced and nothing that happens here is hugely vital for the overall story. It's also quite rough, starting as Conan parody with almost no depth. The first half or so of this collection features lots of short stories with little or no broader significance, and the early ones are about little other than Cerebus's skills and fighting abilities. That said, when reading the series, I like to start at the beginning. It is nice to follow the characters from their moment of first introduction, and it's delightful to watch Sim's ability grow (surprisingly quickly) through the first few issues. Cerebus #1 is bad: crude, simplistic artwork, almost nothing in the way of a story, and lots of purple narration. But flipping forward even to Cerebus #6 (the first appearance of Jaka), one sees a remarkable difference. By Cerebus #7, Cerebus looks like himself, the plot is getting more complex, and Sim is clearly hitting his stride. And, by the end of this collection, the art has moved from crude past competent and into truly beautiful in places. It's one of the few black-and-white comics where I never miss color. The detailed line work is more enjoyable than I think any coloring could be. The strength of Cerebus as an ongoing character slowly emerges from behind the parody. What I like the most about Cerebus is that he's neither a predestined victor (apart from the early issues that follow the Conan model most closely) nor a pure loner who stands apart from the world. He gets embroiled in political affairs, but almost always for his own reasons (primarily wealth). He has his own moral code, but it's fluid and situational; it's the realistic muddle of impulse and vague principle that most of us fall back on in our everyday life, which is remarkably unlike the typical moral code in comics (or even fiction in general). And while he is in one sense better and more powerful than anyone else in the story, that doesn't mean Cerebus gets what he wants. Most stories here end up going rather poorly for him, forcing daring escapes or frustrating cutting of losses. Sim quickly finds a voice for Cerebus that's irascible, wise, practical, and a bit world-weary, as well as remarkably unflappable. He's one of the best protagonists in comics, and that's already clear by the end of this collection. Parody is the focus of these first issues, which is a mixed bag. The early issues are fairly weak sword-and-sorcery parody (particularly Red Sonja, primarily a vehicle for some tired sexist jokes) and worth reading only for the development in Sim's art style and the growth of Cerebus as a unique voice. Sim gets away from straight parody for the middle of the collection, but then makes an unfortunate return for the final few issues, featuring parodies of Man-Thing and X-Men that I thought were more forced than funny. You have to have some tolerance for this, and (similar to early Pratchett) a lot of it isn't as funny as the author seems to think it is. That said, three of Sim's most brilliant ongoing characters are parodies, just ones that are mixed and inserted into the "wrong" genres in ways that bring them alive. Elrod of Melvinbone, a parody of Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone who speaks exactly like Foghorn Leghorn, should not work and yet does. He's the source of the funniest moments in this collection. His persistant treatment of Cerebus as a kid in a bunny suit shouldn't be as funny as it is, but it reliably makes me laugh each time I re-read this collection. Lord Julius is a straight insertion of Groucho Marx who really comes into his own in the next collection, High Society, but some of the hilarious High Society moments are foreshadowed here. And Artemis Roach, who starts as a parody of Batman and will later parody a huge variety of comic book characters, provides several delightful moments with Cerebus as straight man. I'm not much of a fan of parody, but I still think Cerebus is genuinely funny. High Society is definitely better, but I think one would miss some great bits by skipping over the first collection. Much of what makes it work is the character of Cerebus, who is in turn a wonderful straight man for Sim's wilder characters and an endless source of sharp one-liners. It's easy to really care about and root for Cerebus, even when he's being manipulative and amoral, because he's so straightforward and forthright about it. The world Sim puts him into is full of chaos, ridiculousness, and unfairness, and Cerebus is the sort of character to put his head down, make a few sarcastic comments, and then get on with it. It's fun to watch. One final note: I've always thought the "phonebook" collections were one of Sim's best ideas. Unlike nearly all comic book collections, a Cerebus phonebook provides enough material to be satisfying and has always felt like a good value for the money. I wish more comic book publishers would learn from Sim's example and produce larger collections that aren't hardcover deluxe editions (although Sim has an admitted advantage from not having to reproduce color). Followed by High Society. Rating: 7 out of 10

5 November 2012

Joachim Breitner: Somewhere in Israel, someone printed 50 copies

Today, a small package was waiting for me at my door step, containing 52 printed and stapled copies of a paper that I wrote a while ago. To be more precise, two years ago, when I submitted the main results of my math Diploma Thesis to the Israel Journal of Mathematics. Next year at christmas eve, it was accepted and published online. And now, it seems, it finally went into print. So my paper now has page numbers and I have this pile of printouts that outnumbers the set of possibly interested readers by four dozens or more, and they would probably just download the online version instead of asking for this print out. This seems all very anachronistic to me.

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