So I know, I know. There are a lot of annoying memes circulating on the net/facebook/[pick your spot] and well, sometimes the best thing to do is stop the damn thing by ignoring its existence. But I have to say, I have completely, totally and absolutely have loved reading the 25 things notes on facebook. It just provides a window into the extraordinary character that emerges from the collection of mundane events/likes/pleasures that make up people s lives. Reading them took me back to elementary school when and where I was an avid slam-booker. I have very fond of collecting and reading the tidbits of thoughts and information people left behind in my notebook. What also struck me about these recent 25 thingie notes is how odd or not as interesting, I think, it would be to have them recited to you over coffee or at dinner. Now I could be wrong here but I think the list-like quality would just not fly in a conversational context. A few facts with more embellishment would work but a whole string of thoughts would just sound flat and out of place. A reminder that format does matter for engendering certain types of knowledge. So here is my list.. 1. I looked like a boy for the first three years of my life (but a cute one, I think).
2. I love dogs so much that I often think that if I had a criminal streak, I would be a dog nabber.
3. I would routinely bring home dogs from the street when I was a kid. Many of them ended up dead after being hit by cars (they liked to return to the street and this only happened to 2 of them).
4. My favorite concert was Jimmy Cliff in a parking lot. There was lots of rain and lots of weed.
5. I like have a penchant for tall men. My mom claims it was because I lacked a strong father figure in my early childhood years. Who knows if that is the case.
6. I knew the instant that I took an anthropology class I wanted to be an anthropologist. I guess I made it happen (and it was one of the few moments of clarity in life).
7. I started the first environmental club in my high school and my car was called the recycle-mobile because there were always cans in the back seat.
8. I love the ocean; swimming, snorkeling, diving, sailing, and just watching it, though the cold ocean is not always by cup of tea.
9. I had terrible insomnia for a year and slept for a good chunk of it on a couch. I like the snuggle feeling I got from sleeping against a back.
10. I am very indecisive person. It is annoying as i tend to worry a lot about whether I made the right decision.
11. I was a shy kid and barely talked until meeting my best friend in kindergarten, Yael
12. I also failed the psychological test to get into school but my mom managed to get me in anyway.
13. I often wonder if I would have been a nun if I had lived prior to 1900s to escape various domestic obligations. I think it might have been fun to be a nun.. Fun to be a nun also has a nice ring to it.

14. I am currently struggling with an Etsy addiction and the UPS delivery guy asked if delivering packages would be a daily occurrence.. I just find all the stuff amazing and it brings me back to my artist days when I used to paint and spend a heck of a lot of time in the darkroom.
15. I have recurrent issues with nausea and have been hospitalized for it a few times. It is gut wrenching and really uncomfortable when it happens.
16. When I left NYC in 1997 I thought i would never come back. I am here now and quite happy.
17. I was obsessed with Ultimate Frisbee for many man years. I played more than I studied and finally gave up as it was ruining (or perhaps ruined?) my neck. I still miss it.
18. I LOVE tostones and would eat them everyday if they were not, you know, so bad for you.
19. I have been using IRC for 7 years and consider some of my best friends to come from there.
20. Some folks have asked how I became interested in politics and I am pretty sure it was Doonesbury.
21. When I was like 4 we went to some fair and I swore that I almost got flung off some rickety ride but this could be totally wrong. It was really frightening.
22. The coldest night of my life was spent in Los Nevados, Venezuela and the scariest car ride I ever took was leaving Los Nevados in a jeep and something that resembled a road.
23. A few sucker fish once tried to stick on me while I was doing a decompression stop after a dive. My dive buddy smacked the fish, which had devil faces, with the regulator, saving me from what would have been a really sort of sucky situation.
24. I am trying to learn how to surf and am really sorry that I did not do so when a teenager since I don t exactly have the time to really learn.
25. Since I am not sure how to end, I will do so with a

I ve so far been going through the list of projects that were done last year (part 1, part 2) in a somewhat dry fashion so I m going to make a little pause here and tell where I m going from with these posts. As I went through the 2008 Summer of Code at Debian, I moved from being a nearly total outsider student to something more of a developer. I ve been contributing to Aptitude since the end of the Summer of Code (well, trying to find time to contribute more, as with many people..) and will be going to FOSDEM. I can t say I m an insider yet: I haven t met a lot of people, most people have no idea who I am, I ve been active here for, like 9 months and I m not even in new-maintainer yet (though I plan to apply when I feel I ll have contributed significantly to Debian). The Student point of view See, I m a student in Computer Science. I use free software, I d like to participate but it s intimidating and you never know where to start. You know the drill. Then comes the Google Summer of Code. Let s review its stated goals, as per its FAQ:

Google Summer of Code has several goals:

• Get more open source code created and released for the benefit of all;
• Inspire young developers to begin participating in open source development;
• Help open source projects identify and bring in new developers and committers;
• Provide students in Computer Science and related fields the opportunity to do work related to their academic pursuits (think flip bits, not burgers );
• Give students more exposure to real-world software development scenarios (e.g., distributed development, software licensing questions, mailing-list etiquette).

I m going to start with these goals and provide some of my opinions in something of a candid way. Inspire young developers to begin participating in open source development I have been playing with the idea of making a GUI for Aptitude ever since I dropped Synaptic, about 2 months into its use. It felt like when I bought a high-school required Texas Instruments TI-83+, that I dropped for a TI-89 within a month. Since back in 2005, every time I would see someone using Synaptic, I would pitch Aptitude as a better tool. The main reason for not doing so was that Aptitude was scary-looking. See, it s a lot of blocky text and wacky colors. With life and cool stuff like CPGE, I never had time to really code so I left it at that. In 2008, for the first time I was free the whole summer and so, I tried to get into the Summer of Code program and into Debian. Actually, it wasn t the first try. One popular way to get acquainted with Debian is to go to wnpp, adopt a package (new or orphaned) and find a mentor to upload it. In January 2008, I did try to package a set of geocaching tools I used at that time. But I didn t find a mentor to upload it. I didn t try very hard though and the package had some minor issues anyway. I reckon that Debian-mentor is a good idea to bring in new Debian Maintainers but the whole process is still quite technical. It is true that the minimal technical level for good packaging is not trivial in itself and the process should filter out unserious people, but the technicality curve could be adjusted to be more welcoming. I think the Debian website could be improved in this area (ok, it s a quite long-standing bug). Holger Levsen mentioned the way Fedora and Sugar presented avenues of collaboration to prospective developers. The crux here is that it should feel much easier to identify areas to get involved into and who to contact if needed. Help open source projects identify and bring in new developers and committers Actually, it would rather be the other way around: help students identify and integrate into open source projects. For the Summer of Code, I only postulated at two organizations, Debian and Freenet (the ones working on an anonymous darknet, remember ?). I got accepted at both and ultimately chose Debian (was my first choice from the beginning). The Debian developers community is quite unique in the way it is very decentralized, independent and fluid. There are teams in some areas (Kernel, KDE, Translation, Edu, Publicity, whatever) but much of what makes up Debian is done by individual developers working on their own. The downside of this is that for a newcomer, it s a little off-putting. Organized teams are not the way all things are done within Debian so there are often no smaller circle of people one gets to know. Going to Debian meetings and not knowing most of the people is a little intimidating. Keeping up with all the faces is a little hard too :). Many other organizations participated into the Summer of Code and many would feel arguably different. Many may be more corporate-like, more hierarchical, more centralized. I preferred Debian because it was less formal in its structure. I felt that I didn t want to get into something that looked too much like work with supervisors and the like. It is indeed how it felt, there were no one up there to decide what we had to do. We were quite independent. I can say that the Summer of Code is quite a good way to get a feeling of how a particular organization works in the inside. Give students more exposure to real-world software development scenarios As said earlier, many parts of Debian are independent, which is a result of the work separation through packages. In my work on Aptitude, it is a pity that I didn t have to interact a lot with other members of the Debian community. Aptitude talks with the rest of the Debian packaging ecosystem through mature library interfaces so there s not much need to ask questions beyond them, and even more so because my Daniel Burrows, my mentor and developer of Aptitude participated in their development. Also, I was working on bringing a graphical interface to it, so I didn t have to modify a lot of core code that interacted with the outside world. Despite this, I still met a few people interested with future developments in the area of package managers. One example is Enrico Zini who pushed his work with Xapian APT Index. Over the summer, my mentor integrated packages search through Xapian which was interesting with the expanded possibilities of a graphical interface such as search as you type, drop down suggestions and so on. Because of the short duration of the Summer of Code, most projects can t complete a full development cycle. The proposed work in my proposal was quite imposing. In the end, I managed to produce an (probably not even) alpha quality version of a graphical interface. My branch (if I remember correctly) was merged into the main trunk at the end of the summer and a version landed in Experimental at the end of the year. One aspect that I missed was beta-testing feedback. During summer, only a handful people popped up on the mailing-list giving feedback on the GUI I was writing, although I knew through stats on my mercurial repository that dozens of people cloned it and followed it. Debian has no testing team , or any kind of semi-organized group of people who try stuff, which would be very useful to have an idea of how well I was doing. So, did the Summer of Code at Debian give me real-world software development scenarios ? Not really in my case but by staying longer into Debian, I think caught up a little with that. Here is some advice for the future Summer of Code student at Debian:

• the work of a Linux distribution might look a little nebulous and mysterious but the reality is that Debian does a very large range of development work: web development (debexpo), user application development (aptitude-gtk), hardware interaction (Debian NAS), developer infrastructure (lintian) or even quite theoretical stuff (debgraph) there is really a lot to choose from.
• Debian is not a nanny-project: you will not be managed, you re free, but you re on your own, be prepared
• don t hesitate to contact anybody working in areas you re interested in: look for packages maintainers, search mailing lists and wiki, look for debconf/fosdem/wherever talks by Debian developers. Developers will be happy to redirect you to the right people.
• choose something that can be reasonably finished by summer s end. Also take into account release freezes.
• be sure to contact anyone involved into the area you re working on: they will try to make it easier to merge your work in
• be sure to contact anyone involved into the area you re working on: it s ok to ask for help
• publicize your work: the Debian Project News will be happy to take your press releases , write a blog and get included on the planet, go on #debian-devel and #debian-soc, go to conferences and meetings
• you re not alone, interact with the other Summer of Code students, try out their code, give them feedback
• Communicate, nobody will kill you if you say something stupid
• Communicate, don t be afraid if you run into problems
• Communicate, clear enough ?

To conclude, despite all the difficulties, I would say that the Summer of Code at Debian was awesome. Although Debian is quite different from many other organizations, it was a very fruitful experience. And that s why I m still here. Coming next is the rest of the projects reviews and a more concise and substantive list of recommendations for the handling of the next Summer of Code at Debian. And of course, see you at FOSDEM.

Christian, you forgot my (not so) recent hackergochi redo :-) Anyway, the picture I took of you back in Argentina isn't great hackergochi material; it cuts off part of your chin and the top of your head, which will get you a very very ugly hackergochi if you try to use it. Trust me been there, done that. In addition, it's very likely that you like the picture because of the somewhat dark background, even if only subconsciously; by turning it into a hackergochi, you cut out that background, so the appeal of the picture gets lost somewhat. Since you won't be at FOSDEM, I can't offer to take another picture of you. And since the picture you refer to is mostly great because of the lighting (which will no doubt be completely different, it freezing right now over here and everything) and the lens I used (which wasn't mine, but belonged to someone else; I just borrowed it for a few hours), I seriously doubt that I'll be able to get a picture that's in any way similar to the one you seem to like so much. Having said that, taking a good hackergochi picture isn't too hard; just think of a few basic things while taking it. If you're not happy with any of the pictures you already have, then take a new one! The following might help you with that:

• You'll need a halfway decent camera. Webcams probably won't do, but your el cheapo digital camera will likely cut it.
• Good lighting. Try to use sunlight if at all possible; at any rate, try to avoid the use of a flash (except if you have one of those extremely expensive flashes that will simulate sunlight, but you probably don't).
• Turn yourself so that the sun casts some interesting shadows. Do not move at a 90-degree angle, because such long shadows are not interesting anymore; Something like 45-degree would probably be nice. At any rate, make sure the sun is not in the background of the picture, unless you want to see a black hackergochi.
• Frame the picture well. The more pixels you have for your head, the better. Make sure your head and neck fill as much as possible of the picture's frame, but do not zoom in too much you do not want to have any part of your head and/or neck even touch the edge of the frame.
• Find a bland background. Something monochromatic is the best; think 'bluescreen'. Make sure you get a wall that is not near the colortones of human flesh.

After that, just cut out the head and add a dropshadow. Even if you're not very familiar with The Gimp, that shouldn't take you a very long time; andn The Gimp is fun enough to play with anyway. Hints: Look for 'scissors select'; the dropshadow is in 'filters' -> 'light and shadow' -> 'dropshadow' Good luck :-)

Last week I reported that 95% of British Residential ISPs Censor - but I think I m OK, so I d like to quickly update on what I ve seen happen since then:-

• My question to the Phone Coop s election candidates has gone unanswered - not sure why
• I asked 3 how to switch off IWF filtering on Tuesday - first call-back on Wednesday couldn t do anything except escalate it. I m still waiting for further reply at the time of writing.
• Cockspiracy reports no good news from Virgin Media - you can have porn on your cable TV but not on your cable internet, OK?
• Digital-Scurf Ramblings shows Daniel Silverstone accusing Virgin Media of being unfit for purpose, as I understand it
• EFF: Internet Censors Must Be Accountable For The Things They Break
• Looks like a positive result with the Aussie plan to censor Web in shreds
• I read the preface to Animal Farm: The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. because of a general tacit agreement that it wouldn t do to mention that particular fact. George Orwell, 1945. Still current in 2008?

Two months since my last status update of my initial guess for Lenny s release date, time for an update: I don t know what the current official release target for Lenny is, but I still think we re heading towards Spring/Summer 2009. The last related mail on -devel-announce is from October 2008 from Alexander who hopes that we ll release Lenny at least by the end of 2008. I ve read an article with an interview with Steve McIntyre somewhere on The Register where he said:

Bastian s being a little bit pessimistic based on the data he s looking at, but as far as I know, he hasn t spoken to any of the release team. As far as Lenny goes, we re almost there, he told The Register.

That interview was in the beginning of October. It doesn t bother me too much, that we release late. What bothers me is that we don t correct our estimated release dates even when it s obvious that there is no way we will release in time. It s really sad that we keep our users in the dark about the fact that we can t release in time until it s already too late. I believe many users would appreciate if we d honestly say: We don t know when we release, but currently we have x RC bugs open and looking at the last releases we think it will take roughly n months to fix them and release, instead of the good old We release when it s ready . Another important point: Unstable is frozen for almost five months now. If you buy a current laptop, chances are hight that it might not fully work with Debian bleeding edge unstable, since it s horrible outdated. Some of the newer stuff can be obtained from experimental if you re brave enough, but if you re not, unstable is getting more and more unattractive compared to other distribution s current versions. This is really something we should try to fix after we released Lenny.

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

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

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

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

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

You remember the bug sprint, don't you? I've already argued how nice the idea was, being a stereotypical example of how in Debian efficiency and fun can (and often must) go together. Well, Joss' cookies have been delivered to my office last Wednesday, unfortunately I wasn't there!!!, due to my participation first in the Debian QA Meeting in Extremadura, and then another academic workshop in Amsterdam. Sadly, I had to "delegate" the task of cookie tasting to other fellow Debian-ers which happen to work with me. Today I've finally got back to my office, and to much of my surprise, 5 cookies were still there waiting for me. In spite of the bad previsions about their health status after a week, they were delicious: simple biscuits, not too sweet, with walnut in pieces, and dark chocolate. So long Joss, and thanks for all the fish cookies.

I recently purchased a short story from Fictionwise, which was not DRM’ed, so I could easily get it into a form where I could read it on my Sony eReader. Thanks to that short story, I was introduced to an author, and a character, which I found very engaging. When I decided to find out more about the character, I found that the author had written two additional short stories, and three additional novels many years ago, but has since stopped writing any more books involving that character. Furthermore, the novels have gone out of print, and are only available from amazon.com as used books. Unfortunately, I travel a lot. So much so, that one of the few times that I have time to read is when I’m traveling. And I really dislike having to haul dead-tree versions of my favorite novels around; they take up far too much weight and space in my carry-on luggage. Unfortunately, these out-of-print novels were published by a Neanderthal Publishing company who hasn’t made any of the books available in ebook format, DRM’ed or no. Grumpy, I searched on Internet, and found all three novels were easily available for free download — in a pirated form, of course. Should I download them and convert them into a form which would allow me to read them on my Sony eReader? Well, according to Russell Davis, former chair (and now president of the Science Fiction Writer’s Association) of the SFWA’s Copyright Committee, “electronic infringement is theft”. From a legal perspective, I suppose that is true. And given that as an Open Source programmer, I depend on Copyright Law to assure that my wishes as an author are upheld, it would be hypocritical for me assume that I should be able to ignore Copyright Law just because it is inconvenient. And yet… from a moral perspective, who has really lost anything? The argument made by Russell Davis is that infringement is bad because it is “harming authors and author estates”. Jerry Pournelle has indignantly proclaimed that e-piracy goes against a “specific (and very stern) Biblical injunction against stealing from widows and orphans”. Of course, in this case, the author is still alive (and is female, although I suppose stealing from widowers would be just as bad). Also, given that the author has publically stated she doesn’t plan to write any more books involving this character (since some of her more psychotic readers sent her death threats as a result of reading said books), the publisher is highly unlikely to re-release said novels — and if I buy used dead-tree versions of said novels, the author doesn’t receive any additional royalties. So, then, where is the moral bright line?

• Should I purchase a used dead-tree copy of the novel, and lug it around, inconveniencing me, causing more CO2 emissions by shipping the book to me, and in the airplane because of its added weight, as the only way I can comply with copyright law? Furthermore, should I do this to set an example to all of the younger generations that are treating copyright law much more casually, much as essentially all drivers casually ignore the law’s dictats to not drive faster than the speed limit? (Many have argued that the current state of affairs with respect to music and etexts and copyright law is bad because it encourages people to not respect the rule of law — I guess, as the argument goes, if people don’t respect the copyright law, what’s next? Torturing prisoners in Guantanomo in violation of the law? Oh, wait… too late…)
• Should I purchase a used dead-tree copy of the novel, slice the binding off, and then run pages through a scanner and an OCR program, then spend hours reformatting it into an .LRF file so I can read it on the Sony eReader? Would that be considered fair use?
• What if I purchase a used dead-tree copy of the novel, but to save the time and effort of scanning the pages and correcting the OCR errors, download the pirated e-text, and convert it into an .LRF file and enjoy it on my Sony eReader?
• What if I don’t purchase the dead-tree copy of the book, download the pirated e-text, and send a money order (so it can’t be traced) for roughly the same amount of money as the cost of the used dead-tree version of the book to the author, with a letter explaining why she was receiving this check?
• What if I just download the pirated e-text, justifying my actions that no one is actually getting hurt my downloading the text and reading it; after all, since it is long out of print and not available from any booksellers as a new book, the author isn’t going to be getting any more royalties anyway.

Somewhere along this continuum, we’ve crossed over from the light-side to the dark-side. Setting aside the observation that the Neanderthal attitudes and business practices of the publisher involved has made it impossible for me to legitimiately follow the law, enjoy the novels, and direct money to the author via royalty payments — what do you think is the morally correct course of action? And why? And if you don’t mind saying so publically, roughly what generation are you from (i.e., Baby Boomer, Gen X, Gen Y, etc.)? I’m curious how attitudes are changing based on age, and whether folks who are currently in college might differ from those who can remember a time when the Internet didn’t exist… Update: I’ve posted a follow-up to this post here.

Hey, Xfce 4.6 Beta 2 Hopper has just been released and, guess what, packages are already available. Still not in unstable (or even experimental), that will wait post-lenny. You can install it from my repository, and, as usual, there's no Debian support on them. The known_issue page is currently quite empty, and this beta looks really quite polished. Packages currently available are i386 and amd64, powerpc will be available when I have time to put the mac at build. This beta features mostly bug fixing, and some features too:

• power management stuff in xfce4-session. Based on a patch included long ago in Ubuntu, it means that when you click the logout button it'll ask you if you want to suspend/hibernate the box. That works through hal and it may need some tuning on the machine. Reports appreciated here or there. 
• soname bump in xfconf. That means package renaming from libxconf-0-0 to libxfconf-0-2. No standard upgrade path (Replaces:) is provided because I don't want to clutter the packages before upload to Debian. This will continue for following changes (libxfconf-0-3 for rc for example). For the final release the library name will be changed to libxfconf-1 and the soname will be reset to 0, which means the package name will be libxfconf-1-0. There again, no upgrade path will be provided for people using my repository. The only upgraded path supported will be 4.4 →4.6. (but you won't be totally alone in the dark, I use 4.6 beta on my laptop so I'll pass through hell before you)
• keyboard shortcut can be configured (both window manager ones and applications) and there is now conflict handling
• session management has been greatly improved, you can now save the session immediately (a long-wanted feature) and it manages stuff like SMRestartImmediately etc.

The official announcement can be found there.
Have fnu!

Bash is probably the most common command-line shell in the GNU/Linux world. Although a lot of people use alternate shells (such as Zsh), Bash is still shipped with most mainstream distros as the default. Once you have a lot of different remote machines, all running Bash as the shell, it becomes increasingly difficult to pay attention to the prompt, and typing reboot in a machine different from the one you wanted becomes more likely. I deal with that problem by changing Bash prompts First of all, the basics: Bash prompts are just environment variables with special characters you can set and export. Bash has four of these variables: PS1 to PS4, but usually only the first two matters (actually, just PS1 for a reference on the others, check the manpage). The most common PS1 string is:

spectra@home:~$ echo $PS1
\u@\h:\w\$
spectra@home:~$

This has 4 special characters, escaped with a backslash: \u informing us the username; \h informing us the hostname; \w, informing us the working directory; and \$, which gives us the $ in the end of the prompt (more on this later). So, essentially, one can change that string to anything else

spectra@home:~$ PS1="my_shell_prompt\$ " 
my_shell_prompt$

Pretty easy. You can check a complete reference of the special characters at the section PROMPTING of bash manpage, but the most useful IMHO are the following:

• \d the date
• \t the time (24-hour format)
• \W the basename of the current working directory
• \! the history number of this command
• \# the command number of this command
• \$ shows # if the UID is 0 (is we are root), or $ for all the rest

Also, as part of the prompt string, one can use ANSI Colors enclosed as non-printing characters (that is between \[ and \]). ANSI sequences always begin with an ESC[ and end with an m . (Yes Really arbitrary but that s the way it is ). ESC can be represented as \e Here is a list of the most common colors in ANSI sequences:

• Black: 0;30
• Red: 0;31
• Green: 0;32
• Brown: 0;33
• Blue: 0;34
• Purple: 0;35
• Cyan: 0;36
• Light Gray: 0;37

Now, notice that there are two numbers separated by a semi-colon the first is always 0 (zero) in the colors I pointed above, but it actually refers to an ANSI attribute called Select Graphic Rendition You can use 0 (zero) to normal colors, 1 for bold, 2 to faint, etc. So \e[0;30m refers to BLACK, \e[1;30m refers to DARK GREY. The Wikipedia has a good article on these escape sequences. Once you re satisfied with something printed in a color, to go back to the default (to reset), you issue the \e[0m escape sequence. So, back to my problem Each different machine gets a different color for the hostname. On hospital machine, for instance, my PS1 looks like:

spectra@hospital:~$ PS1="\[\e[1;33m\]\u\[\e[0m\]@\[\e[0;35m\]\h\[\e[0m\]:\[\e[0;32m\]\w\[\e[0m\]\$ " 
spectra@hospital:~$

With \e[0;35m (Purple) for the hostname. On home machine, it may be \e[0;34m (Blue)... On server , it may be \e[0;36m (Cyan), and so on After a while, you get used to the color and end up linking the color to the machine so that typing reboot on a machine with the wrong color gets harder than before. To make the changes permanent, put export PS1 in one of the config script of bash (.bashrc, .bash_profile, etc). On some systems, /etc/environment holds lots of environment variables definitions. I just scratched the surface That s just what works for me The Bash-Prompt-HOWTO has some interesting examples, and I actually have a friend who uses more esoterical stuff, such as fancybash or bashish, but I ll leave this up to you

I have finally bought an EeePC 901, mainly to use for travelling.

I had been holding off for some weeks because I had hoped (in vain) that the Linux version with 20GB SSD and without a Windows XP license would become available here in Australia.

Anyway, I decided to try putting brand new Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex on it and I must say it worked really well. Here is what I did:

• Downloaded the standard Intrepid i386 Desktop CD and put it on a USB memory stick using UNetbootin.
• Installed with the following disk layout: / on 4GB SSD, 1GB swap and 7GB /home on 8GB SSD. (I setup a 1GB swap partition for hibernation and also used ext3 even though some sources say that the flash memory may die during the lifetime of the box.)
• One issue I noticed was that my static IP configuration did get lost between reboots. Eventually I created a new connection from scratch and that worked fine.
• After installation, I added the Ubuntu EeePC kernel and assorted tools which resolved the WLAN problem (even though I have not actually connected to any access points yet) and got all of the Hot Keys to work.
• I thought the screen was a bit dark, so I looked around and found that using the following command makes it much brighter: setpci -s 00:02.1 f4.b=ff. (This may fry the screen apparently, so use at own risk.)
  
• Also, the sound volume was very low. Appending the following to /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base fixed this: options snd-hda-intel model=auto
  

Everything else is pretty much ok. Apart from smaller fonts and makingg windows go above the top panel (with: gconftool-2 --set /apps/compiz/plugins/move/allscreens/options/constrain_y --type bool 0), I have not really made any changes.

I am typing this on the little keyboard of the 901 and it is actually quite usable even though I would not want to type pages and pages on it. (Somehow the Blogger editor behaves a bit funny, but I guess this has nothing to do with the hardware but if anything with Firefox 3.)

So far, I think this is an excellent little machine - it even plays Big Buck Bunny in 720p without any problems. ;-)

I've been telling people that I plan to keep bicycling into the winter. I think about half the people I've told to don't really believe it. And the last two weeks, I haven't been able to ride to work due to muddy roads and scheduling conflicts. But today I did.

I left while it was still dark and 45 degrees outside (7C for the Fahrenheit-impaired). I think that's the coldest bike ride for me yet. I wore my regular shorts, shoes, and socks. I had my regular shirt on, plus a long-sleeve thicker shirt on above it.

It was cold the first few minutes, but this was pretty much the right outfit. Once I got going and got some heat built up, I was doing fine. In fact, I had to unzip my outer layer because I was getting hot.

So. I figure that if I can do 45 with shorts, then I ought to be able to take on 20 with proper winter gear.

Either that, or I've now dug myself a nice big hole if I wimp out.

The following list is merely a small selection of scholarly articles listed in the ISI Web of Knowledge with "invisible hand" in their title:

• Beyond the Reach of the Invisible Hand
• The Real Invisible Hand: Presidential Appointees in the Administration of George W. Bush
• The Invisible Hand of God, Visible in the History of Chemotherapy
• Does the Latex Glove Fit the Invisible Hand? Application of Market Ideology to the Doctor/Patient Relationship.
• One-Armed Economists and the Invisible Hand.
• Subjective Image of Invisible Hand Coded By Monkey Intraparietal Neurons
• Exploitation - The Invisible Hand Guided By a Blind Eye: Confronting a Flaw in Economic Theory
• The Invisible Hand: Supernatural Agency in Political Economy and the Gothic Novel
• The 'Invisible Man' and the Invisible Hand - H.G. Wells's Critique of Capitalism
• The Dilemmas of Laissez-Faire Population Policy in Capitalist Society: When the Invisible Hand Controls Reproduction.
• Hong Kong Government Policy and Information Technology Innovation: The Invisible Hand, the Helping Hand, and the Hand-Over to China
• Helping Russian Students See the Invisible Hand.
• Hailing with an Invisible Hand: A 'Cosy' Political Dispute Amid the Rise of Neoliberal Politics in Modern Ireland
• Adam Smith's Invisible Hand Is Unstable: Physics and Dynamics Reasoning Applied to Economic Theorizing
• Offering an Invisible Hand: the Rise of the Personal Choice Model for Rationing Public Benefits
• From the Invisible Handshake to the Invisible Hand? How Import Competition Changes the Employment Relationship
• Invisible Hand Effect in an Evolutionary Minority Game Model
• Did the Invisible Hand Rock the Cradle?
• Internet: The Invisible Hand of Deliberation
• The Invisible Hand Has Already Wreaked Much Havoc - About Adam Smith
• Gaussen's Invisible Hand: The University Mechanics and Machine Inspector Moritz Meyerstein: An Instrument Maker in the 19th Century.
• "The Invisible Hand" of the Market or "The Ever-Present Hand" of Management (On New Discussions and Methods in the Field of Economic History)
• Statin Utilisation - Recognising the Role of the Invisible Hand
• The Universe's Invisible Hand.
• How Did the Invisible Hand Handle Industrial Waste? By-Product Development Before the Modern Environmental Era
• When Iron Fist, Visible Hand, and Invisible Hand Meet: Firm-Level Effects of Varying Institutional Environments in China
• Behavioural Genetics: Evolutionary Fingerprint of the 'Invisible Hand'
• The Hunting of Forbidden Books. Censored Books, Persecuted Books, the Story Written By the Invisible Hand
• Identification of Pareto-Improving Policies: Information as the Real Invisible Hand
• The Conspiracy of the Invisible Hand: Anonymous Market Mechanisms and Dark Powers
• The Other Invisible Hand, Delivering Public Services Through Choice
• Reviving the Invisible Hand: the Case for Classical Liberalism in the Twenty-First Century
• Plant Science - The "Invisible Hand" of Floral Chemistry
• Suppressive Effect of Multimodal Surface Representation on Ocular Smooth Pursuit of Invisible Hand
• The Visible Versus the Invisible Hand - A Tension Inherent in Modern Economies
• The Invisible Hand and the Grabbing Hand
• A Close Eye on the Invisible Hand
• The Contracts of Credit in a Long Term Relationship From the Invisible Hand to the Handshake
• Chile's New Entrepreneurs and the "Economic Miracle": The Invisible Hand or a Hand From the State?
• The Invisible Hand or Hands Across the Water, American Consultants and Irish Economic-Policy
• How Would the Invisible Hand Handle Money
• A Helping Hand for the Invisible Hand
• Measuring the Speed of the Invisible Hand - The Macroeconomic Costs of Price Rigidity
• The Invisible Hand Turns Green - Using Economic Instruments to Conserve the Environment
• The Invisible Hand Made Visible, the 'Birth-Mark'
• Trembling Invisible Hand Equilibrium
• Guiding the Invisible Hand - Economic Liberalism and the State in Latin-American History
• The 'Invisible Hand Meets the Dead Hand High Above Washington D.C.'
• From the Invisible Hand to the Gladhand - Understanding a Careerist Orientation to Work
• Public-Sector Reform - Not So Invisible Hand
• Darwin and Paley Meet the Invisible Hand
• Economics as Ideology - On Making the Invisible Hand Invisible
• The Invisible Hand - Poetics and Narration of Verga, the Novelist
• Invisible Hand, Invisible Death
• The Invisible Hand Strikes Back - Motor Insurance and the Erosion of Organized Competition in General Insurance, 1920-38
• The Creeping Invisible Hand - Entrepreneurial Librarianship
• The Speed of the Invisible Hand
• From the Invisible Hand to Visible Feet - Anthropological Studies of Migration and Development
• Invisible Hand, the Marijuana Business
• The Invisible Hand in San Francisco.
• The Invisible Hand That Feeds the Cults - Messianic Capitalism
• Can an Invisible Hand Palpate the Carotid Pulse
• Invisible Hand or Fatherly Hand - Problems of Paternalism in the New Perspective on Health
• Palm-Reading the Invisible Hand - A Critical-Examination of Pro-Competitive Reform Proposals
• The Market as Messiah: The Invisible Hand Strikes Again.
• Federal Legislation and Investment Policy - Far-From-Invisible Hand of Congress and Treasury
• Shaking Hands with Invisible Hand - Transitional Strategies for Global Social-Change - Questions and Issues
• Invisible Hand and Clenched Fist - Is There a Safe Way to Picket Under First Amendment
• Institutional Change and Quasi-Invisible Hand

And, finally:

• What's Wrong with Invisible-Hand Explanations?

For quite a few years now, I've been using a Dell 2001FP 20" LCD. Aside from the fact that this is the monitor that has apparently placed me on Dell's "permanently harass with paper catalogs" list (BTW, USPS has sent them a nasty enforcement letter over that), and the fact that when it needed warranty repair, Dell didn't know how to do it because it wasn't connected to a Dell computer, it's been a good monitor.

With Terah's recent conversion to Linux, she needed a monitor. We decided she could use the 20" LCD, and I'd get a new monitor. I have a nice 24" HP LP2465 at work, 1920x1200, so I thought I'd hop on newegg and see what 24" monitors I could find.

I found a Samsung T240 over there. Apparently Samsung's premium "touch of color" line. I did some research. It got glowing reviews -- people seemed to think the display was brilliant, and the only problem was that its stand wasn't height-adjustable. It got rave reviews on Newegg. It was $400 after rebate. And it arrived here Thursday.

I opened up the box, and I have to tell you that it looks beautiful. The bezel is this reflective black with a hint of dark red at the bottom. I put it together, hooked it up, and...

Well, let's just say that "Touch of Color" isn't all that accurate. "Touch of Crap" is more like it.

As I write this, my Firefox window covers half the screen. The center part of it is this brilliant color. The lower part has the white faded to this sickening blue, and the bottom right corner has almost turned to a black-and-white image. While the top part of my screen simply is more contrasty, except for the very top of the screen, which has half an inch of brighter area than anywhere else.

In short, the viewing angle on here is so bad that sitting directly in front of the screen gives significant color variations. An xterm with a black background maximized to fill the screen has a black background some places and a gray background others. My solid midnightblue background looks more sky blue at some places and more... really dark blue... at others. And of course, moving my head slightly varies the color that I see. Also, on photos, there is very visible horizontal banding in them -- apparently some sort of dithering going on since this is only a 6-bit display. Ugh.

How on earth this monitor got glowing reviews, I have no idea. I learned a bit about LCD panel types. Apparently the T240 is a TN display. The horror. I'll never buy another one of those again.

The HP LP2465 that I have at work, and which is great with solid colors all across it, is an S-PVA. So I'm buying one of those for home. It's more expensive, but -- it's a good display.

I am still trying to figure out exactly who thinks this is a good monitor. I tried games on it. It was responsive, but again, colors were distorted due to viewing angle. And this distortion means it's completely useless for photo editing, where precise colors are important.

I bought it from Newegg, and their policy generally prohibits refunds on LCDs. I called them, explained the situation, and told them that I wanted to buy an HP LP2465 from them to replace it. After being on hold for a few minutes, they agreed to waive their policy -- and even the 15% restocking fee, once I placed the order for the HP monitor. Classy show, Newegg. That's the one bright spot in all this.

You know you've got a bunch of Mennonites together when the pastor spontaneously asks the church to sing "Jesus Loves Me" while the children walk up for their children's story. And, without music, everybody spontaneously breaks into beautiful 4-part harmony. It must be genetic or something.

It was a day of beautiful singing of hymns a week ago for Tabor Mennonite Church's centennial. It's hard to write about that weekend, in fact -- it was such a nice experience.

Sunday ended with opening the box sealed in the church's cornerstone back in 1965 when the current building was built. Rudy Schmidt, the person that sealed it up back then, was on hand to open it back up. They took out the stone and removed the box. Before the box was opened, Rudy told a story:

Back in 1965, I was the one to solder this box shut. While I was doing this, all of a sudden I smelled burning from inside. I figured I must have caught something inside on fire. I asked Jake Koehn (another person on the building committee) what to do. Jake said, "Nobody will ever see it again, just put it in." So let's open it!

I think Rudy has been wondering all these years whether he set it on fire or not.

The box was opened, and other than a few scorch marks on an envelope, was completely intact and in good shape. There was a copy of a local newspaper from 1965 with a headline about Goldwater, copies of programs of dedication for the new building and parsonage, a Bible, copies of the church constitution, and all sorts of other interesting things. To that we will add a copy of our centennial book (which I helped develop), CDs with recordings of our centennial activities, programs from the centennial celebration, and photos of the weekend.

Earlier on Sunday, we had a long but good worship service with sermons from two former pastors. The choir sang, including a song commissioned for the occasion by Larry Nickel. We got applause after that one (which happens occasionally, but not regularly, in our church). All the living former pastors, and the widow of one of them, served communion as well.

The service ended with the congregation singing the "Mennonite Anthem". I think it was the most beautiful singing of that song I've ever heard. We had 352 people in church that day, and it seemed that not one person was going to let the moment go by without singing.

Saturday had started off with outdoor activities in the church park. There was old-fashioned soap making, remembering how church members used to store fat all year, then get together to make soap for use in their homes and to donate to the needy. There was rope making, wool spinning, and rides for the children. Under the tent, we had some great music the local Greenhorns band, and the former pastors all shared some memories and stories about their time here.

On Saturday evening, we had a meal and a drama -- and managed to somehow fit 321 people into the church basement for the meal. We think that's a record! The drama was written for the occasion by one of our members. John Gaeddert, a pastor here in the early 1970s, has become an expert wood carver in his spare time. He had carved a piece for us to celebrate the occasion, and presented it during the drama. That fit right in, because the drama was called "Bring Your Own Hedgepost" -- back in the early days of the church, each member was supposed to do just that so they would have a place to tie their horses.

Friday night was a lecture by James Juhnke about our first paster, P. H. Richert, who was pastor for nearly 40 years. Quite entertaining and interesting.

I think the highlight of the weekend for me was getting to talk to some of the former pastors I never knew well. I had a few minutes to chat with John Gaeddert. I introduced myself, and he said, "Oh! I don't think I've met you, but I've heard your name a few times this weekend. You're on the centennial committee, right?" Yes indeed. I was born after he left this church, but he knew my grandparents -- which means he also knows exactly where we live. John and his wife Mary are both such warm and friendly people that it feels like I've known them much longer than a few days!

I got to chat with Jim Schrag too. He was pastor at Tabor until I was about 5 or 6. He didn't remember me specifically, but he was also interesting to talk with. He was one of the people that worked on a detailed history book in 1983 for the church's 75th anniversary. He told me that he processed most of the black and white photos for that book in a darkroom in his basement. I hadn't known that -- and mentioned I had found all those photos in the church archives and had scanned them all in. Jim requested a copy.

Terah found Lenore Waltner, wife of former pastor James Waltner, who passed away about a year ago. James had started his career as a pastor at Tabor, and ended it at College Mennonite Church in Goshen, IN, where Terah grew up. So she knew him, but I didn't. Terah introduced herself to Lenore, who seemed quite excited to make this sort of family connection!

And Brenda Martin Hurst, another former pastor, found Terah and introduced herself. Terah said that Brenda said something like, "Hi, I'm Brenda, and I don't think I know you!" These pastors all want to get to know everybody, I think!

When I first got a digital SLR camera a few years ago, I spent some time evaluating photo printing options. I sent a set of test prints to several different companies, and wound up deciding to use Shutterfly for my photo printing.

It's been some time since then, so I figured it was about time to re-evaluate options.

There are three main things to consider when obtaining prints of photos: cost of prints, quality of prints at delivery, and longevity of prints. Many people look only at cost, and those that look past cost rarely look past quality at longevity. Longevity (or permanence) is, in my opinion, the most important factor to consider. But let's look at all of them.

Longevity

All color photo print technologies fade or otherwise degrade over time. There are several main things that can cause this: exposure to light, exposure to gases (especially ozone), and exposure to humidity. The impact of these different items varies by print technology, paper, and process.

Longevity: Traditional Photo Paper

Most services such as Shutterfly, Snapfish, Ofoto, as well as retailers such as Walmart, Target, and Walgreens print on traditional photo paper.

Historically, traditional photo paper has had terrible fading characteristics. Typically, old photos exposed to light -- for instance, hanging on a wall underneath a light bulb or in the sun -- will exhibit severe fade towards yellow or magenta. Modern papers are much better, but you will still not want to leave them directly in the sun or under lights.

Over at TPR, you can find several papers analyzing this. Perhaps the most interesting are test of digital prints and image permanence: comparing the technologies.

To attempt to summarize, what you see is that of the two common consumer-grade photo papers, Kodak Royal and Fuji Crystal Archive, the Fuji paper has better permanence. However, the pro-quality Kodak Professional Supra Endura is better than either of them by a significant margin. The photo papers didn't really have a problem with humidity, and not much of a problem with ozone.

Longevity: Inkjet

So what about inkjets and laser processes? The main thing I learned from my research is that there is a tremendous amount of variance here. When looking solely at top-quality inkjet papers and inks, they ranged everywhere from having little bits of them flake off after a few months to doing better than any of the photo papers. This variance occurred even with similar papers from the same manufacturer.

As far as light exposure is concerned, every inkjet paper tested by TPR did better than Kodak Royal. Some fared about the same as Fuji Crystal Archive. And some even beat out Kodak Supra Endura.

But look at the ozone exposure test and you see a far different picture. All of the photo papers did really well, though suprisingly Supra Endura was the worst of them (though the scale is so small here that the difference is pretty minimal).

Not one of the inkjet papers came even close to that, and some faded so fast that they couldn't even make it halfway through the test.

As far as humidity is concerned, it barely impacted the photo paper prints at all. Inkjet impacts were still mostly small, but also were mostly more impacted than the photo paper.

Longevity: Laser

And finally, how about laser prints. There was huge variety here. An HP printer they tested faded so fast it couldn't complete the light exposure test, while a Konica-Minolta fared better than Kodak Supra Endura in one test. In another light exposure test, they performed about the same as the photo papers. Ozone had little effect on the laser papers, except for the Dell test, which faded so fast they had to abort the test early. Humidity also had little effect on the laser prints.

Longevity: Other Examples

Brett Wilson did some interesting experiments with photos hung in front of a window as well. Wilhelm Imaging also has done some research in this area, though they are done using fluorescent lights only, which is prejudicial in favor of inkjet papers and against photo papers.

For the ultimate in longevity, true black and white photo paper is well-regarded.

TPR also has a report covering different lacquer and other finishes often applied to prints to improve their longevity.

Longevity: Conclusions

With the exact right combination of inkjet paper and ink, you can get a print that will last exceptionally long. Some inkjet paper and ink combinations have really poor longevity characteristics, however, as do the laser papers.

Photo papers, especially Kodak Supra Endura, but even Fuji Crystal Archive, will last quite awhile as well, and are probably the best storage if kept in dark conditions such as an album.

Print Quality

When looking at print quality, I'm concerned with correct color balance, saturation, cropping, consistency, sharpness, contract, and detail in both dark and light areas -- the typical things you'd look for.

Printing inkjet prints at home leaves all this up to your printer, inks, papers, and you, so we can't really compare meaningfully.

Back when I looked at it, Shutterfly and Ofoto did the best. Walmart, Walgreens, dotPhoto, and many of the other online sites were really too poor to even bother with. Ofoto had a bit of a yellow tint to it, while Shutterfly did pretty well.

Most of the reviews of the major sites I've seen lately rank Shutterfly or Snapfish at the top in terms of quality. Many also rank Ofoto/Kodak near the top.

Walmart and Walgreens produce consistently bad results, and I only use them if all that matters is speed. If you ever read a review where somebody says that they get good results from one of those places, find a review where somebody has a better idea what they're talking about.

Besides your mass-market sites like Shutterfly and Ofoto, there are also some slightly more expensive sites. The two best-known are mpix.com and adorama.com. Mpix is a division of Miller's Professional Imaging, a pro lab. Mpix is basically a website where you can submit photos in the way you would to one of these other sites, and they can do their thing. Their standard rate includes human color correction on every print, but they offer a cheaper rate if you don't need that. Their standard paper is Kodak Pro Supra Endura (the one that ranked highest in longevity tests), and the options go up from there. They also offer printing on true black and white paper, as well as wrap-around canvas and other such options.

I've sent some work their way and have been exceptionally happy with the result. Everything from the color of the prints down to the packaging shows extreme care and attention to detail. Among the reviews that cover mpix -- many don't -- it almost always comes out at the top of the pack, easily beating out Shutterfly and Snapfish. It can be more pricy (though sometimes actually cheaper, since shipping is flat-rate with them), though not significantly.

Adorama is also sometimes mentioned. Most people seem to prefer mpix over adorama, but some prefer adorama. It's a bit cheaper when you don't need color correction for some prints, but sometimes -- right now, for instance -- closes for weeks at a time to observe Jewish holidays. It didn't seem to be enough for me to bother.

Cost

Perhaps the easiest to figure out is cost, since websites typically list it right there for you.

High-quality inkjet prints are by far the most expensive option. I looked at 4x6 prints. Using the high-quality paper/ink combinations that did well in the TPR tests, and when buying supplies in bulk to get the best possible discount, it's still 25 cents or more for a single 4x6 print. That's with doing all the color work yourself, and not even figuring in the cost of the inevitable experimenting with getting the software set up right and the wasted prints when ink gets low. It also doesn't figure in the cost of the printer.

At mpix, if you do your own color correction, it's 19 cents per print, plus shipping. Prints are on Kodak Professional Supra Endura Shipping is a flat rate of $3 for 50 or fewer 4x6 or smaller prints, or a flat rate of $5.95 for USPS Priority Mail for anything else. They offer FedEx at an additional cost, which maxes out at a flat rate of $12.75 for overnight shipping. Some items such as framed canvas prints are more expensive.

Other options at an additional cost include color correction by a human, metallic paper, Ilford B&W paper, etc. There are also some more typical pro-lab options: red-eye removal by a human, custom retouching, etc.

At Shutterfly, a 4x6 print goes for 15 cents. You can get them as low as 10 cents if you buy a pre-paid plan of 600 prints for $60. Shipping varies based on the number of prints, starting at $1.79 for up to 10 prints, ranging up to $21 for 500 prints, with 3 cents per print after that. Priority and express mail is available at an additional charge. Shutterfly's standard paper is Fuji Crystal Archive.

At Snapfish, a 4x6 print goes for 9 cents. You can get them as low as 8 cents if you buy a pre-paid plan of 250 prints. Shipping at Snapfish follows a complicated formula, but is generally approximately the same as Shutterfly. Though if you print more than 595 prints, watch out for the 10 cents per print overage fee. They don't state what paper they use. Recent reports seem to suggest that it's Fuji Crystal Archive, but some reports claim it's Kodak Royal.

My Conclusions

I'm planning to switch most of my prints to mpix -- their higher quality and cheaper shipping offset their higher per-print cost for me. Also, I plan to try out Snapfish and see what sort of quality I get from them for things where quality isn't really that critical.

Steven Taylor is considering going dual-boot. For better or worse, I think Ubuntu is probably the best choice for a newbie these days, although my last lenny install was surprisingly painless (except for the whole “MacBooks have very funky partitioning” issue which I’ve never really been able to resolve to my satisfaction).

The Cassandra metaphor is applied by some psychologists to individuals who experience physical and emotional suffering as a result of distressing personal perceptions, and who are disbelieved when they attempt to share the cause of their suffering with others.

What the Cassandra woman sees is something dark and painful that may not be apparent on the surface of things or that objective facts do not corroborate. She may envision a negative or unexpected outcome; or something which would be difficult to deal with; or a truth which others, especially authority figures, would not accept. In her frightened, ego-less state, the Cassandra woman may blurt out what she sees, perhaps with the unconscious hope that others might be able to make some sense of it. But to them her words sound meaningless, disconnected and blown out of all proportion.

Dear Adrian, I can only but complain about the "Guide Through The Linux Sound API Jungle" that you mention in your last post. All that is said there about OSS is pure FUD and only reflects a deep ignorance of the current project. It is a pitty to spread misinformations that deprecate the work of others without even trying to understand it. Here is what is said about OSS in this document:

The Open Sound System is a low-level PCM API supported by a variety of Unixes including Linux. It started out as the standard Linux audio system and is supported on current Linux kernels in the API version 3 as OSS3. OSS3 is considered obsolete and has been fully replaced by ALSA. A successor to OSS3 called OSS4 is available but plays virtually no role on Linux and is not supported in standard kernels or by any of the relevant distributions. The OSS API is very low-level, based around direct kernel interfacing using ioctl()s. It it is hence awkward to use and can practically not be virtualized for usage on non-kernel audio systems like sound servers (such as PulseAudio) or user-space sound drivers (such as Bluetooth or FireWire audio). OSS3's timing model cannot properly be mapped to software sound servers at all, and is also problematic on non-PCI hardware such as USB audio. Also, OSS does not do sample type conversion, remapping or resampling if necessary. This means that clients that properly want to support OSS need to include a complete set of converters/remappers/resamplers for the case when the hardware does not natively support the requested sampling parameters. With modern sound cards it is very common to support only S32LE samples at 48KHz and nothing else. If an OSS client assumes it can always play back S16LE samples at 44.1KHz it will thus fail. OSS3 is portable to other Unix-like systems, various differences however apply. OSS also doesn't support surround sound and other functionality of modern sounds systems properly. OSS should be considered obsolete and not be used in new applications. ALSA and PulseAudio have limited LD_PRELOAD-based compatibility with OSS.

And here is what one of the devs from OSS answered to this [1]:

It's pretty inaccurate FUD (From the URL address - it's Pulseaudio's author, right? I'd have expected him to know better). He's basically judging OSS per the old OSS/Free drivers, which is like 5 years ago, and even that he does wrong. First, *all* current implementations/emulations of OSSv3 do sample conversion. It's not even a property defined by the API but by the underlying drivers. Second, even OSSv3 supported surround, USB cards, etc. Third, arguing that "it cannot be virtualized" is disproven by the amount of emulations and alternative implementations existing out there and working in practice. (The main difficulty is mmap() API, which is very rarely used anyway, and even that can be done with, say, oss2pulse). Fourth, complaining about OSS API being awkward, is... well, awkward when you compare it to ALSA API, if you could compare it, since most ALSA API isn't documented. It's kinda funny he advocates using ALSA API (not in the quoted part above, but last time I read his blog he suggested it). Actual ALSA devs advocate against it, but using a sound library with multiple backends [2].

If you read some documentation, you can understand that OSS has been the target of some kernel developpers that didn't like it to be reused in a commercial product, back in the 90s. Hence, ALSA was launched, and OSS was progressively discarded, while constantly being the target of FUD like this. OSS has then lived for almost 10 years in the dark side of the force, but eventually did the way back in July 2007. Ironically, now most of the developpement in the linux kernel is driven by commercial interests. Most of the original complains about OSS are now fixed, including all the FUD written in this guide. In particular, software mixing is now supported. Being also part of a project that writes code to handle sound input and output, I can only but complain about the mess in the area of sound APIs in linux. However, OSS should really be reconsidered. In particular, its API is designed in order to abstract as much as possible access to the sound card, so that application writers have as less as possible to do with sound conversion and the like Those who have tried to use ALSA may for instance compare that to the "set rate near" call in its API: this call will set the rate to what the hardware support and let you handle the conversion... For each application... Also, OSS API is available across all unices, except OSX, and there is even a BeOS port going on. Finally, OSS API is POSIX oriented, reading and writing on the sound card, being a matter of calling few ioctls and then reading from the device file. In the future, OSS developpement will most probably be done as a community project, and I believe it is now time to stop spreading false ideas about the project, and give it as much attention as the other projects. For the debian users who want to try OSS4, a package is available in the packaging team's svn repository. It has been sitting in NEW for some time, I hope it gets accepted at some point.