Yesterday I finally implemented what we agreed on FOSDEM - to use Git as a version control system for phpMyAdmin. The migration itself required just a little bit of magic, fixing other tools which were relying on Subversion was a little more work, but hopefully I did not forget anything and all pieces are now fixed (if you spot something still referring to Subversion, please drop me an email). Immediately after completing this task, I focused on another one - move from our custom translation system to Gettext. This is almost done in gettext branch and also web interface for translations is set up, but there are still some minor issues to fix (some messages are fuzzy even when they should not be). But anyway your translations won't be lost, so feel free to contribute there.

Well I suppose its a bit heretical running something such as VMware, but its an important piece of software at my workplace, it also allows me to run some important VMKs or modules. But at first it just wouldn't compile.

And then I found this wonderful blog about Installing VMware on Ubuntu and it worked wonderfully. The author patched the code and it all installed nicely.

The next problem was one of the services would not start. Port 8308 would refuse to work and when I went to the management screen and said Service Unavailable. I tracked this down to the Java program dying at socket binding time.

The absolute first thing you should check if you are having TCP/IP problems with Java is the sysctl path net.ipv6.bindv6only which you can check with
sysctl net.ipv6.bindv6only.

If it is 1, it might mean bad Java code network problems. And in fact this time it was the problem, changing it to 0 and the Java daemon started and stayed running and all was good.

Incidently if you use the Cisco ASA firewall Java client and it dies, use this trick for it too. On Debian systems, edit the file /etc/sysctl.d/bindv6only and set that option to 0. I don't think its the fault of the key, but bad Java code (but is there anything but bad Java code?)

There was a plug for an up and coming conference in my last post but it was a bit buried and it deserves a bit more attention: the Libre Planet Conference in Cambridge, MA. It is fast approaching but there are still spots, student rates, and funding for female attendees. Though I can t go as I will be out of town, this seems like it will be a great event: excellent speakers, lots of interesting folks, and I am sure a fantastic set of discussions.

There was a plug for an up and coming conference in my last post but it was a bit buried and it deserves a bit more attention: the Libre Planet Conference in Cambridge, MA. It is fast approaching but there are still spots, student rates, and funding for female attendees. Though I can t go as I will be out of town, this seems like it will be a great event: excellent speakers, lots of interesting folks, and I am sure a fantastic set of discussions.

Version 0.1.0 of RcppExamples, a simple demo package for Rcpp should appear on CRAN some time tomorrow. As mentioned in the post about release 0.7.8 of Rcpp, Romain and I carved this out of Rcpp itself to provide a cleaner separation of code that implements our R / C++ interfaces (which remain in Rcpp) and code that illustrates how to use it --- which is now in RcppExamples. This also provides an easier template for people wanting to use Rcpp in their packages as it will be easier to wrap one's head around the much smaller RcppExamples package. A simple example (using the newer API) may illustrate this:

#include <Rcpp.h>
RcppExport SEXP newRcppVectorExample(SEXP vector)  
    Rcpp::NumericVector orig(vector);			// keep a copy (as the classic version does)
    Rcpp::NumericVector vec(orig.size());		// create a target vector of the same size
    // we could query size via
    //   int n = vec.size();
    // and loop over the vector, but using the STL is so much nicer
    // so we use a STL transform() algorithm on each element
    std::transform(orig.begin(), orig.end(), vec.begin(), sqrt);
    Rcpp::Pairlist res(Rcpp::Named( "result", vec),
                       Rcpp::Named( "original", orig));
    return res;
 

With essentially five lines of code, we provide a function that takes any numeric vector and returns both the original vector and a tranformed version---here by applying a square root operation. Even the looping along the vector is implicit thanks to the generic programming idioms of the Standard Template Library. Nicer still, even on misuse, exceptions get caught cleanly and we get returned to the R prompt without any explicit coding on the part of the user:

R> library(RcppExamples)
Loading required package: Rcpp
R> print(RcppVectorExample( 1:5, "new" )) # select new API
$result
[1] 1.000 1.414 1.732 2.000 2.236
$original
[1] 1 2 3 4 5
R> RcppVectorExample( c("foo", "bar"), "new" )
Error in RcppVectorExample(c("foo", "bar"), "new") :
  not compatible with INTSXP
R>

There is also analogous code for the older API in the package, but it is about three times as long, has to loop over the vector and needs to set up the execption handling explicitly. As of right now, RcppExamples does not document every class but it should already provide a fairly decent start for using Rcpp. And many more actual usage examples are ... in the over two-hundred unit tests in Rcpp.

Update: Now actually showing new rather than classic API.

There is an interesting conversation over at about the nature of peer production, and crowd based production over at PBS. Thankfully folks right off the bat noted that the types of activities they are addressing that range from 4chan to open source are so freaken distinct that perhaps it is not all that useful to use one moniker for them. The comments I am most fascinated by are danah s who notes:

We assume that the collective voice will be populist and, more importantly, that it will reflect the diversity of the populous. Yet, as we ve seen time and time again, certain values and attitudes and voices are over-represented in crowd-sourced activities. Who is looking out for those who aren t represented? In what ways are we reinforcing structural inequalities? What are the implications of this?

And then Clay s response:

So, to re-ask your question in a non-rhetorical way, under what
circumstances would we want to make the population of Deviant Art,
say, less white, or Linux less male, and if we wanted to do so, what
would need to happen?

What I find interesting about this discussion (and will be talking about this topic here, next week) is there not enough recognition of two related things: 1) the efforts are there (more on this soon) 2) that perhaps hacking and F/OSS in particular are not fully accessible to all and everyone because they are full-fledged, full-bodied, cultural worlds and all cultural worlds are to some degree not fully accessible and transparent for there are built on particularities, often invisible and unarticulated, forms of value. That is, just as some norms and values of Indo-Guyanese to take one random example, are not of my world, so too is hacking partially inaccessible for the fact that it is culturally configured. But I am starting to suspect that the culture-ness of these domains are often overlooked because they are overwhelmingly white, male, and chock full of computers (and so economically lucrative). All three, I suspect are (incorrectly) seen as lacking culture, as domains of rationality. (I stand rightly corrected and also forget this very fact, though I know it well from all the Brazil/Latin America Debconfs, as this diversity gets a bit lost from a pure US-European perspective, which I was assuming). Other historical factors have also produced certain distortions that don t allow us to see (easily at least) these worlds as culture-full. First is the fact that so many folks outside of this world lobbed onto F/OSS for being radical (and this is partially right in so far as its challenge to intellectual property can be seen as radical). But the portrayal or mere suggestion of these worlds as uber-democratic and populist, made people expect these groups to behave as radical egalitarian collectives. For the most part, they don t and yet never portrayed their own politics and forms of organization as such (openness comes in the form of code and technical merit). But this vision stuck and when some folks realized that larger projects, for example are very organized (which many people addressed only very late), have hierarchies (which are flexible and also allow them to function, which is I think is a good thing), and are not as diverse, there was deep disappointment that they did not conform to the sense that there was something extremely radical going on as opposed to a cultural group really into producing free software. But if I am offering a cultural alibi of sorts in which barriers to participation are to some degree a function of culture, one of the great things about the norms, values, ideas that compose culture is that there are dynamic and changing. They are alive and historical. They are pushed and pulled upon by insiders and outsiders based on wider social values. And there is an answer to these questions about diversity for there has been a dramatic, noticeable, and noteworthy push within this world, one that really started to coalesce I would say in the last year or so, to address these issues and it ranges from Python s mammoth efforts at addressing diversity (and I have been told that there was a great speech on the topic at Pycon recently), the geek feminism wiki, and smaller but increasingly common efforts such as Libre Planet s women s caucus and their funding of women to participate. So while I do think that culture goes at least part of the way to explain why these worlds are not fully open for culture limits this very domain has grown dissatisfied with its representational make-up and are leading some efforts for cultural change.

There is an interesting conversation over at about the nature of peer production, and crowd based production over at PBS. Thankfully folks right off the bat noted that the types of activities they are addressing that range from 4chan to open source are so freaken distinct that perhaps it is not all that useful to use one moniker for them. The comments I am most fascinated by are danah s who notes:

We assume that the collective voice will be populist and, more importantly, that it will reflect the diversity of the populous. Yet, as we ve seen time and time again, certain values and attitudes and voices are over-represented in crowd-sourced activities. Who is looking out for those who aren t represented? In what ways are we reinforcing structural inequalities? What are the implications of this?

And then Clay s response:

So, to re-ask your question in a non-rhetorical way, under what
circumstances would we want to make the population of Deviant Art,
say, less white, or Linux less male, and if we wanted to do so, what
would need to happen?

What I find interesting about this discussion (and will be talking about this topic here, next week) is there not enough recognition of two related things: 1) the efforts are there (more on this soon) 2) that perhaps hacking and F/OSS in particular are not fully accessible to all and everyone because they are full-fledged, full-bodied, cultural worlds and all cultural worlds are to some degree not fully accessible and transparent for there are built on particularities, often invisible and unarticulated, forms of value. That is, just as some norms and values of Indo-Guyanese to take one random example, are not of my world, so too is hacking partially inaccessible for the fact that it is culturally configured. But I am starting to suspect that the culture-ness of these domains are often overlooked because they are overwhelmingly white, male, and chock full of computers (and so economically lucrative). All three, I suspect are (incorrectly) seen as lacking culture, as domains of rationality. (I stand rightly corrected and also forget this very fact, though I know it well from all the Brazil/Latin America Debconfs, as this diversity gets a bit lost from a pure US-European perspective, which I was assuming). Other historical factors have also produced certain distortions that don t allow us to see (easily at least) these worlds as culture-full. First is the fact that so many folks outside of this world lobbed onto F/OSS for being radical (and this is partially right in so far as its challenge to intellectual property can be seen as radical). But the portrayal or mere suggestion of these worlds as uber-democratic and populist, made people expect these groups to behave as radical egalitarian collectives. For the most part, they don t and yet never portrayed their own politics and forms of organization as such (openness comes in the form of code and technical merit). But this vision stuck and when some folks realized that larger projects, for example are very organized (which many people addressed only very late), have hierarchies (which are flexible and also allow them to function, which is I think is a good thing), and are not as diverse, there was deep disappointment that they did not conform to the sense that there was something extremely radical going on as opposed to a cultural group really into producing free software. But if I am offering a cultural alibi of sorts in which barriers to participation are to some degree a function of culture, one of the great things about the norms, values, ideas that compose culture is that there are dynamic and changing. They are alive and historical. They are pushed and pulled upon by insiders and outsiders based on wider social values. And there is an answer to these questions about diversity for there has been a dramatic, noticeable, and noteworthy push within this world, one that really started to coalesce I would say in the last year or so, to address these issues and it ranges from Python s mammoth efforts at addressing diversity (and I have been told that there was a great speech on the topic at Pycon recently), the geek feminism wiki, and smaller but increasingly common efforts such as Libre Planet s women s caucus and their funding of women to participate. So while I do think that culture goes at least part of the way to explain why these worlds are not fully open for culture limits this very domain has grown dissatisfied with its representational make-up and are leading some efforts for cultural change.

Last night, in two different instances I read the claim that the England s first copyright act, the statute of Anne passed in 1710 was never intended to protect authors but to protect the reproducers like printing houses and presses investing in authors implying that printing houses loved the act. After pouring through hundreds of pages of Adrian John s history of piracy, that statement is pretty off and in fact I don t think the Statute was really about printers/booksellers or authors but the public. While licensing had all together lapsed for a period before this statute was passed, and the printing houses and book sellers were indeed clamoring loudly for an official recognition of property in literary works, they wanted a perpetuall right in literary property rooted in common and natural law. Like I am talking here about forever, not like a measly, paltry 14 years. They were not exactly thrilled at this statute (in fact, they were downright pissssssssed off) for it severely limited how long they held a property right over books. In fact, so pissed were they, they challenged the statute, went to court in 1769 (Millar v Taylor) and got what they wanted: a perpetual right to literary work. It took s a fiery Scot and bookseller by the name of Alexander Donaldson (I kind of think of him as the RMS of booksellers; he was quite a rabble rouser) to challenge Millar and he finally got his day in the highest court of the land in 1774 in Donaldson v Beckett and the outcome was that a perpetual right in books was tossed out the window. The court ruled that copyright was a limited statute. One of the lords in the case even stated Knowledge has no value or use for the solitary owner: to be enjoyed it must be communicated. Adrian John s explains the significance of this case in the following way: Copyright, they decided, was not a right of man at all. Indeed, it was almost the very opposite: an artifact, and one that replaced a prior right established by an author s work of creation. . . In terms of revolution principles, liberty won out over property Again the printers booksellers (minus the pirate ones) were not happy a bunch. Unfortunately the subsequent history is one we all know well, one in which booksellers and others with vested interests in copyrights pushed to extend property rights in all sorts of ways to get to where we are today (obviously with a lot of different historical developments), a land, time, period where perpetuity may not be forever but it is long enough to nullify the very public domain envisioned by the first copyright act. However, I think it is nonetheless important to recognize how radical in many respects the first copyright act was: given what the book printers and sellers wanted (and they were a powerful bunch). For those interested in learning more about Alexander Donaldson, I would check out his Some Thoughts on the State of Literary Property, where he rails against the London booksellers for being monopolistic and calling for a limited property right in books.

Last night, in two different instances I read the claim that the England s first copyright act, the statute of Anne passed in 1710 was never intended to protect authors but to protect the reproducers like printing houses and presses investing in authors implying that printing houses loved the act. After pouring through hundreds of pages of Adrian John s history of piracy, that statement is pretty off and in fact I don t think the Statute was really about printers/booksellers or authors but the public. While licensing had all together lapsed for a period before this statute was passed, and the printing houses and book sellers were indeed clamoring loudly for an official recognition of property in literary works, they wanted a perpetuall right in literary property rooted in common and natural law. Like I am talking here about forever, not like a measly, paltry 14 years. They were not exactly thrilled at this statute (in fact, they were downright pissssssssed off) for it severely limited how long they held a property right over books. In fact, so pissed were they, they challenged the statute, went to court in 1769 (Millar v Taylor) and got what they wanted: a perpetual right to literary work. It took s a fiery Scot and bookseller by the name of Alexander Donaldson (I kind of think of him as the RMS of booksellers; he was quite a rabble rouser) to challenge Millar and he finally got his day in the highest court of the land in 1774 in Donaldson v Beckett and the outcome was that a perpetual right in books was tossed out the window. The court ruled that copyright was a limited statute. One of the lords in the case even stated Knowledge has no value or use for the solitary owner: to be enjoyed it must be communicated. Adrian John s explains the significance of this case in the following way: Copyright, they decided, was not a right of man at all. Indeed, it was almost the very opposite: an artifact, and one that replaced a prior right established by an author s work of creation. . . In terms of revolution principles, liberty won out over property Again the printers booksellers (minus the pirate ones) were not happy a bunch. Unfortunately the subsequent history is one we all know well, one in which booksellers and others with vested interests in copyrights pushed to extend property rights in all sorts of ways to get to where we are today (obviously with a lot of different historical developments), a land, time, period where perpetuity may not be forever but it is long enough to nullify the very public domain envisioned by the first copyright act. However, I think it is nonetheless important to recognize how radical in many respects the first copyright act was: given what the book printers and sellers wanted (and they were a powerful bunch). For those interested in learning more about Alexander Donaldson, I would check out his Some Thoughts on the State of Literary Property, where he rails against the London booksellers for being monopolistic and calling for a limited property right in books.

Last month I converted my laptop to btrfs to get some experience using this new, still experimental file system. The bugs tell the story:

• #567065: initramfs-tools: avoid mount -t unknown
  I provided a patch which has been accepted. The underlying bug in klibc still remains to be fixed (#548047).
• #540786: update-grub doesn't work with root fs on btrfs
  There are patches, but not acceptably clean ones. (For values of "acceptably clean" that are somehow more important than "it boots", anyway.)

At this point I had a booting, working btrfs system. The bugs seen over the next weeks were strange:

• #567135: python-dbus went missing from python-support directory on upgrade
  Was the filesystem losing information? Maybe.
• #569058: dbus: helper not setuid; breaks gnome-power-manager
  Both the package maintainer and I am fairly sure it's not really a bug in the package. And another btrfs user also saw the problem.
• #568908: gnome-terminal: uses iceweasel for urls despite gconf being configured to use chromium
  Hard to say if btrfs was really involved since I can't point at a file that was wrong.

In the meantime, I did some initial work toward supporting btrfs in d-i, writing a basic partman-btrfs. One of the interesting open questions is how best to use subvolumes to split up a single btrfs filesystem. If the installer defines the right set of subvolumes, upgrades to be rolled back, without also rolling back /home and /srv. The remaining parts needed for d-i to support btrfs are fairly tractable, but are waiting until root on btrfs is bootable, and until the filesystem is not experimental. I gave up on the current experiement when I ran debsums on my laptop. (So that long thread was good for something!) It didn't find any corrupt files. But it did find a lot of md5sums files that were missing. Some of the packages with missing md5sums were upgraded just this week, and the md5sums files must have gone missing since. I have not seen anything that I can say with certainty was caused by btrfs, and not by some other cause, but since I can't trust the data on this laptop now (although git tells me everything in my home directory is ok), I'm reinstalling it, and saying aloha to btrfs, for now.

Inspired by a conversation about interview coding tasks from a list I'm on, I present the following - I considered it too long to email there. It took me longer than I expected to write; my x86 assembly is quite rusty. I'm not claiming it's pretty, but it fits in a single sector and most of the overhead is actually ELF structures.

; nasm -f elf fizzbuzz.asm
; ld -melf_i386 -s -o fizzbuzz fizzbuzz.o
; ./fizzbuzz
section .data
fizz	db	" fizz"
fizzlen	equ	$ - fizz
buzz	db	" buzz"
buzzlen	equ	$ - buzz
num	db	"   "
numend	equ	$ - 1
numlen	equ	$ - num
nl	db	0xa
nllen	equ	$ - nl
curnum	db 1
section .text
	global _start
_start:
	mov ax, [curnum]
	call printnum
	mov ax, [curnum]
	mov cx, 3
	xor dx, dx
	div cx
	cmp dx, 0
	jnz notfizz
	mov edx, fizzlen
	mov ecx, fizz
	call printstr
notfizz:
	mov ax, [curnum]
	mov cx, 5
	xor dx, dx
	div cx
	cmp dx, 0
	jnz notbuzz
	mov edx, buzzlen
	mov ecx, buzz
	call printstr
notbuzz:
	mov edx, nllen
	mov ecx, nl
	call printstr
	inc BYTE [curnum]
	cmp BYTE [curnum], 100
	jle _start
	xor ebx, ebx
	mov eax, 1
	int 0x80
printnum:
	mov edi, numend
	mov cx, 10
p1:
	xor edx, edx
	div cx
	add dx, '0'
	mov [edi], dl
	dec edi
	cmp ax, 0
	jne p1
	mov ecx, num
	mov edx, numlen
printstr:
	mov ebx, 1
	mov eax, 4
	int 0x80
	ret

Since I last mentioned music back in January I have accumulated another ten albums and unlike last time where there were only a couple of stand outs, this time I have he opposite problem.

Well my last post elicited a response from Mr Lougher the squashfs author. Just not one I was expecting. Apparently he did receive one of my emails (I sent five in total) to which he has not replied as I have accidentally come across as critical.

I've made a quick release of dh-make, now up to 0.52. Besides a minor dh_make.1 manual page fix this release will put the right value in the debian/source/format file. 0.51 will make it a native source package no matter what flags you use.

If you get weird lintian errors about native source formats and version numbers wrong on your brand-new Debian package you just made, you might of been bitten by this bug.

That leaves a few bugs left, there are two I need help with:

• Bug 328692 - If you have a plan ASCII name like me, then your name looks fine in the dh-make generated man pages. This bug requires converting names that aren't plain ASCII (e.g. that use UTF-8) into something groff understands. Someone suggested decomposed unicode but unicode and groff are pretty much a black art to me, let alone combining them.
• Bug 533117 - This one is all about making dh-make make your python packages. You'll need to understand the new debhelper v7 rules files. Again, python is not something I use so the bug is stuck here.
  

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• UTF-8: Bits, Bytes, and Benefits (research.swtch.com)

After a long time of testing and just plain other non-software writing stuff, I'm happy to announce Gjay 0.3.0 is released. This is my first release of Chuck Groom's code and hopefully it will work for you too.

The Debian packages will be out shortly after some building and testing. If you have a 64-bit computer it now works with 64 bits fine (ie on my amd64).

It still needs some work, I'd like it to interact with more than audacious as the sound player. Also if you know how to in one of the sound libraries stream wav, ogg or mp3 files correctly I'd like to hear from you. Currently gjay just uses the same old fork to mpg321 method, but idealy I'd like it to use the libraries directly.

OCaml Batteries Included 1.1.0 has arrived in Debian I've just uploaded the Debian package of OCaml Batteries Included 1.1.0 to the Debian unstable archive; hopefully, it will quickly enter testing to be released with the next Debian stable release. This is the first release in Debian of the "new generation" of Batteries Included, which has followed a strict diet, and now has Camomile as its only external dependency. It took me a while to package it due to an intertwining transition to OCaml 3.11.2 (during which we have fleshed out the last remaining few bits of transition to our new dependency system). Also, I had to fix some typical build issue with upstream, which kindly coordinated with me to have the fixes included in 1.1.0. So go, enjoy Batteries 1.1.0, and let me know your feedback:

    # apt-get install ocaml-batteries-included

(check that it will install 1.1.0 though, it might take a few days to hit your favorite architecture and mirror) Tip: starting from this version you will need the following to use Batteries in place of the legacy standard library in your sources:

    open Batteries_uni

for multi-threaded programs you should rather use open Batteries. Check the FAQ file installed under /usr/share/doc/libbatteries-ocaml-dev/ for more quick start information.

After weeks of trying to get around to doing that, I am finally starting the process of replacing my 10-year old 1024 bits DSA key with a shiny new 4096 bits RSA key. The old key ID is F5D65169, the new key ID is FA1E5292; it s available from the keyservers or my website. I have put up a transition document, signed with both keys; if you ve signed my old key, grab it, verify it and if all is OK on your end, please sign the new key. You ll notice that one of the old UIDs did not make it to the new key; that s because I m not using that email address and don t actually intend to use it in the future. Thanks!

From RFC3164, which is otherwise about syslog formats:

6. Security Considerations An odor may be considered to be a message that does not require any acknowledgement. People tend to avoid bad odors but are drawn to odors that they associate with good food. The acknowledgement of the receipt of the odor or scent is not required and indeed it may be the height of discretion to totally ignore some odors. On the other hand, it is usually considered good civility to acknowledge the prowess of the cook merely from the ambiance wafting from the kitchen. Similarly, various species have been found to utilize odors to attract mates. One species of moth uses this scent to find each other. However, it has been found that bolas spiders can mimic the odor of the female moths of this species. This scent will then attract male moths, which will follow it with the expectation of finding a mate. Instead, when they arrive at the source of the scent, they will be eaten [8]. This is a case of a false message being sent out with inimical intent. ... Along the lines of the analogy, computer event messages may be sent accidentally, erroneously and even maliciously.

This smells more like "I bet nobody ever really reads this RFC, let's put some stuff in the middle to see if they do!".

The Opera-Mini Dispute I have just read an interesting article about the Opera browser [1]. The article is very critical of Opera-Mini on the iPhone for many reasons most of which don t interest me greatly. There are lots of technical trade-offs that you can make when designing an application for a constrained environment (EG a phone with low resolution and low bandwidth). What does interest me is the criticism of the Opera Mini browser for proxying all Internet access (including HTTPS) through their own servers, this has been getting some traction around the Internet. Now it is obvious that if you have one server sitting on the net that proxies connections to lots of banks then there will be potential for abuse. What apparently isn t obvious to as many people is the fact that you have to trust the application. Causes of Software Security Problems When people think about computer security they usually think about worms and viruses that exploit existing bugs in software and about Trojan horse software that the user has to be tricked into running. These are both significant problems. But another problem is that of malicious software releases. I think that this is significantly different from Trojan horses because instead of having an application which was written for the sole purpose of tricking people (as is most similar to Greek history) you have an application that was written by many people who genuinely want to make a good product but you have a single person or small group that hijacks it. Rumor has it that rates well in excess of $10,000 are sometimes paid for previously unknown security vulnerabilities in widely used software. It seems likely that a programmer who was in a desperate financial situation could bolster their salary by deliberately putting bugs in software and then selling the exploits, this would not be a trivial task (making such bugs appear to be genuine mistakes would take some skill) but there are lots of people who could do it and plausibly deny any accusation other than carelessness. There have been many examples of gambling addicts who have done more foolish things to fund their habit. I don t think it s plausible to believe that every security flaw which has been discovered in widely used software was there purely as the result of a mistake. Given the huge number of programmers who have the skill needed to deliberately introduce a security flaw into the source of a program and conceal it from their colleagues I think it s quite likely that someone has done so and attempted to profit from it. Note that even if it could be proven that it was impossible to profit from creating a security flaw in a program that would not be sufficient to prove that it never happened. There is plenty of evidence of people committing crimes in the mistaken belief that it would be profitable for them. Should We Trust a Proprietary Application or an Internet Server? I agree with the people who don t like the Opera proxy idea, I would rather run a web browser on my phone that directly accesses the Internet. But I don t think that the web browser that is built in to my current smart-phone is particularly secure. It seems usual for a PC to need a security update for the base OS or the web browser at least once a year while mobile phones have a standard service life of two years without any updates. I suspect that there is a lot of flawed code running on smart phones that never get updated. It seems to me that the risks with Opera are the single point of failure of the proxy server in addition to the issues of code quality while the risks with the browser that is on my smart-phone is just the quality of the code. I suspect that Opera may do a better job of updating their software to fix security issues so this may mitigate the risk from using their proxy. At the moment China is producing a significant portion of the world s smart-phones. Some brands like LG are designed and manufactured in China, others are manufactured in China for marketing/engineering companies based in Europe and the US. A casual browse of information regarding Falun Gong makes the character of the Chinese leadership quite clear [2], I think that everything that comes out of China should be considered to be less trustworthy than equivalent products from Europe and the US. So I think that anyone who owns a Chinese mobile phone and rails against the Opera Mini hasn t considered the issue enough. I don t think it s possible to prove that an Opera Mini with it s proxy is more or less of a risk than a Chinese smart-phone. I m quite happy with my LG Viewty [3] but I wouldn t use it for Internet banking or checking my main email account. Also we have to keep in mind that mobile phones are really owned by telephone companies. You might pay for your phone or even get it unlocked so you can run it on a different network, but you won t get the custom menus of your telco removed. Most phones are designed to meet the needs of telcos not users and I doubt that secure Internet banking is a priority for a telco. Update: You can buy unlocked mobile phones. But AFAIK the Android is the only phone which might be described as not being designed for the needs of the telcos over the needs of the users. So while you can get a phone without custom menus for a telco, you probably can t get a phone that was specifically designed for what you want to do. The Scope of the Problem Mobile phones are not the extent of the problem, I think that anyone who buys a PC from a Chinese manufacturer and doesn t immediately wipe the hard drive and do a fresh OS install is taking an unreasonable risk. The same thing goes for anyone who buys a PC from a store where it s handled by low wage employees, I can imagine someone on a minimum income accepting a cash payment to run some special software on every PC before it goes out the door that wouldn t be any more difficult or risky than the employees who copy customer credit card numbers (a reasonably common crime). It s also quite conceivable that any major commercial software company could have a rogue employee who is deliberately introducing bugs into it s software. That includes Apple. If the iPhone OS was compromised before it shipped then the issue of browser security wouldn t matter much. I agree that having the minimum possible number of potential security weak points is a good idea. They should allow Opera Mini users to select that HTTPS traffic should not be proxied. But I don t think that merely not using a proxy would create a safe platform for Internet banking. In terms of mobile phones most things are done in the wrong way to try and get more money out of the users. Choose whichever phone or browser you want and it will probably still be a huge security risk. Harald Welte is doing some really good work on developing free software for running a GSM network [4]. But until that project gets to the stage of being widely usable I think that we just have to accept a certain level of security risk when using mobile phones.

• [1] http://counternotions.com/2010/02/18/mini/
• [2] http://www.faluninfo.net/
• [3] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2009/05/31/lg-u990-viewty/
• [4] http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2010/02/13/#20100213-six_weeks_to_bcch

I spent the day working with Daniel. He has been trying to get the correct runes for a GCC build in a strange environment. Turns out all he needed was me to throw stupid ideas at him until one caused him to examine some of the generated intermediate symbol maps...