For a while I’ve been trying to find some easy way to keep a few machines I admin behaving the way I want them too with minimal effort. They don’t really need much maintenance – but I would like something to help keep them all in sync. Basically, something like FAI, but much, much simpler – ideally something that takes five minutes to understand, and another five minutes to deploy; and leave the more complicated and powerful tools for when they’re actually needed. I figured what I really want was just a simple way to make a meta-package – one that doesn’t really provide any functionality, just tells apt/dpkg what I want installed (via Depends), and what I don’t want installed (via Conflicts) and adds any extra configuration stuff or local scripts that I decide I want. But doing that with a real Debian package is harder than I’m really comfortable with – I don’t want to have to worry about potential lintian errors, or rules files and debhelper commands, or writing a Makefile to get my files installed or whatever, I want something more trivial than that. Looking for meta-package creators, the only one I spotted that I thought looked likely was cdd-dev, described as “Custom Debian Distributions common files for developing meta packages”. Unfortunately it seems to just provide templates, which makes things quicker, but no less complex. Fortunately equivs (“Circumvent Debian package dependencies”) is actually used for metapackages these days, according to its maintainer on IRC and its long description:

This package provides a tool to create Debian packages that only contain dependency information. One use for this is to create a metapackage: a package whose sole purpose is to declare dependencies and conflicts on other packages so that these will be automatically installed, upgraded, or removed. Another use is to circumvent dependency checking. […]

That turned out to work much better than I remembered (from whenever I last tried it – back in ‘99 I guess?), with the only drawback being that I couldn’t add files easily. But that’s just a matter of creating a patch to equivs, which I then won’t have to worry about again. So having done that, I can now create a metapackage to do whatever I want by creating a file like:

Suite: client
Section: misc
Priority: standard
Package: ajs-client-stuff
Version: 20071114.1
Maintainer: Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au>
Description: Metapackage for aj's client computers
 Depends on necessary packages, etc.
File: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/client.list
 deb http://mirror.localnet/debian etch main contrib non-free
 deb http://mirror.localnet/debian etch-proposed-updates main contrib non-free
 .
 deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
File: postinst
 #!/bin/sh -e
 .
 apt-key add - <<EOF
 [output of gpg --armour --export $KEY]
 EOF
 .
 ##DEBHELPER##

debhelper kindly takes care of getting the permissions right for me, and equivs will generate a full source package if I tell it to, which I can just upload to mini-dinstall and have a regular Debian repository just by writing a text file and running equivs-build. And my metapackage can add dependencies, conflicts, apt sources, cronjobs, scripts, configuration files, documentation, or whatever I happen to want – which means I can make it automatically update itself, and thus install any dependencies or remove any conflicts, which then means that modifying the config on all the machines is just a matter of updating the metapackage. And new installs is (hopefully) just a matter of doing a standard install and then adding the metapackage. Perfect. …even if it is really little more than a reinvention of rpm’s .spec files. :)

Some of you might notice that I've been somewhat inactive as a Debian developer or hacker in general for a while. There were several reasons, but at least one of my free-time-suckers these days has been MIAU (Movements for the Internet Active Users). I'm one of the founders, and recently we held the kick-off press conference and are steadily gaining supporters. Oh yeah, we know this acronym is quite awkward...we simply love that sound (in case you don't get, see our symbol mark). Our organization is intended to be a Japanese counterpart of EFF or ORG, and possibly includes some elements of what Prof. Lessig & Co. are doing in the U.S. We would like to defend our freedom and build/preserve the nurturing environment for innovation, especially in the Net. We would also like to be a political voice for Japanese Internet users. Currently we are focusing to fight with (IMHO) ill-conceived Japanese copyright "reform"s, such as extending the copyright term to 70 years or making downloading (in a sense) questionably-uploaded materials (like BitTorrent downloads) illegal. In case you want to know what's going on in the Japanese copyright war front now, I recommend this recently-published Techdirt article: Japan Is The Latest Country To Explore Copyright Term Extension. Unfortunately, for the time being, most of the MIAU Web contents are available only in Japanese. Yes, *I* got to translate the MIAU articles into English but need some more time...and I should admit MIAU as an organization is still tottering in many aspects. I'm not sure how we can gain greater momentum. If you have some experience to run this kind of initiative in your countries, please share your experience with us.

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Today I was reminded about a thought I was having earlier this year by a twitter from Garrick Van Buren about the new ultra-thin MacBooks. It seems altogether likely that the next laptop computer that I buy will have no moving parts. Currently the only moving parts in the MacBook that I have now are in the optical drive, the fan, and the hard drive. This is of course not counting the moving parts which I move myself - the buttons to actually interact with it and the lid. Apparently the optical drive in the laptop is going the way of the floppy drive in laptops, so there is only the fan for the CPU and the hard drive. Hard drives are also heading toward the realm of non-moving parts with solid state drives gaining acceptance and size. You can now get a 32GB solid state flash drive for pretty cheap, and they are sure to go in the direction all storage goes - faster, larger, and cheaper. That only leaves the fan which cools the CPU. It is not impossible to run a high-end computer without a fan nowadays, but unfortunately the heatsinks required in order to keep the most crucial part of the computer without burning up. The OLPC hardware is already in some ways the wave of the future - there are no moving parts at all. Unfortunately it is also completely underpowered and it's not possible to run a ton of programs on it. I'm not sure that a solid-state laptop for the general public will ever be possible with the general increase in computing power, but if it happens, I would bet it happens in the next 5 years.

People will be pointing out that the optical drive being missing is a new and novel concept and that Apple is pushing the boundaries of laptops, but they are hardly the first ones to ship a laptop without a optical drive. The world of sub notebooks have been taking out the optical drive in their smaller models for a while now. One model that I've seen around quite a bit is the Sony PictureBook which got quite a lot of press because it featured the Transmeta Crusoe chip. There are also a number of other sub notebooks which don't have a drive. However, I don't believe that the drives will be replaced by flash drives or network installs - there will always be a need for boot media for completely broken computers. The common solution in the sub notebook world is to just have a drive which attaches when it's needed, in the mode of the first drives. The solution which uses flash drives is not likely to happen anytime soon - software isn't getting any smaller, and the cost of flash media isn't falling quickly enough to catch up with the cost-effectiveness of pressing CDs.

After a really crazy weekend in which it looked like I wasn't able to set up NAT[1], I went to work with the gear and tested the exact same thing I did at home and it worked without a glitch.

So, now I suspect that there might be something wrong with my ISP or the DSL modem, while ritter (my NSLU2) is fine. As a bonus I just installed Debian armel on it (installation report to arrive soon).


When I got home, after the laptop came back from hibernate[2] I saw these messages on all my terminals:

Message from syslogd@bounty at Mon Nov 12 23:57:04 2007 ...
bounty kernel: Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason b0.

Message from syslogd@bounty at Mon Nov 12 23:57:04 2007 ...
bounty kernel: You have some hardware problem, likely on the PCI bus.

Message from syslogd@bounty at Mon Nov 12 23:57:04 2007 ...
bounty kernel: Dazed and confused, but trying to continue

Is this a good time to panic?
I guess I'll have to dig into this, too.


In other news, svn-buildpackage 0.6.23 has been uploaded to unstable and it fixes yet another 7 bugs, which brings svn-bp's bug count down to 19 open valid bugs (2 more if you count wontfix bugs, too). This is the lowest bug count of svn-buildpackage since at least the end of April, according to the bug count graph.

Also, oolite 1.65-6 was also uploaded to unstable and fixes the breakage due to the gnustep build tools changes. Unfortunately, on arm is dep-waiting for libgnustep-base-dev which is broken on this arch.


Thanks to my sponsors, you know who you are ;-) .

[1] I have been trying to set up a simple NAT machine for more than 6 hours and, although everything seemed to be OK, checked and double checked it didn't work
[2] which works now only if I don't use fglrx which is broken from this PoV (bug 449095)

The Ubuntu Code of Conduct is probably the most widely read document I've written. Agreement to it is prerequisite to participation in the Ubuntu community in all official and many unofficial capacities. It is has successfully set a positive tone and helped turn Ubuntu into what is probably the most friendly and civil free software project I've worked in. Over time, quite a few free software projects have copied or adapted the CoC. Tired of giving folks permission, the project went ahead and licensed the CoC under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license to explicitly allow reuse as long as attribution to the Ubuntu project is given and derivatives are similarly modifiable. In a recent development, it was adapted by the Fort Erie, Ontario town council for use government interactions of their business improvement areas! It's amazing to see the document gain so much traction! Unfortunately, the person who repurposed the CoC did not attribute the document correctly and was publicly accused of plagiarism by another council member! Ubuntu is happy to have Fort Erie, and anyone else, use or adapt the CoC. Folks should just take care to be honest about where it came from and maintain the BY-SA license.

Yesterday, my laptop locked up hard. So hard, it wouldn't turn on afterwards, but flash an error code. Unfortunately, Dell hides the relevant information very well - it took me some time to find in the forums that the error code means bad memory.After removing the memory module from slot B, I could turn my computer back on again. So either the module is dead or the mainboard part related to it.I bought my laptop second-hand in the US last year, and warranty probably is just over. Still I wanted to make sure that this isn't covered by warranty anymore, so I tried contacting Dell support.What a pain. No reply yet to my mail inquiry; and the "support chat" doesn't work right. Their support agent always asks for my phone number (WTF?) and then after some minutes says he's going to disconnect because I don't reply.I wonder if they ever tested their support chat with Gecko-based browsers.0 out of 5 stars for Dell support so far. Important information is inaccessible and the support doesn't reply in either email nor chat. It's not even giving bad replies.

I’m currently evaluating Olivier Sessinks jailkit to maintain a small cvsd CHROOT with an included SSH server. The cvsd-buildroot command e.g. doesn’t handle the libpam-modules dependency in the CHROOT. So I tried to update the Debian packaging files included in the jailkit source. During this work I found some issues with the build environment - e.g. no DESTDIR support and some other stuff (another user already complained, that there might be problems with the SUID installation part for jk_chrootsh, jk_uchroot and jk_procmailwrapper of the Makefiles). So I began to check and “fix” the Makefiles and the configure script and then sent everything to Olivier. I did not only add the DESTDIR variables. I also made use of built-in rules, common variables (also for implicit rules), … and such stuff to make the Makefiles shorter and easier to maintain. My fault: I tested everything with GNU make. Now Olivier complained, that BSDs make doesn’t work anymore. So we began a short hack session to check for the problems. My first issue: I had to find some BSD make to test it myself. I found it in the freebsd5-buildutils, that contains the freebsd-make command. Then we began to check for incompatibilities and that’s the result:

1. ifdef statements differ in syntax
   • GNU make uses ifdef VAR
   • BSD make uses .ifdef VAR
   solution: We replaced the statement with a construct similar to AM_CONDITIONAL. But we do not use this macro, because it would need to be shipped in aclocal.m4, which is currently not necessary. The code simply sets a variable foo_TRUE to ‘# ‘, if the condition is wrong, or the variable is left empty, if the condition is true:

   if test "x$my_condition" != "xno" ; then
       AC_SUBST([foo_TRUE], [])
   else
       AC_SUBST([foo_TRUE], [# ])
   fi

   FILES = bar
   @foo_TRUE@FILES += foo

2. prerequisite variables differ in syntax
   • GNU make uses $<, $^, $@, …
   • BSD make uses $ .IMPSRC , $ .ALLSRC , $ .TARGET , … (note, that both *SRC variables hold a list of source files)
   Unfortunately both make implementations doesn’t seem to share a variable for the list of prerequisites. So the only solution is to list all prerequisites in the rule again. A variable would be much more comfortable. Maybe one could write a function, that first tests $ .IMPSRC and falls back to $^. Maybe that’s an alternative, but it’s IMHO not a very good solution. We’ve chosen to write down all prerequisites in a rule instead of using a variable. This is a little bit “harder” to maintain, but it works.
3. built-in rules are not shared and do not use the same variables
   • GNU make ships built-in rules to build objects from sources and link them; rules consider CPPFLAGS
   • BSD make ships built-in rules to build objects from sources, but there are no rules to link them; rules do not consider CPPFLAGS
   In the case of GNU make, one can simply write:

   myprog: foo.o bar.o

   and GNU make will automatically create foo.o from foo.c (.c.o:, ditto for bar.o) and at least link myprog (.o:). But BSD make will only create the object files. There is no final link-step. So we had to include the rule to link the program in the Makefile.

Finally we got it and it looks good now. I/We learned a lot of new things (I learnd a lot about BSD make) ;), but it took us 1-2 hours to understand and fix the problems. Here a list of URLs, that might give some more information about the programs, their syntax and limitations:

• GNU make’ manual
• FreeBSDs make
• Autoconf: Limitations of make

There are many reasons to love the blog Five Chinese Crackers, and printing the letter sent to The Daily Mail from the author of an immigration report which was drastically misrepresented certainly is one of them:

Unfortunately, your piece is a mixture of ignorance, misinterpretation and speculation. I couldn't care less about your intellectual capacity to absorb the data, but you have included my name in an article that conveys a false impression of what the study was about.

In other news, today I discovered that the epitome of British retailing, Marks and Spencer, was co-founded by a foreigner! Michael Marks was born in Belarus, and came to England to avoid the persecution of Jews. The warehouse in Leeds where they started up has a blue plaque commemorating the event. What would the Express or Mail say to this?

Once ftp-master is back, several important X updates should arrive. The first one is a Xserver pre-1.4.1 snapshot (the official 1.4.1 is expected soon). It will bring many input fixes, for instance for broken LEDs (reported 12 times). Unfortunately, there are still some input bugs in there, for instance upstream bug #13114 which is kind of annoying (I can't play xmoto anymore). A new release of the Intel driver is coming soon. The first release candidate, 2.1.99, has been uploaded to experimental. The most noticable changes include some fix for VT switch and the support for some rare LVDS chipsets (ch701x). Also EXA is now enabled by default, which is good news since XAA had some bugs that won't ever be fixed (for instance when using XV in Compiz, see upstream bug #10912). Before 2.2 is released, we might get a fix for backlight support which got fixed on some boards while broken again on some others in the past (see upstream bug #11527). The new Mesa 7.0.2 release might be worth taking a look too since it brings many fixes, including a working __gluInvertMatrix() which should solve many GLU-related problems that have been reported, and some fixes for several Blender crashes. Not much activity on the xserver-xorg-video-ati side recently. But given how well it works these days, I am seriously thinking of uploading the next snapshot to unstable (1:6.6.193-3 didn't help a lot there).

I have just come back from a half week stay at the Hilton Indian Lakes resort (which is the second time in a month that I have stayed at a golf resort and club and proceeded to spend 9 hours a day in a windowless conference room). On Thursday night, an ex Chicago native wanted to show us the traditional Chicago pizza (which can be delivered, half cooked, and frozen, via Fed-Ex, anywhere in the lower 48). Google Maps to the rescue! One of the attendees had a car, and we piled in and drove to the nearest pizzeria. It was take out only. We headed to the next on the list, again to be met with disappointment; since making the pizza takes the best part of an hour, and we did not want to be standing out in a chilly parking lot while they made out pizza. So, I strongly advocated going to Tapas Valencia instead, since I have never had tapas before. Somewhat to our disappointment, they served tapas only as an appetizer, and had a limited selection; so we ended up ordering one tapas dish (I had beef kabobs with a garlic horseradish sauce and caramelized onions), and my very first paella (paella valencia), with shrimp, mussels, clams, chicken, and veggies. We ate well, and headed back to the hotel. As we parked, and started for the gate, I realized I no longer had my wallet with me so back to the restaurant we went. The waiter had not found the wallet. Nor had the busboy. The owner/hostess suggested perhaps it was in the parking lot? So we all went and combed the parking lot once, twice. At this point I am beginning to think about the consequences I can t get home, because I can t get into the airport, since I have no ID. I have no money, but Judy can t wire the money to me via western union because I have no ID. I need money to buy greyhound tickets to get home on a bus and then there is the cancelling credit cards, etc. Panic city. While I was on my fourth circuit of the parking lot, the owner went back and checked the laundry chute. I had apparently carelessly draped the napkin over my wallet when paying the tab, and walked away and the busboy just grabbed all the napkins, wallet and all, and dumped it down the chute. Judy suggests I carry an alternate form of ID and at least one credit card in a different location than my wallet for future trips. If that was not excitement enough, yesterday, I got on the plane home, uneventfully enough. We took off, and I was dozing comfortably, when there were two loud bags, and the plane juddered and lister to the port. There was a smell of burning rubber, and we stopped gaining altitude. After making a rough about turn with the left wing down, the pilot came on the intercom to say We just lost our left engine, and we are returning to O Hare. We should be in the ground in two minutes . Hearing the in , a guy up front started hyperventilating, and his wife was rubbing his back. My feelings were mostly of exasperation, I had just managed to get myself situated comfortably, and now lord only knows when we would get another aircraft. When we landed, the nervous dude reached over and kissed his wife like he had just escaped the jaws of death. And he asked if any of us knew statistics, and if we were fine now. (I was tempted to state that statistics are not really predictive, but hey). It was all very pretty, with six fire engines rushing over and spraying us with foam and all. When we got off the plane the nervous dude headed straight to some chairs in the terminal, and said his legs would not carry him further. He did make it to the replacement plane later, though. Turns out it was a bird flying into the engine that caused the flameout. Well, at least I have a story to tell, though it delayed getting home by about three hours.

I have just got a CentOS system running with a MySQL database to store account data, Postfixadmin [1] to manage the account data stored in the MySQL database, and Dovecot for serving the mail via POP and IMAP. It was a minor annoyance that Postfixadmin is not packaged for CentOS (and doesn’t appear to be packaged for Debian). I installed it under /usr/local and apart from a bug whereby it refused to talk to MySQL anywhere other than localhost it worked well enough. One thing to note is that you must not use AllowOverride None in the Apache configuration section for the Postfixadmin directory as it relies on a .htaccess file to determine who can login as the overall administrator (the person who delegates domain administration rights to the people who run the various domains). Also it was a little annoying that Postfixadmin seems to only be able to talk to a MySQL instance on localhost. The next issue was getting Postfix to talk to MySQL. For some reason (which unfortunately is not mentioned in the changelogs) the Postfix package in CentOS is built without MySQL support, but there is a macro on the second line of the postfix.spec file to enable this. Obviously at some time in the past MySQL support was added to that packaged and then removed. It’s a pity that they haven’t chosen to do what is done in Debian and create separate packages with shared objects to support MySQL, LDAP, and PostgreSQL lookups for Postfix.

• [1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/postfixadmin/

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On Sept 30th 1997, alternated traffic regulation was decided in Paris for the day, because of a pollution peak. As of now, this has been the one and only time this decision was applied and it won't probably happen again because of many (stupid) limitations:

• cars with a "green" sign are not concerned and about 90% of cars now used in France have it
• it is limited to Paris and not its suburbs
• the pollution level that triggers it is stupidely high

Anyway, when this happened, I was, like dozens of millions of moron^W people in the Paris area, driving from my home to my work place (the same home and workplace than now): 30km one way, between 30 and 120 minutes (most of the time 45-60). I then decided to try using public transportation for one full month and then see if I can survive it (as many people who seldom use public transportation, I had horror stories in mind, such as full trains, no respect of schedules and of course, the horrific FRENCH STRIKES). This was 10 years ago and I never stopped. Since then, my daily trip is:

• 7 minutes walk to the bus stop
• 16 minutes ride to the train station
• 10 minutes ride in a first train
• 20 minutes ride in a second train
• 15 minutes ride in a bus
• 6 minutes walk to Onera

So, about 75 minutes from my home to my work place. 30-60 minutes "lost" per day? Not really. In the train, I can read, sleep (funnily an internal system always wakes me up at the right moment) and of course, hack on my laptop (which is my most common activity there). This, quite comfortably with enough room for my arms, feet. The same goes for the bus rides (I don't suffer from car sickness). I still haven't found a way to hack while walking (but I found some free Wifi spots at some bus stops). So, in my opinion, I *won* 90 minutes a day. And, indeed, Debian benefits it a lot as this moment is my privileged moment to work on my packages, or write stupid things in my blog, or just hack around and look for things to improve in our favourite distribution. In 10 years, I of course have a few "horror stories" about crazy schedules, missed busses and of course the awful FRENCH STRIKES. About the latter, the reality is that I just have to look at the special schedules on strike days...and spot the few trains that are schedules (either 1 every 30 minutes or, at worst, 1 every hour....when the usual schedule is 1 every 15 minutes)...and then I reach my home/work pretty safely, while many moron^W other peopl suffer from awful traffic jams on highways. So, in short, here am I, ready for 10 more years of public transportation use and being seen as an ET in my neighbourhood because I leave home by WALKING even if I am not a high school teenager. Strange person, indeed? Not to forget: from my records, I saved about EUR41,700 by doing this, assuming a cost of 0.4EUR/km, 60km/day, 200days/year for the car trips....and EUR623/year for my transportation card. I should buy a brand new SUV..:-)

Groups that campaign for free technology, like the Free Software Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tend to be supported primarily by technologists. Both groups have struggled to communicate their messages to non-geeks. I have written an article and helped create a new weblog, both called Revealing Errors, that attempt to address a root cause of this issue in what I hope is both an insightful and entertainingly manner. Geeks support groups like the FSF and EFF because, as people who understand technology, they understand just how powerful technology is. Geeks know that control of our communication technologies is control over what we can say, who we can say it to, and how and when we can say it. In an increasingly technologically mediated age, control over technology is not only the power to control our actions; it is the power to limit our possible actions. Our freedom to our technology is our freedom, full stop. This message fails to resonate with non-geeks but it does not fail because non-geeks are happy to hand over their freedom. It fails to resonate simply because the vast majority of people do not understand that technology, and control over it, is powerful enough to impact their freedom. Most people fail to see the power because, quite simply, most people fail to see technology. While we all see the effects of technologies, the technologies themselves are frequently hidden. We see emails but not mail transport agents. We see text messages but not the mobile phone network. Before one can argue that such systems must be free, one must reveal their existence. Technologists are keenly aware of the existence of these systems. To everyone else, they are completely invisible. Marc Weisner of Xerox PARC cited eyeglasses as an ideal technology because, with spectacles, "you look at the world, not the eyeglasses." When technology works smoothly, its nature and effects are invisible. But technologies do not always work smoothly. A tiny fracture or a smudge on a lens renders glasses quite visible to the wearer indeed. Similarly, people see their MTAs when messages bounce. They see Windows on their ATM or phone when the system crashes. Technological errors are moments when usually invisible technology becomes visible. They are, in this sense, also an educational opportunity. I have recently published an article in Media/Culture Journal from the University of Melbourne within a special issue called Error. If you are interested in learning more about what I'm trying to do or looking at some examples, please read the article. With support and ontributions from Aaron Swartz, I have also created a new weblog, Revealing Errors, that reveals errors that reveal technology by posting descriptions of errors with commentary on what the error reveals. I've posted a few examples there already and I will be updating it regularly. The goal is to help explain the power and influence of technology in the service of broadening the base of people who can get excited about freedom to technology. Eventually, I hope to be able to communicate this message to a less technical audience. With that said, I hope that even seasoned technologists will learn things about their technological environment through the analysis and interaction. I hope readers of this blog will subscribe to it and, if possible, comment on and contribute to the project as it moves forward.

France sank against Argentina tonight. Last time France played in Parc des Princes, they were crushed by South-Africa, 10 years ago. The same happened tonight with an impressive victory by Argentina against France. France dominated the first 20 minutes but Argentina's defense was heroic and strong. Certainly the best defense play of this entire world cup, in this match, with a great organization around mauls, an impressive scrum and explosive tackles. After being dominated 26 minutes long and anyway scoring a try an, Argentina had to resist 10 minutes before half time when France unsuccessfully attempted to score a try (which would probably have changed the match). I think I will have to review these 10 minutes again as this was a demonstration of defensive play. It is indeed not a surprise that Ibanez lost his nerves and got expelled at the very end of 1st half time. Sad end of career...very similar to Zidane's one, indeed. In second half time, seeing France being crushed so hard was sometimes saddening but Argentina played so wonderfully that we could just be admirative of that play. Again, their solidarity and defensive play made the difference and, 5 tries later, they finally logically beat France. The Argentinian team is really a great satisfaction of the world cup. Playing only with 18 players, they only half-missed one match: their semi-final against South-Africa. I think they now really deserve to play in the Tri-Nations tournament along with New Zealand, Australia and South-Africa: if that doesn't happen, I will really think that other southern hemisphere nations are just cowards..:-) What about France? Well, this is a really sad ending for that world cup. Finishing with two very bad matches is really worrying for the future of that team. There are many promising players in that team (such as Dusautoir, Szarzewski...) and they can probably rebuild something and we still be enthusiast about that sport in this country.

...but, really, Fiji would have deserved the victory. They did put the Stade Velodrome on fire this afternoon, pushing South-Africa to play....a quite bad rugby with few imagination and many errors. In the RSA team, only Steyn emerged and saved his team from sinking (37-20). RSA scored 5 tries mostly only because they have good four-wheel-driven "trucks". In the Fiji side, Sisa Koyamaibole and Mosese Rauluni lead their team to even the score 20-20 on 65th minute...unfortunately, losing in the last 10 minutes despite the support of the entire French crowd. The Springboks need to improve their play dramatically if they want to have a chance against Argentina (very probably unless Scotland realises a miracle). My conclusion today: the Three Nations from southern hemisphere (RSA, NZL, AUS) should really consider opening their annual tournament to other nations such as Samoa, Tonga, Fiji or Argentina. That would certainly force them to play another game than their usual game. Of course, that would mean being less attractive to players (just count the number of players from Samoa, Tonga and Fiji who play with New Zealand and Australia) but considerably widening rugby in the Pacific area.

So, A completely non-existing French team lost against a....nearly completely non-existing English team. Too many bad decisions, too much bad kick play, too many lost balls....and even no luck (the English try...damn). The French team couldn't win with such poor play (even when they were leading by 9-8, we both were completely sure they would lose on a penalty kick). What's pretty sad is that England nearly showed nothing too and, therefore, both teams made this the worst match I've seen in that world cup. Hopefully, Argentina and South Africa will show some better play tomorrow. However, when I see this, I nearly regret that France eliminated New Zealand. The All Blacks could never have played as bad as France did and they would certainly have kicked out that boring English team. Definitely, I'll be South African or Argentinian next Sunday (I have a small preference for being Argentinian, indeed).

We watched either parts or the entire three matches yesterday. So, long report..:-) The day began with the most unbalanced game of this world cup, featuring New Zealand, world's top rugby team, against Portugal, ranked 22nd. Rugby in Portugal is played by about 4200 people only, in less than 50 clubs. All players are amateur but one (Gon alvo Uva, playing in Montpellier, France), being dentists, students, etc...and coming to RWC during their holidays. The result (108-13 and 16 tries) was expected but the feeling when Portugal scored a try was great, with the 40,000 attendees in Lyon supporting Portugal. Personnally, I had great time chatting on IRC with Miguel Figueiredo, one of the leaders of the portuguese l10n team in Debian, during the match. We watched Wales-Australia (20-32) during the evening. That game was obviously the key match of this pool, with the winner very probably finishing 1st in the pool. Wales playing in Millenium Stadium in Cardiff is always astonishing and show how much the Welsh people love this sport. During 1st half, Australia strongly dominated and logically lead 25-3 with 3 tries. Berrick Barnes, their new fly half (Stephen Larkham injured), is a very promising player and, imho, the match's MVP (even after being severely bashed by Gareth Thomas on Australia's first try). After half time, the Welsh team courageously fought and came back to 13-25, menacing Australia which was more hesitating. Unfortunately, Australia scored a try after a big mistake by Stephen Jones. So, even with good play by Wales and another try by the incredible wing player Shane Williams, Australia logically won this game. Again, a southern hemisphere team dominated a northern hemisphere one. This is probably what will happen during this entire WC and I bet that New Zealand, Australia and South Africa will end up in semi-finals, quite probably along with Argentina, unless France does a miracle and ends up 1st in their pool. I think that Australia is slightly weaker than NZ and RSA, though. So, my current bet is NZ-RSA for the final (this can happen, given their respective track to the final and given that they certainly will end up first of their respective pools). Finally, we watched the second half of Ireland-Georgia (14-10). *That* was quite a surprise. Ireland was very close to lose this game with Georgian forwards crushing them repeatedly at the end of the match and nearly scoring a try that would have made them win. Everybody was waiting for Georgia to swell after their strong 1st half (3-7) but they managed to fight until the last second, supported by Bordeaux 40,000 attendees (minus a few thousands of Irish supporters, of course). So, while the initial question was whether Ireland would score a bonus point, the final question became about them to *win* the match. This gives even more credit to Argentina's victory last Tuesday. Full standing ovation for Georgia at the end of the match. Today is again a busy day. I'll probably skip Fidji-Canada (which happens at the same time than France-Namibia) but certainly won't miss Samoa-Tonga and, of course, France-Namibia. Samoa have to win to keep their chances of qualifying (they can beat England, really) and, well, France has of course to win *and* score a bonus point. In this world cup where to so-called "small" teams are not that small, everything can happen and France is anything but safe, ehre.

...and, really, we nearly never thought that Argentina could win tonight. South Africa was really too strong for them. The only domain where Argentinians dominated were scrums but this was much compensated by their great weakness on line-outs, losing something like 5 or 6 of them. South Africa thus logical won very easily...and Bryan Habana is now the best try scorer all along RWCs, along with Jonah Lomu. He is a really great player, indeed. Much much impressive South Africa: they'll be by far the favourites of the final against England, which they beated already during that World Cup. I said several times that I'm not a deep fan of RSA's play, but I could become one. Their game improved all along the World Cup and today, they probably played their best match. Two remakes next week-end: France-Argentina for the 3rd place and South Africa-England as final. That will be good matches, no doubt...and I hope that Bernard Laporte will change the French team to play against Argentina.

Logically, Argentina won against Scotland tonight after a.....quite boring match. Scotland, as expected for them unfortunately, wasn't able to put speed in their game, the only way to beat Argentina this year. Even with that poor game (Lamont, their rear player, was a disaster), Scotland finished quite close to ARG, who didn't play brilliantly with many approximations (Hernandez being a bit arrogant, trying to kick too many drop goals) and a bit of luck. So, nothing really impressive in that match. Does that mean that South Africa has better chances to qualify for the final: who knows? Argentina can be unpredictable...but it seems they are a little bit burned out (they don't really have 30 top players and some of their key players appear tired). The semi-finals will feature France-England (about 50-50 chances from what we saw up to now) and South Africa-Argentina (60-40, in my opinion). Next week-end, Stade de France.

Bartosz, it's interesting to see that "right wing" seems to have different definitions for both of us, and probably in both our countries...:-) So far, the definition of M. Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz party "Law and Justice" (I think this is the right translation of PiS...in French, we use "Droit et Justice") would classify it as "conservative" for me...and thus eligible for being called "right wing". Anyway, we both agree that political orientations in Poland really suck. I really would have hated seeing someone like Roman Giertych, head of the "Polish Families League", ultra-catholic party, be in some change in my country (we have a very similar political man named "Philippe de Villiers", here). Worse is the nomination of Andrzej Lepper who probably represents the most hideous aspects of populism. I think that such step is more or less impossible to avoid, unfortunately. And I stay confident that your country, as well as all recent EU members from Central Europe, will soon overcome this. Don't emigrate: you have to change your country from the inside...:)