I think we all in Debian agree that the current discussion and the votes are a cruel mess. But if anyone wants to blame anyone else for this, please consider some facts: The outcome of the vote depends on what is to be voted on. If the vote is "Eat shit or die" a majority of people might choose the shit. That's why our constitution allows everyone to amend the vote, to offer more options, so that people can vote for what they actually want. This might get messy, especially if the process is chaotic. It can only work if people take the time and consideration to discuss the suggestions long enough to get to sane values. But if you haste it will get messy. That there is so much haste currently is also our all fault. Of course if more people had worked on the firmware issues, we would not have this problem. But this is not the fault of one side. The other side could have worked on that too. Some "But I have nothing against firmware in the kernel." is as little an excuse for not working on it as "I do not need kernels for hardware without free firmwares". Because the outcomes of the last votes for sarge and etch made clear that just having the stuff in the kernel is no solution. Everyone that did not propose a GR to allow non-free firmware more than half a year ago and did not work on easing things for users needing non-free firmware has either to admit that it is also his fault by omission as much as those not wanting the firmware in there and not having done more to get rid of it. Or you have to admit you willfully did nothing to now take the release hostage for your goals. That said, I also want to speak against the "lenny without firmware will be totally unusable". I didn't look at the details. But when I in the last half year had some servers that needed some firmware, that was not even in the kernel and on the installation media, I was extremely surprised how easy it was to put it there and how anything went correctly without thinking much, the installer just copied the needed files directly on the installed system. The initrd generator must have included that somehow (for it was a firmware for the sata card, and it actually boots). And I think it might not even be needed on the installation media, but might also be inserted by some other means. (But putting it in the initrd of the netboot installer was just so easy, that I tried nothing else). Some post-scriptum: I personally would have deemed it more clean to have Peter Palfrader's proposal not made to amendment of the other vote. But if it had been handled otherwise, I definitely would have suggested an amendment to it (and perhaps some others, too). So do not think it would have made things much faster or easier to grasp. Another post-scriptum: It's the job of our secretary to protect and interpret the consitution. The only thing looking at the current discussions is why political partisans in some western countries not yet got to the idea of recalling judges whose job it is to protect the constituion. Perhaps because in that setting it would sound just too absurd...

I went on IRC to ask a simple technical question earlier today. I wasn't going to ask it in the #debian-devel channel, since it was a samba question rather than a debian-related one; but since my IRC client was still running, and had that channel active, I couldn't help but notice some discussion about "what-ifs" when there isn't a secretary, and who gets to do what then. Surely this was idle speculation, I thought? But that can sometimes be fun, so let's look at the backlog, and see... That's when I found out that this wasn't, in fact, idle speculation. Oh dear. Well, that's the end of an era, I guess. Not that it wasn't totally unexpected; when I learned that Neil McGovern had become "assistant secretary", I already suspected that Manoj was going to resign eventually, and he does confirm that suspicion in his resignation email. However, the suddenness of it certainly was unexpected. Here's a tip of the hat for everything Manoj has done for Debian so far. I can only wish to be at your level. What does distress me, however, is a part of Manoj's email, in which he mentions some people had been trying to get him kicked from the project:

As to the people who emailed me that they are putting together a petition for the DAM to have me removed from the project, I hear you too. I am going to spend the next few days evaluating how important the project is to me, and whether I should save you the bother or an expulsion process.

Well, Manoj, if my voice means anything to you: ignore those people, and stay a happy Debian Developer. You became project secretary not too long after I became Debian Developer, and over the years I've learned to respect you as a person with great integrity for your work, who would always do what you considered to be "the right thing". Even when I disagreed with you on what "the right thing" is (and there have been cases of this happening, including this particular vote, although I wasn't very active in the discussions), I have never been able to pinpoint our disagreement on you abusing your position as secretary in order to win the argument, or some such. You have been consistent and (where necessary) predictable in performing your duties as project secretary, and that is a great compliment. I can only hope we'll see those same virtues in our next secretary. As for that expulsion process, please do not tell us who those people were, for I do not like seeing people made utter fools of in public.

New version of python-gammu has been just released. It fixes possible crashes, brings compatibility with Gammu 1.22.0 and adds support for converting to and from vCard/vCalendar/iCalendar formats. Full list of changes:

• Properly use Py_ssize_t type to avoid problems on 64-bit systems.
• Properly handle phonebook Category attribute (can be a text).
• Follow new semantics of GSM_SetDebugFileDescriptor (bug #749).
• Compatibility with current gammu.
• Support for encoding/decoding vCard, vCalendar and iCalendar files.

Download from usual place: http://cihar.com/gammu/python/

This is the worst vote that has come up since I m part of Debian. And Manoj the secretary has refused to listen to the remarks of many developers about the misleading titles/summaries, about the unjustified 3:1 ratio, and worst of all, about the mixing of multiple questions in a single ballot. I have ranked misleading options ( Reaffirm social contract at least) lowest and below Further discussion and sorted all the other options according to my preference, and ranked some of them equally when the choices answer different questions (where I can not prioritize any preferred outcome). I m not yet sure if I put Further discussion first or not. There s some hope that the vote will be cancelled and redone with separate ballots but I ve lost trust in Manoj s abilities to do his job properly. I m sure he s convinced that he s doing the right thing but that doesn t help at all, on the contrary. It also means we probably should fix the constitution to make it crystal-clear how the secretary should decide whether 3:1 ratio is needed for a given resolution or not. Not really the kind of thing I enjoy within Debian, but that s the price to pay if we want to continue to work together. On this and much more I agree with Russ Alberry. Update: Manoj resigned as secretary. I want to thank him for having taken this hard decision. And I sincerely hope he doesn t resign from Debian completely as our strength is also in our diversity of opinions. Partagez cet article / Share This

Have you ever gone monastic, taken a step away from the rough tumble of life to throw yourself totally and completely in one or just a few things? I have been in this state a few times before, sometimes by my own volition, other times I was forced into such state, as when I spent nearly a year homebound, sick. The last time I went monastic, I did so to finish my dissertation in 2005 and it worked rather well. In fact, I recall those few months where I barely left home (and as result my PJs) with deep fondness. I just loved the intensity and simplicity of it all, which is why I loved my other periods of self-enforced solitude/simplicity and often yearn for those moments again. The pile of writing projects I am trying to complete (or start) are mounting and honestly, I want the pile to move from a mountain to at least a hill and in order to do so, I think I will have to retreat. So tonight, I declared that upon my return from PR, I will once again go monastic but given that I have a pretty demanding full time job, I can t really go full-on monastic. I can only go semi-monastic, shirking some of my extracurricular activities and duties but I still think that I can enter into a more seclusionary (I know not really a word) mode than has been my life for the last year. I will report back in a few months with a story of success or failure about entering Monastic Mode x

So today, I discovered that MoinMoin has an all or nothing attachment setting: either everyone with write permission to a page can upload attachments, or uploading attachments is disabled for the entire site. No exceptions. Period. Not only that, but there is no maximum attachment size setting unless the attachment was uploaded embedded in a ZIP file. How s that for irony? Not wanting to have my railroad site turn into a file trading site, I don t really want to let everyone upload attachments. Oh, also MoinMoin doesn t maintain a history of attachments. So if somebody drives by and vandalizes an attachment, you get to . restore the original version from tape. Yay? So I decided I d look back at MediaWiki, which has better attachment controls. I still had my test installation, so I went to use it. I edited the main page. I wanted to read about the markup, so I clicked the Editing help link. Whoops, broken link. It links to Help:Editing on the local wiki. Which MediaWiki does not install for you. I asked about it on #mediawiki. The answer was: copy from mediawiki.org. OK, fine. How? Cut and paste. Yes, that s right. Every time a new version of MediaWiki comes out, you get to cut and paste dozens of pages from mediawiki.org to your wiki, or else you ll have outdated help. Yay? The MediaWiki folks on IRC seem to like it this way. Not everyone wants the same help. Fine, but provide a sane default for those that don t care. Who thought running a wiki would be so hard? Update: since yesterday, I went to moinmo.in and fixed the ThemeMarket page to reflect what versions a MoinMoin theme works with. I m happy to help out with fixing Free Software though I don t really have time to add fundamental features like working syntax help links on this particular project.

I am quite sad to announce that I am discontinuing Adept development for good. Since Kubuntu will be changing its default manager to KPackageKit (I wish everyone involved good luck), I have no further motivation to work on Adept at all. I have mostly done the 3.0 overhaul since Jonathan Riddell is my friend, and I like to make my friends happy. However, since this is no longer a factor, and my time is likely better invested elsewhere, I am giving up altogether. Of course, if anyone steps up for maintainership, I will happily delegate Adept to them. It is in a relatively good shape these days, I hope. I will keep the source (darcs) repositories around as long as reasonably possible. If you are interested in taking over, even despite the Adept userbase declining sharply in near future, please drop me a mail. With Adept goes also libept, a more general-purpose library for working with APT. I will be around when people need me to fix it, but won t add anything on my own. I am not even sure what is Enrico s status on libept, but probably just consider libept as good as orphaned, too. On a more personal note, this closes a long (very long) chapter in my free software life. I d like to thank everyone involved with it, there have been many of you. Moreover, this apparently cuts the few remaining ties I had to KDE development community I will miss you. well, maybe one of those days UPDATE: No, this does not mean I am no longer friends with Jonathan. I don t know why, but already two people managed to read it that way. To put it in hopefully less ambiguous words: The fact that Jonathan is my friend is no longer a factor just because he does not need Adept anymore. Hope that helps.

I am sure this is making the rounds but this seems like an appropriate place for this list: If Programming Languages Were Religions. My favorite description:

Lisp would be Zen Buddhism - There is no syntax, there is no centralization of dogma, there are no deities to worship. The entire universe is there at your reach - if only you are enlightened enough to grasp it. Some say that it s not a language at all; others say that it s the only language that makes sense.

Speaking of computer languages and projects and religious holy wars, in the last few weeks I have been totally intrigued by the culture being built by the Ruby on Rails guys. As a researcher of Free and Open Source Software, I, like others, actually tend to see the similarities more than the difference between these two poles (in part because I focus on practice, not on the purist ideologies or two ideologues, you know who I am taking about) but it seems to me -and I could be wrong here but I suspect I am not -that Ruby on Rails is producing a unique Open Source culture, one that really diverges from some of the core principles of Free Software, much more so than other Open Source projects like Apache. The rail guys as I have heard, are Open Source evangelists of a certain stripe, who are quite cultish (you know, it is weird if you don t use github, a Mac, TextMate). What do you think of Ruby on Rails? Are the attacks fair? Are they a bunch of douchebags, as this (very incisive) post argues? Is it where Open Source meets and marries, for better or for worse, the Web 2.0 craze? If I could clone me, this is definitely one line of research, I would love to dive into right now but since I can t, your opinions would be greatly appreciated.

I used to run a website for traveling by rail in the United States. I let it falter, and eventually took it down. But I still have the domain, and am working to bring it back as a wiki. The first step in that process was selecting which wiki software to use. I have a few requirements for the site:

• Availability of both WYSIWYG (friendly for beginners) and non-WYSIWYG editors
• A number of nice-looking themes to choose from
• Nice to have: a hierarchy or category system
• The ability to search within only a particular section or category in the hierarchy
• Easy to maintain software; not having tons of plugins to keep up-to-date for security
• Stellar spam prevention
• Nice to have: ability to redirect people to the new page after a rename

I m frustrated that there is no wiki out there that does all of these. There are quite a few that do all but one, but which one they omit varies. My two finalists were MoinMoin and MediaWiki. MoinMoin MoinMoin will let you easily define arbitrary categories (by creating a wiki page following a certain name). The search screen automatically presents checkboxes for restricting searches to a particular category. Some reviews have complained about its anti-spam features, but they are all talking about older versions and they seem to have done some work on this lately. MoinMoin has tons of features and is easy to set up and maintain. But here s where it falls down: themes. Over at moinmo.in, there is a theme market for themes. Only most of the themes there haven t been compatible with the current MoinMoin release since about 2005. Most of the rest have one download, then a long discussion page full of mixed bug reports, diffs, and non-diff edit this to make it work comments. Most of these don t state what version of the theme they apply to. Most themes won t work with current browsers and Moin releases without them. UGH. After discussing on #moin, I ll probably go in there and at least organize the ThemeMarket page by release. MediaWiki Then there s MediaWiki. It s got a lot of features, and a lot of complexity. It has no current WYSIWYG feature, though apparently there is work on one. MediaWiki has an amazing category system. It can generate sorted lists of pages in a category, supports subcategories, etc. Surprisingly, though, you can t search in just one category. (Though it might be possible indirectly via some syntax; not sure.) Searching in MediaWiki overall is less capable that in MoinMoin. MediaWiki does offer namespaces, and namespaces are the sole way of searching just one part of a site. They re used well over at, say, uesp.net. But namespaces are heavy-handed. You have to edit config files to define them, and they bring with them other associated namespaces for discussion and whatnot. It s not as easy as creating a category in MoinMoin, and might not scale well to lots of future categories. MediaWiki does appear to have good spam prevention, and support recaptcha. Conclusions I eventually selected MoinMoin and have set up most of my content in it. But now that I am to the point of selecting themes, I m having some second thoughts. I also looked at DokuWiki. Its design makes me nervous. The user list is stored in a single file. You can t search by category. You can search by namespace, but there aren t checkboxes for it in the search screen; you have to know the syntax. WYSIWYG is a plugin. Categories are a plugin. So too many plugins to maintain, and no real features above MoinMoin.

I'm pleased to make Emdebian Grip unstable available - a smaller, binary-compatible, Debian without manpages, without unwanted translation files (uses Emdebian TDebs) and without package documentation. The current packages will be migrated into Emdebian Grip testing in due course and then be released alongside Lenny.
Emdebian now has two flavours with Grip taking the intermediate position in terms of size whilst retaining full compatibility with Debian. Grip "cherry-picks" packages from Debian but retains the unchanged Debian sources - the main binary and library packages will exist but -dev, -doc and -dbg packages may well be missing, as well as some of the more unusual OR dependencies).
I've just converted my Acer Aspire1 (i386) - running XFCE - from Debian Lenny to Emdebian Grip:
607 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 184MB of archives.
After this operation, 278MB disk space will be freed.
Yes, update 600 packages and have nearly 300Mb more free space - that's a 400Kb space saving per package, on average. Gaining 90Mb more free space than the total size of the download is nice too. Comparisons are after using 'sudo apt-get clean' to remove downloaded archives:
Debian Lenny:
/dev/sda1 7.1G 1.2G 5.6G 17% /
Emdebian Grip (unstable)
/dev/sda1 7.1G 919M 5.8G 14% /
I make that about 25% smaller and not all packages installed on the machine have been "gripped" - (about 100 remain, many of which I should probably remove anyway).
Method: See http://www.emdebian.org/grip/index.html.
Add the Grip source to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
deb http://buildd.emdebian.org/grip/ unstable main
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install grip-config
This is a very important stage - Emdebian Grip is still in development and with the Lenny freeze, a few wrappers and helpers are needed to allow smooth migrations between Debian and Emdebian - grip-config is Architecture:all and contains the relevant scripts. (grip-config is Priority: required so debootstrap picks it up by default - this also means that grip-config cannot be part of Debian.) grip-config also includes the same key as the emdebian-archive-keyring package used by all Emdebian repositories.
Only after grip-config is installed should you use:
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Note that this is a complete replacement, including libc6, apt, coreutils, dpkg and (on i386) the stock kernel. As such, it can take a while to complete the installation once the download is complete. (As ever, if the kernel is updated, ensure you reboot before you next suspend to disk - even the minimal "gripping" changes to the kernel package may confuse grub when deciding whether to use the suspended image.)
A few packages are currently behind Debian Sid (notably ncurses) and I'm working on the scripts to enable full update automation.
One other problem is that /usr/share/locale/locale.alias has also disappeared which compromises localisation support right now but that's fairly easy to fix. (langupdate is also missing so there is no effective localisation support right now - I need to cross-build langupdate for the grip architectures.)
Note that this test install adds the Emdebian Grip repository to the existing Debian sources and relies on the em[0-9] version suffix to implement the upgrade - packages that are behind Debian get left at the Debian versions, you can also use normal pinning.
$ apt-cache policy
Package files:
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
release a=now
500 http://buildd.emdebian.org unstable/main Packages
release v=0.1,o=Debian,a=sid,l=EmdebianGrip,c=main
origin buildd.emdebian.org
500 http://ftp.uk.debian.org sid/main Packages
release o=Debian,a=unstable,l=Debian,c=main
origin ftp.uk.debian.org
Pinned packages:
I've done some testing with debootstrap and a chroot works too - it should be possible to ally these packages with the normal Debian installer because there is no point "gripping" udebs that are already v.small and the packages that actually get installed are dictated by your choice of mirror. debian-live should be gaining support for Emdebian Grip in due course.
If someone fancies trying a test installation by choosing http://buildd.emdebian.org/grip as their mirror in d-i, let me know.
(Installing Grip is likely to result in further size gains as the Grip repository data does not support Recommends, so you don't have to try and get d-i to not use recommended packages).
Emdebian Grip (unstable) is now available for 7 architectures:
i386, amd64, arm, armel, mips, mipsel and powerpc.
(amd64 is only supported for debugging purposes, most of my development machines are amd64.)
Please report any and all bugs to the buildd.emdebian.org pseudo-package in the Debian BTS.
If you want more packages added, set up a Debian machine or chroot with all the packages you need (and only the ones you need) and send the
complete output of 'dpkg --get-selections' to the debian-embedded mailing list. Alternatively, file RFP bugs against buildd.emdebian.org at wishlist severity.
To see the current list of packages, use the search support
Headline packages:
coreutils, perl, python, apt, dpkg, grip-config, XFCE, debhelper, make, devscripts, sylpheed, iceweasel, drivel, xchat-gnome, gpe-tetris,
totem-gstreamer, liferea, thunar, evince, seahorse, gthumb, libsqlite3, pilot-link, python-gnome2, lua, tcl, gcc-4.3, binutils, libmysqlclient15off.
Currently, very few -dev packages exist in Grip. I'll make the emdebian-grip package available on Grip itself in due course so that new and bespoke packages can also be "gripped".
I'm migrating the current packages to Emdebian Grip testing soon and I'll be making a release of Emdebian Grip 1.0 (based on Debian 5.0 "Lenny") as well as Emdebian Crush 1.0 (based on Debian 5.0 "Lenny"), alongside the main Lenny release.
Finally, note that Grip is binary compatible with Debian - indeed, the binaries themselves are untouched - but bugs that appear in Emdebian Grip must only be filed against the buildd.emdebian.org pseudo-package. Right now, reportbug is not part of Emdebian Grip because I need a way of telling reportbug to only use the pseudo-package.
The main usability improvements will come in the development of Emdebian 2.0 (based on Debian 6.0 "Squeeze") - please consider Emdebian 1.0 as a "developer release", think back to what things were like with Slackware 1.0 or Debian buzz, rex or bo.
P.S. there is no concept of a release-critical bug in Emdebian Grip (at least, not yet) - the 1.0 release will happen as soon as Grip testing is in sync with the released Lenny (no matter what). Please do not file any bugs against buildd.emdebian.org with higher severity than important, it will just annoy people trying to fix RC bugs in Lenny.
If you are a maintainer in Debian and you inadvertently receive a bug report listed as 'found' in a version that ends in em[0-9], please reassign to buildd.emdebian.org, at severity no higher than important. Thanks.

Speaking of the tactile and the tactical, after seeking some input, I settled on this keyboard a few months ago and I simply love it so much so, today I got another one for my office. I love the key strokes simply cuz they have just the right feel. It takes some, but not too much, pressure to type and it feels great on my finger tips. The fancy blue lighting is a plus but not a central feature. The overview/description on their website is pretty dramatic but I tend to agree it provides for some pretty hefty power, allowing me to launch my email assaults with perfection :

With an awesome host of features, the Razer Lycosa is on an unstoppable mission to destroy and dominate. Execute complex combat maneuvers with swift dexterity. Launch your assaults timed to perfection. Annihilate your enemies and reign supreme on the battlefield. You now have the tactical advantage on every terrain, and your enemies fates are in your hands.
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I dare say I am fully content with the keyboard but I am still searching, however, for the perfect pen

So I replaced my Latitude D410 with a shiny new Latitude E4300 (Intel Core 2 Duo SP9400 2.4 Ghz with 4 Gb RAM). Here are some notes about this laptop that might be interesting for others. SSD disk I now use an SSD drive for my main disk (Dell Ultra Performance SSD, it s the second generation of Samsung SSD) and I m satisfied with that choice, I can boot (an unmodified Debian desktop install) from the SSD in less than 30 seconds while the same system booting from a traditional hard-disk takes more than 45 seconds. X server The Intel GM45 graphic card is not auto-recognized by Xorg 7.3 (or rather by xserver-xorg-video-intel 2.3.2 which is in lenny) so you end up with the vesa driver by default. It s possible to force the usage of the intel driver by adding a Driver intel line in the device section of xorg.conf but I have opted to use Xorg 7.4 (available in experimental). With this version, I can successfully use the DVI output in the associated dock and I have working suspend/resume. It does create some interesting problems however since that version of the xserver relies on HAL to detect the keyboard layout and doesn t use the Keyboard section of xorg.conf. You have to create /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-keymap.fdi by using /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-keymap.fdi as template and reload HAL then restart X. Wifi support The Intel 5100 Wifi chipset requires Linux 2.6.27 at least for the new iwlagn driver. This driver also needs a new firmware (the iwlwifi-5000 one) that is not yet integrated in the non-free package firmware-iwlwifi (see #497717). Sound support It works ok with alsa and the version integrated in linux 2.6.27 but it still has some rough edges when used in combination with the dock. Using the output jack connector on the dock doesn t stop the output in the integrated loudspeakers and the volume on that connector is so low that you could think that it doesn t work at all if you don t pay attention. Using the microphone works fine. For reference, if you play in the mixer, Front mic means the microphone connected on the dock while Mic means the one connected on the laptop. Each Analog loopback X option goes pairwise with the corresponding Input source X setting. In order for the recording to work, I have to set Digital Input Source to Analog Input , Digital must be activated and Input source 1 defines the default input used for the recording. Bluetooth support Contrary to the previous laptop, Dell offered no choice on the bluetooth chipset, they only propose the Dell 365 Bluetooth Card so I took it but it doesn t seem to work out of the box. In fact I can t even see it with lspci or lsusb so I wonder if they did something wrong during the assembly. Googling on the topic didn t gave me any good result, let me a comment if you know how to get this working. Update: so apparently the bluetooth component is there (ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp.), it just appears as an USB hub so it s somewhat difficult to guess that it s effectively a bluetooth card. Freezes, in particular with an amd64 installation I first installed the system in 64 bits mode (amd64 architecture) but I had very regular freezes of the system (I couldn t finish a single kernel compilation for example). Since I switched to an i386 installation, the system is more stable but I still get an occasional freeze every other day. It might be that a more recent kernel fixes this or maybe it will be fixed with a future Dell Bios update we ll see, but it s my biggest complaint with this laptop so far. Links Lucas Nussbaum bought the same laptop, you might want to read his remarks as well. More details Load the full article only if you want to see the lspci and lsusb output on this laptop.


rhertzog@rivendell:~$ lspci -nnk
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 07)
Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel
Kernel modules: intel-agp
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07)
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a43] (rev 07)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10f5] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: e1000e
Kernel modules: e1000e
00:1a.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:2937] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
Kernel modules: uhci-hcd
00:1a.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 [8086:2938] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
Kernel modules: uhci-hcd
00:1a.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 [8086:2939] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
Kernel modules: uhci-hcd
00:1a.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:293c] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
Kernel modules: ehci-hcd
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller [8086:293e] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:2940] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 [8086:2942] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1c.3 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 [8086:2946] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: pcieport-driver
Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:2934] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
Kernel modules: uhci-hcd
00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:2935] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
Kernel modules: uhci-hcd
00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:2936] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
Kernel modules: uhci-hcd
00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 [8086:293a] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
Kernel modules: ehci-hcd
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller [8086:2917] (rev 03)
00:1f.2 RAID bus controller [0104]: Intel Corporation Mobile 82801 SATA RAID Controller [8086:282a] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: ahci
Kernel modules: ahci
00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller [8086:2930] (rev 03)
Kernel driver in use: i801_smbus
Kernel modules: i2c-i801
02:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394) [0c00]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller [1180:0832] (rev 05)
Kernel driver in use: firewire_ohci
Kernel modules: firewire-ohci
02:01.1 SD Host controller [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter [1180:0822] (rev 22)
02:01.2 System peripheral [0880]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller [1180:0843] (rev 12)
0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100 [8086:4232]
Kernel driver in use: iwlagn
Kernel modules: iwlagn
$ lsusb
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 019: ID 046d:c03d Logitech, Inc. M-BT69a Pilot Optical Mouse
Bus 004 Device 018: ID 0424:2228 Standard Microsystems Corp. 9-in-2 Card Reader
Bus 004 Device 017: ID 0424:2602 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 004 Device 016: ID 0424:2502 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 004 Device 007: ID 045e:00dd Microsoft Corp.
Bus 004 Device 006: ID 0c45:63fe Microdia
Bus 004 Device 004: ID 413c:2513 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 004 Device 003: ID 413c:2513 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 413c:8162 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 413c:8161 Dell Computer Corp.
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0a5c:5800 Broadcom Corp.
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
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Thanks to Daniel for suggesting I try burning my ISO image with brasero in response to my problems burning images using nautilus. Unfortunately brasero won't offer me a burn ISO option 497226: brasero: Burn button disabled. No indication of why.. I just tried wodim directly and ended up with the same (wrong) sum for the burnt disc as with nautilus cd burner (not suprising really). I wondered if I was being bitten by 386640: wodim doesn't fixate DVD+R with premastered ISO, but trying to fix the disc did not update the sum. Taking an image of the burnt disc, I notice that the burnt image is longer size-wise than the input ISO by 10240 bytes. This turns out to be 10240 of zeroes appended to the image.

America is a land brimming with paradoxes, one of them being our simultaneous obsession with freedom and rules. We purport to be the land of the free (and while this is and may not be true, we do hold steadfast to this idea). But we also love rules rules and rules, and wait there are more and more and more rules, too many rules, which often come in the form of the form of a sign, this one being one of my favorites. (shall not produce grease laden fumes?! yes, I think it was written by an academic). So I appreciate small reminders that poke fun of and holes in our love of rules and warnings, such as the one I found on my new bamboo-based shirt, pictured above. I have taken a huge liking for bamboo shirts as of late (I am obsessed with the tactile and can only stand soft cloth, which is why I love bamboo-based cloth) and I ordered a few shirts of the Internet. I only noticed the warning when I pulled the shirt out of the dryer late the other night and it was by far one of the only times I smiled from left to right at 1 am when doing laundry. More people should take the time to plant these easter-egg type jokes as they are, I am sure, much appreciated.

America is a land brimming with paradoxes, one of them being our simultaneous obsession with freedom and rules. We purport to be the land of the free (and while this is and may not be true, we do hold steadfast to this idea). But we also love rules rules and rules, and wait there are more and more and more rules, too many rules, which often come in the form of the form of a sign, this one being one of my favorites. (shall not produce grease laden fumes?! yes, I think it was written by an academic). So I appreciate small reminders that poke fun of and holes in our love of rules and warnings, such as the one I found on my new bamboo-based shirt, pictured above. I have taken a huge liking for bamboo shirts as of late (I am obsessed with the tactile and can only stand soft cloth, which is why I love bamboo-based cloth) and I ordered a few shirts of the Internet. I only noticed the warning when I pulled the shirt out of the dryer late the other night and it was by far one of the only times I smiled from left to right at 1 am when doing laundry. More people should take the time to plant these easter-egg type jokes as they are, I am sure, much appreciated.

I use exetel for a number of services in Sydney. I have always found them to be the cheapest, even if their ability to support their service is sub-optimal. An example is right now, they are currently totally offline.

a2@eve:~$ dig +trace exetel.com.au
; <<>> DiG 9.5.0-P2 <<>> +trace exetel.com.au
;; global options:  printcmd
.           338458  IN  NS  G.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.           338458  IN  NS  H.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.           338458  IN  NS  I.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.           338458  IN  NS  J.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.           338458  IN  NS  K.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.           338458  IN  NS  L.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.           338458  IN  NS  M.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.           338458  IN  NS  A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.           338458  IN  NS  B.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.           338458  IN  NS  C.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.           338458  IN  NS  D.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.           338458  IN  NS  E.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
.           338458  IN  NS  F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.
;; Received 228 bytes from 192.168.1.1#53(192.168.1.1) in 58 ms
au.         172800  IN  NS  ADNS2.BERKELEY.EDU.
au.         172800  IN  NS  AUDNS.OPTUS.NET.
au.         172800  IN  NS  NS1.AUDNS.NET.au.
au.         172800  IN  NS  NS2.AUDNS.NET.au.
au.         172800  IN  NS  DNS1.TELSTRA.NET.
au.         172800  IN  NS  SEC1.APNIC.NET.
au.         172800  IN  NS  SEC3.APNIC.NET.
au.         172800  IN  NS  ADNS1.BERKELEY.EDU.
;; Received 413 bytes from 2001:503:ba3e::2:30#53(A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET) in 620 ms
com.au.         259200  IN  NS  ns1.ausregistry.net.au.
com.au.         259200  IN  NS  ns2.ausregistry.net.au.
com.au.         259200  IN  NS  ns3.ausregistry.net.au.
com.au.         259200  IN  NS  ns3.melbourneit.com.
com.au.         259200  IN  NS  ns4.ausregistry.net.au.
com.au.         259200  IN  NS  dns1.telstra.net.
com.au.         259200  IN  NS  au2ld.CSIRO.au.
com.au.         259200  IN  NS  audns.optus.net.
com.au.         259200  IN  NS  ns1.audns.net.au.
;; Received 354 bytes from 2001:dc0:2001:a:4608::59#53(SEC1.APNIC.NET) in 1302 ms
exetel.com.au.      3600    IN  NS  ns2.exetel.com.au.
exetel.com.au.      3600    IN  NS  ns1.exetel.com.au.
;; Received 99 bytes from 128.242.113.189#53(ns3.ausregistry.net.au) in 193 ms
dig: couldn't get address for 'ns2.exetel.com.au': not found

This is something I reported (ticket #853640) to them around Oct 2008 (when they last had a failure), that the auDA has no in-balliwick glue for their DNS. I was told by their support supervisor, Dylan Friedewald, via email:

The DNS for helpdesk.exetel.com.au is operational and valid, I do not see the point in discussing that further.

It is interesting to note that Steve Waddington has blogged many times about customers being unable to identify issues, but it is even more interesting that when a customer does it is explicitly denied as being a problem and then ignored. Apart from no in-ballwick DNS glue, their nameservers are also open recursive ones. Great if you would like to perform a DoS attack against some unsuspecting person. I have raised other issues with them that warrant further investigation and corrective action, lest they affect all their customers. But I no longer have the time to continually ping them about things.

My home Asterisk configuration has been pretty static for a while. It works well, and so I haven't had a need to mess around with it. There's a couple of outstanding features I've wanted to implement for a while though, and I've now got one of them out of the way. All calls that come in from the local PSTN line, the Vonage ATA, and the SIP connection to Engin, hit a menu, where the caller selects whether they want to speak to Sarah or myself. The sole purpose of this is to determine what to do with the call if no one answers (which voicemail box or cell phone to send the call to). A convenient side-effect of this is that it defeats most telemarketers. Ages ago, I set up caller ID announcement to my MythTV setup, so if we happened to be watching TV or a recording when a call came in, it briefly popped up on the TV. Fortunately, we're not huge square-eyes, and spend more time goofing off on our laptops, so I wanted a way to display notifications on our laptops when calls came in as well. I had this crazy design in my head of having a server process on my Asterisk box, and then clients on our laptops could connect to it, and be informed of new calls. Before I went on a coding frenzy, and did something with the Observer pattern and more socket programming than I really wanted to, I thought I'd check if this was solved problem. Turns out, it kind of is. I found the Notify application for Asterisk (which I've made a package for Debian Etch), which blats a UDP message to particular host as part of a dialplan. It's more intended to go in person-specific extensions, but as the majority of calls go into the main menu and never come out before hitting a person-specific extension, and I still wanted to know about them for my own perverse pleasure, I added multiple calls to the Notify application in the main menu dialplan. The site for the application also mentioned some third-party clients for Linux and MacOS, but I've been looking for an excuse to try and write something that used Growl, so I wrote my own Python application, initially on Linux, and then I essentially swapped out the pynotify code for the equivalent Growl code, and it worked just as well on Sarah's Mac. So it's not quite the solution that I had in mind, because it doesn't really scale, but for our two-user home setup, it's adequate. I might still try and write some middleware between a client for this application and an infinite number of observers, but there's no urgency. The dialplan for our main menu now looks something like this:

exten => s,1,Background(for)
exten => s,n,AGI(mythtv-cid.agi)
exten => s,n,Notify($ CALLERID(num) $ CALLERID(name) $ EXTEN /icarus)
exten => s,n,Notify($ CALLERID(num) $ CALLERID(name) $ EXTEN /iapyx)
exten => s,n,Set(TIMEOUT(digit)=5)      ; Set Digit Timeout to 5 seconds
exten => s,n,Set(TIMEOUT(response)=10)  ; Set Response Timeout to 10 seconds
exten => s,n,Background(names/sarah)
exten => s,n,Background(press-1)
exten => s,n,Background(for)
exten => s,n,Background(names/andrew)
exten => s,n,Background(press-2)
exten => s,n,WaitExten

A call comes in, hits the menu, and the caller ID info is displayed on MythTV (if something's being watched) and our two laptops (if they're awake). Unfortunately my Git-fu is atrocious, so I can't figure out how to link to a web-browseable repository that contains the source for my client, but if I figure that out, I'll update this with a link later. Update I managed to summon enough Git-fu to put the repository online. It's available at http://git.andrew.net.au/?p=asterisk-notify-client.git;a=summary Now I just have to use it properly.

Next semester I am teaching a new undergraduate course tentatively titled Technology, Society, and Media: The Body under Transition, in Movement, and under (Massive) Transformation(s). As designed, the course should address technology and media in fairly broad stokes (which I do) but I narrow and control what is a truly unwieldy subject by framing the issues/readings in relation to the human body. Generally speaking, we will interrogate the ways in which technology engenders or erases bodily/human possibilities/capacities and especially the ethical and political ramifications that precipitate from the use/abuse of technology. We traverse a wide range of topics from the telegraph (and how it was used to speak with the dead) to the role of human enhancement technologies of today, to questions of surveillance and privacy, among many other topics. I am pretty far along with the syllabus and pretty happy with it. So far I think I have struck a nice balance between fun/light/accessible readings and some which are bit more theoretically dense. I am still looking for one or two pieces, perhaps one on tattoos and body modification and another about karaoke. If anyone knows any great articles on these topics, do pass along the information. I am probably most excited about the cluster of issues that address eugenics (and most students know next to nothing about America s central role in unleashing the Eugenics movement), disability rights activism, human enhancement technologies, and transhumanism. Considering human enhancement in light of previous efforts to enhance our population brings into relief the similar and distinct ethical issues that haunt this field. One of the most hot button issues of today concern the use of human enhancing drugs. The prestigious journal Nature has just published an editorial on the topic of cognitive enhancement drugs,Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy, which is a fairly interesting read and covers some of the main controversies. For me, however, the interesting issue is not only whether human enhancement is right or wrong though this is certainly important but what our embrace of these drugs tell us about the conditions under which our bodies live and labor. That is, I think we are actually missing out on posing some other important questions simply by framing this int terms of human enhancement. I suspect, and this is where ethnography would really help out, that many people turning to enhancement drugs may not be medically sick, in the technical sense but I don t think they are healthy either. Many who turn to these drugs feel pretty worn, pretty exhausted, pretty frazzled (the perfect word, I think, is agotado, Spanish for exhausted) and use these drugs as crutches, as band-aids, as an elixir to help out one preserver in tough work circumstances. I am sure there are folks who take these drugs feel fine and are just trying to push their limits and capacities but I troll many many many patient support sites and it also seems to me that many people live under a state of low-grade chronic state of unwellness. Given the pace of society, given what and how we eat, given the extraordinary rates of depression in our society ,given the fact that babies are born with 200 + chemicals in their bodies (what a way to start out life) I am skeptical that enhancement really captures what is going on with these drugs. I have not yet come up with the right term, but I am trying to come up with a phrase that would reflect the ways in which these drugs are not used as therapies for a discrete condition (Type 1 diabetes) but how they are a collective response to a state of low grade chronic unwellness that seems to mark the lives of a whole lot of people. This, I think, would be one responsible approach to human enhancement technologies that would contextualize their use within a much broader frame, one that is attuned to how bodies have been made, remade, and limited under actual material conditions of labor and life in the 21st century.

Regarding the ballot currently before the Developers, Christian Perrier writes:

Moreover, the proposal is worded and was pushed in a way that all (but one) options that would allow us to release lenny will need a 3:1 majority, which is obviously very hard to achieve (and as, there are several such proposals, the vote will be spread out among all of them). So, those folks who make the release of lenny their priority are now facing an interesting tactical choice: how the ..... should we vote for this to happen? I personnally did choose to vote this way: 5462371.

I agree with Christian's goals, but in my opinion, the ballot he has cast actually makes less likely that the winning option will allow us to release lenny. In Debian, we run a two-round election using a single ballot. In the first round, any options that need a 3:1 majority must defeat the default option by a 3:1 majority. Options which fail this test are eliminated and dropped from further consideration. In the second round, a winner is chosen from the remaining options using a Condorcet method as usual. The upshot of this is that the votes for the 3:1 majority cannot be spread out, unless people habitually place only one of the 3:1 options over Further Discussion. Furthermore, voting everything below Further Discussion benefits the options that don't require a 3:1 majority over the ones that do. For a real example, let's say that we have a ballot like this:

[ ] Choice 1: Omelette [3:1]
[ ] Choice 2: Quiche [3:1]
[ ] Choice 3: Toast
[ ] Choice 4: Further Discussion

Suppose that we don't like the ballot at all, but we want an egg-based breakfast. What happens if we vote like this?

[2] Choice 1: Omelette [3:1]
[3] Choice 2: Quiche [3:1]
[4] Choice 3: Toast
[1] Choice 4: Further Discussion

This ballot can be read as: I don't think that omelettes or quiche should pass the 3:1 majority requirement. But if they do, I prefer them to toast. Unless 75% of the remaining voters vote omelette and quiche above toast, those two options will be thrown away, and the vote will be determined by whether half the voters placed toast over further discussion. If you want to make sure that toast doesn't win, you have to vote (insincerely) like this:

[1] Choice 1: Omelette [3:1]
[1] Choice 2: Quiche [3:1]
[3] Choice 3: Toast
[2] Choice 4: Further Discussion

Sadly, there is no way to vote against the vote without effectively also voting for toast!

---

I wonder if it was a mistake to combine the supermajority vote and the Condorcet vote on a single ballot. Maybe it would be better to write both ballots out explicitly:

Some options on this ballot must be approved by a 3:1
supermajority of the electorate.  Please enter 'Y' next to the
options that you approve of and 'N' next to those you disapprove
of.  Ballot options on which 75% of voters vote 'Y' will proceed
to the next round (below).
[ ] Choice 1: Omelette [3:1]
[ ] Choice 2: Quiche [3:1]
Rank the ballot options below:
[ ] Choice 1: Omelette [3:1]
[ ] Choice 2: Quiche [3:1]
[ ] Choice 3: Toast
[ ] Choice 4: Further Discussion

That would allow people who want to vote against the vote without privileging any of the options over the others to do so: vote Y to all 3:1 options, then vote 2221 on the rest. On the other hand, I suspect people would be confused in different ways by a voting system that was this complicated, voting Y in places where they should write a number and writing numbers where they should write Y or N. I guess all this mess is why we still use First Past the Post for votes in the real world...

There is not much I miss from the world of gluten (though it does make it hard to eat on the fly) but I do miss good beer, especially Belgium beer. Thankfully, the last five years has seen a mini-explosion of decent to great gluten free products, including beer and here is a handy list of gluten free beers.