Over the last few days, I have been working on merging audacious-1.5 and bmpx, to create an XMMS-lookalike GStreamer player. It’s fairly “stable” now, some stuff is obviously not there yet (Tuplez for one, getting stuff like bitrate etc for another), but you can check out the Hg repository at http://hg.atheme.org/users/nenolod/mudkip-player. What does this mean for Audacious and BMPx? Absolutely nothing will change involving both projects. The goal here is to create a simple player which looks like XMMS to satisfy the demand created by XMMS removal in many distros. Both already existing projects have their own direction, this is just a shared goal to create a solution for the strain placed on our projects. Hopefully distros will take this as a hint and run with it. Hopefully.

You might have already heard of it — the new Nine Inch Nails album "The Slip" has been released by them under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 US license. Yep, that's right, it's totally legal to download it from the web — and use it for any non-commercial purposes! It's a bit annoying that they want your email address, though. Nothing that bugmenot.com (or similar) cannot fix, but still. Luckily, the files are now also available from archive.org! This, and the fact that the music is CC-licensed allowed me to "play" one of the songs in my Creative Commons music podcast (RSS), and more will likely follow.

Important note: This post has been modified according to a private remark from Marco d'Itri, thanks to him for his explanations ! I've been trying for a very long while to learn to write udev rules, but I've mostly been unsuccessful, or rather, successful by chance, which is hardly better, as it implies no understanding whatsoever of what I'm doing. My game, today, was to create a symlink for a loop device (loop7) and set the device's group to cdrom (I might elaborate some time later why I need that). So, here is what I learned:

• at least for the GROUP= directive, the latest item in the /etc/udev/rules.d directory rules
• to test the modifications, the best thing is to generate a synthetic add using the following snippet:

  echo add > /sys/block/loop7/uevent
  

  Many thanks to Marco d'Itri for this information !

With that in mind, the following snippet worked for me, under the name 40-private-loop.rules:

KERNEL=="loop7", SYMLINK="videoloop", GROUP="cdrom"

Enjoy !

There should be a website to coordinate cinema-dates. I don't like going to the cinema alone and have, in the past, frequently missed viewing films rather than go alone. This is a habit I'm growing out of, but I still think it is better to go with a friend or two. In the near future I'm going to view the last Indianna Jones movie, and the Sex & The City film. I have partners for both of those. But after that? There are a few films which I can't immediately think of who I'm going to lure away with me. I could either :

• Go alone, regardless.
• Randomly ask people to come

If there were a site that had list of upcoming films, and allowed you to express interest in going to see them that would be a fantastic idea. (Obviously location based). I'd not even assume "dating", because I think in my life I've had a first-date at a cinema once. When I was about 14. Because it just doesn't work - you can't talk during, (and back then we couldn't go to the pub afterward to discuss the film. I think we did anyway ;) For bonus points you could allow people to rate the films, or even each other. Hmm. Somebody write it for me? I've got too much on my plate ..probably ObQuote: Se7en

Lalala, it’s me again. Don’t shout, it’s not a long post! :) What did we do since I last dared to post with my Ftpmaster head on? (Yes, I should put a summary of all my blog posts into a Bits from mail sometime.)

• Fixed some bugs, like all of the waiting Please create/remove pseudopackage FOO ones. So we now have a BTS entry for wiki.debian.org, release.debian.org and the security-tracker.
• Merged a patch from Thomas so we now correctly reject packages where the maintainer tried to be clever, editing the changes file to get an orig.tar.gz mentioned after forgetting the -sa parameter to dpkg-buildpackage. SIGH. Especially sigh as that ##censored## wasn’t able to understand the format of those lines. Nor did he look, or he would have immediately spotted his mistake. Unfortunately it is not the first time this maintainer broke stuff with uploads he never checked in any way. Including uploads for important packages. Bah.
• Merged another patch from Thomas, which generally makes NEW look nicer. It drops the unneeded Checksums-foo headers completly, no need that we see them there again, they just waste space and are useless for us. The patch also changes the html files we generate for all packages in NEW, something which I added to dak a few months ago - based on a patch from Thomas. :) The stylesheet now applied got sent in from Mart n Ferrari who already created the style for the removals page.
• Done a whole lot of NEW. Yes, I continue to do most of NEW, as I’m still (and possibly for some time) are the one with the most experience and speed in doing it. Thomas is doing NEW too, mostly by picking a few packages and processing them. (Before someone yells - he is doing a very good job with removals and override changes, an area where I haven’t looked much into since he got added to the ftpteam).
• Did, together with Mark Hymers, a lot of cleanup work in the code, using pychecker and pylint. We only started, but there have been various changes already, like
  • change “import daklib.foo” and then using daklib.function to “from daklib import foo” and then using foo.function. Granted, the Ideal way would be to go “from daklib.foo import function1, function2, function3” (or so), explicitly naming every thing you use. Or even better, make the whole dak fully object oriented. Or so. Or whatever. :)
  • replaced all own string exceptions, which are deprecated, with real exception classes.
  The cleanups we did made pylint rate the code 5.21, with the initial rating (before we did anything cleanup related) was 3.59/10. (As if it would count, but still) :)
• Added two more headers to mails generated by dak and the queue daemon, X-Debian: DAK and X-Debian-Package: $something, following a suggestion from Bug #479953. Hopefully other tools follow this schema too, at least I announced it on debian-devel-announce, so hopefully it will be taken as a quasi-standard. :) Ok, yes, I admit, the queue daemon is currently not adding the X-Debian-Package header. It does add the X-Debian: DAK header, but not the package one. I got a headache when looking at it, its old and grown perl code. If someone wants to send a patch, fine, the bzr repository has it in tools/debianqueued-0.9. Update: Now the queue daemin also adds the X-Debian-Package header as I got two patches addressing the issue, in two different ways. Thanks to Stephen Gran and Matt Kraai for their work!

Comments: 2

I have updated apt-p2p to version 0.1.3, which is available now in unstable and my repository (see my previous post introducing apt-p2p). This update brings mostly speed improvements to finding peers to download from, and performing the download. Nodes in the DHT are now checked for responsiveness more thoroughly before adding them to the routing table, and rechecked more frequently afterwards. This should prevent bad nodes from propagating through the system, and departing nodes remaining in the system long after they have left. Downloading from peers is also quicker, as bad peers are dropped with a quicker timeout value and after a small number of errors. There was also a bug revealed by about 10% of the mirrors that caused downloads to fail, and was fixed in version 0.1.2. This update is STRONGLY recommended, as keeping unresponsive nodes out of the DHT will make everyone's experience better. If you tried apt-p2p and had some problems, I hope you'll consider trying again now. Unfortunately, these are enhancements I could not predict needing before releasing to the public, as the problems they solve are all caused by having a larger number of users, some of which are unresponsive. There are still a large number of peers (maybe 50% of them) that are unreachable, and so can not share any files with other peers. I don't have a good way to check yet, but you can go to sites such as this one to probe your client for you. Just enter the remote IP address and port (available on the status page) of your client in the form http://ipaddress:port/ (e.g. http://1.2.3.4:9977/). If the check returns any HTTP headers (even a 404 Not Found response) then you're fine, but if it doesn't return anything then your peer is firewalled or NATted and should probably be fixed. Here are the changelog entries for 0.1.2 and 0.1.3:

• Speed up downloading from peers
  • Set a new peer's ranking values so they don't get an unfair advantage.
  • Reduce the HTTP connection timeout to 10s.
  • Drop peers after a limited number of errors.
• Speed up the DHT requests when nodes fail
  • Schedule a re-ping message after adding a new node.
  • When a node fails, schedule a future ping to check again.
  • Send periodic finds to nodes that are stale.
  • Increase the stored value redundancy to 6.
  • Increase the concurrency of DHT requests to 8.
  • Add early termination and ignoring slow responses to recursive DHT actions when timeouts occur.
• Remove the debconf note about port forwarding (Closes:#479492)
  • Add a NEWS entry for port forwarding
• Fixed a bug in the HTTP downloader that caused errors with some mirrors that always close the connections (Closes: #479455)

From Berne, the Swiss capital, hails a band I really like by the name of Z ri West. The name itself is a pun: the folks from Berne love their city (rightfully so!) and join the rest of Switzerland in looking down a bit upon Zurich, which is metropolitan and hip and has often been considered the real capital of Switzerland. Located west of Zurich, Berne is thus Z ri West , and by using this name, the Bernese band ridicules the Zurich folks a bit. Well, that s my interpretation anyway and I make no claim over its correctness, and I surely don t want to get mixed up in local politics! Where was I? Oh yeah: Z ri West (Flash-using homepage] make rock music, and they re good with their instruments. The result are groovy and melodic sounds, which everyone in Switzerland knows. What I find particularly amazing about this band are their lyrics. Kuno, the singer, sings almost all songs in the Bernese dialect, which I ve learnt to the point of understanding it, though I can t speak it yet. It s a beautiful dialect, and Kuno displays magnificent control over it. When I say beautiful, I do not only mean its sound, but also the way it allows one to express thoughts, situations, feelings, etc.. It s very lyrical, often poetic, but always very much to the point. It sounds natural, yet not at all blunt. In addition, Z ri West s songs display no haste. Again, this is a bit ironic since the Bernese are said to be slow, but what I mean is that the band is unafraid to take their time to recount what they have to say. Forget 4/4 beats and verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus, it s a lot more as if the band shaped the music around the story they re telling. (Of course I have no reason to claim that the Bernese are actually slow. According to my dear (Bernese) friend Isabel, they are just considerate to give the rest of the world enough time to parse and understand their sophisticated verbal and non-verbal output). I won t be able to convey all of the lyrical beauties of their music to you, but what I want to do is translate my favourite of their songs, which is based on a story by Peter Bichsel and it s called America does not exist . Keep in mind that their version rhymes, which I won t be able to achieve in the translation. I ll try to keep the flow though. Imagine a jazzy, slightly Latin groove to it. And it s sung, not spoken.

This is the story of Colombo
not the one from the TV show
but of a guy who once lived in Spain
and who was a bit of a freak
capable of nothing
and always telling weird stuff
without giving it much thought
until one day someone told him: you ve got to learn a trade
you have to live your life
nobody takes you for real like this
and most just laugh about you
what are the options
he asked - what do you do
I m an explorer - the other guy said
I sail my ship out to the sea
through the various parts of the globe
that sounds very interesting - I d like that too
and so Colombo said - I ll become a famous explorer And he told it to everyone
and everyone just started laughing
and he said: just wait and see
and the people didn t believe him
and he got sulky
and the people almost died laughing
and he left the town
and hid somewhere in the forest
where he remained for 13 weeks - 13 weeks in the shrubs
and the people searched and felt ashamed
and noone knew where he might be
and noone laughed anymore when suddenly on a wonderful morning he was back
then everyone rejoiced
and when he said: i told you so
I discovered a new land
it s out there somewhere in the sea
then everyone listened
and was kind to him
and tried hard to make some dreadfully serious faces The explorer from the first verse
Amerigo Vespucci is his name
just happened to be in town
and said: good for you, but I won t believe you until I see it myself
and went off to set sail immediately
and after exactly 13 weeks and a day and a night he was finally back
and the people all went down to the port
and Colombo was nervous, almost ill because he had lied
and he was horribly frightened
and pale
and looked noone in the eyes But Vespucci smiled and stood in front of the people
and blinked at Colombo and told that he had found it
and Colombo was so glad that he didn t tell on him
and called out Amerigo Amerigo and the people joined in And Colombo became famous and until the end of his days
he was never actually sure and never dared to ask
whether America really existed
over time, more people went there and when they came back
they told stories and they tell the same stories until today
and noone knows anything more than he knew before
and everyone saw exactly the same
and that sounds very dodgy
and tastes a bit like screenplay and Hollywood America doesn t exist
they never found it
America doesn t exist
it s all just a tale
America doesn t exist
it s all lies and made up
America doesn t exist
America is just a rumour

NP: Z ri West: Z ri West

So i've been struggling with an Ubuntu 8.04 networked workstation. It uses libpam-mount to mount the user's homedir (actually, the mountpoint is one level up from the homedir) automatically at login over CIFS. One of the problems i ran into with this arrangement happened because i was following the pam_mount configuration instructions too literally. In particular, README.Debian.gz says:

For every application used for logging in, there is a file of the form /etc/pam.d/xyz, add the following line at the end of the file:
@include common-pammount

In particular, ubuntu's /etc/pam.d/gdm defaults to:

#%PAM-1.0                                                                                                                                                               
auth    requisite       pam_nologin.so
auth    required        pam_env.so readenv=1
auth    required        pam_env.so readenv=1 envfile=/etc/default/locale
@include common-auth
auth    optional        pam_gnome_keyring.so
@include common-account
session required        pam_limits.so
@include common-session
session optional        pam_gnome_keyring.so auto_start
@include common-password

When i added the @include common-pammount directive to the bottom of this file when using pam_mount, new GNOME sessions failed badly: the gnome-panel didn't appear (which means that the user couldn't log out conveniently), and two error messages popped up at each login with nasty details like:

No database available to save your configuration: Unable to store a value at [...], as the configuration server has no writable databases.

The problem seems to be that libpam-gnome-keyring actually kicks off gconfd-2 during its PAM session invocation. If that comes before libpam-mount's PAM session invocation, then the home directory isn't mounted for the keyring, and gconfd-2 decides that it is unable to save any settings. Since gconfd then persists for the rest of the session, further GNOME session components try to talk to it and it refuses, even though the gconf db is now available (via the mounted homedir). Since the order of the lines in a /etc/pam.d/* are semantically relevant, i'm usually very reluctant to tamper with the defaults. However, i think the correct /etc/pam.d/gdm for this scenario (or any pam-mount scenario using GNOME where the homedir might not be present at all before the session) is actually:

#%PAM-1.0                                                                                                                                                               
auth    requisite       pam_nologin.so
auth    required        pam_env.so readenv=1
auth    required        pam_env.so readenv=1 envfile=/etc/default/locale
@include common-auth
@include common-account
session required        pam_limits.so
@include common-session
@include common-password
@include common-pammount
auth    optional        pam_gnome_keyring.so
session optional        pam_gnome_keyring.so auto_start

With this configuration in place, i can successfully log in with a test user, anyway (and move on to the next problem, which appears to be SQLite over CIFS, ugh). These sorts of problems are tough to nail down:

• Is this overall problem due to a bug in the documentation for libpam-mount?
• In gdm for its default weirdly-ordered PAM config?
• In libpam-gnome-keyring for launching gconf-d-2 in the first place?
• In libgconf2-4 for gconfd-2 not being able to notice when the directories it wants become available?

Or maybe it's just a configuration detail that i should have known about and expected to deal with in the first place. Ah, well.

My previous entry was somewhat misleading in one respect - the discussion of the power consumption of a downclocked processor. The problem is that nowadays, halving your CPU frequency doesn't halve the power consumption (see the figures in Arjan's slides from OSCON last year, for instance). I'm assuming that this is due to the cache size on modern hardware being sufficiently large that it dominates the power consumption of the processor. Dropping the frequency doesn't reduce the amount of power required to keep the contents of the cache alive, so the saving is less than you'd expect. Deeper C states disable the cache and save much more power.

So, if halving your speed means everything takes twice as long but doesn't even halve your power consumption, what's the point in having P states at all? There's a certain amount of latency and power involved in moving between C states, and if the choice is between rapidly cycling between full speed and C4 or just sticking at low speed and maybe dropping into C1 or C2, then executing code at the lower performance state may be beneficial. The ondemand governor takes this into account by looking at the amount of load on the processor over time, so if this doesn't hit a threshold value it'll assume that you're better off staying at the lower performance level.

I bought an HCL MiLeap X for Shruti (who is in the tenth standard) and the IMSc purchased an eeePC for "general use". Now that I have both machines in front of me, it seems like a good time to review them.

SimilaritiesLet's be clear that we are not comparing "jamun" to "aam" (or apples to oranges, if you prefer); these machines have quite a few similarities. Both are aimed at young students who are starting to use the computer for "real work" for the first time. Both the machines run GNU/Linux, and have similar dimensions and features --- even the prices are close. However, we are here to "raise the differences and not bury them"!

Physical appearanceThe eeePC is marginally lighter and more compact. The MiLeap appears to be more rugged though I didn't dare drop either machine to check!The eeePC has a rectangular touchpad which appears to have only one button but in fact this button has a left and right! The MiLeap has two regular buttons and a circular(!) touchpad.The MiLeap is bulkier but has a nice handle to lift it by. The eeePC can be carried like a book and has a matt finish.Both were proclaimed "cute" by Shruti and Sudeshna; I depend on their opinions in such matters!

Hardware featuresThe eeePC scores over the MiLeap X in terms of hardware features. The former has a web camera, a VGA out and one additional USB port. At the same time, the remaining features of both devices are likely to be adequate for most users --- 900 MHz low power processor, graphics adapter, wireless, ethernet, smart card reader. The eeePC has 4GB storage to the 2GB on the MiLeap, but the larger base software install on the eeePC means that the user has about the same amount of working area on both machines.The extra hardware features on the eeePC do give value for the 10% extra that one pays for the eeePC; the latter costs Rs. 17K to the MiLeap's Rs. 15.5K.

SoftwareThis is where the difference between the two is most striking. The MiLeap comes with a pre-installed "classmate" version of EduBuntu. The net result is that this looks and feels like a regular GNU/Linux system configured with software appropriate for educational use.The eeePC on the other hand has a completely icon-driven interface where even getting a terminal is not easy (Ctrl+Alt+T). However, this is just the icing on top of a regular icewm cake. The applications that actually run are just the regular ones --- not customised to fit in with the point-and-click interface.The eeePC terminal has really small fonts and is a regular xterm so that fonts are not as easy to fix as they are for the Gnome terminal used by EduBuntu on the MiLeap. Overall, EduBuntu applications which are based on Gnome are more consistent with the interface than the mix and match between KDE, Gnome and icewm that has been attempted by Xandros; the latter has a lot of promise but needs more work!It was easier to install software on the MiLeap since the EduBuntu repository is significantly larger than Xandros' repository as used by eeePC. In particular, on the MiLeap we installed nethack-qt since that is Shruti's favourite game and openvpn which is needed for us to connect to IMSc from outside the LAN.The installation of the MiLeap is that of Intel's ClassmatePC on which it is based. The entire installation is on a squashfs filesystem image. The base system is used via unionfs at run time on both machines. This makes for easy "reset to default".Suspend-to-ram does not work on the MiLeap; it should be fixed by installing the Linux 2.6.25 kernel.

PhilosophyI have long believed that un-prejudiced minds (like children) will take more readily to GNU/Linux than the hordes of "experienced" (mostly adult) computer users who have well-formed opinions about "user-friendly" software and how particular applications should behave.The "standard" GNU/Linux interface actually encourages exploration and the "tune-it", "tinker" and "fix-it" approach to learning about computing. It is not a sealed box with a "do-not-tamper" sticker. (This tinkering attitude is further enhanced by the approach taken by the designers of the Sugar interface for the XO Laptop.)Since both the systems are based on GNU/Linux (and Debian derivatives no less!), I am nothing short of thrilled at how far things have come. However, will the interface of the eeePC actually encourage exploration? Perhaps the EduBuntu interface of the MiLeap will prove too daunting for a novice. (Shruti does not classify as one since she used GNU/Linux "forever".) Only time will tell ...As Larry Wall has famously said: "There's more than one way to do it!" These devices certainly prove the truth of that assertion within the GNU/Linux world.Devices like these could push GNU/Linux into mainstream usage much more effectively than the "battle for the desktop". Hence, it is perhaps not surprising the both MicroSoft and Apple are trying hard to get into the game. However, it is only GNU/Linux that can comfortably provide a plethora of applications in less than 2GB! Until small solid state disks become significantly cheaper, those guys will have to wait.

Miro helps you Mira (watch) Videos in a snazzy and easy to use way. Software like Miro and Zotero is why I free software. And speaking of videos, one of my readers has provided information about a wonderful documentary on Monsanto and here is a video with Michael Pollan ( an amazing journalist writing on the politics and technology of food) who recently spoke at Google.

Modern CPUs are great. They have all sorts of advanced power saving features, which is one of those nice cases where everyone can save money, gain performance and claim environmental credentials at the same time. Everyone's a winner.

Well. Everyone's a winner as long as your software doesn't suck.

I've talked about the benefits of the tickless kernels and reducing wakeups and spending longer in deep C states before, so if you don't know about them then go and read that first. This time I'm going to focus on a different level of hardware, and a different level of suck.

For a long time, laptops supported changing the speed of processors when switching between AC and battery. CPU power consumption is proportional to frequency, so dropping the frequency meant a longer battery life. Of course, it also meant that it took longer to get anything done - the reason this was still a win was because CPUs in those days consumed just as much power when idle as when running. Transmeta introduced a technology called Longrun with their Crusoe processors, bringing the ability to drop both the frequency and the voltage of the CPU simultaneously. With power consumption being proportional to the square of the voltage, even a small drop resulted in worthwhile power savings. As the only really worthwhile thing Transmeta brought to the x86 world[1], this was unsurprisingly ripped off by everyone else. Intel introduced their Enhanced Speedstep, AMD gave people PowerNow and VIA have Longhaul.

Obviously, reducing the frequency of the CPU increased battery life. Everyone's happy?

No[2].

The problem is that nowadays, processors don't consume as much energy when they're idle as when they're running. The aforementioned C states mean that an idle processor consumes a tiny percentage of a loaded one - an ultra-low voltage Intel part will draw on the order of a watt. Executing code, even at the lowest voltage and frequency, will draw far more power. Obviously, we want to keep the processor idle for as long as possible. The easiest way to do this would be to never run anything, but that's not a real option. The alternative is to run when we have to, but make sure that we get it over with as quickly as possible so we can return to the idle state. Counterintuitively, that means switching to the highest voltage and frequency, executing the code and then dropping back into the idle state. By going faster, we save power[3].

In summary, the only sensible way to use a CPU is to run it as fast as possible in order to let it idle as much as possible, and drop the frequency and voltage when it's not doing anything. The. Only. Sensible. Way.

Some people write software that lets you choose different power profiles depending on whether you're on AC or battery. Typically, one of the choices lets you reduce the speed of your processor when you're on battery. This is bad. It is wrong. The people who implement these programs are dangerous. Do not listen to them. Do not endorse their product and/or newsletter. Do not allow your eldest child to engage in conjugal acts with them. Doing this will reduce your battery life. It will heat up your home. It will kill baby seals. The sea will rise and your car will float away. If you are already running it, make sure that it always sets your cpufreq governor to ondemand and does not limit the frequencies in use. Failure to do so will result in me setting you on fire[4].

The only legitimate reasons for limiting the speed of your CPU are to avoid overheating (which should be fixed in the kernel, really - having userspace in charge of ensuring the continued functioning of the machine is madness) or to make the machine quieter. And if you want your machine to be quieter, there should be a tickbox marked "Reduce performance in order to reduce noise" or something, which would take into account all the sources of heat in your machine rather than just your CPU. Encouraging the managing of acoustic levels by asking users to restrict the functionality of their CPU is just another way of saying "Look! We suck!". Letting the user choose a specific CPU governor or a specific frequency is not a useful thing to do. Don't do it unless you want to see dead kittens. Delivered by UPS.

[1] And, presumably, whatever else Intel and everyone else ended up licensing off them which resulted in their reinvention as an IP company rather than a CPU one, but that's just not interesting to me.

[2] Even ignoring the people that are unhappy for entirely unrelated reasons, such as injured toenails or the brutal murder of their family

[3] There's a corner case here, which is a system that is always entirely CPU bound. Say we halve the CPU's speed. Along with the voltage drop, that gets us down to about 20% of the original power consumption. Of course, it now takes twice as long to do anything and your screen, RAM, hard drive, chipset and so on are still drawing power, so will end up costing you twice as much power as they would have done if you'd run at full speed. If you do the maths, it works out that you save power if your processor's full-speed power consumption is more than 1.7 times that of the rest of the platform. In the real world, things are made more complicated by the rest of your platform consuming more power if you're working over a longer period of time - your hard drive is going to end up spending more time spun up, your memory bus is going to be active for longer and so on. You're basically not going to hit this case.

[4] While the burning of your body will result in carbon emissions, the reduction in power usage should offset this in the long run

Helping a user run GNU/Linux programs on a proprietary system when one knows that the user has no intention of switching to the use of a free system is generally a bad idea. It is sometimes called "enabling" and is generally considered a waste of one's time.All the same, there are situations when one is faced with a Mac¹ with strict instructions not to reboot or otherwise "disturb" the existing system.The news in brief is:

Debian Etch runs with Xorg (vesa driver) under Parallels.
It installs using "mini.iso" for network based install.

Using this one can run all the GNU/Linux programs one needs. It "disturbs" the existing system less than things like "fink" or "MacPorts".Another alternative is "VirtualBox" from Sun which is free for educational use (and has an "Open Source Edition" too!).QEMU offers yet another alternative. Since it emulates all the hardware it is significantly slower. However, on current hardware, the speed will be more than adequate if you just want to use standard desktop tools from GNU/Linux.

Pros

1. Applications run in the environment they were designed for.
2. Speed is "native" for running computational code as there
   is no emulation going on for this part.
3. X applications work in full screen mode.
4. Full networking support.

Cons

1. Can only run in 32-bit mode.
2. Currently runs X in "vesa" modes so you don't have
   accelerated graphics.
3. Some keys like F10 and Ctrl+Alt Alt+Enter are trapped by
   MacOS so you may have to remap these keys if your application
   uses them. (For example, Ctrl+T instead of F10 for aptitude).
4. Possible delay in disk access since parallels provides an
   "emulated disk".

Not yet tried

1. Sharing files (Samba/NFS/SSHfs?)

---

1. Also known as Macintrash. ↩

"your download link will arrive momentarily at the email address you submitted. to ensure the email does not get marked as spam, please instruct your email client to accept mail from nin.com." I wonder how many spambots are busy blasting off zillions of spams with headers forged to be from nin.com as we speak? Best of all, the spams can be customised, you know that many of the people getting them will enjoy this music. (Sometimes I wish I could take advantage of these money-making opportunities as they present themselves to me..)

Sarah and I are doing the Tour de Cure again this year, like we did in 2006, again as part of the Google team. This time around we're doing the 50 kilometre ride, since the 25 kilometre one was a bit of a cakewalk. That said, the fitness levels of both of us are pretty abominable at the moment, so it'll be interesting. So this is the obligatory grovel for donations. If you'd like to make one, you can do it at http://tour.diabetes.org/goto/andrew_pollock Here's what I'm not spamming people with:

I recently accepted the challenge of cycling in the American Diabetes Association's Tour de Cure fund-raising event. The Tour de Cure is a series of cycling events held in over 80 cities nationwide. The Tour is a ride, not a race; it features different route lengths from a leisurely 10-mile course to a demanding 100-mile journey. I have joined thousands of others to pedal in support of the Association's mission: to prevent and cure diabetes and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes. I am asking you to help by supporting my fund-raising efforts with a donation. Your tax-deductible gift will make a difference in the lives of more than 20 million Americans who suffer from diabetes and another 54 million people in the United States with pre-diabetes. Any amount, great or small, helps in the fight against this deadly disease. I greatly appreciate your support and will keep you posted on my progress. If you want to do even more to help, please consider joining me in this great event. Our efforts will help set the pace in the fight against diabetes. More information on the American Diabetes Association, its programs and diabetes in general can be found at the Association's Web site: www.diabetes.org. For more information on Tour de Cure, please visit www.diabetes.org/tour.

This made my day! Here's an excerpt if you're too lazy to click on the link: "Als humanos, tambien nations, after seine geborn, become bambinos und grow adult. Aber als humanos, sommige nations never become adult und necessite psychiatrico help", dixit once Sigmund Freud aan Herr Kanzelier Otto Von Bismarck attemptante de le convince que Germania eine tumultuosa puberty was traversante.
Otto Von Bismarck ignored die wise parolas des fader des psychanalyse und wat happened aan Germania next, wir know mucho well.
Die freudiana diagnose noch todag applicable und validissima est, by exemplo, por wat Grosse Britannia betreft. Eine nation die encore play mit kleine soldatos und make carnaval parades out des season, mature est suremente nicht.
Wat pushe flegmaticos aged britannicos de dresse in hooliganicos costumes und parade mit tambouros und trompettes in der nordirlandico landscape? Sicheremente eine mucho neglected mentale desease.
Eine people waar hombres can wel dress in skirts, waar animals habe more rights dann mensen, waar man drive op de wronge side des strada, must echtemente seriose problemas van personnality habe. Eine people die nicht only play cricket und darts, aber les regarde tambien op TV, bastante insane must definitamente esse.
(...) There are more texts in this, er, language, on the Europanto main site. Edit: fixed link

Some of you might have noticed that in the recent weeks I wasn't active at all online. This was because I was on a vacation in Italy. On the way back I was eager to write about my experiences, but after entering Romania, I found out that may parents had been involved in a motorcycle accident due to a careless driver.

The accident took place on the second day of the Orthodox Easter (on the 28th of April)[1] while my parents were coming back from my sister's, just 20 km away from my home town, Caracal, in a village called Z noaga. There, a Daewoo Cielo was parked on the left side of the road[2], facing the direction towards Caracal. The driver decided that it was a good idea to turn his vehicle and, according to his declaration, instead of looking himself if there was anything comming, he asked a passenger if there were any cars comming.

Since a motorcycle is not a car, I guess the passenger thought it was OK to answer "no".

So the driver simply started his maneuver and managed to occupy the entire right lane, according to the accident schematics (I saw the official police schematics of the accident site with my own eyes). There were only 30 cm from the front most point of the car to the ditch on the right side of road, while the rear wheels were on the mark indicating the axis of the road. That left only 2 meters free on the opposite lane out of the 6.60 meters wide road, so there was no way for my father (driving the motorcycle) to avoid the collision, in spite of the fact he was travelling at about 40-50 km/h[3], within the legal speed limit (50 km/h).

My father barely had enough time to avoid the central pillar and aim for the rear right door of the car, obviously, a safer place to hit. Still, this wasn't enough to keep my mother on the motorcycle, a safer place for her than anywhere on the road.

My mother was projected over my father and over the car, and, luckily, landed on the side of the road, between the asphalt and the ditch, on an area covered with grass. She landed straight onto her head (the helmet protected her really well), and the shock of the landing propagated along the spine, resulting in the fracture of the L1 vertebra. She also got a fissure in the right clavicula, but that should already be OK now.

My father managed to remain on the motorcycle, but the impact was violent enough that he managed to bend the gas tank and has two huge bruises on the inside of his thighs (one for each leg). He also accuses pains in his shoulders and the lower end of the spine (unfortunately he "managed" not to do the medical investigations after the accident), but I hope all of these will pass soon and will have no ill effects. Also, out of sheer luck, at that time, my father was wearing a full-face helmet, contrary to his habit of earing an open-face helmet; due to this, his face was protected and suffered no harm, while the chin of the helmet broke after the impact with the motorcycle windshield. Also some deep scratches starting from the half of the helmet windshield up to the top of the helmet were the signs of a (probably second) violent impact with the motorcycle windshield.



So, the next time you are on the wheel, please look out for motorcycles, too. Motorcycles do exist on the road!

Also, I advice anyone driving a motorcycle to wear good protection equipment like a full-face helmet, jacket, pants, boots, gloves, etc. These helped a lot my parents, and will help you too, if, God forbid, you are involved in an accident.


My mother is in a cast that covers her from hips to shoulders to help with the fracture recovery and also wears a collar (just for safety reasons since she is suffering of spondyloses).
My father is able to walk (with some pain) and seems not to have any injures (I will take him for a close investigation some time soon in spite of his stubbornness).



[1] worrying for us (me and my future spouse), my parents didn't told us and waited for us to return to Romania
[2] in Romania the vehicles travel on the right side of the road, so the driver also drove on opposite lane, a fact which, according to the law, is punished with the suspension of the driving license
[3] he speed was confirmed by the measurements done by the police

Surveillance, massive patent litigation, and toxic trails are just a few of the atrocities that are part and parcel of the global giant Monsanto. They do not just produce a lot of the worlds GE crops but some MAJOR FUD with real muscle as this disturbing in-depth article demonstrates . Whether it is their shadowy, relentless fight against American farmers to “protect” their patents or their fight to scare dairy farmers from labeling their milk BST free, they deploy an astonishing range of legal and extra-legal tactics to make sure they stay on top. Below is a smattering of some of their creepiest tactics, which kinda make the RIAA look angelic in comparison.

“To gather leads, the company maintains an 800 number and encourages farmers to inform on other farmers they think may be engaging in seed piracy. Once Pilot Grove had been targeted, Monsanto sent private investigators into the area. Over a period of months, Monsanto s investigators surreptitiously followed the co-op s employees and customers and videotaped them in fields and going about other activities. At least 17 such surveillance videos were made, according to court records

“Studies by health authorities consistently found elevated levels of PCBs in houses, yards, streams, fields, fish, and other wildlife and in people. In 2003, Monsanto and Solutia entered into a consent decree with the E.P.A. to clean up Anniston. Scores of houses and small businesses were to be razed, tons of contaminated soil dug up and carted off, and streambeds scooped of toxic residue. The cleanup is under way, and it will take years, but some doubt it will ever be completed the job is massive. To settle residents claims, Monsanto has also paid $550 million to 21,000 Anniston residents exposed to PCBs, but many of them continue to live with PCBs in their bodies. Once PCB is absorbed into human tissue, there it forever remains.”

The company contends that advertising by Kleinpeter and other dairies touting their no rBGH milk reflects adversely on Monsanto s product. In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission in February 2007, Monsanto said that, notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence that there is no difference in the milk from cows treated with its product, milk processors persist in claiming on their labels and in advertisements that the use of rBST is somehow harmful, either to cows or to the people who consume milk from rBST-supplemented cows. Monsanto called on the commission to investigate what it called the deceptive advertising and labeling practices of milk processors such as Kleinpeter, accusing them of misleading consumers by falsely claiming that there are health and safety risks associated with milk from rBST-supplemented cows.

It is the end of the semester as well as the end of my first year of full time teaching. It has been quite a handful, mouthful, and especially mindful but I am happy to say that I like a lot more than I dislike it, which bodes well for the future. I would like to spend some time writing about teaching and what I enjoyed to teach (and what the students like) but for now I want to note what was my favorite book of the academic year, which unsurprisingly, was fiction (and thus nothing I taught). The book is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by MIT professor, Junot D az and I read it over my winter break. It is a heart breaking but deeply humorous story that I could barely put down and I can’t wait till his next novel and will gladly wait the 10 years it took him to write this one after his amazing book Drown. It is about the life, trials, and tribulations of an unlikely character, a Dominican SUPER NERD by the name of Oscar Wao who has more than a lot of trouble scoring with the ladies (a “lovesick ghetto nerd” in the words of the author. Or to put in Dominican speak, he is no “tigre”). In the process of his many failures and attempt at love and lust, you learn about the experiences of Dominican immigrants in the tri-state area, the brutal history of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic as well as a good dose of odd culture folklore (both geek and Dominican, if you can believe it!) and all of this is told in a style that manages to combine the rhythm and passion of a poetry slam with classic issues of tragedy common in Greek literature. It is books like these which make me a little down on purely academic ones which tend to lack the style, pizazz, rhythm, flow, narrative, and heart needed to make you fall in love with words on a page.