I've updated the blogspam site a little. Now:
Last week, I spent some time building a good (that I liked) feed auto-discovery tool to use in Ruby for other project I m building, rFeed. I liked CPAN s Feed::Find, and at some point I made a wrapper class to run a Perl script using such module, however, I wasn t happy by mixing it all. So, Feedbag was born:
It makes smart use of relative and absolute bases, hrefs, links, content types, etc. It is also a single Ruby file, so you can grab it and use it on your application. Plus, it only requires Hpricot as dependency. It can find all feeds linked on a web page, but it will return the most important at the beginning of the resulting array, so you will have the important one on the first results (see example above with Planet Debian). Synopsis, README and a brief tutorial have been placed at axiombox.com/feedbag. You can also take a look at the git repo, hosted in GitHub.>> require "rubygems" => true >> require "feedbag" => true >> Feedbag.find "log.damog.net" => ["http://feeds.feedburner.com/TeoremaDelCerdoInfinito", "http://log.damog.net/comments/feed/"]>> planet_feeds = Feedbag.find("planet.debian.org") [ ... ] >> planet_feeds.first(3) => ["http://planet.debian.org/rss10.xml", "http://planet.debian.org/rss20.xml", "http://planet.debian.org/atom.xml"] >>planet_feeds.size => 104 >>
" Unbind the cursor keys in insert, normal and visual modes. for prefix in ['i', 'n', 'v'] for key in ['<Up>', '<Down>', '<Left>', '<Right>'] exe prefix . "noremap " . key . " <Nop>" endfor endfor
Recently the Debian Administration website has been besieged by spammers submitting bogus comments.
I also run a couple of blogs which are constantly having random gibberish submitted to them - although it is less of a problem there because I approve them manually due to the offline nature of my blog, and the blog compiler I use.
Regardless I figured it was time to do something about it, in part because Chris Searle suggested that I should be able to query arbitrary text for spammyness due to my experience with fighting email spam. (As it turns out that is not so useful experience. Comments and emails are not the same. The same header-trickery you see in bogus email, false EHLOs, etc, are not useful concepts to carry accross.)
Anyway we were saying, I was going to do something? So I did. My solution? An XML-RPC server which you submit your comments to. This will return either:
| OK | The comment is clean. |
| SPAM:[reason] | The comment is spam, and the optional reason explains further |
So the failings of the GR result in just what everyone didn't need - a restarted discussion about the firmware issue without first releasing Lenny. Come on people, leave it alone and get Lenny done. Anthony, Thomas and Theodore (also in his blog) all seem to be missing the point(s):No, said Cletus. I m trying to explain to you why I d never make an Exotic. In your calmness in the face of possible torture and the need to kill yourself, you were showing a particular form of ruthlessness. It was ruthlessness toward yourself but that s only the back side of the coin. You Exotics are essentially ruthless toward all men, because you re philosophers, and by and large, philosophers are ruthless people. Cletus! Mondar shook his head. Do you realize what you re saying? Of course, said Cletus, quietly. And you realize it as well as I do. The immediate teaching of philosophers may be gentle, but the theory behind their teaching is without compunction and that s why so much bloodshed and misery has always attended the paths of their followers, who claim to live by those teachings. More blood s been spilled by the militant adherents of prophets of change than by any other group of people down through the history of man.The conflict between idealism and pragmatism is a very old one in the Free and Open Source Software Movement. At one end of the spectrum stands Richard Stallman, who has never compromised on issues regarding his vision of Software Freedom. Standing at various distances from this idealistic pole are various members of the Open Source Community. For example, in the mid-1990 s, I used to give presentations about Linux using Microsoft Powerpoint. There were those in the audience that would give me grief about using a non-free program such as MS Powerpoint, but my response was that I saw no difference between driving a car which had non-free firmware and using a non-free slide presentation program. I would prefer to use free office suite, but at the time, nothing approached the usability of Powerpoint, and while dual-booting into Windows was a pain, I could do a better job using Powerpoint than other tools, and I refused to handcap myself just to salve the sensibilities of those who felt very strongly about Free Software and who viewed the use of all non-Free Software as an ultimate evil that must be stamped out at all costs. It is the notion of Free Software as a philosophy, with no compromises, which has been the source of many of the disputes inside Debian. Consider, if you will, the first clause of the Debian Social Contract:
Debian will remain 100% free We provide the guidelines that we use to determine if a work isThis clause has in it no room for compromise. Note the use of words such as 100% free and never make the system require the use of a non-free component (emphasis mine). In addition, the Debian Social Contract tends to be interpreted by Computer Programmers, who view such imperatives as constraints that must never be violated, under any circumstances. Unfortunately, the real world is rarely so cut-and-dried. Even the most basic injunctions, such as Thou shalt not kill have exceptions. Few people might agree with claims made by the U.S. Republican Party that the war in Iraq qualified as a Just War as defined by Thomas Aquinas, but rather more people might agree that the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler would be considered justifiable. And most people would probably agree most of the actions undertaken by the Allied Soldiers on World War II battlefields that involved killing other soldiers would be considered a valid exception to the moral (and for those in the Judeo-Christian tradition, biblical) injunction, Thou shalt not kill . As another example, consider the novel and musical Les Mis rables, by Victor Hugo. One of the key themes of this story is whether or not Thou shalt not steal is an absolute or not. Ultimately, the police inspector Javert, who lived his whole life asserting that law (untempered by mercy, or any other human considerations) was more important than all else, drowns himself in the Seine when he realizes that his life s fundamental organizing principle was at odds with what was ultimately the Right Thing To Do. So if even the sixth and eighth commandments admit to exceptions, why is it that some Debian developers approach the first clause of the Debian Social Contract with a take-no-prisoners, no-exceptions policy? Especially given the fourth clause of the Debian Social contract:freein the document entitledThe Debian Free Software Guidelines. We promise that the Debian system and all its components will be free according to these guidelines. We will support people who create or use both free and non-free works on Debian. We will never make the system require the use of a non-free component.
Our priorities are our users and free software We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation in many different kinds of computing environments. We will not object to non-free works that are intended to be used on Debian systems, or attempt to charge a fee to people who create or use such works. We will allow others to create distributions containing both the Debian system and other works, without any fee from us. In furtherance of these goals, we will provide an integrated system of high-quality materials with no legal restrictions that would prevent such uses of the system.This clause does not have the same sort of absolutist words as the first clause, so many Debian Developers have held that the needs of the users is defined by 100% free software . Others have not agreed with this interpretation but regardless of how needs of the users should be interpreted, the fact of the matter is, injuctions such as Thou shalt not kill are just as absolute and yet in the real world, we recognize that there are exceptions to such absolutes, apparently unyielding claims on our behavior. I personally believe that 100% free software is a wonderful aspirational goal, but in particular with regards to standards documents and firmware, there are other considerations that should be taken into account. People of good will may disagree about what those exceptions should be, but I think one thing that we should consider as even higher priority and with a greater claim on how we behave is the needs of our users and fellow developers as people. For those who claim Christianity as their religious tradition, Jesus once stated,
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.Even for those who do not claim Christianity as their religious tradition, most moral and ethical frameworks have some variant on the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you . I would consider, for example, that the Golden Rule is at least a high priority claim on my behavior as the notion of free speech, and in many cases, it would be a higher priority claim. The recent controversy surrounding Josselin Mouette was started precisely because Joss has taken a something which is a good thing, namely Free Speech, and relegated it to a principle more important than all else, and claiming that any restraint on such a notion was equivalent to censorship. I think the same thing is true for free software, although it is a subtler trap. Philosophical claims than 100% free software as most important consideration is dangerously close to treating Free Software as the Object of Ultimate Concern or in religious terms, idolotry. For those who are religious, it s clear why this is a bad thing; for those who aren t if you are unwilling to worship a supernatural being, you may want to very carefully consider whether you are willing to take a philosophical construct and raise it to a position of commanding your highest allegiance to all else, including how you treat other people. Ultimately, I consider people to be more important than computers, hardware or software. So over time, while I may have had some disagreements with how Mark Shuttleworth has run Canonical Software and Ubuntu (but hey, he s the multimillionaire, and I m not), I have to give him props for Ubuntu s Code of Conduct. If Debian Developer took the some kind of Code of Conduct at least as seriously as the Social Contract, I think interactions between Debian Developers would be far more efficient, and in the end the project would be far more successful. This may, however, require lessening the importance of philosophical constructs such as Free Speech and Free Software, and perhaps becoming more pragmatic and more considerate towards one another.
For various reasons (which in the end boil down to lack of manpower), we are quite late in the process of packaging GNOME 2.24. (This is almost finished now, I ll keep you informed.) Which is why I may sound coming a bit late on noticing this one, but I was really speechless.
The problem: session management has flaws
Currently, a session manager uses XSMP (the X Session Management Protocol) to talk to applications. What it means is that for applications supporting this protocol, it is able to do more than simply starting and killing them: it will also remember their state, and offer them a way to shut down gracefully. However, XSMP is really a shitty protocol I won t explain why here, you will find tons of better explanations on the intarweb.
The gnome-session developers, being quite aware of this issue, did what anyone interested enough would have done: they designed a new protocol, based on D-Bus, and implemented it. The new protocol is not considered stable yet, but it is simple, efficient and above all, reliable that s a giant leap forward. For this reason, I was very excited to see what gnome-session 2.24 would look like, since it brings major cleanups in the code.
The solution: remove session management!
When I first started it, it did not restore my saved session. I simply supposed that the format of the saved session had changed, and that writing a conversion tool would be in order. Wrong. Let s bring the session preferences:
static void
on_save_session_clicked (GtkWidget *widget,
GsmPropertiesDialog *dialog)
g_debug ("Session saving is not implemented yet!");
$ lspci grep Modemthat is a SmartLink modem, supported well by sl-modem-deamon package and by alsa:
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 02)
$ ps -eo command grep slmRemember to edit /etc/default/sl-modem-daemon file and set the right country for you.
/usr/sbin/slmodemd --alsa -c ITALY modem:1
ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0works well if the number to call is a local one (I tried it before, and worked). Since Teleconomy provides a state-wide number (702...) with the above string the connection will fail with a sad:
NO CARRIERBut there is a fix: first, the Init1 should be ATX3 (but it seems to be enbedded in the one below), and the last arguments must be changed (well, I think it has something to do with line speed (MS=34 will result in a 33.6k line) or protocol, but don't care too much as long as it works) resulting in this Init2:
No Carrier! Trying again.
ATX3Q0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +MS=90And remember to select the "stupid mode" in gnome-ppp, and you'll have a nice:
--> Initializing modem.I'll move to ppp soon, since gnome-ppp seems to not understand "fsck, reconnect when disconnect, dude" option.
--> Sending: ATX3
ATX3
OK
--> Sending: ATX3Q0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +MS=90
ATX3Q0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +MS=90
OK
Modem initialized.
Sending: ATM1L3DT7020187187
Waiting for carrier.
ATM1L3DT7020187187
CONNECT 52000
--> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately.
--> Starting pppd at Fri Dec 26 19:12:23 2008
--> Pid of pppd: 4870
--> Using interface ppp0
--> local IP address ......
This is the follow-up on my Asus EEE PC configuration. Next on my TODO list was to make the webcam work, and as Ben Armstrong had pointed it worked fairly well, proving to be a non-issue.
After that, I decided it would be a good thing if the presence of my bluetooth-enabled cellphone were tested, so that if I walk away from the PC, it called xscreensaver -lock. After some googling, I found a tool that did just that: BlueProximity. It really seemed a good idea, except that my cellphone (a Palm Treo 650) kept warning me about a connection going on, which was quite unpleasant. This happens because BlueProximity tests the RSSI of a bluetooth connection Beautiful, but a little overkill for what I wanted: I just wanted to know if it is there or not.
First I tested the bluetooth discovery with hcitool scan, but for that I would have to keep my cellphone Discovery On, which is not a smart thing to do So I tested other things, and found out that hcitool name XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX only returned the name of my cellphone if it were around. So that was what I used. This is treo-presence.sh script:
#!/bin/bash
TREO='XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX'
NAME='name_of_my_cellphone'
CMD="/usr/bin/hcitool name $TREO"
if [ " $CMD " = "$NAME" ]; then
exit 1
fi
exit 0
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/w /bin/grep $LOGNAME > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
# Running user is not logged in
exit 1
fi
CMD="/usr/local/bin/treo-presence.sh"
LOCK_CMD="/usr/bin/xscreensaver-command -lock"
FILE="/tmp/no-treo-lock.txt"
TMPFILE= /bin/tempfile
/bin/touch $FILE
/usr/bin/tail -2 $FILE > $TMPFILE
$CMD; echo $? >> $TMPFILE
/bin/mv $TMPFILE $FILE
/bin/rm -f $TMPFILE
for line in cat $FILE ; do
if [ "$line" = "1" ]; then
exit 1
fi
done
# Got here: all 3 lines are not 1
$LOCK_CMD > /dev/null 2>&1
exit 0
This is a continuation from part 1 but can be enjoyed on its own too, like a good red wine. It s a bit early for me for red wine, though.
A reel from Glenn Gould's 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations contains the following dialogue between the 22-year-old pianist and the recording engineer after a take of the 30th variation, a quodlibet:
By the way, I have a quodlibet of my own which came to me in the bathtub the other night. One of these days I will be asked to perform on the fourth of July, I'm sure, and when I do I figured out that by leaving out the repeats in the Star Spangled Banner and starting your entry on the thirteenth bar of God Save The King and then playing God Save the King over again and altering the harmony in the second half of The King to modulate to the supertonic region, it has the most marvelous effect. Listen to this.. (202KiB Ogg Vorbis).
I just found out about hacker spaces. For a nice example of a hack space, see The Metalab. Such places seem quite suitable for work on individual public projects and for growing teams by sorting out the wheat from the chaff.
It's a pity there are no hacker spaces east of Vienna. I wonder if one could be set up in Vilnius. There probably are enough people around. but quite a bit of organising work (see Hackerspace Design Patterns [PDF]) needs to be done to establish a hacker space. I would do it, but I am overbooked as it is. Any takers?
When a cat is on your lap or very close to you, it means there is no better place for him in the whole world. And cats are very smart. And demanding. They are absolutely free souls and natural born gourmets.Next.