Search Results: "spa"

18 December 2008

Michal Čihař: Gammu stable version 1.22.0

After two and half months of development, new Gammu stable release is out. Since last testing version there are only minor changes in vCard export, but full changelog since 1.21.0 is quite long: You can download from usual place: http://cihar.com/gammu/, Binary packages will be available soon in all usual places (Debian Unstable, OpenSuse build service, Ubuntu PPA repository).

Raphaël Hertzog: Release Lenny GR

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

17 December 2008

Biella Coleman: Going, going (gone) Monastic



Not Ballistic, Monastic, originally uploaded by the biella.
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

16 December 2008

John Goerzen: Wiki Software

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: 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.

Chris Lawrence: GPS buying advice

Rich Owings of GPS Tracklog offers advice on must-have and less-worthwhile features for an automotive GPS. I ll slightly dissent from Rich on the value of traffic information, although of the units I ve used the Dash Express has the only helpful implementation* of traffic I ve found so far and with Dash leaving the hardware business it s not clear that anyone will be filling the gap in the future although TomTom s HD Traffic is allegedly headed stateside in 2009. * Virtually all of the existing products focus on Interstates and other freeways, which might be helpful in really big cities where there are multiple freeway routes to the same destination, but isn t so helpful in the places I ve lived where the question is not which freeway should I take? but should I take the freeway or one of the 2 3 surface street options? Dash at least has some data on traffic on the surface street network but much of it relies on Dash getting more market penetration, which seems unlikely unless they ve hooked up with a major player like TomTom to provide traffic services going forward.

Pablo Lorenzzoni: Lenny in the Asus EEE PC 901 - day 1

Following my previous post, today I began to turn my brand new Asus EEE PC 901 into a Debian Machine. At first I wanted to do all in one day, but since work is taking too much out of me (and everything seems to take more time than expected), I ll have to split this in different days So, first things first. I read Debian Wiki on the issue and began by doing the most important: backing it up. So I got a daily netinst iso, put it on a USB Pendrive and followed the tip on backup over the network using netcat. Easy and effective, and took only 8 minutes on the 901 (I think the 35 minutes described on the wiki were for models with slower NICs). From there, I had to decide which version of the installer I d use. I chose Standard, since I want an encrypted disk on my EEE. So I run the installer and, on the partition manager, I deleted /dev/sda1 (where Xandros was installed), turning it into a 300 MB /dev/sda5 (to use as /boot) and a 3 GB /dev/sda6 building a Logical Volume over an LVM Volume Group with it and /dev/sdb1 (where the user directory was), and enciphering it. This took a long time, since, I believe, random data were being written to the device to increase crypto strength. I left /dev/sda 2,3,4 as they were, since they can belong to the Asus EEE Recovering System (and they don t take too much space :-) ) Now base system is installed, and wired network works like a charm Next steps will have to wait until tomorrow.

Neil Williams: Emdebian Grip - Debian, only 25% smaller

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.

Biella Coleman: Speaking of the Tactile/Tactical



razer my new keyboard, which i LOVE, originally uploaded by the biella.
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

Rapha&#235;l Hertzog: Dell Latitude E4300 with Debian

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
 Partagez cet article / Share This

Patrick Schoenfeld: Re: How many bugs have you fixed today?

Bastian Venthur notices how the "How many bugs have you fixed today" question is used as a killer-argument against critism at the release-process.

I must confess that I also don't like this attitude of people to use such arguments as a form to silence others. It is something that only people should do, who enjoyed bad manners.
But OTOH it is really sad to see that always the same people are fixing rc bugs. I can only guess, but it seems like out of over 1000 developers eventually 100 are actively involved in the squashing of release-critical-bugs. That is a shame. And people who try to blame the release team for the consequences happening because of this only aren't really helpful, too. Its not like having a release team is meant to be a "5 people to rule/rescue the world" approach.

Bastian, the problem with your attitude is, that you adduct such arguments with it. If its not visible that you do anything more to get Lenny out, except pointing with the finger at the release team, saying "Ha! Ha!", and speculating how we will fail to release Lenny timely, then you shouldn't wonder. You should remember that you are a part of the "We", which is failing, when we as a project miss yet another release date.

And yes, I do agree that our release process is not really ideal and I think we should further push changes to optimize it (which already happened, given that the unblock-policy was way less strict as the years before), but where is your constructive contribution to that?

Biella Coleman: Do Not Eat the Laundry



do-not-eat, originally uploaded by the biella.
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.

Biella Coleman: Do Not Eat the Laundry



do-not-eat, originally uploaded by the biella.
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.

15 December 2008

Chris Lawrence: On the filibuster

Nate Silver thinks Harry Reid is being an ineffective Senate majority leader because he s letting the GOP get away with holds without the traditional filibuster. However, as I pointed out here in 2003 (and also here later that year), the traditional filibuster is far more burdensome on the majority when the minority is bigger than a single senator; while you need 60 majority senators to be on-call to break the filibuster, all you need at any given point of time is a single minority senator to hold the floor. Ultimately the cot drama makes for nice TV, but dragging out the cots probably won t win him any friends among the supermajority of senators he needs to break the minority. These problems have also vexed other majority leaders of both parties if there s a common theme to in-partisans complaints about their majority leaders, it s ineffectuality, without much recognition that Senate majority leaders are institutionally weak and individual senators like it that way. It probably doesn t hurt that most senators have served in the House and the last thing they want is to have another Speaker trying to boss them around. On a related topic, McQ points out that the bailout had enough GOP support in the Senate to pass if Reid had successfully herded his party s cats. But again being a good cat-herder isn t really the qualification that fellow senators want when choosing their majority leader, so I m not sure anyone in Reid s position would have been able to do a better job.

Pablo Lorenzzoni: It arrived!

I got an Asus EEE PC 901 Linux. Unfortunately it arrived just now, at the end of the day. I ll document the process of turning it into a Debian machine as I go, beginning tomorrow. So, stay tuned!

Jonathan McDowell: Debian: King of procrastination

Once again Debian is close to release. And once again we're trying to find ways to avoid doing so. Using a technique we've employed before; firmware.
Social Contract #4 states that "Our priorities are our users and free software". The hard liners believe that it's in our users' best interests that we ensure Debian is 100% Free, whether that be regarding software, documentation or firmware. In the long run I think they're right. Access to firmware source (assuming that there's also access to
suitable tools for building it and producing an image the hardware will accept, which is a fairly big assumption) enables us to continue supporting and improving hardware support long after a manufacturer has discontinued a device. It enables us to understand the behaviour of a new device better (allowing better support which makes it a more attractive purchase). It potentially lets us appropriate a device for new and exciting purposes the manufacturer never imagined (which may again increase the sales of the device). Access to firmware source is a good thing in the long term, for the consumer, the driver author and the manufacturer.
In the short term we I think we need to be pragmatic. We can say that we won't release until all non-free firmware is purged, but who knows how long that will take, and once we've done so how much hardware will we actually be able to support out of the box? What benefit is it to our users if we ship them a distribution that doesn't support their hardware and is already out of date because we spent so long removing that support? Wouldn't we be better to say "We're aware of some firmware issues. We're going to keep working on spliting such blobs out to their own easily installable packages that live outside main. We promise to continue improving the situation for each release (as we have already done since etch), but in the interests of our users we will not hold up a release at this stage of the process." Obviously plenty of people disagree with that, but I don't believe that pragmatism is against the Social Contract and I'd like to think that even our users who are fervently against firmware blobs would accept that there's a tradeoff to be had against release dates.
Anyway. I doubt I've changed anyones mind with the above, so I'm going to go and destack the dishwasher and reply to the latest mail from my NM.

14 December 2008

Cyril Brulebois: Secretary? Epic FAIL

Debian has a secretary that: Epic FAIL. (I won t mention again the incredible decision of putting everything into a single vote, others have done so already. And that s of course the worst of all.) Update: Just for fun (or despair), I sent another ballot for the General Resolution: Project membership procedures vote. And guess what? 
This is an acknowledgement for your vote [record msg00356.raw] for
the vote "Project membership procedures"
sent in on Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:37:16 +0100, with the subject
"Re: Final call for votes: GR: Project membership procedures"
 
Your vote has been recorded as follows
 
I note that this is not your first vote.
The time now is Mon Dec 15 08:08:06 2008
Thanks for your vote.
I m lacking words, and running out of popcorn.

Biella Coleman: Thinking Responsibily about the Drugs among Us

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.

Kurt Roeckx: Debian vote about firmware and the Lenny release

Today the voting period starts for this general resolution about firmware and the Lenny release. As many have pointed about before this is very complex vote with many orthogonal issues. The issues and some of the options: And then we're going to decide all of that in 1 single vote. I interpret the options we have as: Choice 1: Choice 2: Choice 3: Choice 4: Choice 5: Choice 6: Choice 7: So in my opinion, options 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 all decide on 1 of the 4 questions, and only 2 of them about the same question. I also don't see any bugs filed against the linux-2.6 package about any issues the kernel might have with firmware, so I have to wonder why we're voting about this. My current vote is "2222221". I'm not sure it's the best options, but I currently don't see a better one.

13 December 2008

Christian Perrier: GR about firmware and strategy about releasing

I am somewhat under the feeling that the Debian project is currently facing a critical moment of its history. The development momentum has slowed down a lot during last months (approximately since Debconf and even more since October. I feel just like we're facing a moment where either we release Lenny (which is technically a great progress over Etch and, being a little bit more than 18 months after Etch, well suited wrt "modernity")....or we delay it for several months and will suffer more and more from the long freeze process (remember sarge). The momentum is then very likely to continue moving elsewhere (should I say Ubuntu or did everybody understand already?). And now we have to vote about firmware blobs, a proposal that popped up because a few (*very* few) vocal folks who (in my opinion) live on a planet that has no connection with the real world, think that we should triple check the freeness of each and every bit that is likely to be run on a Debian machine. 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. Yes, I ranked "reaffirm the Social Contract" after everything, which makes me sad....and I blame the play on words by the zealots who pushed that proposal for forcing me to do this. I think this is the best "tactical" choice for those (and I hope we are a strong majority) who still make the *release* of the best possible and most possibly free operating system their priority. Believe me or not: if we don't release lenny soon, we will die slowly and rot peacefully. We will rot being 150% free and proud to be 150% free on our little planet, outside the solar system and the real world. *This* is the choice we are facing. Ah, and before I forget: film at 11, of course. PS: no comment system on my blog (I don't want to deal with spam and put complicated systems there). Please comment in public in your own blog. I very much prefer this over private comments which will be mostly ignored.

Joerg Jaspert: Planet Debian

I just updated the Software behind Planet Debian to Planet Venus, away from PlanetPlanet. The major benefit right now is the threading, we are now using 15 threads to download the various feeds instead of just one. For all the rest it is currently the same as the old PlanetPlanet, as we use the same templates. But we might switch to something different, we now have the option. The reason for that switch, beside a little more recent code, was the faster updates which was driven by a request we got recently. Language based Planet Debian, ie. a spanish, a german, one. This is now doable without trashing the machine it runs on and will be there soon. I m not yet sure what the exact rules for the language planets will be, but I guess something along the following will do (have to discuss with the other Planet maintainers, this is just my 2 on it): While I was doing this I also went and disabled a large number of non-working feed entries in our Planet config. A diff is available, if you find yourself in it, feel free to reactivate our entry as soon as it is reachable again. [Update] Planet now also features an Atom feed, in case you prefer that.

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