How weird is that a bug get closed by a spam email?
Today I checked my email and found that #210857 got closed by a spam email of US army nurses and doctors...!
It's sometimes funny what automatically added advertisements can
produce. This morning when I complained about lack of Windows developers
for Gammu
and shared my unwillingness to work on Windows,
Microsoft sponsored this email ;-).
On Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:55:56 +0900
Michal iha <michal@cihar.com> wrote:
> I have totally no interest in investing into Windows license and
> finding out how to use totally free MSVC.
[...]
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft
> Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2005.
Several months ago, I announced that I'd received a grant from mtvU
and Cisco to work on a cool voting technology research project called
Selectricity. A project in quotidian democracy, Selectricity attempts
to apply some of the best voting technology and election methods
research towards every-day decision-making. It takes research I did at
the MIT Media Lab and packages it into a real, useful, application.
I spent probably half of my time over the last several months managing
a team of competent hackers and designers as we've built out the
project. Last week, press releases and news stories went out as
we launched our first production batch of features and a new design. You
can check it out online at:
http://selectricity.orgThere is a whole line-up of a groups and organizations, some high profile, that will be using the software in the coming months. There's also half a dozen killer new features that are built and waiting in the wings for a little polish and fanfare. We'll be testing and releasing those in the next couple months. No doubt, I'll be mentioning bits and pieces of my work on the project on my blog here. However, if you want to follow development, you should subscribe to the Selectricity News Blog where more full coverage will take place. You can leave feedback, suggestions, and bugs as comments on the blog or email it to team@selectricity.org. The election method code is already published and we'll be releasing the rest of the code under the AGPLv3 when the license is released by the FSF in the next few weeks.
| 2007 | |
| Unique visitors | 4952207 |
| Total visits | 8572139 |
| Total pageviews | 43332086 |
| Total bandwidth (apache only) | 783.28 GB |
| Additional traffic due to robots | 53328963 pageviews adding 265.73 GB traffic |
| Yahoo | is the most active spider, making some 97.54 GB of traffic |
| Googlebot | follows on second place, responsible for 43.92 GB |
| MSNBot | caused about 21.52 GB traffic |
| Python-urllib | is used by multiple bots and they all made up 43.29 GB traffic |
| Linux | is of course the most used one, 48.1% of our visitors told us they use it. |
| Windows | only on place 2, with 40.5%. |
| MacOS | all kinds of MacOS add up to 2.5%. |
| Debian | 15397537 | 22.8 % |
| Ubuntu | 9050014 | 13.4 % |
| Suse | 542635 | 0.8 % |
| Red Hat | 107240 | 0.1 % |
| Mandriva (or Mandrake) | 166545 | 0.2 % |
| Fedora | 623242 | 0.9 % |
| Centos | 69998 | 0.1 % |
| GNU Linux (Unknown or unspecified distribution) | 6421731 | 9.5 % |
Since I am now running Freedom on a MacBook, it reminded me of one of my favorite Internet videos of all time. It is nice to re-visit the classics from time to time.
Last week, Rapha l Hertzog mentioned a transition in progress that
was going to change the way that Planet Debian updates. As part of
the plan to deprecate cvs.debian.org, Rapha l helped me move Planet
Debian away from the old CVS repository and to a new Subversion
repository in Alioth.
Readers of Planet Debian should not notice any differences.
When it comes time to change or disable a feed, contributors to planet
Debian will have to update their feed slightly differently.
Documentation on how the new method is now in the wiki and at
gluck:/org/planet.debian.org/README.
As Rapha l mentioned, all Debian Developers have write access to the
configuration file in the Subversion repository through their Alioth
accounts. Unlike the old setup, non-DD's who have blogs in Planet can
have write access to it as well, but they'll need to have an Alioth
account and they'll need to be added to the ACL by me. As before, it's
only OK to modify one's one feed and anyone who violates this in bad
faith will have their privileges to the repository removed.
The old CVS repository remains crudely broken. Please help update any
references to the old CVS-based method or alert me to documentation
that's public and out of date that you don't have access to change
yourself.
One of several things I never got around to blog about is my experience with
MythTV (which, in case you don't know,
turns your pc into a tivo, given a suitable tv decoder card and the mythtv
software). To make up for the lack of a more detailed post, let's just recap:
I had set it up a little over two years ago, on what was then a 'possibly
temporary' Kubuntu box. Well the box is
still there and still running Kubuntu, four releases later, and MythTV only
got easier as Ubuntu now includes the decoder drivers. So far no worries.
TV schedule information had always been provided via the 'free as in beer
if you answer a question or two' zap2it
subsidiary of the for-profit Tribune publishing company (i.e. the folks who
own the Chicago Tribune, Cubs baseball team, WGN TV station around here and
what have you, and are in the process of being sold to Sam Zeil). As had
been noted in other places, that 'free' service is no more, and a seemingly
cooperatively-run 'small fee' service has been set up by a few volunteers at
schedulesdirect.
So I just switched, and for the benefit of anybody sitting on the fence about
this, the switch is trivial:
wajig update;
wajig dist-upgrade
winpdb - a platform independent Python debugger
A few minutes ago a mail arrived which told me, that my winpdb package migrated to testing, which was just another reminder to blog about it.
winpdb is not just yet another Python debugger, it is actually the first really well working one I've used so far. One of my favorite features is the embedded debugging, which allows you to debug scripts which are embedded somewhere. I still have to try it with a Zope product, though - I'm really wondering if I could embed the remote debugger in there. That just brought us to another very useful feature - winpdb is a remote debugger. It connects to the real debugger (called rpdb2) using an encrypted and password protected tcp connection, which allows you to run rpdb2 under a totally different user, probably on some embedded box somewhere on the other side of the world. If you don't want to use a graphical frontend, rpdb2 is able to run the debug sessions in a 'screen' window. Although winpdb doesn't ship much documentation, it is very well documented. And in case you don't like winpdb or wx - pida ships with a debugger plugin which is in fact a gtk frontend for rpdb2.
The following quote is part of a mail from Nir Aides, the author of winpdb. Although it may be biased, I think it'll probably give you some ideas in case you want to compare winpdb with some other common (commercial) debuggers. He kindly allowed me to quote it here:
I have just spent a couple of hours (instead of doing some real work…) with the commercial Python debuggers of Komodo IDE 4.1 and Wing IDE 3 beta, and (without declaring objectiveness) Winpdb seems currently better than both in several important areas:Not to forget that winpdb supports debugging of curses based applications, namespace modification and the coming version is supposed to have full unicode support. Happy debugging!
* It is the only one of the three to support os.fork() (wingide debugger crashes)
* It handles thread debugging best in many aspects (e.g allows inspection of threads that are still running, stays with the correct thread when stepping, general usability, etc…)
* Its name-space browser is the most consistent and stable (in particular with describing class inheritance, very large objects, sets!)
* It is the only one that prevents breakpoints in invalid lines (Komodo does not care at all and Wing allows setting breakpoints inside remarks and thus possibly in other invalid lines). This is important since in Python it is sometimes surprisingly hard to tell (by looking at the source code) which lines are valid for breakpoints.
Due to popular demand, there is now a new version of mISDN in experimental. The usual warning applies: it will break your system, it will not work out of the box and whatever you do to make it not Oops your kernel during boot will probably no longer work with the next upload. YMMV. HTH. HAND.
You are demanding an explanation? Well, there are a few problems with this package that are not trivial to solve. The most visible of them is that it provides drivers for a bunch of ISDN cards that are also supported by the mainline kernel. The hotplug subsystem handles this situation totally gracefully and simply loads all of them. Now if that wasn't nasty enough by itself, mISDN also wants to set up the entire stack when a hardware driver is loaded. All the modules that aren't there at this point are replaced by NULL pointers. As there is no formal dependency on the modules providing layers 1-3, I invite you to guess the stability of your kernel at this point.
Upstream has an init script that parses XML files.
I spent much of my early childhood at the video arcade. I was fortunate enough to have a best friend who 1) Lived in the old quarters of San Juan where you could walk everywhere 2) Had three older teenage sisters who would take us when we were still quite young to the arcade, which also doubled as a fantastic ice-cream parlor.
My favorite game there was galaga, and I played it incessantly (and had to use a foot stool too!!) As a result of all that childhood gaming, I am still pretty half decent at it. For example, I more often than not beat my partner (except under less than auspicious conditions, like being sleep deprived), which is pretty unbelievable as he is much more of a video game wizard than I and otherwise beats me in everything.
With the last git release, git-rebase gained a new option: --interactive.
If you already had the feeling that in a patch series of yours you should have ordered patches differently, or merged some, then this command is what you dreamed of. Here is how it works
Let's pretend you want to rework your last 10 patches, you'll run:
$ git rebase -i HEAD~10It will launch your
$EDITOR and you'll see something like:
# Rebasing 16d3800..14f3d11 onto 16d3800 # # Commands: # pick = use commit # edit = use commit, but stop for amending # squash = use commit, but meld into previous commit # # If you remove a line here THAT COMMIT WILL BE LOST. # pick 6270640 Simplify write_tree using strbuf's. pick 27c528a Further strbuf re-engineering. pick fd82c9a Eradicate yet-another-buffer implementation in buitin-rerere.c pick eee488f More strbuf uses in cache-tree.c. pick 16878b5 Add strbuf_rtrim and strbuf_insert. pick e9081af Change semantics of interpolate to work like snprintf. pick 99c3ef5 Rework pretty_print_commit to use strbufs instead of custom buffers. pick 203db5d Use strbuf_read in builtin-fetch-tool.c. pick a20d939 Use strbufs to in read_message (imap-send.c), custom buffer--. pick 14f3d11 Replace all read_fd use with strbuf_read, and get rid of it. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~[1]Then you can rewrite "
pick" into "edit" if you want to change something in a commit, or "squash" if you want to merge it with the one from the line before.
What the small help doesn't say is that you can actually reorder your commits, and it will do what you expect it to do. I used it 10 minutes ago, because I have this string buffer module I extend on a regular basis, I squashed every API extension of that module in one commit using that.
Each time one change needs you to edit anything because either you asked for it, or that one of the change you asked for generated a conflict, then as usual the rebase will stop. You will be prompted to make the change, or fix the conflict, or merge comments (in case of a squash), and when all is in order, you just need to:
$ git rebase --continueThis is just awsomely simple and intuitive
$EDITOR sucks btw
Maintenant j'ouvre la fen tre et une mouche la chambre entre Ni la moche ni l'italienne ne peut tre trouv e plus son centre This place with its wood and its shingles, this place with birdshit splattered down the bricks This place with drunken girls screaming Meat Loaf lyrics and behaving like abject pricks Maintenant je suis bien loin But yet oh so close Cerca de la criatura del lago Not Iago as has been previously claimed Humming, screeching, gurgling, squeaking Not unlike Barbie's mom on a Thursday night It goes through the motions of accomplishing something When really it is advancing its own sinister agenda An agenda so sinister that you'd name it Dexter if you could. You can't. Then, as the disruptive forces destabilize reality, like they destabilize the rhyme and scansion and hyperlinklessness of This Poem Then, like Mike Stone expressing gratitude, like something demanding its $3.50 (but oh, oh, it does not want its $3.50; it wants something far more visceral and ephemeral), it makes a simple statement. F01. Natuurlijk.
Sarah's Mum arrived this morning.
Sarah was discharged from hospital this afternoon.
By some freaky coincidence, one of our friends from Australia who's been
through the same thing as us happened to be nearby, and rearranged his
travel plans to swing by and spend a day with us on the way home. I'm
extremely grateful for that.
The flowers, emails, and number of visitors we've received in the past four
days has been nothing short of overwhelming. We are truly grateful for
having so many wonderful friends over here (and all around the world). It's
going to take some time, but we'll acknowledge all of them.
This afternoon I signed the paperwork to have Joshua cremated. We've decided
against having any sort of funeral service.
The house looks like a bomb hit it, and then a florist moved in. I've barely
been home all week, and the fridge is still overflowing with leftovers from
last week's baby shower barbecue that we had. I guess I know what I'm doing
tomorrow...
Next, we need to pack up the baby's room.
So, for some reason, I was using
advogato
and, for some reason, I was looking at
jono
and, for some reason, I clicked on the link
to the JonoCam.
What I saw was unpleasant and not what I
was expecting.
Someone's squatting on the JonoCam address,
hiding behind eNom's privacy service.
In fact, it looks like all of
kdedevelopers.net is spam now, including
jono.kdedevelopers.net.
Not only that, but
http://www.jonobacon.co.uk/
is squatted too, by futuregate aka Mindcom Internet Limited of 20 Meridian Way,
Meridian Business Park,
Norwich
NR7 0TA.
If you're reading this from
near Norwich,
would you post some pictures of the home of
these serial domain-squatters, please?
So I hopped onto the lugradio IRC
and asked jono.
Apparently he lost it ages ago(!)
nominet
says the domain was registered in 2004 and
last updated April 2007, so I didn't know if
that means it's been a while, or just a few
months. Does the registration date change
if an owner loses control?
astinus told me that it does.
Anyway, I wonder how many advogato users have
disused person pages with spam/squatted links.
Is there a nice way we could spot them all
and tag them somehow?
Is there some common "about me" format which
advogato (and social networking sites?) could
use to keep up-to-date on our movements?
List three locations in case we lose our
primary domain?
Also,
I had another email yesterday from someone
apologising for losing control of their
domain, asking me to change my links
and
I've removed a couple more from my
friends bookmarks category recently.
Are people still losing
personal domains to squatters?
If so, is there a new reason for this,
or is it the same old problems of
registrar-lock-in and it being cheaper to
register a new domain than to go to dispute
resolution?
(2007-09-09: 4 comments)
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