A question that people often ask about wind power (and was asked in the comments section of my previous post) is what can be done when the wind speed decreases in an area. There are several methods that can be used to address this problem. The easiest option is to simply have wind farms spread out over a large area and interconnects that can spread the load. This greatly reduces the problems but is not a total solution. The next step is to have a series of power plants that can quickly ramp up supply to meet the demand. One good option for this is gas-fired power plants, while they aren’t ideal for the environment they are cheap to build and can react quickly to changing demand. If a gas fired plant is only used when wind speeds are low it should on average be running at a small fraction of it’s peak capacity and use little fuel. Another good option is hydro-electric power which can be turned on quickly, which doesn’t produce any CO2 emissions and is already used widely (about 10% of Australia’s electricity is provided by hydro-electric power). The ideal solution is to have every user of grid power know when the electricity is cheap (when there is a surplus of wind power) and when it’s expensive (when gas or hydro power is being used). Then non-critical services can be run when electricity is cheap. For example you could put clothes in your washing machine and program it to start the wash when electricity becomes cheap, some time during the day there will be a cheap time and the washing will get done. Once consumers know when electricity is cheap (via X10 or similar technology) they can use that information to determine when to use electricity generated from photo-voltaic cells on their roof and when to use grid power. The same technology can be used for heating and cooling of your home or office, turning off the A/C for an hour or so is only going to be a problem in the middle of summer or winter, for most of the year any heating or cooling could be done with cheap electricity. These technologies are all being developed at the moment (I once briefly worked on a system that could be used as a pre-cursor to managing home electricity use for times of cheap electricity).

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It's the time of the year I feel a bit nostalgic since for the second, consecutive, time since 2004 I'm not at debconf. This time I've decided so, since I'm currently focused on develop my academic profile trying to catch-up this unfinished business I wanted to pursue sometime ago when I was younger. By May, things were quite on-schedule so I decided to drop this trip, since I didn't wanted to be involved in another unfortunate situation due time contraints, now even more constrained by my new responsibilities in life. I've tried to follow the conf over the stream since yesterday, but I felt asleep by 1am (8am there). However, as video team previously announced, by 17's night I went to the meetings arhive and downloaded Bdale's talk. I was impressed by the quality and professionalism of the video and the on-time (or time-to-market, aka me) publising. I want to congratulate the video team for this, very good work guys!. It's the second time I follow the conf over the stream and it helps to the being-there feeling. Anyway, I'm already arranging stuff and scheduling the time for debconf8 in Argentina. Hopefully I'm able to skip some days of class. I believe it would be a wonderful time, I also plan to visit my family there also. So, see you next year!. Now the usbmgr package. I have quite a feeling for this package (you might guess this knowing there were more mature options available since a couple of years ago). This was the first package I was in charge in Debian, and as popcon says there are still some users. However, things come to an end and I decided, as previously prepared and stated to some users, to orphan it post-etch. Now that the time has come, I'll do so and request its removal from the archive also in the following days. There are more mature options such the udev+hald mix and they support much more devices and give the user much more pleasant experience. usbmgr is a piece of software that was written when there was no good/integrated support for USB devices, specially pendrivers and memory sticks. There's no activity on upstream from long time ago, in fact I never was able to reach him, but I was trying to keep it useful for new software environments from time to time.
In case you still want to keep or maintain it, please drop me an email: rudy at d.o.

Every time I make a new emacs-snapshot release I have to copy the source package from my amd64 desktop to my i386 laptop to build it, then copy the built packages back in order to upload them. This scp'ing gets tiring after a while, so I wrote a trivial script called dscp which acts as a Debian-aware wrapper around scp, using python-deb822. It's similar in spirit to Myon's dget script, which does pretty much the same thing with wget.

Note that unlike scp it can only copy files to other machines, and currently does no command-line parsing at all, so you cannot pass options to scp (other than the user@host:/bla part, of course).

Also note that if the destination is local it will serve as a .dsc/.changes aware cp, which is also handy in some situations.

If there's interest I could probably add some sanity checks and propose it for inclusion into devscripts.

Right, so as announced I finished my thesis this week. Its translated title is (if anyone want to know)

"Design and Implementation of a Model for the Retrieval of Free/Libre Open Source Software using a Case-Based Reasoning System".

Writing it certainly was an educational experience but I am still happy it's done now. Especially the last weeks where rather unfunny, more so since about ten days before my deadline we had a massive heat wave here in Lower Saxony. Now that it's done I am still waiting for enthusiam to kick in. So far weariness still prevails. Maybe also because finishing my thesis does not yet end my studies. We also have to do written and oral examinations which will take place in July and after. So at the moment I spend my days mostly sleeping and trying to muster up enough wanderlust for my trip to DebConf7. (At the moment the prospect of traveling long distance with trains and cheap flights and then be surrounded by a few hundred happy people is still rather daunting.) Anyway, in order to give an impression of my last weeks and months and to sum this all up, a list of random notes, taken during the last weeks, of what I learned while writing my thesis:

• 6 months are NOT a long time!
• 10.000 chars are not enough to model a Debian package description
• 50 chars are not enough to model a Debian package name (YES, THAT MEANS YOU, libmaypole-plugin-authentication-usersessioncookie-perl!)
• osi.org does not belong to the Open Source Initiative but to Ontario Swine Improvement (Ontario Swine Improvement (OSI) is an industry-run organization dedicated to providing swine improvement and genetic products, programs, information and expertise. Our goal is to help Ontario pork producers achieve competitive advantages and excellence in the global market place.)
• I must not procrastinate.
  Procrastination is the mind-killer.
  Procrastination is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
  I will face my thesis.
  I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
  And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
  Where the thesis has gone there will be nothing.
  Only I will remain.
• Dr.-Ing. Roland Bless rules! (So does his LaTeX class for theses.)
• Working without internet is possible. It is even better than working with internet. Simply leave gaps where you need to look up stuff and fill them in in the evening.
• Losing half a litre of blood does not impair my fitness for (brain) work.
• Working with version control requires a minimum of intelligence attention. Unfortunately mostly so when ending work (dead tired) and when beginning to work (dead tired).
• Side effects: Insomnia, itchy area on left leg, belly aches, little blisters on the sides of my fingers, headaches, slight but constant petulance.
• "I know what I want to say, getting it on paper is the least work." - WROOOONG!
• German is such a crappy language to write scientific texts in. Special greetings to the generic masculine. Gah!
• When the cat's writing her thesis ...
  The fun time's over now, darling ;)
• "I have don't really like proof-reading your thesis in PDF, can't you just send me the Word file?" is not what you want to hear from your proof reader.
• Good: Debian, vim, subversion, LaTeX, bibtex, evince, xpdf, pdftk, PostgreSQL, OpenOffice.org, dia, gimp, phpESP, tea, coffee, ramen, chocolate, electric fan, eating at the uni's cafeteria twince a day, raw cornflakes straight from the box, frida (my trusty laptop), power naps, pizza, people understanding my true problems, the freedom to burry myself in my work and absolutely and utterly neglect anything else until I am finished.
• The flat can look worse. Much!
• Bad:
  • The FSIL (student council for teaching students) belt grinding(!) tables on the balcony in front of the students' working rooms.
  • People trying to be nice and asking how it's going with the thesis.
  • Fellow students greeting me with "Hey still here?"
  • Our evil DPL blogging about his highly addictive monsterz just when I got to work.
• I'll do it after I handed in the thesis.
• I'll see a doctor about it after I handed in the thesis ...
• I should commit much more often (svn that is)
• How come there are so many extra 'i's in your thesis?" Because it's Linux!
• Sense of time is overrated.
• Print shop guy is mean.
  A = Me, overtired, having formatted and doing last changes to this document the whole night through and on until 20 minutes before the printing appointment.
  B = Print shop guy
  
  B: You know that's not A4 ...
  A: WHAT?!
  B: Yea, it's too big.
  A: WHAT?! But, but, I ... That can't be!
  B: I'm telling you, it's too big. See, 0.3mm too long and 0.12mm too wide
  A: ... *death stare*
  
  
• The examination office is now located in the fourth floor in the building next to the post office at the Hindenburgplatz.
• Tolimar is the most patient and understand guy I've ever known.
  Thank you!
• 6 months are SUCH a long time!

Okay, so with the “Bits from the DPL” talk that Sam and I shared now out of the way, that hopefully means finishing off the whole dunc-tank thing won’t imply any more conflicts of interest, potential or otherwise. And since we’ve now had the post-etch release team report, there shouldn’t be much to wait around for. I’d been kinda hoping to be able to come to debconf with a pre-prepared report of similar quality to the debconf6’s final report (or debconf5’s for that matter); but while I was going back through the discussion threads, it just got harder and harder to find a way of writing the report that didn’t seem like it’d just inspire the same arguments again. I think that’s avoidable – I know some of the people who were against the way dunc-tank ended up have indicated there are other approaches they might support, and it ought to be possible to summarise the dunc-tank experience in a way that lets us have a better idea what to do in the future based on that experience, than have the same disagreements we’ve already had. Anyway, my best guess is to try crafting the report via blogging or put it on a wiki or something. Anyway, there are three things that I thought we could usefully have in a report that wouldn’t devolve into the same old arguments (after all, if we at least have new arguments, that’s some sort of progress!). First of all is trying to have a real understanding of what happened with etch – getting a release out is complicated with lots of potential blockers beyond just “release management” work: d-i, kernel, toolchain, CDs, builds, bug tracking, whatever. Presumably dunc-tank only ever had a chance of removing release management as a blocker, and since we can’t redo the etch release while changing parameters like dunc-tank or Vancouver, at least having as clear as possible understanding of which blockers happened when, and what other influences might have been important the release process seems like a good way of understanding the influences that were and weren’t important, so we can have a better idea what to do in future. I’m figuring a reasonable structure might be something like:

• Release blockers between July 2006 and April 2007
• Analsyis of bug discovery/resoution rates between July 2006 and April 2007
• Comparison of major statistics for etch with previous releases (freeze length, etc)
• Comparison of etch with Ubuntu’s edgy release (October 2006, roughly the time dunc-tank started), and feisty release (April 2007, roughly the same time as etch’s release)
• Summary of other release timliness projects: Vancouver proposal, release assistants, BTS version tracking and changes to RC bug monitoring, transition monitoring through the entire release cycle, binNMU changes, improvements in experimental support, BSP marathons
• Summary of release quality projects: DFSG-free content, LSB support, security support for testing, QA meetings, piuparts runs, whole archive rebuild testing

The theory is that the above should provide the information to make a good judgement of what (if any) effect dunc-tank (or the other projects) had on the release, without implying a preconceived conclusion of whether dunc-tank’s “good” or “bad” or whatever. As well as looking at the release stuff in some depth, it seems to me to be pretty sensible to do a report on how dunc-tank worked financially. Anyone doing any similar sort of “let’s raise funds, then spend them on free software” is going to have similar issues in getting publicity, collecting funds, and actually spending them, no matter how they end up deciding on the harder questions of deciding who or what to fund. There’s not a lot to say there, and I don’t think there’s much that’s controversial there either, but there are a few problems and approaches to solving them that are worth reporting on. I think that’s about as far as you can get trying to cleverly avoid the controversy though. And presuming we rule out the idea of choosing a position on some of the controversial questions and advocating for that (“dunc-tank was good, paying release managers was awesome, we should do it again for everyone!”), the best idea I’ve had so far is to just try summarising some of the controversial questions that remain open, which Debian, or dunc-tank, or whoever can then address in whatever way we like – by GRs, or further debate, or more experiments, or leaving it to other people to do for us, or whatever. So having the questions and some of the arguments for various answers and summarising what happened with dunc-tank seems like a plausible way to go. The questions I’ve got:

• Is paid work compatible with volunteer work?
  • How the release managers and assistants reacted to doing volunteer work while someone was paid to do similar work
  • Other developers – some donated; others resigned or reduced work
  • Dunc-bank and QA initiatives
• How much distance should there be between Debian and whoever’s funding development?
  • Involvement of DPL and high-profile developers
  • Involvement of SPI
  • Statements from press reports about the relationship
  • Votes to support/endorse/recommend against
  • Donors being confused as to where to donate funds
• How should work or developers to be funded be chosen?
  • Potential for favouritism
  • Potential for misalignment with Debian’s goals
  • Choosing based on least controversy or most benefit
• How should paid “volunteer” work be priced?
  • Covering living expenses?
  • Comparable rate to similar proprietary/commercial development?
  • “Market” rates?
  • Full-time versus part-time work
  • Contracts versus prizes or bounties or rewards

No promises as to whether they’re the best questions, the best sub-points, or that we’re going to be able to come to an answer on any of them. :) Anyway, that’s my theory so far, no I need to grab some lunch before the next lot of talks – feel free to mail me, or talk to me in person, or blog responses or whatever…

Lately I have been thinking about switching source code management systems. In years gone by, I have used CVS, Subversion, arch, and most recently bazaar-ng for managing all the source code that I have to change. Lately I have been unhappy with the speed that bazaar takes to get some things done, and after watching a Google talk by Linus about Git, I thought I would give it a look.

I was surprised to find out that it actually models the way that I work normally slightly better than the bazaar model does. The main thing is that a repository holds a bunch of branches, but the working directory only has one of those branches checked out at any point in time. I use bazaar with about 4-5 branches per project, and only work on one of them at once (normally, sometimes I want to transport a bug across a couple branches) - so the "working space replaced by branch you want to work on" actually works out OK for me. I also need to collaborate with a bunch of projects at school and work that use other systems including CVS and Subversion, which Git seems to make it easy to do.

I did run into some questions that I don't really have a good answer to, however, therefore the new segment on the blog: Ask the interwebs. Normally I would just ask on some IRC channel, but the Minneapolis public library doesn't seem to allow anything but HTTP out. On to the question!

When using Git, how do you manage having multiple computers (at multiple locations) that you work on? I have approximately 5 different computers that I use regularly. Luckily I have enough space to have git installed on all of them, and I also have a web server that I can use WebDAV on if necessary. What I would like to have is a repository that I can pull from before I start work (if I am connected) and then push to when I finish so that the next computer I sit down at I can just pull again and get everyting. I would like this to include any branches I may have made on the first computer. Is this possible, hard, or easy for Git users? How much do I need to worry about slowdown? My WebDAV server is in the cloud, and I would prefer to be able to get up and go on say, a minute's notice.

I'm also interested on what your workflow is like even if it doesn't match the model I just described. I'm open to changing - the bazaar-ng to git change is big enough that I can probably incorporate a new workflow as well.

Comments: (8) Trackbacks: (1)

Comments

1. adrian: hi, i'm a just a newbie so can't help much.
   You can host your push repository in http://repo.or.cz.
   If you prefer to do it your own you have git-daemon (Have a look to tutorials). Good luck!
   #1 2007-06-16 13:59 (Reply)
2. Michael Janssen: I looked at the public repo.or.cz, but decided against it, because while I want my branches to be available at some point, I'd rather not all of them at the same time. People randomly finding them is okay, but I'm sure I'll check in unworkable/uncompilable code in this state, because I would basically be using git as an easy sync between computers at times.
   
   I'm just really interested in how other people deal with this issue of needing semi-location-independent access to the branches.
   #1.1 2007-06-16 23:29 (Reply)
3. mike: Sounds already good for you to use git.
   
   Enjoy!
   #2 2007-06-16 15:57 (Reply)
4. R mi Vanicat: I haven't answer to the synchronization problem on my blog post because it is one I don't have. Still, you can make a git repository that can be pull and push from, and git can use https/dav or ssh or its on git protocol for this.
   
   Just read man git-remote, man git-push, man git-pull and man git
   #3 2007-06-17 00:06 (Reply)
5. JM Ibanez: Just upload a bare git repository (e.g. copy /.git in particular) to a server you have ssh access to. Then, in your working copy in git 1.5:
   
   
   <br />
     $ git remote add upstream git+ssh:///path/to/bare/git<br />
    
   
   
   You can then
   
   
   <br />
     $ git pull upstream .<br />
    
   
   
   or
   
   <br />
     $ git pull upstream/some-upstream-branch my-local-branch<br />
    
   
   
   or
   
   <br />
     $ git push upstream/some-upstream-branch<br />
    
   #4 2007-06-17 01:15 (Reply)
6. Josh Triplett: A followup to that: you can do the same thing without ssh access, by using WebDAV. See Documentation/howto/setup-git-server-over-http.txt in the Git source (also available various other places in other formats).
   #4.1 2007-06-17 02:13 (Reply)
7. Steven Walter: Whenever I want to create a non-local git repository for push, whether for sharing the code or just backing it up on another system, I follow this procedure:
   
   ssh remoteserver
   mkdir myproject.git
   cd myproject.git
   git --bare init --shared=all # world readable, group writeable
   chgrp -R git .
   vi description
   exit
   # back on local system
   git remote add origin git+ssh://remoteserver/path/to/git
   git push origin master:master
   git push origin branch2:branch2 # repeat for other branches
   
   You may then want to re-create your local branches so that they "track" the remote branches. "man git-branch" for more details on this.
   
   Hope that helps!
   #5 2007-06-18 04:25 (Reply)
8. brian m. carlson: For your workflow, you can try this:
   [geshi lang=sh]
   # first time on each machine only (you can use DAV, too)
   git remote add server git+ssh://server-hostname/path/project.git
   
   # every time
   git push server
   ssh anothermachine
   git fetch server
   git pull server branch-on-server-to-merge-from
   # merge happens; continue working
   # start over again from the push
   [/lang]
   #6 2007-06-18 09:56 (Reply)

Trackbacks

1. How I use git
   Michael Janssen ask about workflow and git, so I will explain mine. I have three types of git repositories: git-svn repositories where I don’t have write access on the upstream subversion repositories. git-svn repositories where I do have write ...
   Weblog: Debian, and other stuff (Tracked: Jun 16, 23:49)

So one of the (many) sucky things about having a parent with alzheimers is that someone usually has to take complete responsibility over their financial affairs. That person happens to me and the transition, I have to say, has not been all that smooth nor easy. Manging less than 20,000 per year while a graduate student was somewhat manageable. Taking care of my mom’s finances, bills, expenses, bank accounts, insurance etc. on top of mine, and largely doing this long distance, has been a whole other (difficult) ball game. To try to make things easier, I chose to use Citibank as I also have a joint account with my mother with them in PR. Well, life has not been made easier by this but, in fact, has been made harder. In a nutshell, the problem is I can’t LINK nor even transfer money, between my US based Citibank and my PR based Citibank, which is somewhat ironic (and imho, really messed up) because one can transfer money from a non-Citibank bank into a Citibank account (which means, soon I will no longer have a Citibank account). Why? Aside from the fact that PR always seems to get short changed, I had a conversation on the a very nice customer service person who let me know that there is just a lot of fraud between Puerto Rico and the United States. And one way they keep it in check is by disallowing links (and even one time transfers) between Citibanks in PR and US. Now, I can’t speak completely to the cause of the high prevalence of fraud but I am sure that their “security” practices don’t help, for in fact, like many banks, their security is especially insecure, particularly vulnerable in Puerto Rico and all of Latin America. And the security hole has to do with a cultural practice. In a nut shell, the main security question you are asked on the phone when you call in is your mother’s maiden name. Now in the United States (and I think Canada), your maiden name is may not be all that common of knowledge. But in Puerto Rico, it is *super-duper* common knowledge. Not only do people just know this, but it is printed everywhere, like your license. So Citibank:, perhaps one reason driving the high level of fraud is bad bad bad bad security. I have tried to let customer service know of this problem but outsourced Indian labor just does not get my explanation (I don’t think there are scripted computer answers for my concerns) and those who get it, don’t seem to do anything about it. What will it take to change this?

Sorry if someone has already mentioned this, but I don’t think it hurts to repeat it. If you are heading to Debconf and are traveling through Heathrow, and I reckon any UK airport, keep all your stuff to 1 bag total. Or make sure one piece can fit in the second so you can more easily pass through security.

While I already have some experience in explaining this Debian thingy to people, who are more or less familiar with Linux and free software, next week I have a special job: Explain Debian -- and how free software projects work -- to people, who aren't familiar with that. It's a university course, which just learned the boring theory. Licence work, a bit of history, etc. A complete different audience than I used to speak to: So far all but one of my talks where with people who visited my talk because they were interested in the topic... some came even, just because they like my talks! I'm not yet sure, how to handle that. Beside the difficult audience (which might be even more difficult, because it's rather hot here), it might be further complicated by the techniques: It's a kind of shared course, a cooperation of the University of Hildesheim and the University of Saarland; slides are transmitted via vnc, audio and video are transmitted in both ways via a software I haven't seen before; half of the audience here half there... and if you ever visited one of my talks, you might know, that I'm a walker type of guy: I run around, gesticulate, point things out on my slides, sometimes I even go right into the audience and talk to people directly. And now I can't really do this, urg. But all that's solvable, the main questions remains: How do you explain how Debian works, what Debian is, to people who just learned about the four freedoms? I was asked to aus dem N hk stchen plaudern. That's a German idiom; don't know how to translate that. In this case it means more or less that they would like to hear stories, not see organigrams. Well... so far my Idea is to reuse some of my old slides from an old talk¹ and add some nice examples, showing the see the need, solve the problem approach. Perhaps I'll use reportbug-ng and debtags as examples. If you have any ideas, better examples: Feel free to mail me. Would be perfect if I could get your ideas before Monday. Thanks. 1: Note to myself: I really need to sort my talks page out.

A default RHEL4 install of a Rackspace (*) server contains a cron.d file named /etc/cron.d/rs_rhncheck that runs a job to check for Red Hat Network updates. In the default configuration this would send out a message every day indicating that up2date did nothing. To only get email when there is something interesting happening I changed the cron.d file to call the following script. The checksum is compared against the checksum of the output of up2date when it does nothing (I guess I could have tested the return code for diff). So when up2date either installs a package or decides not to install a new kernel package (or other important package) then I get an email. #/bin/sh
/usr/sbin/up2date --nox -u > ~/up2date.out
SUM=`md5sum ~/up2date.out cut -f1 -d\ `
if [ $SUM != "65c57b05b24bd8f656a0aec0d6db725a" ] ; then
  cat ~/up2date.out
fi (*) Rackspace support is really good. If I was paying I might look at other options but for my clients I am happy to recommend them without hesitation.

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Just a quick note to say a huge thanks to everyone who's offered support (financial, hardware-wise, or just verbal) to the r5xx project -- we really appreciate it. A couple of FAQs:

Thanks! Where can I send money?

Sadly, money isn't the issue: we have jobs/university theses/lives to tend to. We just lack for time right now.

Thanks! Where can I send hardware?

If you have a card that you won't be needing back (we may lose or fry it), please email myself (daniel@fooishbar.org) and J r me (j.glisse@gmail.com), detailing what you have, and we'll get back to you if it'll be useful to us.

Will this work with the X2xxx cards (r6xx)?

Yeah, pretty much. It just needs someone to hack up the small amount of code to deal with it.

What's happening with X1650 and above (r530/r580)?

Most of the code is written, however, initialisation doesn't happen correctly for some reason.

What's happening with 3D support?

It should be relatively simple to implement from the existing driver, as the engine is believed to be extremely similar, but we want to get the basics working before we start attacking things like this.

Which tools do you guys use?

For tracing the video BIOS, we use a hacked version of xresprobe: vbetool will instrument the BIOS quite well. For tracing fglrx, we use a hacked version of valgrind: run it against the X server, making sure that it is not suid root. For getting impatient and playing with registers, we use avivotool.

Where does the development happen?

On IRC, #dri-devel seems to serve somewhat as the ATI development centre. This gets fairly well coalesced into The Irregular Radeon Development Companion, however, so you may prefer to just follow that.

Shouldn't all this be on a wiki page somewhere?

Yes, but I have to get up in less than four hours.

Once again, thanks for the support, from all of us. It's been great.

Yay, I'm here Lot of things happened preventing me to post the obligatory "yay for debconf" on Planet earlier (just to mention one: my DSL provider was incredibly fast in disabling my connection, and godog who remained at home is probably thanking them for that as well...). Anyhow ... I'm here! Meeting again all of you guys is terribly cool, thanks you all!! Ah, by the way, since people are asking: no, I didn't come here by motorbike. Actually I started planning the trip a while ago and summing up the needed money. When, counting in euros, I reached the 4th digit I stopped counting and decided to came by plane

I have uploaded exim4 4.67-2 to experimental. Lots of changes and improvements. Quite some changes have gone into the Debconf stuff (for example, the split/unsplit config question is not asked first any more), and into update-exim4.conf (including input sanitazion, transformation of input to lower case, and getting rid of the DEBCONFsomethingDEBCONF stuff in the configuration). I’d like you to test the experimental package before I upload to unstable (probably on sunday). Please report your findings.

exim4 (4.67-2) experimental; urgency=low
  - update-exim4.conf:
    - finally get rid of the DEBCONFfooDEBCONF stuff. That information
      is now passed to the configuration by ue4c by directly setting exim
      macros in the configuration. This has caused both the configuration
      and ue4c to be much shorter.
    - run with -e, -C and -u.
    - convert input read from update-exim4.conf.conf to lower case
    - barf if strange characters are found in ue4cc. Closes: #400294
  - Remove superfluous “x$foo” = “xbar” constructs from scripts
  - Add routers to reject mail to accounts with low UID.
    Closes: #400790.
  - Make daily cron job barf if /usr/bin/mail is not found. Have
    exim4-base recommend mailx. Closes: #427960
  - Have all -daemon packages provide exim4-localscanapi-1.0 and
    exim4-localscanapi-1.1 as requested by Magnus Holmgren while fixing
    #426425. Also include exim4-localscan-plugin-config script with
    exim4-dev. Thanks to Magnus for helping with this. Closes: #428274
  - remove /etc/exim4/email-addresses symlink and document this.
    Thanks to Josip Rodin. Closes: #420578
  - introduce conf.d/250_exim4-config_lowuid which optionally allows
    to reject (or alias away) mail to low-uid accounts that are not
    listed in an exception list. Thanks to Dominic Hargreaves,
    Marc Sherman and Ross Boylan. Closes: #400790, #307768, #331716
  - remove versioned depends on cron, since the version we need is
    well before sarge.
  - Add cron   fcron dependency. Fcron is going to be removed again
    at the first sign of trouble. Closes: #381806
  - remove move_exim3_spool debconf template. Closes: #391762
  - replace openssl gendh with openssl dhparam. Closes: #413235
  - adapt docs, README and manpages
  - have Hilko fix the lynx-dump postprocessing to repair generating
    README.Debian text version. Thanks!
  - increase README.Debian generation robustness. Thanks to Hilko.
  - debconf:
    - Partly apply Christian Perrier’s patch for reviewed
      templates and control file. Closes: #426980
    - Other minor template changes.
    - get rid of “mails” in debconf templates, use “messages” instead.
      Re-word local_interface debconf template. Other minor changes.
      Thanks to Jens Seidel and Christian Perrrier. Closes: #394976
    - re-work exim4-config.config logic to have split/non-split config
      asked last instead of first. This partly addresses #410756.
    - Add exim4-daemon-heavy.templates, exim4-daemon-light.templates
      and exim4.templates to POTFILES.in
    - Re-Word dc_other_hostnames debconf template.
      Thanks to Hans G. Ehrbar. Closes: #421860
    - translation updates:
      - French
      - Ukrainian. Closes: #427793
      - Bulgarian.
      - Thai.
      - Galician.
      - Swedish.
      - Punjabi.
      - Indonesian.
      - Italian.
      - Khmer.
      - Traditional Chinese. Closes: #428072, #428069.
      - Portuguese.
      - Simplified Chinese. Closes: #428072, #428069.
      - Marathi
 -- Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages@zugschlus.de>  Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:00:38 +020
0

Intel has released PowerTop, a tool designed to monitor what is causing your CPU to be active.If your system is idle, your operating system tries to put the CPU into a low-power sleep state to reduce power consumption and thus extend battery life. The longer the CPU can remain in sleep states, the better. There are multiple sleep states, which save different amounts of power, but also take different time to "come back" into operation. If the operating system knows it can sleep a bit longer, it can use the more efficient modes.However, some applications busy themselves unnecessarily, waking up without doing anything.This is where the PowerTop tool comes in: it monitors which applications cause a wakeup from idle, to help developers find which applications might be wasting their power.The application waking up most often on my system: Skype. Skype wakes up about 200 times per second, thus being a major blocker for using power-efficient CPU states.I wouldn't complain if it would at least be doing something, but this even happens when I'm logged off. It's not even displaying an animation (and you don't need 200 Hz for animations either!)So you can probably extend your laptops battery life a slight bit by quiting skype. Funny, isn't it?Too bad that I need to use Skype to reach some people. I wish they'd all switch to some open protocol for IM. I mean, Skype's IM sucks anyway...

* We are expecting ‘Good News’ in some days (Doctor gave date around 18th to 23rd June). Koki (and upcoming baby) is fine and just waiting for me! I hope this [VAC] will be cool (I will try to keep my packages updated as always — feel free to do NMU if you find any RC bugs!). I know there will not be rest for us for next some years Mumbai, Here I come.

Sarah's approaching the 23 week mark. So far the pregnancy has been going swimmingly. The obstetricians are still freaking out (although a bit less), but nothing's happened to warrant it. We went to see the cardiologist today, and Sarah's aortic root is no bigger than it was prior to conception. He did indicate that he didn't think having any further children was a good idea (despite there being no problems to date). He was saying that we should probably expect to not have a choice, and have to have a Caesarean section delivery. If we did have a "natural" birth, it wouldn't be all that natural - he'd be wanting for an assisted delivery (probably involving suction) after the first stage of labour. None of this is really the way I'd envisaged or wanted my child to come into the world, but you can't really argue with the doctors, and I'm not the one having the baby, so my personal preferences are really just that. Young PJ, (Pollock Junior) as we've been calling him, is proving to be very active. He's doing lots of kicking, and I can feel some of them as well now. Sarah's employment contract was up for renewal, and they wanted to renew it for another 6 months rather than try to convert her to full-time. Given that she'd have to take some time off mid-way through the new contract to have the baby, we thought that it made more sense for her to just cease working now and take it easy for the remainder of the pregnancy. So she's now a lady of leisure (and loving it) again as of Monday.

I promise to write about something else very soon, but I have to post this given what I have just written. Ms Oprah is seeking Healthcare Insurance Company Experiences

Tell us about an experience you had with your healthcare insurance company. Please write in only if you are willing to appear on national television.

I am sure my story is babycakes compared to the scary stuff that is actually happening out in the so-called “Land of the Free.” Like people being denied some cancer treatment, them dying, and then some of the head honchos feasting on their major organs, but hey, I submitted anyway.

The day I stop crying myself to sleep over the free software community is likely to be fairly closely associated with the day when we think OMG-a-girling is even more embarrassing than the fact that there are so few women involved to begin with that someone might think they needed to point it out.

PDF press release saying

"The Information Commissioner's Office is again reminding businesses across the UK not to be misled by bogus agencies that send notices demanding money to register under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). The warning comes after Leeds Crown Court sentenced three men to prison on Friday 8 June for their involvement in fake data protection agencies."

They earned 62,575 before they were closed (that's a lot of 135-a-time victims) and got up to two and a half years in jail (tip to PL&B for emailing me). I feel this type of scam only works so well because most of the official advice is vague and unhelpful, while the most useful notification page is three-clicks deep in a section that few businessmen would choose unless they already knew about it.

PDF press release saying

"The Information Commissioner's Office is again reminding businesses across the UK not to be misled by bogus agencies that send notices demanding money to register under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). The warning comes after Leeds Crown Court sentenced three men to prison on Friday 8 June for their involvement in fake data protection agencies."

They earned 62,575 before they were closed (that's a lot of 135-a-time victims) and got up to two and a half years in jail (tip to PL&B for emailing me). I feel this type of scam only works so well because most of the official advice is vague and unhelpful, while the most useful notification page is three-clicks deep in a section that few businessmen would choose unless they already knew about it.