According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle Hans Reiser pled "not guilty" to the charge of murdering his wife. This isn't particularly exciting news as all previous indications were that he was going to do so.

However one noteworthy fact from the article is that they are setting up an education fund for his children. Regardless of whether Hans is convicted or not, his children will still be in a bad situation and in need of assistance. While there are plenty of other worthy charities needing donations, if you are considering donating towards a Linux related cause then you might want to consider the children of a kernel coder.

I came across Adam's post inviting everybody to participate in a simple meme propagation speed and path tracking experiment. Well, I bite. Here I am. Some points to consider (for Acephalous, who started and tracks this meme): If people like me read Adam's blog via an aggregator (Planet Debian), and when I post I I get syndicated at the same aggregator, won't this disturb your metrics/readings? Or if I know I'm syndicated at least in two aggregators (Planet Debian and Planeta Linux M xico - If there is another one, please tell me :) ), won't that also influence somehow?

One of my tasks for today was to upgrade to the new versions of the JanRain OpenID libraries for Wikitravel. However, since those libraries implement the draft OpenID 2.0 standard, which includes support for i-names, I had to do some i-names playing today. i-names is a distributed system, with different "i-brokers" (yes, they're really called that) providing naming services. Unfortunately, the service that I used for registering my i-name, 2idi, isn't compatible with the JanRain Open Source libraries I'm using. JanRain's implementation depends on the very latest version of the OpenID 2.0 draft, and 2idi doesn't support it yet. So testing with my current i-name, =evan.prodromou, doesn't work. So, I had to register a new i-name with an i-broker that supports the new draft standard, which, y'know, it's the whole point of this stuff not to have to register all over the place. But whatever. JanRain folks in #openid, the OpenID channel, let me know that i-brokers that use EZ iBroker, a kind of i-broker-in-a-box package, would work with their library. The best one I could come up with is LinkSafe, which works OK. Now, rather than spend another US$20 and register a variant on my given name, I decided to spend the US$55 get an organizational i-name so I could make as many different testing names as I needed. And rather than register an i-name for a real organization, I registered just a bogus one, @gratis, so I could give them away to whoever wanted an i-name. My new i-name, @gratis*evan.prodromou, works great. If you'd like an i-name to play around with, please drop me a line using the Web form at @gratis, and I'll set one up for you. I've toyed around with it, and it seems to work for sites that support i-names. tags: i-names 2idi janrain openid ibroker linksafe gratis

La ka I met my friend Nicolas Ritoux at La ka, the wireless-enabled lounge on St. Laurent. We hung out at the bar and had a beer or so, which was a nice way to spend the early evening -- of course, it was an hour after dark when I met him, but just 5PM... We talked a lot about his projects working on a new version of Hyst rie, the classic Quebec Web zine, formerly hand-coded in HTML but soon to be implemented in a CMS. He's using SPIP, a cool-looking French jobby that seems to have a lot of features. He's really getting into the XHTML+CSS aspect of it... a sure sign of madness. I like La ka, but it didn't dawn on me until today that it's named after Laika, the Soviet cosmo-dog that was the first living thing intentionally launched into space by humans. Good dog! tags: laika niko montreal

Movie night I had to rush back to the house pretty quick, though -- our friends Patti and Meg offered to babysit Amita tonight so Maj and I could go see a movie. Awww! Of course, given that opportunity to have a romantic evening with my beautiful wife, what did I decide to go see? Borat, of course. We were pretty worried about the baby -- she's been kind of feverish and cranky for the last few days -- but when we came home, she and Meg and Patti were dancing and twirling around the room. Good girl! tags: amitajune meg patti borat movie night

As I said a while back, Lisa and I had been in the process of finding and buying a new house. A few months ago, we found one, and moved. We left behind a bit of our furniture that we have had since we were in college, and since then have been in a rather involved process of finding furniture that we’re willing to live with for the next few decades or so. It’s been a rather painless process for me, since Lisa’s been doing all of it. I just have to stay alert for when new things show up. I still tend to miss lamps. We were in the process of selling our townhouse; but after a few months we only had two offers, and both were significantly below our asking price. So we’ve taken it off the market for now, but will list it again in the spring. Fortunately for us it’s paid off, so other than property tax, it isn’t too big of an expense. We considered renting it but have friends who did that and their experience has convinced us that we’ll never rent anything ever. Also, a couple months ago, after we moved, we found out that Lisa’s pregnant. We’re both really excited about it. We had been married for just less than a year when we found out, which doesn’t seem like a long enough time, but we had been together for seven years prior to that. So it seemed like a good time for us. We have our third ultrasound in a couple weeks when hopefully we’ll find out the baby’s gender. Lisa’s hoping for a girl, but she thinks it’s going to be a boy; I think it’s going to be a girl. Everything seems to be going well so far, and Lisa’s starting to show a little. We haven’t started doing any of the baby-related things yet, like picking names, or setting up a nursery and buying a ton of crap that will probably end up being mostly unused. We did receive our first baby-related gift from my grandmother though, and Lisa’s grandmother is busy knitting booties and blankets. One of these days we’ll probably head over to Babies R Us and set up a baby registry, but probably not until after the new year.

Wow... The amount of press/coverage inside the FS community (not necessarily good press) the Ubuntu people are receiving lately is huge. I smell the possibility where Canonical might face what many people call the ugly side of Debian - But what we, the insiders, call it the most important part of it: Our people's devotion to the Free Software ideals. Of course, even inside Debian there are all kind of opinions (to the point that Debian's main activity seems at times to be debating rather than coding), but the general perception is that we are the fundamentalist zealots.
It's only funny to imagine what lies ahead. No, I'm not talking (for people not following planet.debian.org) about Ubuntu's latest big media scandal, although it might share some connections. Apparently, Canonical wants to grow and bring more people in. And, of course, being a commercial desktop-oriented distribution, being flashy (or in their words, going for the bling) is needed to keep up with the Joneses.
This time, it starts (for me) with Scott's interesting and worthy posting regarding the future of binary blobs and clearly non-free drivers inside Ubuntu. In short: Scott explains why Ubuntu will apparently sacrifice some of its ideals for (what I read as) some extra popularity, and states he is not too happy with it. This, of course, has triggered a load of postings - not necessarily in chronological order, but: Mako, also an Ubuntite, asks people (users, developers) to tell their opinions on this - But he is not at all happy with the direction this might take. Many Ubuntu enthusiasts are voicing their opinions in Wiki form. I guess that Joey's peace of mind comes also because of this discussion (although I'm only stretching my views).
...There is always the debate of whether Ubuntu is good or bad for Debian, as Norbert points out. I've tried to stay away from it, quoting one of Luis Echeverr a's famous it's neither good nor bad, it's just the opposite. I do think the two systems will eventually diverge too much - But I'm not at all involved in Ubuntu, and I refuse to back my claims ;-)
The point of this posting is: When forming Canonical, obviously Mark wanted to gather the best of the best, people who knew their way developing and coordinating an eminently Free and high-quality distribution, but without the distraction of 1000+ developers trying to pull the whole distribution their way. By being the boss, he can ensure a single vision (and not a multitude of egos) drives the excellent work of talented hackers. However, there might be a subtle mistake: Maybe his team are too Debianites? Maybe they will show they are as strongly Free Software (and not Opensource) oriented as they were when they joined Debian? Maybe, even with the unlimited powers that being a SABDFL gives, Mark and the Ubuntu technical committee/community council will have to concede on not having the latest and flashiest, just to keep his elite team happily working?
I'm not, of course, blaming them for selling their principles - Of all the commercially-oriented Linux distributions, Ubuntu is clearly the one that stays closer to what I'd like. And it's not by mere chance that it derives and keeps in constant sync (at least until now) with Debian. Still... This has the potential to make a big dent on their structure and vision.

While I appreciate the research and legal commentary over at Groklaw, the tendency of PJ and the regular posters to imagine vast conspiracies makes me more than a little uneasy. Yesterday I came across a truly jaw-dropping example that would be offensive if it wasn't so laughable; and since I happen to know more about the situation, I felt I should comment on it:

I have some questions about this group, BELUG, who did the article, I gather. There is no info on the site to be more informed. Anyone in the Seattle LUG know anything about this new group in Bellevue, 5 mins. from Bill Gates' house?

...

I don't like to be a cynic, and maybe they are a Linux user group, but if so, maybe the Seattle LUG can give them a hand.

Of course, we all know that the Microsoft corporate campus has an enormous mind-control ray mounted on Building 1 that turns everyone living on the Eastside of Seattle into mindless Gates-worshipping zombies. Part of Bill's personal security plan, dontchaknow. That's why BELUG starts every meeting with a round of "All Hail Gates, Lord of All That Is Electrified".


She goes on to complain about "major confusion" in their description of free software. At a quick read, I can only see two glaring problems with this page: first, they describe free software as being both "free in a monetary sense" and able to be sold (which is actually true but sounds like a contradiction without more explanation that they don't provide); later, there's some weird wooly-headed stuff about revolutionizing entire economies and societies. I don't know what they're talking about, but they certainly can't be accused of lacking enthusiasm.

Finally, she quotes a section of the FAQ that suggests that Microsoft professionals should learn Linux and vice versa, since the world is heterogenous and getting more so. I don't think that's controversial, so I think she must be referring to this question:

Q: Why does BELUG dislike Microsoft?

A: That is a complete misunderstanding. BELUG does not dislike Microsoft. Microsoft is our neighbor, and many of our friends and relatives work there. Both Microsoft's headquarters and Bill Gates' house are located just minutes away, and Microsoft's world sales headquarters is currently under construction nearly adjacent to BELUG's meeting location. BELUG merely believes in friendly competition and that competition can benefit everyone, including Microsoft. This is what a free market economy and the American system is (supposed to be) all about, and this is what has helped make the U.S. a great country.

The statement that Microsoft is nearby is nothing but geographical fact (I could walk about fifteen minutes from my apartment and be on the MS campus; does that make me an MS mole?).

As for the rest, I really don't see anything to complain about. I know some people like to rhetorically shred Microsoft at every opportunity, but if you're trying to attract members in Microsoft's hometown, it's wise to keep your comments polite. It's also true that Microsoft benefits from competition (even if they don't see it that way); I don't think it's a coincidence that their products started sucking drastically less as OSX and Linux became reasonable alternatives to Windows. And the fact that we can have friendly competition (as opposed to the cut-throat, take-no-prisoners style that's popular in some quarters) is exactly one of things I like about Linux. You will notice, however, that the Q&A carefully doesn't mention what sort of competition Microsoft engages in. I think anyone who knows anything about the company knows the answer to that one.


Here's the kicker, though: I actually attended a BELUG meeting a few months ago. It seemed pretty much like what I'd expect from a small group of volunteers: one guy gave a talk about hooking ALSA up to a digital audio receiver, another guy showed off a Unix kernel he had written for classic MacOS (it ran as a user process and presented a Unix-like interface to the Mac), someone passed around cookies, and people talked a bit about using Linux and so on.

The poor quality of the Web site and the lack of a mailing list probably reflect the fact that there are a handful of people organizing the thing who all have day jobs and other committments, not some vast Microsoft conspiracy to undermine Linux from the inside by setting up fake LUGs. PJ never said they were fakes outright, but it was a clear subtext of her comment, and the Groklaw regulars who replied knew exactly what she was getting at. If she really thinks they might be fakes, then I think she needs to take a break from watching SCO (which could make anyone paranoid and suspicious) and enjoy the holiday season instead.

Vim's Feature of the Day #1: i_CTRL-R I'm really astonished of how much there's to learn about Vim and how much you can forget about it, especially because I consider myself a rather power user of my beloved editor. Digging into my ~/.vim/after/ftplugin/tex.vim I found some mappings that were laying there from quite a while (I think I wrote them something like 4 years ago):

vmap ,b "zdi\textbf <C-R>z <ESC>
vmap ,e "zdi\emph <C-R>z <ESC>
vmap ,t "zdi\texttt <C-R>z <ESC>

Looking at them I went through :help i_CTRL-R ... and it's wonderful! Hitting CTRL-R in insert mode Vim enters in a "waiting for a register name" mode and when received it inserts its content without leaving insert mode. That's amazingly quick, and I'm already addicted to two combos:

• CTRL-R " which inserts the content of the unnamed register (i.e. the last stuff you yanked/deleted/...). That's interesting since I often end up doing: go somewhere, yank, go somewhere else, enter insert mode, type stuff, exit insert mode, put, re-enter insert mode
• CTRL-R + which inserts the content of the X clipboard, finally an handy way (or better, a way I'm apparently able to remember) to copy stuff from a Gnome application and paste it back in Vim without having to use the "edit" menu

If yes, please consider signing this online petition which asks the government to completely prohibit the usage of voting machines in Germany. Actually, you should sign this replacement petition, as the first one was getting "too big", a.k.a the software or server they use couldn't handle the sheer numbers of recorded votes anymore (ironic, isn't it?)... Note: the deadline for the petition is today, i.e., November 28, 2006! Ca. 45.000 people have signed already. If 50.000 signers are reached, there's sort of a guarantee that the government has to formally put this issue on their agenda (or something in that direction, I don't remember the exact details right now). If you haven't followed the latest news regarding the voting machine issues, I urge you to get informed by reading the recent blog entries of Frank Rieger and Tim Pritlove (for example). The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has a very good collection of information and further readings. Take a look.

Rob Myers commented:

"Since all CC licences allow NC copying and distribution, any DRM that limits copying in any way is a breach. Or any DRM as it is also known. And since the CC licenses all support fair use and DreAm (an oxymoronic idea that I thought had died of lack of interest) restricts it, that's another problem. Not to mention how harmful electronic enforcement of CC licenses would be."

That's an argument I've heard from several CC supporters, but I don't accept it: fair use is inconsistent globally. What is fair use in the USA might not be fair dealing in England, or the other way around. As to whether any DRM is possible under CC licences, there's the small matter of Lessig's "praise for better DRM" which seems to acknowledge the existance of TPMs that restrict in a CC-OK way. Rob continues:

"Mako's arguments are a rehash of ones that were considered in depth when the debate was happening. Terry covered most of them [in an article on a magazine web site]"

Maybe the points Mako presents were considered, maybe they weren't, but it's very hard to tell from the limited transparency of CC. I think the points are clear, direct and difficult to argue against - that may be why it's so hard to get a good debate with CC about this. What's more, Terry Hancock's article is a rehash of his old list posts. I think Terry's points were all covered in mailing list discussions and they don't even try to make a case for the TPM-ban in CC-BY. I like recycling, but it's disappointing to see people use the press to recycle old threads. Also, I don't find it particularly surprising if someone writing for a magazine web site isn't entirely comfortable with some forms of redistribution. Rob finishes with:

"And I would add that, as someone who has installed GNU/Linux on my iPod, who has recently read the Yellow Dog Linux announcement for the PS3, who uses their PS2 as a CD and DVD player, and whose son seems to get MP3s, images and movies onto his PSP OK, I do not understand the argument that the best way of "helping" users is to help third parties trap them under DRM regimes rather than assisting users in installing and using free software."

Maybe that's not understandable because it's not an argument that's used, except as a straw man by pro-format-discriminators? Personally, I think it's a pretty poor show that you have an iPod, PSP and so on - weren't Apple's and Sony's DRM-mania well-known when they were bought? Which brings me on to why I feel locked-media distribution is worthwhile: educating people to make better device choices next time. I bought an Ogg player this time - hearing Cory Doctorow's talks as MP3 was partly why. If CC 2.0 had had an aggressive-patent ban similar to CC 3.0's TPM ban, maybe that wouldn't have happened.

Have you ever had a need for a large number of "real" network interfaces on a Linux box? For security reasons, you don't just want to hook everyone up to a single switch and use virtual interfaces (because it's too easy for one of the connected devices to play silly buggers with his neighbours). Up to a certain point, you can stuff more NICs into a box, and when it fills up you can switch to those outrageously expensive 2- and 4-port NICs. But eventually you're going to run out of space[1] or money. At that point, you need something more interesting. For me, this week, that "more interesting" has been Ethernet VLANs. Linux Journal has a good intro to the technical aspects of how to setup VLANs and Linux. VLANs are some crazy stuff. They're implemented by wrapping a little number around every Ethernet frame indicating which VLAN the packet is "on", and the switch (you need a higher-end device, appropriately configured) makes sure that packets don't roam onto ports they're not meant to be on. For a single switch, this isn't very interesting, and you don't really need an IEEE standard to make it work -- just a lot of little jumpers. However, VLANs are mostly useful on larger networks, which tend to use more than one switch. So you need a way for your VLANs to roam amongst your switches -- hence the packet tagging. You stick the tag onto the packets and fling them off to another switch, and packets coming in with the tag are corraled into their VLAN. Naturally, you don't want end-user devices whacking their own VLAN tags onto packets (untrusted data, and all that), so you define most of your ports as being "untagged". Packets that come in on these ports are treated as regular ethernet frames and tagged with the appropriate VLAN ID, and packets that go out have their VLAN IDs stripped before being sent. (This implies that you can tunnel VLANs in VLANs, and I'm pretty sure that is doable in most switches, modulo some nasty problems that can, and probably will, occur). The ports that aren't designated "untagged" spit out tagged packets -- and this is where my interest lies. Like most every other computer-related standard, Linux can decipher and work with VLAN tags (the 8021q module is what you're looking for). You just load up the module, hook your NIC into the appropriate port on your very expensive switch, define your VLAN tags with vconfig, and suddenly you've got vlanN interfaces, which map to real RJ-45 ports, and you can hang network devices off these and get lots and lots of "real" network interfaces on your Linux router. It's all so simple, right? Nothing ever is, of course. The trials and tribulations I've had over the past two days have included:

• Not being able to talk to the switch via serial console (so I can configure the damned thing). Turns out the cable I had wasn't a null modem cable, and the switch needed one (the documentation was contradictory on this point, so we started off with the regular kind and a gender-bender -- which should have been my first clue). So Jaycar got ten more of the company's dollars for the proper cable. After that, all was well, and I could find out that...
• The console interface is horrendous on the switch I've got, at least for defining VLANs. I just enabled the (slightly less hideous) web interface, and used that instead. It still sucked, but it sucked less.
• Once everything was configured and the test rig all wired up, I spent about 20 minutes plugging cables into various ports on the switch and watching a distinct lack of packets flowing. It turns out that new VLAN trunks (the technical term for "a port that gets all VLANs, with tags still attached") on this switch get configured as "disabled". Yes, of course that's what I want -- it's overwhelmingly likely that I won't want to use that new trunk I just configured. Sheesh.
• The first NIC I used as the VLAN interface on the server (a Tulip-based home brand thing) didn't play nicely with the VLAN packets. As you'd expect, the extra bytes for the VLAN ID need to be a part of the packet -- and that size is normally limited to 1514 bytes (1500 bytes of payload plus a 14 byte Ethernet header). Adding the VLAN tags increases this by 4 bytes. Although some NICs comprehend the utility of supporting VLANs, and will handle these oversized 1518 byte frames, others don't. This NIC just didn't want to handle it. The symptoms were large pings just disappearing (they didn't show up in tcpdump on the destination interface). As I've had to track down MTU problems in the past, and it's always painful, I wasn't keen on introducing a known one right at the start, so this had to be rectified.
• The next NIC I tried (a Netgear FA311 -- uses the natsemi driver) had a fantastic failure mode. Packets arrived having had their VLAN tag stripped -- so the 8021q module didn't know it was a VLAN packet, and couldn't drop it into the appropriate vlanN interface. I know everything was otherwise alright, because ARP packets were tagged to the VLAN fine, but the ICMP packets that followed weren't tagged. Scratch that one off the list.
• The third NIC was an RTL8139D. The driver didn't even recognise this card, which confused the hell out of me. It turns out that this particular card (PCI ID 1904:8139) isn't a real RTL8139 (despite having RTL8139D and the RealTek crab printed on the chip) but is rather a dodgy knockoff (some might say "as opposed to the dodgy original?"). Why anyone would bother to knock-off the world's cheapest ethernet chipset, I have no idea -- if I were an electronics counterfeiter, I'd go after something expensive, like a 3Com card. Far more profit.
• The fourth NIC, a real RTL8139D, worked like a charm. I know it isn't exactly the most fantastic NIC on the market today, but I don't have any 3x59x or eepro cards around, so this'll have to do for now.

Thankfully, once all those dramas were done, the whole thing just kind of fell into place, and now I've got a machine which has up to 2048(ish) network interfaces (with huge, glaring caveats on that upper bound, of course). With a bit of luck, the live installation in a couple of days will go smoothly. You can stop sniggering now.

---

1. In this case, there wasn't a lot of space to begin with, as it's a 1RU box I'm working on, and the 4-port NIC didn't want to place nice with me for some reason anyway.

Pointed at the issues by Josselin Mouette’s post, I got aware of a list of issues posted by JP Rosevear, which is a reply to Mark Shuttleworths post to the opensuse mailinglist. Note especially point 2, which is: “Preventing the Debian GNOME maintainer from updating GNOME packages until after Ubuntu LSO had shipped because you had hired him.” If this issue is true, it’s the worst thing I ever heard of regarding Canonical. I mean it’s bad enough that points 1 (“Having a stated policy of not funding any significant new software development because the Return on Investment is not good enough”) and 3 (“Not releasing any source code for launchpad/rosetta/malone to maintain a competitive advantage”) certainly are true (even though I can’t prove and therefor don’t 100% believe the second part of #3). But unless there is a very good reason to delay the submission of the patches developed to “upstream”, Debian.
It’s bad enough that Canonical hired the most active Debian Developers, depriving Debian of much of their time, while not really supporting Debian (i.e. while not actively submitting patches to Debian). It would have been better for the community if Canonical had hired less active DDs (or even non-DDs). Sure it would have been harder to select some sufficiently qualified people for the jobs, but the total outcome whould have been better IMHO (getting time from previously uninvolved people, while keeping the existing contributors). Anyway, I really would like to know wether the mentioned point #2 is true, and if so wether any valid reason for doing so could be given before I set my opinion about this issue in stone. One thing is sure however, I’m becoming more and more critical regarding Ubuntu and Canonical over time while I once hoped that the opposite would become true for those criticizing Canonical at that time. Actually I still hope so (and thus I hope reason to become less sceptical again).
Another thing is also sure: If Canonical wants to use Debian as a base for much longer, it should make damned sure to work with Debian more actively instead of seemingly working against it (more or less openly). Update: As also pointed out in a comment below, a post by Scott James Remnant proves point 1 from the the aforementioned list and gives a further hint that point 3 might be true. More precisely it says “we have a policy of not doing our own software development, but only packaging what others have developed”, which probably means “not doing our own major software development”, since - as a comment to that post also says - Canonical did some software development, like launchpad/rosetta/malone and some other relatively small projects.

Many years ago I was involved in a free software development project with write access to the source tree. For reasons that are not relevant to this post (and which I hope all the participants would regard as trivial after so much time has passed) I had a disagreement with one of the more senior developers. This disagreement continued to the stage where I was threatened with expulsion from the project.

At that time I was faced with a decision, I could have tried to fight the process, and I might have succeeded and kept my position in that project. But doing so would have wasted a lot of time from many people, and might have caused enough productivity loss for enough people to outweigh my contributions to the project for the immediate future. But this didn't seem very productive.

So I requested that my write access to the source tree be removed as I was going to leave the project and unused accounts are a security risk.

I never looked back, I worked on a number of other projects after that time (of which SE Linux is one) and the results of those projects were good for everyone. If I had stayed in the project where things weren't working out then it would have involved many flames, distraction from productive work for everyone, and generally not much good.

The reason I mention this now (after many years have passed) is because in another project I see someone else faced with the same choice I made who is making the wrong decision. The people who are on the same private mailing list as me will all know who I am referring to. The individual in question is appearently suffering health problems as a result of stress caused by their inability to deal with the situation where they can't get along with other people.

My advice to that person was to leave gracefully and find something else to work on. If you don't get along with people and make a big fuss about it then they will only be more glad when they finally get rid of you. Running flame-wars over a period of 6 months to try and get accepted by a team that you don't get along with will not do any good, but it will convince observers that removing you is a good idea.

A few months ago I finished Play Money by Julian Dibbel and like his My Tiny Life before it, the writing style is simple yet sumptuous, or I guess just simply sumptuous. Like the travel writings that pre-figured anthropological writing, Dibbel takes us to a far-away exotic land (but only a click or two away) that are populated by a motley crew of wizard (or is lizard)? slayers, gold-diggers, money-makers, and virtual-world-builders. For many, these MMOGsare no strange-lands but are becoming weaved firmly and intimately into the fabric of everyday life, whether as entertainment, sociality, and or for a cadre of folks, as a source of income generation. I think the book has gotten enough coverage that I don’t need to rehearse its content in any detail but the basic story is that Julian embarks on a real world quest in the virtual land of quests to try to make enough money (to be specific make a little more than his monthly salary as a freelance writer) from trading and selling a slew of virtual objects and gold. In taking us along, he gives a compelling entry into the imaginative and morally complex world of these games. And better is that whether you know nothing about them or are a seasoned player, the book has much to offer. One of the reasons I respect Julian Dibbel is because he takes his sweeeet time to churn out a book-length manuscript. In a day and age when there is so much pressure to release quick and often, especially when writing about anything in the so-called virtual plane of existence, he waited nearly 8 years from the publication of his last book on gaming, My Tiny Life before publishing on a considerably higher-tech phenomenon. Following him on his most recent adventure, you learn that he threw himself into a variety of gaming environments persistently and consistently and did at least 3 years of research and writing (at one point in the book he confesses how excruciating writing for him, which is hard to believe as the words slip so nicely off the paper but whatever the extent of his writing angst is, he clearly spends a lot of care in crafting his sentences). And I am starting to think that if more people followed this ethic of long-term immersion, coupled with slow-brewed productive sparsity, we would get higher quality products (Yes, kinda like the Debian release cyclce). Like any good ethnographer, he gives an intimate portrait of life in these worlds of copious play where various types of real world economies have mushroomed apace with new technological developments. That is, he gives us a taste of what it is like, as he cleverly puts it to own unreality. Couched within tales of gaming gone real world economic, are hearty reflections on the place of play in social and economic life, the close resemblance and conceptual affinity between computers and games (and not just computer games, and here he does a fantastic job at explaining the Turing Test), self-doubts about writing in general and in particular about this topic, commodity fetishism, and the changing nature of capitalism in a world of ever-greater abstractions. All of this makes for an enjoyable read that if used in the classroom (which like A Tiny Life, I am sure will become standard for courses on Virtual Worlds) allows you to bring in some good supplemental material whether Edward Castranova’s Synthetic Worlds, Greg Lastowka and Dan Hunter’s The Laws of Virtual Worlds and or older heavy-hitters like Max Weber and Karl Marx. The only topic I think I would have liked to seen included is that of capitalist finance, because there are, I think, some real affinities, phenomenologically and conceptually, between finance capitalism and gaming the virtual game. Otherwise some of my favorite sections were on hackers and the object of the computer, but of course, I am biased that way. So here I leave you with a tasty morsel of something that was sumptuous to ingest: It is this endlessly repeatable collusion of freedom and determinism-the warp and woof of fixed rules and free play, of running code and variable input that sets both games and computers apart, together from the larger universe of information technologies they inhabit…. But only games share the universal machine’s game’s thoroughgoing commitment to the principle of recursion: the chained repetition of simple operations, each building on both the input of the moment and the outcomes of preceding steps. And only games, therefore, come close to capturing that precise mi of unpredictability and inevitability that makes the computer such a powerful simulator of our lived experience of the world. p. 104

This is a picture of me before I started this whole diet watching and exercising regimen. Hopefully I will be able to take regular pictures that can document my progress. This is one thing which I don't plan on doing very regularly, maybe every two or three months. Pictures have been known to be a great motivator to people on diets - they remind people how they used to look, and more importantly point out how far they have gone so far. Usually the most dramatic change is seen in the picture, even if you don't see much movement on the scale. The picture is so powerful that it is usually used alongside actual insane weight loss claims in TV commercials. Anyway, this is how I looked when I started this whole thing.

As this week's entry falls on turkey day, it may be interesting to note something which has been at the back of my mind during these “special” days in which you are urged by almost every sane diet plan to just forget the plan on that day. Many websites say that cheating on your diet may actually be good for you in the long run. While some emphasize the psychological aspects of having a day off, others actually cite scientific reasoning involving a hormone called Leptin. At any rate, the line between cheating and giving your diet a little boost is getting quite a bit blurred. So on this turkey day and days after, don't feel like you have to work out extra hard just because you're eating more.

This week I started using a new diet tracking site. This one is more closely in line with the method I used before. It's Physics Diet, and is basically an online notebook like you would keep if you were on the hacker's diet. This also calculates some more stuff that would be a little complicated to keep track of yourself, like Total Energy Expended (calories). It also has a nice CSV export which still allows me to give all of you your weekly stats. I've continued with the watching of anime while I am exercising, but am supplementing it with some podcasts and some episodes of a BBC show called QI or Quite Interesting. There is a downside to watching QI while exercising: I am laughing so hard sometimes I need to re-concentrate on the exercise so that I don't fall over. I'm sure it's not a bad thing for my calories expended in total.

This Week (Nov 17 - Nov 23):
Minimum: 335.0 (-0.5) (Nov 22)
Maximum: 339.0 (-0.5) (Nov 17)
Average: 336.8 (-0.4) (136.8 to goal)
Exercise Calories: 2719 on 6 days
Average Calories per session: 453.1

I have not written anything on this blog for a long time and after someone told me about it I decided that I could do it today; the long delay between posts comes from the fact that I'm quite busy with my current jobs and they don't leave me free time to work on Debian or Free Software related projects in general. Today I've been on the 2nd gvSIG Conference, a two day conference related to the gvSIG project, a GPL'ed Java based GIS (Geographical Information System) promoted by Regional Council for Infrastructures and Transportation (CIT) of the Valencian Government. I know about this project since it was made public, but I never tried it because I have a very poor GIS knowledge and I always try to avoid Java based software if possible (luckily one of the main reasons for that will change soon). Some months ago I tried the tool, but I left it soon because I found its interface quite weird and had no data to play with. Today I've seen a presentation about the raster capabilities that will be included on the next version of gvSIG and I have to admit that I've been quite impressed by them. I don't think I will use the tool much, but it is good to see free software projects like this one succeed; having local GNU/Linux distributions is not bad, but IMHO projects like this one are a much better way of using public money and promote the use and development of Free Software. My only complaint about the project is that the project development is not as open as I would like it to be (there is no public revision control system, no bug-tracker, ...), probably because almost all of the work is done by local software development companies that don't like to share their work until it is finished and don't have a free software development culture... ... but hey, nobody is perfect... ;)

In two days time we are having a state election in Victoria (Australia). For this election there is only one party with policies that are positive towards free software, that is the Australian Greens. The policy documents include an IT policy (note that the IT policy is on a link that may change while the policy documents is a permanent link).

The Greens IT policy has three sections under the goals, one of those is about open standards (ensuring that government data is in documented file formats for use by all with no need to purchase software) and another is about Open Source which directly advocates the use of free software by government agencies. The principles part of the document is also very positive towards free software and explains why it's beneficial for Australia.

Any Greens representatives that are elected on the weekend have to abide by the party policy, that means that they must advocate the use of open standards and Open Source in government use and vote accordingly when any legislation related to computers is being considered!

Some of the members of the Greens are also members of the free software community, we were able to explain to the other party members the benefits for Australia and for social justice in the use of free software, and thus we reached an agreement about on a policy that suits people who use free software - not to benefit such people, but because of the benefits to society of the use of free software.

I think it would be good if members of the free software community in other countries would also join their local Green party and promote similar policies. While there is no direct connection between the Green parties in different countries the aims are very similar and therefore the arguments that persuaded Green members in Australia can be expected to work reasonably well in other countries (I am happy to provide advise in this regard via private mail if requested).

Also it would be good if other parties could be persuaded to have similar policies. If you want to help the free software community but for some reason you don't support the Greens then please join a party that matches your views and advocate an IT policy that promotes free software.

Currently people who want to vote for free software in the Victorian election have no option other than to vote for the Greens. As a member of the Greens I am happy to document this as a reason to vote Green. But as a member of the free software community I would like to see other parties adopt policies that promote free software.

The Greens adoption of a policy that promotes free software was largely driven by the issue of social justice. We believe that every Australian citizen has the right to access all public government data. If government data is available in proprietary formats then access is only granted to people who can afford the latest software ($800 for a full copy of MS Office) and hardware to run it ($600 at least). We believe that unemployed people who receive free Linux computers from Computerbank should be able to access government data. We also believe that when FOI laws apply in 30 years time all current data should be accessible, there's no chance that whatever version of Office is being sold in 30 years time will read current MS file formats, and there's no guarantee that MS will even be in business then. File formats for which there are authoritative open-source programs written to use them will be accessible in 30 years time and more.

I need to get out of this place. Really, I do not mind a little bit of bureaucracy every now and then, but seriously, if someone asks you whether you have a minute, telling them that the proper way to do this is to look up your consultation hours on the Internet. Most of my experiences with this university are like this. The letter informing me of the tuition fees for next semester begins with "according to 17 of the Bavarian law concerning higher education in conjunction with 2 of the additional regulations on tuition fees, the university collects tuition fees of 500 Euros for the summer semester 2007.". Well, at least they go on promising that the money will be spent enhancing tuition. Honestly. Since this is the only uni in Munich I can attend and I'm not keen on being being cited regulations that prohibit me from taking advanced classes before I did the Java beginner course, I'm looking into other alternatives for getting a degree. Difficulty is that I'm pretty much bound to Munich. Any recommendations?