The MeeGo community is frustrated with the news of the MeeGo brand being abandoned. Some are understandably angry or otherwise not happy about how Linux Foundation, Intel handled the Tizen announcement and community in general - or more like how they didn't handle it at all.Last week Openmind 2011 happened to be arranged in Tampere on the very same day as Tizen announcement came alive. It was good in the way that it lead to the fact that Nomovok's CEO Pasi Nieminen was able to initiate the "Reigniting MeeGo" session not just by talking vague things about future, but actually about the process which led to Tizen and the unfortunately brief initial PR about it. Pasi is intense on emphasizing the quality and role of Qt in Tizen as well, even though officially Tizen is all about HTML5 and apparently from Samsung's part at least EFL is provided as a native toolkit. However, the promise of Tizen compared to MeeGo is reportedly that the toolkit is not specified in compliancy documents, so HTML5 with WAC is the main/only "3rd party apps" layer whereas others can be offered case-by-case. This means that unlike before, the underlying system can be built on top of practically any distribution (theoretically) and using whatever toolkits and other techniques wanted. Obviously the "Nordic System Integrators" are probably all very keen of using Qt to produce more of Nokia N9 quality user experiences in various products.

Taking the corporate hat off, I as a community member am also puzzled. The only reason I was not completely blown by the news was that I didn't yet manage to get involved in MeeGo community on a daily basis, since I'm involved with a dozen communities already. Instead I've been more like scratching the surface with MeeGo Network Finland meetings, IRC activity, OBS usage for building a few apps for MeeGo Harmattan and MeeGo proper etc. But I can somewhat understand how people like Jarkko Moilanen from meego-fi feel. They have given a _lot_ to the MeeGo community and brand, all taken away without hearing or pre-notice.

So where to now for MeeGo community? Tizen is one obvious choice. However, for all the talks that even I started this post with, Tizen is still vaporware today, and the dislike of how community is being treated might make it easy to consider other options. Also, if Tizen's reference implementation has lesser meaning, it might also mean less to actually be "in" the Tizen community than in MeeGo. I met Jos Poortvliet at Openmind, and he invited people to openSUSE. There is a lot of common ground with MeeGo and openSUSE - strong OBS usage, RPM packaging, community side focused on KDE and therefore Qt.

I would like to now point similarly to Debian! If one is tired about corporate interests and not listening to community, there is no match for Debian's 15+ years history, purely volunteer based, trust based organization, and first of all scope. While openSUSE has traditionally focused on desktop (even though like Jos pointed out they are open to all new contributions and projects), Debian has always had the "universal" scope, ie. no boundaries besides producing free software operating system for various purposes. There are over 10 architectures maintained at the moment, including the ARM (different ports for ARMv4 and hard-float ARMv7) and x86 from MeeGo world. There are even alternative kernels to Linux, mainly the GNU/kFreeBSD port. There are multiple relevant plans and projects like the Smartphones wiki area, most noticeably Debian on Neo FreeRunner. I have run Debian on my primary mobile phone for over 2.5 years, although now in the recent months I've had dual-SIM in my Nokia N950 as well (Debian not yet running on Nokia N950 or Nokia N9 - but it can and will be done!).

What Debian may lack in both good and bad is corporate funding, if you don't count the still quite respectful contributions from Ubuntu to Debian (it's in Ubuntu's interests to contribute as much possible back to Debian, so that the delta remains small). For each and every aspect, it needs a volunteer - there are a thousand volunteer Debian Developers, and at least a double of that of people without the official DD status but who still maintain a package or two among the 25000+ packages in Debian. That means also that one my find it more lucrative to join a project that has paid people to do some of the "boring parts", more of fancy web tools, including for bug handling and build systems like the OBS (which I do love by the way). On the other hand, there is no other project in my opinion where what you do really matters as much.

To find out more about Debian from MeeGo perspective, please see the recent mailing list post Mobile UXes - From the DebConf11 BoF to the stars where I wrote most of the MeeGo (CE) part when I was asked to and known of my MeeGo involvement.

Last but not certainly least, there is the Mer project - originally "maemo reconstructed", ie. making Nokia's "not really distro" into a real distro by filling in the void places. Now it's obviously MeeGo reconstructed, and they aim to be the MeeGo they always wanted MeeGo to be! Read the post for details from Carsten Munk and other key Mer people. They share the love for Qt, and want the core to be as lean as possible. They also aim to incorporate the most community like aspect from MeeGo - MeeGo CE - as the reference vendor in Mer. They also aim to be Tizen compliant - and when Tizen comes alive, I wouldn't see why the Tizen reference implementation couldn't be used for saving resources. Maybe Nomovok and/or others could offer the Qt maintaining part.

So, it might be that Tizen itself is enough for most people's needs. The key point however in this post is not to fall in agony if one corporate based project takes big turns - it has happened before, it will happen in the future. There are always enough political and business reasons from some points of view to do Big Changes. But the wider community is out there, always, and it's bigger than you think. You should consider where you want to contribute by asking yourself why you are/were part of for example the MeeGo community. Aaron Seigo from KDE asked us all this question in the Openmind MeeGo Reignited session, and I think it's good to repeat.

There has been a lot of talk recently questioning the trust authorities that underpin the SSL/TLS world. After a few high-profile incidents, it is clear that there is something wrong with this structure.

While some people have suggested that DNSSEC might solve this problem, here are three Firefox add-ons that can be used today to enhance the security of HTTPS:

• Certificate Patrol applies the "trust on first use" principle familiar to most ssh users. It keeps track of the certificates you get for the sites you visit and displays a warning if important elements (e.g. the certificate authority) change.


• Perspectives uses a network of certificate notaries to issue a warning when you encounter a certificate that is different from what other Perspectives users see.


• Monkeysphere takes advantage of the PGP/GPG web-of-trust to verify the authenticity of certificates.

Unlike the Convergence approach which completely takes over certificate handling, all three of the above add-ons can be used together.

A continuation of my intermittent series on Emdebian and prompted by a query from Paul Wise, I thought I'd cover some of the uses to which a device running Emdebian can be put. It is a bit long this one...

So, yes, there are general purpose computers which could run Emdebian but there are common features amongst general purpose computers:

1. Lots of different tasks must be supported - lots of different packages installed, each user could quite easily use a distinct set of packages from another user.


2. Multi-user support - even if any one machine is only used by one person, a general purpose computer must have support for adding another user - not just a system user, a real user with a login, shell, possibly bookmarks and browser history etc.


3. Connectivity - general purpose computers (and that includes mobile phones) must connect to a variety of other computers to be at all useful.


4. Multi-modal data input - there needs to be support for a mouse and a keyboard or touchscreen and just as likely, software support for accessibility interfaces like an on screen keyboard and switch inputs.


5. Storage for user data - the system admin can't know how much data users are going to add and if it is general purpose, it's probably going to support media players, image viewers, even office software. The data files managed and written by such software tend to be large and tend to accumulate into large collections. This means that a general purpose machine cannot anticipate the full storage requirements, so has to allow plenty of room for user data storage. If there's so much storage space available, why use an OS which is primarily designed to take up less space? Just use the full version, Debian.

Now compare with the common features of special purpose or single-purpose computers:

1. Single task only - a splash screen (without support for removal) covers all the boot information, the single task starts as a daemon and if the user quits the task, the task initiates a shutdown, not quit. Every effort is made to prevent the task from exposing the underlying OS, including auto-restarts if it does crash.


2. Single-user support - indeed, user is not the typical user. user in this case is a non-login user without a shell, created by the postinst of the task package purely to support running the task without root privileges (because if the task doesn't need privileges, it shouldn't retain privileges).


3. Single mode input - don't expect these machines to support 105 key keyboards. You'll be lucky to have 5 keys which are really just buttons. The button won't just enter 'J' into the machine, it will fire off a command to charge your bank or start a drill or shutdown a malfunctioning service. (Each button will often be multi-functional as well, depending on context). Some devices will replace the mouse with a touchscreen but many are fitted in places where touchscreens simply won't survive, where keys have to be able to withstand being submerged in water (or oil) for hours. Many machines simply won't have mouse support at all. Many will not have any typical external connectors. Indeed, units which go into dirty or wet environments certainly won't have standard external connectors of any kind. Think boats and factories. Internal battery packs with custom hot-fit replacements, buttons encased in 4mm of clear plastic, screens viewable only through protective mesh / filters.


4. Restricted connectivity - if the task doesn't need networking, no networking hardware is fitted. If the task doesn't need USB, no USB hardware is fitted. If the task doesn't need serial connections, there will probably be an internal serial connector but also a Warranty void if removed sticker. Don't expect an RS232 inside the case either, this will be a flat cable connector which you'll need to attach to a breakout board which correctly connects the cable wires to the RS232 port pins. That mapping is not standardised (why would it? only service engineers are approved to use it.)


5. Constrained user data - the task is in complete control and determines what the user can view, store and access. Storage can be expensive and a power drain, so if the task doesn't need Gb of storage, don't fit the machine with Gb of storage. Profit.

So what are these mysterious single-use computers running Emdebian? It's hard to tell because the task has no particular reason to tell the user anything about the OS. Perhaps a different way to phrase the same question would be: Why use a general purpose OS for a special purpose computer?.

• Single task does not mean single process - doing one thing can involve doing a couple of different things behind the scenes, so a multi-tasking kernel and userspace is extremely useful in providing a responsive machine without wasting money on unnecessarily powerful hardware. Multithreading support is also valuable.


• Software reuse makes good business sense - why write a single-usage operating system when the device needs a multi-tasking OS anyway and suitable ones already exist?


• Minimal software - no point packaging Xorg or GNOME when the user interface is a tiny QVGA framebuffer and the device only has 128Mb of RAM. By all means get the core system (cairo, pango, Qt, gettext, dpkg) from Emdebian but the actual code which performs the task of the device will generally be bespoke and, yes, that generally means proprietary, closed source, utterly non-free. This is where GNU/Linux wins over iOS and Windows - the graphical software is trivially separated from the core software and tested as such. If your device has only monochrome text output (and plenty of those still exist), what possible reason is there to use a graphical toolkit? Use the multi-tasking support of the OS to handle inter-process communication and understand the licensing - job done. Again, these devices have deliberately limited storage capacity, the smaller the OS, the lower the cost of the device, within certain constraints.


• Debugging compatibility - this is the big one. It's hard debugging the task software on device with the differences in architecture and connectivity. Why not use the same packages on the same OS on the development machines as on the devices? All the power and all the screen resources to properly investigate bugs, simple way to provide an emulator for translation support and other activities (like user interface training). There will always be bugs which have to be debugged on device - timing issues, hardware issues - but why not make at least a proportion of the likely bugs easier to fix by using binary compatible libraries on both the big desktop machines and the small devices?

This is why Emdebian Grip is popular for these machines - because Emdebian Grip is binary compatible with the equivalent Debian suite and when a bug appears in the high level user interface, it is much easier to debug that on the desktop than on device. Debian stable is a fantastic OS for commercial development - the stability of the OS makes detection of interface bugs much easier. It is rare that developers have to investigate whether bugs in their UI come down to a bug in the underlying OS. That saves time.

The machines themselves? I'm sure others can come up with other examples but these are some which come to my mind (no particular order):

• Control interfaces - solar power controllers, robot controllers - anywhere that a low power board can monitor responses from other machines and do something intelligent about reported errors. Temperature limit responses, pressure limit responses, encoding all of those in assembly or VHDL is hard, so use a system which provides for more creative result handling.


• Electric car charging points - very simple user interface, single task which doesn't complicate things by expecting the user to tap on something to start the main application - just process the card details, charge the customer and provide power.


• Similarlyelectronic point of sale devices - EPOS. The staff on the shop floor don't want to be waiting for an X server to start up and then using a menu. The device starts up and runs one task (checking barcodes, printing labels, counting stock), if the task is shutdown, the machine shuts down.


• Communication aids - my area, a machine which presents a simple UI on non-standard framebuffer hardware, lots of audio output but little other connectivity. Resilience is very important, so solid state is vital but why provide more solid state storage than the device can actually needs?

Anywhere where the device simply needs to DoTheRightThing in a variety of unpredictable circumstances, you're going to need a general purpose OS to gather the data and produce the right result. Anywhere where the device has only a single task, you're going to want to not provide access to the rest of the system. There's no point providing "general purpose access" when the device doesn't have "general purpose hardware". There's no point fitting general purpose hardware if the device does not use it. That is a waste of money, a waste of resources and causes unnecessary delays if one component or other becomes unobtainable or changes behaviour. Limit your exposure to hardware bugs and get the product out to the user more quickly and more reliably, everyone is happy. Fit non-standard hardware and you can fit custom hardware which better matches the profile of the device usage - why use standard speakers capable of CD quality across a vast frequency range when the device only makes very very loud alert noises which can be done at lower sample rates and with narrow range, high amplitude, speakers.

There are all sorts of estimates for the number of computers now in the average Western home. It's worth noting that the vast majority of those computers are not PCs or laptops or even game consoles and routers - all instances of general purpose machines with general purpose access / connectivity. A lot of the computers in your home are embedded in machines like white goods, media controllers (set top boxes and the like). Some of these will still use low level firmware written entirely in assembly or COBOL. More complex ones already have a general purpose OS inside yet constrain that OS with a simple, user-friendly interface which is tailored to the hardware actually fitted. It might be cool to connect to your set top box over Bluetooth but really, is that actually going to sell more units? Only if there are other high-end services written for the device which the average customer won't want to see pushing up the price of the base unit. Some machines (particularly in automotive uses) will need to be using Real Time operating systems and Safety Critical operating systems but even some of those are based on general purpose systems - just old versions which have been thoroughly tested.

Finally, consider that for a lot of these devices, the customer is not you. The customer is another business who then put the device into something else which is installed into a factory production line which produces something which goes into creating a consumer product you find in Tesco or on Amazon or bundled in with another service like your TV/broadband contract. There is absolutely no reason for these devices to provide general purpose computing to you, even if the device itself is part of something else which can provide such services.

Quite a belated English blog (after the Thai version), due to busy personal life lately. I had visited Yangon during 4-11 Sep. to give some talks and tutorials on Debian packaging and mirroring. And I've shared some information with community. The visit was initiated by Ngwe Tun and the Myanmar L10N team. I found later that a Facebook event had been created for this. Localization The first day was a comparison between Myanmar and Thai supports in GNU/Linux, in which I briefed the status on Thai side, and Thura Hlaing on Myanmar side. It was nice that we had the Myanmar Computer Federation (MCF) director presiding the meeting til the end. That means GNU/Linux support has been awared at executive level. According to Thura, Burmese has gained support in GNU/Linux quite well. On the rendering side, all the reordering for the logical order is normally done with pure GSUB in the fonts, without special processing on the rendering engine. This is suboptimal in principle, but it's the most effective way, as Windows redering engine itself does not yet support Myanmar, either. For input method, Myanmar XKB map has been available in xkb-data for a long time, but to serve users' familarity with visual order typing, some reordering input methods have been developed, based on keymagic and ibus. But all are not context-sensitive like what's done for Thai in other frameworks. Fortunately, with the surrounding text API recently added to ibus, this has become possible. One unusual requirement for Myanmar script editing is the caret movements. It needs to move syllable-wise, not character-wise nor cluster-wise. So, I suggested them to have a look on UAX #29 to see how it should be amended. Myanmar locales are already done, both for GNU C library and CLDR. And even a GNOME applet for Myanmar lunar calendar is also available. This latter thing is what Thai can learn from. Burmese word segmentation is not supported in general. But R&D works have been done for this in its NLP lab. A serious issue left to solve is the existing abuses of Unicode. In Myanmar, there exist at least 14 variations of font hacks, abusing some free slots in Unicode charts as pre-composed clusters for information interchange (not for font internals), making plain text interchange impossible without the proper font for rendering. For program translation, the new Myanmar L10N team is trying to request for a mass submission to the current GNOME team. And for Debian, Thura Hlaing and Ngwe Tun has already started the translation process with Christian's help. Along my stay, I could see the team actively discussing on the IT glossary, trying to settle down the translated terms. This looked very fun. Debian Then, the next three days were a workshop on Debian packaging, where I have presented the basics of Debian package building, uploading, quality-controlling, modifying, creating and delivering. This aimed toward the development of a local distribution based on Debian. Each day in the afternoon was the time for setting up a Debian mirror, not only for convenient local distro developement, but also for general users. This is important because internet penetration is still low in Myanmar. The main media for software distribution is CD/DVD, which means only stable version of Debian can be spread, which is not good for desktop users. Having a mirror should improve the situation somehow. It should make dist-upgrading to testing/unstable easier. And it should make CD snapshotting using local distributions easier, too. For this, I also presented another quick slide on Debian mirroring & caching. In the last day, I was introduced to the staffs of Myanmar NLP Lab and their projects, which include Myanmar OCR (based on tesseract), information retrieval, machine translation, and other lingustic resources like dictionary, lexicon and text corpus. Furthermore, I was also offerred technical helps on developing a Lao/Esaan Tham font for a Lao and North Eastern Thailand variation of Tham script, which is Mon-based and is closely related to Myanmar script. (See some sample transliterations if you are curious how it looks like. It was part of my hacking during DebConf11 travelling.) Currently, its OpenType support is quite sufficient, but it still renders poorly on Mac OSX. To cope with this, I was given a Mac Mini as a present from Myanmar for its development, as well as some explanations on AAT features from a Myanmar font developer. And I am very grateful for that.

The last month I was supposed to work on a OpenStack related project, but for administrative reasons it has been delayed and I've tried to do small tasks to be able to finish them quickly and start the work on the main project when the issues get solved. As the delay has been longer than expected last Wednesday I've realized than on the last weeks I did a lot of small system administration tasks:

• With a co-worker I started to work on a GNU/Linux version of our firewall based on Shorewall to handle the rules and conntrackd and keepalived to make it highly available (I had to stop my work on the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD based firewall a long time ago, and this summer the old firewalls' hardware started to fail, so a migration from Linux to Linux makes sense now, as it will be faster and a future migration will be simpler, as we will have a cleaner set of rules and better documentation),
• I installed and configured an instance of a web based File Exchange server (F*EX),
• I installed and configured an instance of a pastebin clone,
• I installed and configured an instance of ProFTPD that works only as a SFTP server using virtual users (without shell access),
• I also installed an instance of a web based event management system called indico that is being used to manage a conference and probably will be used for other events in the future,
• I installed and patched some plugins in our Trac servers,
• I tried a groupware system called SOGo that we will probable deploy in a week or two,
• And updated and fixed configurations of some other services,

With all the changes I did I noticed that I had to do something with our Intranet server; it is just a reverse proxy for a lot of different web services and its main page was one static HTML page with links to them, nothing else. In the long term maybe we will replace it with something based on Drupal or Lifeay, but for now I just wanted something to be able to organize the links and provide some information about the services for the new users without having to write HTML (I really like Agile Documentation Tools that let me focus on the content and forget about the markup), and started to look at some of them. My first idea was to use ikiwiki, as it has all the features I was looking for: I can use Markdown or reStructuredText to write the contents, the source pages are easily handled on a Version Control System, it supports the use of templates for the HTML, etc., but it seemed to me that using ikiwiki was like killing flies with a cannon (that's a Spanish say, I guess it's easy to understand it in English, no?) and I decided to review other tools to build static web sites. To make a long story short, I selected some tools that met my requirements and looked nice on their demo sites; after my first review I thought that Hyde was going to be my bet, as it uses technologies I'm already familiar with, but after trying it I saw that I was going to have a problem with documentation (the current Hyde version lacks it) and it was going to be more complicated that using ikiwiki. Before giving up I decided to review simpler tools, just in case, and after looking some of them I ended up using poole, a simple python script (the source is just one file and it only requires python-markdown to work). Before moving to the content I tried to adapt a couple of free themes to be used by the tool, but I didn't liked the result, so I went back to the plain style provided by the tool and added a logo and a background. With that simple look and feel I started to work with the content, splitting it into eight markdown files and a python macro to include a file that has all the links used on the site. While trying to make the main page look good I noticed how little I know about CSS, but using search engines I was able to build a two column block into the main page and publish the contents and with the help of some CSS enabled co-workers I changed the look and feel of the site in about 30 minutes. In summary, if you want a really simple website, you know a little bit of python and don't want to spend much time learning how to use a website generator then Poole is a good option. If you want something more complex I still think that ikiwiki is a good option, but YMMV.

Just a quick note to remind everyone that the Rcpp class in San Francisco, which I am holding together with Revolution Analytics, will take place a week from today. We are happy to report that the number of registrations has met our initial targets. But as a number of open slots remain, we have decided to offer a few places at discounts of 25% for academics (with code acad1) and 50% for students (with code student). Course details are at the Revolution course page, registration is at the Eventbrite page. And just for completeness, here is what I wrote in the previous announcement:

The format will follow the workshop Romain and I gave during the tutorial day preceding this year's R/Finance conference. The style will once again be hands-on, with copious concrete examples and solid coverage of most aspects of Rcpp and related packages such as RInside, RcppArmadillo and others. The eight-hour schedule contains about six hours of instruction, split into four sessions of around ninety minutes. This leaves ample time for both lunch and coffee breaks, and for informal discussions and Q+A. The one-day class will be offered in San Franciso on Saturday, October 8, 2011. Please see the official course page for more details, concrete location info and maps as well as registration details.

Feel free to contact me at the usual email address with questions. Or with suggestions for the after-party in San Francisco :)

After spotting an upload of mira, who in turn spotted an upload of abe (the package, not an upload by me aka abe@d.o), mira (mirabilos aka tg@d.o) noticed that there are Debian packages which have same name as some Debian Developers have as login name. Of course I noticed a long time ago that there is a Debian package with my login name abe . Another well-known Debian login and former package name is amaya. But since someone else came up with that thought, too, it was time for finding the definite answer to the question which are the DD login names which also exist as Debian package names. My first try was based on the list of trusted GnuPG keys:

$ apt-cache policy $(gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --list-keys 2>/dev/null   \
                     grep @debian.org   \
        	     awk -F'[<@]' ' print $2 '   \
                     sort -u) 2>/dev/null   \
                   egrep -o '^[^ :]*'
alex
tor
ed
bam
ng

But this was not satisfying as my own name didn t show up and gpg also threw quite a lot of block reading errors (which is also the reason for redirecting STDERR). mira then had the idea of using the Ultimate Debian Database to answer this question more properly:

udd=> SELECT login, name FROM carnivore_login, carnivore_names
      WHERE carnivore_login.id=carnivore_names.id AND login IN
      (SELECT package AS login FROM packages, active_dds
       WHERE packages.package=active_dds.login UNION
       SELECT source AS name FROM sources, active_dds
       WHERE sources.source=active_dds.login)
      ORDER BY login;
 login                   name
-------+---------------------------------------
 abe     Axel Beckert
 alex    Alexander List
 alex    Alexander M. List  4402020774 9332554
 and     Andrea Veri
 ash     Albert Huang
 bam     Brian May
 ed      Ed Boraas
 ed      Ed G. Boraas [RSA Compatibility Key]
 ed      Ed G. Boraas [RSA]
 eric    Eric Dorland
 gq      Alexander GQ Gerasiov
 iml     Ian Maclaine-cross
 lunar   J r my Bobbio
 mako    Benjamin Hill
 mako    Benjamin Mako Hill
 mbr     Markus Braun
 mlt     Marcela Tiznado
 nas     Neil A. Schemenauer
 nas     Neil Schemenauer
 opal    Ola Lundkvist
 opal    Ola Lundqvist
 paco    Francisco Moya
 paul    Paul Slootman
 pino    Pino Toscano
 pyro    Brian Nelson
 stone   Fredrik Steen
(26 rows)

Interestingly tor (Tor Slettnes) is missing in this list, so it s not complete either At least I m quite sure that nobody maintains a package with his own login name as package name. :-) We also have no packages ending in -guest , so there s no chance that a package name matches an Alioth guest account either

The new ncurses library that is currently sitting in the NEW queue will have a significant change that, if we ve done it right, should be an invisible change. If we ve got it wrong, then the BTS (and us) may be a little busy. What has happened is that the low-level terminfo library has been split out from the general ncurses library making a new package called libtinfo5. This also means that there only needs to be one libtinfo5 package because at this low level it doesn t care about wide characters, so there is no libtinfo5w (and that gets important later). libncurses is linked to libtinfo so from the point of view of using libncurses there should be no major change in how things are done. So, why bother? The way ncurses was built before causes a nice long conga line of trouble . There really are (was) two main ncurses library packages, libncurses5 and libncursesw5. The w meant it was for wide characters. So anything that uses ncurses needs to decide which one to link to or perhaps both. A problem came up with the readline library that needs to link to ncurses because programs that link to IT (such as python) want a wide library but other programs do not. One solution is to have two readline libraries, but then any other library would need to be compiled and built twice as well and so on and so on. readline didn t really want the full ncurses library, it only wants the terminfo part but there was (until now) no way of picking up that bit only. Once this new version of ncurses gets released then readline can link to libterminfo which is agnostic to wide and non-wide characters which means it is as well which them means everything else should, in theory work. If you are using ncurses for some low-level terminfo work only, you may want to have a look to see if you can link to libtinfo5 only which will mean depending on libtinfo5 and not libncurses5 or libncursesw5. I m just writing this up mainly and uploading the packages, the bulk of the work was done by Sven and Matthias as well as some help from our ever-helpful upstream Thomas.

Besides FusionForge stuff, I also kept busy with other things.

• A new electronic drumkit: I upgraded from a Roland TD-4K to the new TD-9KX2. Apart from the improvements of the sound module and the mesh-head pads, it has two goodies. First, an extra trigger input line. Which means I just had to plug a cymbal pad from my Guitar Hero drum controller (with a standard jack cable), so I get an extra pad. More cowbell! Second, it now has a MIDI-in port. Which means that I "just" have to write some code (probably using libcwiid) to get the signals from the GH controller to a convenient computer nearby, then turn them into MIDI signals and send them to the Roland kit. So that I get not one but six extra pads (actually, five and a pedal). Special effects, lasers, symphonic chords, cymbals of all sizes, steel drums and more cowbell!
• Big mistake: I borrowed a Zelda Twilight Princess game. I'm ashamed to admit that it ate my week-end, and it's likely to eat quite a bit of my time again in the near future, although I'll try to put it on a diet. Yeah, okay, I had sort of guessed that games had improved a lot since the days of Might & Magic, but wow, I didn't realise how much.
• Rapha l and I started the fundraising campaign for the translation of our Debian book to English. Pre-orders/pledges are collected on Ulule; we'll only get them if the threshold is met, but the counterpart is that we won't actually do the translation if the threshold isn't met: translation and proofreading and publication of a book take a tremendous amount of time, and that's going to be time spent away from our respective clients. Note that there's a second threshold, for the "liberation fund"; if that one is met, the result of the book will be released under a Free license (most probably a CC-BY-SA + GPL dual-license). There are a whole lot of options for contributing, with rewards according to the amount you choose: e-book, paperback book, updates to the e-book, dedication, and even a dinner with the authors (limited offer, while supplies last).

The following is a quick HOWTO for the brave Debian users who want to upgrade to GNOME 3. Assuming you have an up to date system running sid, and experimental listed in your APT sources, perform the following complicated steps to end up having a functional GNOME 3 desktop:

apt-get install -t experimental gnome

Thanks go to Joss for putting together new GNOME 3 meta-packages, and the rest of the Debian GNOME people for months of hard planning and packaging work, and painful testing transition handling. Before you ask, yeah, not all of GNOME 3.x is in unstable yet, but will soon be, as precedent transitions start clearing the way. And yeah, GNOME 3.2 will come just after the two remaining package sets enter testing. To compensate, you'll find that you have some GNOME leaf packages pending an upgrade to 3.2.0-1 while you read this.

Hope a few of my readers got it from the title of this blog post. And maybe many others didn't. So let's talk about "Stop Making Sense". You're warned: nothing to do with free software...or running, this time. This is all about music. Music from the 80's. "Stop Making Sense" is indeed, in my opinion, one of the best achieved musical movie. It is simple: it features a gig by the Talking Heads, back in 1983, when this band was among the most innovative ones that ever appeared in the late 70's. And I finally managed to take time to actually buy the DVD and see it again as I didn't see it since 1985. For many people, Talking Heads is the incredible person that's David Byrne. That's certainly true for some parts (and this is what lead to their split in 1991), but the movie really gives credit to all members of the band, either the "regular" ones (Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison) or the tour musicians (Bernie Worrell, Alex Weir, Steven Scales, Lynn Mabry, Edna Holt). The construction of the movie is simple: it just starts with Byrne bringing a music box on an empty stage, with his acoustic guitar and playing an incredible tense "Psycho Killer" (there are so many different version of that mythical piece but this one is among the best). Then Tina joins for a not-so-often played "Heaven" and brings her so inimitable bass line (I count Tina among my very favourite bass player, immediately after Tony Levin). At the end of the piece, the crew quietly brings a full drum set, then Chris Frantz joins, smiling as ever, and the rhythm increases with "Thank you for sending me an angel". Then Jerry Harrison joins, to make the original Heads line-up for a really funky "Found a Job", where Jerry shows that he was THE Heads lead guitar (and Tina is still keeping the foundations so strong). Continuing the increasing tension, the rest of the musicians join for Slippery People, then Burning Down the House ("Who's got a match?"). All this culmminates in a crazy joggin on stage during "Life During Wartime" and Byrne performing incredible and stellar movements on stage. THis one surely makes the band entirely exhausted. How can they survive this? The few next songs are a little bit less stunning (oh, well, "Making Flippy Floppy" still features a dream bass line)...until a really special "Once in a Lifetime" that...has just to be seen (SAME AS IT EVER WAS), then a break where....the Tom Tom Club (namely Chris, Tina and the rest of the band) perform a giant "Genius of Love", so funky. All this is indeed meant for Byrne to prepare for his top appearance, in "Girlfriend is Better", in a giant suit, that makes his head over his long neck yet more...strange. This leads to a crazy "Take me to the River" which has always been the top of the Heads shows during the 80's and a tireless encore on "Crosseyed and Painless". The movie ends up and you nearly never had a breath. So, yes, if you think you enjoy the Heads music and have never seen that movie, just try doing it once. That's how music was in the 80's..and, doh, these folks were so good! By the way, all parts of the movie can be seen on YouTube in case you just want to see what *I* enjoy. Ah, and yes I share the love of the Heads with Danese "we never meet often enough" Cooper, by the way. We once made a promise ourselves to sing Psycho Killer in karaoke if we're happy (and drunk) enough to meet again before we're too old for this..:-).

Continuing on my Hackweek project, I've polished GePeS a bit today. I started with better display of GPS coordinates and added some more GPS details to separate page. Adding images for moon phase was also part of the plan, though it force me to learn how to switch application to black theme, which looks much better with moon image. Rest of time was spent on cleaning up the code and adding preferences (for now only refresh rate). Updated screenshots: PS: Some numbers look weird (altitude and speed), though I'm pretty sure this is what phone reports me.

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A bit more than a year elapsed since we announced our plans to translate our Debian book into English and to try to get it published under a license compatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. But we re now ready to go to the next step. Completing the translation of 450 pages book is a huge work, we estimate it s going to take roughly 3 full time months for both Roland and me. Since we re freelancers, we can take the required time provided that we have a minimum income during that period. That s where you come into play: we have setup a crowdfunding campaign on Ulule.com and we need your support to raise 15000 (this is the absolute minimum for us to be able to commit the required time). Even if a good and up-to-date book on Debian is a great perspective, we want to go further than that by adding the perspective of getting a DFSG-free Debian book. That s why we have transformed the crowfunding campaign in a liberation campaign. When you support the project, you can pledge money towards a liberation fund and if this fund reaches 25000 then the book will be published under the GPL-2+ and CC-BY-SA 3.0 licenses. On top of this, when you support this project you can select a reward that goes from a copy of the ebook to a dinner with the authors (only 10 places for the latter)! Among the other rewards, there s obviously a paperback version of the book, but also an individual one-hour mentoring session with me a nice way to get you hooked as a new Debian contributor (limited to 40 persons, don t miss the opportunity!). We also need your help to spread the news and get as many supporters as possible. Share the link with your friends, write an article on your blog, put a widget on your website, etc. Thank you very much!

Click here to go to the fundraising page and to learn more about this project.

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There's something brewing, moving in Jalisco (a state in Mexico's West, where our second largest city, Guadalajara, is located). And it seems we have an opportunity to participate, hopefully to be taken into account for the future. Ten days ago, I was contacted by phone by the staff of UDG Noticias, for an interview on the Universidad de Guadalajara radio station. The topic? Electronic voting. If you are interested in what I said there, you can get the interview from my webpage. I held some e-mail contact with the interviewer, and during the past few days, he sent me some links to notes in the La Jornada de Jalisco newspaper, and asked for my opinion on them: On September 23, a fellow UNAM researcher, C sar Astudillo, claims the experience in three municipalities in Jalisco prove that e-voting is viable in the state, and today (September 26), third generation of an electronic booth is appearingly invulnerable. Of course, I don't agree with the arguments presented (and I'll reproduce the mails I sent to UDG Noticias about it before my second interview just below They are in Spanish, though). However, what I liked here is that it does feel like a dialogue. Their successive texts seem to answer to my questioning. So, even though I cannot yet claim this is a real dialogue (it would be much better to be able to sit down face to face and have a fluid conversation), it feels very nice to actually be listened to from the other side! My answer to the first note:

El tema de las urnas electr nicas sigue dando de qu hablar por ac en Jalisco... nosotros en Medios UDG hemos presentado distintas voces como la del Dr. Gabriel Corona Armenta, que est a favor del voto electr nico, del Dr. Luis Antonio Sobrado, magistrado presidente del tribunal supremo de elecciones de Costa Rica, quien nos habl sobre los 20 MDD que les cuesta implementar el sistema por lo que no lo han logrado hasta el momento, pudimos hablar hasta argentina con Federico Heinz y su rotunda oposici n al voto electr nico y por supuesto la entrevista que le realizamos a usted. Sin embargo este d a La Jornada Jalisco publica la siguiente nota http://www.lajornadajalisco.com.mx/2011/09/23/index.php?section=politica... nos gustar a saber cu l es su punto de vista al respecto, quedo a la espera de su respuesta

Hola, Pues... Bueno, s que el IFE hizo un desarrollo muy interesante y bien hecho hace un par de a os, dise ando desde cero las urnas que propon an emplear, pero no se instrumentaron fuera de pilotos (por cuesti n de costos, hasta donde entiendo). Se me hace triste y peligroso que el IEPC de Jalisco est proponiendo, teniendo ese antecedente, la compra de tecnolog a prefabricada, y confiando en lo que les ofrece un proveedor. Se me hace bastante iluso, directamente, lo que propone el t tulo: comicios en tres municipios prueban la viabilidad del voto electr nico en todo el estado . Pong moslo en estos t rminos: El que no se caiga una choza de l mina con estructura de madera demuestra que podemos construir rascacielos de l mina con estructura de madera? Ahora, un par de p rrafos que me llaman la atenci n de lo que publica esta nota de La Jornada:

la propuesta de realizar la elecci n en todo el estado con urnas electr nicas que desea llevar a cabo el Instituto Electoral y de Participaci n Ciudadana (IEPC) es viable, pues los comicios realizados en tres municipios son pruebas suficientes para demostrar que la urna es fiable

y algunos p rrafos m s adelante,

Cu ntas experiencias m s se necesitan para saber si es confiable, 20, 30, no lo s (...) Pero cuando se tiene un diagn stico real, efectivo y serio de cu ndo t cnicamente procede, se puede tomar la decisi n

Como lo menciono en mi art culo... No podemos confundir a la ausencia de evidencia con la evidencia de ausencia. Esto es, que en un despliegue menor no haya habido irregulares no significa que no pueda haberlas. Que haya pa ses que operan 100% con urnas electr nicas no significa que sea el camino a seguir. Hay algunas -y no pocas- experiencias de fallas en diversos sentidos de urnas electr nicas, y eso demuestra que no puede haber confianza en las implementaciones. Aunque el equipo nos saliera gratis (que no es el caso), hay que invertir recursos en su resguardo y mantenimiento. Aunque se generara un rastro impreso verificado por el votante (que s lo ha sido el caso en una peque a fracci n de las estacione de votaci n), nada asegura que los resultados reportados por el equipo sean siempre consistentes con la realidad. El potencial para mal uso que ofrecen es demasiado. Saludos,

And to September 26th:

Disculpe que lo molestemos otra vez, pero este d a fue publicada otra nota m s sobre el tema de las Urnas electr nicas en Jalisco donde se asegura que la urna es invulnerable. http://www.lajornadajalisco.com.mx/2011/09/26/index.php?section=politica... nos podr a conceder unos minutos para hablar con usted, como la vez pasada, v a telef nica sobre el caso espec fico de Jalisco, en referencia a estas notas publicadas recientemente? si es posible podr a llamarle este d a a las 2 pm? Quedo a la espera de su respuesta agradeci ndole su ayuda, apreciamos mucho esta colaboraci n que est haciendo con nosotros

Hola, ( ) Respecto a esta nota: Nuevamente, ausencia de evidencia no es evidencia de ausencia. Se le permite a un peque o segmento de personas jugar con una m quina. Significa eso que fue una prueba completa, exhaustiva? No, s lo que ante un jugueteo casual no pudieron encontrar fallos obvios y graves. Un verdadero proceso que brindara confianza consistir a en (como lo hicieron en Brasil - Y resultaron vulnerables) convocar a la comunidad de expertos en seguridad en c mputo a hacer las pruebas que juzguen necesarias teniendo un nivel razonable de acceso al equipo. Adem s, la seguridad va m s all de modificar los resultados guardados. Un par de ejemplos que se me ocurren sin darle muchas vueltas:

• Qu pasa si meto un chicle a la ranura lectora de tarjeta magn tica?
• Qu pasa si golpeo alguna de las teclas lo suficiente para hacerla un poquito menos sensible sin destruirla por completo? (o, ya entrados en gastos, si la destruyo)

La negaci n de servicio es otro tipo de ataque con el cual tenemos que estar familiarizados. No s lo es posible modificar el sentido de la votaci n, sino que es muy f cil impedir que la poblaci n ejerza su derecho. Qu har an en este caso? Bueno, podr an caer de vuelta a votaci n sobre papel - Sobre hojas de un block, probablemente firmadas por cada uno de los funcionarios, por ejemplo. Pero si un atacante bloque la lectura de la tarjeta magn tica, que es necesaria para que el presidente de casilla la marque como cerrada, despoj de su voto a los usuarios. S , se tienen los votos impresos (que, francamente, me da mucho gusto ver que esta urna los maneja de esta manera). El conteo es posible, aunque un poco m s inc modo que en una votaci n tradicional (porque hay que revisar cu les son los que est n marcados como invalidados - no me queda muy claro c mo es el escenario del elector que vot por una opci n, se imprimi otra, y el resultado fue corregido y marcado como tal)... Pero es posible. Sin embargo, y para cerrar con esta respuesta: Si hacemos una corrida de prueba, en circunstancias controladas, obviamente no se notar n los much simos fallos que una urna electr nica puede introducir cuando los "chicos malos" son sus programadores. Podemos estar seguro que este marcador Atlas-Chivas-Cruz Azul tenga el mismo ndice de fiabilidad como una elecci n de candidatos reales, uno de los cuales puede haberle pagado a la empresa desarrolladora para manipular la elecci n? Y a n si el proceso fuera perfecto, indican aqu que est n _intentando_ licitar estas urnas (y nuevamente, si lo que menciona esta nota es cierto, son de las mejores urnas disponibles, y han atendido a muchos de los se alamientos - Qu bueno!)... Para qu ? Qu nos van a dar estas urnas, qu va a ganar la sociedad? Mayor rapidez? Despreciable - Media hora de ganancia. A cambio de cu nto dinero? Mayor confiabilidad? Me queda claro que no, siendo que no s lo somos cuatro trasnochados los que ponemos su sistema en duda, sino que sus mismos proponentes apuntan a la duda generalizada. La frase con la que cierra la nota se me hace digna para colgar un ep logo: "en ese futuro quiz no tan distante la corrupci n tambi n ocurre y sta se debe siempre al factor humano". Y el factor humano sigue ah . Las urnas electr nicas son programadas por personas, por personas falibles. Sin importar del lado que est n, recordar n la pol mica cuando se hizo p blico que la agregaci n de votos en el 2006 fue supervisada por la empresa Hildebrando, propiedad del cu ado del entonces candidato a la presidencia Felipe Calder n. Qu evita que caigamos en un escenario similar, pero ampliamente distribu do? Y aqu hay que referirnos a la sentencia de la Suprema Corte de Alemania: En dicho pa s, las votaciones electr nicas fueron declaradas anticonstitucionales porque s lo un grupo de especialistas podr an auditarlas. Una caja llena de papeles con la evidencia clara del sentido del voto de cada participante puede ser comprendida por cualquier ciudadano. El c digo que controla a las urnas electr nicas, s lo por un peque o porcentaje de la poblaci n.

I finally finished a thing I was really missing: accessing my Google Contacts from Emacs. That's now possible, thanks to my new google-contacts.el package.

<video controls="controls"> <source src="http://julien.danjou.info/images/emacs-google-contacts.ogv" type="video/ogg"> </video> It includes searching for any contact and displaying the result in a window. You can also jump to a contact from Gnus by pressing a key, and complete e-mail addresses while composing a mail.
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Using zsh as default shell is perfect. Using grml-zsh stuff to configure it, even better. Using XTaran s config, way better. Using your own config, invaluable. Now, there is one thing that always bothered me: having all hosts I usually deal with in my ~/.ssh/config in order to have tab completion (and short names). I wanted to improve the situation and was kindly pointed in a different direction by Myon, namely to just use the ~/.ssh/known_hosts for tab completion. How about that? I started playing around with the config and, as it turns out, Axel already has something ready. Unfortunately, it didn t fulfill all my needs yet. That is because I have multiple known_hosts files. Martin already filed a bug to have ssh read ~/.ssh/known_hosts.d/* but that isn t resolved yet either, even though upstream is aware of it. I thus had to point tab completion and ssh to multiple files by hand. But that s not too bad for now. Let s have a look: Host *
HashKnownHosts no Host *.your-work.com
User that-is-what-they-call-me-at-work
UserKnownHostsFile ~/.ssh/known_hosts.work Host *.debian.org
UserKnownHostsFile ~/.ssh/known_hosts.debian
What am I doing? Well, we need to deactivate the hashing of known hosts. Otherwise your known_hosts files aren t readable as needed. Then you define your known_hosts files for the domains you care about. Pretty straight forward. Now, how about tab completion in zsh? Well, easy part actually: [ -f ~/.ssh/config ] && : $ (A)ssh_config_hosts:=$ $ $ $ (@M)$ (f)"$(<~/.ssh/config)" :#Host * #Host :#*\** :#*\?*
[ -f ~/.ssh/known_hosts ] && : $ (A)ssh_known_hosts:=$ $ $ (f)"$(<$HOME/.ssh/known_hosts)" %%\ * %%,*
[ -f ~/.ssh/known_hosts.work ] && : $ (A)ssh_known_hosts_work:=$ $ $ (f)"$(<$HOME/.ssh/known_hosts.work)" %%\ * %%,*
[ -f ~/.ssh/known_hosts.debian ] && : $ (A)ssh_known_hosts_debian:=$ $ $ (f)"$(<$HOME/.ssh/known_hosts.debian)" %%\ * %%,* zstyle ':completion:*:hosts' hosts $ssh_config_hosts $ssh_known_hosts $ssh_known_hosts_work $ssh_known_hosts_debian What's here? We read and parse your ~/.ssh/config for configured hosts, then we parse all your known_hosts files which are for me: ~/.ssh/known_hosts, ~/.ssh/known_hosts.work, and ~/.ssh/known_hosts.debian. And lastly, all is added to zsh completion for hosts. That actually works. :) Axel, that makes a diff for you looking like this: diff --git a/zsh.d/70-completion b/zsh.d/70-completion
index e92e068..5abf5cc 100644
--- a/zsh.d/70-completion
+++ b/zsh.d/70-completion
@@ -8,6 +8,8 @@ [ -f ~/.ssh/config ] && : $ (A)ssh_config_hosts:=$ $ $ $ (@M)$ (f)"$(<~/.ssh/config)" :#Host * #Host :#*\** :#*\?*
[ -f ~/.ssh/known_hosts ] && : $ (A)ssh_known_hosts:=$ $ $ (f)"$(<$HOME/.ssh/known_hosts)" %%\ * %%,*
+[ -f ~/.ssh/known_hosts.work ] && : $ (A)ssh_known_hosts_work:=$ $ $ (f)"$(<$HOME/.ssh/known_hosts.work)" %%\ * %%,*
+[ -f ~/.ssh/known_hosts.debian ] && : $ (A)ssh_known_hosts_debian:=$ $ $ (f)"$(<$HOME/.ssh/known_hosts.debian)" %%\ * %%,* -zstyle ':completion:*:*:*' hosts $ssh_config_hosts $ssh_known_hosts
+zstyle ':completion:*:hosts' hosts $ssh_config_hosts $ssh_known_hosts $ssh_known_hosts_work $ssh_known_hosts_debian Care to merge? Oh, and before I forget... Of course you don't need to check each and every host by yourself. Debian provides ssh keys for all hosts on master. Just do a scp master.debian.org:/etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts ~/.ssh/known_hosts.debian and I'm sure, your security aware employer has such a file for you as well. Doesn't he? ;)

quick overview over my RC bug activities during the last week:

• #594277 blm: "blm: non-standard gcc/g++ used for build (gcc-4.3)"
  drop explicit build dependency on g++-4.3 and do a QA upload (which was REJECTed because another DD uploaded it between me looking at the bug and uploading it)
• #616254 src:libcaca: "libcaca: replace doxygen and texlive-* build dependencies with doxygen-latex"
  update build dependencies as requested (more or less) and upload to DELAYED/2
• #635448 collabtive: "collabtive: sources file that was removed in postrm purge"
  check for existence of script in postrm before using it and upload to DELAYED/2
• #638252 chrony: "chrony refuses to start on kernel 3.x"
  forcemerge (and thereby close) with #628919
• #638589 libcaca: "libcaca: Missing build dependancies for documentation building."
  fixed in connection with #616254
• #640559 src:ircd-hybrid: "ircd-hybrid: FTBFS: make[2]: *** No rule to make target /usr/lib/libpcre.a', needed by ircd'. Stop."
  apply patch from Ubuntu / Colin Watson and upload to DELAYED/2
• #640565 src:scrollz: "scrollz: FTBFS: make[2]: *** No rule to make target /usr/include/sys/stat.h', needed by alias.o'. Stop."
  apply multiarch related patch from Ubuntu / Matthias Klose and upload to DELAYED/2
• #640568 src:cpqarrayd: "cpqarrayd: FTBFS: tar (child): /usr/src/.tar.bz2: Cannot open: No such file or directory"
  update packaging for 3.x kernels and upload to DELAYED/2
• #640625 src:scim-bridge: "scim-bridge: FTBFS: rm: cannot remove debian/tmp/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/*/immodules/im-scim-bridge.a': No such file or directory"
  apply multiarch changes from Ubuntu / Daniel T Chen and do a QA upload
• #642034 libjifty-plugin-oauth-perl: "FTBFS: Can't locate Test/Script/Run.pm in @INC"
  add missing build dependency (pkg-perl)
• #642166 src:libjifty-plugin-wikitoolbar-perl: "libjifty-plugin-wikitoolbar-perl: FTBFS: missing build-dep on libtest-script-run-perl"
  add missing build dependency (pkg-perl)
• #642167 src:libjifty-plugin-comment-perl: "libjifty-plugin-comment-perl: FTBFS: missing build-dep on libtest-script-run-perl"
  add missing build dependency (pkg-perl)
• #642237 src:libdbd-odbc-perl: "libdbd-odbc-perl: FTBFS: fails to configure"
  adjust build system to multi-arched odbc-dev (pkg-perl)

random notes:

• "look, mom, #RCBW and /me are mentioned in the recent debian project news!"
• looking at the ubuntu box in a package's PTS page sometimes shows valuable patches that have not yet been forwarded to the debian BTS & are just waiting to be applied.

...but I didn't break it myself. Still, Patrick Makau broke today Haile Gebresselassie's world record by 21 seconds, lowering it down to 2h03'38". This is an impressive performance, considering the quite "high" temporature today in Berlain (about 23 C). My own race was quite good, though not perfect. My goal was targeting 3h36', to break my own record (3h40'24"). However, my preparation was complicated by an hurted ankle in early August, then a very shaky September month at work with a lot of stress and work days up to 12 hours. Not the best way to prepare a marathon. Last two weeks were fairly good wrt running, with an half-marathon run in 1h43' two weeks ago. Still, we complicated this by speding a few days to do sightseeing in Berlin (you can't really be in such a nice city and not try to see it!). So, that means a lot of walking here or there, with museum visits and quite long days. Again, not the best way to prepare a marathon..:-) Still, my watch was set on a 5'07"/km pace. My goal was starting like this, work to avoid going faster over the first 20K ad see what happens. At the beginning, it worked fairly well. Contrary to Paris marathon, Berlin's start in Strasse des 17. Juni is very cool for the first 3 kilometers with an incredibly wide avenue, whilst Paris marathon shrinks in Rue de Rivoli after km 1.5, making it fairly complicated to pass. Also, runners in Germany are much more respectful of running principles and very few register for starting blocks that are nont their real performance (like registering for 3h30 while your best time if 4h). So less passing and a much more costant pace. Up to km15 in Kreuzbeg, everything went well, though the heat was growing, which already made me suspect that I would not make it (0-5K in 25'31", 5-10K in 25'54", 10-15K in 25'55") . From this point, I had to "fight" a bit more to keep the pace...and a few streets without shade had their effect. Moreover, I already had to refill my belt bottle after drinking 0,8l for the first 17KM. The pace thus went down to about 5'10-5'15" and I reached half-marathon in 1h50'28", already not really on time for less than 3h40). 15-20K in 26'41", including a bottle refill. Then 20-25 in 25'44", so small drop after all. However, the wall hit me on km28. For the first time in my marathon life, I think I considered abandoning because I was feeling without any energy and still 1/3 of a marathon to run. Well, that was only the 30K wall which they apparently moved 2K earlier..:-) After calming myself down, I decided to do what has to be done in such case: refill with energy. So long for the gels I had and particularly the hyper-glucidic "Coup de Fouet". Finally, around KM30, I found more motivation to complete the race. Anyway, we were then very very far away, at the end of Hohenzollendamm, so the only option was to come back anyway! Despite all this, I kept a very decent pace, after all: 26'45" for 25-30K. Each kilometer, my watch was beeping to remind me that I was not crawling on the street but more keeping about 5'20". Still, the last kilometers on these giants avenues (oh, endless Leipziger Strasse after Postdamer Platz!) needed a lot of motivation to be completed. It's indeed only at Gendarmenmarkt that I finally could be reliefed and know that I would not only finish, but also do it in a very decent time. 30-35K in 27'43", 35-40K in 27'38". Then we turned in Unter den Linden and, even better, at KM41, my beloved Elizabeth was there yelling. This, plus Brandenburder Tor not so far away....I could then "sprint" at 5'08" for the last kilometer. Finally, this marathon (my 6th official) was completed in 3h44'50", which is my second best. I'm really happy with this result, finally. OK, I didn't break my record as I was intending to (I think I can go down to 3h35 with a normal preparation and good conditions), but the way I managed the difficulty was finally good. So, now, let's prepare the next goal, a 67km night race in November, the longest distance I have ever run. Yet another different thing to prepare. And what about Berlin in all this? Well, in short, that city is *great*. What could I tell more?

So much reporting on hacking is . so bad (no surprise to readers here). Worse is that term term was bandied out constantly during the News of the World Scandal. In contrast to this historical tradition, On the Media has curated a stellar Hack Week that provides depth, breath, and nuance; the producer of the show, Alex Goldman, poured an enormous amount of time, labor, and thought in compiling a rich set of materials to get at the term hackers, the many facets of hacking (from phreaking to hardware hacking) and best of all, interviewed the fantastic Marcia Hoffman from the EFF on one of the laws, the Computer and Fraud Abuse Act, whose massiveness (and vagueness) has the potential to do a lot of damage and which is often wielded against hackers (and many non-hackers as well). There is also an audio section on the term hacker, which I myself might have done slightly differently, emphasizing, that alongside the MIT hacker (covered so well by Steven Levy) phone phreaking (only called as such in 1973 but well and alive before then) fed into a transgressive tradition that was not simply about malicious hacking nor about the media portrayals that started to explode in the 1980s. The interview gets at the fact that there are differences and hackers can be quite sectarian but I might have pushed this fact a little further. All in all and after the ad nauseum use and abuse of the term hacking during the News of the World scandal (and its overabuse with Anonymous), this collection is the perfect antidote.

Thanks to Bruce Schneier security blog, I come across an interesting article about liability and software. The problem is well known

• if you impose liability on any software producer, then it's a dead sentence for free software
• but the current situation enable software dealer to sell faulty software with I can't audit, with liability for them if their software fail on a large scale.

Of course for better security, the solution could be to not use proprietary software, still a law as proposed on ACM could be useful to protect madam Michu.