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

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

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

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

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

Ben Fowler writes about the issues related to nuclear power in Australia. He spends 8 paragraphs discussing the issues on the “Right” side of politics - of which 6 concern the an Australian nuclear weapons capability and then spends 3 out of 5 paragraphs related to the “Left” side explaining that he thinks that everyone who opposes nuclear power is a Luddite. Ben didn’t bother providing any links or statistics to back up his claims, so I’ll assist him in analysing these issues by providing some facts that we can discuss. In March Spain had wind power provide 27% of all electricity (making wind power the main source of power for the country). I blogged about this at the time. While Spain has an ongoing program of building new wind power stations the majority of wind turbines in Spain are quite old (the Model T of wind power) and not nearly as efficient as modern turbines that would be installed for Australian power plants. The Danish government has announced plans to use wind power for 75% of their electricity. Denmark has a much smaller land area than Australia, which means that generating so much electricity from wind power is more technically challenging for them than it would be for us. A larger land area means that when one area has low wind speeds other areas can be used to provide power. For home electricity generation wind turbines have not yet been proven to be practical. The linear speed of the blade is determined by the wind speed and the rotational speed is therefore a factor of the wind speed divided by the radius of the blades. This means that smaller turbines have higher rotational speeds which causes more noise (bad for getting council approval), also to avoid turbulence a wind turbine will ideally be some distance above the ground (8 meters is good) which again gives problems when getting approval. The O’Connor Hush Turbine is supposed to solve the noise component of this problem. It will be interesting to see whether home based wind power becomes practical in future - if so I would like to get an O’Connor turbine on my house! Home solar power has been proven to work well, in the form of both solar-electric and solar hot water (I know several people who have been happily using them for years). You don’t get cold showers when the sun isn’t shining, you instead use gas or electricity to heat the water (it’s a standard feature in a solar hot water system). Also your home electricity doesn’t go off when the sun stops shining, you have batteries that are charged during sunny times to run things overnight, and when they get flat you pay for power from the grid. It is quite realistic to stick solar power systems on every roof in the country. The added cost to the process of building or purchasing a house is negligible and the benefits include having electricity when mains power is unavailable (NB water is used in generating electricity from coal or nuclear power plants so a bad drought will eventually become a time of limited mains power). Even the smallest home solar electric system will produce enough electricity to power a fridge and freezer 24*7 so it’s a very useful backup for essential power. The government is subsidising the installation of solar electric systems, so it seems that they expect everyone to get one eventually. Dr. Ziggy Switkowski (the main advocate of nuclear power in Australia) says “the introduction of a carbon tax could make nuclear power the cheapest option by the 2020s”. In consecutive paragraphs Ben derides “carbon trading” and claims that nuclear power is “practical”. Unfortunately the main advocate of nuclear power in Australia does not believe that it is practical without a carbon tax. Ziggy also states that it would take at least 15 years to complete a nuclear power plant, unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of waiting for 15 years before starting to try and reduce the damage that we are doing to the environment. The Stern report makes the economic consequences of inaction quite clear. I am not a Luddite. I oppose nuclear power because of the risks related to accidental release of radioactive material and the routine release of radioactive material as part of the uranium mining process, and the dangers related to long-term storage of nuclear waste (let’s not assume that Star Trek science can make it all non-radioactive). Nuclear power is not cost effective for Australia and will take so long to develop that it won’t save us from the serious economic damage predicted by the best scientific models as presented in the Stern report. For large scale power generation wind power works now, can be easily implemented and has no hidden costs or risks. There will never be a Chernobyl type accident with wind power, it is inherently a safe technology. For small scale power generation (something you can add to your home) solar power works well, is not expensive (when considering the price of a house and especially when the government subsidy is counted) and has the potential to seriously reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced.

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After having been here in Edinburgh for about a week now and not having blogged about it, I'm starting to feel slightly guilty about it. Only slightly so, however. I did figure out that the wireless on my PowerBook doesn't work with 2.6.21, whereas it seems to (flakily) work with 2.6.18. Yay broadcom. Not. Anyway, life here in Edinburgh has been fun so far. Mostly. I had a bit of Mao-playing, some bit of "putting faces to names", a bit of Scotch-tasting (of which I still need to remember taking one (1) bottle home for $BROTHER who really likes the stuff), and a bit of getting-so-drunk-I-woke-up-not-yet-completely-sober-and-decided-it-might-be-nice-to-find-my-bed-again, too. Like I said, mostly fun. The guy puking on my luggage last night wasn't fun, but at least he managed to puke most of it right next to my luggage. But I'll still have some laundry to do, I guess. DebCamp to me isn't about being productive, so much as it is about meeting people and getting to know the environment. But I still managed to do some work on nbd-server, which is now at version 2.9.3 (plus some patches stolen from svn) in Debian. That helps, too. In an hour or two, I'll be doing my m68k got kicked out of etch!?!?! Oh noes! BoF. The schedule already lists 11 people who will be attending, so that's cool. Let's hope we get something productive out of it.

It actually seemed as though I wouldn't be going to DebConf this year. I didn't get to work much the last two months, since I wanted to spend all my time on the near completion of my thesis so I didn't have the money to pay for a flight (or train) to EDI and back myself. Due to that same thesis I also didn't have the time to prepare a talk this year so I was also not a speaker. Since I am also neither a DD nor in NM I was pretty sure I wouldn't be eligible for travel sponsorship this year. And, as expected, I was indeed very far down the queue, so when I still hadn't heard anything about being sponsored until about a week before DebConf was starting I had pretty much given up on the whole thing and resigned to the fact that this year's DebConf would happen without me. However, on 10 June I had a mail in my Inbox. Subject: "Your travel cost sponsorship request for DebConf7". It seems the DebConf team was able to dig up some more money and do another run on the sponsorship queue. This was three days before I had to get my thesis to the print shop and I wasn't really doing anything else except for frantically going over my proof readers' annotations, doing last minute additions, changes etc. and occasionally lie down for a few hours of rather uneasy sleep. So my first reaction was something along the lines of "What?! Now?! I don't have time for this now! Go away!" and I was pretty close to answering the mail saying "Thank's but that's too short notice. I won't be coming, have fun, see you all next year." Luckily Tolimar prevented this though and actually managed to find a flight for me that not only goes on the actual days that I had originally planned to arrive and leave but that is also not far over my travel sponsorship! So, long story short, I'll be flying to EDI on Wednesday. It'll only be for the very last few days and I am probably already missing out on lots and lots of stuff, but at least I'll be able to attend for a few days. And in time for debian-women's third birthday! :) I just hope everything will go well, it seems there's a lot of trouble with flying to DebConf this year, at least judging from what I read on planet and heard on irc. See you all soon!

Just stopped off in Derby on the way to Edinburgh. It was a good move in one way, because my inbound train was running over 30 minutes late (diverted due to the floods in the Midlands) and my outbound one is only 10 minutes late... but the manager just announced flooding in West Yorkshire, so I guess we'll see. The inbound train was called Vyjaer Kernewek (or something like that), which was nice to see. Derby was useful in another way (besides a good wifi-enabled light meal at the big blue coffee shop). I bought a laptop case. I didn't plan that when I set off, but by Bristol it was already obvious that I couldn't carry all my widgets in one bag. I also couldn't get the laptop out on the train, for fear of a packing explosion. So, Derby has shops. It also seems to have a market-free market place as the focus of the city centre. There's a view up to the cathedral, a small waterfall... and the Derby Mountain Rescue. I suppose the peaks are near, but mountains? The market wasn't in the marketplace. It seemed to be under cover in two parts. One is in the guildhall and the other is in a shopping centre that seems to have an identity crisis - is it the Eagle Centre, or is it Westfield? - and also has a building site attached that greets you as you approach from the railway. Not good tourist promotion. Until the building site, the City-Rail Trail is signposted well, about 5 minutes walk, but the signposts are a bit odd. I noticed the funny ridges first and dismissed them as an anti-spin thing, but then I noticed some bronze floppy disks (I'll post a photo once I find the right USB lead). Other attachments included spark plugs and glasses. There's no sign explaining it that I saw. What the heck is that all about? Coda: No, it wasn't a good move. Apparently there's more flooding in South Yorkshire, so I arrived about midnight and this is posted the next day. At least I'm having a better time of it than damog, who's stuck in New York and I wonder whether other tales of woe will appear on Planet Debian as people find net access. Now for breakfast and planning the day.

On the way I managed to wash and dry the Debconf badge, but it seems like it survived. Good news.

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

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

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

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

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

Comments: (8) Trackbacks: (1)

Comments

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

Trackbacks

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

Debcamp is productive Shame on me for having underestimated the productiveness of DebCamp/DebConf. This year I'm overwhelmed by things to do and the first (for me) 2 days of DebCamp have really been productive. Yesterday the Zenoss packaging has taken off. We have already implemented (thanks to Fabio) the needed changes in dzhandle to properly handle ZEO databases, added user management for the zenoss system user, updated the documentation and we started working on the dbconfig-common stuff (we also have just noticed that Seanius, dbconfig-common author, is arriving tomorrow at DebConf, what a great occasion!). Today I've worked more on the OCaml packaging side. A first working version of OCaml 3.10.0 is now available in experimental .. ehm, oops, I meant in the NEW queue; CamlP4 available in there has been finally properly split into (huge) pieces and people can start rebuilding OCaml packages against it. Next day, actually hour, exciting adventures for me include:

• Vim packaging stuff (Jamessan has just arrived in EDI as well, and we plan to both kickstart the Debian Vim policy and to do some vim-specific BSP)
• OCaml automatic dependency handling stuff. In a few minutes me, Gildor, and Jcristau will brainstorming about that ... somewhere in this castle.

Wow, I'm overwhelmed, but it's actually soooo fun!

One of the reasons I tend not to blog very much is that I don't have much to say to the Planet Debian audience (the only place I know my blog is syndicated) that hasn't been said a dozen times before. But the world's best release party (the one good enough to cross an ocean for) gave me food for thought, and for once I'm inspired in the true spirit of blogging to write even if nobody cares what I have to say. Even if it has taken me until two months after the release to write it... Folks within the Debian community have been asking for years whether it's really still worthwhile for Debian to do stable releases, or if we're better off focusing on our "core competency" of testing and unstable and leaving stable releases to derivatives. For me, the answer to this question is an unqualified: yes, it's worthwhile. Of course that's the answer you'd expect from a release manager. Who would want to believe after committing as much time as the release team does that their efforts had been wasted? But the investment I've made in the etch release wasn't done without reflection; I recognize that the level of involvement required to be a release manager has come at some personal cost to me, as it does for each member of the release team, and I have made the investment anyway because I believe in Debian's philosophy, its goals, and its community. Even outside of a stable release, Debian packages really are great; in spite of the bugs and library transitions that we as release managers spend our time on in unstable and testing, and figures showing that within a month of the etch release we already had some 500 RC bugs identified for lenny, both unstable and testing do a great job of meeting the needs of many of our users. And package maintainers are constantly improving their packages in unstable, fixing bugs and adding new features. Unstable is a flowing river, vibrant and vital, never the same twice -- and only rarely are people dragged to their deaths by the undertow. ;) Maintainers often don't get to choose the version of their package that goes into stable. When it comes to a stable release, the bug you know is quite often better than the bug you don't. But although the release team is charged with chasing out the release-critical issues in preparation of a stable release, it isn't just the release team who deserves credit for etch. Etch is a monument to the work of all Debian maintainers, who have each helped shape the release with their contributions. "Stable" doesn't mean "perfect", but it does mean "lasting": in etch we have not only created what I think is the highest-quality OS I've ever had the privilege to be involved in, we have created something permanent that will be burned to thousands or millions of disks, something that users will continue to use and install for years to come. Far from standing in opposition to unstable, it is a perfect complement, letting us share everything that's great about Debian with users for whom tracking a constantly-changing testing or unstable simply isn't an option. I had decided well before etch was finished that it was time for me to move on from serving as release manager, but I still look forward to great things from Debian stable for lenny and releases beyond. With last weekend's release team meeting in Juelich, and the wonderful collaboration that's sure to take place this week at DebConf 7, I think we're off to a great start. The grumbling on IRC about broken packages and missing builds and uncoordinated library transitions is already in full swing for lenny -- and I'm no small contributor to that myself even now -- but we shouldn't let that blind us to what a great achievement etch has been for the Debian community, and what a great achievement lenny will be when it's released exactly on schedule next year.

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

Chat with bubulle These are a few notes from a chat with Bubulle about package descriptions. Check a description against keywords To see what packages would match certain keywords, and how:

ept-cache dumpavail keyword1 keyword2   grep-dctrl -sPackage,Search-Score .

To check how much a package would match certain keywords:

#!/bin/sh
PACKAGE=$1
shift
ept-cache dumpavail "$@"   grep-dctrl -sSearch-Score -FPackage -X $PACKAGE

Technical details in the descriptions The programming language used to implement the software and the X UI toolit used by the software can also be removed from descriptions: Debtags offer a better place to store this information, and most package managers now show tags together with the package description. Submitting descriptions for review Submitting descriptions for review to the Smith Review Project means posting them to the publicly archived debian-l10n-english mailing list, and that may turn off some. It would also be interesting to change the description template generated by debhelper to mention the Smith Review Project and a link to description guidelines Description guidelines There are various description guidelines that could use consolidation and eventually inclusion in the Developers Reference. For example, Writing package descriptions is a very good guide, but most of the unsolved issues at the end have actually now been solved by the Smith Review Project.

I’ve thought S3 was pretty awesome sounding ever since it launched early last year. Sadly I haven’t managed to get it set up yet – it’s refusing to accept my credit card (which I’ve used to buy stuff from Amazon before), so I just get a NotSignedUp error and told “Your account is not signed up for the S3 service.” The webservices help has responded, but not managed to work out wtf’s going on yet. One of the things I’d like to do with it is (the pretty obvious and staid) remote backup thing – though what I’m actually hoping for is more to get something more or less the same as the backup described in Greg Egan’s Distress, which is more or less: your laptop automatically backs itself up to the web somewhere, then when your laptop dies or gets stolen, you get a random new one, authorise it with your passcode or thumbprint or whatever, and it automatically recovers itself from the backups you’ve got on the web. Oddly though none of the command line tools seem to quite do backup “right” (by my definition) – there’re some that encrypt, some that do an rsync equivalent, and none that I’ve seen compress, all of which seem like a requirement to me; and given the support for metadata pretty easy to actually handle. It’d be even nicer if there were some other services with similar APIs (and cost structures!) so it wasn’t quite tying yourself to amazon so much, but until Google decide to release G-Drive or some other distributed thing happens, there’s not much to be done. Of course while amazon won’t even let me in, not much to be done…

So I'm off travelling again. I've done way too much lately, and I'm looking forward to getting home and staying there for a while. I flew from San Francisco to London yesterday for my first ever business class trip. United business class is whole different experience to United economy, that's for sure. Aside from getting ridiculous amounts of legroom, and much better cabin service, the thing I like best about the whole experience was the preferential treatment. I arrived at SFO, and there was an unholy amount of people at the economy check-in counters, so it was really nice to breeze around to the business check-in counters and wait in a much more manageable line. At Heathrow, I got to used the priority immigration line, and my bag came out pretty quickly, so I'd breezed through Heathrow and onto the tube faster than you could say "Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?". Very happy with all of that. I caught a Piccadilly line tube from Heathrow to Acton Town, then changed to the District line to Victoria station. The tube (particularly the first one) was smaller than I expected. The ceiling was pretty low, the aisle narrow, and it just felt pretty squishy. The second one seemed a bit wider and taller. It didn't feel like it could really deal with peak-hour commuting, but I guess maybe the frequency makes up for the capacity... Buckingham Palace Road turns out to have pretty wacky numbering. Just because you're opposite number 80, doesn't mean the odd numbered 80's are anywhere near you. So it took me longer than it should have to find the hotel, and I wandered up and down Buckingham Palace Road for a while before I'd managed to calibrate myself to the numbering. More frequent numbers on the buildings would have helped immensely. So I've hardly seen anything, I'm really just passing through on the way to Edinburgh for Debconf, but I love what I've seen so far. The red double-decker buses. The taxis. The post boxes. The phone booth's. It all feels really really old, but still really really alive. We've got to come back and do the place properly. The office is really nice as well. Very modern looking. Very open-plan like the Sydney one. I wasn't able to sleep on the plane unfortunately (I couldn't convince my brain to switch off), so I was pretty zonked by the end of the day (got into the office shortly after 9am). I had a fairly productive day, and went to the hotel and crashed at about 6:30pm, woke up at about 2:30am and couldn't get back to sleep. Hopefully if I just soldier on through today, I'll get to sleep a bit later this evening and do something closer to a normal night's sleep. I'm catching the train to Edinburgh today (I blame Mark (who doesn't appear to believe in permalinks) for putting the idea in my head). Looking forward to another tube ride and seeing some of the countryside. I've been really apprehensive about this trip ever since I booked it. Mainly because I'm going over to Dublin after Debconf to try and apply for a new visa. For some reason, I'm just really worried that's all going to go pear-shaped. I'm feeling better now that I'm here, but I'll feel even better once the trip to the consulate is behind me. Even better still when I get my passport back successfully. Best still when I'm home again.

Transcript of the call for participation on the Gathering of the Indigenous People of the Americas. If you don’t mind, feel free to skip it. Considering that 515 years after the first invasion of our ancestral territories, the war of conquest, the plunder, and capitalist exploitation have not altered their course, but rather have become a new war of extermination, a war designed for the destruction and utter plunder of all the original peoples of the Americas; Considering that the long history of wars of independence and numerous revolutions that have taken place on our continent have not yet changed the condition of colonized people, nor have they allowed for a full recognition of our rights in the nation states that formed in the last two centuries; Considering that despite a long history of domination, our resistance has sustained itself and that our people continue to live and struggle, and that this struggle has been encouraged by the uprising of the Zapatista National Liberation Front (EZLN) in the first days of 1994; Considering that the strategies of the national governments of the Americas have always sought the division of our people through the establishment of borders, reservations, and legislation designed to fragment us and to neutralize our efforts of autonomy; Considering that the strengthening and the unity of the struggles of liberation of the indigenous people of the Americas will be possible as our peoples meet and come to know each other; Considering that for our people it has proven necessary that their struggles be made known world wide in order to be supported by all honest movements that struggle for a society effectively just, free, and democratic; All indigenous communities, tribes, and nations of the Americas are called to

THE GATHERING OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE OF THE AMERICAS Which will take place the 11st, 12nd, 13rd, and 14th days of October, 2007 in the community of V cam, Yaqui Territory, Municipality of Guaymas, State of Sonora, Mexico, to address the following

TOPICS 1 The war of capitalist conquest in the indigenous communities in the Americas.
2 The resistance of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and our defense of
mother earth, our territories, and our cultures.
3 Why do we, the indigenous peoples of the Americas, struggle?

ORGANIZATIONAL PRINCIPLES 1st Principal. Delegates, observers, and communications media workers attending the Gathering will abide by the regulations of the Yaqui Tribe devised by their Traditional Authorities in order to govern their presence while in attendance.
2nd Principal. All participating indigenous communities, tribes, and nations are invited to demonstrate their clothing, songs, dances, and other traditional forms of expression.
3rd Principal. Authorities and Representatives of indigenous communities, tribes, and nations of the Americas are invited to participate as delegates with voice and vote.
4th Principal. Individuals and members of social movements and civil organizations in solidarity with the struggles of indigenous peoples of the Americas invited by the organizing commission will be able to participate as observers.
5th Principal. National and international communications media workers that are accredited by the organizing commission will be able to cover the event.
6th Principal. All agreements adopted at the Gathering will be made by consensus of the participants and not through the method of voting.
7th Principal. Organization of the Gathering, the national and international distribution of its publicity, as well as accreditation of participating delegates, invitees, and any unforeseen issues will be resolved only by the organizing commission in conformity with the Traditional Authorities of the Community of V cam, Yaqui Tribe, The National Indigenous Congress (CNI), and the Sixth Commission of the Zapatista National Liberation Front. Information: 1. Office of the Sixth Commission of the EZLN, located on Zapotecos St. No 7 Col.Obrera, C.P. 06800 Mexico, D.F. Telephone: (01 or 011) 55 67 61 42 36 Monday thru Friday, 10 AM 8 PM., Saturday, 10 AM 6 PM.
webpage: www.encuentroindignea.org e-mail: informes@encuentroindigena.org
2. Official Precinct Office of the Traditional Guard of the Yaqui Tribe, Vicam Station ,Colonia Yaqui, Municipio de Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico. Telephone: (045 or 001) 64 49 98 94 08.
3. Office of the Organization of Indigenous and Campesino Communities, de Tuxpan, Jalisco, in Nicolas Bravo, No. 65 , Tuxpan, Jalisco,. Telephone: (01 or 011) 371 41 764 15 from Monday Saturday, 10 AM 8 PM. e-mail: comunidad_tuxpan@hotmail.com Written - April 22nd, 2007 in Tohono O Odham Territory of the Tohono O Odham Nation, Sonora, Mexico. Attentively,

Wa-a itom yo Lutu-ria yoribetchibo, intoka a Wiutinepo Amani
(Por el respeto a nuestros usos y costumbres, nuestra identidad y cultura y nuestra verdad que permanezcan en el tiempo y no se olviden)

Never Again, a Mexico Without Us ~ Liberty, Justice, and Democracy

 

Nde Cultural Historical Organization
(Organizaci n Cultural e Hist rica de la Naci n Nde/Apache)

 

Tierra y Libertad / Chicana Indigenous Organization, Tucson, Arizona
(Tierra y Libertad / Organizaci n Xicana Ind gena, Tucson, Arizona

 

Native and Immigrant Indigenous Development Organization
(Desarrollo de Los Pueblos Indios Inmigrantes y Nativos, A.C.)

 

Michelle Cook (Dene Nation)
(Nacion Dene/Navajo)

 

Tohono O Odham Nation Mexico United States
(Nacion Tohono O Odham M xico - Los Estados Unidos de America)

 

Traditonal Authorities of Vicam Community, Yaqui Tribe
(Autoridades Tradicionales del Pueblo V cam, Tribu Yaqui)

 

National indigenous Congress (Congreso Nacional Ind gena)

 

Clandestine Revolutionary Committee, General Command of
the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN)
(Comit Clandestino Revolucionario Ind gena-Comandancia General del
Ej rcito Zapatista de Liberaci n Nacional)

On Debian Etch systems it is impossible to install out of the box both libglade-gnome0-dev and libsvn-dev due to a conflict between depended upon libraries.

In order to install them side by side you will have to modify an existing libdb4.4-dev deb package to add "libdb3-dev" to the Provides: field of the package. You can do this by editing DEBIAN/control after running:

deb-reversion -k /bin/sh libdb4.4-dev_*.deb

When done, exit and install the newly created libdb4.4-dev package:

dpkg -i libdb4.4-dev*LOCAL*.deb


I managed to find this solution thanks to mrvn and other people on IRC. Thanks.

My latest venture, Expectnation, is conference management software aimed primarily at the traditional form of running conferences. The schedule, speakers and topics are all lined up in advance.
Campers at O'Reilly's Foo Camp unconference However, many conferences now are taking the form of "unconferences" in whole or part, exemplified by the BarCamp movement. At these events, the schedule is assembled just in time, and almost everybody is a presenter. The same problems exist for BarCamp organizers as for conventional event organizers. They still need to use a bunch of diverse tools for their web sites, registration, communication and reportage. Expectnation solves this problem by being a "one-stop shop" tool for conventional conference structures, and we want to do it for BarCamps and unconferences too. Tell me what you need  I'm asking for feedback from attendees and organizers of BarCamp-like events as to what kinds of features they're seeking in their support software. We already have the platform to build on, and we want to find out the best ways in which to do it.The sort of subject areas I'm keen to hear about include

• registration,
• attendee social networking,
• documenting the event,
• tools already in use, and their effectiveness.

If you have views on this, please join the discussion thread over on the forums. It's worth restating too that I'm very keen to talk about this with attendees as well as organizers.

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

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

The Real Cambridge is quite a lot different from the US Cambridge. There are vast stretches of green grass everywhere. People drive little brightly-coloured Volkswagons on the wrong side of the street, and in some places one can be walking down the middle of the street and not realize that vehicle traffic can go there too until a car creeps up behind you, trying to get through. Everywhere that’s not explicitly marked “no cycles” (the colleges, historic important buildings, etc.) features dozens of locked up, often step over-framed commuter bikes, decorated with panniers and front baskets. I still find it vaguely nerve-wracking being in a British vehicle, since I’m always expecting cars traveling in the opposite direction to come wheeling towards me. But I have yet to step off the curb and almost get hit by a double-decker bus because I looked in the wrong direction before starting across. The Cam River is frankly quite puny. Walking alongside it you can witness such events as crew boats nearly crashing into tour boats, and apparently a sort of crew racing called “knocking” is often used because of the river’s narrowness. It’s also not very deep, as can be proven by the periodic punt hires along its shores. And here punting is not to procrastinate (very much an MIT-ism) but to propel a punt , which is a flat-bottomed boat with square ends, by pushing a pole against the bottom of the river. It’s difficult to go six hours without being offered a cup of tea, especially if one is visiting many different people. And I have no idea how people can manage to get drunk off of beer, because a pint is quite enough to fill my stomach and leave no room left for more. So much liquid! And the prices of everything here are just about the same as in the US–except in pounds sterling, not dollars. Which means things really cost twice as much. But since the only things I really need to buy are food, drink, and miscellaneous (like anti-death-by-hay-fever-histamine), things will work out alright. Things have been awesome so far, and the local free software-Debian-Ubuntu-GNOME crowd has made me feel right at home. Maybe someday I will actually swap Cambridges for a while. I’ve gotten to see a bit of Cambridge University here too. Since Hanna’s (really awesome) dad is a fellow of King’s College, we got to go in and look around even though it’s exam season and the general public isn’t allowed in — there’s always a person in funny academic robes standing at the gate and shooing away tourists. Right through the gates there is a large, pristine mowed lawn. It’s in such a condition because no one is allowed to walk on it — unless they’re a fellow of the college. Flaunt that. Her dad also supervises the Cambridge end of CME, so we crashed an end-of-the-year garden party for that this past afternoon. And Saturday it’s off to Scotland, which should be just as awesome! And with more people and more Debian! I’m excited.

Via Jason, my brilliant former Constitutional Law professor Wendy Parmet weighs in on the XDR-TB scare. Unlike most coverage, Professor Parmet brings out the big picture of how the incident fits into a larger flawed public health policy:

…It is trite but true that in America we admire individual self-sufficiency and rugged individualism. Not only do we admire this taking care of number 1 attitude, but public health has encouraged it. Over the last several decades, public health has emphasized the role that individuals can and should play in determining their own health. Indeed, every day of week, we are bombarded with messages about how we can do this or that to take care of ourselves. Sometimes the message extends to what we can do for our families. Seldom are we told what or how we can do for unnamed others. Even infectious disease policies perpetuate this myth of self-control. We are told to vaccinate our children to protect them. We are told to help ourselves by getting a flu shot. And the federal government provides us with information about how we should prepare to help ourselves and our family in the event of an influenza pandemic. This privatization of infectious disease control is even evident in the U.S. approach to quarantine. During the SARS epidemic, governments in Canada and in Asia quickly realized that quarantines would not be effective without income protection. So laws were passed to assure that people would receive compensation while under quarantine. In the United States, in contrast, despite all the efforts that have been made at public health preparedness and public health law modernization, income replacement remains off the table (the Family and Medical Leave Act only guarantees unpaid leaves for some ill employees). Perhaps even more astonishingly, in its proposed quarantine regulations, the CDC failed to ensure that it would provide all necessary health care to those it quarantined. …

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Hello World Debconf (16.6.2007) is getting closer, in 77 hours I will take the train to the airport in Geneva and then fly to Edinburgh. I didn’t really organize anything yet so it becomes stressful.
* Today I organized a kilt from a friend, looks quite funny, I will wear it on Saturday.
* Wednesday I want to prepare my private notebook and maybe even my IBM x60s from the office.
* Wednesday I want to prepare my digital camera and clean the memory stick.
* Wednesday I’ll organize 95 for the LPI exams.
* Wednesday evening I’ll go out with some friends to have party (several of my friends go to the Greenfield festival Thursday evening and I go to Debconf, time to celebrate)
* Thursday evening I will leave work early and go to Biel to buy some clothes for me, cheese for madduck and the othere Cheese’n'Wine participiants, chocolate for ana, cookies for Joerg. (If you also want something from .ch, please ping me on IRC)
* Thursday after shopping I need to go to a business dinner in a Mongolian BBQ restaurant.
* Friday I need to organize some W-Lan cards for the airport in Geneva in a Swisscom-Shop.
* Friday I would like to bring a friend a birthday gift.
* Friday I would like to go to have a drink with my ex-girlfriend.
* Friday night I need to prepare my baggage including all technical stuff. So you see, several tasks I have to do (this weren’t all of them) and I hope to be able to do all of that See you in Teviot, Saturday afternoon!