After this bugreport from Tuomo Valkonen (upstream of the ion window manager) against the ion3 Debian package and a personal discussion with him by mail, I'm no longer interested in maintaining the ion2, ion3, ion3-mod-ionflux and ion3-scripts packages. Drop me a mail when you're interested in taking over these packages.

One thing that has always surprised me is how few people talk to speakers after they have finished their lecture. A lecture might have many questions and the questions may be cut off, but when the speaker leaves the room they will usually do so alone.

When I give lectures at conferences I'm always happy to spend more time talking to people who are interested in the topic and disappointed that so few people choose to do so. It seems that other people have similar experiences, there have been several occasions when I have invited speakers to join me for lunch and no-one else has shown interest in joining us.

Usually the most significant factor in making someone offer a talk at a Linux conference is the opportunity to teach other people about the technology that they are working on. People with that motivation will take the opportunity to teach people at lunch, dinner, whenever.

Linux Conf Au has an event called the "Professional Delegates Networking Session" which is regarded by some people as the way to meet speakers (about half the delegates don't attend so the ratio of speakers to delegates is significantly better than at other conference events). But it seems to me that it's more efficient to just offer to buy them dinner. When I worked for Red Hat the maximum value for a gift I could accept was $100US, I expect that Red Hat has not changed this policy since then and that most companies that employ speakers at Linux conferences have similar policies. $100US is more than a meal costs at most restaurants that are near a Linux conference.

If I was a manager at a company that sent employees to a Linux conference I would first send email to some speakers who were working in areas of Linux development that were related to the projects that the employees were working on. I would ask the speakers if they would be interested in having dinner bought for them by my company and give them the option of bringing one or two friends along for a free meal (the friends would probably be people who work in similar areas).

These are some random thoughts based on a not very thorough reading of candidate platforms of the DPL Election 2007, and my subjective view of the candidates based on the mailing traffic I remember reading. Wouter Verhelst: Has quite a broad Debian-background, the platform also seems to share quite a bit of my view of where Debian's problems are at the moment. Doesn't propose a course of action right now, not sure how to judge that. Not sure if I remember Wouter being heavily involved in flamewars, but I do remember reading quite a few of his emails in discussions with interest. broad Debian-background, the platform also seems to share quite a bit of my view of where Debian's problems are at the moment. Doesn't propose a course of action right now, not sure how to judge that. Not sure if I remember Wouter being heavily involved in flamewars, but I do remember reading quite a few of his emails in discussions with interest. broad Debian-background, the platform also seems to share quite a bit of my view of where Debian's problems are at the moment. Doesn't propose a course of action right now, not sure how to judge that. Not sure if I remember Wouter being heavily involved in flamewars, but I do remember reading quite a few of his emails in discussions with interest. broad Debian-background, the platform also seems to share quite a bit of my view of where Debian's problems are at the moment. Doesn't propose a course of action right now, not sure how to judge that. Not sure if I remember Wouter being heavily involved in flamewars, but I do remember reading quite a few of his emails in discussions with interest. Aigars Mahinovs: Quoting from his platform: “My goal of running for DPL is not to be DPL, but to get a few concepts closer to real life.” So don't run for DPL, but start doing these things you're thinking about. Not being DPL has the advantage that you don't have to spend time on DPL stuff that would detract you from these goals. Speaking about your goals: (i) No release: I've thought about that, too, but I feel this would quickly make Debian irrelevant. (ii) $HOME configuration files organisation: take it up with the upstream developers of all the application. I think this is a very good idea, but freedesktop.org would be a better platform. (iii) Old Maintainer Process: Idea looking for a problem. (iv) Dropping Trademarks: not sure what to think about this. Gustavo Franco: Some focus on the desktop, and a constructive attitude towards Ubuntu, both positive in my book. (The first one primarily because on servers Linux is already quite well established, while the desktop is where more work is still to be done. Not because servers are less important.) His goals: (i) Core teams: as with Wouter, he sees that people and what goes on between them are where the problems are. (ii) Release goals: I think building the release based on release goals could be a driving force, but this is more RM area than DPL. (iii) Adding features to the bts doesn't need DPL powers. (iii) New developers: certainly an area that still needs attention, but the intended course is not entirely clear to me. (iv) NEW queue: same. (v) CTTE: Not sure what the idea behind this is. (vi) Groups: yes, but again not entirely clear what and how. (vii) Backports: yes, new versions of some software should go into Debian (stable) faster. Officially supporting backports or something else, I don't know, but this is an area where a DPL could pull together the RMs, security team(s), backports.org people etc. (viii) Universal OS: is this about more media coverage or about more face to face meetings? Both are good, but we should set clear goals beforehand. (ix) Much work is needed, especially in the area of buildd management (meaning: the processes and people behind it!). Does Gustavo have previous involvement here? (x) Vendors, Website, Publicity: This is more or less all about media coverage and popularity. Much needed, but as Debian as it is will never be able to commit to a public official opinion of anything, we'll need to think hard about what to do here. (xi) NMU: I don't see a great need for action here, personally. Overall: this platform contains too much material, I fear trying to tackle all these areas will lead to a burned out DPL within three months and little actually getting anywhere. Sven Luther: It's true that it always needs at least two people for a flamewar. But having a DPL who is always ready to provide one side of an argument is not a good idea. Sam Hocevar: Everything is high-level on his platform. Both good and bad. Not sure how to rate this platform, but I see myself nodding along. Learn from other OSs is good, but I hope he also means active cooperation and not just passive let's see how they do it. Steve McIntyre: Should have won 2006. Certainly did a lot of both behind-the-scenes work and some good communication. The platform lacks mention of relations between Debian and the outside world, which is an area where I feel some work is missing (and where the DPL as the only person with a official role also known outside Debian can make a difference), and also lacks mention of legal problems (trademarks and patents) where I'm not sure how solid Debian's work is. Additional argument in favor of Steve: Having a 2IC and promoting him to DPL the year after might be a good idea overall. Maybe we should actually elect the 2IC and only have a confirmation vote to promote him to DPL? Raphaël Hertzog: I like the DPL board idea. I also like how Raphaël focuses, in his platform, on the DPL board idea and some selected problems. On the other hand, the platform is wholly focused inward, outside relations are important, too ! Anthony Towns: Not sure what to think of the current DPL. I think he had good ideas, and I still think the original “spend Debian funds for the release”-idea was not that bad, but seeing how it all worked out was very, very painful for too many people. The platform seems pretty much empty, so I guess ajt won't have my vote this time. Simon Richter: Maybe I miss something, but I only see “don't repeat the dunc-tank flamefest” in his platform, which seems a bit thin. His observation that the real power of the DPL is to get everybody's attention may be partly true, though, even if this power will be spent as soon as a DPL, trying to mediate, lets himself be drawn into the flamewar instead (I don't accuse Simon that he ultimately will do this, but I fear that it happens all too quickly). Now what? I really don't have the time to thoroughly follow the campaigning, but I'll certainly have a look at the rebuttals, and perhaps somebody will do some summary. So the ballot below will certainly change. (You might also be able to buy the vote if you're rich enough ;-)

 [ 1 ] Wouter Verhelst
 [ 5 ] Aigars Mahinovs
 [ 3 ] Gustavo Franco
 [ 6 ] Sven Luther
 [ 3 ] Sam Hocevar
 [ 1 ] Steve McIntyre
 [ 2 ] Raphaë Hertzog
 [ 5 ] Anthony Towns
 [ 4 ] Simon Richter
 [ 5 ] NOTA

The low quality theora versions of the videos from the Debian Devroom at FOSDEM 2007 are available online now.

Better quality ones and slides will follow as they appear.

The encoded videos from the NetConf and the Formal Dependency Management talks are broken, the DV files look ok, so I expect I will be able to fix them, but this might take some time.

Enjoy :-)

P.S.: Maybe it's worthwhile to go for speaker microphones next year...

We had one of the biggest snows of the year today in Montreal. The storm, which happened overnight and was supposed to let up around noon, still hasn't stopped. It's a practical white-out outside -- big fluffy flakes everywhere. The radio said we had more than 40 cm of snow, which is just amazing. I headed over to La ka this afternoon for an interview with Steve Faguy of the Montreal Gazette. I was pretty worried about going out, but as usual I was pleasantly surprised when I was outside. Snowy weather is pretty gentle, and although I was cold and wet when I got to La ka, it wasn't all that bad. I had a good talk with Steve about Wikitravel, Montreal tech scene, and the French Revolutionary Calendar. I'm looking forward to seeing the article when it comes out. tags: steve faguy la ka snow interview gazette

certifi.ca doing well I was glad to see a post about certifi.ca in the Solution Media Blog of Thomas Huhn. Thomas set up the extremely useful OpenID Directory, so his opinion is pretty valuable. I'm glad he's as enthused about certifi.ca as I am. tags: thomas huhn certifi.ca openiddirectory openid

Registration and privacy I think I have an account on every free OpenID service on the Web. I need lots of accounts for debugging purposes, and I also like to have an idea of what people are doing with the protocol. I checked out prooveme.com a few days ago. prooveme.com gives out OpenIDs with SSL cert authentication, like certifi.ca. It seems like an OK service, but I don't think they use SSL and certs the right way. I tested the prooveme ID on a couple of services, had a couple of errors, and that was that. So I was surprised to see this posting in the proovemeblog today:

• certifi.ca is another site doing certificated OpenID. Evan, the creator of certifi.ca is a subscriber of ours. We'll obviously be pleased if he carries on using us!

Now, I've been in wikis long enough to know that you have to AssumeGoodFaith when people post things in public forums, so I'll take this comment as nothing more than clumsy but good-natured ribbing. Ha ha ha. But: I haven't publicly said that I'd tested out the prooveme server. I'm not particularly embarrassed about it, but I hadn't had any reason to mention it to anybody, either. So the only way the poster could know that I'd registered for their service was to check their database records for my registration information. Publishing users' registration info without their consent steps over an important privacy line for me and, I think, for a lot of people. I'm not sure making a joke really justifies that kind of privacy invasion. I don't feel fairly treated, here. I partly blame myself: after all, I submitted personally-identifying information (PII) into a Web form on a site without an explicit privacy policy. I've gotten so used to OpenID providers being experienced with security and privacy issues that I made assumptions that turned out not to be the case. I've taken the incident as a wake-up call to put a privacy policy on certifi.ca. I hope that will communicate to users what I consider acceptable use of their data. And I'll make sure to check carefully for privacy policies whenever creating a new account in the future. For clarity: if I have an account on a Web service, that is not any kind of endorsement of their service, and doesn't necessarily suggest that I use that service regularly (or at all). I'm going to see what I can do to get my account deleted from the prooveme servers to avoid any misunderstanding in the future. tags: prooveme privacy openid

I tried to setup VMWare today, to be able to have some virtual machines to test random stuff. My laptop only has a small HD, so I want to have all the VM stuff on my huge external USB drive. Also I only use them occasionally, so that pretty much rules out Xen. So I decided to give VMWare a try. VMWare has always been a desaster installation-wise. It took me like 5 runs to get it installed properly; you need to apply some patches or it won't work with current kernels etc. After these tries it had installed without any further error messages and the GUI also came up easily. However none of the VMs I created did anything; apparently they're supposed to at least show some BIOS like screen. Instead I only get the error message "Unable to change virtual machine power state: The process exited with an error: End of error message." And of course it doesn't tell me which process or anything else that could help debugging it. Shutdown also doesn't work properly - stopping vmware leaves a vmware-serverd process running that needs to be killed with -9. As usual, commercial software is totally disappointing. [Update: so neither the vmmon shipped with VMWare nor the one from vmware-any-any-update108 worked; keep your eyes open for update109. I managed to patch vmmon myself, in include/compat_kernel.h move the if/else part up to the front, as it is in update108.]

Recently, I got a comment on an older blog post on Edmonton that basically agreed with another comment that Edmonton was so not the cat’s meow. Despite the winter and many months later, I guess I still do think it is, although in saying so, it is not I think their assessments are wrong, I think my take has as much to do as what has come before (like NJ, which was not the high point o my life), my experiences here, and what is to come in the future. I tend to like Edmonton because there is enough stuff to do but not too much to do. It is that whole freedom from choice that I like because I often shut down in the face of too much choice. What also colors my experience in a positive light is that generally, Canadian politics, social policy, and way of life, are a step up or two (or maybe three) than that of the United States. So the worst of Canada (if you are even to call Edmonton that, which I would not), in this regard, beats out the best of the United States. And I have lived most of my life in the US so that is my point of comparison. Even if you are living in a fantastic American city, you always face the possibility of struggling in ways that will *never* happen in Canada. It makes for a calmer, less aggressive society. For example, I recently learned that Edmonton has the highest murder rate in Canada, at a whopping …. 36 people per year (population of Edmonton = 1 million). I grew up in a place, Puerto Rico where the yearly murder rate hovers at about 700-800 per year (population = 4 million). And yet people here are freaking out over the high rate of murder, which is a good thing because hopefully they can bring it down but this fact should make the US pause and think about what they are doing up north to keep the murder rate so darn low (and the answer I think is pretty easy to find). But perhaps a lot of my love of the place has as much to do or more with my state of mind. After a grueling year of finishing a dissertation under pressure as I had deadline, and then living in NJ where I was on the job market (which meant spending so much time churning out application after application and then flying around interviews), in addition to flying 7 times in one year to visit my mom, my life here just feels so much more sane than it has been in years. What sealed it all was that right before I moved here in August I was lucky enough to be offered a permanent job (which means this summer I will be moving to NYC to join this department and I will be back to the land of overwhelming choice), so that for the first time in 5 years I did not have to apply for anything in the fall that would guarantee my livelihood for the next academic year. I was not faced with a year of lots of travel (and actually traveling in out out Edmonton is really one of my least favorite things). With that firmly in place, I could just concentrate on things like my work, my friends, brewing kombucha and do things routinely, like exercise, which I had not consistently done for years. There are things about Edmonton that I find totally obnoxious like the cities inability to plow roads leaving a thick glaze of black ice on the roads so that when you drive in the city, you basically are at real risk for an accident (and this is despite a 6.6 BILLION government surplus). There are a tad too many strip malls in the outlaying areas, and of course there is the infamous winter. We are still deep in it. The cold temperatures have been with us steadily for months now and according to folks, there are still two more months to look forward to. The cold and the constant layering of clothes are getting to me a little, although I do appreciate that the cold is just not as cold as one would think with the actual temperatures. The lack of wind, the dry conditions, the cute as chubby-as-anything- bunnies that run through the snow, and the overpowering sun all help to make -6 F much more mild, so it is not as bad as you would or I would think it was. So while I am thrilled to join the department where I am moving too, I will be sad when I leave, though perhaps not as sad as Edmontons “darling” hockey player, Ryan Smith, who was just traded by the Oilers to the NY Islanders. The day he left, he literally was shedding tears at the airport. And I have to say, even though I have no attachment to hockey, I found the pictures endearing because there is nothing like seeing a grown Canadian man cry over hockey! : )

Never mind the wheels what about the fuel ? Update: Morrisons have withdrawn unleaded petrol from suspected stations as a precaution. Well done! Meanwhile, last I heard, Tesco were still denying that the contaminated fuel was anything to do with them, while flushing their tanks. Hey, it's not their cars which are kangarooing.

More comments, which I think help to narrow my choice to OpenWRT or FreeWRT. Kris Marsh commented:

"I can't comment on dd-wrt, as I've never tried it. I can, however, say that OpenWRT is great. Personally, I don't see the point in X-WRT, as I use vi and /etc/ to modify configs. Assuming you're handy with Debian (;-)), then you should be just fine without X-WRT. Tip: If you want to use WPA, you need to install the "nas" package: "ipkg install nas". I believe this non-free package is what a previous commenter was referring to."

Yes, I want to use WPA (I think some of the machines here can't do IPSec and WEP just isn't good enough) so I guess I have another freedom problem. I'd be happy with ed, but I might try X-WRT just to see how it copes with my web browser (I expect badly, like many embedded web apps, but then I could file bugs or fix it up). ranf mentioned:

"There is also a OpenWRT fork named FreeWRT ."

Argh, another candidate! Seriously, thanks for the tip. I'm not sure what it offers me over OpenWRT, as FreeWRT doesn't list either my router (Belkin POS) or my office host system (gobo) as supported and I don't intend to install svn any time soon. I'll probably try its Web Image Builder. Taneli commented:

"I believe Kamikaze has open source broadcom drivers (it's using 2.6). No idea if backport exists, but I'd venture no. Using Kamikaze sounds quite dangerous, but I haven't tried."

nbd wrote:

"Hi there. A few comments on your blog post: The main reason why the free Broadcom drivers haven't been included yet is because they're simply not ready. The Broadcom SoC needs to be handled differently than the MiniPCI cards and I'm working with the bcm43xx on that. Actually the new 2.6 based port is almost complete. As to which Firmware you want: As an OpenWrt developer I very much recommend installing X-Wrt on OpenWrt :) Anyways... Have fun!"

Yes, this is definitely a "fun" choice! I guess I won't know what works until I JFDI and pick up the pieces. Glad to hear the Broadcom drivers are still being worked on: I've met a lot of Broadcom cards and some of them can only be coerced with ndiswrapper, which isn't good. I wish I knew enough about network hardware to hack sensibly, but I don't know where to start and there's so much else to do. Finally, it looks like dd-wrt isn't a good choice. Yammering (Clint Adams) linked me to this rant and Simon Farnsworth commented along similar lines:

"X-WRT is just an easier UI that installs over OpenWRT. DD-WRT is a competing project to OpenWRT, based on the OpenWRT code, but using such "free" software techniques as product activation, and per-seat licencing to stop you "misusing" your GPL rights. I'd recommend OpenWRT/X-WRT, just because they tend to be more respectful of licences, and less prone to demanding money with menances."

I've no problem with commercialism itself, but I dislike broken promises and playing fast-and-loose with copyright. If there's evidence the other way, please let me know!

The S Class Mercedes has some really interesting safety features, see this 6.8M PDF file for details. If you are interested in technology then you want to read it just to learn about all the cool features - it's got more technology than a Prius!

The S class includes the following features to protect the occupants in the event of a crash:

• Tire pressure monitors
• Electronic Stability Program (ESP) to selectively apply the brakes to reduce the risk of skidding
• Active suspension
• Pre-Safe is a management feature that recognises a potential collision by the steering and braking patterns of the driver and prepares the vehicle for an impact. This can involve adjusting the sun-roof, the seat-belts, and the driver's seat position to prepare for impact, closing the side windows, and inflating air chambers in the sides of the seats.
• Head rests that automatically adjust in the event of a rear impact

The following features reduce the risk and/or severity of a crash:

• Night view (infra-red) display gives a display of potential obstacles ahead without dazzling oncoming traffic
• Distronic Plus is a brake assistance package that includes automatic braking based on radar surveillance of the traffic ahead
• 4Matic is a new feature that combines AWD with the traction-control feature that has become common on all expensive cars. This means that when any combination of wheels starts to spin on water or ice the brakes will be applied to them so that the wheels that have good grip can still be used for acceleration.

After a crash there are more safety features that can help you:

• The engine can be automatically turned off after an impact and if necessary the fuel supply can also be cut
• The hazard lights and emergency interior lights can be automatically activated
• The side windows can be partially lowered, if your car lands in water deep enough to submerge it then you MUST open the windows as soon as possible - otherwise water pressure may make it impossible to open the doors - people forget this so it's good to have an automatic feature
• Automatic door unlocking after an impact (good for rescuing unconscious occupants)
• Cutting points marked on the windscreen and rear window for the benefit of emergency workers who need to cut the roof off with the "jaws of life"

These features are documented as being available in the latest S Class, I haven't investigated what is available in the cheaper models and I'm not even sure where to find information on the safety features available in older models (a second-hand E class is more in my price range). But if I won the lottery a S class Merc would be high on my list of things to buy!

If you know of other cars that have a similar set of safety features to the S class and cost less then please let me know.

I will probably write a blog post about the BMW safety features in the near future. I couldn't do so immediately because the BMW web site sucks. They have a form for me to fill in contact details so that they can post me a brochure (I want to read it NOW ONLINE). The form doesn't like my postcode and refuses to proceed (it should at least have an option for them to contact me via email or phone).

I just uploaded a minor update of Pyroman to unstable and the pyroman download page on alioth. I added support for a complete interface wildcard, and added example configuration files for a single-host setup. Pyroman is a firewall configuration tool I wrote for managing the firewall of a small network consisting of four zones and servers with a dozen different tasks. It plays very well in setups with DMZ, wireless networks, intranet etc. and all kinds of different services. Key benefits are the very simple syntax, safeguards (extensive syntax checks, rollback on failure, safety timeout option for remote administration), scriptability in python and high performance, since it does not run dozens of iptables commands, but generates a script file for iptables-restore. For more benefits, see the pyroman homepage. The next version will probably feature an XML syntax additionally; while the current Python syntax is very powerful and readable, it's pretty much impossible to write a GUI for editing the policy when written this way. That's why I'd like to add an XML syntax (that can be intermixed with Python statements, but only the XML-defined parts will be editable in the GUI) that supports the key parts of configuration (if you want the rules to be generated on the fly from some database or whatever, you'll still be able to do that in Python!): making it easier to write a GUI for it.

* I Did ITP for ldtp-doc yesterday. And the great thing is that nags changed its licence from GFDL to LGPL, making things easy for Debian packaging for me (& world). Thanks nags for that. I have not seen such co-operative upstream yet!! LDTP-doc will contain html documentation for LDTP (Linux Desktop Testing Project) package.

OK, it's taking longer to find time to do this. The network is holding up this week and customers have work that needs doing urgently, so I've not risked bricking the router. sdf commented:

"i would try dd-wrt (dd-wrt.de) instead..."

Mark commented:

"Install OpenWRT 0.9 (not "Kamikaze", which is a ground-up rewrite in pre-alpha). Install X-WRT to get webinf^2 (better web interface for configuration). Read the OpenWRT documentation on how to backup/restore your firmware. Make a backup once after you get everything configured, again before installing any major new packages, and again just before a firmware upgrade. The IRC channel is hit-or-miss but the forums are well-attended by knowledgeable people. Hope this helps."

Thanks. That's a great help. sebastian commented:

"Just saw your blog entry, you could have a look at X-WRT, which is an enhanced web configuration frontend to OpenWRT. ( http://x-wrt.org/ ) otherwise, they just plain rock (my opinion) ;-)"

Ben Finney commented:

"One warning I'd give is to make clear that OpenWRT happily sets up a 'non-free' repository source for its 'ipkg' package manager. This is necessary to get the Linux 2.4.3x module for most Broadcom wireless chips, and for 'nas' which is apparently needed for WPA encryption. I vaguely recall someone announcing recently that free-software drivers were now available for most Broadcom chipsets, but that's likely only in Linux 2.6.x and may take quite some time to appear in OpenWRT."

I'm aware that I'm pretty screwed by the Broadcom chipset, but it's a step forwards from where I am. The reply:

"I'm not sure whether to hope for an improvement. Do you know if the Broadcom chipset on these devices is one that now has free drivers available? If so, possibly we could agitate for those drivers to be backported to the kernel used in OpenWRT."

I don't know, but I guess I'll find out soon. Thanks for all the great comments so far, but now I'm not sure whether I want OpenWRT, X-WRT or dd-wrt!

Lots of short, sharp items today that I want to get down.

LinuxQuestions.org supports OpenID First, I'm psyched to see that LinuxQuestions Wiki now supports OpenID. Jeremy gave the scoop in The LQ Wiki Now Supports OpenID. I was glad to see that LQ's on the OpenID path. It's a really strong community site, and I think it'll benefit greatly from opening up the authentication process. tags: linuxquestions jeremy garcia lqwiki openid

Wikia and OpenID Angela Beesley had some comments on my Journal/7 Vent se CCXV posting about wikiHow's support of OpenID. In that posting, I said that I thought companies with lots of wikis, like Wikia or wiki farms, might have a disincentive to participate in the OpenID network. Angela put me straight on the issue in a post on WikiAngela about OpenID. I'm glad to hear that Wikia is considering supporting the protocol. Then again, it's hard to believe that an Open Content, Open Source company is really going to go out of its way to avoid open standards and open login. tags: wikia openid angela

DemoCampMontreal1 I had a good time last night at DemoCampMontreal1. I gave the first demo -- on, of course, the MediaWiki OpenID extension -- and I had some technical difficulties that didn't let me show off all the functionality. Which was kind of a bummer, but there were lots of questions about it from the audience, so that kind of made up my time. The room was packed, by the way -- pretty much anyone who's anyone in Montreal tech was there. I'm looking forward to DemoCampMontreal2 on 29 March! tags: democampmontreal1 openid montreal demo

certifi.ca One of the best ways to establish credentials on the Web is to use a signed SSL certificate in your browser. It's fast, incredibly secure, and once you get it set up you can just forget it. They're also practically immune to phishing. Unfortunately, most people don't even know what browser certificates are, how they work, or what to do with them. Consequently, most Web sites don't support browser certificate authentication. Vicious cycle. But, one of the cool things about OpenID is that you can disconnect the authentication method from the Web site you're using. Most OpenID identity providers still use username/password combos for authentication, which is why critics have said that the standard is vulnerable to phishing attacks. I wanted to see if it were possible to set up an OpenID identity provider that used browser certificates as the only authentication system. So, in my copious free time, I've hacked up certifi.ca. It's based on the cool PHP OpenID Server that JanRain made, but I've ripped out all the password stuff, and now it runs on luscious certificatey goodness. I'm going to be enhancing the service in the near future, but I wanted to get feedback from folks interested in OpenID as soon as possible. I'm using it for my primary OpenID delegate, and it seems to be working great. Please give it a try and let me know what you think (admin@certifi.ca). tags: openid pkix ca browser certificates certifi.ca

DemoCampMontreal1 on Montreal Poutine There's an article on DemoCampMontreal1 on Midnight Poutine. That's me up on the stage, in the photo! tags: me democampmontreal1 midnight poutine

Nepean Hotspurs Selects win On Saturday, a Muslim girl named "Azzy" Mansour, from Ontario playing in a soccer tournament in Laval was ejected from the tournament (by a Muslim referee, notably) for wearing a hijab -- reportedly because it was a safety hazard. (Montreal Gazette story, registration required.) Admirably, her entire team forfeited the tournament in protest. I'm not excited about Quebec's reactionary activity around Muslim, Sikh, and other religious community's different clothing rules. However, I understand that Quebecois -- and French people -- have a different idea of personal freedom than Americans. I try to be understanding and put myself in the Quebec headspace for this kind of stuff. Mostly, though: I admire the soccer team, the Nepean Hotspurs Selects, for standing up for their teammate and their friend. A lot of teams might have gone ahead and played without her, and it took some courage to drop out of a tournament they'd had high hopes for. They're sixth-grade girls, but they've learned something about integrity that most adults never learn. Kudos to them. tags: quebec hijab soccer nepean hotspurs selects

Tasks 0.2 is ready to roll. Tasks is a simple To Do manager, using GTK+ and libecal (part of Evolution Data Server). No great new features over 0.1, but several bug fixes. Now that I've been putting off categories by fixing up code, I'll have to them.

• Sort tasks based on the locale
• Persist window size
• Allow GTK+ themes to change the task colours
• Move the cursor to new tasks
• Remove the None priority from the interface
• Add a frame around the date popup (thanks Luca)
• Don't close the date popup when the month is changed (thanks Kris)
• Pop down the combo when the button is pressed (thanks Kris)
• Add a faded label to the entry explaining what it is for
• Fix memory leaks

For 0.3 I invite a dedicated member of gnome-i18n to be the first person to send a patch to i18n the source and provide a translation. Fame and glory can be yours!

Since I’m on a Google kick these last few days, let me ask a question I’ve been kicking around in my head for a long time: When are we going to get an API for our Gmail contacts? Like scads of other people, I use Gmail as my primary mail “client” these days, and that means I want things like email autocomplete to work, which means Gmail has to know about my contacts (or at least their email addresses). Gmail actually has a really slick interface to contact management that I’d happily use as my main address book. Trouble is, it’s not synchronized with anything, most importantly my cell phone, where I also want that address book to be available. So, for now, I have to maintain two address books—one in Gmail (with just the email addresses), and one in my phone (with everything else). Invariably, it takes effort to keep them “synchronized”, and I’m not always successful at doing so. I was hopeful that the new “APIs to integrate with existing infrastructure” introduced in Google Apps Premier would finally address this shortcoming—after all, integration with corporate directories would seem to be a feature high on the “must have” list for any enterprise looking at Google. Alas, the APIs appear to only deal with single sign on and account provisioning, and do not appear to do any sort of deeper directory integration. With an API, Plaxo could presumably synchronize contacts between Gmail and phones (and Outlook etc.), or even better, someone could do over the air synchronization. There have certainly been a wave of interesting products doing similar things using the Google Calendar API. I’ve thought about doing a synchronizer with libgmail, by I’m not sure what would happen (e.g., would I somehow trip the “lockdown in sector 4” alarm, which given my reliance on Gmail, would be pretty darned disruptive). Thoughts? Anyone else in a similar situation?

Over the last four days I've had patchy Internet connectivity but I've been hacking on Tasks a bit in the evening and on flights. The result:

$ svn diff   diffstat
 README                            33 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 src/Makefile.am                    1 
 src/koto-group-filter-model.c      4 +++
 src/koto-task-editor-dialog.c     40 +++++++++++++++++---------------
 src/koto-task-editor-dialog.h      5 +---
 src/koto-task-editor.c            47 +++++++++++++++++++++++---------------
 src/koto-task-store.c             37 ++++++++++++++++++++++++------
 src/koto-task-store.h              3 ++
 src/koto-task-view.c              45 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
 src/koto-task.c                   51 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 src/koto-task.h                   26 +++++++++++++++++++++
 src/test.c                        48 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----
 12 files changed, 281 insertions(+), 59 deletions(-)

Now I wish I had the foresight to clone the Tasks repository into a Bazaar branch so that I could commit as I went, and then merge it all back when I got home. But no, I have several bug fixes and new features in this mega-diff, and I'm too anal to commit it in a single go. Expect a Tasks 0.2 soon!

Okay, perhaps it’s a little exaggeration to say that I’m nearly homeless, since I have a perfectly nice house in Durham. However, since I’m working in Dublin this is not especially helpful for my weekday accommodation. If any reader has a room they could rent me near Grand Canal Dock, for around 400-450, please get in touch, perhaps by email. I don’t keep cigarettes or pets.