Yoe seems to believe I see a cabal in Debian. Let me assure you: I don't - and if there would be a cabal, I would be part of it. I've seen most of Debian, played around with NM, the release team, have seen how our buildd network works (or, in the specific case of today: mostly works) and have close contact to people in all other core teams of the project. I still haven't seen a sign of a Cabal.

I believe that there are "clusters" of people who work better with each other, simply because they have known each other for years and developed trust, but that's nothing I would actually mark as problem. I do the same. Many of our core people have too much work to do, mostly because getting a job well done is usually reason to give you more tasks until your performance becomes abysmal. That doesn't mean that they are bad people or do bad things intentionally, but often, they don't allow people to help them - the usual reasoning is "new people need training, training needs time, time is what I don't have => no new people". Obviously, that argumentation is flawed in the long run.

Anyway, on to the more technical details:

• The real reason for not adding new architectures is that not one of the people able to do so cares enough to do it. That doesn't sound as nice as "I don't really know why we don't do it", does it?


• I haven't asked the security team to support backports, and I won't. volatile isn't under the supervision of the security team and works just fine.


• Most porting machines aren't "down", they are "locked down". See the list of Debian machines (which is, BTW, seriously out of date). Hardware failure is something completely different (though we might want to think about using Debian funds to replace broken machines, if needed), but restricting access is a sign of an overloaded team of system administrators.


• Dictating how a team should be changed is usually not a good way to do things - but there isn't another. A few of our core teams have failed to solve their problems on their own. Debian's job now isn't to stand by, watching and saying "He, that's bad. Maybe they'll fix the team in the next decade". Also, there are people experienced with the tasks of these core teams who are not part of them - you might want to use their experiences.


• With my release team and unofficial buildd network hat on I will tell you that adding one buildd maintainer for those architectures that only have one at the moment would improve the situation a lot. Please don't assume that I only talk about stuff I have no idea of. Sometimes I actually know about things!


• I don't think that we need to change our position regarding the GFDL, but I do believe that we should work on our relation to the FSF. Debian is the biggest free-as-in-free-as-in-free-speech distribution on the market, so the FSF should actually be interested in working together with us. Still, that doesn't happen, so we should perhaps start by having a discussion what the problems of each of these organisations is in the eyes of the other.

And, FWIW: I do hate conspiracy theories too. They come to life because people usually want to see the "bigger picture" - even if there is none and all of the weirdness in their environment can be explained by chance, human error and unknown social problems. And as I said - I don't believe there is a group of people making decisions that seem bad for Debian. I just believe a lot of people try to do their best for Debian - but they fail on a regular basis.

I have a theory. There are two kinds of people in the world: those who see conspiracies everywhere, and those who don't. Personally, I'm part of the latter group; and it annoys me endlessly when people in the former group use conspiracy theories to explain what they don't understand—much in the same way that I don't really understand people who use religion to explain what they don't understand. An example of what I mean: Marc 'HE' Brockschmidt wrote about the stuff he'd like to change in Debian, since he feels many things go wrong. Now even though he doesn't mention the word 'Cabal' anywhere in there, it still reads as someone who sees conspiracy theories in Debian. No hard feelings, Marc, but...

• It doesn't really help to 'enforce' addition of new architectures. Arguments like "I've heard that foo said bar" don't really help, either; please go find out for sure. If you can't or won't, then please do assume that those people who did care enough to find out know what they're doing.
• Adding more official suites, such as volatile or backports, increases the burden on the security team and others. This isn't something that should be done lightly, and so "just" adding a CNAME won't really fix it.
• I don't see why the practice of porting machines should be "resurrected". Yeah, sure, some of them are down, but we all know hardware sucks. That doesn't mean there's malicious intent or a change of policy or anything.
• I'll agree that it's a bad thing that some people in core teams aren't delegates, especially when they don't do their job. There are many core teams of which the members aren't delegates, such as the security team, the listmasters, the maintainers of our default MTA, the d-i team, the kernel team, the X strike force, and a huge bunch of other teams; if and when they stop doing their jobs, that would be a serious problem.
  I also really don't believe it's a good idea to go to a specific team that you don't have any experience with, and start dictating terms.
• With my m68k buildd maintainer hat on, I can tell you that adding more buildd maintainers to any architecture is a bad idea. I'll gladly explain the details in more detail later, if there's any interest.
• You do know about the draft updates to the FDL, right? We've put forward our position, now it's the FSF's turn; and though they considered updating the GPL to be of higher priority, they didn't ignore our opinion, which one can easily see if they read the discussion drafts.

I could go on, but I guess you got the point. Like I said, conspiracy theories annoy the hell out of me. Marc, it isn't personal, you're just the last in a long list. Oh, and BTW: comments to this post will be moderated away.

I’ve been asked for my opinion of senatoronline.org.au which claims to be Australia’s only internet-based political party. The claim may be correct depending on what you consider to be “Internet based“. Here is a copy of their platform from their web site:
Senator On-Line is not aligned to any other political party it is neither Liberal nor Labor. Senator On-Line ( SOL ) is a truly democratic party which will allow everyone on the Australian Electoral roll who has access to the internet to vote on every Bill put to Parliament and have its Senators vote in accordance with a clear majority view. We will be running candidates for the upcoming federal Upper House (Senate) elections. When a SOL senator is elected a web site will be developed which will provide:

• Accurate information and balanced argument on each Bill and important issues


• The vast majority of those registered on the Australian Electoral roll the chance to have their say by voting on bills and issues facing our country


• A tally of all votes which will then count in Parliament

Each person on the Australian Electoral roll will be entitled to one vote and only be allowed to vote once on each bill or issue. SOL senators will have committed in writing to voting in line with the clear majority view of the SOL on-line voters. Senator On-Line will enable broader community involvement in the political process and the shaping of our country. If you like the concept, please register your details and tell others about SOL.
Now at first glance it sounds like a good idea, the Liberal party (which is similar in all the bad ways to the US Republican party) has demonstrated what happens when a party gets away with entirely ignoring the wishes of the voters. But there are three significant problems with the Senator Online idea. The first is the issue of providing “Accurate information and balanced argument on each Bill“. We have seen many media outlets claiming that there is a debate about global warming (the debate ended years ago, the vast majority of scientists have agreed that global warming existed for a long time) and now the same media outlets are claiming that there is a debate about whether it will cause any harm to us in the near future (ignoring all the dams that are running low). One of the aims of the democratic process is that representatives who spend all their time working on politics can fully analyse the issues and also gain access to resources that are not available to the average citizen, thus being able to make better informed decisions. The next problem is that it can degenerate into mob-rule. The idea of having a tabloid TV show being able to directly control votes in the senate is not an exciting one. The final problem is how to ensure that each citizen gets the opportunity to have exactly one vote, solving this requires good security and identity checks involving viewing photo-id. The checks used for voting (merely asserting your name and residential address) might be considered adequate for an election, but are grossly inadequate for online voting where one false registration allows many false votes. I think it would be more interesting to have a populist party started that campaigns for the issues that have the most impact on the majority of citizens. Issues such as the fact that a couple on the median income can’t afford the median house price [1], the lack of job security that is caused by recent industrial relations legislation, the price of health-care, and the fact that any car which is affordable on a single median income (after money is spent on rent and other basic living expenses) will lack basic safety features such as air-bags. While the Green party has decent policies on these issues they have many other policies to consider. A party that solely concentrated on allowing more people to have decent health care, not risk losing their job, own their own home, and drive a safe car would get a lot of interest from people who don’t normally take much notice of politics.

• [1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2007/08/06/housing-prices/

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The talks I proposed for FOSS.in, the major FLOSS conference in India, have been accepted for the Project Days, in the Debian-Ubuntu sessions. Thanks to the event organizers who will sponsor my travel to Bangalore, I'll probably leave as of Sunday Dec. 2nd and attend the entire conference from Dec. 4th to Dec. 8th. During earlier weeks, Sam Hocevar, the Debian Project Leader, also agreed to come to the conference and give two talks there. And, this morning, I had the nice surprise to discover that Lucas Nussbaum, one of our most tireless QA animators in Debian, will also come and give a talk about QA in Debian. So, that should make three French DD attending and, therefore, bring a strong Debian representation in this conference, which is something I definitely find interesting as I invested quite a lot of time and energy last years to increase the Debian presence in South Asia. This will certainly be a great occasion for us to give credit to the few people who contribute to Debian (and related projects) in India, and of course meet them in person. Please check the list of talks to get an idea of talks. Now for the challenge: the organizers expect our slides....by 7 days as of now. I don't know for Sam and Lucas but I have just begun working on one of my two talks (the i18n one, of course...you know: the one with the cute maps....). Would someone have a ready "How to contribute to Debian" talk somewhere? :-)

Above is a picture of a DVD player I saw on sale in Dick Smith Electronics [1] (a chain store that used to sell mostly electronics hobbyist gear but now mostly sells consumer electronics gear). I asked one of the staff why it said “root”, tests revealed that the DVD caused any player to display “root” once it was inserted. The DVD in question was from the $2 box (the DVDs that didn’t sell well at other stores) and for some reason had the string “root” in it’s title (or some other field that gets picked up by the player). I wonder if an ex-employee of a movie company is laughing about millions of DVD players all around the world saying “root”. Update: I’ve been told by private mail that “It means it’s displaying the “root” menu. (As opposed to the title menu or any submenu’s)” and “most just display ‘menu’ or similar“. So apparently every time my DVD player says “menu” the new ones from Dick Smith will say “root” (I have yet to test this theory).

• [1] http://www.dse.com.au/

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A short program I wrote has searched the web and revealed many names for frailty:

• Frailty, thy name is Abbey.
• Frailty, thy name is Astronaut
• Frailty, thy name is a Tag Cloud.
• Frailty, thy name is Bingles
• Frailty, thy name is Blog.
• Frailty, thy name is Brand Loyalty
• Frailty, thy name is Browser.
• Frailty, thy name is Carelessness.
• Frailty, thy name is Carl.
• Frailty, thy name is Doctor.
• Frailty, thy name is Eleanor
• Frailty, thy name is Emo.
• Frailty, thy name is English.
• Frailty, thy name is Facebook.
• Frailty, thy name is Falco.
• Frailty, thy name is Female.
• Frailty, thy name is Fide.
• Frailty, thy name is Filmmaker
• Frailty, thy name is Francine.
• Frailty, thy name is the Gaming Press.
• Frailty, thy name is Gates.
• Frailty, thy name is Genius.
• Frailty, thy name is the Global Laser Tag League Council.
• Frailty, thy name is Hamlet.
• Frailty, thy name is Harry.
• Frailty, thy name is Horse.
• Frailty, thy name is Human.
• Frailty, thy name is iPod.
• Frailty, thy name is the Love of Ready-Made Congregations, and Ready Built Churches.
• Frailty, thy name is Machine.
• Frailty, thy name is Man.
• Frailty, thy name is Mankind.
• Frailty, thy name is Marriage.
• Frailty, thy name is a Misnomer.
• Frailty, thy name is Old Age.
• Frailty, thy name is Outsourcing.
• Frailty, thy name is Phrailty.
• Frailty, thy name is Pigeon.
• Frailty, thy name is Ryan.
• Frailty, thy name is Sceptre.
• Frailty, thy name is Sci-Fi.
• Frailty, thy name is Solana.
• Frailty, thy name is Tehran.
• Frailty, thy name is This.
• Frailty, thy name is Typepad.
• Frailty, thy name is US.
• Frailty, thy name is Weakness.
• Frailty, thy name is Whining.
• Frailty, thy name is Woe.
• Frailty, thy name is Worm.

It eliminated a few as well:

• Frailty, thy name is certainly not SIRO.
• Frailty, thy name is not Jane.
• Frailty, thy name is not Me.
• Frailty, thy name is not necessarily Viola.
• Frailty, thy name is not Woman.

I was recently talking with some people who develop a BSD licensed product who are a bit worried about competition. I had this to say, and I thought I would share it. I think the concern is the "Sun Microsystems situation", where there is a second project (B) based on open source project (A), and code only moves in one direction, towards B, a, commercial project. That can be kind of scary, especially when the commercial project has some sort of advantage. There is a real risk that as users and developers move towards project B, network effects take over, and B comes to dominate. The GPL is one answer to this problem, that the Apache Software Foundation, and others in the "BSD camp" have chosen to eschew, in favor of another solution: 1) making the development community broad enough and strong enough to make it hard to vacuum up all the talent over to project B, and 2) moving fast enough with the project that development outstrips that of project B. Of course, that strategy is not always possible, but that's the direction to take, I think - make it so that it's a big effort to 'keep up' with project A for the commercial guys, to the point where they don't want to diverge very far from the main development line for fear of not being able to keep up with all the good stuff coming out of it. One of the ways this can happen with a BSD style license is to get lots of companies contributing to the common code base, something that is at times easier if they have no worries about restraints the license may place on their future directions. Incidentally, I also think people may like the GPL because it makes things "fair", without worrying so much about putting in the effort to "outrun" the competition in terms of code or community. These are some of the reasons why I don't get too worked up about there being a "best" license. It really depends on the situation, and the goals of the people involved, too much to get fixated with one license being "superior".

Reporters Sans Frontiers (AKA RSF AKA Reporters Without Borders) has an interesting document about blogging [1]. They are specifically focussed on blogging as a way of reporting news. Their definition of a blog states that it is “a personal website” (there are many corporate blogs run by teams) and that it contains “mostly news” (most blogs that I read contain mostly technial information about computers and any “news” is mostly about the author). They also describe a blog as being set up with an “interactive tool” - most blogs are written using web-based tools, but some are written with plain text and a compilation system. Some of their technical information is simply wrong. For example they say that RSS “alerts users whenever their favourite blogs are updated” (this can be done through RPC notification which then requires RSS to pull the data - but a user will almost always have a tool polling their favourite RSS feeds). Their section listing the various options for blogging platforms mentions LiveJournal, Blogger, and MSNSpaces but doesn’t mention Wordpress.com which seems to be a serious omission (although it does mention civiblog.org which is a useful hosting resource for grassroots political campaigning). But these are minor problems, they are reporters primarily not programmers. Their document gets interesting when it gives links to pages about blogging ethics. One page that was not directly linked (presumably because it mainly concerns non-journalistic blogging) is Rebecca Blood’s document about blogging ethics [2]. She gives a brief coverage to conflicts of interest and gives most space to the topic of maintaining a record of changes. One thing I have been considering is having a separate instance of Wordpress for documents that change [3]. This way regular blog posts (such as this one) can be relied on to preserve a list of changes (any change other than correcting a typo will be documented) so if you link to a post you can rely on the original intent being preserved. But for posts which have ongoing value as live documents they will be kept current without a significant change-log. Items that go into the main blog would include commentary on news and predictions, and the document blog would contain technical information about Linux, the science-fiction stories that I will eventually write, etc. When I wrote my previous blog post about this issue I was mainly considering technical issues, but when considering the ethical issues it becomes clear that I need a separate blog (or other CMS) for such things. The site etbe.coker.com.au needs to be a reliable record of what I wrote while another site such as docs.coker.com.au could contain live documents with no such record. The essential factor here is the ability of the user to know what type of document they are seeing. Another really interesting point that Rebecca makes is in regard to known bad sources. Sometimes a known bad source can produce worthy data and is worth referencing, but you have to note the context (which among other things means that if the worthy data gets any reasonable number of hits it may get replaced by something entirely different). If a blogger cites a reference on a known bad site and explains the reason for the reference (and the fact that the nature of the site is known) then the reader reaction will be quite different to just a reference with no explanation. As a contrast to Rebecca Blood’s document the cyberjournalist.net code of ethics [4] covers the traditional issues of journalistic integrity, “public interest” etc. One interesting issue that they raise (but apparently don’t address) is the definition of “private people“. While it is generally agreed that movie stars and similar people deserve less protection as they have chosen to be in the public eye the situation regarding bloggers is less clear. Is a blogger with a high ranking on technorati.com in a similar position to a Hollywood star when it comes to privacy? A claim is sometimes made that blogs are unreliable because they can change (based on the actions of some bloggers who change posts with no notification and turn sections of the blogsphere into a swamp). Magazines and newspapers are held as an example of unchanging content and people who publish online magazines sometimes express horror at the idea of changing a past issue. The fact is that newspapers and magazines never changed past issues because it is impossible to recall hundreds of thousands of printed documents that are distributed around a country or the world. When it’s possible to fix old issues (as it is online) then the requirement is to document the changes not keep bad versions. It probably would be a useful feature for a blogging package to have the ability to display (and link to) old versions of a page. This would allow the users to easily see the changes and anyone who references a post can reference a particular version of it. In some situations it may make sense to use a Wiki server instead of a Blog server for some data to preserve the change history. Maybe I should consider a wiki in which only I have write access for my documents repository. No-one seems to cover the issue of how to deal with fiction. Obviously for a blog such as 365tomorrows.com (a science-fiction blog) it’s assumed that all content is fictional unless stated otherwise. The problem comes when someone includes fiction amongst the non-fiction content of a blog. I recently unsubscribed from a blog feed when the author revealed that what appeared to have been a diary entry was actually a fiction story (and a poor one at that). If your blog has mostly non-fiction then any fiction must be clearly marked, probably including the word “fiction” in the title and the permalink would be required to avoid all potential of confusion. For my documents CMS/blog I am considering having a category of “fiction” and to use the category name in the permalink address of each post. Of course science-fiction is sometimes obvious as fiction, but to avoid problems with fiction that is set in current times I think it’s best to clearly mark all such posts. The old-fashioned media seems to have dealt with this, tabloid womens magazines (which almost everyone reads occasionally as they are often the only reading materiel in a waiting room) traditionally have a fiction story in every issue which is clearly marked. Another type of blogging is corporate blogging. I wonder whether that needs to be covered separately in an ethics code. One thing that the three documents about ethics have in common (as a side-note in each) is the fact that the personal reputation of the writer depends on their ethics. If you are known for writing truthfully and fairly then people will treat your posts more seriously than that of writers who lie or act unfairly. There are direct personal benefits in acting ethically. The RSF document claims that the sole purpose of ethics standards is to instill trust in the readership which directly benefits the writer - not for any abstract reasons. Whenever ethics is mentioned in terms of writing there is always someone who claims that it can’t be enforced, well many people in your audience will figure out whether you are acting ethically and decide whether they want to continue reading your materiel. I wonder whether Planet installations should have ethics codes and remove blogs that violate them. In conclusion I think that a complete code of ethics for blogging needs to have some IF clauses to cover the different types of blog. I may have to write my own. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

• [1] http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/handbook_bloggers_cyberdissidents-GB.pdf


• [2] http://rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.html


• [3] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2007/09/30/blogging-and-documents/


• [4] http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/000215.php

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Once again there is a discussion whether uClibc based systems should get their own architecture, or whether it would be more like Ubuntu -- they, too, have a different C library (with stack-protector support; this simplifies the gcc bootstrap sequence a bit). Thinking further, why not have generic support for keeping different configurations for various derived distributions in a single source tree, so the same source package could be used on Debian, Ubuntu, emdebian and all the others which all build different binaries? The gcc package does this, to some extent, but it looks at the build system to find out which configuration to use -- a standard mechanism, for example a DEB_BUILD_VARIANT environment variable would be nice.

I’d like to make somewhat more visible what some of you already know, that I have bipolar disorder. I was diagnosed a bit more than a year ago. I’m doing this mainly because I think visibility matters. First and most important, because in my experience it can be helpful and comforting to hear about other people whose names you recognize that can relate to your situation. And second, in case it helps a tiny bit in detabooizing mental ilnesses and their drugs. (But fortunately geek circles seem to need less of that than other, more prejudiced environments.) On a more personal note, I can’t but be grateful after six months of straight euthymia, during which I’ve regained control of my life, written code, attended events, and retaken long term projects. I also feel, after many years, less fearful of the future. And finally, let me add I can’t imagine having made through it without one particular friend, who doesn’t even read this blog. Should everybody be so lucky.

This week-end, i decided to copy a collection of CD-R back to my hard drive, to make new copies. Everyone knows, that a CD-R only live for 10 years. After this date, the data on it are more difficult to read. So it's the time to know what brand of CD-R has the greatest lifetime. I begin to write CD-R sometimes around 1997. From this date, i keep using the same scheme to do this task: use high-end CD recorder (Plextor), good quality disc, always write at the minimum speed (ranging from 4x to 16x for the latest CD-R -- because sometime you cannot go under a defined speed), keep data on a separate partition to prevent buffer underun (10 years ago this was mandatory). The way i do this has almost not changed, expect maybe for the buffer underun, which doesn't happen anymore on modern hardware. They have been in the same place at the same date. They have always been kept out of direct sunlight exposure, in 18-25 C environment (i.e. near my computer). I didn't often use them. None have "scratches" on theirs surface. I have written the name of the CD with a permanent marker (Stabilo). For reading back the data I use a DVD-Recorder (Plextor PX-716UF) that can lower its speed if there are too many errors during the read. The result is somehow what you should think:

• Verbatim CD-R DataLifePlus metalAzo (blue surface): lost something like 5 files on 50 CD-R
• Kodak DS (gold surface): 0 lost on 2 CD-R
• Memorex CD-R (gold surface): 20 files lost on 2 CD-R

The Verbatim and Kodak can be read at full speed. I think the data on this two media are really well conservated. Even, if i have lost some data from the Verbatim medium, i think it is a really good rate for a 10 year old CD-R. The Kodak medium seems also good, but i don't have enough of them to be sure that i won't have the same error rate as Verbatim. Memorex CD-R is by far the worst media. I think all the data i have on these CD-R are lost. It takes me something like 1 hour to conclude that the first disc i try was totally destroyed. At the time i have bought Verbatim medium, it was the best medium around. I gave a try to the Memorex medium to reduce the price per unit. Conclusion: i have lost 15 CD-R with their content because 10 years ago i was thinking that i will save 2-3F (0,5 ) by replacing Verbatim with Memorex...

I see from the BBC and /. that ESA has made its choices in Cosmic Vision 2015-2025. It appears that Darwin did not make the cut. Istead, PLATO and SPICA seem to be holding the banner for exoplanetary exploration. Can someone closer to the decision-making process comment? What does this mean for NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder? There were considerations of merging Darwin and TPF; does the project live as TPF, or was the task of imaging an exoplanet left to JWST ? Tags astronomy, darwin, exoplanets

I have just read an interesting post speculating about the possibility of open source hardware [1]. To some extent things have been following a trend in that direction. Back in the bad old days every computer manufacturer wanted to totally control their market segment and prevent anyone else from “stealing their business”. Anti-competitive practices were standard in the computer industry, when you bought a mainframe you were effectively making a commitment to buy all peripherals and parts from the same company. The problems were alleviated by government action, but the real change came from the popularity of PC clones. White-box clones where every part came from a different company truly opened up the hardware development, and it wasn’t all good. When running a simple single-tasking OS such as MS-DOS the problems were largely hidden. But when running a reliable multi-tasking OS such as Linux hardware problems became apparent. The PCI bus (which autoconfigured most things) reduced the scope of the problem but there are still ways that white-box machines can fail you. Now when I get a white-box machine I give it away to members of my local LUG. My time is too valuable to waste on debugging white-box hardware, I would rather stick to machines from IBM and HP which tend to just work. Nowadays I buy only name-brand machines, all the parts were designed and tested to work together - this doesn’t guarantee that the machine will be reliable but it does significantly improve the probability. Fortunately modern hardware is much faster than I require for the work I do, so buying second-hand name-brand machines (for less money than a new white-box machine) is a viable option. The PCI bus [2] standard from Intel can be compared to some of the “Open Source” licenses from companies where anyone can use the software but only one company can really be involved in developing it. One significant impediment to open hardware development is the proprietary nature of CPU manufacture. Currently there are only a few companies that have the ability to fabricate high-end CPUs so projects such as OpenRISC [3] which develop free CPU designs will be limited to having their CPUs implemented with older technology (which means lower clock speeds). However this doesn’t mean that they aren’t useful, tailoring factors such as the number of registers, the bus width of the CPU, and the cache size to match the target application has the potential to offset the performance loss from a lower clock speed. But this doesn’t mean that an OpenRISC or similar open core would be ideal for your typical desktop machine. If companies such as Intel and AMD were compelled to fabricate any competing CPU design at a reasonable cost (legislation in this regard is a possibility as the two companies collectively dominate the world computer industry and it would be easy for them to form a cartel) then designs such as OpenRISC could be used to implement new CPUs for general purpose servers. Another issue is the quality of support for some optional extra features which are essential for some operations. For example Linux software RAID is quite good for what it does (basic mirroring, striping, RAID-5 and RAID-6), but it doesn’t compare well with some hardware RAID implementations (which actually are implemented in software with a CPU on the RAID controller). For example with a HP hardware RAID device you can start with two disks in a RAID-1 and then add a third disk to make it a RAID-5 (I’ve done it). Adding further disks to make it a larger RAID-5 is possible too. Linux software RAID does not support such things (and I’m not aware of any free software RAID implementation which does). It would certainly be possible to write such code but no-one has done so - and HP seem happy to make heaps of money selling their servers with the RAID features as a selling point. Finally there’s the issue of demand. When hardware without free software support (such as some video cards which need binary-only drivers for best performance) is discussed there is always a significant group of people who want it. The binary-only drivers in question are of low quality, often don’t support the latest kernels, and have such a history of causing crashes that kernel developers won’t accept bug reports from people who use them, but still people use them. In the short-term at least I expect that an open hardware design would deliver less performance and in spite of the fact that it would have the potential to offer better reliability the majority of the market would not accept it. The production volume of electronics gear is the major factor determining the price so it would cost more. I think that both IBM and HP provide hardware that is open enough for my requirements, they both have engineers working on their Linux support and the interfaces are well enough documented that we generally don’t have any problems with them. Both Intel and AMD and the major system vendors are all working on making things more open, so I expect some small bug significant improvements in the near future.

• [1] http://www.raiden.net/?cat=2&aid=315


• [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Component_Interconnect


• [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenRISC

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OK, I'm taking the risk of being ridiculous and have all my English friends laugh loudly in 3 hours. So, my bet is South Africa winning over England, 25-16 (3 tries, 2 transformed and 2 penalty kicks while England scores one trandformed try and 3 penalty kicks). The weather is *perfect* over Paris tonight. That will be a great final.

Original post can be found here. Interview: Today we are interviewing Andrea Veri, fresh MOTU and eager Ubuntu volunteer. Age: 18
Location: Udine, Italy
IRC Nick: bluekuja How long have you used Linux and what was your first distro?
I started using Linux at the end of 2005 using Red Hat and Fedora distros, contributing on writing several pages for Fedora documentation (mostly server docs) but mainly working on some packaging-related activities (introducing ctorrent, gtorrent-viewer and v2strip packages inside Fedora) for more than 3 months until the beginning of March 2006 when I decided to move definitely to Ubuntu after discovering it at a friend s party. Was love at first sight that made me leaving every Fedora plan and project creating my first personal wiki page on wiki.ubuntu.com some days later. How long have you been using Ubuntu?
In fact, I started using Ubuntu at the beginning of 2006, firstly getting involved inside the Edubuntu family making real the possibility to have an Edubuntu Italian support and website area inside the current Italian LoCo Team. When did you get involved with the MOTU team and how?
Right after joining the Ubuntu brigade I started checking out MOTU documentation, mainly packaging guide plus debian new maintainer s guide, trying to understand every single new word and applying directly to a source package every lesson learned during developer s world travel . After getting introduced and fascinated from an active community, I had to left the project for a while for some small problems, restarting everything on May 2007 with my first sponsored upload inside the archive. My packaging passion increased right after meeting Alexander Sack inside #ubuntu-mozillateam irc channel some days later, deciding to work directly with him as my mentor for both Debian and Ubuntu distributions. What helped you learning packaging and learning how the Ubuntu teams work?
I started with Debian New Maintainer s guide and Ubuntu s packaging guide moving then to package my first applications learning from already-packaged software and asking if needed to Alexander improving and learning every time from him or from other developers a new Ubuntu Team lesson. Favorite part of working with MOTU?
Introducing a fix making tons of users happy is one of the best things I appreciate of being a MOTU. Mentoring, sponsoring, helping out new contributors or students is something special as well. Any advice for people wanting to help with MOTU?
I always suggest to start with a package a new contributor cares about personally, that s useful to improve/fix the package itself during its maintenance.
Reading MOTU and Debian documentation is a great starting point as well to avoid any strange question on our MOTU irc channel. What packages/areas of Universe are you most interested in?
I m currently working on a vast area of packages, but I ll try to focus on p2p (Peer-2-Peer) applications both for Universe and Main. I planned to create a MOTU-p2p team really soon including it inside the existing motu-torrent team, but it will take some months to organize everything up; contributors (testers/packagers) are currently missing. Any Plans for Hardy Heron?
I ll keep working on a large number of packages but as I said before I would like to focus on having an updated situation of p2p applications, introducing libtorrent-rasterbar and its related clients like btg or linkage. Creating a working team with interested contributors and developers will be the first step to work on. Favorite quote?

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing. Socrates

What do you do in your other spare time?
I love going around with my motorbike, listening good music, playing basketball and meeting up with friends around the city centre. Pic of you, your work area, and/or your screen?

France sank against Argentina tonight. Last time France played in Parc des Princes, they were crushed by South-Africa, 10 years ago. The same happened tonight with an impressive victory by Argentina against France. France dominated the first 20 minutes but Argentina's defense was heroic and strong. Certainly the best defense play of this entire world cup, in this match, with a great organization around mauls, an impressive scrum and explosive tackles. After being dominated 26 minutes long and anyway scoring a try an, Argentina had to resist 10 minutes before half time when France unsuccessfully attempted to score a try (which would probably have changed the match). I think I will have to review these 10 minutes again as this was a demonstration of defensive play. It is indeed not a surprise that Ibanez lost his nerves and got expelled at the very end of 1st half time. Sad end of career...very similar to Zidane's one, indeed. In second half time, seeing France being crushed so hard was sometimes saddening but Argentina played so wonderfully that we could just be admirative of that play. Again, their solidarity and defensive play made the difference and, 5 tries later, they finally logically beat France. The Argentinian team is really a great satisfaction of the world cup. Playing only with 18 players, they only half-missed one match: their semi-final against South-Africa. I think they now really deserve to play in the Tri-Nations tournament along with New Zealand, Australia and South-Africa: if that doesn't happen, I will really think that other southern hemisphere nations are just cowards..:-) What about France? Well, this is a really sad ending for that world cup. Finishing with two very bad matches is really worrying for the future of that team. There are many promising players in that team (such as Dusautoir, Szarzewski...) and they can probably rebuild something and we still be enthusiast about that sport in this country.

Filtering planet entries Here is how to setup liferea not to show me some entries in Planet Debian:

1. Create a script that reads the rss from stdin, removes the entries you don't want and then writes the rss to stdout;
2. From the feed properties in liferea, choose the source tab, enable the conversion filter and point that at your script.

Now you just need a simple script that filters the RSS. Here is mine:

#!/usr/bin/python
# Copyright (C) 2007 Enrico Zini <enrico@debian.org>
# This software is licensed under the therms of the GNU General Public
# License, version 2 or later.
import libxml2, re
# What links we should filter out
unwanted = re.compile(r"^(http://feed1.example.com http://feed2.example.com)")
doc = libxml2.parseFile("-")
root = doc.getRootElement()
# Create an xpath context and register the namespaces
xpc = doc.xpathNewContext()
for d in root.nsDefs():
    if d.name == None:
        xpc.xpathRegisterNs("rss", d.content)
    else:
        xpc.xpathRegisterNs(d.name, d.content)
# Remove unwanted items from the channel list
for x in xpc.xpathEval("/rdf:RDF/rss:channel/rss:items/rdf:Seq/rdf:li"):
    res = x.nsProp("resource", "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#")
    if unwanted.match(res):
        x.unlinkNode()
        x.freeNode()
# Remove unwanted items from the item list
for x in xpc.xpathEval("/rdf:RDF/rss:item"):
    res = x.nsProp("about", "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#")
    if unwanted.match(res):
        x.unlinkNode()
        x.freeNode()
# Serialize the result
print doc.saveFormatFile("-", True)

Now, getting to this simple script took some spitting blood. Basically, in Debian we seem to have lots of simple libraries for:

• parsing rss, but not outputting it;
• outputting rss, but not parsing it;
• pasing and outputting rss, but not modifying it.

I tried, in order:

• The standard ruby rss module, after seeing this. However, rss.channel.items doesn't seem to be a normal array anymore, and I could not find any documentation on how to modify it.
• python-feedparser allows you to read rss and change it, but not to serialize it.
• libxml-rss-perl can read, modify and serialize, but serializing loses all the content of the items. Try this script and see:

  #!/usr/bin/perl -w
  use strict;
  use warnings;
  use XML::RSS;
  my $rss = new XML::RSS;
  $rss->parsefile("/tmp/rss10.xml");
  print $rss->as_string;
  

  Update: Nemui Ailin told me that with the most recent upstream version it works. I've reported the bug
• libxml-rsslite-perl does not serialize. Plus, it parses rss via crude regexps and its manpage has a longish list of things that can go wrong.
• libmrss0-dev has only a README that points to example files that are not packaged. I reported it as a bug.
• The description of any other module that I could find that would mention rss was quite clearly showing that it didn't support one of the three (read, edit, reserialize) features that I needed. With a quick look at the code, I couldn't find out if cl-rss supported serialisation.

If, like me, you’ve been following development of Joey’s nifty new multi-repository tool and busily registering all your git and bzr and cvs and whatnot repos, you might have noticed a tantalising TODO item that’s recently appeared in the git repo:

* Ability to run commands in paralell? (-j n)
  If done right, this could make an update of a lot of repos faster. If
  done wrong, it could suck mightily. ;-)

Well, sucking mightily just means you need to prototype it first, so here’s a little add-on to mr(1) that runs multiple invocations of mr(1) simultaneously, naturally enough called mrs(1). Consideration of what that implies about superior multitasking is left as an exercise to the interested reader. The implementation is slightly interesting: it’s a fairly simple perl script that first uses “mr list” to get a list of repositories to work with, then simply uses perl’s “open” function to run mr on each of those directories with the output piped to a filehandle. At that point, things get slightly complicated, since we want to keep them all running no matter what’s going on, so we have a select() loop that collects all the output into one buffer per command, which we put together later, and print out. And just for kicks, if the output ’s longer than 20 lines, we pipe it through less after trimming out any ugly ^M nonsense we might have had thanks to progress updates or similar. I like it, anyway. And happily, while “mr update” takes about fifty seconds for me, “mrs update” takes about ten. Fun! (Joey: btw, it’s “parallel” :)

Note: red underlined links are clickable flickr photo page for this post

Note: red underlined links are clickable flickr photo page for this post