Search Results: "coleman"

2 August 2020

Holger Levsen: 20200802-debconf4

DebConf4 This tshirt is 16 years old and from DebConf4. Again, I should probably wash it at 60 celcius for once... DebConf4 was my 2nd DebConf and took place in Porto Alegre, Brasil. Like many DebConfs, it was a great opportunity to meet people: I remember sitting in the lobby of the venue and some guy asked me what I did in Debian and I told him about my little involvements and then asked him what he was doing, and he told me he wanted to become involved in Debian again, after getting distracted away. His name was Ian Murdock... DebConf4 also had a very cool history session in the hallway track (IIRC, but see below) with Bdale Garbee, Ian Jackson and Ian Murdock and with a young student named Biella Coleman busy writing notes. That same hallway also saw the kickoff meeting of the Debian Women project, though sadly today http://tinc.debian.net ("there's no cabal") only shows an apache placeholder page and not a picture of that meeting. DebCon4 was also the first time I got a bit involved in preparing DebConf, together with Jonas Smedegaard I've set up some computers there, using FAI. I had no idea that this was the start of me contributing to DebConfs for text ten years. And of course I also saw some talks, including one which I really liked, which then in turn made me notice there were no people doing video recordings, which then lead to something... I missed the group picture of this one. I guess it's important to me to mention it because I've met very wonderful people at this DebConf... (some mentioned in this post, some not. You know who you are!) Afterwards some people stayed in Porto Alegre for FISL, where we saw Lawrence Lessing present Creative Commons to the world for the first time. On the flight back I sat next to a very friendly guy from Poland and we talked almost the whole flight and then we never saw each other again, until 15 years later in Asia... Oh, and then, after DebConf4, I used IRC for the first time. And stayed in the #debconf4 IRC channel for quite some years :) Finally, DebConf4 and more importantly FISL, which was really big (5000 people?) and after that, the wizard of OS conference in Berlin (which had a very nice talk about Linux in different places in the world, illustrating the different states of 'first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win'), made me quit my job at a company supporting Windows- and Linux-setups as I realized I'd better start freelancing with Linux-only jobs. So, once again, my life would have been different if I would not have attended these events! Note: yesterdays post about DebConf3 was thankfully corrected twice. This might well happen to this post too! :)

11 November 2015

Jonathan Dowland: Useful Mac programs

A little over a year ago I wrote about how I'd been using a Mac as my main work machine. I hadn't written anything on the subject since. Here are four useful Mac programs that I can recommend to people. Sizeup, from Irradiated Software. A bit Like Windows' aero snap, but on steroids. I love this. I regularly move windows between two desktops (external and internal display), resize and centre them or put them in one quarter of the screen with just a few presses. The "snapback" feature is also great. X Lossless Decoder (XLD). A handy transcoder that can use QuickTime encoders and so can write out Apple/Quicktime/iTunes-encoded AAC/MP4 files en-mass, translating file meta-data.
LimeChat LimeChat
LimeChat, an IRC client. I theme it to look like Colloquy. The net result is pretty clean. I like using a proportional-font for text things, so getting IRC out of a terminal is a win for me. LimeChat automatically fetches and thumbnails URIs to images that people paste in channels, which is either incredibly convenient or a curse, depending on the channel. You can toggle that behaviour but only across the whole client, not on a channel or network basis. Finally, 1Password is an incredibly slick password manager. I use it in a very basic fashion: no mobile client, no syncing to anything outside of my workstation. You could also use LastPass which is similar and has a Linux client. I haven't tried it, but there's a third party tool to read 1Password password stores on Linux written by Ryan Coleman of SDL fame called 1pass.

24 September 2014

Vincent Sanders: I wanted to go to Portland because it's a really good book town.

Plane at Heathrow terminal 5 taking me to America for Debconf 14Patti Smith is right, more than any other US city I have visited, Portland feels different. Although living in Cambridge, which sometimes feels like where books were invented, might give me a warped sense of a place.

Jo McIntyre getting on the tram at PDX
I have visited Portland a few times previously and I feel comfortable every time I arrive at PDX. Sure the place still suffers from the american obsession with the car but similar to New York you can rely on public transport to get about.

On this occasion my visit was for the Debian Conference which i was excited to attend having missed the previous one in Switzerland. This time the conference has changed its format to being 10 days long and mixing the developer time in with the more formal sessions.

The opening session gave Steve McIntyre and myself the opportunity to present a small token of our appreciation to Russ. The keynote speakers that afternoon were all very interesting both Stefano Zacchiroli and Gabriella Coleman giving food for thought on two very different subjects.

The sponsored accomodation rooms were plesent
Several conferences in the past have experienced issues with sponsored accommodation and food, I am very pleased to report that both were very good this time. The room I was in had a small kitchen area, en-suite bathroom, desks and most importantly comfortable beds.

Andy and Patty in the Ondine dining area
The food provision was in the form of a buffet in the Ondine facility. The menu was not greatly varied but catered to all requirements including vegetarian and gluten free diets.

Neil, Rob, Jo, Steve , Neil, Daniel and Andy dining under the planes
Some of us went on a visit to the Evergreen air and space museum to look at some rare aircraft and rockets. I can thoroughly recommend a visit if you are in the area.

These are just the highlights of the week though, the time in the hack-labs was productive with several practical achievements Including:
- Uploading new packages reducing the bug count
- Sorting out getting an updated key into the Debian keyring.

Overall I had a thoroughly enjoyable time and got a lot out of the conference this year. The new format suited me surprisingly well and as usual the social side was as valuable as the practical.

I hope the organisers have recovered enough to appreciate just how good a job they did and not get hung up on the small number of things that went wrong when the majority of things went perfectly to plan.

8 September 2014

Jaldhar Vyas: Debconf 14 - Days 1 and 2

Unfortunately I was not able to attend debconf this year but thanks to the awesome video team the all the talks are available for your viewing pleasure. In order to recreate an authentic Portland experience, I took my laptop into the shower along with a vegan donut and had my children stand outside yelling excerpts from salon.com in whiny Canadianesque accents. Here are some notes I took as I watched the talks. Welcome Talk
Debian in the Dark Ages of Free software - Stefan Zacchiroli Weapons of the Geek - Gabriella Coleman bugs.debian.org -- Database Ho! - Don Armstrong Grub Ancient and Modern - Colin and Watson One year of fedmsg in Debian - Nicolas Dandrimont Coming of Age: My Life with Debian - Christine Spang Status report of the Debian Printing Team - Didier Raboud

3 August 2014

Bits from Debian: DebConf14 - schedule available

Debconf14 will be held in three weeks in Portland, OR, USA and we're happy to announce that the schedule is already available. Of course, it is still possible for some minor changes to happen! DebConf will open on Saturday, August 23 with the Welcome talk followed by two highlighted talks: There will also be also a plethora of social events, such as our traditional cheese and wine party, our group photo and our day trip. The complete schedule can be found at: https://summit.debconf.org/debconf14/ DebConf talks will be broadcast live on the Internet when possible, and videos of the talks will be published on the web along with the presentation slides.

14 April 2014

Christine Spang: PyCon 2014 retrospective

PyCon 2014 happened. (Sprints are still happening.) This was my 3rd PyCon, but my first year as a serious contributor to the event, which led to an incredibly different feel. I also came as a person running a company building a complex system in Python, and I loved having the overarching mission of what I'm building driving my approach to what I chose to do. PyCon is one of the few conferences I go to where the feeling of acceptance and at-homeness mitigates the introvert overwhelm at nonstop social interaction. It's truly a special event and community. Here are some highlights: I didn't get to go to a lot of talks in person this year since my personal schedule was so full, but the PyCon video team is amazing as usual, so I'm looking forward to checking out the archive. It really is a gift to get the videos up while energy from the conference is still so high and people want to check out things they missed and share the talks they loved. Thanks to everyone, hugs, peace out, et cetera!

11 March 2013

Russ Allbery: Small non-fiction haul

Long time no write. A variety of things, including getting sick with a particularly bad cold (I'm still coughing up phlegm), led to my schedule and general life organization getting turned on its head, and I'm only slowly recovering. Work gets top priority (including a security release of OpenAFS), so I'm afraid non-work things such as reviews and journal posts (and Debian, and non-work-related software development, and conversations with friends...) have been getting second shrift. Hopefully this is finally starting to improve, and I have a block of time for working remotely coming up that should help. In the meantime, more books have, of course, been acquired. This particular order was mostly to get one book (The Making of the Indebted Man), which I'm going to read and discuss as part of a surprisingly fun political discussion about basic income guarantee and, somewhat by extension, Marxist analysis of capitalism. But it's impossible to buy just one book, similar to how it's impossible to eat just one potato chip: Neil Barofsky Bailout (non-fiction)
E. Gabriella Coleman Coding Freedom (non-fiction)
Joshua Foer Moonwalking with Einstein (non-fiction)
Maurizio Lazzarato The Making of the Indebted Man (non-fiction)
Isabel Wilkerson The Warmth of Other Suns (non-fiction) I of course preordered Coding Freedom and am quite looking forward to reading it, although it will surprise no one to hear that I have rather a long queue. The Warmth of Other Suns I picked up based on a recommendation by Ta-Nehisi Coates, whose writing for The Atlantic I wholeheartedly recommend. I have such a large pile of books that I've read but not yet reviewed that I cringe to think about it. But no progress will be made on that this evening (damn you, Benjamin Franklin! *shakes fist*). More tomorrow if I survive five and a half hours of scheduled forced social interaction.

21 February 2013

Biella Coleman: Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

Although the book has been out for a number of months, available for purchase and download, Coding Freedom finally has a dedicated home on the Interwebz. Based on my graduate research in anthropology and my dissertation, the book takes an up front and close look at various personal, affective, ethical and political dimensions of free software development. While the book is not on Debian per se, there is one chapter dedicated to the project and a whole lot of Debian developers were interviewed for the book. You can read some reviews and if you like what you see, take a dip.

14 February 2013

Jon Dowland: Managing Puppet modules with puppet

Over the last few days I've done quite a lot of work to try and get our puppet configuration up to modern best practises. The Puppet Labs folks strongly encourage you to make as much use of puppet modules as possible. A puppet module gathers together puppet manifests, facter facts and other bits and pieces into a reusable component that you could potentially share with others. Many modules (of very mixed quality) are available on the web, in particular at github and via Puppet Lab's own Forge. Since version 2.7.14, the puppet command-line tool has built-in support for managing modules:
# puppet module list
/etc/puppet/modules
  auth (???)
  interfaces (???)
 
# puppet module install puppetlabs-apt
 
However, they have not provided support for managing modules in puppet manifests themselves. This strikes me as a bit odd: the whole point of using puppet to manage your machines is to capture the configuration in one place. If your configuration depends on a collection of modules and module versions, you'd ideally record that in the puppet configuration itself. Otherwise building a new puppet master is a mixture of manually installing modules and setting it up as a client of your existing master. Other people to the rescue: Ryan Coleman (and Pieter van de Bruggen) have written puppet_module_provider which does exactly this. (Note that they both work for Puppet Labs). Now I can define which modules and what versions are necessary:
class puppetmaster  
   
  module   'rcoleman/puppet_module': ensure => '0.0.3',  
  module   'puppetlabs/firewall':    ensure => '0.0.4',  
  module   'puppetlabs/lvm':         ensure => '0.1.1',  
  module   'puppetlabs/ntp':         ensure => '0.2.0',  
   
I've decided to pin specific versions given the highly variable nature of module quality. There's no guarantee of backwards compatibility except by reputation of the publisher. The puppetlabs modules are likely to be of higher quality than average, so over time I'll probably gain confidence to change the specific versioning to 'latest' or similar. I also want to double-check how secure the module selection and downloading is (whether it's over HTTPS or cryptographic signatures are checked etc.)

6 February 2013

Biella Coleman: Edward Tufte was a phreak

It has been so very long since I have left a trace here. I guess moving to two new countries (Canada and Quebec), starting a new job, working on Anonymous, and finishing my first book was a bit much. I miss this space, not so much because what I write here is any good. But it a handy way for me to keep track of time and what I do and even think. My life feels like a blur at times and hopefully here I can see its rhythms and changes a little more clearly if I occasionally jot things down here. So I thought it would nice to start with something that I found surprising: famed information designer, Edward Tufte, a professor emeritus at Yale was a phone phreak (and there is a stellar new book on the topic by former phreak Phil Lapsley. He spoke about his technological exploration during a sad event, a memorial service in NYC which I attended for the hacker and activist Aaron Swartz. I had my wonderful RA transcribe the speech, so here it is [we may not have the right spelling for some of the individuals so please let us know of any mistakes]:
Edward Tufte s Speech From Aaron Swartz s Memorial
Speech starts 41:00 [video cuts out in beginning]
We would then meet over the years for a long talk every now and then, and my responsibility was to provide him with a reading list, a reading list for life and then about two years ago Quinn had Aaron come to Connecticut and he told me about the four and a half million downloads of scholarly articles and my first question is, Why isn t MIT celebrating this? .
[Video cuts out again]
Obviously helpful in my career there, he then became president of the Mellon foundation, he then retired from the Mellon foundation, but he was asked by the Mellon foundation to handle the problem of JSTOR and Aaron. So I wrote Bill Bullen(sp?) an email about it, I said first that Aaron was a treasure and then I told a personal story about how I had done some illegal hacking and been caught at it and what happened. In 1962, my housemate and I invented the first blue box, that s a device that allows for free, undetectable, unbillable long distance telephone calls. And we got this up and played around with it and the end of our research came when we concluded what was the longest long distance call ever made, which was from Palo Alto to New York time-of-day via Hawaii, well during our experimentation, AT&T, on the second day it turned out, had tapped our phone and uh but it wasn t until about 6 months later when I got a call from the gentleman, AJ Dodge, senior security person at AT&T and I said, I know what you re calling about. and so we met and he said You what you are doing is a crime that would , you know all that. But I knew it wasn t serious because he actually cared about the kind of engineering stuff and complained that the tone signals we were generating were not the standard because they record them and play them back in the network to see what numbers they we were that you were trying to reach, but they couldn t break though the noise of our signal. The upshot of it was that uh oh and he asked why we went off the air after about 3 months, because this was to make long distance telephone calls for free and I said this was because we regarded it as an engineering problem and we made the longest long distance call and so that was it. So the deal was, as I explained in my email to Bill Bullen, that we wouldn t try to sell this and we were told, I was told that crime significance would pay a great deal for this, we wouldn t do any more of it and that we would turn our equipment over to AT&T, and so they got a complete vacuum tube isolator kit for making long distance phone calls. But I was grateful for AJ Dodge and I must say, AT&T that they decided not to wreck my life. And so I told Bill Bullen that he had a great opportunity here, to not wreck somebody s life, course he thankfully did the right thing.
Aaron s unique quality was that he was marvelously and vigorously different. There is a scarcity of that. Perhaps we can be all a little more different too.
Thank you very much.

18 February 2012

Biella Coleman: Montreal, first impressions

frozenlights When I told people of my plans to move to Montreal, it usually prompted one of two reactions: one was some version of joyful envy, many people exclaiming breathlessly Montreal is one of my favorite cities, one person once even clutching my arm and told me as he looked me straight in the eye: you are so lucky, there is no city quite like Montreal in North America. The second reaction came off as a thinly veiled mixture of disdain and disbelief usually peppered with many reallys: oh wow, really, really you would really leave NYC? I am pretty certain they really were thinking something along the lines of what a fool, how dare she leave a great job, a great university, a world class city (the only city to live) for some Canadian mid-sized city, which is like tundra for a good chunk of the year? The decision to move weighed heavily on me, if for no other reason I had a choice to stay or to go and I honestly have not had a choice, a decision to make about where to go since I got accepted to graduate school (and even then the choice was more obvious than this one). So over a month into my move what is my verdict? In a word, win. I don t miss NYC at all though I get why some people cannot leave the place and know that despite some oddities and difficulties of living in Montreal, it fits my tastes and needs much better than NYC which dwarfed me in so many ways. I never felt I could enjoy it, I grew tired of the cramped living quarters, the noise ate at my soul, and I simply felt more overwhelmed by the fact that I could not even get a handle on the neighborhoods in my vicinity, much less all the other hoods in the area. Instead of dogging NYC anymore, I think I will spend a little time on first impressions, as they will soon be lost to the familiarity borne with time and experience. In essence Montreal is chock full of life but rather intimate, a quirky city with lots of charm but some grit and lacking the way over designed and done feel of cities like Portland. Here are some of quirks: 1. The Hawt Metro: I fell in love with the Metro when I first rode it a few years ago. I just love the powder blue color of the cars and the super sweet 1960s aesthetic of many stations. Even better and unlike NYC, they are just clean and quiet. The downside? The temperatures approximates a sauna during the winter and while you would think this is a good thing, when you are layered with the clothing necessary to survive outside (re: long underwear along with Canada-coat, gloves, hat, and scarf), it is hooooooot down there and you feel like you need to pass out. 2. Spend money, get free stuff: In many establishments you get free stuff (like blueberries or some like sports bar) when you spend over a certain amount of money, like 70 bucks. Quirky local tradition. 3. The culture of negotiation and the kick ass standard lease: Housing is amazing here. There is plenty of it, there are many different styles, and it is rather fun exploring all the different hoods that make up the city. Problem is too that lots of apartments have weird problems and issues and I had to steer clear of anything that could even possibly have mold. I spent weeks day in day out looking for a place, desperate to move out of my corporate apartment very nicely provided by the university but still not my ideal living situation. Finally found a place that fit all my needs in the perfect location and I took it to only find out that places are priced to negotiate and I was faced with the decision to negotiate or not. Sort of did, was not thrilled about it (thinking that I might lose the place) but it sort of worked and I scored the place. If price is up to haggling, the lease on the other hand, is standard (you can buy one at your local bodega ). It is the law to use it and it is like a no nonsense, straightforward lease, which is very protective of renters. 4. Montreal is known for its exceptional food but you know Poutine is just plain gross: Food here is good and I can tell that I will get a handle of restaurants in a way that felt impossible in NYC. The gluten free religion seems to be spreading, thankfully. There are many little Fruiterias! to get your fruits veggies which I am still exploring and right around my house is a crazy supermarket that is so cheap, which is weird because consumer goods generally ain t cheap in Montreal like they are in the states but this place is a gem and everyone agrees (and almost impossible to notice from the street!). Now Poutine is disgusting. Ok it did not help that the first night I went out to eat it, I was still under the clutches of Noro virus, and I think it re-activated the nausea that had been zapped by some strong medicine and the hospital, the day before, which brings me to the next point, the health care system. 5. Healthcare, I had to use it way too early: So last week I came down with the Noro virus and you usually wait it out as it runs through you quickly but I was dehydrated before I even started to vomit to for 8 hours straight, at which point severely tired and so nauseous (I was yelling to make it stop), I went to the hospital. Now I had talked to lot of people about the healthcare system in Montreal as it seems good, really great but a bit over taxed, especially compared to where I had lived in Edmonton where it was like a magic fairy tale dream. I had heard of two things: the care is excellent but the facilities are shocking and the wait times unless dire can be atrociously long. So facilities, yea they are kinda shocking, somewhat shabby but who cares, so long as the care is good, no? Packaging is irrelevant so long as the goods are derived. Before going I was scared of the long wait times (and also the taxi took me by mistake to Montreal General Hospital was looked too much like a HUGE version of the creepy buildings in The Shining for me, and I was supposed to go to Jewish General so left for there). The wait time: nearly none, somewhat as shocking as the facilities first looked to me. I think it was a combination of the time I arrived, with the fact that my lounge was parched and yellowish-gross (sorry, it was gross), indicating I was dehydrated, oh and I was crying bit hysterically, for despite my high threshold for pain, nausea terrorizes me. I was covered by insurance and since I did not yet have my McGill health cards (it takes three months to qualify for the local stuff), I did pay and the price was laughably cheap compared to what I would pay in NYC for the same treatment. 6. Now for my favorite, snow so nice, ice oh Christ: Well this winter has been, by all accounts, weak and warm, the spirit of winter barely making its way from the underworld to the outerworld. But even though it is has been more idle than full throttle, I still got a pretty accurate taste of what winter is like, with a few days of 20- c temps, and having to walk a number of times on a layer of frozen ice that makes it feel like a very dangerous mini-ice age in the making. IMAG0028-1 I do rather love the quiet snow falling and just love love sprinting through the snow with my dog, Roscoe, who has taken a liking for prancing in the white stuff and looks awful cute with his winter man s ice beard. After a sizable snowfall, it is clear they city does not toy with the snow removal although the sidewalk snow plows do look somewhat like very large and dangerous but kinda cute toys. But let s be frank, winters are hard, so hard that I think I would go mad if I had to stay through the entire thing, being born and raised in the tropics So the fact that I am writing this from the southern hemisphere in the height of summer gives me the assurance I can handle the rest of the snow, ice, ice and snow upon my return.

22 December 2011

Biella Coleman: The Best of NYC

Rosco-Biella-on-Train Now that the semester is done and now that I have compiled my crazy paperwork for Canada (wow, it is a lot), I will be heading in six days to the wonderful city of Montreal to settle down, at least for a few years. I am ready to leave but it is not an easy move, as I like NYC and my job. I came to New York City for the first time at the age of 19 after spending a year on a ship and I rather did not like the city for those 5 years, although loved my college years and all the time I spent chasing a Frisbee while running on grassy fields all over the east coast. When I left in 1998, I said, never again. But the future is impossible to predict so of course I came back when I got a job, my only job, at NYU MCC and headed quite happily here (incidentally from Canada). And NYC was much much much better the second time around, most likely as I had a salary, and here is what I <3 and loved about the city. 1. Not having a car (which will still be the case in Montreal)
2. The bike path on the Hudson, especially the gardens and the Irish famine memoriall
3. The farmer s markets (won t miss the prices though)
4. High walkability factor (and though I did not love my hood, I loved being 1.5 blocks from my office)
5. The music jam circles in Washington Square Park (I was always left wondering if they were spontaneously generated or long standing groups // prolly both) and the occasional but mighty impressive hawks in the park.
6. Coney Island especially under certain special conditions when you can rly enjoy the lights radiating out of the amusement park
7. Leaving the city for some nature time
8. 24 hour trains (despite not loving them cuz the noise robbed some life from me every time I took them)
9. Grand Central Station s ceiling
10. The gluten free options (this is going to be the hardest to give up as Montreal sort of sucks in comparison)
11. Being able to take your small dog on the train ;-) which is only a recent pleasure
12. My department
13. East Asian Starr library at Columbia University (still my favorite library in the world) and totally loathed NYU s Bobst, ugly on the outside, ugly on the inside
14. NYC sunrises which I have like only seen 3 times (sadly) but they have been stunning every time
15. Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge
16. HOPE
17. The Highline
18. The Strand
19. My favorite thing = Massive Snow Storms in the City (good thing I am moving to Canada, eh?)

24 October 2011

Biella Coleman: Occupy S o Paulo Under Threat

Occupy Sao Paulo Under Threat I was in Brazil last week and had the pleasure of participating in a teach-in at Occupy S o Paulo, a vibrant camp set up last week in the heart of the old down town. There are now under threat, please see below for details and spread the word. *** On October 15, a group of nearly 300 activists began an occupation of S o Paulo in the Valley of Anhagabau, one of the sites of the first rallies for direct elections during the end of the Brazilian military dictatorship in the 1980s. After a week of peaceful encampment, educational and cultural programs, and creating a sustainable community for not just themselves but many homeless people in downtown S o Paulo, the Occupy S o Paulo movement is coming under increased police threat. Today, Monday October 24, the governor of the state of S o Paulo, Geraldo Alckmin is holding two special events. First, he is hosting Florida Governor Rick Scott (R). Second, Alckmin has decided to hold a parade of 3000 military police right next to the encampment (see photo above). After a week of police harrassment and a pending court case for them to hold the right to pitch their tents, the Occupy S o Paulo movement sees this as an escalation of the harassment they have already faced by city police. Further, the presence of 3000 military police next to 300 occupiers is clearly meant to intimidate both occupiers and members of the public who have been coming up to the encampment and learning about the movement. Please take the time to call or email the governor and the secretary of public security of the state of S o Paulo to condemn this action. You can also send messages of solidarity to the S o Paulo occupation at occupysampaenglish@googlegroups.com. To contact Governor Geraldo Alckmin s office of citizen and organizational relations: Fill out a comment form at: http://www.saopaulo.sp.gov.br/en/fale/fale.php
Phone: 55-11-2193-8463 To contact the Secretary of Public Security, Ant nio Ferreiro Pinto:
Email: seguranca@sp.gov.br
Phone: 55-11-3291-8500

16 October 2011

Biella Coleman: What a Hackable World?

I really don t know what to make of this Cisco-made video What a Hackable World. It is sort of interesting that Anonymous and Lulzsec made it in but the video is not all that clever. And what up with the nerd-o-matic sys admin (most sys admin I know are more hoodie, less nerdie). But can anyone explain what/who the main featured dude is supposed to be? Hacker detective/destroyer? Cisco customer?

Biella Coleman: Going to S o Paulo next week

lolcat_brazilian First, is that image really the best LOLcat referencing Brazil that exists out on the Internets? I sure hope not as it is sort of lame but it was the only one I could find (in the 30 seconds I looked, which I admit, is not all that much time). But all of this lolcat in Brazil stuff is really to say, I am heading to S o Paulo tomorrow to give a talk on Anon on Thursday at this conference. If you are an Anon in the city and can make it, please do. If you are not Anon and are still interested, come along as well ;=) If there are Debian developers as well in the city, it would be great to meet at some point. I am there from Tuesday morning to Friday night.

14 October 2011

Biella Coleman: Jobs vs Ritchie

Denis! Best said here Let not make the final statement and not a single newspaper cares " into a reality. PS: Do check out Against Nostalgia, a great jab at Jobs.

12 October 2011

Iain Lane: Robin Hood beer festival 2011

tasty beerskis Greetings real ale fans, This most exciting time of year is almost upon us again. Yes, it's the Nottingham Robin Hood Beer Festival! This year I have followed in the footsteps of Alex and Karen and decided to trawl through the list of over 900 beers so that I can best sample the delights on offer. My selection is here. I'm attending on both the Thursday and Saturday, so there's plenty of time for me to sample a reasonable number of different ales. Beer aficionados, I'd welcome suggestions for alternative beers to try, if you'd recommend any of them. I promise to update the list after. I might even be tempted by the ciders, perries and wines. Generally I tend to prefer paler ales, but I also quite like a mild given half the chance. See you on the other side! (Image by Ant & Carrie Coleman, cc-by-nd 2.0)

26 September 2011

Biella Coleman: Now for the harder photo request: Free Dmitry!

Free Dmitry! So one my favorite fieldwork photos is the one above and I would love to include it in my book but I have no idea where I got it from much less who took it. The photo was taken during a San Francisco protest against the DMCA, and more urgently at the time, also calling for the release of Dimitry Sklyrov (and we were all listening to Richard Stallman who was giving a small speech and I am on the right hand side of the photo, furiously scribbling notes) I am looking for a high quality photo from one of the many Dmitry Sklyarov protests that were held in San Francisco or San Jose a photo that is either under CC license or given to me with formal permission to publish (I have forms to get official permissions). As I mentioned in my previous post, the book will be published with Princeton University Press with a CC license.

Biella Coleman: Photos for Coding Freedom

So my first book, Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking is mostly sort of done. All the arguments are in place and I am doing the final, very annoying, seemingly endless work of adding a few final citations, hunting for permissions, and tweaking about 10 paragraphs that I feel can be slightly improved (down from about 20 last week). The book is based on the dissertation but re-framed significantly with lots of new material and best of all a lot of the cruft has been zapped away, I think. The book will include two published pieces, although slightly revised. One of them is one of my all time favorite pieces on the hacker conference (which is the least academic/jargony of the peer reviewed articles). I thought it might be fun to change some of the photos for my book: so if you have some awesome, high quality photos that exude the joy of conferencing from past Debconfs or ANY hacker conference (preferably with computers in the background) please share. I am open to anything although I am looking for a high quality/sharp photo of people hacking away in the hack lab. The photo I have is good but I would like one with better lighting/sharper focus. The book will be published under a CC license (the most restrictive one, but heck as a junior scholar, I took what I could get and it is the first book that Princeton University Press is releasing under such a license). If you hold the copyright, I will need more official permission, otherwise, if it is under a CC or copyleft license, I will be adding the correct attribution/notice in the book.

24 September 2011

Biella Coleman: Hack Week On the Media

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

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