Search Results: "oliva"

13 May 2026

Sergio Cipriano: My experience at MiniDebConf Campinas 2026

My experience at MiniDebConf Campinas 2026 Last week, I spent the entire week in Campinas attending MiniDebConf and MiniDebCamp. The Debian Brazil community organizes this event every year, and this year's edition was the biggest so far. During MiniDebCamp, I sponsored a few uploads and spent two days teaching packaging to two participants. I usually teach packaging online, so it was refreshing to do it in person. I believe the experience was much better than teaching online. One of my mentees introduced me to the DDTSS (Debian Distributed Translation Server Satellite). Even though there are many i18n contributors in Brazil, this was my first time learning about this system. I plan to contribute to translations over the next few weeks using DDTSS.

My Activities
NOTE: I translated every talk title; the original titles are in PT-BR, so some details may have been lost in translation.
I presented three talks and led one BoF session. The talks are all available on Debian's Peertube: You can also find my slides at people.d.o. My first talk was a showcase of dh-make-vim, a tool I created and have been using for a few months. Some people tested it and found bugs, which was really nice to see. My second talk was essentially a live version of my blog post Zero-Code Instrumentation of an Envoy TCP Proxy using eBPF. I also gave a lightning talk about something many people are not aware of: non-uploading DDs can also sponsor uploads. If you're interested, this bug report provides more context: tracker.debian.org: Signed by field is missing when sponsoring as DD non-uploading Finally, I led the BoF session "Experiences, lessons learned, and next steps from the mentoring sessions". This was my favorite session, we had many participants with different perspectives and ideas, which led to a very engaging discussion. I'm still working on the action plans and I plan to release them soon. Here are some photos of these activities: Mentorship BoF Mentorship BoF DD non-uploading can upload talk dh-make-vim showcase Zero-Code Instrumentation showcase

My favorite activities This is a list, in no particular order, of some of the sessions I enjoyed the most:
  • Salsa CI, showing features that almost nobody knows I wrote a blog post about one of the things I learned in this talk, and there is still a lot more to explore. Aquila Macedo is developing many cool features in Salsa CI.
  • Free Software: Freedom, Autonomy, Sovereignty I had been really looking forward to this one. Alexandre Oliva is a very important figure in the Free Software movement, especially in South America. I'll need to rewatch it, my futures talks about Free Software will likely be inspired by this one.
  • What I've lived/seen in 33 Years of Debian & Free Software in general Eduardo Ma an was the first Debian Developer in Brazil, so it's always valuable to hear the story from someone who was part of it.
  • Symbolism - an introduction Despite the title, this talk was not about astrology! I'll probably rewatch it as well, as there is a lot of information to take in. I really like the passion S rgio Durigan has for C. He is also a great speaker and knows how to guide the audience through the topic.
  • Debate: Contemporary controversies in Debian The debate itself was great, but the conversations we had afterward were even better. I changed some of my opinions after hearing different perspectives. I don't think this format would work at DebConf, but I would definitely like to attend another one like this.
  • Why LTS on Debian? I had a few questions about LTS, and Kanashiro and Santiago answered them both during the talk and in the Q&A session. They also shared some challenges and how to avoid them, it was a great learning experience.
  • From my first contribution to the Debian Maintainer Polkorny was a bit shy but did a great job! I really enjoy this kind of talk. It is always nice to see the different paths people take.
Unfortunatly, I couldn't attend everything I was interested in, as always.

DayTrip - The Brazilian Particle Accelerator Sirius is the largest and most complex scientific infrastructure ever built in Brazil and one of the most advanced synchrotron light sources in the world. My jaw dropped the entire time; it's hard to describe how incredible this is. My favorite detail: they're running Debian :)

Wrap up I believe this was the best MiniDebConf Brazil so far. There were many other things I chose not to include here, as this post is already quite long. Still, here are a few more highlights:
  • A Bug Squashing Party
  • Driving Samuel Henrique's drones
  • Lots of capybaras
  • A small birthday party
  • A visit to two data centers

5 April 2020

Vincent Bernat: Safer SSH agent forwarding

ssh-agent is a program to hold in memory the private keys used by SSH for public-key authentication. When the agent is running, ssh forwards to it the signature requests from the server. The agent performs the private key operations and returns the results to ssh. It is useful if you keep your private keys encrypted on disk and you don t want to type the password at each connection. Keeping the agent secure is critical: someone able to communicate with the agent can authenticate on your behalf on remote servers. ssh also provides the ability to forward the agent to a remote server. From this remote server, you can authenticate to another server using your local agent, without copying your private key on the intermediate server. As stated in the manual page, this is dangerous!
Agent forwarding should be enabled with caution. Users with the ability to bypass file permissions on the remote host (for the agent s UNIX-domain socket) can access the local agent through the forwarded connection. An attacker cannot obtain key material from the agent, however they can perform operations on the keys that enable them to authenticate using the identities loaded into the agent. A safer alternative may be to use a jump host (see -J).
As mentioned, a better alternative is to use the jump host feature: the SSH connection to the target host is tunneled through the SSH connection to the jump host. See the manual page and this blog post for more details.
If you really need to use SSH agent forwarding, you can secure it a bit through a dedicated agent with two main attributes: The following alias around the ssh command will spawn such an ephemeral agent: 
alias assh="ssh-agent ssh -o AddKeysToAgent=confirm -o ForwardAgent=yes"
With the -o AddKeysToAgent=confirm directive, ssh adds the unencrypted private key to the agent but each use must be confirmed.1 Once connected, you get a password prompt for each signature request:2
ssh-agent prompt confirmation with fingerprint and yes/no buttons
Request for the agent to use the specified private key
But, again, avoid using agent forwarding!

Update (2020-04) In a previous version of this article, the wrapper around the ssh command was a more complex function. Alexandre Oliva was kind enough to point me to the simpler solution above.

Update (2020-04) Guardian Agent is an even safer alternative: it shows and ensures the usage (target and command) of the requested signature. There is also a wide range of alternative solutions to this problem. See for example SSH-Ident, Wikimedia solution and solo-agent.

  1. Alternatively, you can add the keys with ssh-add -c.
  2. Unfortunately, the dialog box default answer is Yes.

10 November 2017

Thadeu Lima de Souza Cascardo: Software Freedom Strategy with Community Projects

It's been some time since I last wrote. Life and work have been busy. At the same time, the world has been busy, and as I would love to write a larger post, I will try to be short here. I would love to touch on the Librem 5 and postmarketOS. In fact, I had, in a podcast in Portuguese, Papo Livre. Maybe, I'll touch a little on the latter. Some of the inspiration for this post include: All of those led me to understand how software freedom is under attack, in particular how copyleft in under attack. And, as I talked during FISL, though many might say that "Open Source has won", end users software freedom has not. Lots of companies have co-opted "free software" but give no software freedom to their users. They seem friends with free software, and they are. Because they want software to be free. But freedom should not be a value for software itself, it needs to be a value for people, not only companies or people who are labeled software developers, but all people. That's why I want to stop talking about free software, and talk more about software freedom. Because I believe the latter is more clear about what we are talking about. I don't mind that we use whatever label, as long as we stablish its meaning during conversations, and set the tone to distinguish them. The thing is: free software does not software freedom make. Not by itself. As Bradley Kuhn puts it: it's not magic pixie dust. Those who have known me for years might remember me as a person who studied free software licenses and how I valued copyleft, the GPL specifically, and how I concerned myself with topics like license compatibility and other licensing matters. Others might remember me as a person who valued a lot about upstreaming code. Not carrying changes to software openly developed that you had not made an effort to put upstream. I can't say I was wrong on both accounts. I still believe in those things. I still believe in the importance of copyleft and the GPL. I still value sharing your code in the commons by going upstream. But I was certaily wrong in valuing them too much. Or not giving as much or even more value to distribution efforts of getting software freedom to the users. And it took me a while in seeing how many people also saw the GPL as a tool to get code upstream. You see that a lot in Linus' discourse about the GPL. And that is on the minds of a lot of people, who I have seen argue that copyleft is not necessary for companies to contribute code back. But that's the problem. The point is not about getting code upstream. But about assuring people have the freedom to run a modified version of the software they received on their computers. It turns out that many examples of companies who had contributed code upstream, have not delivered that freedom to their end-users, who had received a modified version of that same software, which is not free. Bradley Kuhn also alerts us that many companies have been replacing copyleft software with non-copyleft software. And I completely agree with him that we should be writing more copyleft software that we hold copyright for, so we can enforce it. But looking at what has been happening recently in the Linux community about enforcement, even thought I still believe in enforcement as an strategy, I think we need much more than that. And one of those strategies is delivering more free software that users may be able to install on their own computers. It's building those replacements for software that people have been using for any reason. Be it the OS they get when they buy a device, or the application they use for communication. It's not like the community is not doing it, it's just that we need to acknowledge that this is a necessary strategy to guarantee software freedom. That distribution of software that users may easily install on their computers is as much or even more valuable than developing software closer to the hacker/developer community. That doing downstream changes to free software in the effort of getting them to users is worth it. That maintaining that software stable and secure for users is a very important task. I may be biased when talking about that, as I have been shifting from doing upstream work to downstream work and both on the recent years. But maybe that's what I needed to realize that upstreaming does not necessarily guarantees that users will get software freedom. I believe we need to talk more about that. I have seen many people dear to me disregard that difference between the freedom of the user and the freedom of software. There is much more to talk about that, go into detail about some of those points, and I think we need to debate more. I am subscribed to the libreplanet-discuss mailing list. Come join us in discussing about software freedom there, if you want to comment on anything I brought up here. As I promised I would, I would like to mention about postmarketOS, which is an option users have now to get some software freedom on some mobile devices. It's an effort I wanted to build myself, and I applaud the community that has developed around it and has been moving forward so quickly. And it's a good example of a balance between upstream and dowstream code that gets to deliver a better level of software freedom to users than the vendor ever would. I wanted to write about much of the topics I brought up today, but postponed that for some time. I was motivated by recent events in the community, and I am really disappointed at some the free software players and some of the events that happened in the last few years. That got me into thinking in how we need to manifest ourselves about those issues, so people know how we feel. So here it is: I am disappointed at how the Linux Foundation handled the situation about Software Freedom Conversancy taking a case against VMWare; I am disappointed about how Software Freedom Law Center handled a trademark issue against the Software Freedom Conservancy; and I really appreciate all the work the Software Freedom Conservancy has been doing. I have supported them for the last two years, and I urge you to become a supporter too.

4 November 2014

Tiago Bortoletto Vaz: A few words on the recent Brazilian elections

The Brazilian presidential election was exceedingly intense this year. Among many inferences that we can make by following the news and investigating data from the voting results I'd like to share this one, which in my opinion reflects quite well the vote preferences in the country. First, let me introduce you "Bel gua", a small town located in the Northeast region of Brazil. It has 6,524 habitants, 3 buses and 2 hospitals. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the income per person in Bel gua is $146 BRL (or U$59) per month. Believe it or not, it used to be much less. Actually, the city reported in 2013 the highest economic jump in the country, rising more than a thousand positions in the ranking of GDP per capita (from position 4,991 to 3,849). This recent growth was consequence of the social welfare program of the Brazilian government, which also boosted artisanal and manioc flour production. This federal assistance is called "Bolsa fam lia", which benefits 1.814 families in Bel gua.
"Bolsa Fam lia currently gives families with per-capita monthly income below $140 BRL (poverty line, ~$56 USD) a monthly stipend of $32 BRL (~$13 USD) per vaccinated child (< 16 years old) attending school (up to 5), and $38 BRL (~$15 USD) per youth (16 or 17 years old) attending school (up to 2). Furthermore, to families whose per-capita monthly income below $70 BRL (extreme poverty line, ~$28 USD), the program gives the Basic Benefit $70 BRL per month." (from Wikipedia)
Contrary to what many of my middle-class friends believe, and as you can calculate yourself, this little amount of money does not offer anybody a luxury life. It does not make anybody stopping working, nor stopping looking for paid job (but yes, it makes people to start saying NO to forced labor, which is amazing, right?).
/images/belagua.jpg

Bel gua, where Dilma got 93.93% of votes (photo by Clarissa Carramilo / from G1)

Also, Bel gua has no much physicians around because doctors in Brazil usually wouldn't live in a such city. But now Bel gua population can be treated by foreign doctors imported by the recently launched program "Mais M dicos" (More Physicians for Brazil), which hosts two Cuban doctors 15km away. Finally, Bel gua people have light, due to the "Luz para Todos" ("Light for All") program. It's not surprising that Bel gua has re-elected the party which has motivated these changes. For 2014 presidential election, Bel gua people gave 3.558 votes (93.93%) to Dilma Rousseff (candidate of the current government, from a left-ish party), against 230 (6,07%) to A cio Neves (from the right coalition), being the city with the largest amount of votes for Dilma, proportionally, followed by "Serrano do Maranh o" (93,75%), which is located in the same region. On the other hand, the city which gave, proportionally, the largest amount of votes for A cio Neves has a population of 5,564,635 habitants, where most of citizens are not Brazilians, not yet. Miami, located in US, was the city where Brazilian residents would elect A cio by 7,225 votes (91,79%), against 646 (8,21%) for Dilma, followed by Atlanta/US (89,47%) and Houston/US (89,22%).
/images/miami.jpg

Miami, where 91,79% of Brazilians voted A cio (photo by Marc Averette / from Wikipedia)

It's so clear that we do what people call "selfish vote". In general, we don't care about which party has better proposals for the society as whole. Rich people will go against any serious social equality proposal, which will necessarily be followed by higher taxes on their fortunes. As middle class citizens, we care about dollar rates, because we want to get cheaper iStuff from Miami. We're also very upset by the fact that new apartments are being built without that small room in the back, which has been used to accommodate a subservient housemaid who, until last year was not even legally considered a worker. Those people from Bel gua, who used to live in extreme poverty for decades, serving as slaves, they mostly care about having something to eat. Now they eat, so they can think better, they can work, they can sell what they produce in their little yard. And like middle-class and rich citizens, they will give their vote in exchange of what they think is better for them. The big difference here is, if we ask Bel gua people why they voted for Dilma, with no embarrassment they will make it very clear, that's because her government has provided them lots of benefits. Asking the same question for most Brazilians in Miami, Atlant, Houston or S o Paulo, you'll get not only a bunch of allegedly moral/altruistic reasons, but they will also try to delegitimize in many ways the votes from those marginalized citizens. You'll never get the real reasons from them. They will even try to convince you that whoever receives federal assistance should automatically lose right to vote. Such a statement may seem ridiculous, however it has been very present recently. Actually, such hate speech is happening right now. While I'm writing this post about 2500 people are protesting in S o Paulo streets, asking for an immediate military coup because they don't agree with the elections result. These people keep pushing the limits of ridiculousness. Dilma won with 51.64% of valid votes, a very tight result. The country is clearly divided, mostly by hate, unfortunately.

15 September 2013

Robert Millan: Rooting the LG Optimus L3 (and just about any Android model, really)

I recently purchased an LG Optimus L3 ( e400 ) mobile phone. I ve to admit it would be a perfectly fine purchase if it wasn t for the huge amount of time I had to invest in order for this thing to recognize me as its master. Even though I wanted to install CyanogenMod in it, the device blocked my attempts to install it through ROM Manager. Yes, for some awkward reason LG kept on thinking they still owned the device even after they sold it to me. Anyway, as none of the rooting instructions for LG Optimus L3 I found on the net worked for me, I figured I should try with the recently-discovered master key vulnerability. A bit of research shows there s very extensive documentation on this hole and how to exploit it, as well as proof-of-concept exploits. But unfortunately, I haven t been able to find any complete solution to implement this in easy steps. On the soulders of giants After running through the whole manual setup of this exploit (and succesfully rooting my LG Optimus L3), I figured it would be useful if I put the pieces together into a unified script. So here it is, an exploit for the Android master key vulnerability which will give you root access to almost every Android device in existance: https://github.com/robertmillan/mkbreak Enjoy. Oh and btw: fuck you LG.

24 January 2013

Gunnar Wolf: The joys of Internet The Bolivarian dream

Oh, the joys of the Internet. A Mexican and an Argentinian listening to a Spanish cantaor singing Mexican music for an Argentinian audience, remembering a Costa Rican woman. What? Regina and me are finally back home in Mexico, after a month (me) and six weeks (her) of vacations in Argentina. And this week, in the city of Cosqu n (C rdoba, Argentina), they celebrate most important Argentinian folkloric festival. The Cosqu n Festival can be followed live on the TV P blica website. Right now, while I finish writing a short article and Regina fights her way to learn some of the GNOME 3 tricks, we are following Cosqu n. Among many great Argentinian folklorists, they invited a Spanish cantaor, David Palomar, who is remembering Chabela Vargas, a great singer, born in Costa Rica, but who became famous in Mexico, singing very heartfelt Mexican music, and deceased earlier this year. Trivia: Q: What do Mexico, Argentina and Spain have in common (besides a language that can be almost-understood)? A: They all have a city called C rdoba.

17 June 2011

Timo Jyrinki: Betawikiss tuhannen euron porkkana

--- cut ---
Vuoden 2007 lopussa Siebrand asetti lokalisointitavoitteet MediaWikille.Tavoitteet olivat todella kunnianhimoisia. N ytt kin silt , ett n ihin ei p st . Emme kuitenkaan aio luovuttaa ilman taistelua. Viel on vajaa viikko aikaa saavuttaa nuo tavoitteet. Sin voit auttaa saavuttamaan tavoitteet suomen kielen osalta.

Yhteisty ss Stichting Open Progressin kanssa pystymme tarjoamaan sinulle kannustusta. Tarjoamme 1000 euroa jaettuna kaikkien k nt jien kesken, jotka ovat tehneet yli 500 uutta k nn st MediaWikiin ja sen laajennuksiin vuoden loppuun menness .

My s muut Betawikin projektit kaipaavat apua. Kiinnostaisiko sinua k nt vaikkapa FreeCol-peli tai Mantis-virheenseurantaj rjestelm . Yst v llinen ja yhteisty kykyinen ymp rist saattaa sinut vauhtiin sek auttaa sinua kehittym n suomentajana parantamalla k nn ksi yhdess .

Betawiki l ytyy osoitteesta http://translatewiki.net.
--- cut ---
(l hde)

Katso my s http://lokalisointi.org/.

25 May 2011

Iain Lane: Greetings, Planet Debian!

Well hello there. A couple of days ago my debian.org account was created, meaning that I'm one1 of the crop of current new Debian Developers. Actually the news was broken to me by Rhonda when I attached to irssi after arriving at work, a nice surprise :-) 
<Rhonda> All congratulate Laney on becoming a Debian Developer.  ;)
* Rhonda . o O ( http://db.debian.org/search.cgi?dosearch=1&uid=laney )
<Laney> Rhonda: I did?!?!?!
I'll quickly introduce myself by paraphrasing from the background section of the AM report before letting you go about your business. I apparently submitted my first thrilling patch to the alsa-tools package in Ubuntu on February 2nd, 2008. This was sponsored into Hardy by Daniel Chen. Thereafter followed a myriad of exciting patches to various packages that somehow managed to convince a bunch of people that I had enough skill to become an Ubuntu developer. Fast forward a while and I get sucked into the world of Debian packaging by the CLI/Mono strike force of Mirco Bauer and Jo Shields by way of the Mono 2.0 transition. This was where I got my first Debian upload, and it was in this team that I fully realised both the excellence and importance of Debian in the FOSS world2. At some point the Debian Haskell Group formed and I've been involved to some extent there all along too. What I've mainly learned from these two groups is that team maintenance is a really great way to look after a bunch of related packages. When I see people touting new packages about, I often recommend that they look at the list of teams to find a nice home. Perhaps one or two actually did. Thanks to everyone who's supported me so far. I hope to be able to do the same for others in the future.
  1. Along with obergix, lopippo, oliva, aron, madamezou, taffit. Congrats to the rest of you, too :-)
  2. I now consider it one of my primary duties as an Ubuntu developer to reduce the number of fixes that are uploaded to Ubuntu, and take every opportunity that is given to me to promote Debian as the natural home for technically excellent work. Not least because I fully expect DDs to not shy away from calling out poor work presented to them.

1 March 2010

Diego Escalante Urrelo: GNOMEs in Chile

Update March 1st, 24 UTC: Reynaldo Verdejo is ok, the list is complete! Update March 1st, 16 UTC: Alejandro Vald s, Fabi n Arias, Carlos R os Vera and Germ n P o-Caama o have been in contact with others in Chile. :) Probably by now some of you know or are worried about the situation in Chile. I m not chilean nor in Chile but I ve been following closely due to the considerable number of good friends I have there, most of them related to GNOME.
From The Big Picture (AP Photo/Roberto Candia) Juan Carlos Inostroza (blog down) suggested I publish the list of GNOME/Free Software people in Chile that has reported since the earthquake and are fine, here it goes: Known, found and good: Not know, nor found, we presume good but without cellphones: If you have been in contact with any of them, leave a comment, send a DM in twitter (@diegoe) and etc. List is not complete, I probably forgot someone, please remind me. Will update if I get news from anyone.

30 May 2009

Christian Perrier: Yet another silly name change for a country

After Venezuela changed its official "short" name from "Venezuela" to "Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of", it's now the turn of Bolivia to take the same silly decision. From now, Bolivia's "short" name is "Bolivia, Plurinational state of". Don't take me wrong. I'm fine with such changes in official country names...when it comes at the official long name of the country. Most long names have some kind of political meaning. For Bolivia, the change is meant to reflect the consideration of the current government of the country for all "minorities" of Bolivia. That's for sure definitely any country's decision. But, for $ DEITY 's sake, why change the *short* name? For everybody, Bolivia is "Bolivia" and Venezuela is "Venezuela" and not some funky long and politically correct (or incorrect) name! So, once again, the iso-codes package maintainers will use a new "common name" for another country so that lists of countries that display in various places do not show ridiculously long names for some countries while others have the name...everybody uses. Remember "Taiwan" back in 2004?

23 April 2009

Romain Beauxis: Lastfm no longer free as in free beer (and some bits about xml in OCaml)

Lastfm no longer free as in free beer As I was trying move the code of ocaml-lastfm [1] from the unmaintained xml-light [2] to xmlm [3], I discovered that it now fails to request track in anonymous mode. Then, I went on the lastfm [4] site, and discovered that now I cannot find any full content available for anonymous users. Some more researches and I found this [5]:
Today we are making the changes to the radio that were previously announced here. This means that from today, listeners to Last.fm Radio outside of the USA, UK and Germany will be asked to subscribe for 3.00 per month, after a 30 track free trial period. In the USA, UK and Germany, where it's feasible to run an ad-supported radio service, there won't be any changes. Everything else on Last.fm (scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos etc.) will remain free in all countries, like it is now.
JPEG - 42.5 kb
Alcool ! Voil l'ennemi.
Poster by French painter and missionary Fr d ric Christol (1850-1933) warning of the dangers of absinthe and other alcoholic drinks.
Although I will not comment this with the same violence as in the comments of the above message, this is not a good news at all. I totally understand how it can be difficult to find financial resources for this kind of business, and how complicated it can be after few years to maintain an activity that initially was breaking new and attracting investors. However, given the current global [6] propaganda [7] campaign [8] that is organized [9] by the major music companies, I do not believe this decision has only to do with lastfm's financial resources. In particular, also the legality of Deezer [10] was challenged by universal [11] such that they had to require registration [12] and also limit drastically the available titles. The current situation is now really becoming worse and worse. Not only the music companies are trying to push for dangerous laws for the civil rights while pretending to fight against illegal music sharing, but also they are trying to shutdown all the new competitors that were successful in doing exactly what they refused to do during the same time. All of this is just simply pathetic, and I strongly hope there will soon be an end to this, which will surely mean for these companies adapt or perish.. Or perhaps they plan to impose their restricting and dangerous laws in any country in the world ? Another remark about all this is that it clearly demonstrate the importance of having the right to copy and store for your own usage any copyrighted material. Indeed, these are not only products but also artistic productions, and for this reason it is important to be able to save them in some place in order to not loose track of it if the streaming company was to be shutdown, as it seems to be the trend now.
JPEG - 71 kb
Viktor Oliva: The Absinthe Drinker.
The original painting can be found in the Caf Slavia in Prague.

Moving from xml-light to Xmlm The other part of this post is about moving from xml-light to xmlm. This is in fact very easy, and should only be a matter of adding a piece of code like this:
type xml =
Element of (string * (string * string) list * xml list)
PCData of string

let parse_string s =
let source = String (0,s) in
let input = Xmlm.make_input source in
(* Map a tag representation in xmlm to
* (name, attributes list) where attribute = string*string. *)
let make_tag (x,l) =
(* Forget about the uri attribute *)
let l =
List.map (fun ((_,y),z) -> (y,z)) l
in
snd x,l
in
let rec get_elems l =
if Xmlm.eoi input then
l
else
match Xmlm.input input with
El_start tag ->
let elem = get_elems [] in
let (name,attributes) = make_tag tag in
get_elems ((Element (name, attributes, List.rev elem)) :: l)
El_end -> l
Data s ->
get_elems ((PCData s) :: l)
Dtd _ -> get_elems l
in
let elems = get_elems [] in
Element ("", [], List.rev elems)
This is a very simple code that surely needs more fixes, but starting from that, you can parse a string into an equivalent representation of the xml data, and then use it as before in your code..

[1] Ocaml-lastfm: http://www.rastageeks.org/lastfm.html [2] Xml-light: http://tech.motion-twin.com/xmlligh... [3] Xmlm: http://erratique.ch/software/xmlm [4] Lastfm: http://www.last.fm/ [5] "Radio Subscriptions": http://blog.last.fm/2009/04/22/radi... [6] "New Zealand: safe from Big Music. Or is it?": http://www.p2pnet.net/story/19074 [7] " La Quadrature du Net discr dit e aupr s des d put s anti-Hadopi": http://www.numerama.com/magazine/12.... Link is in french. It explains how, after filling a so-called petition with hundreds of signatures from employees presented as artists, or artists abused by the presentation of the content, these companies complain about the "totalitarian methods" used to verify the validity of the signature, which were simply based on the public available information on these names on the web, while they propose a system that would automatically cut the internet access to probably 1.000 people a day in France... [8] "Faux proc s : Les pirates paient": http://www.ecrans.fr/Faux-proces-Le.... again, in french, the article reports a Danish study that prove once again that people who tend to download a lot of music are also much more likely to spend their money in the music business, being concert, records or else.. [9] ""Three strikes" for Ireland - Eircom, music industry settle filtering case": http://tjmcintyre.com/2009/01/three... [10] Deezer: http://www.deezer.com/ [11] "Universal Music challenges the legality of Deezer, a free streaming website": http://french-law.net/universal-mus... [12] "Now Deezer Required Registration": http://forums.techarena.in/technolo...

23 July 2008

Pablo Lorenzzoni: The new Brazilian Internet surveillance

Here I am writing today to tell something that might not be known outside Brazil at least, I haven t read much in English about it the attempt to turn the Internet into a government surveillance device. This story goes back to 2006 (and even back), when we first successfully blocked the approval of a bill that would, in effect, turn the Brazilian Internet into a giant Big Brother. This bill was introduced by Senator Eduardo Azeredo as a replacement to a series of other similar bills that were attempted before and was followed by a strong resistance by civil organizations, one of those being ASL, of which I am proud of being one of the founders. By that time we ended having it postponed for more debate. It happened that the bill made a come back last weeks, and was pushed into approval by a subcommittee of the Senate (one that was suppose to deal with the constitutionality of bills) and now is heading to the Chamber of Deputies for appreciation. Apart from the first debates back in 2006, nothing happened between then and the approval. The bill have changed a little bit, but not much as to change its effects. In Brazil, we have two legislative houses, Federal Senate and Chamber of Deputies. If a Law Project is proposed by one, is revised by the other. So we have already lost 50% of the fight. Ronaldo Lemos, professor of Funda o Get lio Vargas (think about a Brazilian version of Harvard Law School ) have already stated how dangerous such a Law can be, once approved. In his own words: The wording of the law is too broad, and can be applied in several cases. The interpretation of what is a crime or not will be done by a criminal judge, who is used to deal with homicides and not with technology . Since its approval in Senate, several people have been putting together a resistance. Central to it is a Petition, hosted at Petition Online, that already holds 64-thousand signatures. One of the writers of that petition, Andr Lemos, a university professor and researcher, have said that the regular user will have the feeling of being watched, and not knowing if what he s doing in legal or not: For instance, if I disseminate a virus without knowing, will I be arrested? Can I exchange my files in P2P networks (my pictures, my musics, my text files) without asking for permission? How will the ISPs interpretate these exchanges? Can I copy a part of a text from a blog and paste it into mine? This law creates a feeling of insecurity and generalized fear . FGV s Center for Society and Technology have published an analysis of the Law Project, and have spotted a lot of problems in it. For instance: Thinking of how I can help, after sending an email to every Deputy whose email address I was able to get, I decided to translate the law into English (I also uploaded a version with indentation, since it s pretty hard to understand the whole law without it, if you re not used to), so the World can be made aware of what s going on in Brazil. I also just sent an email with it to EFF, asking for their help. Not that I think they can do much, but they surely will know one or two strings to pull in order to put more pressure on the Brazilian government. I also hope that, once this post reaches Planet Debian, even more people become aware of the issue. In a sense, this is an appeal for all the Freedom Culture lovers out there to take any actions they can to help us prevent this Law Project to become a Law. (In time, I d like to thank Alexandre Oliva, who revised the translation). Update (2008-07-23 11:50): Steve Langasek also revised the translation of the Law Project and I ve made a cherry-pick merge , which resulted in the version currently linked in the text above. Older version of the plain and the indented documents are still available. Thanks Steve!

21 June 2006

Jos Parrella: Shame, shame

I was at a client today when I remembered that David was due to arrive to Caracas circa 1430, so I called him to his brand-new-venezuelan-GSM-cellphone and I found out that he was in problems. In big, dark, awful problems. As I told in previous posts, he went to San Crist bal (near the border with Colombia) to visit his girl and know the city. He departed from Caracas in a bus on Friday night and arrived on Saturday morning. He spent the whole weekend there, and in Monday he was due to leave San Crist bal through the Mayor Buenaventura Vivas Military Airbase, in a civilian airplane. He arrived just on time for his flight, rushing to take the plane on time, and he was stopped by two so-called Inmigration Officials who demanded to see his passport. He recently got a new one from the Passport Office in Mexico City, so he had a brand new passport with the Venezuelan Entry Stamp (Mexicans don’t need a visa to enter Venezuela)
ONIDEX, the National Office for Inmigration. Praised for lots of people for fighting against Passport Corruption, kidnaps people in San Cristobal. The Officials told him that his passport was a fake, and they told him that, from this time on, he was under arrest. They made him leave the Airport quickly and took him in a civilian vehicle with no identifications. They started the trip to San Crist bal City (1 hour away from the Airport in a very scary road) and they kept telling him that his passport was fake (they claimed that the Passport didn’t have the watermarks, and stuff) Soon their position changed and a common practice in Venezuelan officials started: extorsion. They told him that there were “several ways to fix the problem”, and asked him what was in his backpack (which had a laptop, but he denied it): they were demanding money, and David wasn’t prone to do that.
National Guard. Doesn’t have a /proc/clue about anything. They drove David to the Inmigration Office in San Crist bal and told him that they “made” some tests to the passport and they determined that the passport was fake. They told David that their “Commander” told they that he should be deported into Colombia, since he was a “very important member of a Cartel that they were willing to capture”
DISIP: the Venezuelan Political Police. They were helpful in this episode, but they’re not angels. Finally, hours after that charade of Officials telling him funny laws, stupid suppositions and wanting him to give them money, they left David in the Bus Terminal in San Crist bal, where he was able to talk to Ana, from Debian Venezuela, which picked him up and went back to the Airport. The two “Officials” weren’t there anymore, and he had a last problem with the National Guard which had stupid suppositions about his trip, and stuff (this is common, but at least it’s not illegal) before he was able to get into the plane. Being in Caracas, I was really worried. Between Ana, my mother and me we were able to move several people to check David status in the Airport (my mother called four members of the Venezuelan FAA, I called the Venezuelan CIA and Ana called the Vicechancellor) and this probably saved David’s life and money, since the “Officials” might have been scared by the movement of people caring about David. He’s safe now, back in Caracas, in home. He has all his stuff and his health is OK (yet he was scared when he arrived, which I fully understand) Why am I writing this post? I’m really concerned about what happened to David, and I want to make a public statement on this. Somehow, we venezuelans got used to this kind of practices in our Country. Probably 40 years of pseudo-democracy with messy governors helped, maybe it’s a matter of education and culture. I don’t really care about this, but I do care about what they’re doing with the people in my Country. Today, President Chavez declared that a dance against corruption was going to start. I think it’s the fourth time he’s making something about corruption, and he’s failing. There’s a gang of people in San Cristobal, Mr. President, who tries to rob and scare the visitors. They should be in jail. They arrested somebody illegally. It’s forbidden in our Constitution to arrest somebody without having proofs to do it (we have one of the best Constitutions in the World, experts say, but we don’t have people who obey it). If you’re going to arrest an alien, you need to have a Public Prosecutor in place, writing down a legal document and guaranteeing the safety of the detained. This people should be in jail.
Stop Corruption! Though, as my mother later said to David, two awful Venezuelan people kidnapped David, but probably twenty Venezuelan people quickly acted to find out what was happening. We might be a Third World Country, but we use to be able to get out of our problems by our own. And, hell it’s rewarding. I want to apologize in the name of all venezuelans to David and to make a clear statement against corruption: we venezuelan won’t tolerate more corruption. We’ve grown between that, buying places in a line to get our National ID Card, paying one million bolivares to get a Passport appointment. We’re sick of this. This is not the great Venezuela we live in. Please, losers, shoot yourselves. Or eat rat poison, whichever makes less stains.

Jos Parrella: Thoughts about DPL Election

As I see it, there are three positions: Yes, someone already told it: is that time of the year again. This small and insignificant fact (the DPL election) can shock the entire Debian Community. This kind of stuff makes us the fun, social and rewarding Debian Community some people claim we should be. The people who only cares about developing will keep working disregarding all the social conflicts. So most people won’t take much care about the Election, pick up a candidate, vote and keep working
It says: Welcome - Bolivarian Revolutionary Government of the Merida State David has more than one week in Venezuela. I’m gladly offering him accomodation in my house, bandwidth and all the support he needs for the next twenty years. We spent a weekend in Merida (which is in the Venezuelan Andes) in some Free Software Workshops and the rest of the week we have been working in several migration projects in the Company I’m working with. We have setup g33k!, a small server in my room running Debian (and Cherokee and Jaws) just for fun and testing. He’s leaving to San Crist bal (the capital of a state in the border with Colombia) on Friday and I should be finishing my semester as well. The next big Free Software event in Venezuela is the Latin American Infest. See you there!

30 March 2006

Jos Parrella: Chewie did that

I’ve found this photomontage at the Chewie’s blog (hilarious) (the blog also, not only the photomontage) BTW, me and around 6 more people from Venezuela are coming to DebConf 6 in Oaxtepec. That if you don’t count David, of course. Everything can happen. Even some people are waiting for a last-minute Venezuelan government sponsorship… I was originally travelling with Colombian flag carrier Avianca in the itinerary CCS - BOG - MEX, but this was expensive, slow and uncomfortable for me to pay (the travel agency is in a city 2 hours away from Caracas) so I went to my plain-ol’-good travel agency in Caracas and found a special offer from Mexicana with a student fare. I have to wait until April to buy it, but it’s worth the wait. I now have my Venezuelan and Spanish passports, but someone told me that Mexico won’t take my old Venezuelan passport (the Country changed names, from Republica de Venezuela to Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela on 1999) since we have diplomatic problems with them, and also they told me that my Spanish passport won’t do for entering Mexico since I’m not travelling from Europe. So I have to request the new Andean Community Passport (links in spanish). See you in Mexico!

Jos Parrella: Call For Papers: IV Foro Mundial de Conocimiento Libre

Call For Papers for the 4th. World Forum on Free Knowledge is now released in english (non-official translation, sorry for mine) and spanish. The WFFK is a Community-organized Forum, made possible by the sponsorship of Government Enterprises and Private Enterprises, as well as Volunteers and Donations. The first was made in Caracas, on November 2004, in the installations of the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela, with the sponsorship of the Venezuelan Oil Company, PDVSA. The second WFFK was made in Thiruvananthapuram, in Kerala-India, under the name Free Software, Free Society in May 2005, and the third WFFK was made in Maracaibo, Venezuela, with the support of several Institutions, including PDVSA, CONATEL and serveral others. Impressed by the success of the 3rd. WFFK, a group of people is organizing the fourth, which will take place in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, in October 2006. This is the first ocassion a Call For Papers is being done, because the Forum will have a Congress inside it, as well as selected articles. In the past, we only had selected articles and invited speakers on a certain basis. This time, a Call For Papers will also be done, so we can invite nice speakers to come and share with the attendance. Last time in Maracaibo we had David Moreno Garza with us, as well as several Debian Maintainers and Co-Maintainers with us, from Venezuela and Colombia: Ernesto Hern ndez-Novich, Polkan Garc a, Ernesto Crespo, V ctor P rez, Ana Delgado, Gerardo Curiel, Manuel Garc a, V ctor P rez and myself (am I missing someone?). So this was quite a MiniDebConf! Let’s make the 4th. a complete one :)

14 March 2006

Jos Parrella: Shame, shame

I was at a client today when I remembered that David was due to arrive to Caracas circa 1430, so I called him to his brand-new-venezuelan-GSM-cellphone and I found out that he was in problems. In big, dark, awful problems. As I told in previous posts, he went to San Crist bal (near the border with Colombia) to visit his girl and know the city. He departed from Caracas in a bus on Friday night and arrived on Saturday morning. He spent the whole weekend there, and in Monday he was due to leave San Crist bal through the Mayor Buenaventura Vivas Military Airbase, in a civilian airplane. He arrived just on time for his flight, rushing to take the plane on time, and he was stopped by two so-called Inmigration Officials who demanded to see his passport. He recently got a new one from the Passport Office in Mexico City, so he had a brand new passport with the Venezuelan Entry Stamp (Mexicans don’t need a visa to enter Venezuela)
ONIDEX, the National Office for Inmigration. Praised for lots of people for fighting against Passport Corruption, kidnaps people in San Cristobal. The Officials told him that his passport was a fake, and they told him that, from this time on, he was under arrest. They made him leave the Airport quickly and took him in a civilian vehicle with no identifications. They started the trip to San Crist bal City (1 hour away from the Airport in a very scary road) and they kept telling him that his passport was fake (they claimed that the Passport didn’t have the watermarks, and stuff) Soon their position changed and a common practice in Venezuelan officials started: extorsion. They told him that there were “several ways to fix the problem”, and asked him what was in his backpack (which had a laptop, but he denied it): they were demanding money, and David wasn’t prone to do that.
National Guard. Doesn’t have a /proc/clue about anything. They drove David to the Inmigration Office in San Crist bal and told him that they “made” some tests to the passport and they determined that the passport was fake. They told David that their “Commander” told they that he should be deported into Colombia, since he was a “very important member of a Cartel that they were willing to capture”
DISIP: the Venezuelan Political Police. They were helpful in this episode, but they’re not angels. Finally, hours after that charade of Officials telling him funny laws, stupid suppositions and wanting him to give them money, they left David in the Bus Terminal in San Crist bal, where he was able to talk to Ana, from Debian Venezuela, which picked him up and went back to the Airport. The two “Officials” weren’t there anymore, and he had a last problem with the National Guard which had stupid suppositions about his trip, and stuff (this is common, but at least it’s not illegal) before he was able to get into the plane. Being in Caracas, I was really worried. Between Ana, my mother and me we were able to move several people to check David status in the Airport (my mother called four members of the Venezuelan FAA, I called the Venezuelan CIA and Ana called the Vicechancellor) and this probably saved David’s life and money, since the “Officials” might have been scared by the movement of people caring about David. He’s safe now, back in Caracas, in home. He has all his stuff and his health is OK (yet he was scared when he arrived, which I fully understand) Why am I writing this post? I’m really concerned about what happened to David, and I want to make a public statement on this. Somehow, we venezuelans got used to this kind of practices in our Country. Probably 40 years of pseudo-democracy with messy governors helped, maybe it’s a matter of education and culture. I don’t really care about this, but I do care about what they’re doing with the people in my Country. Today, President Chavez declared that a dance against corruption was going to start. I think it’s the fourth time he’s making something about corruption, and he’s failing. There’s a gang of people in San Cristobal, Mr. President, who tries to rob and scare the visitors. They should be in jail. They arrested somebody illegally. It’s forbidden in our Constitution to arrest somebody without having proofs to do it (we have one of the best Constitutions in the World, experts say, but we don’t have people who obey it). If you’re going to arrest an alien, you need to have a Public Prosecutor in place, writing down a legal document and guaranteeing the safety of the detained. This people should be in jail.
Stop Corruption! Though, as my mother later said to David, two awful Venezuelan people kidnapped David, but probably twenty Venezuelan people quickly acted to find out what was happening. We might be a Third World Country, but we use to be able to get out of our problems by our own. And, hell it’s rewarding. I want to apologize in the name of all venezuelans to David and to make a clear statement against corruption: we venezuelan won’t tolerate more corruption. We’ve grown between that, buying places in a line to get our National ID Card, paying one million bolivares to get a Passport appointment. We’re sick of this. This is not the great Venezuela we live in. Please, losers, shoot yourselves. Or eat rat poison, whichever makes less stains.

10 March 2006

Jos Parrella: Thoughts about DPL Election

As I see it, there are three positions: Yes, someone already told it: is that time of the year again. This small and insignificant fact (the DPL election) can shock the entire Debian Community. This kind of stuff makes us the fun, social and rewarding Debian Community some people claim we should be. The people who only cares about developing will keep working disregarding all the social conflicts. So most people won’t take much care about the Election, pick up a candidate, vote and keep working
It says: Welcome - Bolivarian Revolutionary Government of the Merida State David has more than one week in Venezuela. I’m gladly offering him accomodation in my house, bandwidth and all the support he needs for the next twenty years. We spent a weekend in Merida (which is in the Venezuelan Andes) in some Free Software Workshops and the rest of the week we have been working in several migration projects in the Company I’m working with. We have setup g33k!, a small server in my room running Debian (and Cherokee and Jaws) just for fun and testing. He’s leaving to San Crist bal (the capital of a state in the border with Colombia) on Friday and I should be finishing my semester as well. The next big Free Software event in Venezuela is the Latin American Infest. See you there!

22 February 2006

Jos Parrella: Chewie did that

I’ve found this photomontage at the Chewie’s blog (hilarious) (the blog also, not only the photomontage) BTW, me and around 6 more people from Venezuela are coming to DebConf 6 in Oaxtepec. That if you don’t count David, of course. Everything can happen. Even some people are waiting for a last-minute Venezuelan government sponsorship… I was originally travelling with Colombian flag carrier Avianca in the itinerary CCS - BOG - MEX, but this was expensive, slow and uncomfortable for me to pay (the travel agency is in a city 2 hours away from Caracas) so I went to my plain-ol’-good travel agency in Caracas and found a special offer from Mexicana with a student fare. I have to wait until April to buy it, but it’s worth the wait. I now have my Venezuelan and Spanish passports, but someone told me that Mexico won’t take my old Venezuelan passport (the Country changed names, from Republica de Venezuela to Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela on 1999) since we have diplomatic problems with them, and also they told me that my Spanish passport won’t do for entering Mexico since I’m not travelling from Europe. So I have to request the new Andean Community Passport (links in spanish). See you in Mexico!

28 January 2006

Jos Parrella: Call For Papers: IV Foro Mundial de Conocimiento Libre

Call For Papers for the 4th. World Forum on Free Knowledge is now released in english (non-official translation, sorry for mine) and spanish. The WFFK is a Community-organized Forum, made possible by the sponsorship of Government Enterprises and Private Enterprises, as well as Volunteers and Donations. The first was made in Caracas, on November 2004, in the installations of the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela, with the sponsorship of the Venezuelan Oil Company, PDVSA. The second WFFK was made in Thiruvananthapuram, in Kerala-India, under the name Free Software, Free Society in May 2005, and the third WFFK was made in Maracaibo, Venezuela, with the support of several Institutions, including PDVSA, CONATEL and serveral others. Impressed by the success of the 3rd. WFFK, a group of people is organizing the fourth, which will take place in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, in October 2006. This is the first ocassion a Call For Papers is being done, because the Forum will have a Congress inside it, as well as selected articles. In the past, we only had selected articles and invited speakers on a certain basis. This time, a Call For Papers will also be done, so we can invite nice speakers to come and share with the attendance. Last time in Maracaibo we had David Moreno Garza with us, as well as several Debian Maintainers and Co-Maintainers with us, from Venezuela and Colombia: Ernesto Hern ndez-Novich, Polkan Garc a, Ernesto Crespo, V ctor P rez, Ana Delgado, Gerardo Curiel, Manuel Garc a, V ctor P rez and myself (am I missing someone?). So this was quite a MiniDebConf! Let’s make the 4th. a complete one :)

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