Club Linux Coffs Harbour

Ferris has extended its claws to allow the pastebin at http://paste.kde.org to be mounted. Since bash doesn't know libferris at all, without fuse you can use ferris-redirect to pipe information into any file that libferris can use as shown below (-T truncates like ">" in bash).



mkdir /tmp/test

cd /tmp/test

date > df1.txt

cat df1.txt | ferris-redirect -T pastebin://kde.org/new/foo

...

http://paste.kde.org/199754/



If you just have one file, then the "new" directory itself will act as a target too:



echo anyone, anyone... | ferris-redirect -T pastebin://kde.org/new

...

http://paste.kde.org/199760/



And because everybody knows that key protected pastebins are the new red, the following will need to have "goodkeyhere" on hand to read the data back...



echo this is secret, dudes | ferris-redirect -T pastebin://kde.org/private/goodkeyhere

...

http://paste.kde.org/199772/35847813/



The final directory is the "list" which contains virtual files allowing you to get a paste through the virtual filesystem. Of course, you could just fcat the http:// URL for the paste, but a nice tree is a nice tree.



fls pastebin://kde.org/list/

... 199700

fcat pastebin://kde.org/list/199700

In the last week we've now seen the two specialists that we needed to see to learn more about Catherine's pituitary adenoma. The first was the opthamologist, who kindly saw us at very short notice. Even better, he's Andrew Tridgell's brother and a lovely guy. He did a great job of answering our questions and generally reassuring us, and the short of it is that Catherine's vision is not current disturbed and barring another hemorrhage or a significant growth in the tumor it shouldn't be. He of course couldn't rule these things out, but that's because all things are possible even if they are unlikely. The ongoing strategy here appears to be a series of MRIs and visual field studies done every six months or so for the foreseeable future. The only real wart here was that if there is a hemorrhage, which is something we can't control, the prognosis here could change rapidly for the worse with very little warning. There is evidence of a previous hemorrhage on the MRI.



The second specialist was the endocronologist, who we saw on Monday in Sydney. Again he was a lovely guy and put up with our two pages of questions. As best as he can tell the adenoma is not cancer, but he's not sure if it is functional or not (controlling the level of prolactin in Catherine's body). The first steps are that he's going to take the MRI films to a radiologist specializing in cranial scans, and has put Catherine on a drug which should control her prolactin levels. Then it will be a blood test in a month to see if the drug is working, and we'll take it from there. He was talking about the possibility that this whole thing is related to Catherine's sarcoidosis from a decade ago, but he thinks that only a biopsy of the tumor will confirm that. I feel that if they're going to do brain surgery for a biopsy they may as well just take the darn thing out while they're there, but we'll have that argument when we get there.



So, overall not as horribly bad as it could have been. There are still risks if there is a hemorrhage, and its possible that we'll end up seeing a neurosurgeon to have the tumor removed, but we'll cross those bridges when we come to them. The next step is either that the radiologist will see something on the MRI that he thinks needs more information, or that Catherine will have a blood test in a month. We'll keep you posted.



Tags for this post: health catherine brain tumor pituitary adenoma

Related posts: It hasn't been a very good week; JJJ's hack



Comment

Wow, a lot happens in 3 months. I'm sure I've missed something...

I think the biggest achievement would be toilet training. Zoe's been using the toilet for some time now, but still wearing diapers, and just after Christmas (when she was sick and vomited on the carpet) we figured we had nothing to lose, so we ditched the diapers. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of accidents she's had since then. I'm really happy to have this out of the way so early. Using a toilet away from home is still more of a challenge, but she seems to have very good bladder control, and fairly predictable bowel movements.

Speaking of sick, she was the sickest she's ever been around Christmas time. It coincided with her top canines finally coming through. She had a cold, which progressed into an ear infection, and she had this dreadful persistent dry cough, which then progressed into a dreadful productive wet cough. You knew she was really sick because she was extremely cuddly and lethargic.

Since around that time, her sleep has gone completely to hell. We've had some really bad nights where she'll wake up after a couple of hours of going down for bed, or for a while, she was reliably waking up at 4am and taking a good couple of hours to settle back down. Lately she's been sleeping through again, but waking up at 6am instead of the usual 7-7:30am. We bought a clock that changes colour at programmable times, so we're trying to train her that if she wakes up and the clock isn't green yet, she should try and go back to sleep. Not a huge amount of success there yet.

Christmas itself was good, but fairly quiet because Zoe was sick. Sarah managed to get a fabulous photo with Santa, which just fills me joy every time I look at it. We had some friends around for Christmas dinner, and Zoe vomited all over her new Cabbage Patch Kid doll and I think she threw up a couple more times between that day and the day after, so that wasn't much fun.

She's becoming more and more independent. "Zoe do it" is the most frequent thing out of her mouth, but fortunately she still accepts help as well.

We've also been getting plenty of sneak previews of the Terrible Twos. Fortunately they're pretty short-lived, but it's definitely going to be a challenge to my patience.

We'd been intending to keep Zoe rear-facing in the car until she was 2, which is the current recommendation over here, but I caved in recently when she was getting in the car and refusing the sit down (she'd stand up facing forwards and it was next to impossible to rectify the situation). After she did this to me a few times when I took her out in the car, I had enough and turned the car seat around. It's improved things a bit, but she still has her moments.

We also changed her day care, from the one day a week at a home day care, to two days a week at a commercial place. We were becoming more and more unhappy with the existing day care, and so decided to move her. It's a lot more money, but after just a week, we were seeing a noticeable change (for the better) in Zoe's response to going to day care, and she seemed to have picked up a bunch of new skills as well (sitting crossing her legs, holding a crayon like a pencil). The place she's in now is pretty new and very shiny. There's a couple of kids in her class that she knows from the local park, so overall it's looking like money well spent and definitely a change for the better.

Zoe had her first hair cut last weekend, and it was fairly uneventful. We went to this cute place in Palo Alto called Snipits, which was ludicrously expensive and I'd only ever take Zoe there for her first haircut. There was another kid there who was screaming bloody murder, and I think that unsettled Zoe more than anything else, so she was a bit uncomfortable to start with, but once the hairdresser put an Elmo DVD on, it was all good.

Sarah's Mum is coming over to visit for a couple of weeks in a couple of weeks time, so Zoe will be very happy to see her Nana. They're going to go on a cruise out of New Orleans down to Mexico and part of the Caribbean. Unfortunately I'm too busy at work at the moment to burn a week, so I'll just take a four-day weekend and check out New Orleans with them when they get back from the cruise.

I wanted to determine if its worth putting ephemeral images into the libvirt cache at all. How expensive are these images to create? They don't need to come from the image service, so it can't be too bad, right? It turns out that qemu-img is very very fast at creating these images, based on the very small data set of my laptop with an ext4 file system...

mikal@x220:/data/temp$ time qemu-img create -f raw disk 10g Formatting 'disk', fmt=raw size=10737418240 real 0m0.315s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.004s mikal@x220:/data/temp$ time qemu-img create -f raw disk 100g Formatting 'disk', fmt=raw size=107374182400 real 0m0.004s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.000s

Perhaps this is because I am using ext4, which does funky extents things when allocating blocks. However, the only ext3 file system I could find at my place is my off site backup disks, which are USB3 attached instead of the SATA2 that my laptop uses. Here's the number from there:

$ time qemu-img create -f raw disk 100g Formatting 'disk', fmt=raw size=107374182400 real 0m0.055s user 0m0.000s sys 0m0.004s

So still very very fast. Perhaps its the mkfs that's slow? Here's a run of creating a ext4 file system inside that 100gb file I just made on my laptop:

$ time mkfs.ext4 disk mke2fs 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010) disk is not a block special device. Proceed anyway? (y,n) y warning: Unable to get device geometry for disk Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) Stride=0 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks 6553600 inodes, 26214400 blocks 1310720 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=0 Maximum filesystem blocks=0 800 block groups 32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group 8192 inodes per group Superblock backups stored on blocks: 32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208, 4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872 Writing inode tables: done Creating journal (32768 blocks): done Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done This filesystem will be automatically checked every 36 mounts or 180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override. real 0m4.083s user 0m0.096s sys 0m0.136s

That time includes the time it took me to hit the 'y' key, as I couldn't immediately find a flag to stop prompting.



In conclusion, there is nothing slow here. I don't see why we'd want to cache ephemeral disks and use copy on write for them at all. Its very cheap to just create a new one each time, and it makes the code much simpler.



Tags for this post: openstack qemu ephemeral mkfs swap speed canonical

Related posts: Further adventures with base images in OpenStack; Openstack compute node cleanup; Taking over a launch pad project; Speed limit; Slow git review uploads?; My machine was thrashing a lot; Large inodes = faster samba; Are you in a LUG? Do you want some promotional materials for LCA 2013?; Announcement video; linux.conf.au Returns to Canberra in 2013; Linux USB quandary



Comment

I'm running for election as an "At Large" board member of the Drupal Association.

"Meet the candidates" forums were scheduled so members of the Drupal community could ask questions of the nominees.  We were all asked to do a brief introduction, then respond to questions either by voice, or by IRC, and then were all asked to make a final statement. 

Rather than adding to the already lengthy wiki summary of the candidate meetings, I'm posting the edited version of my responses here instead.  See the full IRC transcript, and others summaries here:

http://groups.drupal.org/node/207398

My formal candidate statement is here:

https://association.drupal.org/node/14388

Further information on the election, as well as details on voter eligibility, and how to vote is here:

https://association.drupal.org/2012-elections-voting

General Intro

I'm in Melbourne, Australia. Run my own small business, called creative contingencies. Been using Drupal for about 5 years. I'm really passionate about open source and the fact it enables people to do things they would not otherwise be able to do.

In terms of Drupal and the Drupal association, I'd like to be a voice for the 'small voices'. Small drupal shops, amateurs, hobbyists, non-profits, students and tinkers. Sometimes we get caught up in the commercial opportunities, and forget that Drupal has been an enabler for many people that aren't using it to make a living.

It's important the Drupal Association develops a more global perspective, and that we work together to invite and embrace more people into the Drupal community.

I just helped run Drupal Downunder in Melbourne a couple of weeks back, it was a great success, and like many other camps around the world was driven by the local community to fulfil a need that can't be filled by DrupalCon, because DrupalCon happens on the other side of the world. The DA has already expressed an interest in seeing DrupalCon South America and DrupalCon Asia Pacific - which is fantastic, but I have concerns.

Response to Questions

Harley (Hyperglide)

Regarding emerging markets in asia. Wants to know if any of the candidates have an idea on how to handle outreach to those markets to solve the talent shortage?

Emerging markets are really important for Drupal's growth. There's a pretty critical Drupal skills shortage. Everyone is hitting that. China and India are both huge countries with lots of developers - finding a way to encourage them to participate in the community could help with the global skills shortage. But we also have to acknowledge the economic reality that participating in an open source project as a volunteer doesn't pay the bills. We need to connect with other open source communities in the region, and encourage and support local groups to create and grow their own events, meetups, mentoring, and community learning programs.

The DA can help with some of that, but we're also going to run into some issues. We're going to have address the tension between commercial interests in training and certification with the broad based need for more people to learn Drupal.

 

tsvenson: What do you see as the biggest obstacles for new Drupal users, especially non coders with small or no budgets, often leading to them quickly going elsewhere? And what will you do to change that?

We need to tackle the issues identified by the documentation team. They are the front line for new users. Our online help and support is where new users and new developers go to learn. Infrastructure bottle necks are a real issue holding us back. That is definitely something the DA should address. Even better, it's on the roadmap for 2012 - which is great. I'd support and champion that element of the 2012 roadmap.

We also need to find how to support documentation translations, and better multi-lingual support, on drupal.org

 

webchick: For those who want to promote international diversity, explain how a position on the DA helps you do that more effectively.

Actually, this is the core of my platform. International diversity has been identified as a key goal for the DA. Yet the makeup of the current board is largely homogenous. With one exception, all 8 of the current board members lives in North America. One is in Europe.

No doubt these people have an international perspective, but it's one thing to think about, it's another thing to live it. The heated discussion about the need to travel was educational to say the least.

As an example, the 2nd candidates meeting was scheduled at 4am Melb/Sydney time. We weren't expected to be there, but I wondered how failing to show up would hurt our candidacy? I decided to bite the bullet, get up early to be on the call.

If elected, I'll be noisy, opinionated and irritating. I'll reach out to communities in Oceania, Asia and Africa, and encourage them to engage in the community, participate on groups.drupal.org, share their experiences of running local camps, and national associations - as I've started to try and do so with a BoF at London DrupalCon, and International Drupal Associations on G.D.O

 

Crell: Currently Drupal's face in the world is a mix of face-less Drupal.org and Acquia. Acquia is the face of Drupal, rightly or wrongly, in many eyes, moreso with the new Office of the CTO. Drupal of course is far far more than Acquia. What if anything do you feel the DA can or should do to counter-balance that, or is that even an appropriate role for the DA?

I think the DA needs to look at the apache and gnome foundations. Acquia is incredibly important and powerful - but as far as the DA concerned - Acquia should just be one of many ddrupal companies. The DA needs to focus on the community and the infrastructure the community needs to make drupal better.

 

tsvenson: We just had a live usability test that showed we have still very much to do. How do you propose we can put more efforts into making Drupal, including contib projects, more user friendly and intuitive?

Continue to improve the infrastrucuture... and invest in the tools we use... eg D.O Conduct further public live streamed usability sessions just like that. Very useful. But the next step is spreading knowledge of what to do with that information amongst the developer community, and ignite their passion to focus on usability challenges.

 

Slurpee: How many candidates have been to Drupal events outside of their own continent? And can you speak more than 1 language fluently?

I have been to drupalcon sanfrancisco and london - I can't speak another language fluently... but I speak a little bit of Dutch.

 

Crell: Several of you listed things yo want to do or accomplish. The DA, however, has shifted from a staff board to a policy board, so board members are not directly doing anything, but managing, strategizing, coordinating, etc. Those of you who want to "do", isn't the board the wrong place for what you're describing?

This is exactly why I want to get involved and be a voice for under represented parts of the Drupal community because all too often the policy gets driven without those things being considered.

If you're not loud and you don't put your voice in when the policies being formed, it's much harder to move in that direction afterwards.

 

rfay: In 30 seconds or less, what are the roles of the DA and what are not the roles?

The DA can amplify the work of local communities and also support and give credibility to them!

The DA has no involvement in driving the Drupal project itself. It is primarily and administrative entity to manage the affairs of a series of large international conferences. Potentially taking over some of the legal intellectual property issues around the trademark which belongs to Dries Buytaert, and employing staff to help ensure DrupalCons happen, and the hardware and Drupal infrastructure keeps working.

 

Crell: Several candidates said they want to better represent or be a voice for "small shops" and independents. In what way does the DA currently not adequately serve small shops, and what would a better service for small players mean in practice? Be as specific as possible.

I don't know that the DA is failing small shops, I just don't see those voices represented in the current makeup of the board. most are from NA and large organizations so it's not necessarily that there's a huge gap, but there is potentially a huge gap. I have a sense that this is a problem more than specific criticisms.

But we're not just talking about small drupal shops... but people using Drupal who don't have a commercial interest in it... Hobbyists, non-profits staffed by volunteers, clubs and amateurs, and community groups. Tinkerers and students. Many of our contributors have come from this kind of background, it's a valuable proving ground for future Drupal talent.

 

tsvenson: When do you think the first Asian DrupalCon should be held? Also, should that mean 3 cons/year or should they alternate with 2/year?

DrupalCon Asia?

I was concerned about the idea of "drupalcon asia pacific" somehow being "the rest of the world" except Africa. The AsiaPacific region contains 3 of the 5 most populous nations on earth: India, China and Indonesia. They are all incredibly culturally and linguistically diverse. Trying to create a single event for both continents (ASIA and OCEANIA) is going to be an enormous challenge.

DrupalCon Mumbai, DrupalCon Shanghai, DrupalCon Bali, DrupalCon Manila, DrupalCon Wellington might all happen one day. When? Yes, well that's a very good question. This year? unlikely. Next year? Maybe. And then 2 years after that.

A DrupalCon in our region is going to happen pretty infrequently, I'm more interested in local communities building their own capacity to serve their needs with local events, than sit around waiting for the blessing of the Drupal Association.

Perhaps the US Drupal community should adopt the North American DrupalCon as it's National event? And the Drupal Association should shift it's focus toward developing one International UberDrupalCongress which is on a different continent each year, more like the olympics, and focus all of its attention on that. I don't know. I just think we should question all our assumptions.

 

jredding: In 30 seconds or less, what would you say is the most important skillset, expertise, or experience that a board member should bring to the Association.

One of the most important things is to bring a sense of collaboration and wilingness to work with the rest of the board on important topics. To try to reach consensus, and ensure we all bring our slightly different perspectives to the table when we're making decisions. People often think consensus is all happy families but you only get there considering many differnt perspectives and figuring out what you can agree on, rather than focussing on what you can't agree on.

 

carsonblack: Q: What are some (or one) way that DA can help the small user groups throughout the world better serve their local markets?

Perhaps put together an info pack? How to build and grow your local community. How to engage with local businesses, authorities and educational institutions. Often what's holding people back, is just knowing where to begin.

 

jredding:

When the DA board member is out n the community how would that member represent themselvs in the community? Would they have a title of board member and use that?

I don't know. I think it's an interesting question and would be keen to explore ideas on how best to do this.

 

Crell: The DA is officially banned from "directing the development of Drupal". What does that mean to you? Are there ways the DA could "support" development without "directing" development? What would you want to do in that regard? Again, be specific as possible.

I like the idea of funding sprints... not directing what happens at them, but helping them happen. Putting effort into the tools the project relies on is borderline... but it's something that needs doing....

 

tsvenson: Question: Should the DA take a more proactive role about the d.o infrastructure and its improvement needs. Especially in regards to for example content management tools for doumentation and giving better cred/visibility to all those that puts in amazing work that is not project/code related? If so how and what is needed?

Yes! We expend effort and resources on ensuring DrupalCon happens, and that the servers keep running. We should be expending effort on the real heart of the community, drupal.org and groups.drupal.org.

We urgently need to address bottle necks frustrating key community initiatives, such as documentation, support, prairie, some of these have lost momentum because of infrastructure bottlenecks, and the fact we can no longer really innovate on D.O.

 

Final Statement

I'd like to finish off by saying Drupal is awesome. The community is what makes that true.

I am desperate to give back to this project and this commnuity in the best way I can

I'm not a coder, designer, documenter, but I am good at being committees, organising events. Following through.

I will put in all my energy and efforts to be a useful productive, engaged member of the board.

It's the first time the DA has run broad based elections like this. It is the beginning of a new chapter in terms of how org is structured. There's a a lot of work to do in the future around consolidating the work that's been done and becoming a more open/transparent organization. I'd love to be part of seeing that happen and working for the community by being on the board.

I'd like to add, my fellow nominees are all awesome. Even if not elected, the DA should find a way to co-opt them onto other committees. They've all indicated a willingness to serve - let's harness their commitment, competence and energy.

• drupalplanet
• drupal

After LCA [1] there was a discussion about possible locations for future conferences, most of the messages in the discussion were jokes or suggestions that don’t seriously apply to LCA. So I’ll add my suggestion for conferences other than LCA.

I’ve previously written generally about the issue of conferences at sea [2]. I don’t think that LCA would be suitable for running at sea because delegates have specific expectations for LCA which are quite different to what a cruise ship can offer, so I don’t think it makes sense to change LCA which is working well as it is. However there are lots of other possible computer conferences which could suite a cruise ship.

Price

Price is a major factor in running a conference, so obviously getting a cheap cruise price is very important. Here is a link for Vacations To Go which shows cruises from the Australia/NZ region which are of at least 5 nights and cost no more than $800 [3]. The cheapest entry at this moment is $609 for 5 nights and the cheapest on a per-night basis is an 8 night cruise for $779. The cheapest cruise currently on offer which allows a conference similar to LCA is 7 nights for $699. The prices should be regarded as rough approximations as some cruises have some mandatory extra fees and the prices are quoted in US dollars and subject to currency fluctuations. Note that those prices are for dual-occupancy cabins, this can be a “double” or a “twin” configuration. Some cruise ships have cabins for 3 or 4 people that are cheaper, but if you have a cabin for a single person then the rate is almost the same as for having two people.

The price for LCA accommodation including breakfast was $78 per night for a single room or $92 for a double room. Then lunch cost a minimum of $10 and for dinner there was $80 for the penguin dinner and probably about $20 for dinner every other night. That gave an overall cost for a 6 night stay (which is probably the minimum for someone who lives further away than Melbourne) in Ballarat of 6*78+6*10+5*20+80==$708. For a double room that would be 6*92+6*10+5*20+2*80==$872.

Even if we don’t count the fact that the Australian dollar is worth more than the US dollar it is obvious that on the basis of accommodation and food two people sharing a twin cabin on a cruise ship could pay LESS than two people in single rooms at the Ballarat University dorms! Now sharing a cabin isn’t so great, but the upside is that cruise ships have excellent food and lots of other entertainment options. I previously reviewed the food on the Dawn Princess and determined that it’s better than the food I would expect to get if I spent the cost of the cruise on dinner at land based restaurants [4].

I have been led to believe that the use of ship conference facilities is typically free for any organisation that books a sufficient number of cabins. So there’s no reason why the conference admission fees should be any greater than for a land based conference.

Advantages

A common problem with conferences is finding suitable dining options. Most people want to eat with other delegates but finding restaurants that have sufficient space and which are conveniently located is difficult at best and often impossible. On a cruise ship everything is within a short walk and the restaurants are big, usually be at least one restaurant will hold 500 people. The fact that you have to reserve times for the “Main Dining Room” makes it more difficult to miss one’s colleagues.

Everything on a cruise ship is luxurious.

There are lots of good locations for BoFs, pools, cafes, restaurants, and bars. Basically the ship is filled with comfortable places for groups of people to sit down.

A cruise ship typically has a main theater with more than 700 seats – more than large enough for most conferences I’ve attended. It’s common for the size of a conference to be limited to the size of the main theater that is used, for a cruise ship this will probably be less of a problem than for most other conference venues.

Disadvantages

The first disadvantage of running a computer conference on a cruise ship is the almost total lack of net access. The costs for net access are more expensive than most delegates will pay. Probably many delegates would check their email but it wouldn’t be practical for people to download source code, browse Wikipedia, and use the Internet in other ways related to the conference. It would be practical to have mirrors of Wikipedia, the source of several distributions of Linux, and other big things of common interest.

Another possible problem is the fact that you need to book it well in advance to avoid the risk of selling out (there is no option to stay at a different hotel). An established conference with financial backing could just pay to reserve the cabins. But when starting a new conference this could be a problem.

Alcohol is rather expensive on cruise ships. But getting really drunk isn’t compatible with learning about computer science anyway.

Finally the requirement to have at least two people in a cabin for good rates is a serious issue. The upside of this is that people travelling with their SO would find that it works really well (regardless of whether the SO is a delegate or not). But anyone who’s not travelling with their SO and doesn’t want to share with a friend will have to either pay a lot more or skip the conference.

Conclusion

I think that there is a good potential for running a computer conference around the Australia/NZ region on a cruise ship. It won’t be overly expensive for delegates and the facilities that are provided are good. The trade-off for solitary travelers of having to share a cabin (or pay more) for getting much better food and leisure facilities will be appreciated by many people (and admittedly hated by some).

Some people won’t appreciate the option of swimming, but even if you consider the cruise ship to be just a floating collection of restaurants and cabins it’s still fairly luxurious and beats the heck out of most conferences I’ve attended.

If you are considering the possibility of running a conference then I think that a cruise ship should be considered. VacationsToGo.com is the best site I’ve found for cheap cruise prices, their large group department has experience handling groups of more than 500 people so I think that anyone who wants to run a new conference in/around Australia should give them a call.

Also cruise ships travel around the world, so the same thing can be done in other countries but at a different time of year. The economic factors will differ by country though. Cruise ships probably aren’t a cheap option for a conference in some other countries.

• [1] http://www.linux.conf.au/
• [2] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2011/11/17/cruises/
• [3] http://www.vacationstogo.com/ticker.cfm?r=15&md=5&mp=800
• [4] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2012/01/08/my-first-cruise/

Related posts:

1. My First Cruise A few weeks ago I went on my first cruise,...
2. Cruises It seems that in theory cruises can make for quite...
3. Creating a Micro Conference The TEDxVolcano The TED conference franchise has been extended to...

jeblair was kind enough to help me debug my problem with slow "git review" uploads for Openstack projects just now. It turns out that part of my standard configuration for ssh is to enable ControlMaster and ControlPersist. I mostly do this because the machines I use at Canonical are a very long way away from my home in Australia, and its nice to have slightly faster connections when you ssh to a machine. However, gerrit is incompatible with these options as best as we can tell.



So, if your git reviews are taking 10 to 20 minutes to upload like mine were, check that you're not using persistent connections. Excluding review.openstack.org from that part of my configuration has made a massive difference to the speed of uploads for me.



Tags for this post: openstack git review gerrit ssh canonical

Related posts: More reviews; Book reviews; Taking over a launch pad project; Working on review comments for Chapters 2, 3 and 4 tonight; A ssh quickie; Review; Andrew's SSH filtering causes me pain; Further adventures with base images in OpenStack; Twisted conch; The Wild Palms Hotel; Wow, qemu-img is fast; Status of the book; Are you in a LUG? Do you want some promotional materials for LCA 2013?; Announcement video; linux.conf.au Returns to Canberra in 2013; clusterssh; Openstack compute node cleanup



Comment

Welcome to Precise Pangolin Alpha 2, which will in time become Ubuntu 12.04.

Pre-releases of Precise Pangolin are *not* encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs.

Alpha 2 is the second in a series of milestone images that will be released throughout the Precise development cycle.

This is the first Ubuntu milestone release to include images for the armhf architecture, for the ARM CPUs using the hard-float ABI.

New packages showing up for the first time include:

• Linux Kernel 3.2.2 (3.2.0-12.21)
• Upstart 1.4
• Unity 5.0
• LibreOffice 3.5 beta 2

You can download Alpha 2 images here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu, Ubuntu Server)

Additional images are also available at:

http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu Cloud Server)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-core/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Ubuntu Core)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/precise/ (Ubuntu Netboot)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Edubuntu DVD)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Kubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Lubuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/mythbuntu/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Mythbuntu)
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/precise/alpha-2/ (Xubuntu)

Alpha 2 includes a number of software updates that are ready for wider testing. This is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs. For a more detailed description of the changes in the Alpha 2 release and the known bugs (which can save you the effort of reporting a duplicate bug, or help you find proven workarounds), please see:

http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/

If you’re interested in following the changes as we further develop 12.04, we suggest that you subscribe initially to the ubuntu-devel-announce list. This is a low-traffic list (a few posts a week) carrying announcements of approved specifications, policy changes, alpha releases, and other interesting events.

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-announce

Originally sent to the ubuntu-release mailing list by Kate Stewart on Thu Feb 2 20:27:28 UTC 2012

Development Update

It is the week of Ubuntu 12.04 Alpha 2 which is to be released in just a few hours. Everybody has been getting their good work into Ubuntu, so it is a great opportunity for everyone to go check it out and test it. If you are excited by 12.04, just check out our testing pages and report back your results. The earlier we get them, the better!

Currently there is also a test rebuild of the whole archive going on, which will hopefully identify all the build errors early enough. In two weeks time Feature Freeze will be reached, at which point we stop introducing new features, packages, and APIs, and concentrate on fixing bugs in the development release.

Jeremy Bicha, a great contributor to the Desktop team, wrote up a nice explanation of how the components of the Ubuntu Desktop were chosen this cycle. It shows how much consideration goes into putting the release together and how coordination between Ubuntu and its upstreams is important.

Events

It is Ubuntu Developer Week, the event for getting involved, learning more, peeking behind the scences, and learning more from experience developers. Day 1 and Day 2 have already passed, but if you couldn’t make it to the sessions, read the following summaries to find out what happened. They contain links to the logs of the sessions.

• Summary day 1.
• Summary day 2.

Ubuntu Developer Week will only still be today, Thursday 2nd February 2012.

Things which need to get done

If you want to get involved in packaging and bug fixing, there’s still a lot of bugs that need to get fixed:

• There’s Merges that need to be done (main, restricted, universe, multiverse).
• Also is the Ubuntu Mozilla team looking for help, so if you’re excited about Mozilla and what’s happening there, join IRC, talk to the guys on #ubuntu-mozillateam on irc.freenode.net.
• And then there’s Security bugs you can take a look at, the team is a friendly bunch and they’re incredibly helpful in getting your patch reviewed.
• There are bitesize bugs.

<if teams ask us to add more stuff to this list, we’re of course happy to do it>

First timers!

We had two new contributors to Ubuntu who got their first upload in: Jean-Michel Vourgere and Sébastien Ramage. Great work! Both helped keeping Debian and Ubuntu in sync and good fixes into Ubuntu.

New contributor: Simon Steinbeiß

Benjamin Kerensa talked to Simon Steinbeiß, here’s what he has to say:

How did you get involved?
I got involved in Ubuntu by starting to use Xubuntu and then hanging out in its IRC channels. I engaged in discussions about Xubuntu’s artwork and default application set. After a while I started bringing in proposals and my own ideas. The developer team was really helpful and that’s how I got involved in the Xubuntu artwork team.

What was your experience like?
Well generally positive. Obviously there are always compromises to be made. When doing a gtk-theme for yourself or a panel-layout you apply different criteria then when doing it for an unkown amount of anonymous users. But I’d say it’s a rewarding job and the reviews of Xubuntu’s artwork have been pretty good since I’ve been involved (*brag* )

What did you like most about it?
The fact that there was a good community and everyone wanted to make Xubuntu better. I have “converted” quite a few friends of mine who formerly used Windows, so I got personally interested in making Xubuntu better. It seemed easier to improve things in Xubuntu itself than going around after each release and fixing things for my all my friends I also liked the fact that my artwork could be seen and used by so many people, it’s always great for an artist to have such a wide audience.

Is there anything that should have been easier? What do you recommend to other contributors who think about starting to get involved?
That is difficult to tell. I have the feeling that with many open-source or community-driven projects it’s about building relationships to people initially and that depends on the structure of the team you want to be a part of. If it’s a good team with good leadership it obviously might be easier to get involved. But it also depends on other factors like your personal motivation – no-one should be trusted with important tasks right from the start, so hanging in there for a bit is a necessary step to build trust.

What do you do in your other spare time?
I’m currently doing a PhD in the humanities. I finished my MAs in Philosophy and Religious Studies (no, not Theology!) and I’m currently conducting research projects in both fields at my university.

Get Involved

1. Read the Introduction to Ubuntu Development. It’s a short article which will help you understand how Ubuntu is put together, how the infrastructure is used and how we interact with other projects.
2. Follow the instructions in the Getting Set Up article. A few simple commands, a registration at Launchpad and you should have all the tools you need, and you’re ready to go.
3. Check out our instructions for how to fix a bug in Ubuntu, they come with small examples that make it easier to visualise what exactly you need to do.

Find something to work on

Pick a bitesize bug. These are the bugs we think should be easy to fix. Another option is to help out in one of our initiatives.

• Help out with fixing packages that don’t build anymore.
• Help out with security bugs.

In addition to that there are loads more opportunities over at Harvest.

Getting in touch

There are many different ways to contact Ubuntu developers and get your questions answered.

• Be interactive and reach us most immediately: talk to us in #ubuntu-motu on irc.freenode.net.
• Follow mailing lists and get involved in the discussions: ubuntu-devel-announce (announce only, low traffic), ubuntu-devel (high-level discussions), ubuntu-devel-discuss (fairly general developer discussions).
• Stay up to date and follow the ubuntudev account on Facebook, Google+, Identi.ca or Twitter.

It’s been a few weeks since the last drop of unity, and now the unity team has readied the new version of unity 5.2. Let’s walk through how to preview the new features unity 5.2 is bringing, and help test those features using checkbox! Checkbox allows you to get your feedback straight into the hands of the unity developers and report any problems your system may have with the new version of unity. First let’s talk a little bit about what’s new. Note that these features only exist for right now in Unity 3D.

• Multi-monitor support
• You will now see launchers on each of your monitor, and when you scroll across a monitor, you should feel some resistance in order to allow for you to use the launcher on that screen.
• New screen edge detection
• To invoke the launcher, you now need to push (or “scroll into”) against the left of the screen, rather than hover for X seconds. No more hitting the back button in firefox and having the launcher pop up in your way!

Feedback is appreciated on these features especially. Utilize #ubuntu-unity on freenode and checkbox feedback form to let the developers know how they work for you.

Installing

Prerequisites: Make sure you are running the latest version of
precise, and all your packages are up to date. Unfortunately this cannot
be installed on oneiric or any previous ubuntu release. 

Also, unity 5.2 did not ship with “the HUD” sadly. So if you have been testing the HUD you will need to use ppa-purge to remove and downgrade your packages. See this post for information on using ppa-purge if you need help doing so.

1) Add the unity ppa (https://launchpad.net/~unity-team/+archive/ppa). You can do this by issuing the following command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:unity-team/ppa

2) Update apt and run a dist upgrade — this should prompt you to upgrade unity and some indicators as well as install checkbox-unity.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

3) Restart your unity session by logging out and logging back in again.

Ok, hopefully the upgrade went smooth for you, but if not, head over to freenode #ubuntu-unity channel and let folks know what went wrong.

Testing

So, now that your up and running you can run the through the manual tests the unity team has prepared. Open the dash and type ‘unity testing’. The Checkbox Unity Tests should launch. Checkbox will gather some information on your system and then ask you which tests you wish to run. Once complete you will see a link containing your system report and an option to publish it to launchpad. Use the text box below the link to enter your launchpad email address and then hit submit. This will ensure your results and feedback go to the unity developers.

Please ensure you have finished and submitted your testing results ASAP. The testing window will be closed this Thursday at
8am UTC, in order to give the unity developers time to finish fixing the bugs found. Then unity 5.2 will be pushed to precise and coding on Unity 5.4 will begin.

Filing Bugs

Please file bugs against unity package in launchpad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+filebug). When filing, please make sure to tag your bug ’5.2-rc1′ and mention your running Unity 5.2-rc1 in your description.

Final Thoughts

Don’t hesitate to reach out to the unity team on IRC #ubuntu-unity on freenode at any time or to follow the latest in unity development. Thanks for helping test ubuntu and unity!

Originally posted here by Nicholas Skaggs on Tuesday, January 31, 2012.

OLPC Australia had a strong presence at linux.conf.au 2012 in Ballarat, two weeks ago.

I gave a talk in the main keynote room about our educational programme, in which I explained our mission and how we intend to achieve it.

Even if you saw my talk at OSDC 2011, I recommend that you watch this one. It is much improved and contains new and updated material. The YouTube version is above, but a higher quality version is available for download from Linux Australia.

The references for this talk are on our development wiki.

Here’s a better version of the video I played near the beginning of my talk:

I should start by pointing out out that OLPC is by no means a niche or minor project. XO laptops are in the hands of 8000 children in Australia, across 130 remote communities. Around the world, over 2.5 million children, across nearly 50 countries, have an XO.

Investment in our Children’s Future

The key point of my talk is that OLPC Australia have a comprehensive education programme that highly values teacher empowerment and community engagement.

The investment to provide a connected learning device to every one of the 300 000 children in remote Australia is less than 0.1% of the annual education and connectivity budgets.

For low socio-economic status schools, the cost is only $80 AUD per child. Sponsorships, primarily from corporates, allow us to subsidise most of the expense (you too can donate to make a difference). Also keep in mind that this is a total cost of ownership, covering the essentials like teacher training, support and spare parts, as well as the XO and charging rack.

While our principal focus is on remote, low socio-economic status schools, our programme is available to any school in Australia. Yes, that means schools in the cites as well. The investment for non-subsidised schools to join the same programme is only $380 AUD per child.

Comprehensive Education Programme

We have a responsibility to invest in our children’s education — it is not just another market. As a not-for-profit, we have the freedom and the desire to make this happen. We have no interest in vendor lock-in; building sustainability is an essential part of our mission. We have no incentive to build a dependency on us, and every incentive to ensure that schools and communities can help themselves and each other.

We only provide XOs to teachers who have been sufficiently enabled. Their training prepares them to constructively use XOs in their lessons, and is formally recognised as part of their professional development. Beyond the minimum 15-hour XO-certified course, a teacher may choose to undergo a further 5–10 hours to earn XO-expert status. This prepares them to be able to train other teachers, using OLPC Australia resources. Again, we are reducing dependency on us.

Certifications

Training is conducted online, after the teacher signs up to our programme and they receive their XO. This scales well to let us effectively train many teachers spread across the country. Participants in our programme are encouraged to participate in our online community to share resources and assist one another.

Online training process

We also want to recognise and encourage children who have shown enthusiasm and aptitude, with our XO-champion and XO-mechanic certifications. Not only does this promote sustainability in the school and give invaluable skills to the child, it reinforces our core principle of Child Ownership. Teacher aides, parents, elders and other non-teacher adults have the XO-basics (formerly known as XO-local) course designed for them. We want the child’s learning experience to extend to the home environment and beyond, and not be constrained by the walls of the classroom.

There’s a reason why I’m wearing a t-shirt that says “No, I won’t fix your computer.” We’re on a mission to develop a programme that is self-sustaining. We’ve set high goals for ourselves, and we are determined to meet them. We won’t get there overnight, but we’re well on our way. Sustainability is about respect. We are taking the time to show them the ropes, helping them to own it, and developing our technology to make it easy. We fundamentally disagree with the attitude that ordinary people are not capable enough to take control of their own futures. Vendor lock-in is completely contradictory to our mission. Our schools are not just consumers; they are producers too.

As explained by Jonathan Nalder (a highly recommended read!), there are two primary notions guiding our programme. The first is that the nominal $80 investment per child is just enough for a school to take the programme seriously and make them a stakeholder, greatly improving the chances for success. The second is that this is a schools-centric programme, driven from grassroots demand rather than being a regime imposed from above. Schools that participate genuinely want the programme to succeed.

Programme cycle

Technology as an Enabler

Enabling this educational programme is the clever development and use of technology. That’s where I (as Engineering Manager at OLPC Australia) come in. For technology to be truly intrinsic to education, there must be no specialist expertise required. Teachers aren’t IT professionals, and nor should they be expected to be. In short, we are using computers to teach, not teaching computers.

The key principles of the Engineering Department are:

• Technology is an integral and seamless part of the learning experience – the pen and paper of the 21st century.
• To eliminate dependence on technical expertise, through the development and deployment of sustainable technologies.
• Empowering children to be content producers and collaborators, not just content consumers.
• Open platform to allow learning from mistakes… and easy recovery.

OLPC have done a marvellous job in their design of the XO laptop, giving us a fantastic platform to build upon. I think that our engineering projects in Australia have been quite innovative in helping to cover the ‘last mile’ to the school. One thing I’m especially proud of is our instance on openness. We turn traditional systems administration practice on its head to completely empower the end-user. Technology that is deployed in corporate or educational settings is typically locked down to make administration and support easier. This takes control completely away from the end-user. They are severely limited on what they can do, and if something doesn’t work as they expect then they are totally at the mercy of the admins to fix it.

In an educational setting this is disastrous — it severely limits what our children can learn. We learn most from our mistakes, so let’s provide an environment in which children are able to safely make mistakes and recover from them. The software is quite resistant to failure, both at the technical level (being based on Fedora Linux) and at the user interface level (Sugar). If all goes wrong, reinstalling the operating system and restoring a journal (Sugar user files) backup is a trivial endeavour. The XO hardware is also renowned for its ruggedness and repairability. Less well-known are the amazing diagnostics tools, providing quick and easy indication that a component should be repaired/replaced. We provide a completely unlocked environment, with full access to the root user and the firmware. Some may call that dangerous, but I call that empowerment. If a child starts hacking on an XO, we want to hire that kid

Evaluation

My talk features the case study of Doomadgee State School, in far-north Queensland. Doomadgee have very enthusiastically taken on board the OLPC Australia programme. Every one of the 350 children aged 4–14 have been issued with an XO, as part of a comprehensive professional development and support programme. Since commencing in late 2010, the percentage of Year 3 pupils at or above national minimum standards in numeracy has leapt from 31% in 2010 to 95% in 2011. Other scores have also increased. Think what you may about NAPLAN, but nevertheless that is a staggering improvement.

In federal parliament, Robert Oakeshott MP has been very supportive of our mission:

Most importantly of all, quite simply, One Laptop per Child Australia delivers results in learning from the 5,000 students already engaged, showing impressive improvements in closing the gap generally and lifting access and participation rates in particular.

We are also engaged in longitudinal research, working closely with respected researchers to have a comprehensive evaluation of our programme. We will release more information on this as the evaluation process matures.

Join our mission

Schools can register their interest in our programme on our Education site.

Our Prospectus provides a high-level overview.

For a detailed analysis, see our Policy Document.

If you would like to get involved in our technical development, visit our development site.

Credits

Many thanks to colleagues Rangan Srikhanta (CEO) and Tracy Richardson (Education Manager) for some of the information and graphics used in this article.

Seems NetworkManager is driving everyone bonkers still and not just me. I did a GUI install and disabled the use of NetworkManager yet the stupid thing still seems to blow away my resolv.conf and better still not populated it even though I have things defined in ifcfg-eth0.

Grrr.

See here. I’ve experienced these exact same issues as the folks posting on the thread. I remember having this issue back on CentOS 6.0, guess it’s still not fixed.

A friend of mine and I were discussing cars the other day. He said that he thought the invention of the electric motor was a curse on cars, because it meant you wouldn't have a gearbox to control which gear you were in. A suitable electric motor has enough power to drive the car from zero to a comfortable top speed (110km/hr) at a reasonable acceleration using a fixed gear ratio - the car stays in (in this case third) gear and you drive it around like that. He maintained, however, that you needed to know which gear you were in, and to change gears, because otherwise you could find yourself using a gear that you hadn't chosen.

I argued that, in fact, having to select a gear meant that drivers both new and experienced would occasionally miss a gear change and put the gearbox into neutral by mistake, causing grinding of gears and possible crashes as the car was now out of control. He claimed to have heard of a clever device that would sit over your gearbox and tell you when you weren't in gear, but you couldn't use the car like that all the time because it made the car too slow. So you tested the car with this gearbox-watcher, then once you knew that the car itself wouldn't normally miss a gear you just had to blame the driver if the car blew up, crashed, or had other problems. But he was absolutely consistent in attitude towards electric motors: you lost any chance to find out that you weren't in the right gear, and therefore the whole invention could be written off as basically misguided.

Now, clever readers will have worked out that at this point my conversation was not real, and was in fact by way of an analogy (from the strain on the examples, for one). The friend was real - Rusty Russell - but instead of electric motors we were discussing the Go programming language and instead of gearboxes we were discussing the state of variables.

In Go, all variables are defined as containing zero unless initialised otherwise. In C, a variable can be declared but undefined - the language standard AFAIK does not specify the state of a variable that is declared but not initialised. From the C perspective, there are several reasons you might not want to automatically pre-initialise a variable when you define it - it's about to be set from some other structure, for example - and pre-initialising it is a waste of time. And being able to detect when a variable has been used without knowing what its stage is - using valgrind, for example - means you can detect subtle programming errors that can have hard-to-find consequences when the variable's meaning or initialisation is changed later on. If you can't know whether the programmer is using zero because that's what they really wanted or because it just happened to be the default and they didn't think about it, then how do you know which usage is correct?

From the Go perspective, in my opinion, these arguments are a kludgy way of seeing a bug as a feature. Optimising compilers can easily detect when a variable will be set twice without any intervening examination of state, and simply remove the first initialisation - so the 'waste of time' argument is a non-issue. Likewise, any self-respecting static analysis tool can determine if a variable is tested before it's explicitly defined, and I can think of a couple of heuristics for determining when this usage isn't intended.

And one of the most common errors in C is use of undefined variables; this happens to new and experienced programmers alike, and those subtle programming problems happen far more often in real-world code as it evolves over time - it is still rare for people to run valgrind over their code every time before they commit it to the project. It's far more useful to eliminate this entire category of bugs once and for all. As far as I can see, you lose nothing and you gain a lot more security.

To me, the arguments against a default value are a kind of lesser Stockholm Syndrome. C programmers learn from long experience to do things the 'right way', including making sure you initialise your variables explicitly before you use them, because of all the bugs - from brutally obvious to deviously subtle - that are caused by doing things in any other way. Tools like valgrind work around indirectly fixing this problem after the fact. People even come to love them - like the people who love being deafened by the sound of growling, blaring petrol engines and associate the feeling of power with that cacophany. They mock those new silent electric motors because they don't have the same warts and the same pain-inducing behaviour as the old petrol engine.

I'm sure C has many good things to recommend it. But I don't think lack of default initialisation is one.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #250 for the week January 23 – 29, 2012, and the full version is available here.

In this Issue we cover:

• Introducing the HUD. Say hello to the future of the menu.
• Ubuntu Developer Week: 31st January-2nd February
• Planet Ubuntu Update
• Ubuntu 12.04 Development update
• Ubuntu Developer Summit Sponsorship Now Open
• Ubuntu Stats
• SCALE 10x
• Launchpad News
• Hitting the road with juju talks and Charm Schools.
• OpenStack Jenkins dashboard available for testing
• juju events for 2012
• Precisely how we’re going to make the wallpapers in 12.04 the best ever!
• Searching Menus
• The HUD: Call For Testers
• software-center now installs language support automatically
• Plasma and KDE Applications 4.8 on Kubuntu
• Ubuntu Brand Guidelines get their own site
• Featured Ubuntu Software Centre apps for January 2012
• Quick Team Update
• Retiring the Firefox Stable PPA
• In The Press
• Ubuntu’s Already Making Plans For ARM In 2014, 2015
• Ubuntu 12.04 Is ARM-ing Up For Better Performance
• Ubuntu 12.04 Adds Launcher Customization
• Full Circle Magazine #57 – out now!
• Other Articles of Interest
• Weekly Official Ubuntu Flavors Team Meetings
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security
• And much much more

The issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Elizabeth Krumbach
• Chris Druif
• Liraz Siri
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

In the inevitable rant-fest that followed the LWN story on the proposal to have /lib and /bin point to /usr/lib and /usr/bin respectively (short story), I observe with wry amusement the vocal people who say "Look at PulseAudio - it's awful, I have to fight against all the time, that's why we shouldn't do this". The strange, sad thing about these people is that they happily ignore all those people (like me) for whom PulseAudio just works. There's some little concieted part of their brain that says "I must be the only person that's right and everyone else has got it wrong." It's childish, really.

And in my experience, those people often make unrealistic demands on new software, or misuse it - consciously or unconsciously, and with or without learning about it. These people are semi-consciously determined to prove that the new thing is wrong, and everything they do then becomes in some way critical of it. Any success is overlooked as "because I knew what to do", every failure is pounced on as proof that "the thing doesn't work". I've seen this with new hardware, new software, new cars, new clothes, new houses, accommodation, etc. You can see it in the fact that there's almost no correlation between people who complain about wind generator noise and the actual noise levels measured at their property. Human beings all have a natural inclination to believe that they are right and everything else is wrong, and some of us fight past that to be rational and fair.

This is why I didn't get Rusty's post on the topic. It's either completely and brilliantly ironic, or (frankly) misguided. His good reasons are all factual; his 'bad' reasons are all ad-hominem attacks on a person. I'd understand if it was e.g. Microsoft he was criticising - e.g. "I don't trust Microsoft submitting a driver to the kernel; OT1H it's OK code, OTOH it's Microsoft and I don't trust their motives" - because Microsoft has proven so often that their larger motives are anti-competition even if their individual engineers and programmers mean well. But dmesg, PulseAudio, and systemd have all been (IMO) well thought out solutions to clearly defined problems. systemd, for example, succeeds because it uses methods that are simple, already in use and solve the problem naturally. PulseAudio does not pretend to solve the same problems as JACK. I agree that Lennart can be irritating some times, but I read an article once by someone clever that pointed out that you don't have to like the person in order to use their code...

I imagine that most people saw this at the conference closing. However, for completeness and because I feel that if we're going to put videos of other speakers online then I should suffer the same fate, here is the LCA 2013 announcement from Ballarat:







Tags for this post: conference lca2013 announcement video canonical canberra

Related posts: linux.conf.au Returns to Canberra in 2013; Are you in a LUG? Do you want some promotional materials for LCA 2013?; LCA 2007 Video: CFQ IO; ScobleShow only available as MP4?; Two more weeks to go; The What-If-Microsoft-Did-The-iPod-Box video done by Microsoft; Procrastination; Very funny; The new way of converting JPEGs to MPEGs; Taking over a launch pad project; Speed limit; Mirror traffic during the last day of LCA 2007; Avoidance behaviour, or, wanted: video RSS feeds; In Canberra; Mont 24 hour race; Most novel traffic jam cause goes to... Canberra!; "Thriller" as performed by inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center; Slow git review uploads?; So, what on earth was I doing up at 4:30 am anyways?; Tomcat first flight tribute video; MythNetTV beta 4



Comment

MegaUpload: Some IP is more equal than others

Last week, the FBI raided and shut down MegaUpload, a site which allowed people to share their files.  Apparently, no one has so far bothered to think of the millions of users of MegaUpload whose data is now inaccessible on the MegaUpload servers.  Moreover, MegaUpload’s funds have been frozen, so it can’t pay to continue to house the data that has been uploaded to it.   Apparently it will start getting deleted later this week.

Imagine a scenario where the Feds raid a warehouse, which is alleged to hold stolen property belonging to some media magnate.  No one disputes that the warehouse also holds other people’s property.  The Feds seize the building and ask what should be done with it.  “Raze it, destroy it all” – so they do, everything, including the property of innocent third parties.

In those circumstances, could anyone seriously argue that the Feds were standing up for “property” in the abstract?  Similarly here, how can an issue of principle be argued when the copyright works of so many innocent people have been sacrificed – now by lack of access, later by destruction?

If you need to setup Ubuntu 11.10 host as an iscsi client, check out the documentation here on how to do it.

All very easy to perform. Great to see some excellent documentation from the Ubuntu documentation teams.

I’m about to head to Paris to present at the February meetup of the MySQL User Group in Paris, France. It happens 1st February from 6-8pm at the Patricks Irish Pub. Its free to attend, and I understand that SkySQL keeps this event afloat.

I’m also heading to my first FOSDEM right afterwards and will definitely hang out at the MySQL & Friends Devroom. There is an amazing lineup of speakers, with all talks being about 25-30 minutes, it looks like it is going to be a lot of fun. To boot, Michael “Monty” Widenius will also be there, so expect lots of Salmiakkikossu.

If you want to keep track of where Monty Program folk are going to be to talk about MariaDB, make sure you’re subscribed to our news page, which also includes important release information. Pretty much every conference that we plan to attend (and have attended) is at the conference page.

I am looking forward to meeting & learning from many MariaDB/MySQL users!

Related posts:

1. Using MariaDB in production?
2. OpenSUSE users have a choice of database now!
3. Plugins & Storage Engines Summit for MySQL/MariaDB

I’ve been tinkering with a few options for Linux on an x86 (Atom) touchscreen tablet. I successfully booted up:

• Android x86
• Plasma Active 2 (Meego image)
• Ubuntu 12.04

from a USB thumbdrive. I’m not yet convinced which one to go with as they each have their pros and cons. Android (ICS) was definitely the most touch-friendly and tablet-wise interface so that may be the one to go with.

The Ubuntu image I used was not strickly the tablet distribution – which I believe is on its way – but the Unity interface scaled down quite well to screen size. The desktop 12.04 release is not really suitable for touchscreens as one false touch and you have libreoffice staring at you and no software keyboard appears when you click on an input form. When the Unity-driven Ubuntu tablet arrives, it will be definitely one to watch.

The dark horse is Plasma Active which I could boot, but the liveUSB was too slow to be usable so I will have to commit to an installation before I can test it properly. The Plasma Active project announced its first commercial tablet product this week. It looks promising as it is an open Linux distribution specifically engineered for touch interfaces.

Would be good to hear what others are using given MeeGo never quite made it out the door…