March 3, 2008
Apologies for the long delay - I am working on lesson 1 for my course and prepping my blog for a move to a new domain.
The seminar was a success... the slides and original text will be available off the HBCLUG page soon. Six people booked and nine showed up. It was lively, with two people present with direct experience of two areas I talked about. Always a worry.
The seminar went into overtime - a good sign.
The installfest that followed was well attended with four machines getting linuxified and one failing only due to some sort of bios problem. NMF! Also got a close look at the Asus Eee.
It was very wet so the BBQ turned into an indoor grill. Cathy enjoyed talking to another IT widow who was there.
There will be another delay befor next post - which should be in a fresh page in a new domain.
(addendum) - Sunday's Geek Puzzle ... nearest I can make out:
Across
3. FLOYD
5. TIBERIUS
6. TOP SECRET
8. JOHN KOENIG (re. Space 1999)
10. ZATHRAS (re. Babylon 5)
11. BOHR (Just google the asteroid)
12. INCONCEIVABLE (re. Pricess Bride)
13. TIM THE ENCHANTER (re. Python: Holy Grail)
14. ZORK
15. SPACE TAXI (It's an old video game.)
17. NEWTON
19. VOGONS
DOWN
1. GREEDO (Star Wars IV "A New Hope")
2. HIGGS (also called the graviton)
3. FRIDAY (Novel of the same name)
4. STAR DESTROYERS (Star Wars Armada)
7. ARCHIE (Stands for ARCHIvE)
9. MYRMIDON (AD&D 2nd Ed.)
16. ALAN COX
18. LOX (cold-smoked salmon, also LOX = Liquid OXygen, amongst other things.)
XYZZY
You don't need all the clues to get this - it's the magic word in the Great Cave text adventure.
I didn't get 3, 15 or 18.
February 29, 2008
Last day of the month - and it's a leap day! Weeeeeeee! (I'm over it now...)
Came back from the seminar - a big success... six people booked, and nine showed up! The opposite of what I was expecting. The actual session took a bit over three hours. Everyone gets invited to an installfest this Saturday (10am till whenever). There will be pool, bbq, wireless broadband and linux - geek heaven.
Everybody wants to do the course. Which is also good news.
If enough people want to do an advanced course, I'll do that as well - next term. After that, if I feel I'm on a roll, I'll bite the bullet and start a NZQA level course which should end in a Diploma and a shot at international certification. To be that fast though, I need somone's course to adapt.
In other news - the LOTD has changed. I ran across an old (May 07) report about a honey pot set for spammers. The project traps spammers and traces them back to were they live. Then attacks them... removing their ability to serve spam, or just plane suing them. Shall we run one in NZ?
February 28, 2008
Seminar Night tonight! At the last minute I have decided to install openSUSE10.3 to one of the HBCLUG
nx5000's (laptops). It's a curious process. Unlike Ubuntu, openSUSE comes with software under a non-free license. This means there are a raft of EULAs to click through. Adobe, Agfa, Sun (10.3 came out before Java was GPL'd), Macromedia and so on.
The openSUSE EULA itself is an intreguing documont. AFAIK: this is the only non-commercial distro which has one. My eye was drawn to a "benchmark" clause... it looks like the MS one (no naughty publishing comparative studies without our approval) only this one adds that, if you do, you are giving permission to Novell to do the same to you. Cute.
The actual install is ticking away right now. The installer has a sidepane which shows the steps as they are checked off, and adds notes at the different tricky spots. Something Ubuntu lacks. There was one glitch adding online repositories... it announced that the ethernet card was disconnected (it wasn't) and would I like to use it anyway?
A regular user wouldn't know how to answer this and there was no help. The answer is "yes" - the message just means that the card hasn't been configured yet. Which probably just means that the ethernet cable wasn't plugged in when you booted.
The rest of the steps are simple enough. I elected to install a gnome desktop, noting that there was no option to install both, as there is with fedora. This took some thought - it would have been nice to demonstrate KDE as well. I ended up opting not to throw too much at the newcomers in one go.
So, all goes well, I should be able to show a standard as well as a pimped Ubuntu install, a suse install, and a dual-boot. The dual-boot machine is the one with the broken bulb - but I can plug it into the projector can't I... heh heh heh.
I considered installing a Quake client on each laptop ... but my bandwidth just maxed out for the month. Oh well.
It is now well into a sticky afternoon - time to go swimming.
February 26, 2008
Just had a look over at the
net-stats for hbclinux.net... and it's picking up. Managed 3500 hits so far this month from 2600 last month, with 300 unique visitors. These folk are roughly 50:50 between the USA and New Zealand, and, most of them are googling there in search of Ubuntu information.
I'll give you guys a hint: Canonical have a website...
Now I'm seriously considering moving the blog over there.
That domain is registered and hosted with domains4less.co.nz, who provide a whole slew of associated services at no extra charge and have proved stunningly reliable to boot. Ihug, by comparison, are pretty stingy - and I found myself locked out of the ftp site several times, unable to update the blog. All compelling reasons. Probably next month.
Meanwhile, I broke! I am so weak... I got that wireless desktop (well, the Cylon Raider would be hard to park.) And it is everything I thought it would be. I note that it cames with a driver-disk for Vista, so you can use all the "features". Not noticed anything missing in Linux though. In-ter-rest-ting.
That health-scare recedes. Tests back say I don't have any infections, so my pill intake is cut down. Pain is all but gone. No further untoward bleeding. I'll have to go see my GP later in the week though, JIC.
February 24, 2008
Blood in the urine yesterday, lots of it, very scary. Fine today though and I have a large collection of pills. Doctor thinks it's a
kidney stone but everything else is being checked. Looking at the descriptions, I really hope it's
not a kidney stone.
Countdown to seminar continues. It will have a presentation followed by demos with Q&A. I have gone and done a load of slides in odp format (i.e. not powerpoint - that would defeat the purpose) but being careful - computer presentations can actually obscure the points being conveyed.
I also wanted to get away from the lecturn - and presentations pretty much tie you to the thing. You need to plug in to the projector, and click on the screen. This keeps you an arms-stretch from the laptop, which is stuck to the attachment in the lecturn.
Lecturns are bad for speakers so I looked around to see what everyone else does. The good speakers always have some sort of remote control - that's a bit beyond me, but I saw someone use a wireless mouse: ahah! So I got one, a logitech from DSE, and it is so cool. It's range is easily across the room.
The projector gives me a computer screen the size of the wall, a wireless desktop would let me sit at the back and still operate the computer, that would be geek heaven. I only got the mouse - but now I want a wireless desktop only slightly less than I want my own Cylon Raider.
February 23, 2008
I wrote about US media priming the population to accept a woman or black president. Looking at my examples, I realised there was something a bit bothersome about this same medias expectations of a woman in office.
My examples were Laura Roslyn, from Battlestar Galactica, and MacKenzie Allen, from Commander in Cheif.
In both cases, the president obtained office upon the death of the previous encumbant, and tended to rule as a dictator rather than lead by diplomacy. In both cases, the president's personal feelings on an issue overrule any other considerations.
In Galactica, the elimination of almost the entire former government and the constant threat of annihilation by the Cylons would seem to justify the imperial stance. However, after a democratic body is created (the Quorum of Twelve), Roslyn still makes important and ticklish policy decisions (like banning abortion) without consultation.
Roslyn's fitness for the office is partly based in her relationship with the previous incumbant, so she was part of the inner circle. However, gender plays no role at all and the overall issue is adressed by not mentioning it. There is no "first gentleman" either, avoiding ideas about gender roles.
To be fair - when Baltar is elected president, he finds himself the focus of everybodies problems. This is the problem with central, imperial style, governance: everyone expects the empiror to fix things. Baltar complains that even the quorum of twelve is on his case to fix things. What? Are they powerless? Baltar has obviously had difficulty deligating responsibility and ends up having even the Cylon invasion thrust his way.
Allen's presidential stance is tougher to justify. While gender roles are very much featured, there is little to explain the direct application of power. Allen is a woman of strong personal convictions, who will happily impose her personal opinions on others.
Possibly, the US yearns for a Thatcher to call it's own.
In both cases, the President is "right" a lot. This tends to end up as a kind of reassurance, if not justification, about the methods. The shows really need to address what happens when the president gets an important decision wrong... i.e. it goes badly.
It also suggest a Democrat win if Obama campaigns for president with Clinton as his running mate.
February 21, 2008
New Zealand's media handling of
that hijacking gets a mention in Bruce Schneier's blog. He's holding it as an example to the USA.
There are a couple of interesting things about the hijacking in New Zealand two weeks ago. First, it was a traditional hijacking. Remember after 9/11 when people said that the era of airplane hijacking was over, that it would no longer be possible to hijack an airplane and demand a ransom or demand passage to some exotic location? Turns out that's just not true; there still can be traditional non-terrorist hijackings.
And even more interesting, the media coverage reflected that. Read the links above. They're calm and reasoned. There's no mention of the T-word. We're not all cautioned that we're going to die. If anything, they're recommending that everyone not overreact.
Refreshing, really.
--- Bruce Schneier
I'm not sure if Australia counts as an "exotic location" though. OTOH; the Herald described the landing, during which three people were stabbed, as "incident free".
February 19, 2008
Taking a peek at thu US Presidential (and VP) primaries... lets face it: the Yanks know how to make elections fun ...runs into some interesting results so far.
Movies and TV can be a good indicator of how voters can go. For years now, US voters have been primed by their TV shows to accept a woman or a black-man as a president.
For example:
And look at the front runners -
Every party is feilding someone black (ish) and most, someone female. It's striking.
Looks like we have either Hilary Clinton or Barak Obama for the Democrats. They are neck and neck with Barak slightly out front. They are also starkly contrasted in their political views. Hilary is a lone-gun (using all three names) with a business-freindly visage, while Barak has focussed on a more caring, compassionate, outlook.
The republicans have a clear winner in John McCain - who looks strikingly like Nixon - though Alan Keys is worth watching. Not so much becaus I think he has any hope of winning, but because he is just so much fun! This is the guy who jumped into a mosh pit for Mike Moore.
The greens ace the others with a black woman, but the libertarians have gone weird. Excuse me: a mafia don, a drug dealer and a gambler? Well, that's what it looks like from here - I'll give them marks for cojones anyway.
The US is a two party system, lets face it.
But what actually interests me is the candidates position on Free Software (yes: you were wondering how I was going to sneak this in.)
It is possible to find out what the various candidates web-sites are running on. In summary:
Hillary is running Windows IIS while Barak is running BSD! John is a Windows man - no surprise there.
Overall, the candidates are pretty evenly split between free and non-free servers, free slightly ahead, but windows is favoured over linux.
However, the spread is starkly split along party lines. Democrats overwhelmingly (90%) go for free solutions (70% linux) while Republicans go the other way (two-thirds Windows) and the division is entirely Windows vs Linux.
The characteristic may have more to do with economics than anything - the candidates may be choosing companies rather than OSs. Rackspace (linux) for example, managed to get a lot of Democrats.
Finding actual policy statements, however, is hard. Not too surprising really: it's early days and these are veteran polititians here. Nobody is going to commit to anything concrete if hand-waving gets more votes.
Nonetheless, Barak runs a clear lead here with the least indirect references. He also gets a load of money from Google, so there is a vested interest in this sort of thing.
Open source/open formats are a province of tomorrow's leaders. They're being taught it in school and get hands-on experience with open source from ever younger ages. It's just a matter of time before it goes from being campaign fodder to the established regime.
Now... how to get
our leaders more on-side.
February 18, 2008
Well, IE totally sucks bigtime. I have just discovered that IE does not render XHTML pages consistently between different computers. That's right folks, tried this page three times with IE7, on three different machines, and got a different result each time.
Semi-transparency in PNGs continues to be spotty too. I can't figure it.
Anyway, the nastyest result is what happens to those menu buttons in the left sidebar... you see, they are formatted as list items, but without the bullet or any other decoration out front.
It seems IE7 sometimes renders this as an empty space. This pushes the menu boxes to the right, running aganst the border. The text either crowds or overflows.
I'll have to look at defining the buttons differently. But seriously, do not use IE if you can help it.
February 16, 2008
Lots of housework today. Used to be I could blame Corwin for the mess. Big spill? No worries: give the container to Corwin before anyone can look and say; "Oh Corwin!"
However - finally tackled the old playroom. Vaccuuming up the centimeters or accumulated dust and leaves. Troweling the cobwebs from the windows. Getting misty over little handprints. Soon there will be nothing left of him but some very loud and enthusiastic paintings and a big hole where our bank account was.
February 15, 2008
The next SCO has
stepped into the ring. The new contender is a company called
Trend Micro, in a claim that defender
Barracuda Networks is in violation of their patent and US importation laws.
To decrease the risk of a virus entering and/or leaving a network, the '600 Patent scans for viruses and other undesired software at the gateway of a network. Moreover, because viruses may be embedded in the content (such as, for example, email attachments and other content from the World Wide Web), the '600 Patent scans the content.
-- Trend Micro (in it's complaint to ITC)
Barracuda, as part of their IT securty line, have deployed Free Software ClamAV as a gateway AV solution. TM say that they own this method of protecting LANs in the USA. While this just yawns "obviousness", it appears they have
successfully enforced this patent, twice, in the past. However, both times the parties suttled out of court.
Groklaw has a nice summary, as usual, including the actual claim. Reading this, and TMs past suits, the phrase patent troll
come to mind. The suit is not intended to go to court, but to be settled out of court for cash.
A troll that might have thought it was safe to take a bite out of a business in the past might find that the business is aligned with the free world," he said in a phone interview. "We want the trolls to go and work in some other neighborhood.
--- E Moglen (SFLC)
Being a patent troll is a bit like hustling poker - TM are currently making raises and hinting at a stronger hand than they currently display. The object is to encourage the other players to follow the raises then fold. Barracuda is trying to head this off... they are drawing cards like crazy, calling as much as they can, and seeking either an early showdown or for the house to step in and close the table.
In the free software side of the table, however, the other players are allowed to give you their cards. Barracuda have appealed to the FOSS community for help and they are getting it. By the bucketful.
Imagine you are in a card game and the other player asks bystanders for help: suddenly the other side of the table is crowded with people making suggestions, dredging up extra cards to augment his hand, stuff like that. I bet TM is feeling a bit nervy right now.
The USA is always entertaining for lawsuits and this one looks to be as much fun as the SCO one, the aftermath of which continues to drag. This time it's the accountants turn at the trough.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Europe continues to look hard at the activities of a certain monopoly provider. Same provider is under extended scrutiny at home. Is it possible that the US Courts are growing some balls?
Meanwhile: discovered that groklaw has a comprehensive wiki page dedicated to the OtherOS--->GNU/Linux switch. Also set as the LOTD.
February 14, 2008
Valentine's Day today. Cathy spent the marning in her art class, made me a card featuring two Cats looking at the moon and I wrote a poem, typeset with a fancy font and everything. You know, giving a nausiating love poem a "Buffy the Vampre Slayer" font lends it a certain
edge.
Lunch was at the Hola mexican restaurant in Orewa. Not authentic, but we are too far south of the border to care.
We both had Enchiladas (hot) which arrived on two plate - portion size: large! There I hit her with flowers, single very long stem red rose, and a box of Belgian chocolates featuring conjoined hearts and various pairs which linked together.
Only one rose this year, because I took Cathy for some french lingerie (local shop) which she loved every bit of. And, after dinner, I got her booked in to an aromatherapy massage at a proper beauty spa thing... place. There are some very intreguing places about Orewa. That session will be tomorrow - so Valentine's lasts an extra day for her.
Then it was a movie. Gods help me, it was 29 Dresses. Something that I would normally only see under extreme sanction. This is a chick flick. I avoid chick flicks because they make me cry like a baby throw up.
(BTW: it was difficult to find reviews by women for this film.)
This one has been retold a lot. Closest previous telling IIRC was "The Wedding Planner". This is about someone who always organises everyone elses weddings (see?) but actually pines for one of her own. She has met the man of her dreams (MoHD), he's her boss, but hasn't approached him. Basically she needs to get a life... which, for a change, is actually the message of the film.
Now... she's not a wedding planner. She's a serial Maid of Honor. Last time I checked, the MoH did not organise the wedding. To be in that position, as MoH, you'd have to be pretty pushy; but the film makes out that she's a walkover. Oh well.
Complications arrive in the form of the younger sister (she ends up getting roped in to organising the wedding between the sister and the MoHD) and the man of her nightmares (a journalist who invades her privacy, criticises her life, and ends up [spoiler removed] ooh-er ... but you can guess the rest anyway.)
There are no actual surprises. Nobody is really unlikeable. The direction is steady and the plot stays on theme. The style is very Jane Austin, who seems to be "in" with Hollywood right now. The movie is also too long, it's 1+half hours seemed more like three. If you are a guy, take a girl if you want to get laid (by a girl). Otherwise: avoid.
This was the second film I've seen in the local Berkely since the revamp. Last time it was in the "Circle Lounge" which is the high-class bit. I found the seats uncomfortable, individual, seperated by a table and was generally put off the whole experience. This time we used the regular theatre. It was also bad. The seats feel like they are throwing you forward and you have to sit diagonally to see the screen without hurting your kneck. I don't think I'll go there any more.
However: the day was a success overall - evidenced by the fact this entry is wayy late.
February 12, 2008
The last two days have been extremely muggy. A good reason all sensible people spend in the water. I, however, have been transferring the website to a cleaner stylesheet. I know I said I had finished, and you'll see the differences are not very big. Everything is just more consistent. Also slicker.
You'll find the graphical buttons have got everywhere. They are more functional too. The only reason I didn't use them more before was that I had to make a seperate image for each menu item. That's nasty, especially when I change the style. And, the user has to download deci-megs of png files just to use the page. The current image is only a couple of k, because it's a repeating background. I've made it somewhat taller than needed in case someone is using a browser with a big font.
Non-graphical buttons will still appear - like on the left. "LOTD" is a "Link of the Day" button - I'll update this frequently as I encounter interesting web sites. Feel free to send ideas. The "Zen Search" button is to help you in your search for truth and meaning in life. Such searches famously end up where they started, so I cut out the middleman.
The "Suspected Terrorist" button links to an article by Bruce Schneier. Worth reading if you plan any air travel. The button itself is a protest about the "guilty until proven innocent" approach to border security. Especially as everyone now has to comply with USA security theater. How about we all just refuse to be terrorized - worked for Londoners.
On the right there is a new menu: "Goodies".
The "Magi Font" links to an archive (download this - it's a zip file) containing the "Atlas of the Magi" font. This page is looking pretty good without it, but looks better with.
"Fun Stuff" links to Cumberland Games - a commercial site from S. John Ross. You'll find lots of cool stuff, including a bunch of creative TTF fonts, gratis. Ross is one of these people who is so effortlessly creative it spills everywhere. His stuff has been used in movies and on TV. Oh, and he created the Magi Font.
"Team del Sol" is the international club of Honda del Sol drivers. Which is wot I drive. Not to be confused with teamdelsol.org which is an ice-skating group.
"Schneier Blog" is one of the few blogs I read regularly. Bruce Schneier is a crptographer with a down-to-earth approach to digital security. The blog is hard-nosed and interesting, except the bits about squid.
I've finished transferring the homepages today. I'll work on transferring the nzlinux.net pages next week. However: I have a seminar to finish off for the 28th and some class materials to finish for the course. There's promotional work to be done tomorrow - and I have a meeting with Orewa College people. There is no may of getting anything done this Thursday though :)
February 11, 2008
S pam snail-mail turned up a pamflet from a local church. "Thee Misconceptions about Chistianity".
As this is, technically, unsolicited advertising, I should really throw the book at them. It's just geekier to ridicule them in my blog :)
As straw-man arguments, they are pretty standard.
Misconception 1:
Christians don't live it the real world and believe in a lot of old fairy tails.
I don't know about "real world", the author makes much of Xians attending the same schools. However, on the subject of fairy tales, the author points out:
We believe that Christianity explains the world as it is experienced in real life better than all the other religeons and philosophies on offer.
... yeah: an old fairy tail. Thank you.
Misconception 2:
Christians are just out to spoil everyone elses fun.
"No!" says the author. Xians want you to enjoy yourself even more, by accepting that a lot of the things you enjoy are wrong. By accepting that hell awaits you otherwise. You too can enjoy our kind of masochism.
The author talks about spiritual dimentions.
We believe that there is a spiritual dimension to life that we can tap into that most people are missing out on.
Isn't this incredibly arrogant: they are the
only people in all of time and space to have a spritual life? Just how likely is that? The author wants me to accept his/her statement of personal experience of this spiritual dimension under Xianity, but is unwilling to accept anybody elses similar statement about other religions -
Baal, say, or
Eris.
Misconception 3:
Christians are just out to condemn everyone and make them feel guilty.
Apparently this one is "more untrue" than the others. So the others were "sort-of true"? It seems that Xians are all about getting rid of guilt so you don't need to feel bad about what you've done wrong. Excuse me, but I happen to think that murderers
should feel bad about their crimes. But tho author would have us believe that all they have to do is say (from their heart - OK): "I'm very sorry and I promise never to do it again." and that's OK then. No need for guilt or remorse.
Imagine the prisoners statement to the court before judgement: Well Milud, I have accepted Jesus Christ and therefore feel no guilt at all for any of my crimes.
Just how well do you think this will go down?
I'll return to this in a bit. Right now, though, there are many Xians who routinely remind us that we are condemed to everlasting torment. They publically condemn homosexuals, muslims, anybody they don't like. So, if this is a misconception, it is actual Xians who have it.
These three are straw-man arguments because they do not actually exist in the wild. Nobody actually really believes any of these statements, not in the distorted form presented. (With the possible exceyption of Xians.) The pamflet only reinforces my belief that evangelists actually don't understand why people become atheists.
Recent, powerful arguments, levelled at Xianity and all religion, conter around the inherent destructive nature of the religion-memes on society and individuals. Look at that "guiltless" bit again: no matter what you do, you needn't feel guilty about it. Get impressionable youths to crash planes into building? No worries. Blow up randow civilians? A walk in the park. Hey - you can even get into paradise for doing it.
Xianity, like many religions, discourages critical thinking - especially where religion is concerned. Unfortunately, this means that the well-meaning ideologies are too easily perverted (in some cases, they are actually interpreted correctly) and devotees mislead to evil deeds. The only way to avoid this is to encourage an environment of criticism. Questioning the right or wrong of an ideology or action.
Nobody ever justified blowing themselves up for the nonexistence of diety.
February 10, 2008
I've had a somewhat radical notion. I was musing this morning on issues surrounding software licensing and control. The impending Richard Stallman visit and so forth, and an intreguing notion crept up an me... and bit.
This is very rudimentary and incomplete. Here's how it goes.
There should be a NZ-GPL (New Zealand General Public License) for software, backed by a NZ-Commons framework to help regular Kiwis choose a license for their work. The whole thing to be overseen by a New Zealand Free Licensing Committee - NZFLC - or similarly appropriate body.
This sort of thing would take a while to set up. In the interim, NZ should adopt the GNU GPL and FDL as Information Technology licensing standards. To be replaced by NZ-GPL/FDL in time. The NZ versions will be exactly the same, just explicitly written in terms of NZ law.
Here's the radical bit: Public sector IT purchases will be required to be compatible with these standards. Public sector documents to carry the FDL (free documentation license).
Public bodies may still use, even purchase, non-free software (i.e. schools and their Macs and PCs) but may not spend public money on this. The motivation here is that the NZ public should not be underwriting commercial profits at the expence of the NZ public or NZ as a nation. Schools are a case in point. The current bulk-license deal means that ordinary kiwis are funding the training of Microsoft Corporation future customers. Technically, Microsoft should be investing it's own money in computers for our schools.
Not everything is applicable to the GPL, however. Which is the point of a NZ-Commons, based in the successful "creative commons". This provides a range of mix-n-match licenses to meet the particular concerns a "content provider" may have. Thi resulting licenses vary from super-restrictive to public domain, in a format easy for non-lawyers to follow.
This would be the number one advantage: when lawyers draft a license it ends up incomprehensible - even to other lawyers. The above structure is known to be so clear even lawyers (once they get over the shock of legalese withdrawal) can agree what it means. So well structured that judges enjoy enforcing them.
To top it off, we know these licenses are internationally robust. This is important because, despite geography, New Zealand is not an island. If we want to foster a creative local IT industry, we must encourage it to innovate and grow. The only way to nurture a vigorouse technology industry is to free it.
(added later)
An interesting addition could be a GPL:A (General Public License: Aotearoa), written in Maori, which would express Free Software Ideals in terms of traditional Maori values. Before you laugh, consider: right now, Iwi are locking themselves in to a pakeha technology ignoring IT-talent in their midst. You'd think they'd know better by now. Free software is a way to take the existing technology and make it Maori, on their own terms.
February 8, 2008
S aw a little girl on the beach getting mad at her doll. I stopped to find out what was happening. It appears her doll wouldn't eat her porridge. I asked why not, and the girl explained, in long suffering tones, that the porridge had hard bits it it and gat burned and dolly dosn't like it. But dolly is very naughty and must eat her porridge.
I thought: "ahhh".
Perhaps if we cook the porridge longer so it is soft all the way through, and stirred it all the time so it dosn't burn? Well, that went down well... and pretty soon I was helping make sand porridge. Then mum shows up.
Now, what makes sence in the world of a child is just plain silly to an adult - how do I explain that the doll will be more accepting of porridge if it is well made (out of sand)? I decided to bare-face it out, while the girl lovingly added mub syrup to the dolls meal. The mother gave me a hard look. I responded with the same look of innocent inquirey that the cats give me when they've been caught stalking my dinner.
With any luck, that little girl will get to stir the porridge in future.
February 6, 2008
W aitangi Day today. For newcomers, this day is a holiday in honor of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Now contraversial, this act ultimately cleared the way for New Zealand to become a nation.
Simplistically, the, then, British Empire had some concerns about French colonisation in the South Pacific. It became important to claim major landmasses for Britain, but there were issues committing resources needed to do this. An alternative was proposed to "take" New Zealand by peaceful means. A treaty.
It's not possible to have a treatybetween governments and individuals, so first order of the day was to make New Zealand into a nation. Thus, there was a declaration of indipendance. This declaration was a major step for the locals, abolishing the right of utu (revenge) and providing an incentive for the major tribes to work together. It was never intended that NZ would stay that way though.
Next step was a treaty between the (British) Crown and the Maori Tribes of NZ. Key points involved the nullification of all land sales prior to the treaty, assertion of ownership of all NZ by Maori, and a restriction that future land sales could only be made to the Crown. This is a typical "We'll protect you" deal which ends up as a "We pwn you".
Over the years the treaty document was lost' found' buried in soft peat and around about the time to have it recycled as firelighters, Maori tribes were able to use it to advantage. So this day is a kind of a mix for NZ. Though there is no question, it is an important one.
February 6, 2008
I wrote about the fedora development yesturday. The other distros I track are Ubuntu and openSUSE... smoe people have asked about this as I have written in some detail in the past. Fact is, Canonical and Novell are not doing anything special on my birthday so it's pptptptptht to them ;)
Oh all right...
Hardy Heron (Ubuntu pre-release) is at Alpha 4. The development is currently slightly faster than fedora, with the final release pegged for April 24. At which point "hardy" becomes 8.04 LTS. That's right folks, the next "long term release" is almost here.
Hardy will have it's feature freeze on Valentines Day. This makes it somewhat older than fedora at release time, but more stable too. While Ubuntu is considered "unstable" by GNU/Linux standards, fedora is deliberately "bleeding edge" and shows it. By the same standards, Vista was considered "alpha" at release (a condition so underdeveloped as to be unsuitable for normal use). Patches and SP1 may have nudged it into a beta testing state. We'll see.
Feisty (currently 7.10) had some important gotchas this time round. Though the Hardy development time is no different, I don't expect such trouble. The reason is that this is an LTS - there should be no major feature changes and an emphasis on stability. The feature set for this one has to remain useable for two years.
openSUSE 11.0 is in alpha 1 development right now, with beta testing to begin on April 17. The preview is on May 29 and the final release, June 19. This is to be a major release, the last three were more incremental (roughly equivalent to MS service packs only with more oomph) and punished early adopters with a string of difficulties. So it is good to see the team taking time to get things right this time - and well they should: the major releases are where the team show what they've learned.
Novell is still under a cloud from their deal with Microsoft. This deal gets interesting when considering the GPLv3, where indemnifications for any GPL software could end up covering all users and developers of that software. I anticipate that this clause is the most likely to end up in a test-case.
MS may be reluctant however. They have already watched SCO fail in court against free software and has an idea of the stakes involved. The current plans involve pushing Win2000AS with exchange and MSOOXML on a .net framework. If that sounds like a lot of tech-speak, it means: "Make your time baby - all your computers are belong to us".
The only solution is to launch all Zig now - for great justice!
February 5, 2008
Y ay!
I have finally heard back from Orewa College about the problems with the course advertising. It seems that some people were sick, some on holiday, and nobody in the office until now. We discussed the issues and the course is going ahead as listed on hbclinux.net.nz. I have a lot of fliers to print out and some advertising to run. At last things are moving along.
I've just had the computer ripping creating a backup of the first-season DVDs of 24. DVD::RIP is a very powerful tool so I'm messing it up. However, I can convert all the VOB files to ogg/theora - one third the size - with no discernable quality loss. The six DVDs will end up on two.
The cute thing about all this is that I now have no DRM, and no compulsory copyright notices. This is video-head heaven. No wonder Big Media want to stop it. Now I can mothball the official copy and watch the backups... keeping my collection pristene. Yum. And regular readers will know how much I like movies.
(Late Addition)
Today is also the fedora 9 alpha release. Everything should be in place now, so if you want to contribute - go for it. Development draws to a close late March, with the final version finished in time for my birthday. Get your preview April 10 - though the final release is on the 29th.
This means that fedora will be a month old at release time - as opposed to Vistas 3-years! For comparison, the tech industry rule of thumb is that computer software is obsolete in 18 months. This is why you will find me constantly referring to the Legacy Vista.
February 4, 2008
F ollowing a chance encounter with this
The Register article, about blatant sencorship of MSN Live Searches, I thought I'd try out the different search engines fora naive comparison.
I went and used the online forms at Google, Yahoo, Ask and, um, MSN. Following the artical, I used "Linux" and "Linux Windows" as search terms to see what kind of bias, if any, MSN shows - in comparison with the others.
I use Google a lot, and their databases seem to know me. So I expect good hits there anyway, resulting in a possible bias error. To help figure that out, I also searched for "simon bridge" and "simon bridge web journal", on an international search, which will also show how famous I am.
Hits tend to be in the millions, so I am using "megahits", so 1Mh is 1,000,000 hits.
The results ran as follows:
Google:
There were 743 megahits for linux, 47.5Mh included windows. Wikipaedia was in the top five. The sites seem to mostly about information and assistance. By far the majority (90%) of linux sites were actually
about Linux. By comparison, my homepage showed up as #1 hit on my name, but this journal didn't register at all (though "blog" gave the LQ referral as #1).
Yahoo:
There were a staggering 1,120Mh for linux with 619Mh of them including windows. The sites seem mostly business-oriented, with people selling linux-based services, books and so on. About half the linux sites involved windows, most were
about windows. A search on my name got nowhere, but the blog is the number one hit.
Ask:
These guys used to be
Ask Jeaves, but Jeeves has retired so you just have to ask Ask. There were 96.48Mh for linux, of which half (46.1Mh) also concerned windows. Interestingly, they seemed to be mostly the same as the Google set. There were, however, a lot more dictionary-style sites; not too surprising considering the whole engine is about answering questions rather that searching for terms. The search on my name hit the homepage at #4, the journal turned up nothing.
MSN:
The contender everyone is waiting for turned up 353Mh for linux with almost all of them, 317Mh, also about windows. The top five managed to include fairly tame comparisons from older web-pages (when linux was still growing and Windows 2000 was still being hyped.)
The top three results are sponsered sites. The others all relegate these to a sidebar.
Hit #2 is for ebay - just a default redirect to the same search term there. In other words, not useful. I want to search e-bay, I know where it is! #3 is the same for shopping.com . But what do I expect from advertising.
The #1 hit promises an in-depth comparison of windows and linux by a "third party". It directs te MS Get the FUD default page. The article referenced is not there.
The real hits (Linux Windows) are:
- An old howto about running Windows 98 and Linux at the same time.
- Directs to an old comparison af XP pro and linux. It is quite dense, and digresses frequently, but is actually a reasonable technical overview of the technical aspects of an OS for the non-tech reader. Provided you don't fall asleep.
- XChat homepage - use MSN-chat from a linux box
- news: dell and Sun drop Windows.
- linux web hosting
Compared with the others, not exciting.
But never mind them, what about me? The search for my name got my homepage at #7, but the journal clocked a #1. So far MSN was best at finding me, and I don't use it! The commerce bias is still present, apparantly I'm an author.
Summary of results
| Engine | linux | + windows | homepage | journal | comments |
| Google | 743 | 47.5 | -- | #1 | information oriented |
| Yahoo | 1,120 | 619 | #1 | -- | commerce oriented |
| Ask | 96.48 | 46.1 | #4 | -- | education/news oriented |
| MSN | 353 | 317 | #7 | #1 | MS/commerce oriented |
Caveat:
Search engines are built with different ideas in mind. I find that google well-suits me, but many of it's searches have learned what my likes tend to be. The above would seem to indicate that this bias effect is not very strong though.
The raw hits is not a good measure of how good an engine is, the telephone yellow-pages for a major city has a very big list, but is almost useless for actually finding a business. You have to already know which one you want. Otherwise you just wade through pages of ads.
Conclude:
The blatant MS bias reported in the Register probably has more to do with the engine being new at the time, it was likely to report hits close to home. However, the bias is still present. It is not clear how to justify the prevelance of older pages which make MS competitors look clumsy and... wait a minute, what am I saying? Of course MS will want to make their competitors look bad.
Perhaps we should try the same test with "Macintosh Windows" and see?
February 2, 2008
New month, new blog. Last month has been
archived.
I have a seminar coming up (fingers crossed). I still haven't heard from the Community Education folk who have been setting this up. They are advertising it for the 14th when it's supposed to be on the 28th. But that's before the college actually opens it's doors - so I have no idea what is happening.
What I'll have to do is show up on the 14th, at the gate, and see who else does. If the venue is not available, I'll just take them back to my place for coffee and a chat.
Meanwhile, I'm working on the talk. Here's an extract of the work in progress:
The term "digital freedom" captures the spirit of a revolution that is currently sweeping the technology world. This is actually the third or forth wave of innovation in the computing revolution. It started back in the 80's with personal computers, then everything went graphical, then we had the internet which suddenly opened doors and expanded horizons. Now we have this participation-oriented era where the internet is bringing people together and allowing them to collaborate, allowing them to create wonderful and amazing things.
A key part of that colaboration is the principle of sharing, of standing on the shoulders of giants, being able to re-use, leverage, remix, the work of others. And we see that principle coming through in the free software movement in the form of the GPL and other free software licenses which essentially allow you to take other people's software, remix that, stand on their shoulders and reach for the stars.
The actual course is on a similar footing. The advertised dates and times are all wrong - it's supposed to be an eight hour course over four days and they've put it down as a two hour course on one day. Though they seem to be charging for eight hours... I'd call this a major fubar.
Richard Stallman stuff is supposed to get resolved this month. I'd have liked to have him here for the seminar, but it wasn't going to work . I should be hearing from the various people organising things soon-ish. Stay tuned.
If you don't know what is happening in two weeks - panic now! (It'll save time later.) Cathy has recieved a big bunch of flowers aready so I am firmly in her good books. Not good enough to actually get out of doing the dishes though. Last year she forgot the day - I invited her to brunch in a very public cafe and showed up with a huge ostentatious bouquet and a heart-shaped box of chocolates. Then it was a day out and about so she was carrying those flowers all over the place. Everyone commented how lucky she was, how jealous they were. She was embarrassed, but enjoying it. Pay attention guys: when every other woman is telling yours what a great guy you are, that can only be A Good Thing.
