planet.mindstab.net

China's President Hu Jintao urges rescuers in the earthquake-struck province of Sichuan to race to save lives.

France's UN envoy accuses Burma of being on the verge of a crime against humanity by not accepting aid.

Gordon Brown accuses Burma's rulers of neglecting its people by blocking aid to cyclone survivors.

From PhysOrg:

A team of researchers from Taiwan has designed the new bio-signal monitoring system inside a baseball cap with the goal of making it convenient and easy to use in everyday life. Since the system is wireless and portable, and can process data and provide feedback in real time, it could be useful for a variety of indoor and outdoor applications.

…

As the researchers explain, by measuring EEG signals, the BCI system can monitor an individual’s physiological and cognitive states. The system takes advantage of advances in sensor and information technology to achieve reduced power consumption and production costs. Currently, the system can operate continuously for about two days before the lithium-ion battery needs to be recharged, but the researchers hope to further increase the lifetime.

The cap contains five embedded dry electrodes on the wearer’s forehead, and one electrode behind the left ear, that acquire EEG signals. Then, the EEG signals are wirelessly transmitted to a data receiver, where they are processed in real-time by a dual-core processor. The BCI system includes Bluetooth transmission for distances of 10m or less (e.g., for driving applications), as well as RF transmission for distances up to 600m (e.g., for potential sports applications). Next, the processed signals are transmitted back to the cap, where the data can be stored, displayed in real-time on a screen, or be used to trigger an audio warning, if necessary.

See Also:

• Skip the helmet, go straight to the brain implants
• Emotiv EPOC Neuroheadset update

via /.

President Leonel Fernandez wins re-election in the Dominican Republic as his main opponent concedes.

I’ve been meaning to comment about this, and was reminded by today’s Coding Horror.

Funpidgin, a fork of the popular Pidgin Instant Message client, was created when Pidgin developers had diverging opinions on how the input box of the chat window should resize by default. According to the Funpidgin website, What makes us different from the official client, is that we work for you. Unlike the Pidgin developers, we believe the user should have the final say in what goes into the program.

Four words I have to say to Funpidgin: Users Are Not Designers.

This attitude takes participatory design to all-new (and very dangerous) level. You go from user-centered design: keeping users in mind while designing a product, to user-directed design: catering to every users’ whim without consideration of the consequences (at least, users who know how to use mailing lists and bug trackers, who are not representative of a broad user audience for an instant messenger client).

What you end up getting is this:

Good luck guys.

– Updated 2008-05-17 00:30 –

Besides all the things I obviously never said nor remotely hint to, between the lines or not, it seems like pantsgolem is the only one who Got It. This isn’t about the [Fun]Pidgin product or the decision to fork, or the design decisions the projects made concerning the text widget. It is about the fundamentally flawed development process Funpidgin has adopted in the name of usability and design and their ignorance (or ignore-ance if they just choose to ignore it) of this decisions implication to the project.

When a project declares that users will have the final say in functional requirements, it is on its way down a slippery slope. Sure, there may be some good examples where a problem was easily solved and a user had a good idea, but what about all the ideas that are obviously a bad design decision? What happens when you have users who have conflicting opinions? Or users who have no knowledge of other users, cases, and scenarios beyond themselves? This is why users are not designers. Even if the real designers are users of a product, they are trained to be objective. They don’t replace the user with themself, but they are empathetic towards the user.

Also, what about the developers? Don’t they want retain the right to create and preserve a certain kind of experience? What if the project wants to focus on a specific user type, but a minor user type requests a feature that will disrupt that group? What happens when developers start to ignore certain ideas and only take the ones they like? Aren’t they acting as the designer and preventing the user from playing designer?

By adopting this mission statement, Funpidgin has set itself up to make some possibly fundamentally poor design decisions. I don’t care about the project itself or the design decisions they’ve made. What I do care about is that the rest of the open source community learn something from it so we don’t repeat these mistakes.

Of course I want to see users participating in open source projects and providing their feedback, that is the basic principle of participatory design. Of course I want to see developers thinking of users besides themselves, that is the basic principle of user-centered design. What I don’t want to see is development driven by users who don’t understand the problem they are experiencing or know who else they will be effecting with their change. We don’t have developers who fully understand how different users of their software might effect each other, and yet we expect users think beyond themselves and do this?

User feedback is important. Open source celebrates the fact that users can take an active part in the community by reporting bugs and driving the development of features through requests. But users are just an indicator of how well we are doing. We want their feedback, but we also want to do what’s best for them.

A state of emergency has been declared for a town in northern Alberta where a large wildfire is raging out of control and threatening homes.

Rei’s nape (and beyond) corset makes me so happy..

Yes, it’s permanent.

Ever wonder what makes a computer tick or how a UNIX server does what it does? Discover what happens when you push the power button on your computer. This article discusses the different boot types, managing the AIX bootlist and the AIX boot sequence. After reading this article, you will better understand what exactly happens when your server starts.

Peter Hintgens, writing at Freesoftware Magazine, explains why the adoption of Microsoft's OOXML as an ISO standard is a dreadful development, and explains how some open standards partisans are organizing to combat insufficiently-open "open" standards.

Andrew Min gives a taster of the open source goodies being developed at Google's Summer of Code: a GUI for Aptitude, a GUI for Grub 2, search based menu browsing for GIMP and Audacity file import/export with FFmpeg amongst others. Read (or listen to) to the full article at Freesoftware Magazine

A CIO article examines why WiMax will be very popular among corporate IT managers. In a nutshell, because of its longer range and its presumed wide adoption, it will be cheaper and easier to maintain a WiMax network for a large office than a Wi-Fi one.LINK

The Fedora team has clearly spent a lot of time trying to refine some of the smaller, but perhaps more common user interface elements in some thoughtful ways. Take, for instance, the new setting that allows you to manage power settings from the login screen. It's a small tweak but it makes shutting down simple. There's no need to login when you wake from hibernate - just shut down straight from the login screen. Similar attention to these basics can be found throughout the new release.

A group of U.S. Senators are asking the FBI to explain a recent controversial National Security Letter sent to the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive was able to defeat the request with help from the EFF and the ACLU this past April. "The Internet Archive's case is only the third known legal challenge to NSLs, despite the fact that the the FBI issues tens of thousands a year -- more than 100,000 such letters were issued in 2004 and 2005 combined. But despite the lack of legal challenges from recipients at ISPs, telephone companies and credit bureaus, successive scathing reports from the Justice Department's Inspector General have found illegal letters and a willy-nilly culture within the bureau towards tracking their usage."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Well, if Dungeons was spelt the same way as Needles it would be..

Play piercings and tattoos by Loïc, Needle & Art PIercing, Cambrai, France.

Night night, don’t let the bed bugs bite.

Unless they’re wearing heels and you’re loving it, of course.

A military judge postpones the trial of Osama Bin Laden's former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan.

A 53-year-old man in Saanich, B.C., managed to drive to safety after a grizzly bear mauled his head and tossed him to the ground in the woods near Bella Coola, about 700 kilometres north of Vancouver.

Those who remember my ancient quest for the perfect IRC solution might be interested in ancient quest for the perfect IRC solution might be interested in these posts by Aaron Toponce explaining how to couple a remote irssi session with GUI notification. I’m still quite happy with my current Bip + Xchat combination, but I’ve always lusted after the 1337ness of irssi. Icecap looks intriguing, but my first instinct tells me that their solution is over-engineered.

Note: If you see duplicated words in the above post, I am aware of them. Wordpress is doing something funny and I can’t figure out what it is. When I get the time I’ll upgrade to 2.5.

LotD: Ubuntu theme for Symbian S60v3 (works on my Nokia N95)

©2008 Sridhar Dhanapalan.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia Licence.

.

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The RCMP have concluded their investigation into allegations of bribery in the so-called Cadman affair, saying there is no evidence to file charges.

esocid writes to tell us that researchers from Taiwan have created a new baseball cap complete with embedded -bio-signal monitoring system. The purpose was to give a neural interface that could be useful in everyday life. "The cap contains five embedded dry electrodes on the wearer's forehead, and one electrode behind the left ear, that acquire EEG signals. Then, the EEG signals are wirelessly transmitted to a data receiver, where they are processed in real-time by a dual-core processor. The BCI system includes Bluetooth transmission for distances of 10m or less (e.g., for driving applications), as well as RF transmission for distances up to 600m (e.g., for potential sports applications). Next, the processed signals are transmitted back to the cap, where the data can be stored, displayed in real-time on a screen, or be used to trigger an audio warning, if necessary."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pawel Dawidek first ported ZFS to FreeBSD from OpenSolaris in April of 2007. He continues to actively port new ZFS features from OpenSolaris, and focuses on improving overall ZFS stability. During the introduction to his talk at BSDCan, he explained that his goal was to offer an accessible view of ZFS internals. His discussion was broken into three sections, a review of the layers ZFS is built from and how they work together, a look at unique features found in ZFS and how they work internally, and a report on the current status of ZFS in FreeBSD.

The BSDCan website notes that Pawel is a FreeBSD committer, adding:

"In the FreeBSD project, he works mostly in the storage subsystems area (GEOM, file systems), security (disk encryption, opencrypto framework, IPsec, jails), but his code is also in many other parts of the system. Pawel currently lives in Warsaw, Poland, running his small company."

read more

Mourners gathered Friday afternoon to remember a Calgary paramedic and reservist killed in Afghanistan last week.

Right now I am over in beautiful Prague for FossCamp and the Ubuntu Developer Summit. Running and attending these events is always a real treat - there is always a genuine feeling of free software in action; a real meeting of minds coming together with a common ethos. Part of why I love the FossCamp/UDS trip is that it involves a huge amount of diversity. Here at FossCamp we have people from a tonne of projects, including Ubuntu, Jokosher, Sun, EFL, Terminator, Strigi, Xesam, Ubuntu Brainstorm, Linux User Groups, GNOME, Glom, gtkmm, Campware, KDE, Amarok, KOffice, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Tango, Novell, Red Hat, Inkscape, freedesktop.org, OpenSuSE, OpenChange, Samba, Debian, MOTU, swfdec, gvfs, OpenOffice.org, eBox, LKSCTP, Elisa, HAL, dbus…

Its been a busy time recently and I have been out on my travels over in San Francisco, Boston, Cambridge, Detroit and London. Its been a hugely fun time, and I got to meet some incredible people - thanks to everyone who made me feel exceptionally welcome. I also want to give a quick shout out to the folks at ubuntu-ma, PenguiCon, CommunityOne, Creative Commons, Mako, Matt Lee, Barton, and my friends over in Lexington who are making Ubuntu work on things that live in your pocket.

Oh, and as a slight postscript, I have finally fulfilled one of life’s little ambitions - to not only meet, but a share a photo with the venerable tron guy:

Not only did I have a photo taken with tron guy - he came looking for me to deliver a parcel with a fake beard in it. While it was happening I felt like I was in some kind of acid trip. We then had a serious and detailed conversation about MOTU, while he was stood there in full tron regalia. Just when I thought my world crazy, it got a little crazier…

I was going to finish this entry here, but sod it, here are a few other things living in my brain right now:

• The Severed Fifth machine continues to roll - the server is up, the mailing lists are on their way, the announcement is written, the logo ideas are flowing in, the photo-shoot is in post-processing, and the content is nearly there in terms of initial work. Thanks to that group of amazing people that are making it happen.
• You know, gyms never really had an appeal to me, but I have been a few times recently - I had a really good session in there a while back and figured it would be fun to repeat.
• Wow, it seems this post of mine caused a bit of a stir over what is considered music. Always amazes me when people accuse creativity that does not meet their taste as being unintelligent or just noise. I am not expecting people to like the music I like, but I am expecting people to understand and respect the work that goes into any art-form, irrespective of their taste. Everything is worth listening to, even Cannibal Corpse, lounge style or flute beatboxing.
• Someone should invent an “anti-mint”, something you put in your mouth to take away the taste of mint. Imagine those situations when you wake up in the morning, brush your teeth and then want to drink orange juice. Personally, I want both clean teeth and orange juice and to not sacrifice one or the other. Someone…the anti-mint…lets make it a reality.
• I bought GTA4 and it rocks. It also drove me to be involved in a police chase, but that’s a story for another time.
• While in video game news, I got totally whipped at Guitar Hero III, and while despite fervent denial, I got completely annihilated. Mind you, I spent more time posing and prancing around the living room at my competitors apartment than focusing on the game in hand. Well, that’s my excuse and I am sticking to it.
• Recently jonobacon.org seems to have been picked up in some of these “top blog” listings. You are as surprised as I am, but for my regular readers, thanks for helping to push my little chunk of randomness up in the blog ranks. It really does go to show how many bored people are populating the Internet.
• You know, Cancun is an amazing looking place, would love to get over there sometime.
• Thinking of a new phone - Nokia N95 8GB or a Blackberry? Any thoughts? It should be good for email, have a decent camera, preferably have a GPS and preferably have an alpha-numeric keypad.

I think that’s enough for now.

France's UN ambassador warned Friday the continued refusal by Burma's military rulers to allow aid to be delivered to people in need or in danger "could lead to a true crime against humanity."

Whoever is responsible for making the rt73usb driver work great out of the box: THANK YOU. I tried it without success when I installed Fedora 8 gold, and now it works brilliantly (and out-of-the-box) on Fedora 9.

Current hacking includes: GPRS/3G support via Bluetooth in NetworkManager, fprintd hacking, and gnome-lirc-properties integration into Fedora (Debian and Ubuntu people, upstream your bleeding patches, kthx).

And for nanobob and Borkis on FIFA: you really didn't need to quit the game when I scored those 2nd goals. Losing against a guy full of margaritas must hurt.

Robert Mondavi, who helped put Californian Cabernets and Chardonnays on the world map, dies at the age of 94.

Alex Gagarin (no relation I assume) had some time to kill and experimented with mighty gauge cheek skewering..

I’ve just noticed that I’m using the same sort of sentence structure and humour that I annoy BMEvideo members with, bear with me. I’ll improve.

A quick FAQ: the reason all DSA keys have been removed from fd.o and we aren't accepting any new ones is that they are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks if they have ever been used (not just generated) on a system with a predictable RNG: see Steinar's summary of the maths. We're going with precedent of debian.org rejecting DSA keys, and a general desire to be safe rather than sorry. RSA keys are the default in OpenSSH anyway, so I'm not really sure why you'd want to generate DSA.

This will be the last post for a few hours because I’m off to play frisbee, the break isn’t anything at all to do with Roxxy (pictured below) being my new crush and making me feel frisky, I promise.. It’s frisbee, yep.

No words needed, the smile says it all!

Immune cells grown from umbilical cord blood may one day be used to improve leukaemia treatment, say researchers.

This beautifully peaceful Kavadi scene was captured by Vin at the 2008 Thaipusam festival, it makes me ache a little because apart from a few Aboriginal festivals I was taken to as a child, there’s a lot of things I’ve yet to experience..

Sean Avery, the colourful and sometimes controversial New York Rangers forward who has expressed a desire to be a fashion magazine editor, has started his internship with the publication this week, according to a report.

Dr. Eggman writes "Oscar Pistorius, a 21-year-old South African double-amputee sprinter, has won his appeal filed with the Court of Arbitration for Sport. This overturns a ban imposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations, and allows Mr. Pistorius the chance to compete against other able-bodied athletes for a chance at a place on the South African team for the Beijing Olympics. He currently holds the 400-meter Paralympic world sprinting record, but must improve on his time by 1.01 seconds to meet the Olympic qualification standard. However, even if Pistorius fails to get the qualifying time, South African selectors could add Oscar to the Olympic 1,600-meter relay squad."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wanderlust

Bicycle bicycle bicycle, she wants to ride her bicycle, bicycle, bicycle.
She wants to ride her bicycle, she wants to ride her bike.
She wants to ride her bicycle, she wants to ride it where she likes.

And she does by jove!

Tinkle your bell merrily and saddle up for this interview with Gwen, BME’s very own Biker Chick — the self-assured and full of wanderlust bicycle sort of biker chick, not the bobbing-for-hotdogs off the back of a Harley type. She’s cycled, floated, bused, choo-choo’d, hitchhiked, stumbled and otherwise meandered her way thousands of miles! Starting from Hamilton, Ontario she peddled mercilessly onwards to Alabama via Winnipeg, Vancouver, San Francisco, down the coast of Mexico then turned left to cross Texas. Along the way she’s collected some wonderful tales, the odd case of food poisoning, and a gorgeous scarification piece.

A Mexican newspaper covers Gwen’s trip

ROO: 

Let’s get the wheels turning by asking you about your passion for cycling, can you remember the first time you hopped on a bicycle?

GWEN: 

I remember this cherry red tricycle I had when I was a kid. I must’ve left it out while my folks were having a garage sale and it got sold — I cried a river that day.

ROO: 

I’m terribly sorry for your loss, it’s a nice thought that a succession of children and probably adults after you have derived some pleasure from it though, or are you still plain bitter?

GWEN: 

Well, I’m bitter at my dad depriving me of such a pleasure, but maybe in another twenty years I won’t resent it so much.

ROO: 

I hope so, you’ve got quite enough to carry around without slipping a grudge into your backpack!

Now, without getting all ‘Fight Club on your arse’ — it’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue, I just gave it a name — your IAM page doesn’t hint at any genital piercings, is this because you spend most of your life in the saddle, so to speak?

GWEN: 

You guessed it!  I’ve heard some piercings don’t get agitated too badly but being on the road for so long means my hygiene level is a little below par, so I wouldn’t be able to take care of ’em so well.

ROO: 

So are you saying all cyclists should be given a wide berth because they pose a significant risk to public health?

GWEN: 

A warning couldn’t hurt; saddle sores are a bother in themselves — I wouldn’t want my whole genital area to be inflamed and pissed at me ’cause I couldn’t keep it clean (ROO: And neither would we Gwen).

 

The day before leaving

ROO: 

For those who haven’t read about your adventures (which will hopefully have dwindled to zero by the time we’re through) could you recount some memories of people you’ve met and general kindness that keep you warm at night? (See her IAM page for the story in more detail).

And anything that makes your toes curl?

GWEN: 

Oh my, there’s been so much hospitality… okay, some that stick out:

• Being introduced to the bike culture in Portland, Oregon (and seeing a the guy who owns the sleeve with all different front chain rings that I saw on Modblog, no less!).

  What was immediately obvious was that most of the other bikers weren’t modified very much. The Germans and Swedish that I came across were usually older and didn’t seem to be into bodly modifications at all.

• Meeting ChopperMark, amongst many others while having the chance to joust on tall bikes and mingle with the ZooBombers.
• Meeting a couple who lived off the land just north of San Francisco and getting to sleep in a gypsy wagon and bathe outdoors.

 

A DIY homestead visited during the adventure

 

• Randomly receiving home-made cookies that some guy was sent in the mail (he was sad to see we were eating store-bought cookies).
• Having dinner in this million-dollar mansion near Los Angeles even though we were smelly and dirt-poor.

Hanging out with the Zoobombers is just something intrinsic to being in Portland. The crew of people who bomb down on those little bikes every week is so varied, young and old, drunk or sober, etcetera, that you’re guaranteed to meet some interesting characters. The tall-bike jousting was a thrill; I didn’t expect to be able to hold my balance on such a contraption but it’s not as hard as it looks! Everyone takes it lightly and getting hurt is half the fun!

Finally, staying at the million-dollar place was a crazy coincidence; a married biking couple that Morgan and I had frequently run into had arranged to meet with another couple who had travelled the world for 2 years on bikes, and we ended up seeing all 4 of them in town (Ventura, California).  We were invited to stay over as well. The wife of the latter duo house-sat for these rich people, and since they wouldn’t be home, all of us biking nomads were invited to eat and drink at this mansion-villa (who needs to own 4 dishwashers, seriously!?); it was quite a treat.

Getting on the road the next day was a bit of a humorous shock, to know that the bike-touring lifestyle throws every extreme of culture at you. I love being poor and dirty, though, so I’d much prefer sleeping by the side of the road to such opulent quarters any day.

I could go on, but those are some fun times.

We were pretty lucky about not having too many bad experiences. Being in fog and mist around the Washington coast and then sleeping on a beach in Oregon with blowing sand and freezing cold nights without a tent sucked. I almost got mugged while visiting Ally in Winnepeg, Manitoba.

A little more about the Oregano beach: The picture where I’m flying a kite (further down the interview) was the night before we realized that the ocean procures some damn cold winds and the sand comes along with ‘em.

We tried using rocks to hold our tarp down as a shield but it just whips up from all directions. That was one of the most miserable mornings, but it makes you that much more anxious to get on the road and wait for the sun to dry you up.

Beaches look so innocent and inviting but don’t trust them to stay that way when the sun goes down!

ROO: 

Life’s a beach, eh.

Mugged? Not by a muggle I hope..

GWEN: 

Haha, actually, the mugging happened whilst I was being tattooed!?

My friend got together her stick-and-poke materials (sewing needle taped to a pen, dipped in India ink) and we decided to do it on a bridge over this train yard, but some homeless native guy came around mumbling something about nice bikes and I didn’t pay him any attention. Next thing I knew he was trying to mount my bike?!  Luckily my friend jumped to block his way and “negotiated” with him (I think he was heavily drugged or drunk), and instead of taking my expensive bike he took hers — in the meantime, though, he attempted to hit us with his fists, and then managed to grab my friend’s U-Lock (we were using it as protection), although he didn’t try to hurt us with that, thankfully.

It disturbed me that cars and pedestrians were passing by — the situation being blatantly hostile — and no one even looked when we were screaming for help. I found it so distasteful that someone would steal a somewhat worthless bike just because they didn’t feel like walking; I guarantee he rode it for 3 or 4 blocks then ditched it. (We ended up finishing the tattoo when we got home).

ROO: 

Crumbs Meg, that was a close shave..

Apart from a large tub of courage what else do you pack on an ‘average’ trek?  Nothing that’s got you into trouble I hope..

GWEN: 

I have four panniers (saddle bags), two on the front and two on the back, and I usually pack light — sleeping bag, sleeping mat, a few bike shorts and shirts (gotta have that spandex), a few kicking-around clothes, running shoes, bike maintenance stuff, a few books, toiletries, and a bit of food to last me ’til the next grocery store.

I depend on everything I have so it forces me to keep an eye on everything pretty closely.

We always make sure not to have any drug-related stuff when we cross borders, and the only thing that had me stuck for an explanation was the cuts on my arm in Mexico — I didn’t know enough Spanish to convey that I didn’t get stabbed and that they had been willingly inflicted.

 

Cyclist meet-up in Vancouver

ROO: 

Another close shave?  Can you remember how the conversation went?

GWEN: 

It started with a lot of broken English, quite a lot of pointing at their arms referring to mine, me smiling sweetly and looking to Morgan hoping he’d be able to explain the situation, and then ending up saying “lo mismo los tattoos” (ROO:  Rough translation - “the same the tattoos”), adding plenty of hand gestures and then yours truly walking away quickly.

 

Gwen and Morgan in mainland Mexico with his parents

ROO: 

Care to talk about the ‘cuts’ that almost got you into trouble and how you came to receive them? It was a scarification pierce by Rafael, correct?

GWEN: 

Yes, that was a good time. I remember at my suspension Philip Barbosa mentioning he lived in Mexico so I sent him a message to see if he knew any cool places to check out and he forwarded me to Rafael, who lives in La Paz where I was headed.

We met him and ended up hanging out for the time we were in the city then spending time at his piercing studio. I learned that he did scarification, and as I was itching to get more work done (hadn’t had any in a year — too long!) I mentioned I could be a guinea pig if he needed more pictures for his portfolio — and the next day I was getting prepped for the scalpel! Rafael did a great job and now I have a keepsake of my travels in Mexico.

 

Having scarification done by Rafael (Symbiosis) in La Paz, Mexico

ROO: 

Could you ramble a little more about your experience with Rafael please honey?

GWEN: 

Asking me to ramble? (ROO: No, I’m demanding it!)

With pleasure!

The scarification was done at his shop (Symbiosis, La Paz, Mexico) under very sterile conditions. He changed his gloves often, and wiped my skin down with an anti-bacterial swab. He changed scalpel blades a few times — he explained they lose their sharpness — and wrapped my arm in saran wrap after he was done. It was a new challenge to see someone repeatedly cutting into the same spot while I could watch it all go down (with my calf cutting I was blind to what was going on), but I prefer ‘seeing the pain’, letting it flow through me, and still remaining calm.

ROO: 

Did you manage to get any rest after he’d unwielded his scalpel and before you rode off into the night?

GWEN: 

Oh, I slept wonderfully that night — all the rush of emotions and endorphins makes me tired after being cut. We stayed at a hostel so we had time to do laundry and give my arm a day off to get a head start on healing before I’d be riding again.

ROO: 

Staying on the topic of your skin for a moment, have you got any special tattoos you’d like share with us?

GWEN: 

There is my tree lady, she signifies everything I encompass.

She reminds me of how I’m half of the earth, and half human, as every cell in my body is comprised of materials that were formally individual molecules that belonged to rocks and plants and water and so on. The roots remind me to stay grounded and remember that I am part of the greater circle of life and not ontop of it.

 

Feral, Womantree

ROO: 

You’re a diamond, would you say suspending makes you feel the same way?

GWEN: 

My suspension is hard to put into a few words. It brought me to a level of consciousness where I could feel the energy of the world and of those around me and embrace them fully.

For the first time in my life I felt connected and loved everthing with a childlike innocence.

 

Gwen’s suspension

ROO: 

That’s beautiful Gwen, like the pink skin of a baby’s bottom. Anyway, you’re obviously planning on doing a lot more travelling in the future, do you see yourself getting more piercings, (hopefully intentional) scars or tattoos along the way?

GWEN: 

Absolutely; I like to think of body modifications I collect on the road symbolizing the time and place of where they were done. I adore having different people work on me and forming those types of bonds with as many people as possible.

ROO: 

Do you generally find that the people you meet on your travels are hospitable?

GWEN: 

Surprisingly so. I never knew how welcoming people can be to those they’ve never met before and know nothing about. I could tell you a hundred instances of when someone did something so generous and nice — in all the three countries I’ve been riding through, too. If I ever have an address I’m staying at I know I’ll be welcoming any traveller coming through; a warm shower is the best gift when you’re riding all day and don’t want to pay for a room just to get some hot water.

ROO: 

Have you ever considered starting a cyclists-rest type service to help your fellow iron jockeys?

GWEN: 

Absolutely! There’s a women with the moniker ‘the cookie lady’ who welcomes all bike tourers to enjoy a warm shower, a place to stay and, of course, some cookies. There’s another site, www.warmshowers.org, that connects those looking for a place to crash. So the framework is in place, I merely want to be another cookie-lady — only I’d make ’em vegan.

ROO: 

I’d take up cycling if there were vegan cookies at the end of the trail!

Hopefully not, but has anything disastrous happened to you whilst you’ve been roaming the planet that made you regret your path in life? Even for a moment?

GWEN: 

Not a thing. Becoming a homeless wanderer was the best decision I ever made. The first week in Mexico made me want to be back in the States, but that’s the only time I felt like changing my route slightly. (A car slowed down and — with great precision — pushed me off the side of the road! I fell pretty hard on my hip and banged my head on the cement, luckily I had a helmet.)

ROO: 

Jeepers, that was a bit mean, onwards to some merrier questions!

Out of all the places you’ve been to can you pick one that struck you as the most beautiful?

Is it the people you’ve met or the places you’ve visited that stand out most for you?

GWEN: 

Haha people always ask this (ROO:  Gosh, I’m predictable) and I never know what to say.

Every place has its own qualities that make it special, y’know? If I had to pick my favourite place, it’d probably be Northern California. There was this hiking trail that decided we should bike, and to cut a long story short, after pushing our bikes on this slippery wet trail up a good two hundred metres (or so it seemed) I saw the Redwoods for the first time in all their beauty and wanted to die I was so happy.

Despite that I’d have to say the people I’ve met stand out the most, as there were so many breathtaking vistas and cool places but only a dozen or so people I really connected with, and they made the areas seem alive.

I was in awe of every different landscape change, there were just too many; I remember them as one giant conglomerate of amazing scenery, whereas individual people are easier to recall.

 

Travelling the California coast.

ROO: 

And we all know how you feel about conglomerates!

Could you run through the route you took on your epic voyage so people get an impression of just how amazing you are?

 

The course, starting in Mexico.

GWEN: 

Well, I began in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, went northwest, around Lake Superior, connected to Hwy 1 and stuck to that straight through all the provinces to British Columbia. I stopped in Winnepeg, Manitoba and Calgary, Alberta but didn’t take a full rest day other than those times. I went through Banff then connected to Hwy 3 south through B.C. (where I hooked up with Morgan) then followed the U.S. border on that highway ’til I hit Vancouver, then I ferried to Victoria on Vancouver Island, went up to Cumberland then back down to Hornby Island, then took a boat to Ucluelet on the western shore (and saw my first real sunrise over the ocean), went by Tofino then rode back to go to Salt Spring Island, then back to Victoria, which ended my Canadian stretch.

 

Hornby Island

 

From Victoria Morgan and I took a ferry to Port Angeles in Washington, rode out to the coast stopping in Olympic Nat’l Park, then went inwards to hit Olympia, rode down to Portland (great bike route connecting the two), then back out to the coast to Tillamook and continued on the 101 all the way through Oregon an California, going through the Lost Coast Highway then down to San Fran, Big Sur and on to San Diego, which ended the U.S. part.

We crossed the border to Mexico in Tecate, a few kilometres east of Tijuana, then took the main highway all the way down Baja to La Paz, where we ferried over to Mazatlan and from there we pretty much packed our bikes on buses and the train through Copper Canyon. From there I headed east through Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi to rest in Alabama where I am now (done through hitchhiking and buses also).

 

Morgan and Gwen in Mexico

ROO: 

For the budding cyclists amongst us (not me unfortunately) could you wow us with the specifications of the bike you use and any other tips for the would-be leg powered vagrant.

GWEN: 

My bike isn’t too boast-worthy. I don’t know the specifics, aside from the components are all Shimano, about the second to top of the line, twenty-seven speeds, drop-down handle bars, 27″ rims and everything has held up ’cept for the occasional flat tire.

As far as tips go, to anyone who’s thinking about being a vagrant, I say DO IT. Take a few hundred bucks and just take off. If you’re open to going with the flow and taking opportunities as they come, there’s no telling where you’ll end up. And definitely make connections over BME — this here site introduced me to Morgan who I was with everyday for seven months, plus a wonderful lady in Portland (no longer has her page up), Rafael in Mexico, and soon to be another man in Alabama whom I’ve already fallen in love with. If I had stayed at home I can guarantee that wouldn’t have happened. Oh, and Food Not Bombs is in almost every big city and good for a free meal…and raid every dumpster you can find — you can find tonnes of good food from grocery stores!

ROO: 

You’ve almost answered this question, but what exactly do you eat when you’re on the road?

GWEN: 

Anything and everything. I started out vegan but relax that to vegetarian most of the time. Peanut butter and bananas has been a staple, but I’ll take anything I can get. As I said, dumpstering brings much of my bounty.

Why pay for it when they’re just throwing it out?

ROO: 

I agree completely, but have you ever been so delirious with excitement upon finding a tasty treat that you gobbled it down without poking at it, then found it to be something poisonous or otherwise unpleasant?

GWEN: 

I threw up once…I was eating donuts that came out of a dumpster and I probably wasn’t careful enough in selecting the ones that didn’t get contaminated with other stuff in the garbage bag. Aside from that I don’t think I’ve ever been sick this whole trip.

ROO: 

I wouldn’t be surprised if your constitution’s comparable to that of oxen by now!  Even though that might be true were you at all worried about the risk of developing an infection after the work by Rafael?

There is quite a lot of media-coverage at the moment surrounding the spread of hepatitis in Mexico (that you can contract it from simply drinking a glass of water etcetera).

GWEN: 

I’ve heard a few things about the risk of catching diseases in Mexico but I wasn’t worried; I had eaten their food for two months with no ill effects so I felt fairly confident I’d be okay.

ROO: 

Let’s hear Rafael’s view on the situation.. apologies for making you orange but colours are being rationed in Canada at the moment..

RAFAEL: 

The Mexican authorities don’t seem to care about body piercing, scarification etcetera..

The senators have recently approved a new law to protect these activities and the customers but really it’s just a meaningless piece of paper!

A lot of people work in the streets, markets and carnivals performing body piercings and scarification, it’s very sad because they attract more custom than an established studio, they also don’t pay rent or taxes and so forth which is obviously bad for the economy.

Customers still supporting these psuedo-artists can very easily pay less than 8 USD for a street piercing, and they don’t seem to care much about the quality of the jewellery, sterility of the equipment or the modification they walk away with.

Piercings in a professional studio usually cost from between 20 USD and 40 USD.

You get what you pay for!

ROO: 

Thanks for the insight Rafael.

From what you’ve just said it appears not, but do you think the chance of someone contracting Hepatitis deters people from having scarification/piercing work done in Mexico?

RAFAEL: 

Obviously I ensure that everything in my studio is clean and sterile!

Only a very small percentage of customers express concerns about Hepatitis, to be honest most of them don’t seem to care.

I’ve been piercing for five years now, I attend seminars to increase my knowledge, I’ve got health department certificates and one of my accquaintances is a doctor who I can call upon if I need support, so in that respect my credentials are amazing!

ROO: 

Do you find you have to work extra hard to bring people in to your shop because of this risk?

RAFAEL: 

Not really, piercings are very popular at the moment.

Most of my customers seem more worried about how much the piercing will cost more than anything.

The vaste majority of scarifications I do are on close friends, and basically I do them for free because scars aren’t really that popular where I live.

In peoples minds the risk of contracting hepatitis doesn’t seem to register so I don’t really have to work any harder to dispel fears or anxieties regarding it.

What I do have to work hard for though is people coming in with crappy jewellery and terrible piercings from the pseudo-piercers I mentioned before.

All in all the situation looks awful but there’s a lot of information out there right now, websites such as BMEzine.com, magazines and so forth, but people just look at the pictures and don’t read the articles.

I don’t know, it’s crazy! The situation in Mexico at the moment is affecting the industry I love and the career that ensures I earn money.

Now I charge 20 USD for a piercing (including jewellery) just to ensure I can pay the rent.

That’s the situation here in La Paz, but I suppose it’s the same everywhere in Mexico City. You can find blocks and blocks of streets filled with jewellery stands and ‘piercers’.

Here’s an example of a crappy tattoo done in a local ‘tattoo studio’ for 30 USD!

 

30 USD tattoo

ROO: 

So there it is from the horse’s mouth, make your own minds up guys!

Gwen, how many spokes does your bike have?

GWEN: 

A lot. Thirty-six or something maybe? Don’t know for sure.

ROO: 

And you call yourself a cyclist!

GWEN: 

I’m still starting out! I may have biked a hell of a lot but I’ve never looked into the technicalities! (ROO:  That’s me told!)

 

Oregon and Washington

ROO: 

Where do you see yourself in five/ten/fifteen years or so? This is probably a rather silly question but do you have any plans to settle down inside a white picket fence and make marmalade with your husband?

GWEN: 

That’s a tricky one. I don’t look too far in the future as long as the present doesn’t pose too many problems. I’d like to be building my own little place out of reclaimed/dumpstered things and have enough land to grow all my own food and can it during the winter. There´ll be no white picket fence, but maybe some branches to keep the wild animals from eating my garden. Funny you mention that, though, ’cause I’m about to move into a place that appears to be that perfect little house.. I’m not one for marriage but I wouldn’t mind having having someone to sow seeds with (literally, not sexually, I refuse to give birth to a child) with. That said, I’ll be a wanderer for the rest of my days at least part of the year. The wanderlust is implanted deep.

 

Morgan in Todos Santos

ROO: 

I hope it was implanted under suitably sterile conditions. Ok how about this question instead..

Where will you be travelling next?

I’m sure if folks had a vague idea of your plans they’d be willing to offer you some free (or at least discounted) scarification/tattoo work. That is if you have a vague idea, of course.

GWEN: 

Unfortunately I don’t know which route I’ll be taking from here (ROO:  I saw that coming). I’d like to see North Carolina and Tennessee, but I really want to see everything so it’s impossible to pinpoint where I’ll be going next, I usually decide where to go on a whim or a suggestion.. or if someone’s willing to let me sleep on their couch for a night!

ROO: 

If there are people reading this willing to help you out on your travels by offering a bed, simple home cooked meal, a warm shower or a night at a strip club how should they contact you?

GWEN: 

Assuming they’re on IAM, that’d be the best way to contact me (Hi-Ho), but gmail works too (ggraovac@gmail.com) — I’ll be staying in Alabama for a while, but come nice weather I’ll be hittin’ the dusty trail again so if anyone is down for biking with me a few kilometers or just hanging out, shoot me a line!

ROO: 

Any final words you think might be of interest to our lovely (and by now probably as exhausted as you felt upon reaching Victoria) readers?

GWEN: 

As far as final words go, I want to be an example of a free-spirited vagrant who decided to live life and choose my own path rather than being led around by someone else’s ideas. The best way to travel is cheap — you meet every type of person and go through every situation, from the lowest to the highest.

I feel if you’re open to the world, she’ll embrace you. As a fellow hitchhiker once said to me: “You meet the angels and the freaks, the sinners and the saints, but that’s what makes the world go round.”

I hope I inspire other kids my age (or anyone) to give up the constant rush of consumer society and breathe in the fresh air and just not care.

ROO: 

Thank you so much Gwendolen, you’re a trooper. Stay safe and may the wanderlust be with you always.

GWEN: 

<3

 

  Just imagine how unstoppable (and unlikely) the love child of Pauly and Gwen would be!

---

Roo Crumbs (iam:RooBot) is 28 29 (ugh), male, a thousand feet tall, and grazes on the treetops for breakfast. He’s covered from nape of neck to tip of wang in heart tattoos. He likes to read and write. He won’t fix your computer (unless you ask nicely) and he doesn’t like Charles Dickens, football or The Beatles.

This article is copyright © 2008 BMEzine.com, and for bibliographical purposes was first published May 16th, 2008.

---

Portugal introduces contentious changes to the language, spelling many words the Brazilian way.

Italy's interior minister says firm measures are needed to meet the country's 'security emergency'.

Oil prices hit a record approaching $128 a barrel for the first time on fresh worries about global supplies.

The first day of FOSSCamp in Prague has ended. As with most FooCamp style conferences, the sessions provided excellent opportunies to learn more about upstream projects and find ways to collaborate.

As the day kicked off:

Early in the day, the schedule looked like this:

Eventually, more sessions were added and some sessions continued on to a second time slot.

My favorite session so far? Dan Shearer, from Samba, talking about the latest developments that have opened up interesting opportunities for them. Dan said OpenChange, a feature functional Exchange server replacement should be available by SambaXP next year.

More pictures coming soon!

A Quebec cabinet minister's aide is believed to have been kidnapped early Friday from her home about 120 kilometres northeast of Quebec City.

With the help of Ana from Kunststätte Tattoo & Piercing, Austria - Fabian relinquishes his rights to ever stop.

The BBC is reporting that Sugar Labs is planning on taking "Sugar", the XO laptop's innovative interface, to the next level and distribute to a broader audience. "Sugar is a user interface that allows children to collaborate even when working on different machines. For example, they can write documents or make music together. The open source software also contains a journal and automatically saves and backs up all data. [...] Sugar Labs will work closely with developers from the open source community to develop the user interface for other computers and operating systems. It has already been bundled with the most recent releases of the Ubuntu and Fedora Linux operating systems."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I have the opportunity to be attending a GTK+ Hackfest in Berlin this week. Visiting Berlin, (and sleeping about a block away from Checkpoint Charlie), is quite interesting, and a welcome new experience for me.

I promised some people back home that I would post daily updates on things that get discussed/decided here. The hackfest could only support a couple dozen people, but certainly there's a larger audience interested in the things happening here. And it would be a shame to not share things with that larger audience.

So far I've done a very poor job of actually getting those updates out. One snag was that due to some interaction of bugs in ikiwiki and/or planet, planet.gnome.org decided to post ancient posts of mine instead of recent ones. I still haven't worked out those bugs completely. In the meantime, I'm glad that some people that missed it the first time enjoyed my writeup on learning git. And for anyone wondering about my son Scott, it's been over 6 months since his first steps, and he's now walking, running, and doing everything else expected of a 2-year-old. Anyone who met him for the first time now would never know that he ever had any problem. So that's wonderful.

But getting back to the hackfest: Due to my travel schedule I missed the first day completely. I know that some transitioning-to-GTK+-3.0 plans were discussed then, and hopefully people have seen those slides. There was also a lot of talk about adding introspection to GTK+, (to enable automatic language bindings and other fancy things). The introspection discussion has continued over the second and third days, and hopefully it's going just great, (but I haven't been a part of it at all---somehow it's just one of those topics that makes my brain switch off---but I'm glad other people are interested in solving the issues).

So what I did do on Tuesday included a fantastic presentation from Behdad Esfahbod about the proposed "user font" API for cairo. This is something that's had some preliminary patches since 2006 when Kristian Høgsberg first needed this for supporting fonts embedded in PDF files. The discussion here took great advantage of having all the right people together at the same time, (though it would have been great to have Kristian here as well). We had an implementor (Behdad), a maintainer (myself), and two consumers of the API, (Benjamin "Company" Otte of swfdec fame and Alp Toker of WebKit/GTK+. That was a great group to have together to make sure we the API would make everybody happy. We found several changes that will improve the API quite a bit, but also shouldn't be too much work. Behdad plans to have the changes all committed to cairo, (on a new 1.7 development branch), before the end of the week.

Afterwards, Behdad returned my code-review favor by taking a look at the patch series I have for adding support for arbitrary true-color visuals to cairo. This series is to address a number of fatal bugs that occur when targeting X servers that don't have the Render extension, (Xvnc is a common case). I knew my patch series had some ugly bits in it, but I wasn't sure what the cleanest fix would be. Behdad set me straight right away. So I'll be landing this in cairo very shortly, and this is one of the very last issues left unfinished on the cairo 1.6 roadmap.

The only other unfinished feature on the roadmap is support for pseudo-color visuals, but Behdad is trying to convince me to let that slip, (it's a lot of work for fairly small gain). Who would be really hurt to see this feature slip again? Let me know if you are, (and I'll let you know how you can help make it happen too).

I'm definitely overdue as far as posting an update on the progress of the work we've been doing to improve EXA performance for the i965 driver. And just yesterday, Benjamin Otte pointed out to me that it's really hard for many people to get any understanding at all about some of the work that's going on within the X.org development community.

Part of my reply to Benjamin was that there were a lot of excellent talks given at LCA this year, (Keith Packard, Dave Airlie, Adam Jackson, Jesse Barnes, Peter Hutterer, Eric Anholt, and myself were all there talking about X in one way or another). And that is true, but it's also true that many people were not able to attend LCA to hear those talks. And while the LCA conference kindly posts video of the talks that's not always the most desirable way of getting information when not at the conference in person.

So I think it would be fair to say that we've been doing a poor job of providing easy-to-find information about what's going on with X. I definitely want to help improve that, and I even just got an official designation to do exactly that. I was recently elected to the X.org Board of Directors and also assigned to chair a Communications committee whose job it is to help X.org communicate more effectively. What can we do better? Please email me with your ideas.

In the meantime, for my own part, I've just done a fairly thorough writeup of my LCA talk. That's something I've been wanting to get in the habit of doing for a while. One thing I can't stand is reading presentation slides that are almost content free---where clearly they weren't meant to stand alone but were meant to be accompanied by someone speaking for up to an hour. And I know I've been guilty of posting slides like that before. So this time, I've written some text that should stand alone quite well, (though, since I just wrote it today it might not correlate extremely well with what I said that day at LCA---but I've tried to address the same themes at least).

Following on from AMD's announcement at XDS 2007, Intel have just released documentation on their graphics hardware, without NDA, available to the public. There's also a mirror at X.Org. Cheers, Intel!

If you're attending the excellent FOSDEM (which you should), you should make sure you get down to my talk on input. We're now at the stage where we understand not only the problems, but their causes and fixes, and the code which led us there, and I think by early 2009[0] we should be in really good shape. Finally.

I felt a bit bad posting a blog entry just about myself, but then I thought hey, at least I'm not putting a picture of myself in here.
[0]: Peter has a thesis to write, I have work to do and another move to make, et al.

The X Developers' Conference 2008 will be held at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California from April 16th-18th, 2008. If you're interested in coming, please sign up at the wiki; we're also interested in having people talk if they want to. More details as they come to hand, but start booking your flights now.

After my shameless beg, a number of people emailed me (thanks -- sorry about the lack of comments) to tell me that I should really be using awesome, and I am. (Other popular suggestions were wmii and dwm.) I'm well happy with it so far, so thanks!

Dear lazyweb,
I want to try out a window manager like Ion, but I don't want to actually use Ion due to the fact the author's an irritating nutcase who I'd rather not encourage any further, and its utterly daft license. What's a man to do?

An appeal court has ruled the widow of a slain Mountie can have her husband's remains moved from northern Alberta to the national RCMP cemetery.

Disgraced sprinter Tim Montgomery is jailed for 46 months for his part in a multi-million dollar bank fraud.

D Ninja writes "Yesterday, Lockheed Martin was awarded the $1.4 billion Air Force contract to build the next-generation global positioning satellite system. This occurred after a series of delays as the Air Force decided between Lockheed and the competing bidding contractor, Boeing Co. 'GPS III, will give new navigation warfare (NAVWAR) capabilities to shut off GPS service to a limited geographical location while providing GPS to US and allied forces. GPS III will offer significant improvements in navigation capabilities by improving interoperability and jam resistance. The procurement of the GPS III system is planned for multiple blocks, with the GPS IIIA portion currently underway. GPS IIIA includes all of the GPS IIF capability plus up to a ten-fold increase in signal power, a new civil signal compatible with the European Union's Galileo system, and a new spacecraft bus that will allow a growth path to future blocks.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

EDIT: daniels (the guy doing all the work) posted a good summary of what happened to fd.o to announce@, so I'll quote that:

Hi,
Due to the recent Debian OpenSSL trainwreck[0], we've had to do a fair
bit of housecleaning with regards to authentication.

Firstly, the host keys have been regenerated, as below:
root@fruit:~% ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
2048 1e:81:13:df:b9:68:fc:c2:ec:9d:c3:87:d1:5e:30:77 /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub
root@gabe:~% ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
2048 c1:1a:8a:e5:99:ce:5a:d9:a9:e2:b3:95:67:95:9d:f7 /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub
root@kemper:~% ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
2048 95:b5:28:3d:9b:37:55:d4:fc:3d:99:b4:06:9d:9b:5f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub
root@annarchy:~% ssh-keygen -l -f /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
2048 32:3e:0c:df:0a:c8:a6:33:72:9c:6c:ba:68:58:d2:30 /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub

You'll note that these are RSA-only. DSA is no longer supported, nor is
SSH1.

Secondly, all vulnerable keys (weak RSA keys, RSA1 keys, and DSA keys)
have been removed; anyone who had a vulnerable key will have received an
email from myself at whichever address you had in LDAP, explaining what
happened, and how to fix it[1].

annarchy.fd.o (hosting bugs.fd.o, www.x.org, and others) is still having
major issues, thanks to the Moin 1.6 upgrade being unbelievably painful;
thanks very much to Benjamin Close for somehow dealing with this
godawful upgrade, which is running its load average up to 116, and using
up to 7GB of RAM just to convert a wiki from Moin 1.5 to 1.6.

The snakeoil cert from bugs.fd.o is still vulnerable, and feel free to
distrust it just as much as any other snakeoil cert. We'll be getting a
real cert from CAcert[2] soonish, but regenerating our snakeoil in the
meantime.

Thanks for bearing with us; if it's any consolation, it's not been the
best week for admins.

Cheers,
Daniel

[0]: http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00152.html
[1]: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/AccountMaintenance
[2]: http://www.cacert.org -- add its certs to your browser if they
aren't there, and don't forget to let your distribution and/or
browser vendor know.

A Bill that could allocate more than $1 billion over the next eight years to combat those who trade in child pornography has been unanimously approved by a Senate panel. "The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to send an amended version of the Combating Child Exploitation Act, chiefly sponsored by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), to the full slate of politicians for a vote. [...] An amendment adopted Thursday also adds new sections to the original bill that would rewrite existing child pornography laws. One section is designed to make it clear that live Webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, which the bill's authors argue is an "open question." Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Survivors pulled from rubble in China quake town

BC Place is getting a new retractable roof, but it won't be in place until after the 2010 Winter Olympics, Premier Gordon Campbell confirmed Friday.

Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. said Friday that it's stopping development of its two MAPLE reactors at its laboratories in Chalk River, Ont.

Stony Stevenson writes to tell us that in a recent interview, Marc Henauer has revealed that security researchers are falling behind now that malware is starting to be able to change its signature every few hours. "Unfortunately the know-how and construction kits used to create this shape-shifting threat are now readily available and are unleashing a wave of malware based on social engineering techniques. [...] Sweeney believes that a non rules-based monitoring process must be set up to defend all ingress and egress points covering SMTP, DNS, HTTP(s), IM etc."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We’re very pleased to announce the results of the Launchpad Logo Contest!
(See https://help.launchpad.net/logo)

The number and quality of submissions took all of us by surprise. We are
immensely pleased with the results and are in awe at what the community
has done. We had so many interesting designs that it was very difficult for
us to declare a single winner.

However, there was one design that we felt embodied what Launchpad is all
about. We were impressed by how it summarised so much about Launchpad and
yet remained beautifully simple.

So, we’re delighted to say that the winner is Eugene Tretyak!

You can view his design here: https://help.launchpad.net/logo/winning-entry

The center of the design represents how Launchpad makes it easy for
people to collaborate and connect with one another, while the surrounding
facets represent the different services that Launchpad provides.

Above all, it shows that all projects are themselves a gem and, when
combined with other gems, can turn into something brilliant.

Eugene is both an Ubuntu member and Kubuntu developer and will receive
an official Ubuntu Messenger Bag.

There are also two runners-up whose designs made the selection process very
challenging for us. Mariana Ravicole and Ambroise Coutand will each receive
a 25 GBP gift certificate to the Canonical Store in recognition of their
highly competitive and very popular designs.

Additionally, we would also like to give an honourable mention to Donn
Ingle for his contributions. Donn’s varied designs were a popular
favourite.

Finally, the Launchpad Team would like to thank everyone who participated
in the contest. We are humbled by the response and are deeply thankful to
all the participants.

Joey Stanford

Hell no!

Military sources say a bomb that wounded two Canadian soldiers near Kandahar on Friday was carried by an 11-year-old boy and was detonated by remote control.

Peer writes "The dutch government has officially decided that it will no longer use voting machines (Babel Fish Translation) for elections. So it's pencil and paper from now on. Activists have been campaigning against the use of voting machines for some time."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Since Diego is deleting my comments from his moderation queue, I'll try to give my impression of his post here. But first I'll state my opinion on the matter.

I think the Council made a mistake (admittedly, not a big one) by missing their latest meeting. And I don't particularly care about why it happened. Also, I don't think they have to give either reasons or excuses, this kind of stuff might happen, and that's all.

However, there's one reason the Council exists: because we all voted for what today is GLEP39 (which wasn't a GLEP by that time, as far as I recall). And said document states it clearly:

If any meeting has less than 50% attendance by council members, a new election for all places must be held within a month. The 'one year' is then reset from that point.

There is no point in enforcing such a rule when Council members are late even for half an hour (or even a couple of hours). But there is no enforcing here, you guys missed the meeting, rules say you have to call an election. Hell, those of you who got my vote will get it again. (And I'm quite sure that's the situation for lots of people).

Just follow the rules that give you the power you have.

However, I find it interesting that Diego, who is a Council member, didn't read the summary of that meeting:

Did I read summary or log the day after? Sincerely, no. I did think I was there till the end, as we were already late, and I don’t tend to read them usually anyway, I’m there during the meeting why should I read the summary? I usually read the replies but not the summaries themselves; I can tell you that Duncan on -dev made the point of the log being missing, so that I surely read. I didn’t even remember to ask what we had to do for the special meeting, and that’s entirely my fault, I should have asked. But I barely remembered saying I was okay with rescheduling, considering the lateness of the whole thing.

Well, to me, it is really important that Council members check the summary so they get an idea of what has been accomplished and decided in that meeting.

But still, am I the only one who thinks that it sounds tremendously like a last exit to get rid of the council when people point everybody at the rules, asking a new election, without having tried a thing to get the meeting actually happening?

This is funny: You didn't do anything to get the meeting actually happening. Don't try to blame those of us who want you to obbey the rules that give you your power.

Now that I explained how it is possible that the meeting was missed by almost everybody, let me reiterate that my official position here (and I repeat mine, not the council as a whole, I’m writing as a single developer here), is that the 50% attendance rule does not apply to this case as the meeting wasn’t officially scheduled through a voting process

Well, to me that's trying to bypass a rule. Be honest, call an election and schedule a meeting (so that last meeting happes) in the next couple of weeks. That should be fine for everyone.

Also, it seems that I have to restate this again: People feeling the need to use cheap psychology on me, please refrain. I don't care what you have to say.

— ferdy

The US ambassador to Zimbabwe warns post-poll violence is "out of control" as a date is set for a run-off.

ModBlog, meet Meli and her furry friend.

Lebanon's rival leaders start talks in Qatar aimed at pulling the country back from the brink of civil war.

Albania's main electricity provider blames a cat chasing a mouse for a 72-hour blackout.

Reunited US boy band New Kids on the Block perform together for the first time in 15 years, in New York.

holy_calamity writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was founded in 1958 after the Soviets shocked the world by launching Sputnik. New Scientist recounts the history of the agency charged with protecting the US from 'technological surprise' and lists some of its most spectacular successes and failures."

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