planet.mindstab.net

Planet FreeDesktop: Donnie Berkholz: Early coverage of Gentoo 2008.0

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:13:23 +0000

Here’s links to a few places that posted announcements for 2008.0. Go there and get involved by voting and commenting!

There’s also a ton of talk about Gentoo 2008.0 happening on Twitter, which I’m following through the Summize search engine with a search for gentoo. I’m also following blogs talking about Gentoo, and I have a news search for Gentoo that I expect to pick up more later once more journalists pick up the news.

CBC News: Suicide attack in Pakistani capital kills 15

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:10:20 +0000

At least 15 people died and 36 others were wounded in a suicide bomb explosion near a police station in Islamabad on Sunday.

Slashdot: Keeping an Eye Out When Sites Go Down

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:08:00 +0000

miller60 writes "Are major web sites going down more often? Or are outages simply more noticeable? The New York Times looks at the recent focus on downtime at services like Twitter, and the services that have sprung up to monitor outages. When a site goes down, word spreads rapidly, fueled by blogs and forums. But there have also been a series of outages with real-world impact, affecting commodities exchanges, thousands of web sites and online stores."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Planet GNOME: Edd Dumbill: Tolling the bell for the gatekeepers

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:03:47 +0000

The current gatekeepers of the web and computing industry include publications such as TechCrunch and TechMeme.

I barely ever read these, and here's why. They only tell me things about the big boys, mostly when money is involved. It hardly matters to me who VCs are investing in, what advertising strategy Facebook is pursuing, or the fact yet another social network for cats has been launched.

That's not what I'm in technology for: I want to hear about genuine advance, discovery, code I can read, services I can use, new applications of research. And I want to share with and learn from others in the same ecosphere.

Unfortunately, the gatekeepers can have a stifling, negative effect on the industry and community. Our thinking has become dull, and our attitude one of sniping. (I have a deep urge to rant about various small-minded inaccurate stories I've seen of late. But if you're getting my point, I needn't bother. And if you're not, well, it won't help)

The competition for cash — directly connected to TechCrunch exposure — is odious. I'm not prepared to even start doing the self-prostitution it takes to get into that echo chamber of A-list tech people. By far and away the most interesting and inspiring people I've encountered on the web recently haven't registered at all on the valley meme-o-meter.

It's time for another cycle to start

These things do come in cycles, of course. TC and TechMeme are themselves usurpers of a previous generation of media gatekeepers, and they in turn will be overtaken.

In the space between the installation of gatekeepers it's a great time for innovation, rich discussions, and changing people's minds. When I read tech news, I want to be inspired to build, create and cheer about it.

There was a children's TV programme while I was growing up called "Why don't you?", entitled in full "Why don't you just switch off your television set and go out and do something less boring instead?" I want to read stuff like that.

Some of the places I've been finding worthwhile news recently include:

FriendFeed — essentially a "lifestream aggregator", it's the commenting feature in FriendFeed that has allowed it to become a useful means of gathering news and information. It systematizes the way I've discovered tech news for the last ten years, through a network of individuals whom you are interested in. Additionally FriendFeed presents the opportunity for engaging debate that feels a lot more alive than blog comments (I wonder if this isn't due in part to the neutrality of the venue.)

TechJunk — a new tech news aggregator created by Dave Winer, with the intent of enabling discovery of smaller interesting technical news items, not just what the behemoths and well-connected are doing.

@timoreilly on Twitter — Tim's always been a discoverer and amplifier of important and interesting trends, and what he does on Twitter is a microcosm of what he does for his day job.

It's about the people

One of the things all those sources I just mentioned have in common is people. The kind of people who — whether you agree with them or not — don't get bound up by gatekeepers.

I've always believed that the best publications are those with the best editors. I've never cared for the "daily me" style of personalized news, because I want to learn things outside of my own scope, and neither for the Digg style of populism, because all too often it's folly, not wisdom, one finds in crowds.

In the spirit of this, I'd love to hear where others go for incisive, non-mainstream, news. Let me know in the comments.

Join the conversation about this post

Planet Ubuntu: Christer Edwards: Install the 1.15.2 “no CD” Patch for StarCraft on Ubuntu 8.04

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:58:30 +0000

Yesterday I outlined how to install and play StarCraft and the BroodWar expansion on Ubuntu 8.04. Today I’ll build on that by outlining how to install the 1.15.2 “no CD” patch available from Blizzard Entertainment.

Installing the 1.15.2 “no CD” patch

One thing we quickly realized after installing was that it was a bit annoying to require the CD to play. After some quick searching we found that Blizzard had released a patch that would allow the game to play minus the CD. To install that patch you’ll need to follow a few more steps.

You’ll need to copy some of the CD contents into your StarCraft installation directory. Each CD (StarCraft original and / or the BroodWar expansion) has a file called “install.exe”. This file needs to be copied into your StarCraft installation directory. The file also needs to be renamed according to which it is. This means if you are copying the contents from the StarCraft original game CD the resulting file needs to be renamed “StarCraft.mpq”. If you are copying the install.exe from the BroodWar expansion disk you’ll need to rename that file “BroodWar.mpq”.

The following two commands will properly copy and rename the files on both CDs. If you only have the original and not the BroodWar expansion you only need the first command.

Copy the install.exe file from the StarCraft original installation CD:

cp /media/cdrom/install.exe ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Starcraft/StarCraft.mpq

Copy the install.exe file from the StarCraft BroodWar expansion CD:

cp /media/cdrom/install.exe ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Starcraft/BroodWar.mpq

One last step is to install the patch itself available from Blizzard. Download the appropriate .exe file for your Starcraft installation (ie; original or BroodWar), run it via wine and you’re done. You can now enjoy playing StarCraft on Ubuntu 8.04 without requiring the CD.

BBC News: Suicide bomb hits Pakistan police

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:58:10 +0000

At least eight policemen are killed by a suicide bomb in Pakistan's capital, a year on from the bloody ending of a mosque siege.

CBC News: Canadian soldier leaves behind son, pregnant wife

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:47:27 +0000

A Saskatchewan-based soldier who died last week while serving at a military base in the Persian Gulf has been described by his family as a committed patriot.

Warren Ellis: DOCUMENTAL

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:41:25 +0000

DOCUMENTAL is an exhibition by four emerging photographers, including two good friends of mine, Irene Kaoru Malatesta and Sarah Sharp. Exhibition ends with a live gig, apparently. If you’re in NYC on the 11th, please do go and see them. Details in the link, obviously.

Warren Ellis: Paul Pope

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:34:14 +0000

There is no nihilism in pushing the frontiers of comics, no budgets but our imaginations, no reason to stop trying.

PULPHOPE: KARIMBAH

BBC News: Afghan strike 'hit wedding party'

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:14:01 +0000

At least 20 people, said by locals to be a wedding party, die in a missile strike by coalition forces in eastern Afghanistan.

Planet Ubuntu: Jim Campbell: Xubuntu meetings, website, and documentation

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:04:44 +0000

Things seem to be moving right along in Xubuntu-land. We’ve scheduled regular meetings for the Xubuntu team for the remainder of the Intrepid release cycle, have posted them to our wiki, and have passed along word to the communications team for inclusion of the meeting dates on the Fridge. Having regularly scheduled meetings helped keep us moving along during previous cycles so I am confident that having our meetings scheduled well in advance will do the same for us here.

We have yet to complete our agenda for the upcoming meeting, but one item that will be included is discussion of the new website. I’ve passed along a draft project plan to Cody Somerville, and he seemed to like what I had prepared. If we go by what I’ve prepared, we’ll have an internal team of Xubunteros to start things off, and will have an external team of interested, able parties to assist us once we’ve laid the ground work. Again, I’ll be posting further details once we get that plan in order.

Of course, you could always just show up to the Xubuntu meeting to discuss it with us. :]

In other news, we are considering using Yelp to display Xubuntu documentation, primarily to limit the discrepancies between common Xubuntu and Ubuntu documentation. Of course, Xubuntu would still have its own set of Xfce/Xubuntu-specific documentation, but we would be able to base our documentation on the primary base of Ubuntu docs. One part of the reason for this possible move is that Xubuntu doesn’t have very many system-doc contributors, and adapting the documentation from Ubuntu to Xubuntu is pretty time consuming, but there are technical and content-based reasons for the possible switch, too.

Why is it time consuming? The root of the matter is that yelp uses special “ghelp” links within the documentation, but the Xubuntu documentation is currently presented in Firefox. Firefox cannot display ghelp links, so we have to convert all of the ghelp links to accommodate our use of Firefox. Of course, modifying links is not so difficult, but the linking differences also necessitate that a different structure be used for the documentation files. In fact, the Xubuntu documentation currently gets validated as one large meta-document based off of the initial index.xml file, and this is not valid docbook.

Relying on Yelp and adapting our documentation later in the release cycle would also allow us to leverage the numerous contributions that are made by the hoards of crazy documentors that submit patches for the Ubuntu system documentation. Going that route would make it so the Xubuntu docs would be more accurate and comprehensive in terms of the documentation’s relation to the final released product. More accurate and comprehensive documentation == more awesome documentation.

As a final (seemingly unrelated, but nonethess important!) note, I’d just like to point out the great work that Cody Somerville and some of the other Xubuntu / Xfce contributors have been doing. For one, Cody took over as the Xubuntu project lead in the early Spring, and has been doing some pretty remarkable work. He’s not only doing a great job in terms of his own activities, but is doing a great job of enlisting and encouraging the help of others. I would also like to thank Lionel Le Folgoc and Jérôme Guelfucci for their remarkable packaging and bug triage work. It looks like Jmak is getting a good start on the artwork for this release, too.

Neato burrito.

Slashdot: 550 Metric Tons of Uranium Removed From Iraq

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:01:00 +0000

Orion Blastar tips us to an AP report that 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" uranium has successfully been removed from Iraq. The operation lasted three months, and it required 37 separate flights and an 8,500-mile trip by boat to reach a port in Montreal. Quoting: "While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called 'dirty bomb' -- a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material -- it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment. The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth 'tens of millions of dollars.' A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CBC News: Newfoundland ferry protest ends, service restored

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:49:14 +0000

A protest by a group of residents upset over ferry service interruption on Newfoundland's northeast coast ended peacefully Friday night.

Planet Ubuntu: Luis de Bethencourt: why droid isn't the answer

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:48:49 +0000

"If you haven't heard, droid is the new font that will drive the typography on the android platform.

currently, there is some discussion about using droid for the ubuntu default. i would be worried if this were the case, and this post will hopefully describe why i feel this way.

the standard gripes

i'd start by suggesting that changing a type without having a goal or a reason is probably the starting point. this is all standard part and parcel of my entire gripe with ubuntu design; no audience and no goal. a simple starting point, but one without a goal. why should we change the type at all?

this isn't to suggest for a second that I'm content with the typography in ubuntu. the default type in ubuntu speaks to the greater whole as being implemented without reason. it is also symptomatic of a franchise that cares extremely little about its art and design presence. look no further than the default wordmark type for further cues. this is despite the fact that someone has attempted to bring more life into the default title font."

continue reading this must-read post at troy james sobotka blog.

Planet Ubuntu: Jeff Bailey: "A third of a gopher'd only arouse my appetite. without beddin' her back down."

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:35:34 +0000

Yay, www.gomeat.com! I especially like the gopher that pops up shortly after the rest of the table of meat appears. The fact that he's advertising sausage makes me think that we've truly reached The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

I'll still take the green salad, thanks.

BBC News: Betancourt plans play on ordeal

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:30:27 +0000

Ingrid Betancourt says she will write a play about spending six years as a hostage of Colombian rebels.

Planet GNOME: Stefan Kost: 6 Jul 2008

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:07:42 +0000

buzztard

Some very visible changes this month - svg machine canvas icons. For that I needed to add better icon theme support. All icons are now themeable and colors are matched with the theme. Machines now have tiny level-meters embedded in the icon.

I also found a solution for slow start of playback in complexer songs. Data- format-negotiation is not deterministic in all cyclic gstreamer graphs. Proposed patches are attached to Bug 540645.

Finally I got around implementing support for a zip based song format. This can contain binaries (like the samples being used). The loader is based on libgsf, which turned out to be a pleasant experience.

I also added filters to the load and save file-choosers and to the recent-chooser in the new recent menu. Still fighting with the filter not doing a precise detection.

Next on my todo list is refactoring the song io plugin api a bit. Right now there is too much hard-coded data (like mime-types, format names, extensions).

Planet GNOME: Behdad Esfahbod: Setting the record straight

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:06:54 +0000

In Heathrow for another hour, then will arrive in Istanbul for GUADEC. I'm staying at Golden Horn. Guys, lets meet at the lobby around 9PM for mild beer tasting.

Also, it's a shame to read "Istambul" on pgo so frequently. Please, write "Istanbul", read as you wish :).

Can't wait to meet everyone... For those of you not coming this year, sorry guys, have to live with it for a week. I'm talking to you sri :-D.

Update: There are two Golden Horn hotels. I'm in the Sultanahmet one. But gather in the lobby of either one and you'll find enough familiar faces to go out drinking with.

Planet Ubuntu: Steven Harms: NVidia

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:02:01 +0000

In a market where you can watch your shares drop 30% overnight, how can you tell your shareholders with a straight face you are doing what is best with their money if you refuse to embrace such a large part of the community? Open up the drives so we can use our hardware any way we want, and in turn your computer techs and purchasers will recommend your cards.

Slashdot: Congress Tries To Strip Power From Anti-Wiretap Judge

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:50:00 +0000

palegray.net writes "Congress is attempting to strip US District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of his power following his ruling against the government regarding immunity for telecoms in the NSA wiretapping case. Walker was appointed to the bench by President Bush, and has attempted to enforce existing prohibitions against warrantless wiretapping. From the Wired article: 'Walker, the chief judge of the Northern District of California, affirmed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the exclusive legal method for conducting surveillance inside the United States against suspected spies and [terrorists]. The Bush Administration argues that Congress's vote to authorize military force against Al Qaeda and the president's inherent war time powers were exceptions to the exclusivity provision.' The article makes the observation that Congress seems to be having difficulties bringing itself to enforce the laws that it has previously passed regarding wiretapping, and seems more interesting in silencing opposing viewpoints." Update: 07/06 16:15 GMT by SS: As several readers have noted, the vote would only limit Judge Walker with respect to this particular case. His other responsibilities would be unaffected.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BBC News: Police issue student murder e-fit

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:29:41 +0000

Police release an e-fit of a man seen near the scene of the double murder of two French students in south London.

CBC News: Well-preserved 1,600-year-old tomb unearthed in Peru

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:27:44 +0000

Archeologists in northern Peru say they've unearthed a rare, well-preserved pre-Incan tomb dating back 1,600 years.

CBC News: Low-key birthday for Dalai Lama

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:26:28 +0000

The Dalai Lama marked his 73rd birthday on Sunday without the usual fanfare of a public party.

Planet GNOME: Lucas Rocha: Beer tonight?

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:06:49 +0000

I’ve just arrived at the Golden Horn hotel (Sirceki) in Istanbul. I’m tired.

Drop me a comment, e-mail or irc ping if you want to have beer tonight!

BBC News: Two arrests in Turkey 'coup plot'

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:42:17 +0000

Two retired generals are remanded in custody in Turkey over a suspected plot to overthrow the government.

Slashdot: The Internationalization of Malware

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:39:00 +0000

Ant brings us a write-up from a former malware analyst about the difficulties in fighting malware as it expands beyond English-language targets and into societies with different standards for privacy and security. Quoting: "One of the most fascinating facets of the increasing internationalization of malware is the cultural assumptions around such software. What is considered malware in the US may be commonly accepted in China or Japan, and this is largely due to the society that it exists in. Anti-cheating rootkits are very common in games released in these countries. What is considered to be invasive in the North American or European world is acceptable there. These anti-cheating rootkits would hook into the kernel space in a very invasive way, and have the behavioral characteristics of malware such as hooking into the keyboard driver. This made it very difficult from a purely technical standpoint to distinguish them."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BBC News: UAE waives billions of Iraqi debt

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:34:47 +0000

The UAE says it is cancelling the entire debt owed to it by Iraq, a sum of almost $7bn (£3.5bn) including interest.

BBC News: Five held over teenager's death

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:11:32 +0000

Five people are arrested in connection with the murder of 16-year-old Shakilus Townsend, stabbed in south London.

Phoronix: Nouveau NV50 KMS Work Continues

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:56:17 +0000

Late last month we reported on Nouveau Kernel-Based Mode-Setting Support (or KMS for short) for the NVIDIA GeForce 8 series graphics cards. This kernel mode-setting support isn't perfect (yet) and lacks support for several features, but it's continued to progress since we first mentioned this support on the horizon...

Planet GNOME: Hubert Figuiere: In Istanbul

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:54:41 +0000

I'm in Istanbul since yesterday. The weather is hot.

We have drunk beer on the sidewalk sitting on cushions and carpet: that's what the terraces are in Istanbul. Some North American countries really need some thinking about the alcohol taboo.

I have taken 346 pictures so far. That's a case where I wish I had a GPS to geotag them. I will need to do some sorting though, and that might involve writing code before hand.

More later...

Planet GNOME: Davyd Madeley: loose change (the new tax system will be fairer on all Australians)

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:53:36 +0000

This update comes courtesy of free wireless at Changi Airport, where I'm transiting on my way to Istanbul. The wave of humidity as you come off the aircraft at Singapore is always familiar and inviting. The Indian vegetarian restaurants in the terminals make me so happy. I am having a 10pm snack of samosa. Flying always makes me hungry. Mmm, cardamomy.

It is Stephanie's birthday today (meaning I left the country), so last night we went to the Fly By Night club in Fremantle to see Peter Combe. Peter Combe was a seminal part of so many Australian children's formative years. His revival just goes to demonstrate how we're all really still kids at heart.

Peter Combe
He had the same support act as last year (De Grussa Band aka De Grussa Starship or perhaps Jefferson Starship). Only this year they were prepared with three costume changes. One of these may have been as the Mario Brothers.

the only place you can buy them is the Willigee General Store
Travelling brings people together (OMG how great is this pun?). On my flight here I managed to discuss both how global warming has affected the Kentish summer, and whether Crumper satchels are superior to Crumpler backpacks (we both concluded the satchel is where it's at).

Peter Combe photos

I apologise if this post contains jokes that only my brother will find funny. More from Istanbul (hopefully).

BBC News: G8 urged to act over oil prices

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:45:42 +0000

Japan and the US vow to call for "swift action" on oil and food prices at next week's G8 summit.

BBC News: Hamilton surges to British GP win

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:45:09 +0000

Briton Lewis Hamilton brilliantly handles the wet conditions at Silverstone to win his first British Grand Prix.

CBC News: G8 summit to test leaders on climate change, economy

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:42:18 +0000

The head of the European Union's executive has said the Group of Eight summit leaders may be ready to step up promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Planet Gentoo: Bernard Cafarelli: SOGo now available in the GNUstep overlay, Window Maker revival?

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:30:00 +0000

IF you want to try another groupware server, I finally made up ebuilds for Scalable OpenGroupware.org, SOGo for short. These are available in the GNUstep overlay for now (it seems to work fine, but I lack the full server installation needed to completely test it, mostly an IMAP server with LDAP backend).

From the SOGO folks:

SOGo is a free and modern scalable groupware server. It offers shared calendars, address books and emails through your favorite Web browser or by using a native client such as Mozilla Thunderbird and Lightning. SOGo is standard-compliant and supports CalDAV, CardDAV, GroupDAV and reuses existing IMAP, SMTP and database servers - making the solution easy to deploy and interoperable with many applications.

For the curious, a demo web site is running here. Feedback appreciated of course if you try it on Gentoo

On other news, I noticed that the Window Maker web site is back up, stating:

windowmaker.info Back Online posted on 2008-06-30 09:04:16 by kairi

windowmaker.info has been brought online as of early July, 2008. We are currently working on reimplementing the site in a more modern, safe fashion, while at the same time restoring all services required for development and communication. With that said, we are working very hard to revitalize Window Maker's presence on X Window (and perhaps beyond) desktops. With this new focus, we can now truly assert that Window Maker will be resuming active development very soon. We expect to once again provide the de-facto minimalist yet extremely functional window manager to the world.

This has been my main window manager since... well a loooong time, I'm crossing fingers and hoping it will really come back from the dead projects world!

Oh, and if you did not get the news, 2008.0 is here! Thanks release engineering team members

I almost forgot: congratulations to the new Council members, both veterans and newcomers!

Slashdot: Scaling Large Projects With Erlang

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:28:00 +0000

Delchanat points out a blog entry which notes, "The two biggest computing-providers of today, Amazon as well as Google, are building their concurrent offerings on top of really concurrent programming languages and systems. Not only because they want to, but because they need to. If you want to build computing into a utility, you need large real-time systems running as sufficiently as possible. You need your technology to be able to scale in a similar way as other, comparable utilities or large real-time systems are scaling — utilities like telephony and electricity. Erlang is a language that has all the right properties and mechanisms in place to do what utility computing requires. Amazon SimpleDB is built upon Erlang. IMDB (owned by Amazon) is switching from Perl to Erlang. Google Gears is using Erlang-style concurrency, and the list goes on."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BBC News: Accident at Chinese mine kills 21

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:25:48 +0000

State media reports that at least 21 people have died after an accident at a coal mine in northern Shanxi province.

BBC News: Syria blames inmates in jail riot

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:13:52 +0000

Syrian authorities blame prisoners for provoking clashes with guards that human rights groups say resulted in several deaths.

BBC News: Summit fortress

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:43:35 +0000

Japanese resort shuts down ahead of G8 meeting

Planet Gentoo: Hanno Böck: ACID3 with webkit-gtk and midori

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:30:02 +0000

Seems with the latest versions of webkit-gtk and midori, a long-standing crasher-bug got fixed and it now allows you to run the browser-test ACID3.

I just bumped the webkit-gtk ebuild in Gentoo to the latest snapshot.

ACID3 is a test for the standards compliance of modern web browsers. I wrote about ACID2 some years ago.

BBC News: Mugabe crisis 'infecting' Africa

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:29:39 +0000

David Miliband says the situation in Zimbabwe is now a "crisis infecting the whole of southern Africa".

Slashdot: US Justice Dept. Sued For Cellular Tracking Information

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:20:00 +0000

tpaudio writes "The ACLU and the EFF are suing the Department of Justice over how the government might be using GPS and location data from cell phones. With over 200 million Americans carrying cell phones, this could be pretty important for setting guidelines. We have already seen other frightening powers related to cell phones, such as 'cell mic tapping.'" The ACLU press release is also available, and it contains links to the complaint and the Freedom of Information Act request. We've previously discussed instances of cell phone tracking in the US and elsewhere.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Phoronix: Linux 2.6.26-rc9 Kernel Released

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:19:52 +0000

If you were hoping that Linux 2.6.26-rc8 would be the last release candidate and the Linux 2.6.26 kernel would be released over the Independence Day weekend here in the US, guess again. There was enough fallout from the 2.6.26-rc8 release that Linus Torvalds has decided to issue a Linux 2.6.26-rc9 kernel release...

BBC News: Malaysia hunts for sex claim man

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:16:35 +0000

Malaysian police hunt for a missing man who claimed the deputy prime minister had sex with a murdered model.

Planet Ubuntu: Brandon Perry: My first package - endeavour2

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 11:30:22 +0000

I packaged endeavour2 today, my first package for Ubuntu. Rock. The current AVScan doesn't work without the latest libendeavour2, so it needed to be packaged.

I won't be updating the ClamAV LiveCD today. ClamAV 0.93.2 is due to be released tomorrow, so I will update the CD to the latest engine and grab the freshest definitions tomorrow (saves me bandwidth rather than uploading it twice in two days).

Slashdot: Bletchley Park Faces Financial Rescue

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 11:08:00 +0000

biscuitfever11 writes "Just two months ago it seemed that Bletchley Park, the home of Station X, Britain's secret code-breaking base during the War, was doomed as the codebreakers' huts rotted and the site fell into disrepair. But today Britain's Lottery Fund is set to step in with a grant to rescue the ailing heritage site. (There was an earlier story on ZDNet.)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BBC News: Constitutional row in S Africa

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:53:22 +0000

South African judicial authorities consider an alleged bid to sway judges over corruption charges against ANC head Jacob Zuma.

BBC News: Abba will 'never' perform again

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:52:20 +0000

Two members of Swedish pop group Abba say there is "no motivation" to make a return to the stage.

Planet Lisp: Michael Weber: Erlang meets Lisp (again)

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:29:00 +0000

There seems to be an interesting attraction between Erlang and Lisp and several times it has been tried to marry them, in different ways. Bill Clementson wrote about it already in his article "Concurrent/Parallel Programming - The Next Generation". Here is an updated list:

Erlisp was one of the first attempts that I am aware of. It's a (partial) reimplementation of the Erlang concurrency model in Common Lisp. I don't think anybody is working actively on it at the moment.
CL-MUPROC is a Common Lisp library which strives to offer some of the multiprocessing abstractions found in Erlang, very much in the same way as Erlisp. It implements some of Erlang's fault-tolerance mechanisms, but not yet distributed operations.
Distel, a distributed Emacs Lisp with Erlang-style processes and message passing, and the Erlang distribution protocol, originally developed by Luke Gorrie of LtU, SLIME, OLPC, and other fame. Some time ago, Bill Clementson wrote a nice article about Distel.
Termite, another Erlang-like distributed programming system, this time written in Gambit-C Scheme.
Lisp Flavoured Erlang (LFE) is a Lisp syntax front-end to the Erlang compiler by Robert Virding (one of the inventors of Erlang). This is an interesting one, because it comes out of the Erlang community for a change, and instead of porting Erlang ideas to Lisp, it goes the other route: porting Lisp ideas to Erlang.
Erlang-in-Lisp, a Google Summer of Code 2008 project, again very much in the spirit of Erlisp, it seems. The project is in its early stages, let's see how far this goes.
Erlang Server, Common Lisp Client by Berlin Brown appears to be the latest attempt of integrating Erlang and Lisp. They are connected via sockets and exchange messages in a custom protocol. This has the advantage that either side can easily be replaced by a different implementation.

And this list does not even include projects like (again defunct?) Kali Scheme, which are clearly related.

Personally, I think that the reimplementation approach will have a tough stance against integration approaches like Distel. They lock out either one or the other of the two language eco-systems: libraries, development tools, etc., and recreating this is a lot of work (but don't let that stop you!) With Distel, I can choose to program parts of the application in ELisp or Erlang, whatever is a better fit.

Distel implements Erlang's on-the-wire protocol, which is nice because there is no need to mess around with a Foreign Function Interface. Alternatively, one could bind to the Erlang C libraries. As far as rapid prototyping is concerned, this should be the fastest and most straight-forward approach. I wonder why everybody is doing it the hard way?

Planet Gentoo: Donnie Berkholz: Developers give existing Gentoo council a mandate

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:18:56 +0000

I said this briefly on the gentoo-dev list, and I want to expand on it here. The council is Gentoo’s leadership, and it’s composed of 7 people elected by all Gentoo developers using a Condorcet-style ranking vote. Of the 7 people on the old council, 5 of them decided to run again and every single council member who ran was re-elected.

This is significant because the re-election was forced over miscommunication about a meeting, and this created some serious conflicts with a sentence in the Gentoo Linux Enhancement Proposal that created the current structure, including the council. I consider this a mandate, showing that Gentoo developers have confidence in the existing leadership doing what’s best for Gentoo.

This was your chance to say yes or no, and you gave us a resounding yes. Since it isn’t often we hear much from the vast majority of developers, this really means a lot to me in saying which directions we should go, based on who you voted for (graphs here). My interpretation is that you like what’s going on now and where we’re talking about going. I’d really love to hear more input from those of you who don’t normally speak up, though. What can we do for you?

P.S. The 2008.0 release is out.

BBC News: Bush 'concern' at N Korea issues

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:18:09 +0000

US leader George Bush says there is still concern over North Korea's alleged uranium enrichment, as G8 leaders gather in Japan.

Planet GNOME: Arun Tejasvi Chaganty: QuickSort

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:13:38 +0000

QuickSort. It’s widely accepted as the fastest generic sorting algorithm around. It’s also very simple. A comment in the last article showed me this Haskell beauty:

qsort []     = []
qsort (x:xs) = qsort (filter (< x) xs) ++ [x] ++ qsort (filter (>= x) xs)

While my C implementations aren’t any where as beautiful, I’m quite satified with their efficiencies. I’ll keep the code to a minimum, and the let the graphs do the talking.

Introduction

The quicksort is kinda like the heapsort, only not as strong (thus not as reliable). It is generally always recursive, and basically consists of 2 steps (Divide and Conquer):

Conquer: Randomly choose an element x in the sorting set X. Seperate the set into two segments consisting of those lesser than and greater than x, X.1 and X.2

X = [4,7,2,6,89,3,5,7,12], x = 7

X.1 = [4,2,6,3,5] X.2 = [7,89,12]

Divide: Do the same for X.1 and X.2

This will terminate when the size of X.1 and X.2 become less than 2.

A reasonable implementation of this can save on space in comparison with the mergesort (O(n)), with O(1) overhead. Interestingly, this algorithm does not guarantee O(nlog(n)) time; it has a worst running time of O(n^2), no better than Insertion Sort. It just happens that the average running time is O(nlog(n)), with much better coefficients than any other sort (actually, this is only true for comparison sorts, i.e. Heap, Merge, Binary, etc.).

A note, all these implementations have been run while running a normal gnome deskop, with just XChat and mocp running in the background. Let the graphs begin.

Naive Vanilla Implementation (using a scratch buffer):

vanilla/quick.c

Key Lines
void sort (int len, int *list) { … pivot = rand()%len; … if (list[i] < list[pivot]) buf[idx1++] = list[i]; else buf[idx2--] = list[i]; …

Interestingly, this is not half as jumpy as merge sort, considering that merge sort was tightly asympototically bound to n*log(n) (i.e. it’ll stay to that value as you go higher and higher), and this implementation uses random numbers to generate the pivot. The performance is much worse than MergeSort (which had a worst performance of about 0.9 ms)

Single Array Implementation:

single-arr/quick.c

Key Lines
SWAP (list[pivot], list[len-1]); … if (list[i] < list[len -1]) { SWAP (list[idx], list[i]); idx++; } … SWAP (list[idx], list[len-1]);

Much better, though still a bit off the 0.9 of MergeSort. The method swaps the pivot element to the end of the list, and keeps track of the position of the last number smaller than the pivot (or actually, the position after it). And at the end of the algorithm, swaps the pivot into that location.

Median Pivoting Implemenation:

median/quick.c

Key Lines
pivot = (len >> 1);

Aha, just better than MergeSort. And all that just by replacing the rather heavy rand() function with a simple median (just take the middle element. len>>1 is equivalent to len/2. I don’t know why I used it here, compiler optimazations and all, perhaps just used to it after the nearest_pow excercise). I would never put something like that in proper code). Interesting to note the optimization difference.

(Thanks to Ivic for pointing out an error: Earlier I had written len>>2)

Grouping Equal Elements Implemenation:

median/group-equals/quick.c

Key Lines
pivot = (len >> 1);

Whoa! Huge improvements. This was with grouping the terms that were equal to the pivot, and excluding them from the Divide step. Notably, this makes much less difference on a random sort.

[BEST] Insertion Sort Implemenation:

median/group-equals/insertion/quick.c

Key Lines
/* Insertion Sort */ if (len < cutoff) { for (idx = 0; idx< len; idx++) { i = idx; for (tmp = idx; tmp< len; tmp++) i = (list[tmp] < list[i])?tmp:i; if (i == idx) continue; tmp = list[idx]; list[idx] = list[i]; list[i] = tmp; } return; }

A minor incremental improvement. It just grazes 0.8 ms. It seems that QuickSort is more amenable to the insertion sort optimization than MergeSort.

I also have a graph for the single array implementation using the insertion sort.

insertion/quick.c

Looks a bit chaotic, but that might be due to some freak processor usage.

Another set of implementations can be found at Jeffery Stedfast’s place. One thing he tried out was to ‘unrecurse’ it by using a stack containing the extents of any stop (essentially, where the sub array you are sorting in one of the Divide steps begins and ends). I don’t see how this is different from what C is anyway doing, i.e. pushing the variables of a function call to a register, and then popping them later. There would be only the function call step (which is a jmp command, something that takes about 1-2 processor operations. On my machine (3.04Ghz) that would be about 3e-10 seconds). On trying to implement it, I found my implemention was probably very sucky, and was much slower than the un-modified program. However, for what it’s worth the previous implmentations (using a median) are all quite a bit faster that Stedfasts implementation (~1.04s on an array of size 5e6). According tho his post, his function is a bit faster than the glib qsort() function, and that also means mine is too :-).

median/unrolled/quick.c

Well, that’s all I have. You can of course find more graphs and the source code for all of these (and some boring modifications) at /quick/

BBC News: Live - Federer v Nadal

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:03:22 +0000

Rain halts play in the fifth set of a classic Wimbledon final after Roger Federer comes from two sets down against Rafael Nadal.

Planet Gentoo: Tobias Klausmann: Finally...

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:10:30 +0000

After more than 3/4 of a year of working (and setbacks), it's finally done: Gentoo Linux 2008.0 install media have been released this morning. Enjoy!

Planet Gentoo: Gentoo News: Gentoo Linux 2008.0 released

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:02:08 +0000

The 2008.0 final release is out! Code-named "It's got what plants crave," this release contains numerous new features including an updated installer, improved hardware support, a complete rework of profiles, and a move to Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD. LiveDVDs are not available for x86 or amd64, although they may become available in the future. The 2008.0 release also includes updated versions of many packages already available in your ebuild tree.

Updated installer: The installer now only performs networkless installations using the packages and ebuild tree on the LiveCD. It also contains numerous fixes for extended and logical partitions.
Improved hardware support: Moving to the 2.6.24 kernel added many new drivers for hardware released since the 2007.0 release.
Complete rework of profiles: Restructuring profiles allowed significant cleanup of redundancies, reducing developer maintenance and confusion. The difference for you is that profiles now appear in /usr/portage/profiles/ under default/linux/ instead of default-linux/. See the upgrading guide for more details.
Xfce instead of GNOME on the LiveCD: To save space, the LiveCDs switched to the smaller Xfce environment. This means that a binary installation using the LiveCD will install Xfce, but you're still free to build GNOME or KDE from source.
No LiveDVDs on x86 or amd64: In the interest of getting the release out, the release engineering team decided to postpone LiveDVDs because of problems in their generation. They may show up later—if so, we'll let you know.
Updated packages: Highlights of the 2008.0 release include Portage 2.1.4.4, a 2.6.24 kernel, Xfce 4.4.2, gcc 4.1.2 and glibc 2.6.1.

A big thanks goes out to our release engineering team members for their hard work over many months to turn 2008.0 into reality.

Get the new release from our "Get Gentoo!" page.

Discuss this!

Planet FreeDesktop: Christian Schaller: Guadec warm-up

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 08:47:33 +0000

Arrived in Istanbul on Friday in preparation for GUADEC. Had a great time so far visiting the main attractions like Haga Sofia, The Blue Mosque, the Sultans palace and the underground water cistern. Last night Wim, Tim, Edward and myself went out to met Jan and Jaime for some food. A lot of other people ended up there too and it was nice seeing people again. Turns our there is a really nice street close to the Golden Horn Hotel which provide you with a lot of pillows to sit on as you see in the picture below:

I got myself a Lumix TZ4 camera just before leaving the UK as I wanted to be able to take some good pictures. Compared to my earlier cameras this camera is a huge step up. 10x optical zoom makes a world of difference in terms of what kind of pictures I can take. Was also very happy last night to find that GStreamer is able to play the .mov files generated by the camera easily. Some time ago now we did a call for people to provide us with camera video files, and it seems that work has paid of in handling a lot of the semi-standard mov files that cameras create.

Today we have gathered in front of our hotel for a little impromptu GStreamer summit. So far discussion has been about Git and the possibility of migrating to it from our current CVS repository. While using CVS do give us an air of age, wisdom and venerability there is an inkling in the GStreamer community that we might be using a slightly outdated version control system

Planet GNOME: Luis Villa: contacting me in istanbul

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 08:29:41 +0000

During my istanbul stay, the best way to reliably reach me in a timely manner will be text message at +16172307951. Please include your name so i know who i am texting with :)

My email access is spotty so far, and voice mail is hard/expensive to check. I am also staying at the golden horn sirkeci if you want to try to ambush me in the lobby. :)

Planet Gentoo: Gentoo News: New council elected

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 08:02:10 +0000

Elections just ended for the Gentoo council for the next year. Turnout was 57% with 145 developers voting, which is quite excellent. The council, created by GLEP 39 to replace Gentoo's previous hierarchy, decides on global issues and policies that affect multiple projects. To select council members, Gentoo uses the Condorcet voting method, which involves ranking them in order rather than just picking a single candidate. Here are your new council members, listed by ranking in the election results:

All of the previous council members who ran again were re-elected, and the two new members are Mark Loeser and Tobias Scherbaum. A full list of ranked candidates is also available. The new council members will get right to work—the new council's first meeting, scheduled for July 10, is approaching fast.

Discuss this!

BBC News: French set to shell out more for snails

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 07:50:57 +0000

The price of that French delicacy the snail is set to soar because of foreign suppliers' rising wages.

Slashdot: AVG Backs Down From Flooding the Internet

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 07:41:00 +0000

Simon Wright writes "As a website that is featured heavily in many Google Australia search results, Whirlpool (Australia's largest technology forum) has been particularly affected by AVG's LinkScanner. We've seen a traffic increase as much as 12 hits per second from these bots. So we've actively and loudly campaigned against this move by AVG, encouraging all users of AVG 8.0 to uninstall the product. The discussion starts here. And AVG's backing down is posted here." From that URL:"'As promised, I am letting you know that the latest update for AVG Free edition has addressed and rectified the issue that [Whirlpool] have brought to our attention. This update has now been released to users and has also been built into the latest installation package for AVG Free.' — Peter Cameron, Managing Director, AVG Australia."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BBC News: S Korea sets fuel-saving measures

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 07:28:00 +0000

South Korea restricts the use of government cars and air conditioning in a bid to tackle rising fuel costs.

Planet Lisp: Lispjobs: Freelance: install FUF/Surge

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:59:09 +0000

Up to $500 to install Common Lisp, FUF/SURGE.

See link.

BBC News: UN to urge revamp of Afghan aid

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:27:26 +0000

The UN's envoy to Afghanistan is to set out a new plan on aid spending amid fears that millions have been wasted.

Coilhouse: The Tarnished Beauties of Blackwell, Oklahoma

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 05:44:48 +0000

Criss-crossing America’s interstates on shoestring music tours, my bandmates and I see scores of battered roadside billboards. They advertise ramshackle sculpture gardens, art brut outposts, World’s Biggest Fill-in-the-Blanks, rustic museums, and obscure historic landmarks. Such attractions are usually located in quiet little towns only a short distance from the highway. More often than not, we make a point to stop, stretch our legs and explore. These spontaneous jaunts expose us to beauty and knowledge we would never have discovered otherwise.

Possibly the most delightful surprise on this last stint with Faun Fables was a visit to the Top of Oklahoma Museum, housed in the somewhat dilapidated (but still glorious) Electric Park Pavilion on Main Street in Blackwell, OK (population 7,700). A grand, white structure with a large central dome, the Pavilion was built in 1912 to celebrate the advent of electricity in Blackwell. Its design takes after styles exhibited at the famous “White City” of the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893. Its lights, which originally numbered over 500, could once be seen for miles across the windswept prairie.

These days, the Pavilion could use some serious TLC. Multiple leaks in the dome have endangered the museum’s contents. Plastic tarps enshroud several exhibits. Many items bear marks of water damage. One of the kindly septuagenarian docents who works there followed us from room to room, clucking over the holes in the roof, the rusty stains. These senior preservationists take a lot of pride in their charge, with good reason. The “TOOM” is a sprawling, musty treasure trove of turn-of-the-century ephemera, railroad memorabilia, articles of Cherokee life, hand-carved walking sticks and pipes, dioramas, dollhouses, baby buggies, hobbyist’s taxidermy, antique musical and medical instruments, Victrolas, zinc smelting documentation, delicate handmade lace, linen and clothing, exceedingly creepy dolls, sewing machines, china, vintage propaganda, picture books, elaborate quilting, and countless other keepsakes left behind by the city’s first brave citizens.

Judging by these artifacts, early non-native residents of Oklahoma were hardy, determined folk who struggled to eke out a life on America’s frontier. How they maintained such an unshakable air of dignity and refinement is beyond me, but Blackwell is a true, sparkling diamond in the rough. For me, nothing symbolizes the spirit of its citizens better than the following portrait, unceremoniously presented on a torn, water-stained bit of pasteboard in the museum’s “School Room”: ”

Who were you, Lola? Whatever became of you?

The girl’s name was Lola Squires, and she was a student enrolled in Blackwell High, graduating class of 1916. That’s all I know. Her gaze knocked me back several feet. Once I finally stop staring at her, I realized that there were countless other flint-eyed and bow-bedecked young beauties on the walls nearby. I must have spent well over an hour in that one room, moving from portrait to portrait, documenting as much as I could, just stunned.

(more…)

Planet GNOME: Luis Medinas: Life is life...

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:26:30 +0000

Too Bad... i would love to go to GUADEC but yeah i'm still a student with spear time but no money. I wish that conference give us some feedback to where to go and where can we improve our Desktop. Maybe next year GUADEC be somewhere near Portugal and i can afford a trip to meet my fellow hackers.
Still maybe some important Open Source Company can give me a job so i can afford a trip to see one of the things i like in my life... OSS.
Yes i need a job...

Slashdot: Your Computer As Your Singing Coach

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:26:00 +0000

Roland Piquepaille writes "Israeli researchers have developed an electronic ear to coach vibrato technique. Until now, the quality of a vibrato — the pulsating change of pitch in a singer's voice — could only be judged by voice experts. Now, a Tel Aviv University research team 'has successfully managed to train a computer to rate vibrato quality, and has created an application based on biofeedback to help singers improve their technique.' Interestingly, this research could be used for other applications, such as improving automated help centers, where computers could be trained 'to recognize a range of different emotions, such as anger and nervousness.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Planet Ubuntu: Debian Package of the Day: aiccu: add IPv6 connectivity to your machine

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:00:39 +0000

Article submitted by Caspar Clemens Mierau. Guess what? We still need you to submit good articles about software you like!

It’s time: no reason should prevent you from adding IPv6 connectivity to your machine. Of course it’s still an issue, as most ISPs don’t provide native IPv6. So in most cases the easiest way for you is to set up a tunnel to an IPv6 broker. There are currently several free brokers. I’ll show a simple way of getting IPv6 connectivity with the aiccu and SixXS.

Apply for an account

First you have to apply for an account on SixXS. Please note: as a kind of ISP, Sixxs really need valid information from you. You may give them a link to your Xing or LinkedIn profile.

Your application will be checked and (probably) approved. Wait for the mail. After that go to the SixXS website, request a new tunnel, and pick an entry point near you. This step also needs to be approved. Wait for the mail (it takes up to a day).

Set up aiccu

Now let’s get it running. Install the package aiccu (apt-get install aiccu). During installation you will be asked, which broker you are using. SixXS is already preconfigured, so choose it and input your account information. If everything is fine, aiccu will check SixXS and ask for your tunnel information.

Open a terminal and run ifconfig sixxs—it should show a new network interface with an IPv6 address. Now let’s check IPv6. Open Firefox and go to http://www.kame.net/. If the turtle logo is moving, your are using IPv6, if it does not, you don’t.

The SixXS credit system

You should understand the SixXS credit system. It’s used to limit users in repeating bad actions and to make sure they maintain their tunnels. For example if a static tunnel is down it will cost you some credits, thus you better keep it up. One could see the credit system as a bank, you got a credit limit and you can’t go over it and buy everything you want, but when you earn credits because your tunnel is up you can do a lot with it.

Security issues

Note that all your IPv6 traffic will be directed through the broker, so you have to take care of the security.

IPv6 content

Check http://www.sixxs.net/misc/coolstuff/ for interesting IPv6 content: high traffic news servers, the IPv6 freenode server and so on. Always keep in mind, that not every application is ready for IPv6 and many applications need to be configured for IPv6. With Debian/Ubuntu you should be able to use at least Firefox, Thunderbird, Pan, and Irssi.

aiccu is available in Debian since Etch, and in Ubuntu since Feisty

Happy networking!

CBC News: Dion needs to 'rein in' MP over blog comments: Baird

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 03:53:25 +0000

Environment Minister John Baird urged Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion to "rein in" one of his MPs after the Liberal member wrote on his blog that Quebec separatists are selfish losers and compared them to Albertans.

Planet GNOME: Andrew Cowie: Using Eclipse’s source code formatter from the command line

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 03:23:00 +0000

One of the many wonderful capabilities built into the side of Eclipse is a powerful code formatter. Adjusting source code to match one’s particular preferences is nothing terribly new; what makes Eclipse’s so excellent is the degree of configurability and the preview of the effect each setting will have.

An Eclipse project has several metadata files:

.project
.classpath
.settings/org.eclipse.cdt.core.prefs
.settings/org.eclipse.jdt.core.prefs
.settings/org.eclipse.jdt.ui.prefs

Which seems a bit of a mess, but whatever. The .settings/ stuff gets written down when you decide to tell a Project to have settings custom that override the user’s defaults. It goes without saying that for a collaboratively developed project like the Java bindings we have the Eclipse project metadata for compiler warnings tuned, the code formatter settings, how to invoke the build system etc all stored in Bazaar along side the real sources.

Anyway, this’s all fine and nice for people working on my software in Eclipse, but what about people wishing to use a different editor?

For a few versions now, Eclipse has exposed the the ability to run its code formatter from the command line; the work was done by Ben Konrath, someone I met a few years ago at a java-gnome hackfest. Since I use Eclipse I hadn’t needed to bother to figure out how to use whatever it was that he’d done. Since becoming maintainer of java-gnome, though, I’ve noticed a bit of unnecessary formatting churn in the contributions we receive. We do have a style guide, but it is secondary to the fact that Eclipse just normalizes the code every time I save something (nice). But for people not using Eclipse I thought I might have a look.

A bit of searching around turned up this blog post by one Peter Friese. It included two important points that are non-trivial. Firstly, that configuration the code formatter from command line will use can be controlled by the pointing it at the .settings/org.eclipse.jdt.ui.prefs file which in turn can be created by the “Enable project specific settings” described above (we’d already done that, so no problem, but how on earth would anyone have guessed this?). Secondly, the command line that one has to incant to make it go is pretty voodoo, so I’m pretty thankful that he described what he’d done.

In our environment, this works out to:

$ /opt/local/eclipse/eclipse -nosplash
    -application org.eclipse.jdt.core.JavaCodeFormatter
    -verbose
    -config .settings/org.eclipse.jdt.core.prefs
    src/ tests/ doc/examples/

Gah!

For a brief moment I wondered if it would be easier just to run the Java class in question. So I interrupted the process and had a look in the process table.

/usr/lib/jvm/sun-jdk-1.6/bin/java
    -Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.5
    -client
    -Xms40m
    -Xmx256m
    -jar /opt/local/eclipse/plugins org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.1.R33x_v20070828.jar
    -os linux
    -ws gtk
    -arch x86
    -launcher /opt/local/eclipse/eclipse
    -name Eclipse
    --launcher.library /opt/local/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.gtk.linux.x86_1.0.2.R331_v20071019/eclipse_1021.so
    -startup /opt/local/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.1.R33x_v20070828.jar
    -exitdata 84001b
    -application org.eclipse.jdt.core.JavaCodeFormatter
    -verbose
    -config .settings/org.eclipse.jdt.core.prefs
    src/ tests/ doc/examples/
    -vm /usr/bin/java
    -vmargs
    -Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion=1.5
    -client
    -Xms40m
    -Xmx256m
    -jar /opt/local/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.1.R33x_v20070828.jar

Good Lord. What the hell is all that? I mean, I know Java environments tend to get a bit unwieldy because there is still no link-to-binary facility, and I know Eclipse is an OSGi framework and what not, but that is pathetic. I guess running the command as described at the top isn’t such a bad idea after all.

I’ve got an even better idea: how about a convenience target in our Makefile front end. Yup. So I’ve added a format target:

$ make format

(or

$ ECLIPSE=/opt/local/eclipse/eclipse make format

in my case). Running that before committing will do the trick quite nicely.

I agree with the bug mentioned by one Nicholas Irving in his post on the topic: it is somewhat asinine that this bit of Eclipse bumps the modification time of every file it formats; it would be nice if it only changed files in which it actually found something it needed to alter. Fortunately our internal build system is actually md5 hash (not Make) based, so it doesn’t hurt us.

AfC

Slashdot: New Pictures of White Knight Two and SpaceshipTwo

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:58:00 +0000

soldeed writes "Over at the Virgin Galactic press site, there are new pictures of both White Knight Two and SpaceShip 2 during construction for media use. After seeing them, I can't help but wonder; Gee, what's in the box?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Planet GNOME: Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay: Slower than molasses going up-hill

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:57:16 +0000

For the past 3 days the OLPC Translation System is just that - can someone please give it some love ?

Planet Ubuntu: Santiago Zarate: Lleve la media pal celular! | Come get your cellsock!

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:40:05 +0000

En español:

Pues bien... como leen... el dia de hoy recibi una donacion de parte de Jaime Escalona, quien trabaja en una empresa de textiles... y a titulo personal ha donado cerca de 200 medias para celular!... las cuales seran destinadas a nuestro evento de aniversario a celebrarse el proximo 12 de julio en la sede de la UBV en caracas.

In English:

Well yes, today Jaime Escalona just donated to me almost 200 cell socks (to put your phone inside), with the Ubuntu-ve's logo on one side and a tux logo on the other... and they all are going to the VenezuelaTeam's second aniversary for free to the public!!!

CBC News: Dion mixes Stampede with politics to sell Green Shift

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:34:05 +0000

Wearing a cowboy hat, plaid shirt and jeans, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion strode into the Calgary Stampede, hoping to sell his Green Shift carbon tax plan in the heart of Alberta oil country.

Warren Ellis: My Claw Once Pinched By Harlan Ellison

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:08:39 +0000

Harlan Ellison turned 74 years of age the other week. And so I dug out my copies of THE GLASS TEAT and THE OTHER GLASS TEAT, the collections of his columns on television written circa 1969-1971, and began to re-read them, as I do every couple of years. The thing you need to know about the GLASS TEAT books is that, for all the wrong reasons, they’re timeless. The states of American network tv, dissent and education have not notably changed since he wrote those columns in his mid-thirties. (I’ve been re-reading those books since I was 20 or so, and it’s a shock to realise I’m finally older than he was when he wrote them. And I don’t want to think about how long it’s been since I first picked up a volume of his short stories in Rayleigh Library. With my dad making approving noises behind me: "Harlan Ellison. Good writer.’’)

I met him once. I’d made a crack somewhere online about Harlan’s heart being held together with garden twine and Lego, I think as part of a larger piece about dealing with anger as a writer. One of his fans — not representative of his constituency as a whole, I think — suffered a major reading comprehension failure, fired a foul note off to me and put it in front of Harlan as a ’’let’s you and him fight’’ kind of deal. From which I received a very nice email from Harlan, assuring me that no gardening supplies were required to hold him together and actually addressing the substance of the piece rather than the misreading placed before him. It was nice, he said, that it turned out we each liked the other’s work.

There’s a peculiar artist’s fear, that rides very low in the gut and mostly goes unspoken. Though few of us would cop to having ’’heroes,’’ debased term that it is, the fear does run along the lines of ’’don’t meet your heroes.’’ The man or woman who wrote the things that helped form you as a creator is not necessarily as loveable as the work. This is something I’ve been lucky in, but I will admit to passing on meeting Hunter Thompson a couple of times, and friends of mine have not had my luck. I know writers who now cannot read their heroes’ work. The books are tainted by the experience.

I met Harlan some months later, at a convention. Our signing tables were side by side. Harlan arrived later than I did (I think the signings were staggered), spotted me and yelled "Warren Ellis! Let me give you a manly hug!’’ So I stood up. Harlan’s about five and a half feet tall. I’m six foot tall barefoot, and I was wearing heavy boots. He looked up at me and exclaimed, "Jesus, you’re HUGE!"

I don’t have "heroes," but there are writers I admire greatly, who were influential in my becoming a writer, and I am grateful to have met Harlan Ellison and remain able to take pleasure in his work. Better: now I can hear his voice, and recall the great personal warmth with which he welcomed me on every occasion we met during that convention.

All of which, wishing him a belated happy birthday and talking about how generations of writers deal with each other and so forth, is really just preface to my discovery last night that the fine ebook purveyor Webscription is now offering eight Harlan Ellison books.

Warren Ellis: Lenora By Olivia

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:34:42 +0000

A preliminary study of my friend Lenora Claire by Olivia Berardinis:

Slashdot: KDE 4.1 Beta 2 – Two Steps Forward, One Step Back?

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 00:23:00 +0000

jammag writes "Linux pundit Bruce Byfield takes a look at the latest KDE beta and finds it wanting: 'Very likely, KDE users will have to wait for another release or two beyond 4.1 before the new version of KDE matches the features of earlier ones, especially in customization.' He notes that the second beta is still prone to unexplained crashes, and goes so far as to say, 'Everyone agrees now that KDE 4.0 was a mistake.' I'm not too sure about that — really, 'everyone?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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