Bloggregation's What You Need
January 07, 2009
The terrorist threat to the UK has been reduced by a series of successful criminal prosecutions, the head of MI5 says.
January 07, 2009 09:54 AM
Marks and Spencer says it plans to close 25 Simply Food stores and two of its regular stores, and cut 1,230 jobs.
January 07, 2009 09:51 AM
The asylum-seeking accountant living on £35 a week
January 07, 2009 09:51 AM
Thousands of rail passengers face long delays after a power failure stops all trains in and out of London Euston.
January 07, 2009 09:41 AM
This is no ordinary downturn... a look at Next and M&S
January 07, 2009 09:39 AM
Sales of videogame software and hardware in the UK hit an all time high, figures from the industry trade body show.
January 07, 2009 09:37 AM
Gordon Brown must "unambiguously condemn" Israel's actions in Gaza, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg says.
January 07, 2009 09:31 AM
Exports of Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine stop altogether with both countries accusing each other of turning off the tap.
January 07, 2009 09:30 AM
International pressure builds for Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas to accept a UN-backed truce.
January 07, 2009 09:29 AM
The father of a missing islander says someone holds information that could solve the mystery to his disappearance.
January 07, 2009 09:24 AM
Thousands of people gather in Ghana's capital to see President-elect John Atta Mills sworn in after his narrow poll win.
January 07, 2009 09:02 AM
I've been meaning for a while to write up what's happening with
cpumasks in the kernel. Several people have asked, and it's not
obvious so it's worth explaining in detail. Thanks to Oleg Nesterov
for the latest reminder.
The Problems
The two obvious problems are
- Putting cpumasks on the stack limits us to NR_CPUS around 128, and
- The whack-a-mole attempts to fix the worst offenders is a losing game.
For better or worse, people want NR_CPUS 4096 in stock kernels
today, and that number is only going to go up.
Unfortunately, our merge-surge development model makes whack-a-mole
the obvious thing to do, but the results (creeping in largely
unnoticed) have been between awkward and horrible. Here's some
samples across that spectrum:
- cpumask_t instead of struct cpumask. I gather that this is a relic
from when cpus were represented by an unsigned long, even though
now it's always a struct.
- cpu_set/cpu_clear etc. are magic non-C creatures which modify
their arguments through macro magic:
#define cpu_set(cpu, dst) __cpu_set((cpu), &(dst))
- cpumask_of_cpu(cpu) looked like this:
#define cpumask_of_cpu(cpu)
(*({
typeof(_unused_cpumask_arg_) m;
if (sizeof(m) == sizeof(unsigned long)) {
m.bits[0] = 1UL(cpu);
} else {
cpus_clear(m);
cpu_set((cpu), m);
}
&m
}))
Ignoring that this code has a silly optimization and could be better
written, it's illegal since we hand the address of a
going-out-of-scope local var. This is the code which got me looking
at this mess to start with.
- New "_nr" iterators and operators have been introducted to only
go to up to nr_cpu_ids bits instead of all the way to NR_CPUS, and
used where it seems necessary. (nr_cpu_ids is the actual cap of
possible cpu numbers, calculated at boot).
- Several macros contain implicit declarations in them, eg:
#define CPUMASK_ALLOC(m) struct m _m, *m = &_m
...
#define node_to_cpumask_ptr(v, node) \
cpumask_t _##v = node_to_cpumask(node); \
const cpumask_t *v = &_##v
#define node_to_cpumask_ptr_next(v, node) \
_##v = node_to_cpumask(node)
But eternal vigilance is required to ensure that someone doesn't add
another cpumask to the stack, somewhere. This isn't going to happen.
The Goals
- No measurable overhead for small CONFIG_NR_CPUS.
- As little time and memory overhead for large CONFIG_NR_CPUS kernels booted
on machined with small nr_cpu_ids.
- APIs and conventions that reasonable hackers can follow who don't care
about giant machines, without screwing up those machines.
The Solution
These days we avoid Big Bang changes where possible. So we need to
introduce a parallel cpumask API and convert everything across, then
get rid of the old one.
- The first step is to introduce replacemenst for the cpus_*
functions. The new ones start with cpumask_; making names longer
is always a little painful, but it's now consistent. The few
operators which started with cpumask_ already were converted in
one swoop (they were rarely used). These new functions take
(const) struct cpumask pointers, and may only operate on some
number of bits (CONFIG_NR_CPUS if it's small, otherwise
nr_cpu_ids). This replacement is fairly simple, but you have to
watch for cases like this:
for_each_cpu_mask(i, my_cpumask)
...
if (i == NR_CPUS)
That final test should be "(i >= nr_cpu_ids)" to be safe now:
for_each_cpu(i, &my_cpumask)
...
if (i >= nr_cpu_ids)
- The next step is to deprecate cpumask_t and NR_CPUS
(CONFIG_NR_CPUS is now defined even for !SMP). These are minor
annoyances but more importantly in a job this large and slow they
mark where code needs to be inspected for conversion.
- cpumask_var_t is introduced to replace cpumask_t definitions
(except in function parameters and returns, that's always (const)
struct cpumask *). This is just struct cpumask[1] for most
people, and alloc_cpumask_var/free_cpumask_var do nothing.
Otherwise, it's a pointer to a cpumask when
CONFIG_CPUMASK_OFFSTACK=y.
- alloc_cpumask_var currently allocates all CONFIG_NR_CPUS bits, and
zeros any bits between nr_cpu_ids and NR_CPUS. This is because
there are still some uses of the old cpu operators which could
otherwise foul things up. It will be changed to do the minimal
allocation as the transfer progresses.
- New functions are added to avoid common needs for temporary
cpumasks. The two most useful are for_each_cpu_and() (to iterate
over the intersection of two cpumasks) and cpu_any_but() (to
exclude one cpu from consideration).
- Another new function added for similar reasons was work_on_cpu().
There was a growing idiom of temporarily setting the current
thread's cpus_allowed to execute on a specific CPU. This not
only requires a temporary cpumask, it is potentiall buggy since
it races with userspace setting the cpumask on that thread.
- to_cpumask() is provided to convert raw bitmaps to struct cpumask
*. In some few cases, cpumask_var_t cannot serve because we can't
allocate early enough or there's no good place (or I was too
scared to try), and I wanted to get rid of all 'struct cpumask'
declarations as we'll see in a moment.
- Architectures which have no intention of setting
CONFIG_CPUMASK_OFFSTACK need do very little. We should convert
them eventually, but there's no real benefit other than cleanup
and consistency.
- I took the opportunity to centralize the cpu_online_map etc
definitions, because we're obsoleting them anyway.
- cpu_online_mask/cpu_possible_mask etc (the pointer versions of the
cpu_online_map/cpu_possible_map they replace) are const. This
means that the few cases where we really want to manipulate them,
the new set_cpu_online()/set_cpu_possible() or
init_cpu_online()/init_cpu_possible() should be used.
- We will change 'struct cpumask' to be undefined for
CONFIG_CPUMASK_OFFSTACK=y. This can only be done once all
cpumask_t (ie. struct cpumask) declarations are removed, including
globals and from structures. Most of these are a good idea
anyway, but some are gratuitous. But this will instantly catch
any attempt to use struct cpumask on the stack, or to copy it (the
latter is dangerous since cpumask_var_t will not allocate the
entire mask).
Conclusion
At this point, we will have code that doesn't suck, rules which can be
enforced by the compiler, and the possibility of setting
CONFIG_NR_CPUS to 16384 as the SGI guys really want.
Importantly, we are forced to audit all kinds of code. As always,
some few were buggy, but more were unnecessarily ugly. With less
review happening these days before code goes in, it's important that
we strive to leave code we touch neater than when we found it.
January 07, 2009 09:00 AM
Both England coach Peter Moores and captain Kevin Pietersen's jobs could be under threat following an emergency meeting of the England and Wales Cricket Board.
January 07, 2009 09:00 AM
The boss of Satyam, India's fourth-biggest software firm, resigns after admitting to irregularities in its accounts.
January 07, 2009 08:33 AM
President Sarkozy plans to scrap investigative magistrates, bringing French justice closer to the English-speaking world.
January 07, 2009 08:28 AM
Gordon Brown is to begin a three-day tour of England and Wales later which will include a cabinet meeting in the North West.
January 07, 2009 08:25 AM
Motorists are warned to take care after the coldest night so far of Britain's big freeze, with temperatures falling to -12C.
January 07, 2009 08:25 AM
Australia dismiss South Africa for 272 with 10 balls remaining to win the third and final Test by 103 runs in Sydney.
January 07, 2009 08:23 AM
A regional strategy is needed to tackle diabetes in Northern Ireland, according to the NI director of a UK-wide charity.
January 07, 2009 08:22 AM
Coalition forces kill 32 Taleban fighters in an operation east of the Afghan capital, Kabul, the US military says.
January 07, 2009 08:21 AM
Nine crew members of a French ship taken hostage at the weekend off the coast of Nigeria have been released.
January 07, 2009 08:21 AM
Harry Redknapp says he needs to add three or four players to his "badly balanced" Tottenham squad in January, despite a Carling Cup semi-final boost.
January 07, 2009 08:13 AM
An Oxfordshire woman admits having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy.
January 07, 2009 08:10 AM
Suspected Taleban militants kill three policemen and kidnap three others in north-western Pakistan, officials say.
January 07, 2009 08:05 AM
Thousands of Cambodians pack a stadium to mark 30 years since the fall of the Khmer Rouge.
January 07, 2009 07:59 AM
A Northern Ireland woman who contracted the rabies virus while she was abroad dies, her family says.
January 07, 2009 07:57 AM
Water supplies to thousands of people in a south Wales valley are affected as freezing temperatures continue to bite.
January 07, 2009 07:24 AM
Ratepayers in some district council areas in Northern Ireland could be paying an extra 10% in the next financial year.
January 07, 2009 07:12 AM
A woman and two teenagers are charged with murder after the deaths of three men in a fire at a house in Sheffield.
January 07, 2009 07:10 AM
Chinese officials investigate the death of a baby boy soon after he was fed baby milk powder.
January 07, 2009 06:57 AM
The assembly government's bill for outside experts more than doubled in four years, Welsh Lib Dem research shows.
January 07, 2009 06:54 AM
Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan heads football's rich list but Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich slips to third.
January 07, 2009 06:53 AM
Who wins the booby prize in Mali cattle crossings?
January 07, 2009 06:30 AM
"Gaza's day of carnage" is how the Guardian headlines news of the Israeli attack at a UN-run school.
January 07, 2009 06:25 AM
Three Chinese search engines apologise for linking to pornography sites after criticism from the government.
January 07, 2009 06:14 AM
A London council announces plans to extend a scheme that charges the most polluting vehicles more to park.
January 07, 2009 06:09 AM
Seven Seas publishing just released the latest book of comic goodness, InVisible written by my partner Tristan. Unlike releasing software, where gratification is instant, Tristan finished this project months ago but the books took the slow boat from whereever the printing was done. Or something. Gratuitous Amazon link (buy now!)
Tristan also has a story with our friend Atticus Wolrab in Comic Book Tattoo, a book that can only be described as a tome. 12″x12″x2″, it has dozens of amazing stories based loosely on Tori Amos songs. It came out last summer coinciding with San Diego Comicon, where I got to see the Tori Amos fan base in all their glory.
January 07, 2009 05:42 AM
Christmas time for Orthodox Christians around the world
January 07, 2009 05:31 AM
The UK is named as one of Europe's worst countries for measles, dashing global hopes of eradicating the disease by 2010.
January 07, 2009 05:15 AM
A prenatal autism test could mean the loss of great minds
January 07, 2009 05:03 AM
I was doing some work tweaking emacs to be usable on my FreeRunner. I have one general .emacs file that I use on all machines, and that file looks for another machine-specific customization file:
(let ((site-file (concat "~/.emacs-" (system-name)))) (if (file-exists-p site-file) (load-file site-file)))
That wasn't working right on the FreeRunner because (system-name) was returning "localhost", even though at the shell prompt, hostname and uname -n both returned the actual name (which is calvino).
Turns out (system-name) looks at /etc/hosts and takes the first name associated with 127.0.0.1. Which was "localhost". Putting "calvino" before that on the line solved the problem (thanks, offby1).
It's weird using menus and a tool bar in emacs again, but it goes a long way toward making things workable. As does a pleasantly large and bold font.
January 07, 2009 04:50 AM
Iraqi authorities close a major Shia shrine in Baghdad to women amid security concerns as the rite of Ashura reaches its climax.
January 07, 2009 03:15 AM
Adverts for British Gas's home maintenance service are banned by a watchdog after being branded "misleading".
January 07, 2009 02:26 AM
David writes in to point out that banks are losing a fortune on foreclosures because many frustrated homeowners are trashing the houses before they leave. This dramatically diminishes the value of the home and leaves scars all around.
Why not, he wonders, offer the homeowners $1000 in cash if they leave the house in great condition?
I can hear the objections already. "What! Why should we pay people not to break the law!" After all, if you do it this time, if you bribe people to behave, then you'll have to do it every time...
Every time? How often, exactly, do you expect to evict a person?
It's very easy to set up policies and procedures designed to give people what they deserve, to set a standard, to teach a lesson, to make sure they understand who's boss. And I think that for parents, this is an excellent idea. Bribing your kid leads to spoiled kids who don't get it. But businesses aren't parents and customers aren't kids.
"I can't let you in, because you didn't follow the procedure, and even though you're never coming back here again, if I let you in now, without having followed the procedure, you'll think that you can ignore the procedure the next time you do business with someone else..." It sounds stupid when you say it that way because it is stupid.
You can extend this all the way to how you hire people. Is penalizing a 40 year old by not giving her a job a way to teach her a lesson about studying harder for the SAT when she was 17?
Instead of worrying so much about establishing good habits among transient customers, perhaps it's worth figuring out what works best for both sides and doing that instead.
January 07, 2009 02:22 AM
No iPhone buzz for fans at Apple's last Macworld show
January 07, 2009 01:53 AM
The US aluminium maker Alcoa has said it is cutting 13,500 jobs, or 13% of its workforce, due to the global economic slowdown.
January 07, 2009 01:33 AM
An advert for a cold and flu medicine is criticised by bosses for encouraging workers to "throw a sickie".
January 07, 2009 01:25 AM
Another strong earthquake hits Indonesia's West Papua province with no immediate reports of any casualties or damage.
January 07, 2009 01:24 AM
The Israeli ambassador to Caracas and several other staff are ordered to leave Venezuela in protest over violence in Gaza.
January 07, 2009 01:19 AM
Councils are taking people to court too quickly if they fall behind with their council tax, the Liberal Democrats claim.
January 07, 2009 01:04 AM
A council is threatening to prosecute parents who fraudulently try to enrol their children in its schools.
January 07, 2009 12:43 AM
Ulrika Jonsson and Lucy Pinder are nominated for eviction from the Celebrity Big Brother house on Friday.
January 07, 2009 12:39 AM
All new homes built in the UK should be fitted with measures to prevent the build-up of the potentially harmful gas radon, say researchers.
January 07, 2009 12:31 AM
Playing the computer puzzle game Tetris might help reduce the effects of traumatic stress, say UK researchers.
January 07, 2009 12:29 AM
Apple Inc agrees to start selling digital songs from its iTunes store without copy protection software.
January 07, 2009 12:27 AM
The financial costs of making redundancies
January 07, 2009 12:26 AM
The rates roulette for savers and borrowers
January 07, 2009 12:15 AM
The economic downturn could be about to hit funding for schools and children's services, a government committee warns.
January 07, 2009 12:15 AM
Demand for staff is falling at a record rate, according to a report by Britain's recruiters.
January 07, 2009 12:11 AM
Migrant workers make an early start home for the Lunar New Year as China's economic slowdown leaves many jobless.
January 07, 2009 12:00 AM
January 06, 2009
UK car sales figures for the past year are expected to be more than 10% lower than sales in 2007.
January 06, 2009 11:57 PM
Five employees of US security firm Blackwater plead not guilty in a US court to the manslaughter of 17 Iraqis in 2007.
January 06, 2009 11:34 PM
Four people arrested over an armed robbery in which a couple and their two young children were threatened, are released.
January 06, 2009 11:33 PM
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is hopeful a basis for a ceasefire in Gaza will be found to end the Middle East's "darkest hour".
January 06, 2009 10:26 PM
Thanks to Ross and Richard Purdie, GUPnP moved to Git today. I already updated the jhbuild modulesets to reflect the new repos.
January 06, 2009 10:22 PM
The US recession is likely to drag on well into 2009, according to forecasts from the US Federal Reserve.
January 06, 2009 10:16 PM
Blurst's Raptor
Copter game built
using Unity3D and Mono just
hit the Apple AppStore.
From the announcement:
Raptor Copter has become our first Unity-made iPhone game to
hit the App Store! We’re making it available for a
limited-time price of $0.99. The game is a loose follow-up to
Off-Road Velociraptor Safari. Instead of a jeep, you have a
Chinook helicopter, but the basic game loop is the same:
Capture raptors, drop them into factories, and teleport their
sweet meats to the future.
You can get it for your iPod Touch or iPhone from
this Raptor Copter
iTunes Link.
Cute video:
Unity3D is using
Mono's full
static compilation to allow the game to run JIT-less and
interpreter-less on the iPhone.
January 06, 2009 10:13 PM
Spurs take a huge stride towards the Carling Cup final by thrashing Burnley in the semi-final first leg at White Hart Lane.
January 06, 2009 10:00 PM
At least 30 people are killed and 55 injured as Israeli artillery shells land by a United Nations-run school in Gaza, UN officials say.
January 06, 2009 09:45 PM
Scottish ministers are considering raising the age of criminal responsibility to 12 but reject a rise to 14.
January 06, 2009 09:34 PM
Arsenal are interested in signing Andrei Arshavin, according to Zenit St Petersburg's coach Dick Advocaat.
January 06, 2009 09:21 PM
A man who barricaded himself into a Sheffield flat is found dead by police as they enter the property.
January 06, 2009 09:16 PM
Over the last days, we've received reports of corporate networks getting infected with various variants of MS08-067 worms. These are mostly Downadup/Conficker variants.
The malware uses server-side polymorphism and ACL modification to make network disinfection particularily difficult. A sign of infection is that user accounts gets locked out in the Active Directory domain as the worm tries to crack user's passwords using a built-in dictionary. When it fails it leads to those accounts being locked.
We have detailed information about the malware functionality in our description.
We also have a separate tool available to assist in disinfecting. The tool is available from here.
We also recommend system administrators to block access to web sites used by the malware. The sites keep changing, but the current domains to block are:
64.70.19.33
qtjumbvk.ws
zdjmcwcknwn.biz
oecsw.net
oawtwovet.cc
itiuuv.cn
dkvjxac.info
ciopicmfq.info
uikrzcuzw.com
siirkijx.cn
cdbhi.cn
xyywekmbuuq.net
akgjmdzx.cc
xbrpaahhcjl.org
lrwnqgoj.biz
xrbczsuyw.com
fhioqvpdpg.info
fhchak.org
fnopiz.cn
bpufhbvqwjs.com
bxtopike.ws
ibifq.ws
dckhrrqh.com
srfvt.com
crikr.cn
jjdifsh.net
yryxdaecqwa.info
vfdjkunysp.cn
hxhpc.org
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rrtvw.org
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cffcipqz.biz
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sedueat.cc
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icbabdoo.org
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kcawyfgl.ws
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weekax.cn
fhoptkn.org
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tlxzjjlmk.org
wycqkpn.cn
mxvrtq.net
cjeyj.com
qdgvbkpopx.net
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govagjcasyo.cn
ywictoyhzeu.ws
ezkhbz.org
memsvr.com
nhmgtrmka.org
iuqmklmklbw.ws
miyga.biz
tmegbpwamyr.ws
igggellu.ws
vuvjptke.org
eufiwwkplyc.cn
udthrjtx.cc
dwikmnmhx.org
qxdzbtgok.org
ccgdllgwk.info
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jqmdyemnd.cn
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uuuwlcpzi.cn
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dugnyfnxky.com
vxuiwtpqc.info
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thzydzvunfk.biz
We'll update this list as needed.
On 06/01/09 At 06:15 PM
January 06, 2009 08:51 PM
Reports of domestic violence in London has risen as Britain heads towards recession, a senior Met officer says.
January 06, 2009 08:50 PM
The cold snap has triggered pay-outs to millions of eligible people, including Londoners for the first time in a decade.
January 06, 2009 08:47 PM
[1]> (defun resolve-host-name (addr)
(handler-case (hostent-name (resolve-host-ipaddr addr))
(t ()
addr)))
RESOLVE-HOST-NAME
[2]> (resolve-host-name "1.2.3.4")
"1.2.3.4"
[3]> (resolve-host-name "195.178.208.66")
"tservice.net.ru"Exception mechanism is a great extension to the whatever language, and I think LISP has one of the best realizations (and the first one actually). I'm not very familiar with the exceptions in C++ as long as with language itself, but iirc it is not (easily) possible return back to the calling point with some value determined by the exception handler. Even in Java with its finally section it is still less convenient. But I may be wrong of course :)
Above chunk of the code catches the error (all exceptions) and returns requested address itself, and when no error happend it returns resolved address.
January 06, 2009 08:46 PM
A mother from Norfolk dies three days after a medical line said she had a bout of flu and should drink plenty of fluids.
January 06, 2009 08:33 PM
The remaining 200 Woolworths stores across the UK close their doors after the High Street chain's final day of trading.
January 06, 2009 08:12 PM
Liferea won every time when I compared it to other newsreaders thus far. The RSSOwl came closest, and only floundered because it takes twice or three times as many clicks to accomplish every task over Liferea. When you have more than 200 feeds like I do, the smallest inefficiency accumulates fast. The Google Reader is not even in the running on this score. Its only good point is the accessibility from any browser.
However, recently Liferea began to show age by accumulating bugs which Lars won't fix. He might be giving up on the project and moving on with life, I think. Here's my list in the decreasing order of annoyance:
- Liferea loops on the CPU, leaves a looping process behind when it exits. I must always watch for it with top(1). It's the pits.
- Liferea starts very slowly (minutes) and grinds whole desktop for a halt while it is doing it. It may be SQLite's fault. But unlike Mozilla's Awesome Bar, we do not get any improved function from the hideous performance.
- Liferea exits randomly (it's not a crash, but an exit). Due to the terrible startup times, I started running it constantly again, but it won't stay up.
- It scrolls back to the top of the entry when a page finishes loading.
- It pops idiotic dialogs about flash. I wish people stopped embedding flash into their feeds, but since they won't, the onus moves onto the reader.
- Reading comments cannot be disabled.
Ideally I would like something like Liferea with the bugs fixed. But if someone took RSSOwl and changed its GUI to match, that would be interesting too. I'm thinking about writing a Liferea clone actually.
January 06, 2009 08:02 PM
Bolton Wanderers are giving a trial to Brazilian World Cup winner Denilson.
January 06, 2009 07:57 PM
Years ago when I was at OpenAdvantage, I worked closely with a group called Access To Recycled Technology. Formed by two salt-of-the-earth students called Steve and Vinnie, they secured what they referred to as “access space” in Birmingham. It was basically a decent sized room that they used to fill with old, discarded computers. They would then install Linux on these computers and use them to train people and upskill them in Open Source software and general computing skills. Linux was the perfect choice: it ran well on older hardware, and software such as XFCE managed to squeeze more juice out of those machines.
For many of the people who came to access space, Steve and Vinnie would furnish them with a computer that they could take home to continue to learn and refine their skills. The guys had struck a deal with Birmingham City Council to take a warehouse full of old computers that were destined for the dump. This gave them a stock of computers to give out to the local community, complete with Linux and application software pre-installed. It was perfect for all involved: for the council to dispose of the computers in landfill was expensive, so when Steve and Vinnie came knocking, it was ideal.
I loved the concept of the scheme. It fits the opportunity of Open Source perfectly: old computers re-energised with free software to give away to people who need them. It helps put computers in the hands of people who could not ordinarily afford them, helps encourage learning, and contributes to closing the digital divide. It is also an ideal green-friendly way to deal with the mounds and mounds of computers that are simply not cut-out for Vista.
The opportunity for Open Source in this area is stunning. While at OpenAdvantage I worked with Birmingham City Council to fill a Community Center in Aston (a deprived part of Birmingham) with machines that ran Ubuntu to help train the local community. Courses were given in using the desktop, office productivity, graphics with the GIMP and Blender, web development in HTML and PHP, learning and sharing knowledge with Wikipedia, desktop publishing with Scribus and more. We also worked with the center to run courses designed to excite local young people. Courses were run on podcasting, recording music, editing video and more. The courses helped to get kids off the street and in a computer room, being creative and enjoying the technology. It was great to see their faces when they realised they could take the software home and use it there too, and that they could share it as much as they liked.
Open Source really paves the way to learning. I have met so many people who have had a hugely positive impact on their lives by enabling their creativity with Open Source.
An example of this was a kid known as WeirdHat. Years ago he used Blender to composite him fighting an animated character in lightsaber battle (unfortunately I can’t find the original video to share with you all). He then entered Theforce.net’s fanfilm forum with this video of him having a lightsaber battle with himself. It is stunning. Not only that, but he then went on to animate Colbert with a lightsaber and got featured on the show. He used Blender for it all.
WeirdHat is obviously a talented guy. The free availability of Blender and a stunning community of Blender users helped unlock his creativity. There are thousands of similar stories happening right now: Open Source opening up doors to creativity which are not only rewarding, but career building. Do you folks have any other success stories to share?
But lets get back to the concept of using Linux to recycle computers. While there are many of these schemes around the world, it seems that they are largely uncoordinated. It strikes me that there is oodles of potential in getting these different projects together to share knowledge, best practice and advice. There is also huge potential in working with other user groups such as Ubuntu LoCo Teams and Linux User Groups to help staff the projects, deliver training and install the software on computers.
Speaking personally, I would love to see our worldwide collection of Ubuntu LoCo Teams help to deliver Ubuntu or its derivatives to people on these computers. Are any LoCo teams doing this? If we have a small number of teams doing this, lets get them talking together and see what opportunities flow from it.
January 06, 2009 07:54 PM
Just bloody good IMO.
The brick corner
To finish this I bought a 25kg glue bag and while delivered that sack and the wood plate for the shelves on my hump from the development market I decided to introduce a new physical quantity to measure a load and a work: a ML. One man-load is equal to the amount of work needed to deliver 25kg to the 1 km distance with the speed of 10 km/h. Thus I wasted one man-load. IIRC this equals to 400 W or roughly one half of the (not real) horse power.
Since now I have a big bag of the glue I decided to glue all the tiles I have, so started to glue part of the floor in the kitchen, some parts of the hall and wall there... Well, I need to put the glue and tiles (lots of tiles, overall I have about 5 boxes of 3 different types (of 2 sizes: 33x33 tiles and 30x30 ceramic granite) of the tiles) somewhere, so I improve the look and feel of the appartments. This will not take lots of time, likely tomorrow all will be finished, but it again requires to saw the tiles which I already hate because of the amount of the dust. It is just hell everywhere, but tomorrow this will be finished and I will finally clean the whole appartments.
Own appartment development - infinite amount of the sex with the ugly stuff creativity on the very limited area. Pervertively love it.
January 06, 2009 07:53 PM
Following my post on the new embedded web server feature of Libgda’s SQL console, I have spent some time on improving the user experience (the web server is optionnaly enabled and serves pages containing information about the current opened connections).
Here are the improvements so far:
- the UI is more polished thanks to the usage of AJAX (through the very nice JQuery javascript library) and to some CSS work
- a simplified authentication mechanism has been implemented where one can specifiy (when starting the embedded web server) a “token string” which is requested when a browser first connects to the server
- a “terminal emulator” page has been added, which behaves almost like a normal terminal emulator and where commands can be entered. Through it, one can execute SQL commands and internal commands (commands specific to Libgda’s console for various tasks such as opening and closing connections).
The following screenshot shows a sample session in the terminal emulator; the “.c SalesTest” command requires that the “SalesTest” connection be used, the “.d” command lists all the tables and views of the connection.
This second screenshot is similar to the one above except that the result of the “.d” command has been folded (by double clicking on it) so it just shows the number of rows:
January 06, 2009 07:43 PM
I had a series of hard drive failures in a rather short time frame last year. My backup strategy sucks as much as the next guy’s. I figured the drives are cheap enough to finally buy/build a disk array.
I have a very noisy and probably very power hungry dual pIII/700MHz box that I use as a file server since 1999. It holds my git repositories, my music, my photo library, videos. It has a bunch of internal drives and two firewire and one usb external drive. A mess. It also acts as a print server and DHCP/DNS Cache/PXE server. I use the awesome dnsmasq for this as my router’s DHCP server configuration involves an on/off switch.
I looked around for cheap NAS boxes. There’s quite a few of them, but I’ve ended up fancying Synology Cubestation. Looking at the feature list, I was a bit worried if those aren’t just bullet points. I expected this coming from the marketing department making sure to have more features than the competition, while the actual features wouldn’t really deliver. That fear was luckily unsubstantiated. Everything I tried worked marvelously as expected from an appliance, despite including features like torrent download and your own personal Flickr-like web service.
I’ve done the initial setup from a Mac, using the included client software. The client finds the CubeStation on the LAN and sets up a small ~2GB partition where it puts the kernel and the system software. There’s a Linux client for this included in the upcoming firmware package, which I was quickly pointed to on the company forum, a valuable resource. Once the root partition with the system is up, you can use the web frontend to manage your Cubestation. The UI is decent, I was highly suspicious when I read “AJAX frontend” on the box. It lacks the elegance of a Wordpress dashboard, but gets the job done (crystal icons, yuck).
The initial creation of the RAID-5 Volume took longer than I expected. Somewhere around 10-12 hours. Then I was able to set up my samba sharing, ssh terminal access, iTunes (DAAP), printer and UPS (so it can shut down cleanly on power failure). That’s what the appliance provides out of the box. I had to upgrade the firmware (through the web-ui) to be able to serve media to my PS3 through UPNP (It presents the media in a much more sane way than mediatomb I was using).
This piece of hardware got me really excited because it’s what an appliance should be. It’s designed to solve a specific set of problems. But unlike something that would come from Apple, it allows customizations for those special cases you may need. Usually you don’t get both of these at the same time. Setting up all this on a stock Linux distro would take quite a lot of effort and I doubt I’d be able to pull it off. Having a solid foundation which you can extend is heaven. And extending I needed. Apart from the DNS/PXE/caching server I wanted to have a git server for my local repos I used to have on my Linux server. I was expecting to fight with building all these manually, but luckily things were a lot easier.
There’s tons of apps already compiled and packaged for the box. You need to download a script that installs a package management system, ipkg on your main Volume (so it’s unaffected when you update firmware) and sets up an /opt mount point. Then you can simply ipkg install package. Apart from dnsmasq and git, I also installed iptraf to monitor bandwith usage (And some other handy utils like screen).
I found the performance good, but if you fear the 64MB 266MHz PPC being too shabby for things like a rails server, they make an 800MHz/128MB variant as well, the CS407. But for what it’s been designed for, the hardware is perfectly adequate.
January 06, 2009 07:42 PM
Statistics chiefs mount a new attack on knife crime figures - including a claimed reduction at Halloween.
January 06, 2009 07:40 PM
A DVCS survey went out recently to GNOME SVN committers, and the results came out a couple days ago. There is much nuance to pull out of the data, but I think that it's fair to say that the respondents prefer git.
(Script here, requires latest guile-charting from bzr.)
The survey was not posited as a referendum on whether or not GNOME should switch to a particular DVCS, but it certainly sheds light on the question.
Unfortunately, the resulting thread on desktop-devel has been quite nasty -- there are a lot of very legitimate concerns coming out, but even Behdad (whom I respect) at one point took an entirely reasonable post as a personal attack.
This is looney.
We're not here to win some kind of victory over each other, to turn other people into losers -- we're here to build something that's bigger than we are. We should remember this when we communicate. We should read at a deeper level to find out what's really on people's minds, to acknowledge those concerns, and work from there to build things, not to tear people down.
* * *Enough of that. One of the options on the table was a really neat hack from John Carr, in which repositories could be accessed via git or bzr.
So, everyone should see this as being a pretty sweet hack, I think. But it has many downsides, and not all of them were mentioned in the ensuing discussion:
The canonical repository format would be bzr, not git. Preferences for git often are based on its semantic model and repository format, so this would be going against developer preference.
Thus, bzr web tools would probably be used instead of git web tools. Personally I prefer cgit and gitweb to loggerhead, though loggerhead has improved quite a bit recently.
Bzr revisions would be the primary way to refer to code. You couldn't say "check revision 034fea225", you'd have to say "check revision 1". So in practice, bzr and git would not be equal, neither from the admin side, nor the developer side.
I was one of the 14 respondents of the survey that actually *use* bzr and git. I mantain many projects in bzr, but am in the slow process of switching to git. Initially I was attracted by the bzr idea that you can usefully refer to revisions by simple numbers, but time has convinced me otherwise.
I want my family jewels in a safe place. When I refer to a revision, I mean that revision and not another tree and history that happens to be the 35th in a series of patches.
Joe Shaw has a few more.
There is of course the important caveat regarding renaming, which many git proponents fail to acknowledge. But my instincts are that if git works for the kernel, its renaming heuristic failure rate should be equivalent to the rate of me starting a new file, but saying it was a copy, or my starting a copy and saying it came ex nihilo. But that's just my feeling -- I have no data on that.
apologies from a git supporter
As one who now prefers git, I would like to apologize to users of other version control systems, especially bzr: for the VCS BOF at GUADEC that wasn't, for the tone of git proponents, for the FUD, and for a general lack of respect. And for ongoing git UI crappiness, though it has improved quite a bit.
But I think that git's the best thing going, and so do most of the other survey respondents. We should figure out a pragmatic way forward that takes all perspectives into account, and I think that Behdad's proposal is a good start.
January 06, 2009 07:29 PM
Nigel Clough leaves Burton Albion after 10 years in charge to become the new manager of Derby.
January 06, 2009 07:27 PM
The Equality and Human Rights Commission is urging the British government to ratify the UN Disability Convention
January 06, 2009 07:23 PM
A 24-year-old man jailed in 2006 for manslaughter has failed to return to prison following Christmas leave.
January 06, 2009 07:20 PM
The new US Congress opens amid a row over the man chosen to fill Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat.
January 06, 2009 07:18 PM
Peter Hunt looks at Princes William and Harry's new office.
January 06, 2009 07:10 PM
Renowned Nigerian writer and novelist Elechi Amadi has been kidnapped by gunmen in the Niger Delta region, say officials.
January 06, 2009 07:04 PM
England and Wasps flanker Tom Rees will miss the majority of the Six Nations due to a knee injury.
January 06, 2009 07:01 PM
A hospital consultant urges the elderly to stay indoors as the freeze brings dozens of broken bones and fall injuries.
January 06, 2009 07:00 PM
It's too much fun to miss, so I finally made the booking... I'm going to LCA 2009 (19-4 Jan), in Hobart, Australia!
January 06, 2009 07:00 PM
Holders Tottenham thrash Championship side Burnley in the first leg of their Carling Cup semi-final.
January 06, 2009 06:59 PM
Bulgaria's president suggests that a nuclear reactor deemed unsafe by the EU could help cover gas shortages.
January 06, 2009 06:54 PM
Why Obama has stayed silent over the Gaza crisis
January 06, 2009 06:48 PM
'Unclear', 'unsafe' and 'inappropriate' knife crime stats
January 06, 2009 06:46 PM
A baby dies and six others are in an isolation ward after an infection strikes at a neo-natal unit of a Birmingham hospital.
January 06, 2009 06:35 PM
Cambodia looks back on the Khmer Rouge 30 years on
January 06, 2009 06:27 PM
Several EU countries report major disruption to their gas supplies from Russia as Moscow accuses Ukraine of shutting pipelines.
January 06, 2009 06:16 PM
Amy Winehouse drops her appeal against a fine for possession of cannabis in Norway.
January 06, 2009 06:14 PM
German billionaire Adolf Merckle commits suicide after his business empire runs into trouble in the global economic slowdown.
January 06, 2009 06:14 PM
I am pleased to announce that James Westby is the new Featured Contributor on the Ubuntu Hall Of Fame.
We already knew that James rocked the house with his Ubuntu work, but the new Nominate somebody! feature in the Hall Of Fame generated a number of requests for James. So, it seemed only right that DJ Westby got the first prestigious Featured Contributor slot of 2009. Congrats James!
Make sure you all head over to the Hall Of Fame and click on the Thank James button!
We want to know which contributors you think are rocking the (K)(X)(N)(U)(Flux)buntu(Studio) (etc.) landscape. Its easy:
- Go to the Hall Of Fame website.
- Click the Nominate somebody! link.
- Enter the URL of the person’s Launchpad profile and a few notes on why they should be a Featured Contributor.
Easy!
January 06, 2009 06:04 PM
The Scottish Parliament is to hold an early debate about the controversy over the funding of the new Forth crossing.
January 06, 2009 06:03 PM
An ambulance crew take refuge in their vehicle after being attacked by a patient, the Ambulance Service says.
January 06, 2009 06:00 PM
The lasting legacy of John Major's much ridiculed plan
January 06, 2009 05:52 PM
England's David Beckham plays 45 minutes on his AC Milan debut as the Serie A side run out winners on penalties against Hamburg.
January 06, 2009 05:51 PM
Democratic rule returns to Bangladesh as Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina is sworn in as PM for a second time.
January 06, 2009 05:51 PM
An air passenger forced to cover his T-shirt because it displayed Arabic script is awarded a payout of $240,000, his lawyers say.
January 06, 2009 05:51 PM
A 600-year-old west London brewery is set to close with the loss of nearly 200 jobs.
January 06, 2009 05:34 PM
Ethiopia's parliament passes a bill imposing restricting aid work, for example promoting the rights of children.
January 06, 2009 05:28 PM
Virtual reality technology will be used to investigate claims that police failed to protect a Catholic man who was beaten to death.
January 06, 2009 05:16 PM
Rebel commanders in eastern DR Congo pledge loyalty to Gen Nkunda after claims he had been toppled.
January 06, 2009 05:14 PM
The Sri Lankan army says it has captured the northern-most defensive line of the Tamil Tiger rebels in the Jaffna peninsula.
January 06, 2009 05:07 PM
An on-the-run con man ran over a female detective leaving her with a serious head injury as he tried to evade arrest, a court hears.
January 06, 2009 05:03 PM
The Mumbai attack must have had support from some official agencies in Pakistan, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says.
January 06, 2009 04:59 PM
A theft of heating oil is behind one of 20 school closures in freezing temperatures across Wales.
January 06, 2009 04:57 PM
If the local bank were offering a sale on dollar bills, ninety cents each, how many would you buy?
Most rational people would say, "I'll take them all please." Especially if you had thirty days to pay for them.
So, why, precisely, do you have an ad budget?
If your ads work, if you can measure them and they return more profit than they cost, why not keep buying them until they stop working?
And if they don't work, why are you running them?
The time-tested response is that you're not sure, that ads are risky, that you can't tell. And for some sorts of products and some sorts of ads, you'll get no argument from me.
Digital ads are different (or they should be). You should know cost per click and revenue per click and be able to make a smart guess about lifetime value of a click. And if that's positive, buy, buy, buy.
And if you don't know those things, why are you buying digital ads?
When Amazon was at its key growth peak, the mantra there was $33. They would buy unlimited ads, of any kind, as long as they generated new customers for $33 or less each. There was a risk that $33 was too high a number for the business to sustain, but the ads were no risk at all. As long as they came in under that number, there was unlimited money to buy them.
How often do you hear the marketing person say, "that's a neat idea, but we don't have the budget this year"?
Shouldn't she say, "We have an unlimited budget for ads that work"...
January 06, 2009 04:55 PM
A 17-year-old who stabbed another teenager to death in the street is sentenced to 11-and-a-half years.
January 06, 2009 04:53 PM
The conflict between Israel and Hamas can be resolved, ex-UK prime minister and current Middle East envoy Tony Blair insists.
January 06, 2009 04:53 PM
Did a attempt to create a graphical representation of the GNOME Release Process, as requested here.
