August 21, 2008

Fedora Foundations part 4: First

I am drawing to an end with the exploration of Fedora’s Foundations with this post about First.

Fedora is often the first mainstream distribution to target new features. For instance Fedora was the first mainstream distribution to enable SELinux by default, support the latest version of X.org, have mobile broadband card support in Network Manager and a host of other things. However this is transitory and Fedora isn’t always the first, so this at best an interesting anecdotal footnote.
What the term first really means in this context is that Fedora leads. Fedora leads in efforts for Free Software as evidenced by the work with Zimbra of late, and the current ongoing efforts to clean up the older perl packages licensed under the Artistic license.
Fedora also leads in maturing new features. It’s shocking how often people expect for Fedora and its user and developer communities to work out all of the kinks of some new feature. Fedora’s reputation is all about rapid innovation and progress.

Fedora also places a heavy emphasis on putting “first things first” or having their priorities straight. Everyone may not agree with Fedora’s principles, but Fedora makes no bones about adhering to those principles - keeping things like community ownership, software freedom, and rapid innovation at the forefront.

Calling All NA Fedora Ambassadors!!
With summer soon coming to a close and the renewed efforts of the Fedora NA Ambassadors, what better way to spend a few fall days, then to attend the Fedora Ambassador Day NA 2008 event being held in Columbus, Ohio. The event is scheduled October 10, 2008 to October 12, 2008 and is being held at [...]
Tip: Calling C functions directly with "noalloc"
In OCaml you can call a C function by writing:

external call_1 : float -> float = "call_1"
then just using call_1. However these calls are not direct. They go via an OCaml runtime function called caml_c_call. This is a tiny bit of assembler, so the overhead isn't large, but it does use a computed jump which on many processors is quite slow.

Luckily this indirection is only needed in order to set up the garbage collector. If your C function won't perform any OCaml allocations, then you don't need this, and you can tell OCaml to jump directly to your C function like this:

external call_2 : float -> float = "call_2" "noalloc"

Let's compare the generated assembly code for the calls in both cases:


Normal "noalloc"

pushl %eax pushl %eax
movl $call_1, %eax call call_2
call caml_c_call addl $4, %esp
addl $4, %esp
...
caml_c_call:
movl (%esp), %edx
movl %edx, G(caml_last_return_address)
leal 4(%esp), %edx
movl %edx, G(caml_bottom_of_stack)
jmp *%eax


As you can see, the "noalloc" version is much shorter.
Fedora Weekly Webcomic: Stats and samples
A few days ago when the number of pre-registration for the Brno FUDCon reached 100 people (now there are a very few more), it was very inviting to make statistics based on it, even if the sample is not representative and the results wrong... or aren't they?

[fedora weekly webcomic: stats and samples]
My GSoC 2008 application is getting finishing touches

Yes baby, my GSoC 2008 application is getting finishing touches! That was a great experience for me. I have been talking with amazing people over all these months of work and I hope to continue contribute on this nice project called Transifex.

The Localization is the first point for people be able to get a great accessibility over programs. Yes, I know, you can believe me! I’m still an English student, but hopefully, I’m able to write some simple English texts and read other ones, even with some mistakes, but it was not always thus. Well, have you never been on a situation where you simply couldn’t understand anything, because you didn’t have a localized user interface? If you haven’t, then you are a lucky guy, or perhaps a very respectable polyglot.

That kind of thing happen every time everywhere we can imagine. We have several languages around the world and most people only speak your native language. Around 95% of people in the world have a native language other than English. So, how does it make a program usefully for the most people? A program with i18n support can make the difference in these cases.

Localized stuff make things easier, accessible. Users can read, browse, find information and mainly they can understand things. It points me to think as would be easy to me write this post in Brazilian Portuguese, surely I could explain all my ideas more clearly. What do I mean? Basically I mean a localized environment ‘make people feel at home’.

So, what have I been doing to make Transifex a powerfully tool to manager translations around the world? Well, thanks some helps from amazing community guys on this WoC (Winter of Code) to me, we got some things done, including a new Transifex Release 0.3.

However, before listing a summary of my work on Transifex until now, I would like to thanks Dimitris Glezos to encourage me to apply for this GSoC and also for all support, Asgeir Frimannsson to mentor me, the Fedora Infrastructure Team for some many times that I have been boring them on #fedora-admin, People that have had comment on this blog, Fedora Project for be an amazing project and finally Google for a Winter of Code. :)

Now, lets summarize all my work for the Transfex development:

  • Full i18n support in both templates and database
  • Support for editing repositories - the editing modules part will be implemented soon, after some changes in the model version 2.
  • Switched templating language from Kid to Genshi
  • Switched widget library to ToscaWidgets
  • Unit testing
  • AJAX: Widgets for AjaxForm with client-side validation
  • AJAX: Async module checkout on Refresh button
  • AJAX: Async file upload on the submit form

Bellow we have a list of all commits to my development branch:

  1. Rev: 366 - Initial Ajax Support: Client-side validation, async file upload and refresh button for submit form
  2. Rev: 365 - Minor: Added ‘transifex.egg-info’ and ‘*.directory’ to the .hgignore file
  3. Rev: 325 - Fixed Forms action
  4. Rev: 324 - Fixed commit redirect to ‘module/foo-module?branch=foo-branch’ instead ‘module/foo-module’
  5. Rev: 318 - It’s needed to avoid i18n problems because we are using genshi-based toscawidgets
  6. Rev: 317 - Added some new test cases
  7. Rev: 316 - Form submit without the exception handling breaks test cases
  8. Rev: 315 - A fix for the cvs import from the hg repo.
  9. Rev: 314 - Fixing the test module for HG repo. Changing to the Transifex repo. Smolt has been moved to git.
  10. Rev: 313 - Lib versions updated
  11. Rev: 312 - Changed to always delete and create the .mo directories langs when `i18n.py -c` (compile) it’s executed.
  12. Rev: 311 - It causes an exception on Genshi 0.5
  13. Rev: 310 - Fedora Project’s database messages updated
  14. Rev: 309 - Potfiles for view updated.
  15. Rev: 308 - Potfiles updated
  16. Rev: 307 - Ignore .mo files
  17. Rev: 306 - It should be uncommented for be able to do the initial repositories check-out
  18. Rev: 305 - Submit form fixed to work with TW and Genshi.
  19. Rev: 304 - A fix around the i18n support for the new structure with two directories for view and data potfiles.
  20. Rev: 303 - Merging with the last Christos’s changes
  21. Rev: 302 - POTfiles splitted into two separated directories (view and data).
  22. Rev: 301 - Added the new POTfiles splitted
  23. Rev: 300 - Potfiles for database added.
  24. Rev: 299 - Some fixes around i18n support for the repo form
  25. Rev: 298 - The i18n.py has been changed to handle two separated POTfiles (view and database).
  26. Rev: 297 - Library versions added
  27. Rev: 296 - Some fixes for repo edition
  28. Rev: 290 - Added some changes around the modules forms by Christos.
  29. Rev: 289 - Edit repo added. Now it’s possible to edit the repos.
  30. Rev: 286 - The modules and repositories forms were migrated to use ONLY ToscaWidgets. It doesn’t need dbsprockets lib anymore.
  31. Rev: 285 - Merge Dimitris’s changes
  32. Rev: 284 - New POT and PO files generated by the new i18n.py script. The files are cleaner now.
  33. Rev: 283 - Replaced some tabs for spaces. We must never mix tabs and spaces.
  34. Rev: 282 - For now, when a module is added it has only a branch. So, we don’t need to check if it’s a list. By Asgeir.
  35. Rev: 281 - Cleaning…It’s not needed
  36. Rev: 279 - Now the descriptions and summaries of modules and repos are put directly into the POT file.
  37. Rev: 278 - Changed modules url of the module datagrid
  38. Rev: 277 - Added all modules and repos of Fedora Project instance to the POT/PO files
  39. Rev: 276 - The function ngettext doesn’t work as expected. Dropping the use of i18n with pluralization.
  40. Rev: 275 - Enable translations of repos
  41. Rev: 274 - Some fixes around the i18n support into the template
  42. Rev: 273 - A CSS fix to the log grid
  43. Rev: 272 - Set the mysql database unicode to utf-8
  44. Rev: 271 - Set the genshi default encode to utf-8 to avoid some problems around it
  45. Rev: 270 - Changing to use the default function gettext “_”
  46. Rev: 269 - Some fixes around the i18n support for the forms and others minor fixes
  47. Rev: 268 - Need to work with SQLAlchemy 0.4.x
  48. Rev: 267 - Repository and Modules forms migrated to dbsprockets
  49. Rev: 266 - Datagrids moved to ToscaWidgets
  50. Rev: 265 - It doesn’t need filter to select all entries
  51. Rev: 264 - If ToscaWidgets is installed we need to declare gettext explicitly to be used into the templates
  52. Rev: 263 - Some configs to work with SQLAlchemy 0.4.x
  53. Rev: 262 - Added Genshi configs to the sample-dev.cfg
  54. Rev: 261 - Genshi and SQLAlchemy branches merged
  55. Rev: 235 - Added i18n support (on Genshi)
  56. Rev: 234 - Initial Genshi migration. We need to fix the widgets and possibles problems with ‘py:attrs’ yet.
  57. Rev: 233 - A CSS fix
  58. Rev: 137 - Menu Changes:
  59. Rev: 136 - Fixing a space error
  60. Rev: 135 - Change a link to the correct form

BTW, you can take this list of commits running the following command in my Transifex repository:

hg log –template ‘{author}Rev: {rev} - {desc}\n’ |grep diegobz|sed -e “s/Diego Búrigo Zacarão <diegobz@\(projetofedora.org\|fedoraproject.org\)>//”

That’s it! I hope my work can make some difference for the Open Source and Free Software as them make the difference to me! Definitely, to be an Open Source and Free Software enthusiast is rock, you can work and know rock people!! Now, it’s the time to attend FUDCon 2008 Brno and then stay in Greece coding for a while. The work continue!

Thanks all!!!

Πρόγραμμα υποτροφιών Fedora

Lamp (source: Echo icon theme)

Πριν μερικές ημέρες ανακοινώσαμε το Πρόγραμμα υποτροφιών Fedora, μια πρωτοβουλία με στόχο να αναγνωρίσουμε την προσφορά φοιτητών στο ελεύθερο λογισμικό και το Fedora. Μέσω του προγράμματος αυτού, το Fedora θέλει να βοηθήσει και να παροτρύνει τη συμβολή νέων, ταλαντούχων συντελεστών στο μεγάλο τοπίο του ελεύθερου λογισμικού.

Τα άτομα που θα κερδίσουν μια υποτροφία θα λάβουν χρηματικό ποσό για την κάλυψη των φοιτητικών εξόδων στην ανώτερη ή ανώτατη εκπαίδευση τους, και επιπλέον θα έχουν την ευκαιρία να ταξιδέψουν και να συμμετάσχουν στο Fedora User and Developer Conference της περιοχής τους.

Τη φετινή υποτροφία έχει κερδίσει ο Ricky Zhou, η προσφορά του οποίου τον τελευταίο χρόνο ήταν ιδιαίτερα σημαντική στις ομάδες Infrastructure και Websites του Fedora. Ο Ricky έχει επανηλημμένως παρέχει πολύτιμες συμβουλές για το deployment του Transifex στους servers του Fedora. Αν έχει τύχει να παρακολουθήσετε μια πρόσφατη μου ομιλία, το πιο πιθανό είναι να έχετε ακούσει να αναφέρομαι σε αυτόν ως το άτομο που έχει λύσει τα χέρια σε πολλές προκλήσεις που είχαμε αντιμετωπίσει στη διαχείριση των εξυπηρετητών του Fedora.

Για την υποτροφία του 2009-2010, οι υποψήφιοι που μπορούν να υποβάλουν αίτηση είναι όσοι ξεκινούν τις ακαδημαϊκές τους σπουδές το φθινόπωρο του 2009. Οι αιτήσεις θα κριθούν από την επιτροπή επιλογής βάσει της προσφοράς των υποψηφίων στο Fedora και άλλα έργα ελεύθερου λογισμικού.

Αν είσαι λοιπόν μαθητής 2ας ή 3ης λυκείου και τα απογεύματα σου τα περνάς με code hacking στην κοινότητα του Fedora, ρίξε μια ματιά στη σελίδα του προγράμματος υποτροφιών.

Keep hacking!

Verfügbare Pakete für Fedora
Nach fast einem Jahr hätte ich noch fast vergessen die obligaten Diagrammen für den Zuwachs der Fedora-Paket zu machen. So ist halt der August 2008 nicht sehr aussagekräftig und die September-Übersicht kommt schon bald.
Das aktuelle Diagramm aus den Daten von https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/collections/.


In Zahlen:

Fedora 7 5365
Fedora 8 5986
Fedora 9 6465
Fedora Rawhide 6528
bicycle nomenclature pedantry

I will routinely get corrected by various bicycling afficianados  if I refer to the thing you sit on as a “seat”. They, of course, say “It’s a saddle, not a seat”.

So my question is this. Why are the parts of the frame called a seat tube and seat stays if the thing you sit on is not a seat?

Official opening of Brisbane Office
Official opening of Brisbane Office

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24207405-15306,00.html
Pidgin 2.5.0 Liberado

El dia de hoy se liberó la versión 2.5.0 de Pidgin. Debido a dificultades técnicas, no esta disponible en los repositorios de Fedora aún, pero cuando lo esté, contarás con las siguientes novedades:

  • Soporte para el protocolo MSNP15, que incluye los famosos “Mensajes Personales”
  • Crear “caritas personalizadas” para el MSN Messenger en Pidgin
  • Mensajes Offline del MSN

Si eres de los muchos que le gusta conectarse al MSN, no olvides revisar este artículo.

Libera tus Bytes!
-Nushio

encrypted rootfs vs suspend/resume
RANT MODE ON

So one of the things people have been wanting for a while is an encryted root filesystem.

Now this isn't some sort of security saviour and I was just chatting to a few people on irc and realised the pain we need to go through to actually make it secure and useable in the face of other things.

Scenario: You have a laptop, you want to "secure", you use an encrypted rootfs because the forums told you to. Now Linux suspend/resume support gets good enough that you don't ever reboot. So when the laptop is suspended where are they encryption keys?
oh they are in the RAM? oh thats nice. Even when the laptop is resumed, where are they? oh look a screensaver is stopping me from logging in.

Solution: remove enc keys on suspend - ask the user for them again on resume. - sounds easy.

How do we ask for the keys then?

Currently in Fedora we plan to ask for the keys in the initrd. This works fine if you are using an English based language and keyboard. What happens if you want to use some of your own language like Chinese. Oh you want input methods so you can type that in do you? Oh we need X. Oh lets put X in the initrd. Oh lets migrate lots of the supporting bits into the initrd. Hey wait a minute half my encrypted root is now in an unencrypted initrd. WELCOME TO DRINKIN' ISLAND!.

So maybe some sort of encrypted overlay on top of an unencrypted rootfs that can bring up enough X to type the password in might be a better plan in sane universe where different parts of the OS talk to each other.

RANT ENDS.

August 20, 2008

Ambassadors Meeting EMEA - 2008-08-20
Meeting details : http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Meetings/2008-08-20

IRC Log : https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-July/msg00206.html
IRC Log (html) : http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Ambassadors/Meetings/2008-08-20/HTML_Log

Summary : https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-ambassadors-list/2008-August/msg00278.html

Next Meeting will be in September, 2008-09-17 at 20.00 UTC.
Utiliser OpenDNS sous Linux

Logo OpenDNS

Le DNS (Domain Name System) permet d’associer des adresses Internet à des noms d’hôtes. En gros, cela permet de gérer les adresses des sites (ex: www.tux-planet.fr) ou encore des noms de machines sur un réseau.

Cet article explique comment utiliser OpenDNS, une excellente alternative aux serveurs DNS des fournisseurs d’accès, qui offrent une multitude d’avantages pour l’utilisateur.


1. Utilisation d'OpenDNS sous Linux

Ouvrez un terminal en root et lancez les commandes suivantes :

cp /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.save
echo "nameserver 208.67.222.222" > /etc/resolv.conf
echo "nameserver 208.67.220.220" >> /etc/resolv.conf


2. Cas particulier

Si vous possédez un routeur qui fait aussi serveur DHCP sur votre réseau personnel ou que vous êtes sur un réseau d'entreprise, il faudra alors reconfigurer ce dernier afin qu'il utilise les adresses de OpenDNS (dns primaire : 208.67.222.222 et dns secondaire : 208.67.220.220) et qu'il les propage à l'ensemble des machines se trouvant sur le réseau.

Plus d'aide sur la configuration d'OpenDNS est disponible ici :
https://www.opendns.com/start


3. Avantages offerts par OpenDNS

En plus d'utiliser les DNS de ce service, il est également possible d'ouvrir un compte sur le site OpenDNS, afin d'avoir accès à une console d'administration qui vous permettra par exemple :

- d'obtenir des statistiques d'utilisation, comme le nombre de requêtes DNS, ou encore voir clairement l'activité du réseau.

Statistiques avec OpenDNS

- de choisir plusieurs niveaux de sécurité : protection anti-fishing, anti-pornographie, ou encore bloquer les réseaux illégaux. Il est possible aussi de bloquer directement certains domaines.

Filtrage avec OpenDNS

- d'activer ou non la correction des erreurs de frappe (google.cmo → google.com).

- de créer des raccourcis en fonction d'un mot clé. Une fois créé, les utilisateurs pourront simplement taper les mots clés dans la barre d'adresses de leur navigateur pour arriver directement sur le site souhaité.

Les raccourcis avec OpenDNS

A noter que quand vous voulez joindre un nom de domaine qui n'existe pas, vous êtes redirigé sur une page d'OpenDNS qui sert de moteur de recherche (c'est d'ailleurs grâce aux pubs se trouvant sur cette page que OpenDNS gagne de l'argent).

Après plusieurs semaines d'utilisation, le service semble très fiable (aucune coupure) et très sécurisé car ces derniers on réagit très rapidement à la faille qui a touché les serveurs DNS dernièrement.

En revanche, contrairement à ce que l'on peut lire un peu partout, OpenDNS n'est pas plus rapide que le DNS de mon fournisseur d'accès (Free). L'utilisation de la commande dig permet de mettre cela en évidence.

Durée d'un requête DNS avec OpenDNS :

[root@xblade ~]# dig a www.tux-planet.fr | grep time
;; Query time: 41 msec

Durée d'une requête DNS avec Free :

[root@xblade ~]# dig a www.tux-planet.fr | grep time
;; Query time: 34 msec

Mais bon, un utilisateur humain ne fera pas la différence lors de sa navigation sur Internet.


4. Conclusion

OpenDNS me semble donc une très bonne solution pour les réseaux domestiques ou pour les réseaux de petites entreprises, notamment grâce à ces fonctions de filtrage et de sécurité qui facile la vie des administrateur réseaux.


Billet original de Tux-planet.

duh-v-r

The time-warner DVR is painfully bad, and attempts at recording the olympics makes this even more obvious.

Various highlights:

- not recording anything for three days? The fix: hit the soft power on/off to “power cycle” it. Awesome.

- Deleting a recorded show _while_ I was watching it. 85% of the way done and black screen, go to the the “list” and the shows are gone. Awesome.

- There is no real way to prioritize season passes. The latest stuff is always higher priority. You have to delete a a show and readd it to the list to make it a higher priority. Awesome.

- If I’m watching something “live” (say, the olympics) I should be able to pause/rewind. Thats what DVR’s do. But no, this only sometimes works.

- It crashes alot. Weekly at least, sometimes more.

- The UI. Aiiiieee.

Anyone using a HD Tivo with time-warner? Any particular hassles I liked my old non-hd tivo’s alot.

Programação do Projeto Fedora Brasil no CESOL 2008

Entre os dias 19 e 23/08/2008, acontecerá o CONGRESSO ESTADUAL DE SOFTWARE LIVRE – CEARÁ (CESOL), evento comunitário que irá reunir no Campus do Pici, da Universidade Federal do Ceará, um grande número de estudantes, pesquisadores e profissionais da comunidade de software livre brasileira. O Projeto Fedora Brasil marcará presença com os embaixadores brasileiros do Fedora, Rodrigo Padula e Guilherme “RazGriz”, que ministrarão palestras e mini-cursos ao longo de todo o evento.

leia mais

Where's Eric?
I know I've been MIA the last few weeks. I am still alive but a lot of things have been happening, the biggest of which is a job change. Of course when you take a new job you are thrust into all the problems that you have been hired to solve. I'm going to like this new job, however, as I enjoy being a security engineer vice analyst. Hopefully I'll be back on my feet soon and able to step back up to the plate in the Fedora community.
Pidgin 2.5!

The long awaited Pidgin 2.5 came out two days ago, and one of the features I’m very happy with are the changes to the MSN protocol: offline messages are now supported.

This was one of the biggest problem for an European user, as MSN is the main IM protocol here, with around 90% market share. People in the industry tend to be connected in offline mode, and you couldn’t receive their IMs until now, they popped up all at once when you used the Microsoft Live client every month or so, not that great :)

You can see the complete changelog here.

Online Python
Python lässt sich auch online benutzen...praktisch für Leute, welche ihre Python-Fähigkeiten auch mit dem Handy verbessern wollen :-)

http://try-python.mired.org/
Proposal for additional Deprecated Characters from Unicode
0953 ( ॓ ) DEVANAGARI GRAVE ACCENT
0954 ( ॔ ) DEVANAGARI ACUTE ACCENT

I saw this earlier but just remembered when i saw pango renders U+0953 and U+0954 characters as independent vowel even though they are dependant(dont know what is exact problem).

Unicode Public Review issue 122 dated 2008-08-04, has proposed these two characters as deprecated.
http://www.unicode.org/review/pr-122.html

As a devanagari script user i have never used these in my writing, but i think these two characters are added specifically for vedic.
Shark 0.03 released

I just updated icedtea6 hg with the latest Shark. The main reason for this release is that Andrew Haley pointed out that the marked-method stuff I was using to differentiate compiled methods and interpreted methods didn’t work on amd64, and while it was possible to make it work there I didn’t like the idea of having something that needs tweaking for each new platform you build on. Now interpreted methods have the same calling convention as compiled ones, which makes the need for differentiation obsolete.

Other new features in this release include support for long, float, and double values, and a massive pile of new bytecodes. Check out the coverage page now, it’s awesome!

iPhone on Vodafone in India

The price of 31k for iPhone in India has been confirmed i recieved the following mail

Hello Ankur,
Thank you for registering for your Apple iPhone 3GTM with us.
We are delighted to announce that the iPhone 3G will be available in India from August 22, 2008
It will be available in 8GB & 16GB models, priced at Rs 31,000 and Rs 36,100 respectively.
Be the first to get the iPhone
We have received a large number of registrations. As there are limited stocks, make sure that you get yours first, by paying an advance of Rs 10,000 to confirm your booking.
Where can you make this advance payment?
The iPhone 3G will be available at select Vodafone Stores. All you need to do is drop in at any select Vodafone Store between August 20 and 21 and make the advance payment by cash or credit card. Don´t forget to show the iPhone booking SMS, which you would have received from us, when you visit the Vodafone Store to pay the advance. To find a Vodafone Store near you, click here
Get an appointment now. No queues for you.
Once you pay the advance, we will immediately give you an appointment date and time, starting
August 22 when you can come and experience a full demonstration and collect your iPhone, all ready to use with your contacts and settings, by paying the balance amount.
Hurry! Limited stocks.
Remember, the sooner you confirm your booking, the earlier you´ll get your iPhone. We have limited stocks and it will be on first come, first serve basis.
Buy a Vodafone connection now!
As you are not a Vodafone customer, you will need a Vodafone connection for your iPhone 3G.
We recommend that when you come to confirm your booking, please do get yourself a Vodafone connection too. Remember to carry a passport sized picture, photo ID proof and address proof as these are required for activating your Vodafone SIM card.
Happy to help
If you have any queries, log on to www.vodafone.in/iphone or call us on 9886098860 and we´ll be happy to help.
Hurry and be one of the first to make the iPhone 3G your own.
Regards
C P Joshi
AVP - Customer Service

At a Price of 31k and 36k i dont think there will be a large number of users going for i, here Vodafone seems to India what Rogers was to Canada, anyway one more reason for not going the i way!!!!!

Safeguarding your mobile devices
I just came across Adeona which allows you to track misplaced or stolen laptops without having to rely on third party providers. I think this make a lot of sense - you can have encrypted drives etc, but if you can also have your machine call home, that would make things all the more useful.

While I do not intend on loosing my laptops, I am wondering if there are other purposes this GPLed code can be used for? Ocassional call home with status check, discover nearby systems etc. Food for thought.
encryption negotiation like pidgin-otr but for email

Dear LazyWeb,

I’ve recently been using pidgin-otr a lot and I have to say, I love it. The setup is straightforward, I’ve watched the XMPP as it goes and I feel pretty good that google can’t see my stuff. Yay.

However, it makes me want to have a similar feature for evolution or tbird. Something so I can say “send this person an email and confirm encrytped communication between us”

I did some searching and I found nothing.

Any thoughts?

Big Brother - Google Edition
Played till late the ancient classic game - SimTower. Earning money and meet the requirements on population and special facilities. But I was like having a bug from 3 stars to 4 stars: VIP came once but failed my star upgrade. It is compulsory to have him granting a thumb up but he hasn't returned ever. I left the game running overnight and nothing happened. The balance accumulates rapidly like Trump. I and my younger brother are wondering when will the figure touching the boundary of the label field. :)

Just played new feature of Google Map - Street View. You can input a address. Then click on 'street view' and see the real picture of such location! Wonderful! (AFAIK, it's currently available in US, Australia, and some European countries.)

I have witnessed a weird truck which with many cameras like eyes of flies passing my street. It should be how they let us even rotate the view of pictures just like turning our heads. A new era of Virtual Travel should be coming soon.

P.S. I have virtual travelled to Sydney Opera House, Canberra Parliament House at the moment. :)
Neon attempt #432536346

If you’ve talked to me at all about the theming process for F10, and my involvment with Neon, then you probably know that I am frustrated and feeling idea-less most of the time. Any ideas that I did come up with, I never felt strongly about. Last night, I came up with the idea for a partial street concept that used only a portion of the available desktop space. The idea is that it would allow for plenty of room for icons and whatnot, while still looking modern and fresh. Check the sketch below.

Neon Street Sketch

So today I started playing around with it and getting it going, and came up with this.

Neon Street Mockup

This is far from a finished work and could definitely use some refinement. Not even ten minutes after posting this idea to the Fedora Art List, I was thinking about my own site and the use of patterns along path effects that were used to make the “tentacles” coming out of a box. I decided to try that out with neon colors, and came up with this:

Neon Tentacles

All of a sudden I am liking this one a lot more, and have strong feelings about its potential. It’s simple, it’s abstract, and it fits in with the theme concept for Neon. What do you think lazyweb and planet fedora?

Neon effect attained from: screencasters.heathenx.org

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August 19, 2008

Just draw something on the f-ing screen
I don't believe that computers have got better over the past 40 years.

Case in point: I've spent at least 2 hours trying to debug a Gtk program which is supposed to plot some dots on the screen. Like this sort of thing in barely remembered ZX Spectrum BASIC:

10 FOR F = 0 TO 2*PI STEP 0.1
20 PLOT SIN(F)*200+100, COS(F)*200+100
30 NEXT F

The Gtk program is 20 times longer than this. And refuses to draw anything except a black window.

Computers have got worse in many ways since my first computer.

Update

My angry late-night programming rant makes it to reddit.


Ob-awesome Wikipedia page of the week: List of 8 bit computer hardware palettes.
python-bugzilla - give me your queries!

I've been working on a branch of python-bugzilla that supports multiple different Bugzilla variants. The current version (0.3) only supports the functions provided by Red Hat's Bugzilla 2.18.x. This branch (which will become python-bugzilla 0.4) adds support for the upstream 3.0 and 3.2 WebServices and Red Hat's shiny new 3.2 instance. (Hooray!)

Yes, I'm sure you've noticed that we've updated to Bugzilla 3.2. Besides the shiny new web frontend there's also new and shiny XMLRPC code for python-bugzilla to use. It still supports the old RHBugzilla stuff, and it now supports all the upstream Bugzilla 3.2 services, but there are some additional new-style methods that will someday make their way to upstream Bugzilla - although probably not until 4.0.

The point is this - I'm trying to get python-bugzilla using the new methods wherever possible. This includes a new and slightly different Bug.search() call, and I want to make sure I can make the switch without breaking everyone's existing code.

So here's my request. If you use python-bugzilla, send me your queries - or just a link to the code, if that's too much to ask - and I will do my best to make sure that your code will work, unchanged, with the new upstream(ish) Bugzilla methods.

I'll update soon to talk about what else is new in python-bugzilla 0.4, but having some real-world test code to work with would be a great boon. Thanks!

MH - 12 DS 228 , the drunk driver who hit my bike

First of all, I am safe. Front part of the bike broke. I was coming back home from office , around 11:50pm, in front of Koregaon park chouki, a whitish car in front of me slowed down and stopped, so I also stopped more than a feet behind. Suddenly that car started coming back in reverse, and it’s behind portion came on top of my bike’s front tire. I was using my bike’s horn at full , but he never listened , and then I understood that he was drunk. He came out of car with 1 male friend and girl. The driver was drunk , aged less than 40 started shouting at me, twice I went back few steps as he was almost in  a mood to hit me. He threatened me of police, when I said lets go to police station he suddenly ran to the car, his friend followed him and the girl went to some other car in different direction. The number of the car which hit my bike is MH-12 DS 228 .

I tried to do an F.I.R. to the police station nearby but no one was there. So I went to Shrasti nagar police station, they asked me to go to Koregaon park police chouki , so I went back again. There they just took the details in a white paper and asked me to go home, they said they will check later in the morning.

Yes, I am a bit upset with the police’s behaviour. But more than to that drunk driver, he looked like some manager kind of guy (from clothing) , and he thinks as he is having money he owns the road. I am lucky nothing happened to me physically but things might went different. In newspapers we regulary read how people are getting killed by drunk drivers.

My kind request to the responsible people don’t drink and drive. And also please help me to find this person, if you are in Pune, try to see if you know this car or ask your friends if they know anything. Give them the car’s number.