I figured since I’m using Vista on my laptop, and I’m using my laptop a bit more recently, that I’d start a little series called “Life with Windows Vista”, and once in a while I’ll come up with something to talk about. I think this week I’m going to whip up an article on what I’ve done so far to make Vista a workable environment here on my laptop. Stay tuned for that.

Nick and I released the second Ubuntu podcast yesterday from J’s Cigar Store.  We did it as a live stream, and recorded audio. Both the video and audio are available to watch, stream, or download. We will be recording “live” next Wed July 30th around 5:00 pm EST if you want to catch the live show and ask us questions. The quality will get better as well, as we are testing out drivers, cameras and mics on linux.

Ubuntu Podcast covers weekly news, events, upcoming features and releases.

Check the Show out here.

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An article over at “Works With U” has an interesting thing that I have run into a few times before:

And here’s another ironic twist: Consumers may actually prefer to pay for Ubuntu — rather than get it for free. No joke: Many consumers don’t like free software. They fear it. My brother in law didn’t understand how Ubuntu and OpenOffice could be free. “Is it legal to actually download and share that software?” he wondered.

I understand how some people can feel like it may not be legal to acquire software that is free, I suppose. Microsoft and the BSA have pretty well attempted to drill the thought into people’s minds that software acquired without a financial cost can be somehow illegitimate, implying that it’s simply not possible for the Internet’s citizens to create software that is of any measurable quality. Of course, anyone that is “in the know” is quite aware of just how wrong this idea is; the quality of Microsoft’s own software is somewhat debatable.

The simple truth is that people just like you can learn to write software, and write high-quality software if motivated to do so. A large portion of free/open-source software is worked on by people such as yourself. Things ranging from the actual programming, to bug management, to documentation—all of those things can be done by regular, everyday people. There’s nothing—other than Microsoft’s business strategy—that says that the work that you or I do on a free or open-source software project is automatically of any sort of lower quality when compared to Microsoft’s software. In fact, the major argument for such software is its transparency. I know that when it comes to any software, I often want to change it to fit me better than the original programmer or company provided for. For software such as Windows, or Internet Explorer, or Microsoft Office, or any other proprietary software offering, this is impossible without violating some sort of license agreement. Now, that having been said, there is the belief that copyright law permits some “tinkering” of something which one has the right to use. I suppose this make sense—nobody would dare invoke copyright law to declare that the notes you’ve written in the margin of your textbook are illegal. Effectively, writing notes in the margin of a textbook or highlighting passages is “patching” the textbook to contain more information and do more things for you the next time you read it. So, why should it be illegal for a Windows user to write (or run) software to bypass the silly restrictions on theming in modern versions of Windows? It’s essentially the same thing.

The fact that Microsoft, the BSA, and other companies and organizations are so successful in drilling this “thou shalt pay for thy software” commandment into people’s brains is somewhat terrifying to me. It means that people in general are still easily had; they think that a corporation that makes billions in revenue every year is somehow more legitimate than the loosely-knit ecosystem of free/open-source software programmers. Of course, we can confirm that idea by simply looking at the U.S. Government, as well; people are inclined to trust it to provide the freedoms that we’re supposed to have, while all the while taking those freedoms away in the name of “national security”.

The point? Think before accepting what corporations and alliances such as the BSA quote as gospel truth. Yes, it is illegal to copy and redistribute Microsoft software without a grant of permission from Microsoft to do so. That restriction does not hold true for all software, though; you can freely copy and redistribute the Linux kernel, the Firefox Web browser, the OpenOffice.org suite of office software,˙and so many more, worthwhile pieces of software—including the entire Ubuntu operating system distribution discs. (In fact, they even say “Pass it on!” on the official media!) There is a lot of value to a system that can be modified on the fly to fit the needs of its user… and this is something that corporations and “copyright advocates” will seemingly never understand.

We recorded the second Ubuntu podcast today. You can see the video below via ustream, also enjoy the .mp3 and .ogg version for audio.

Show Notes

• We have a logo!
• Ubucon! - Setting up to do one in November
  • Checked out a location over the weekend, lots of space
  • Should know soon if we can lock it up
  • Florida team will be joining us
• Ubuntu Eee SD Cards available
  • $50
  • 4GB SD card
  • Nothing to install
  • Just select to boot from SD card
• New community driven QA team: For quite a while Canonical has largely driven QA efforts in Ubuntu, and the community can and should step up in this area. On a high level, the Ubuntu QA team is about coordination and developments, focused on developing tools, policies, and practices for ensuring Ubuntu’s quality as a distribution as well as providing general advice, oversight, and leadership of QA activities within the Ubuntu project.
  • To get involved, join the Bug Squad. Members:
    • assign bugs to packages
    • ensure that bug reports are complete
    • find duplicate bug reports
    • recreate bugs and forward bugs to their upstream authors.
    • All of these activities help the bug get fixed and subsequently
      making Ubuntu even better.
  • Also, join the Testing Team:
    • Structured testing of packages and ISO images.
    • Aim to detect as many bugs and issues as possible before CDs are
      released to the general public.
• Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Alpha 3 coming
  • Expected to be released Thursday, July 24th.
• Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo
  • Fourth “Exploration Ubuntu” event to demonstrate what this easy-to-use
    Linux system has to offer.
  • Saturday August 2nd at the MIT Media Lab

Ubuntu blogsphere Trends:

• Configuring Linux Terminal to work as a transparent wallpaper:
  • Uses devilspie is a non-gui utility that lets you make applications start in
    specified workplaces, in specified sizes and placements, minimized or
    maximized and much more based on simple config files.
• Installing new fonts easily
• Dell is upgrading Ubuntu machines to ship with 8.04 LTS.
  • Wonder if they will release 8.04 ISO like they had for 7.10.
  • Dell does have its own PPA (Personal Package Archive) on Launchpad and it does get added to package source lists if you buy an Ubuntu Dell machine.
• Intel Snubs Microsoft, offers Linux certification: Intel’s enthusiasm for open source is gathering speed: now it is endorsing professional Linux certifications, snubbing the old Microsoft certification program.
  • Attendees at the Intel Developer Forum get discounts for taking open source exams from Linux Professional Institute.
  • No such deal for Microsoft certifications.
  • At one of last years Intel Developer Forum, Intel embraced Linux, instead of Microsoft, for its mobile Internet devices
  • At another Intel Developer Forum last year, Mark Shuttleworth gave one of the keynote speeches.
  • Intel sponsors the Moblin project for developing a standardised open source platform for MID products:
  • Ubuntu provides two builds for it: Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device Edition for MIDs and Ubuntu Netbook Remix for mini-notes.
• 10 + 2 things you’ll get with Ubuntu 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex”
  • This is just a certain bloggers thoughts.
  • These come from blueprints on Launchpad, so there is no guarantee that these features will be implemented in the final version.
  • 1. faster login
  • 2. better Flash experience

  Intrepid will ship improved plugin finder wizard experience, better experience for sites that use the flash detection kit and improved user- experience for selection of available alternatives.

  • 3. 3G networking

  Title says it all, Intrepid will have built-in support for 3G networking with the new NetworkManager.

  • 4. guest account

  It is very common to lend someone else a laptop for a quick email check, or having one’s computer play music and be a surf station on a party.

  • 6. Automatic download of printer drivers through the internet

  The printer setup tool of Ubuntu 8.10 and later will automatically download LSB-packaged printer drivers from the OpenPrinting database.

  • 7. font selector

  Fontconfig offers a variety of font related settings, which can currently only be modified by hacking a XML file together. Intrepid will have a GUI for this task, taking common settings like font ordering, antialiasing, hinting and embedded bitmaps into account, as those settings vary greatly depending
  on different users’ preferences.

  • 9. installation from USB stick

  An application will be developed to convert and write Ubuntu CD images to USB disks. In addition, Ubuntu’s existing tools will be modified to better handle installing from a removable disk.

• Linus is a P.I.M.P - Linus calls the OpenBSD crowd a bunch of masturbating monkeys.

We recorded the second Ubuntu podcast today. You can see the video below via ustream, also enjoy the .mp3 and .ogg version for audio. Show Notes We have a logo! Ubucon! - Setting up to do one in November Checked out a location over the weekend, lots of space Should know soon if we can lock it up Florida team will be joining us Ubuntu Eee SD Cards available $50 4GB SD card Nothing to install Just select to boot from SD card New community driven QA team: For quite a while Canonical has largely driven QA efforts in Ubuntu, and the community can and should step up in this area. On a high level, the Ubuntu QA team is about coordination and developments, focused on developing tools, policies, and practices for ensuring Ubuntursquo;s quality as a distribution as well as providing general advice, oversight, and leadership of QA activities within the Ubuntu project. To get involved, join the Bug Squad. Members: assign bugs to packages ensure that bug reports are complete find duplicate bug reports recreate bugs and forward bugs to their upstream authors. All of these activities help the bug get fixed and subsequently making Ubuntu even better. Also, join the Testing Team: Structured testing of packages and ISO images. Aim to detect as many bugs and issues as possible before CDs are released to the general public. Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex Alpha 3 coming Expected to be released Thursday, July 24th. Ubuntu Massachusetts LoCo Fourth "Exploration Ubuntu" event to demonstrate what this easy-to-use Linux system has to offer. Saturday August 2nd at the MIT Media Lab Ubuntu blogsphere Trends: Configuring Linux Terminal to work as a transparent wallpaper: Uses devilspie is a non-gui utility that lets you make applications start in specified workplaces, in specified sizes and placements, minimized or maximized and much more based on simple config files. Installing new fonts easily Dell is upgrading Ubuntu machines to ship with 8.04 LTS. Wonder if they will release 8.04 ISO like they had for 7.10. Dell does have its own PPA (Personal Package Archive) on Launchpad and it does get added to package source lists if you buy an Ubuntu Dell machine. Intel Snubs Microsoft, offers Linux certification: Intel's enthusiasm for open source is gathering speed: now it is endorsing professional Linux certifications, snubbing the old Microsoft certification program. Attendees at the Intel Developer Forum get discounts for taking open source exams from Linux Professional Institute. No such deal for Microsoft certifications. At one of last years Intel Developer Forum, Intel embraced Linux, instead of Microsoft, for its mobile Internet devices At another Intel Developer Forum last year, Mark Shuttleworth gave one of the keynote speeches. Intel sponsors the Moblin project for developing a standardised open source platform for MID products: Ubuntu provides two builds for it: Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device Edition for MIDs and Ubuntu Netbook Remix for mini-notes. 10 + 2 things yoursquo;ll get with Ubuntu 8.10 ldquo;Intrepid Ibexrdquo; This is just a certain bloggers thoughts. These come from blueprints on Launchpad, so there is no guarantee that these features will be implemented in the final version. 1. faster login 2. better Flash experience Intrepid will ship improved plugin finder wizard experience, better experience for sites that use the flash detection kit and improved user- experience for selection of available alternatives. 3. 3G networking Title says it all, Intrepid will have built-in support for 3G networking with the new NetworkManager. 4. guest account It is very common to lend someone else a laptop for a quick email check, or having onersquo;s computer play music and be a surf station on a party. 6. Automatic download of printer drivers through the internet The printer setup too...

ubuntu_podcast

Originally uploaded by tvma_nix

So this is the new logo for
http://ubuntupodcast.net

We shall resume normal recording schedule now that Josh’s life is a little more back to normal.

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Digg It!

Some topics covered:

• Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter History
• UWN Past & Present Editors Podcast
• Mark Shuttleworth podcast
• Joining the UWN staff
• New Ubuntu QA team
• Call for nominations for Tech Board
• Alpha 3 soft freeze
• Next Ubuntu UDS
• Ubuntu stats
• LoCo news
• Ubuntu Forums news
• In the Press & Blogosphere
• Ubuntu-UK podcast #10
• UWN podcast transcriptions
• Upcoming Meetings & Events
• Updates & Security

Read it here.

This is a special Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.

For our 100th edition, we cover the history of the UWN, a look back at previous UWNs, and discuss what the UWN has meant for people who have worked on it. Former and current staffers of UWN joined in for a podcast to discuss their experiences of contributing to the UWN and the impact of the UWN on the community. Mark Shuttleworth also provides his views on the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.

Links to the UWN Editors Podcast:

• Ogg
• Mp3

Links to Mark discussing the UWN:

• Ogg
• Mp3

If you are interested in writing for the UWN, join and introduce yourself to the the news team list.

If you have a story idea for the Weekly News, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Ahh, well, that wasn’t so bad. The upgrade process was pretty simple this time around, so I am running WordPress 2.6.

If there’s any issues with it that you notice, please let me know.

Fixing a few problems in Hardy, I’ve published some new packages in the PPA for Unofficial Backports for Ubuntu. Available are:

1. Pidgin 2.4.3, with support for plugins using the Mono runtime enabled.
2. Pidgin-OTR 3.2.0, along with libotr 3.2.0, which is a little bit more out-of-the-way in terms of the user interface.
3. An updated GNOME metapackage, making it possible to sudo apt-get install gnome without unresolved dependencies.

All of these are for Hardy. If you’d like these, and like to follow the repository’s future updates, add the following to a new file, /etc/apt/sources.list.d/uubp-ppa.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/unofficial-backports/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/unofficial-backports/ubuntu hardy main

Then do the usual sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade, and you’ll have the new stuff. If you’re running Pidgin, of course, restart it to run the new version.

I just read a surprisingly stupid and inaccurate article regarding “IPv6 [being a] gateway to hackers.” Aside from the obvious fact that they meant “crackers” and not “hackers,” (because crackers are the people that break security with malicious intent, while hackers are the people that create software programs and systems like operating systems, Web browsers, email clients, and so forth), Wired’s Threat Level blog is spreading FUD about IPv6, and to top it all off, giving bad advice (never, ever listen to anyone that seriously believes that software like Zone Alarm is going to protect you; only the operating system itself can do that, as Microsoft Corporation can attest to). Not to mention, the basic principle of separation of privileges pretty well mandates that if a given machine x needs to be protected by any given threat Y, that a third system, Z, should provide that protection. Routers are what need to be charged with protecting networks, not client workstations. Server machines that house data that cannot be leaked, should not be on publicly facing Internet machines. As an example, any site that regularly performs customer transactions via the Web should routinely clean their database on the Web server and move the database’s sensitive content to an internal system that isn’t accessible from the Web site nor the Internet, thereby mitigating what can be stolen in the event that there is a vulnerability lying around somewhere that can be exploited.

In any case, I was going to comment on the blog, but the comment got long-winded, so I am posting it here instead. You might want to head over and read the article first, of course.

---

I am not quite sure how to even begin responding to this article.

This piece stretches the truth a little bit. While many appliances and devices and even operating systems have support for IPv6, it’s only enabled by default when it’s possible to use. Many firewalls on networks like corporate networks use a whitelist policy to determine what goes in and out, for starters. Secondly, most organizations have not yet deployed Windows Vista, which has IPv6 enabled by default. Windows XP has a broken IPv6 implementation anyway, and while it’s possible to add functionality for tunneling into it, either protocol 41 is going to be blocked, or the strange-looking UDP tunnels will be; they’re not going to be part of the whitelist.

Furthermore, you seem to have neglected the fact that the application software which opens ports has to support IPv6 — and have that support turned on — in order for it to expose any sorts of vulnerability. Lastly, you call upon software firewalls functioning on known-insecure operating systems as a means of protection.

Were you on any TCP/IP networks before 1993? NAT hasn’t been around for a very long time, and NAT only came about due to the foresight of the industry realizing that IPv4 address space was shrinking too quickly. IPv6 won’t have NAT, to be sure, but IPv4 networks didn’t use to have it, either; they relied upon packet filtering at the edge of the network in order to maintain security. Network security will shift back to that model, just as it was back pre-NAT.

Any operating system secure enough to provide such services already does so, and this includes any sort of embedded devices which run those operating systems. For example, a router that is running any variant of the GNU/Linux operating system that has support for IPv6 enabled will be able to perform packet filtering for the internal network. This means that the router will have the ability to block packets based on the same criteria that NATs do. It can look for related connections, for example, and permit packets to and from. Networks which require machines to be segregated from the Internet will still have to be segregated in the most cautious of ways, nothing will change there.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve IPv4 machines behind a NAT that have external ports forwarded to them, or if you have a fully functional IPv6 network; the weakest link is still going to be the weakest link. ZoneAlarm and friends aren’t going to provide any level of real protection, and if they’re being trusted to do so, the person(s) implementing these solutions are of questionable network security background. In fact, they’re probably management types, and the decision to do it was probably based on advice from friends, advice from fellow managers, or buzzword compliance, or some mixture of the three.

Also, consider that most home and small office appliances do not have, and will not have, support for IPv6 tunneling through them. Special support has to be present for VPN passthrough on such commodity devices; support for Protocol 41 would be required, as well. For clients that use UDP tunneling, UDP with the external Internet has to be permitted, and that’s the same as VPN passthrough with the way many VPN clients are implemented these days; so, if people are using VPNs, they are already aware of the fact that they’ve opened up their networks to be creating tunnels to and from other networks.

The only way to keep a network secure is to use operating systems which are audited and reviewable systems, combined with software of the same caliber, combined with a router that knows how to drop packets that are harmful based on (in order of preference) whitelisting, greylisting, blacklisting, or even heuristic analysis. Combine with with strong, complex passphrases, and you have a secure system.

As for what is considered to be audited and reviewable, I would say that a GNU/Linux system would fit that bill. Considering that the average privilege escalation exploit in the kernel is closed anywhere between 6 to 36 hours after it is found, compared with Apple or Microsoft’s turnaround time on security-critical bugs (remember MS06-032?) which range from several weeks to several months, it seems fairly obvious what systems should be trusted to perform network routing and security functions… but I wouldn’t risk a network buy having weak links even close to attached to an outside, known-hostile network. If I have systems which _must_ be protected from the Internet at all costs, then the only thing that is going to move data back and forth between those systems and the Internet is the tried-and-true method of sneakernet. There is also the ability to have private nodes on an IPv6 network that do not have globally routable IPv6 addresses; combine that with a totally different Ethernet segment, and you can implement a single machine which acts as a gateway between the two networks, letting data flow in one direction but not the other. It’s not terribly hard to come up with secure solutions, given that simplicity and (what should be) common sense tend to make security a (relatively) easy thing to combat.

If you want to write a piece that will make people aware of security issues on their networks, why not write up a piece on the importance of open systems which are peer reviewed? Why not talk about the known benefits of such systems, and show how it’s worked in the world of academia for so long? Nary a thing is published in academia without peers performing reviews and fact-checking on it. The code that goes into operating systems can (and should!) be proofread in the same way, for the same reasons. After all, you wouldn’t trust papers published in a journal without them having cited sources and provided data such that you could verify the information yourself… why should you trust your operating system to do exactly what (and no more than) it claims to do, without seeing the references and data that is part of the system itself? Well, not everyone would—but when it’s possible, people *do*, and *that* is what increases the security of a system.

Wow. Just wow: See the videos from when Cookie Monster was on Colbert’s show.

Some folks on the Marketing Team have been working on a SpreadUbuntu project. Rubén Romero sent out an email to schedule a meeting to discuss it:

Hello everyone,

The first coming Saturday 29th [actually 19th] of July at 21UTC we plan to hold a meeting in #ubuntu-marketing to talk and adjust our work around the SpreadUbuntu Project. Our focus this time will be in the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) repository with marketing and artwork material for the whole Ubuntu community. Any other SU related questions will be adressed as well.

We, the Spread Ubuntu team, have been working hard to consolidate all the previous work done by others and try to find a path for the future of the project. If you love Ubuntu and would like to help us build a site to spread it please join us:

• Launchpad - https://launchpad.net/~spreadubuntu
• UbuntuWiki - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam/SpreadUbuntu

We need a lot of help in understanding bzr and launchpad in general, so if you are good at this you may give us a hand too

The project status is as follows:

• Previous DIY and SU projects in launchpad are assigned to us (the SU team) now
• We have a playground webserver by Houbsi to work with drupal and we have some mockups for the site and logo as well
• We have started using LaunchPad (LP) to track down task, blueprints ang getting to know bzr
• blueprint and the bazaar branch for the drupal template
• Launchpad will have the elements (using bzr as our DVCS) so we can track different versions and keep high quality versions of the material without killing the sites bandwidth or storage space
• The DIY site will have the latest copy of the elements as well as a database pointing to the original elements stored in LP (so they can be retrieved if the user wants)
• LP will be used for Material translation, change requests, questions & answers and material storage (through bazaar and probably a PPA)
• The Leonov project will be used as a start for our SUgui (a SU desktop client for designers/users) and we will implement plug-ins for it so elements can be edited from within the app (+/- 1 years from now)

See you this saturday in #ubuntu-marketing @ FreeNode

Best regards,

Rubén Romero
https://launchpad.net/~huayra

I’m becoming a little annoyed with Emacs now. While it’s been pretty ok to use on a day-to-day basis for notes and other text chores, getting down and actually coding with it is quite, at least to me, annoying. My biggest problem is auto-indent. I can’t seem to shut this feature off to save my life, and it drives me insane. It seems to vary depending on the mode I’m in (php, python, etc), and the modes seem to override the settings in my .emacs file. While I do enjoy planner mode, the coding side of Emacs is basically annoying the heck out of me right now, and with what I’m working on, I’m thinking an IDE is going to suit me better in the long run. I may find the exact formula to change the behavior, but lately I’m not all that interested in that, rather than finding what’s going to be the most comfortable setup for me.

I’m sure some folks have seen the pingdom post about the uptime of Microsoft, Apple, and Ubuntu “software update” servers over a 3 month period. Basically, the uptimes were: Microsoft, 100%; Apple, 99.9%, and Ubuntu, 98.64%. Pingdom states that they were tracking specific servers, and only the main Ubuntu archive. They point out that Ubuntu has lots of mirrors, but pingdom didn’t bother tracking any of them. So should the title of pingdom’s post really be “Microsoft’s software update beats Apple and Ubuntu?” How about “Microsoft beats Apple, Ubuntu in service reliability?”

Ok, ok, I’ll stop being a baby about it.

Check out the video below for the newest features for Wordpress 2.6.

 Link To Video

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I was going to post this last night, but I wanted some time to think about what I’d just finished reading before I decided to write about it here. Yesterday, I read Little Brother. It was an awesome, amazing read. It is also the only book that I have ever read entirely on my computer screen. Once I started reading it, I could not take it off my screen… which is pretty amazing, considering that I am not one to read entire books on my computer screen. I tend to like to read books in “dead-tree” form, away from my computer. Even technical books, though I tend to read those while I am at the computer.

The book tells the story of Marcus Yallow, a high-schooler, and his interactions with various governmental agencies. The story is set in California, in what can only be described as “potentially not very far in the future”. The telling of the story is direct and powerful.

Even better, the author of the book is very knowledgeable with regards to technology. Nearly every piece—if not every piece—of technology talked about in the book exists or has the potential to exist today. The story is not far fetched, it’s not fantasy, and it’s not surreal in the sense that it depends on things that we do not yet know. It is highly relevant, and everyone—children and adults alike—should read this book.

The story is also released by the author under the terms of a Creative Commons license. It can be copied and distributed on the Internet, or in any other medium, at will. The book is also published in traditional “dead-tree” format by Tor®, which publishes lots of science-fiction and fantasy books such as the Ender’s Game series of books. The author of the book also contributes to a wide variety of other publications, such as MAKE Magazine, which has all sorts of very nifty do-it-yourself type technology projects.

If you read nothing else, take the time to read Little Brother. It is thought-provoking and highly realistic, and well, well worth the read.

Okay, so after spending a few hours trying to fix this bug, I ran across this blog post which had the cleanest & best working fix I've found.

If you've struggled with this, check this guy out!

I have started another podcast with fellow Ubuntu LoCo team member Nick (boredandblogging). We cranked out the first show yesterday. We do a live stream as well as record the video and audio. The goal for the podcast is to have a frequent release of news, events, how tos, interviews and commentary on all things Ubuntu.

For those who watch and like the linuxcrypt podcasts, don’t worry, we will resume shows starting next week. Joel and Eric have been on vacation so we haven’t put a show out for a couple weeks.

For more information on the new “Ubuntu Podcast” series, please bookmark the link below, and make sure to add the RSS to your readers. We welcome comments and suggestions, as well as live interactive feedback in our chat channel as we are streaming.

http://ubuntupodcast.net

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I’ve decided to go the Linux in a VM route on my laptop. Yes, I know, bad geek, but I’m willing to take the loss of geek points. My main reasons for switching to this setup is battery life and heat. I know I could spend hours trying to get things tweaked just right, but even so it seems that Vista does a bit of a better job as far as these two categories go. My laptop has enough power that running a VM isn’t going to be a big deal, especially when I can just SSH into my desktop and access just about everything there.

This also means I may post some Windows tips/tricks since I’m going to try to keep this thing running in top shape. I may also review some utilities I’m using as well. While I do prefer Linux, I’m also a fan of using what gets the job done.

We recorded the first ubuntupodcast today. You can see the video below via ustream, also enjoy the .mp3 and .ogg version for audio.

Show Notes

• 8.04.1 - Release announcement. Some highlights:
  • Firefox has been upgraded to the final 3.0 release
  • The Samba client allows LANMAN authentication again, correcting problems connecting to some NAS and older Windows servers (#209520).
  • Various problems with the FUSE interface to GNOME’s new virtual file system (gvs) have been fixed, correcting certain problems accessing network file shares (#211205, #212789).
  • The “Hardware Drivers” application no longer reports the proprietary nVidia driver as being enabled when it isn’t installed (#216650).
  • While we have fixed a number of audio-related issues, including a scheduler problem that caused audio stuttering under load (#188226), other audio playback problems may still exist, because so far we have been unable to verify a targeted fix that does not cause regressions for other users. We will continue to investigate this  See https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/191027 for details.
  • Images updated for Kubuntu, the Kubuntu KDE4 remix, Gobuntu, Xubuntu, and Ubuntu Studio. Mythbuntu to follow soon.
  • ISOs also have OpenSSL fixes
• Alpha 2 out - Release announcement. Remember, this isn’t production ready yet!
  • Updated X.org 7.4, video might break.
  • Only Alternate CDs available, Live CDs coming for Alpha 3
• GUADEC- GNOME conference in Istanbul, Turkey, July 7-12th.
  • plans involving moving on and creating GTK 3.0 and Gnome 3.0. More news should be coming out this week.
• Terminator Terminal - multiple terminals in one window.Can split horizontally and vertically.
  • Tab support
  • Drag & Drop support
  • Support terminal zooming - now you can quickly hide all terminals apart from one and either scale the fontsize or not.
• UDS-Intrepid Discussions: Jorge Castro, who works for Canonical and deals with upstream projects, put together a summary of the UDS discussions.  Highlights:
  • 3G networking
    • Assemble a list of frequently used hardware and 3G providers in the markets with the highest 3G penetration.
    • Get most important hardware and subscriptions early in the release cycle to ensure that as many options as possible can be verified and get fixed.
  • Better FF 3 and KDE integration
  • Better flash integration, even though Gnash is the long term goal
  • More options for the Ubuntu Firewall
  • These are just discussions, there is no guarantee these will show up in the final release.
• Best Buy Selling Ubuntu - providing 60 day support and a quick start guide.

Check out Steve Langasek’s email for more info and download links: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2008-July/000451.html

Remember, don’t install it on production machines.

So, I had (yet another) unwelcome visitor to my network. We (Erica and myself) decided to do something about it.

sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --source 10.0.251.254 --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 69.31.115.198

Now, the above command will redirect all port 80 traffic from the –source machine in question to a very nasty, dirty, icky, stomach-disturbing Web site. (In other words, don’t open that site in your browser window. If you are at work, you’ll get fired if you do. Trust me.)

What that rule does is takes packets coming from (in this example) 10.0.251.254, destined for port 80 anywhere on the Web, and redirects those packets and resulting connections to 69.31.115.198, which, as I said, is a site that you do not want to look at. Trust me.

The person, who’d been connected to the network for about 15 minutes, disconnected pretty much immediately. Total win.

We are all so stupid. We've been so angry with George W. Bush. We just haven't seen the genius mastermind that he really is. He tried to tell us. He said it so many many times. They hate us for our freedom. Read that again: THEY HATE US FOR OUR FREEDOM. So... you remove the freedom you remove the danger. Got it yet? This whole illegal wiretapping, telecom immunity, patriot act, continually funding a war for imperialist reasons, deals with big business, lack of investigation into government crimes and possibly war crimes... it's all to protect us. That's what you don't get. George Bush will go down in history as the great protector. And all of the wonderful people at congress will be remembered as HIS little soldiers. Especially the democrats who have crossed over the democratic line and helped him put every law he was trying to put in previously. Thank god we all elected them in 2006. Especially with the lack of foresight we have had thus far as to how this presidency and government works.
Not to place blame. I mean, to the normal everyday average citizen, it looks like they are not investigating oil price fixing, allowing big communications to escape due process, stripping away habeas corpus and the bill of rights, holding secret prisons, and torturing people. But really they are just doing everything they can to insure that we are protected from everyone. Especially ourselves.

Working on getting stuff set up through Launchpad, so that hopefully by Friday (gee, is that tomorrow already?) I will have Pidgin up and be ready to start working on other things.

What I haven’t quite figured out yet is how to take advantage of Launchpad’s bug tracking system such that people can create bugs just for this project’s packages, and not for mainstream Ubuntu’s. If I can’t figure that out soon, I can put something up on the Web in terms of a Bugzilla installation or something, though I’d really rather not do that if I don’t absolutely have to.

In any event, it is off to bed with me. Good night, world.

Some of you may have heard about the goings-on surrounding Hans Reiser, creator of ReiserFS, and how he was convicted of killing his wife. Most recently, he lead police to her body in an effort to get his sentence reduced. An interesting idea came up on Ubuntu’s Brainstorm site that sparked a lot of controversy. Exhibit A: Brainstorm Idea #10930. The summary is that the submitter things sending a laptop to Reiser while in jail would give him a chance to contribute to society. Ignoring the fact that the laptop would never see it’s intended recipient, some of the comments got rather interesting. Eldmannen, the originator of the post, sees Hans as a ‘victim’ in all of this and has some rather ludicrous thoughts.

There’s this gem:

mtrausch,
Whatever, it was just one kill. Big deal. Others have killed way more. George W Bush is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people.
Also if he commit a crime, he should be locked up so he is no harm to society. But he should still be allowed participate and contribute to society so that he can become a good and productive citizen.
Plus, she deserved it. She cheated with Sean Sturgeon, embezzled money from his company, and was an irresponsible mother who abused illegal substances such as ecstasy.
Let this be a lesson to all; avoid post-order mail brides.

chipbennett,
It is much better to let him be a productive citizen of society that contributes to society, than have him locked up and do nothing, just waste tax money.

neon,
It is not like he killed Gandhi, he just killed his wife.
Perhaps other people can work on it too, but Hans is the genius who designed it, he can make bring the best to it.

And this is the comment that spurred me to post this:

Endperform,
She was a irresponsible mother abused illegal substances such as ecstasy, putter her kids at risk and who dated Sean Sturgeon a dangerous serial-killer who have admitted to killing 8 people and leaving a ninth for dead.
* http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/05/reiser

I cant imagine the tremendous stress and abuse that poor Hans must have endured. :(
Driving an kind and peaceful man into such an act. :(

“He took someone else’s life and should have to pay for his crimes.”
The guy is paying for his crime. He is doing time.
But he should be given an laptop so that he can be a productive citizen and contribute to the society.

Poor Hans? The guy KILLED HIS WIFE. Eldmannen seems to think Hans is the victim in this, and that his wife drove him to murder her. If you’re having problems with your significant other, there are ways to fix or defuse the situation. If he was really that ’stressed’, he should have separated from her, or better yet, divorced her completely. The fact remains that he killed his wife. We don’t know the exact surroundings of the murder, but to say in no uncertain terms that she deserved to die is just completely insane.

So, we all know about Hans Reiser.

Someone thinks we should send Reiser a laptop so that he can continue development of the Reiser4 file system:

I am shocked, this is absolutely terrible. It saddens me deeply to hear this. This is a very unfortunate tragedy - not that his wife is dead, but that now perhaps he wont be able to develop Reiser4, the amazing file system.

Seriously, WTF?

I haven’t forgot about UUBP that Brian and I started a while back. I had tried (somewhat unsuccessfully, it would seem) to work with Ubuntu directly instead of trying to duplicate work and keep yet another point of contact for users that are interested in a slightly moving desktop environment.

I have come to the conclusion that base software will of course remain the same, and that application software and server software and the like are things that people (like myself) want to see updated versions of. For example, Firefox, Pidgin, OpenOffice.org, and so forth, are things that people would use updated versions of. For Windows users, this is the way it is; applications have nothing to do with the system.

Well, I am going to be picking back up the UUBP system, but instead of housing the repositories ourselves, I think I am going to use the PPA system and create a team for packaging efforts that we undertake. That way, our personal PPAs are used for testing packages, and I don’t have to re-invent the wheel in creating the same build server that will (presumably) be open-sourced eventually.

That having been said, I do have a shell (bash) script that is functional enough to be called from cron and process packages and put them into a repository on the local system. It’s good for someone that wants to locally test packages, too, because it is callable without cron, of course. I use it over prevu because I think prevu is a bit much, and it’s written in Python (and doesn’t need to be), and the shell script is a lot easier to maintain. Furthermore, being written in shell makes it easy to tweak when the time comes for that, and it doesn’t interfere with the package version number by adding something to it, like prevu does.

In any case, we’re going to be resuming work on UUBP, after I have created the relevant teams in Launchpad. I am going to be eliminating the WordPress install on the UUBP site and replacing it with a MediaWiki installation, and hopefully we can put a good amount of information up there as well instead of just things like package lists and the like; WordPress wasn’t working out up there quite like I’d expected, anyway. As far as bugs and the like, we’ll just leverage the power of Launchpad—we can use the bug tracker there, and manage issues more quickly that way.

Among the things planned to go up are:

1. An updated build of Pidgin (2.4.3), with support for plugins written in the Mono/.NET framework turned on.
2. An updated build of OpenOffice.org (2.4.1), with support for Mono/.NET framework turned on.
3. An updated version of Evince, displaying the file name of the PDF being viewed, as specified in the GNOME HIG.
4. A non-broken version of the “gnome” metapackage for Ubuntu, which was supposed to have been updated in the Hardy release cycle to be not broken. (IIRC, it’s not the gnome package itself that is broken, but one of its dependencies. Whatever the issues was, I remember that it was a very trivial fix.)

What won’t we do? Not sure just yet. I don’t think that there is any way for us to be able to do kernel updates, and I don’t think that there is any way for us to be able to do driver updates, and so we’ll likely stay away from that. We’ll also stay away from stuff that is broken, as well. At this point, I think that we’re pretty well set on the idea of just getting the work done so that we can have the systems we want, without the red tape to get there. That having been said, we don’t really care if the work ever does make it up to Ubuntu; we won’t be pushing it in that direction, but if they want to pull it from us, they’re more than welcome to do so. I just have not the time nor the patience to wait while trivial changes get looked at, pushed off on, and then never looked at again. It wastes too much time, and takes too much away from my motivation.

I am not sure how this will go, seeing as there is only 1 GB for storage in the PPA. I have heard of people getting increases to their PPA’s storage allocation when the run low on room, though I don’t know for sure what the policies on that will be. In any event, we’ll go either until we fill up the PPA or until we’re no longer needed, and then we’ll figure out what comes next.

So, Reiser has pointed the police to the body of Nina Reiser (link via Slashdot). The body has been exhumed, and they’re going to be confirming the identity of the body soon, I should expect.

The action came as a result between Reiser and the DA reaching an agreement that essentially said “the body for a reduced sentence”. Stupid, really. The man should be given a harsher sentence because he lied, proclaiming his innocence throughout the entire trial, when he know damn well that he wasn’t.

What kind of a failure of a society are we to permit such idiocy? What the hell kind of “justice” is that? We know that he killed her now. So, why are they willing to be all lenient? This is among the most stupid of things that I have ever witnessed in my life, truly. Why have the penalty if its negotiable upon the presentation of the body? I don’t get it.

Abstract – Software development has evolved over the past few centuries. Typically the development consisted of working for companies or institutions. Many times, it was impossible for a software developer to create software, and release it for public use, while maintaining an income. With alternative licenses, such as the General Public License, the standard mechanism of software distribution has changed, due to a disruptive GPL license. In an effort to preserve their business models, these companies have cited criticisms of open source licenses and how they stifle people from being able to use the code, in addition to FOSS licensing being incapable of being a sustainable business. Most of these views, when compared to the facts, do not hold as true and instead the reverse trend is observable. The evidence points towards a conclusion stating that software developers can develop software ethically, releasing it for public use, and maintain a reliable paycheck.


Software development has been for the past 20-30 years in the hands of large scale proprietary vendors, whose philosophy is to license their software as to maintain profits to produce more software and conduct research. However in the past 19 years a new methodology has gained momentum, known as Free and Open Source software (FOSS). This philosophy dictates that software, which is essential to our use of computers and carrying out the activities of our daily lives, should be free and available to all. Some critics of FOSS is incapable of maintaining a profit and thus staying in business in today's economy.


Many proprietary vendors share the belief that software is the property of development house in which it originated from, and that it must remain closed in order to “[protect] the intellectual property rights in software and [ensure] the continued vitality of an independent software sector that generates revenue and will sustain ongoing research and development.” [1] This philosophy argues that in order to maintain a profitable business, a software company must maintain their code under a copyright that allows them to keep their source internal, no matter it's use in the private or public sector.

Under such strict proprietary licenses, it is argued that software is licensed to the consumer, in such a way that “you don't buy proprietary software, you rent it, and that rental can be rescinded at any time.” [2] Through such a licensing scheme, companies are able to maintain control over their software and their profits. It is through these profits that new software is written and distributed to the consumer.

Most of these restrictions on use are upheld via laws regarding software patents, end user license agreements (EULAs), trade secrets, and copyright regulations. Each of these methods of protection are different in their own regard and have benefits that are used not only by proprietary software, but free/open source as well.

While the other mechanisms of protecting software development are critical, the main mechanism controlling how software is distributed is copyright law. It is important to note that copyright is the driving force behind more than just software, but it also governs many expressions of ideas, automatically. “This also applies to diary entries, letters, song lyrics, and drawings, even if they are only done 'off the cuff,' in the most casual of circumstances.” [3] It is through this powerful and robust scheme that proprietary and FOSS companies maintain their control over their software.


Among the traditional methods of copyright, several others exist that allow a developer to release his code in such a way that it can be used and distributed as the user pleases. One such copyright scheme came into existence in 1989. Known as the GNU General Public License, or GPL, this scheme of copyright allows a user to copy, modify and distribute source code at their leisure, so long as any released software, through commercial or non commercial outlets, also is licensed via the GPL. Richard M. Stallman, who states that the GPL exists as it does in an effort to disallow and prevent middlemen from stripping away the freedom that the original author intended, put this method of copyright into place. [4]


Criticisms of this form of copyright have emerged from prominent proprietary software vendors. Some, such as Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, have stated that software released in such a manner is “... not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source.”[5] This however is far from the truth, in that you must only release the product that uses GPLed code under the GPL, not all of your products. Several companies who maintain proprietary software in addition to FOSS have done similar.

This argument has had some strong evidence in its favor. Microsoft's Senior Vice President, Craig Mundie, stated that “open source software based on the GPL mirrors the .com business models that proved the least successful during the past year ... But as history has shown, while this type of model may have a place, it isn't successful in building a mass market and making powerful, easy-to-use software broadly accessible to consumers.” [1]

The ability to turn a profit is not the only thing in which Mundie has stated is a problem with FOSS development, but also “... it puts at risk the continued vitality of the independent software sector.” [1]


The ability to take free code, modify it, and then resell without providing the source code, is exactly what the GPL was designed to eliminate. A misinterpretation of this rule is that the program must be given away for free, which is contrary to what the GPL reads. “The intention was that nobody would have to pay for permission to use the GNU system... Free software is software that users have the freedom to distribute and charge.”[6]


The idea of giving away the source code with your product has come under fire, when it comes to commercial methods of gaining capital. “They ask software developers to give away for free the very thing they create that is of greatest value in the hope that somehow they'll make money selling something else.”[1] Yet despite these criticisms, many start ups have formed, with the vision of creating FOSS and turn a profit doing so. [7]


They are not alone in this endeavor, not only have more businesses been adopting FOSS business models but they have been raising venture capital finance money in doing so. The first quarter of 2008 saw the most investment in companies with open source models with investments reaching 203.75 million dollars. [8] These FOSS companies, as they've matured, are becoming ever more attractive towards large corporations increasingly.


Not only are these companies being invested in, but they are also succeeding in maintaining a lucrative business. Wired magazine states that the month of January, 2008 saw the acquisition of FOSS companies reach upwards of over one billion dollars, mostly due to SUNs acquisition of MySQL and other sales. This figure topples last year's previous value, valued at just over one billion. [9]


Despite increased acquisitions and investment in the market, many proprietary vendors claim that turning a profit from FOSS is virtually impossible. However, this is a misconception, Red Hat Inc., the largest Linux vendor, saw a 64% rise in profits during the 4th quarter of 2007 [10] and now currently trades at $21.21 [11] on the stock market. The number one contender in the operating system business, Microsoft trades for $29.21. [12]


For much of software developments history, programming has been kept under lock and key of proprietary licenses. While this may have been a necessity of early software development, this has changed with more companies investing in FOSS development and increased knowledge of how to maintain a profitable and free, as in speech, business.

As software developers we are in an atmosphere where it is no longer a question of whether or not a developer can maintain a salary developing free code, but whether that developer chooses to work for a company that supports FOSS development or to keep his code locked behind NDAs and proprietary licenses.

1. Mundie, C, “Shared Source” Microsoft, 05/03/01 - http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/05-03sharedsource.mspx
   
2. DiBona, C, “Open Source and Proprietary Software Development”, Open Sources 2.0, 05/02/08, pp 21.
3. St. Laurent, A, M, “Basic Principles of Copyright Law”, Open Source & Free Software Liscensing, 05/02/08, pp. 01
4. Stallman, R, M, “What is Copyleft?”, Free Software Free Society, 05/02/08, pp 89.
5. Stallman, R, M, “The GNU Manifesto” Free Software Free Society 05/02/08, pp 31.
6. Greene, T, C, “Ballmer: Linux is a cancer”, The Register, 06/02/01 - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/
   
7. Special Report, “Open Source: Now It’s an Ecosystem”, Business Week, 10/03/05 - http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2005/tc2005103_0519_tc_218.htm
   
8. Dean, S, “Record Numbers for Open Source Venture Capital Funding”, OSTATIC, 04/01/08 - http://ostatic.com/158788-blog/record-numbers-for-open-source-venture-capital-funding
   
9. Roth, D, “Open Source Software Made Developers Cool. Now It Can Make Them Rich”, WIRED, 03/24/08 - http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_opensource
   
10. Bass, D, “Red Hat Profit Rises on Sales of New Linux Products (Update5)”, Bloomberg, 09/25/07 - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid= aFXlE1A m3bC8&refer=technology
    
11. “Red Hat Inc Stock”, Google, 05/02/08 - http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:RHT
    
12. “Microsoft Stock”, Google, 05/02/08 - http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:MSFT

After doing more research on the topic at hand, it's quite clear that I need to rethink my stock information analysis. That said : This was written for my Computer Ethics class. That said, there are a few things I wish I could have included, but wasn't able to. Most of the arguments need to be better reinforced by more empirical data. Also the some of the quotes are somewhat old, however I used them because afaik that is still the attitude of many of the mentioned vendors.

I would improve this by finding more information from other proprietary vendors, in addition to researching companies which have both FOSS and Proprietary licences.

While I tried to remain unbiased during my research, this paper illustrates quite clearly my bias towards open source. I believe there much room for more study, as this is a vast field. Much better phrasing of many of my points can be found in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".

--Justin B.

So, being that I am done with school, and am no longer bound to certain ways of computing any longer (this is a big, big YES! moment), and given the fact that my $HOME is way too bloated, it’s time to shove everything off to an archive, and wipe my system clean, and try to do things correctly this time. (Correctly, of course, being not just shoving everything into the $HOME or the $HOME/Desktop, or whatever my $PWD is at the time that I do something.)

So, along with the fact that I am going to be re-structuring my entire home directory, I am going to back away from Ubuntu for a little bit. I need to clear my head a little bit from the politics that are going on up in the areas where people are working on it. There is, of course, no such thing as a distribution where people are free of drama and purely interested in getting the work done—there is always some level of red tape or politics that have to be dealt with. That having been said, I will probably be back to the Ubuntu world a little later in the Intrepid process, in one way or another. I need to spend some time thinking about what the most effective thing I can do is in that area. Waiting forever for a ball to drop one day mystically is not something that I do very well (and in fact is one of the reasons that I have left the corporate world and hope to never re-invent that particular corporate world in the ventures that I go forward into).

In any case, this brings with it the probability that I will be offline for a day or two, maybe a little longer. Being that I am going to be trying out Gentoo (and who knows, I may be ejected right back in the direction of Ubuntu, or maybe I’ll go play with Debian for a little while, if Gentoo hasn’t improved any since the last I have used it), I don’t know how long it is going to take to get setup the way that I am bound to want to have it done. I am, after all, something of a perfectionist when it comes to my system. It has to be done precisely a certain way so that everything is within quick reach.

In any case, if there are any distributions that anyone’s tried and liked (and aren’t based on RPM), let me know. I’d be willing to try pretty much anything, at least, that doesn’t have RPM as the central system package manager. In any event, I’m off! Be back online soon, hopefully.

So I was surfing whitehouse.gov and i figured I'd check out how well it does on validation. Here are some of my findings.

Whitehouse.gov - 160 Errors - XHTML 1.0 Transitional
johnmccain.com - 132 Errors - HTML 4.01 Transitional
barackobama.com - 197 Errors - XHTML 1.0 Transitional

Wow! I know many people can consider standards a joke but still, I wonder what else we can find...

nsa.gov - 26 Errors - XHTML 1.0 Transitional
cia.gov - 22 Errors - XHTML 1.0 Transitional
ed.gov - 10 Errors - HTML 4.01 Transitional
army.mil - 0 Errors - Valid XHTML Transitional
navy.mil - 20 Errors - HTML 4.01 Transitional
marines.mil - 110 Errors - No Doctype
af.mil - 87 Errors - No Doctype


//Since I'm from GA lets check out my state's page

georgia.gov - 148 Errors - XHTML 1.0 Transitional

//And my school
georgiasouthern.edu - 38 Errors - No Doctype

//Finally my own silly page
prxi.net - 0 Errors - Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict
//Not much to be proud of here. There's virtually nothing to the site! :D

Most of these sites at least looked nice, except for the NSA, whose site looked like it was designed in the 90's. (Note! I did not look at the flash version of their site)

What does this prove? It depends on what you get out of error validation checking and doctype declaration

Or How to Start The Revolution

So why do you do what you do? Odds are good, you would rather be doing something else. For example, maybe you are a web designer... but you work for that big company and would much rather freelance. Or perhaps you are a person fresh out of school and doing something completely unrelated to your field? Why? Because of debt. You have that big student loan to pay off. Or you need that suit for your next job promotion. Or you need that new car. Or you need this and that and blah blah blah...

This is the poverty trap. You may not feel impoverished. In fact, you probably aren't. But you aren't wealthy. You aren't starving, but you aren't doing great either. Well this is a problem. This is the big factor in your life that is really keeping you where you are. It's the factor that keeps you from getting too angry with the government. It's the factor that keeps you from quiting that job you hate. It's the factor that keeps everything the same day after day after day.

So fix it. I have methods. Methods you already know, but maybe you need someone to tell you again.

1) Don't buy clothes. You have clothes. Do not buy clothes when you don't need them. In fact, don't buy anything you don't need. If you have clothes that are in good condition don't buy a new outfit because it's cute. If you need clothes, get cheap clothes. Not saying go to wal-mart. I'm saying be picky. There are plenty of stores (and big companies are unfortunately the main source). And if you want those big name clothes, look for sales. Good sales. The ones where the clothes don't cost more than $15 an item. Le