Planet Linux Australia

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: Using Twitter stats to find where the bogans live.…

Sridhar Dhanapalan — 2013-05-21T06:28:49+00:00

Using Twitter stats to find where the bogans live. I wish they did this for Australia. venturebeat.com/2013/05/14/twi…

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: 26 Everyday Occurrences In Australia http://t.co/g…

Sridhar Dhanapalan — 2013-05-21T06:28:49+00:00

26 Everyday Occurrences In Australia buzzfeed.com/awesomer/total… via @BuzzFeed

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: 2300 year old Mayan pyramid demolished for road fi…

Sridhar Dhanapalan — 2013-05-21T06:28:49+00:00

2300 year old Mayan pyramid demolished for road fill abc.net.au/news/2013–05-1…

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: Using context to compare govt budgets http://t.co/…

Sridhar Dhanapalan — 2013-05-21T06:28:49+00:00

Using context to compare govt budgets abc.net.au/news/2013–05-0…

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: Strangely, this all seemed so normal back when I w…

Sridhar Dhanapalan — 2013-05-21T06:28:49+00:00

Strangely, this all seemed so normal back when I was a child. is.gd/H9OJnc

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: Stupid mistakes every start-up owner makes http://…

Sridhar Dhanapalan — 2013-05-21T06:28:49+00:00

Stupid mistakes every start-up owner makes is.gd/Mqoy9e

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: Microsoft reads your Skype Chat messages http://t.…

Sridhar Dhanapalan — 2013-05-21T06:28:49+00:00

Microsoft reads your Skype Chat messages is.gd/LpEwXI

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: Space Oddity, recorded by an astronaut on the Inte…

Sridhar Dhanapalan — 2013-05-21T06:28:49+00:00

Space Oddity, recorded by an astronaut on the International Space Station! youtu.be/KaOC9danxNo via @YouTube

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: The Do’s and Don’ts of Picking Technology for Scho…

Sridhar Dhanapalan — 2013-05-21T06:28:49+00:00

The Do’s and Don’ts of Picking Technology for Schools is.gd/BzkPPD

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: How learning to code helps to learn important life…

Sridhar Dhanapalan — 2013-05-21T06:28:49+00:00

How learning to code helps to learn important life skills edsurge.com/n/2013–05-08-l…

Russell Coker: Advice on Buying a PC

etbe — 2013-05-21T05:27:15+00:00

A common topic of discussion on computer users’ group mailing lists is advice on buying a PC. I think that most of the offered advice isn’t particularly useful with an excessive focus on building or upgrading PCs and on getting the latest and greatest. So I’ll blog about it instead of getting involved in more mailing-list debates.

A Historical Perspective – the PC as an Investment

In the late 80′s a reasonably high-end white-box PC cost a bit over $5,000 in Australia (or about $4,000 without a monitor). That was cheaper than name-brand PCs which cost upwards of $7,000 but was still a lot of money. $5,000 in 1988 would be comparable to $10,000 in today’s money. That made a PC a rather expensive item which needed to be preserved. There weren’t a lot of people who could just discard such an investment so a lot of thought was given to upgrading a PC.

Now a quite powerful desktop PC can be purchased for a bit under $400 (maybe $550 if you include a good monitor) and a nice laptop is about the same price as a desktop PC and monitor. Laptops are almost impossible to upgrade apart from adding more RAM or storage but hardly anyone cares because they are so cheap. Desktop PCs can be upgraded in some ways but most people don’t bother apart from RAM, storage, and sometimes a new video card.

If you have the skill required to successfully replace a CPU or motherboard then your time is probably worth enough that getting more value out of a PC that was worth $400 when new and is worth maybe $100 when it’s a couple of years old probably isn’t a good investment.

Times have changed and PCs just aren’t worth enough to be bothered upgrading. A PC is a disposable item not an investment.

Buying Something Expensive?

There are a range of things that you can buy. You can spend $200 on a second-hand PC that’s a couple of years old, $400 on a new PC that’s OK but not really fast, or you can spend $1000 or more on a very high end PC. The $1000 PC will probably perform poorly when compared to a PC that sells for $400 next year. The $400 PC will probably perform poorly when compared to the second-hand systems that are available next year.

If you spend more money to get a faster PC then you are only getting a faster PC for a year until newer cheaper systems enter the market.

As newer and better hardware is continually being released at low enough prices that make upgrades a bad deal I recommend just not buying expensive systems. For my own use I find that e-waste is a good source of hardware. If I couldn’t do that then I’d buy from an auction site that specialises in corporate sales, they have some nice name-brand systems in good condition at low prices.

One thing to note is that this is more difficult for Windows users due to “anti-piracy” features. With recent versions of Windows you can’t just put an old hard drive in a new PC and have it work. So the case for buying faster hardware is stronger for Windows than for Linux.

That said, $1,000 isn’t a lot of money. So spending more money for a high-end system isn’t necessarily a big deal. But we should keep in mind that it’s just a matter of getting a certain level of performance a year before it is available in cheaper systems. Getting a $1,000 high-end system instead of a $400 cheap system means getting that level of performance maybe a year earlier and therefore at a price premium of maybe $2 per day. I’m sure that most people spend more than $2 per day on more frivolous things than a faster PC.

Understanding How a Computer Works

As so many things are run by computers I believe that everyone should have some basic knowledge about how computers work. But a basic knowledge of computer architecture isn’t required when selecting parts to assemble to make a system, one can know all about selecting a CPU and motherboard to match without understanding what a CPU does (apart from a vague idea that it’s something to do with calculations). Also one can have a good knowledge of how computers work without knowing anything about the part numbers that could be assembled to make a working system.

If someone wants to learn about the various parts on sale then sites such as Tom’s Hardware [1] provide a lot of good information that allows people to learn without the risk of damaging expensive parts. In fact the people who work for Tom’s Hardware frequently test parts to destruction for the education and entertainment of readers.

But anyone who wants to understand computers would be better off spending their time using any old PC to read Wikipedia pages on the topic instead of spending their time and money assembling one PC. To learn about the basics of computer operation the Wikipedia page for “CPU” is a good place to start. Then the Wikipedia page for “hard drive” is a good start for learning about storage and the Wikipedia page for Graphics Processing Unit to learn about graphics processing. Anyone who reads those three pages as well as a selection of pages that they link to will learn a lot more than they could ever learn by assembling a PC. Of course there’s lots of other things to learn about computers but Wikipedia has pages for every topic you can imagine.

I think that the argument that people should assemble PCs to understand how they work was not well supported in 1990 and ceased to be accurate once Wikipedia became popular and well populated.

Getting a Quality System

There are a lot of arguments about quality and reliability, most without any supporting data. I believe that a system designed and manufactured by a company such as HP, Lenovo, NEC, Dell, etc is likely to be more reliable than a collection of parts uniquely assembled by a home user – but I admit to a lack of data to support this belief.

One thing that is clear however is the fact that ECC RAM can make a significant difference to system reliability as many types of error (including power problems) show up as corrupted memory. The cheapest Dell PowerEdge server (which has ECC RAM) is advertised at $699 so it’s not a feature that’s out of reach of regular users.

I think that anyone who makes claims about PC reliability and fails to mention the benefits of ECC RAM (as used in Dell PowerEdge tower systems, Dell Precision workstations, and HP XW workstations among others) hasn’t properly considered their advice.

Also when discussing overall reliability the use of RAID storage and a good backup scheme should be considered. Good backups can do more to save your data than anything else.

Conclusion

I think it’s best to use a system with ECC RAM as a file server. Make good backups. Use ZFS (in future BTRFS) for file storage so that data doesn’t get corrupted on disk. Use reasonably cheap systems as workstations and replace them when they become too old.

Update: I find it rather ironic when a discussion about advice on buying a PC gets significant input from people who are well paid for computer work. It doesn’t take long for such a discussion to take enough time that the people involved could spent their time working instead, put enough money in a hat to buy a new PC for the user in question, and still had money left over.

[1] http://www.tomshardware.com/

Steven Hanley: [mtb] Another ride to Kosciuszko (almost)

2013-05-21T02:26:39+00:00

Open Alpine Spaces (fullsize)

I have not been putting photos and links up on my diary from rides and stuff happening in the past year or so much. I really should get back on to doing that. It has made it hard to find the reports when I want to find them.

A group of us planned to try the ride to Kosci in two days again, like we tried in 2010. We had a bit of a route change this time and a larger group of riders.

With two groups of riders and a bit of route confusion at some points we got through the first day pretty well and relaxed into the overnight camp at 3 mile dam again. Day 2 was likely to be harder but more straight forward. We made it through almost to Guthega but ran out of time to ride up to Charlotte Pass and on to Rawsons for the walk to the summit.

The ride is spectacular and has reminded me I should get up to the snow on XC skis again for some more time in the mountains in winter in these areas. I also think if I try this ride again I will ride a bike with gears, the single speed was somewhat challenging often.

Photos and more words here.

James Purser: Throsby - a quick catchup

James Purser — 2013-05-20T13:25:57+00:00

Last time I blogged I spoke about the current stoush occuring in my Federal seat of Throsby between the left and right factions of the Labor party over who was going to be the next Labor candidate (and most likely member).

Well, the final showdown is going to happen on the 15th of June, with the current encumbent Stephen Jones going up against the contender and son of a former state mp, John Rumble.

Now sticking with Throsby politics, I've been thinking about doing something podcasty for the local election. The basic plan is sit down with every candidate and spend 20 - 30 minutes getting to know them, their personal motivations for running, how the policies they're running with will help Throsby etc, etc.

What do you think?

Blog Catagories:

Politics

illawarra

throsby

Lindsay Holmwood: How we do Kanban

2013-05-20T10:18:29+00:00

At my day job, I run a distributed team of infrastructure coders spread across Australia + one in Vietnam. Our team is called the Software team, but we're more analogous to a product focused Research & Development team.

Other teams at Bulletproof are a mix of office and remote workers, but our team is a little unique in that we're fully distributed. We do daily standups using Google Hangouts, and try to do face to face meetups every few months at Bulletproof's offices in Sydney.

Intra-team communication is something we're good at, but I've been putting a lot of effort lately into improving how our team communicates with others in the business.

This is a post I wrote on our internal company blog explaining how we schedule work, and why we work this way.

What on earth is this?

This is a Kanban board.

A Kanban board is a tool for implementing Kanban. Kanban is a scheduling system developed at Toyota in the 70's as part of the broader Toyota Production System.

Applied to software development, the top three things Kanban aims to achieve are:

Visualise the flow of work
Limit the Work-In-Progress (WIP)
Manage and optimise the flow of work

How does Kanban work for the Software team?

In practical terms, work tends to be tracked in:

RT tickets, as created using the standard request process, or escalated from other teams
GitHub issues, for product improvements, and work discovered while doing other work
Ad-hoc requests, through informal communication channels (IM, email)

Because Software deals with requests from many audiences, we use a Kanban board to visualise work from request to completion across all these systems.

Managing flow

As of writing, we have 5 stages a task progresses through:

To Do - tasks triaged, and scheduled to be worked on next
Doing - tasks being worked on right now
Deployable - completed tasks that need to be released to production in the near future (generally during change windows)
Done - completed tasks

That's only 4 - there is another stage called the Icebox. This is for tasks we're aware of, but haven't been triaged and aren't scheduled to be worked on yet.

Done tasks are cleaned out once a week on Mondays, after the morning standup.

Triage is the process of taking a request and:

Determining the business priority
Breaking it up into smaller tasks
(Tentatively) allocating it to someone
Classifying the type of work (Internal, Customer, BAU)
Estimating a task completion time

We use the board exclusively to visualise the tasks - we don't communicate with the stakeholder through the board.

Each task has a pointer to the system the request originated from:

…and a little bit of metadata about the overall progress.

Communication with the stakeholder is done through the RT ticket / GitHub issue / email.

Limiting WIP

The WIP Limit is an artificial limit on the number of tasks the whole team can work on simultaneously. We currently calculate the WIP as:

(Number of people in Software) x 2

The goal here is to ensure no one person is ever working on more than 2 tasks at once.

I can hear you thinking "That's crazy and will never work for me! I'm always dealing with multiple requests simultaneously".

The key to making the WIP Limit work is that tasks are never pushed through the system - they are pulled by the people doing the work. Once you finish your current task, you pull across the next highest priority task from the To Do column.

The WIP Limit is particularly useful when coupled with visualising flow because:

If people need to work on more than 2 things at once, it's indicative of a bigger scheduling contention problem that needs to be solved. We are likely context switching rapidly, which rapidly reduces our delivery throughput.
If the team is constantly working at the WIP limit, we need more people. We always aim to have at least 20% slack in the system to deal with ad-hoc tasks that bubble up throughout the day. If we're operating at 100% capacity, we have no room to breathe, and this severely reduces our operational effectiveness.

Visualising flow

Work makes it way from left to right across the board.

This is valuable for communicating to people where their requests sit in the overall queue of work, but also in identifying bottlenecks where work isn't getting completed.

The Kanban tool we use colour codes tasks based on how long they have been sitting in the same column:

This is vital for identifying work that people are blocking on completing, and tends to be indicative of one of two things:

Work that is too large and needs to be broken down into smaller tasks
Work that is more complex or challenging than originally anticipated

The latter is an interesting case, because it may require pulling people off other work to help the person assigned that task push through and complete that work.

Normally as a manager this isn't easy to discover unless you are regularly polling your people about their progress, but that behaviour is incredibly annoying to be on the receiving end of.

The board is updated in real time as people in the team do work, which means as a manager I can get out of their way and let them Get Shit Done while having a passive visual indicator of any blockers in the system.

Arjen Lentz: Open Letter to Origin Energy (Gas)

Arjen Lentz — 2013-05-20T03:25:14+00:00

Dear Christina Wilson (Executive Customer Sales and Operations) at Origin Energy

No I will not (re)connect natural gas at my premises. You appear to be (corporately) forgetful.

Only last year I cancelled the gas supply, as it has become everything but natural. As you yourself stated to me, it’s now all Coal Seam Gas (CSG). I don’t think CSG is a smart idea and thus I want no part of that.

Your additional offer to “offset” the resulting CO2 emissions don’t even touch the root problem.

In reciprocation of your looking forward to welcome me, I look forward to the day when you actually listen to your customers rather than just ignoring their feedback and then continuing to send them mail trying plug your products – particularly products they’ve explicitly cancelled. Take it from a business owner: that looks bad.

P.S. I’d write to you in a more direct manner, but even though you sign your letters by name, you don’t actually supply an email address or specific postal address either in your letter or on your website. Phone appears to be the only way to communicate with Origin, but a 1300 number will only connect me to a generic callcentre person, won’t it… not very useful at all.

No related posts

Craige McWhirter: TasLUG State-Wide Meetup in Ross

2013-05-19T14:28:36+00:00

Today was the second ever state-wide meetup of the Tasmanian Linux Users Group. Historic Ross put on another beautiful Autumn's day to greet us as the dozen of us filed into Ross Town Hall for some freedom loving goodness :-D

Here's some of the notes I took on the highlights:

Chris Neugebauer opened the day with some piano improvisation.
Gary demonstrated:
- Using augemented reality spary can graffiti apps with students in St Helens
- SuperTuxKart with modified textures to include sponsors logos for a youth week supertuxcart game arcade console
Josh Bush demonstrated:
- FLAT which he wrote last year in the 7 day programming comp. An ice-skating first person shooter, available on GIT hub under GPL.
- A flashy new Tux logo which may be pilfered for the LCA2015 bid.
- A CMS he wrote, Para CMS which processes plain text files into HTML.
- Some new Neverball updates (and announced an Android version is coming!)
- Other game art he was working on (I missed that start of that)

Scott Bragg demonstrated:
- Some of his Raspberry PI environmental monitoring / control systems
- His qube-sat project which is going into orbit later this year.
Tim Serong and Morgan showed off their awesome home made book scanner
Henry covered off his Gnucash usage
Josh covered twolofbees usage of the GIMP and inkscape to produce art
I demonstrated my use of http://xbmc.org/XBMC, http://gcompris.net/-en-GCompris and http://ikiwiki.info/ikiwiki
Tim Serong gave his "WTF is OpenStack?" talk

It's only a few bullet points but the day was choc-full of interesting insights into what interesting projects others in Tasmania are using Free Software for.

Thanks every one!

Craige McWhirter: Sixty Tea-Trees of Preparation

2013-05-19T14:28:36+00:00

Picked up 60 endemic trees from Huon Farm Trees yesterday and slotted the following in the ground today:

15 Woolly Tea-Trees (Leptospermum lanigerum) that's all of them too
- 6 at the entrance, making it a total of 14 out there now
- 9 along the driveway, taking that total to about 30 along the drive
12 Scented Paper-bark (Melalueca Squarrosa)
- Planted in a north-south hedge two metres apart on the east side of the dam. Only 33 to go :-)

Craige McWhirter: Hamish vs Spicks and Specks

2013-05-19T14:28:36+00:00

Earlier this evening we were watching Spicks and Specks after dinner, as is our want. When the Substitute game was on, Hamish supplied the answer:

"It's the theme from Nemo!"

Kristina disgreed but sure enough, the answer was the closing theme to Nemo, Beyond the Sea. Well done little man.

Craige McWhirter: Hamish's First Day at AusKick

2013-05-19T14:28:36+00:00

Tonight was Hamish's first day of AusKick with Kermandie (Robins). He had an absolute ball. Here he is before training:

Needless to say he was stoked with his AusKick swag and is looking forward to next week.

Ben Martin: Some amateur electronics: hand made 8x8 LED matrix

monkeyiq — 2013-05-19T11:59:00+00:00

So I made an 8x8 matrix of LEDs in a common cathode arrangement. Only one column is ever on at any time, but they cycle from left to right so quick that you and your camera can't get to see that little artefact. This does save on power though so the whole layer can be run directly from the arduino LeoStick in the top right of picture. Thanks again to Freetronics for giving those little gems away at LCA!

8x8 LED matrix, two 595 shifties and a ULN2003 current sink from Ben Martin on Vimeo.

The LEDs to light on a row are selected by a 595 shift register providing power for each row. The resistors are on the far right of the grid leading to that shift register. The cathodes for each individual column are connected together leading to the top of the grid (as seen in the video). Those head over to a uln2003 current sink IC. In the future I'll use either two 2003 chips or one single 2803 (which can do all 8 columns at once) to get the first column to light up too.

The uln2003 is itself controlled by supplying power to the opposite side to select which column's cathodes will be grounded at any given moment. The control of the uln2003 is also done by a 595 shift register which is connected to the row shifty too. The joy of all this is you can pump in the new state and latch the shift registers at once to apply the new row pattern and select which column is lit.

The joy of this design is that I can add 8x8 layers on top at the cost of 8 resistors and one 595 to perform row select.

There are also some still images of the array if you're peaked.

The 595 chips can be had for around 40c a pop and the uln2003 for about 30c. LEDs in quantity 500+ go at around 5-7c a pop.

The code is fairly unimaginative, mainly to see how well the column select works and how detectable it is. In the future I should setup a "framebuffer" to run the show and have a timer refresh the array automatically...

#define DATA   6

#define LATCH 8

#define CLOCK 10 // digital 10 to pin 11 on the 74HC595

void setup()

{

pinMode(LATCH, OUTPUT);

pinMode(CLOCK, OUTPUT);

pinMode(DATA, OUTPUT);

}

void loop()

{

int i;

for ( i = 0; i < 256; i++ )

{

    int col = 1;

    for( col = 1; col < 256; col <<= 1 )

    {

      digitalWrite(LATCH, LOW);

      shiftOut(DATA, CLOCK, MSBFIRST, col );

      shiftOut(DATA, CLOCK, MSBFIRST, i   );

      digitalWrite(LATCH, HIGH);

    }

    delay(20);

}

}

Stewart Smith: New libeatmydata release

Stewart Smith — 2013-05-18T09:27:16+00:00

Good news everyone! There’s a new libeatmydata release! I’ve put a source tarball up on the launchpad page: release-79.

This version packs:

RPM and debian packaging in tree
A bug fix so that O_SYNC and O_DSYNC are properly discarded on 32bit machines both with and without _FILE_OFFSET_BITS being set.

I’d love to hear any feedback and receive any patches (hopefully things still work well on MacOS X and Solaris). So far, libeatmydata has had contributions from the following people, and many thanks to them:

Stewart Smith
Alexey Bychko
Blair Zajac
Phillip Susi
Modestas Vainius
Monty Taylor
Olly Betts
Pavel Pushkarev
Elliot Murphy
Eric Wong
Tamas TEVESZ
Joachim Berdal Haga
Mohsen Hariri

Francois Marier: Three wrappers to run commands without impacting the rest of the system

2013-05-18T06:30:22+00:00

Most UNIX users have heard of the nice utility used to run a command with a lower priority to make sure that it only runs when nothing more important is trying to get a hold of the CPU:

nice long_running_script.sh

That's only dealing with part of the problem though because the CPU is not all there is. A low priority command could still be interfering with other tasks by stealing valuable I/O cycles (e.g. accessing the hard drive).

Prioritizing I/O

Another Linux command, ionice, allows users to set the I/O priority to be lower than all other processes.

Here's how to make sure that a script doesn't get to do any I/O unless the resource it wants to use is idle:

sudo ionice -c3 hammer_disk.sh

The above only works as root, but the following is a pretty good approximation that works for non-root users as well:

ionice -n7 hammer_disk.sh

You may think that running a command with both nice and ionice would have absolutely no impact on other tasks running on the same machine, but there is one more aspect to consider, at least on machines with limited memory: the disk cache.

Polluting the disk cache

If you run a command (for example a program that goes through the entire file system checking various things, you will find that the kernel will start pulling more files into its cache and expunge cache entries used by other processes. This can have a very significant impact on a system as useful portions of memory are swapped out.

For example, on my laptop, the nightly debsums, rkhunter and tiger cron jobs essentially clear my disk cache of useful entries and force the system to slowly page everything back into memory as I unlock my screen saver in the morning.

Thankfully, there is now a solution for this in Debian: the nocache package.

This is what my long-running cron jobs now look like:

nocache ionice -c3 nice long_running.sh

Turning off disk syncs

Another relatively unknown tool, which I would certainly not recommend for all cron jobs but is nevertheless related to I/O, is eatmydata.

If you wrap it around a command, it will run without bothering to periodically make sure that it flushes any changes to disk. This can speed things up significantly but it should obviously not be used for anything that has important side effects or that cannot be re-run in case of failure.

After all, its name is very appropriate. It will eat your data!

TasLUG: Launceston May Meeting

2013-05-17T08:25:55+00:00

G'day all

This month, forum user Attitude will be giving another talk this month, this time looking at comparisons of DEs in a talk titled Objectively Choosing A Desktop Manager.

2:00pm

Saturday 25th May

Royal Oak

Launceston

As usual, some of us will be meeting for lunch beforehand at 1:00pm.

Hope to see you there!

Google Maps Link

-----

Next Hobart meeting: 6:00pm June 20th (All Your Computers Are Belong to Ansible)

Following Launceston meeting: 2:00pm June 29th (Topic TBC)

Russell Coker: Voltage Inside a Car

etbe — 2013-05-17T03:27:27+00:00

I previously wrote a post with some calculations about the power supplied to laptops from a car battery [1]. A comment on the post suggested that I might have made a mistake in testing the Voltage because leaving the door open (and thus the internal lights on) will cause a Voltage drop.

So I’ve done some more tests:

Test	Voltage
battery terminals	12.69
front power socket with doors closed	12.64
front power socket with doors open OR ignition switch on	12.37
cigarette lighter socket with ignition switch on	12.32
front power socket with doors closed and headlights on	11.96
front power socket with engine running	14.38
front power socket with engine running and headlights on	14.29

In my previous tests I recorded 12.85V inside my car (from the front power socket which although having the same connector as a cigarette lighter isn’t designed for lighting cigarettes) and 13.02V from the battery terminals – a 0.17V difference. In my tests today I was unable to reproduce that but I think that my biggest mistake was to take the reading too quickly. Today I noticed that it took up to a minute for the Voltage to stabilise after opening a door (the Voltage dips after any current draw and takes time to recover) so a quick reading isn’t going to be accurate.

My car is a Kia Carnival which has two sockets in the front for power and for actually lighting cigarettes. The one for lighting cigarettes has a slightly lower Voltage and only works when the ignition is turned on. The car also has a power socket in the boot (the trunk for US readers) which delivers the same Voltage as the power socket in the front.

Also one thing to note is that today is a reasonably cold day (16.5C outside right now) and my car hasn’t been driven since last night so the battery would be quite cold (maybe 12C or less). My previous measurements were taken in summer so the battery would have been a lot warmer and therefore working more effectively.

Conclusion

The Voltage drop from turning on the internal lights surprised me, I had expected that a car battery which is designed to supply high current wouldn’t be affected by such things. Certainly not to give a 2% Voltage drop! The Voltage difference from reading inside the car and at the battery terminals might be partly due to the apparent lead coating on the terminals, I pushed the probes of my multimeter beneath the surface of the metal and got a really good connection.

The 14% Voltage increase when the engine was running was also a surprise. It seems to me that if you are running a power hungry device (such as a laptop) it would be a good idea to disconnect it when the engine is turned off. A 14% higher voltage will give a 14% lower current if the PSU is efficient and therefore less problems with heat in the wiring and less risk of blowing a fuse.

Also it’s a good idea to be more methodical about performing tests than I was before my last post. There are lots of other tests I could run (such as testing after the engine has been running for a while) but at the moment I don’t have enough interest in this topic to do more tests. Please leave a comment if there’s something interesting that you think I missed.

[1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2013/01/24/power-supplies-wires/

Russell Coker: Effective Conference Calls

etbe — 2013-05-17T02:27:09+00:00

I’ve been part of many conference calls for work and found them seriously lacking. Firstly there’s a lack of control over the call, so when someone does something stupid like putting an unmuted phone handset near a noise source there’s no way to discover who did it and disconnect them.

Another problem is that of noise on the line when some people don’t mute their phones, which is related to the lack of control as it’s impossible to determine who isn’t muting their phone.

Possibly the biggest problem is how to determine who gets to speak next. When group discussions take place in person non-verbal methods are used to determine who gets to speak next. With a regular phone call (two people) something like the CSMACD algorithm for network packets works well. But when there are 8+ people involved it becomes time consuming to resolve issues of who speaks next even when there are no debates. This is more difficult for multinational calls which can have a signal round trip time of 700ms or more.

I think that we need a VOIP based conference call system for smart phones to manage this. I think that an ideal system would be based on the push to talk concept with software control that only allows one phone to transmit at a time. If someone else is speaking and you want to say something then you would push a button to indicate your desire but your microphone wouldn’t go live while the other person was speaking. The person speaking would be notified of your request and one of the following things would happen:

You are added to the queue of people wishing to speak. When the other person finished speaking the next person in the queue gets a turn.
You are added to the queue and the moderator of the call chooses who gets to speak next. This isn’t what I’d prefer but would probably be desired by managers for corporate calls.
You get to interrupt the person who’s speaking. This may not be ideal but is similar to what currently happens.

Did I miss any obvious ways for the system to react to a talk request?

Is there any free software to do something like this? A quick search of the Google Play store didn’t find anything that seems to match.

Glen Turner: Planet-wide apology

2013-05-16T23:33:01+00:00

I've migrated my blog to LiveJournal. Unfortunately when I manually copied over my old postings I didn't notice the "Do not add to friends page and RSS" tickbox. Becuase LJ uses the date of actual posting, rather than the date set in the posting, in the RSS feed, I've spammed all the planet aggregators with old blog postings. My apologies for that. I've contacted the administrators.

Jeremy Visser: OpenWrt 12.09 (Attitude Adjustment) on Ubiquiti UniFi

Jeremy — 2013-05-16T11:45:50+00:00

Today I had the need to install OpenWrt on a Ubiquiti UniFi device. What I thought was going to be an easy process was unfortunately very painful due to bug 10597 in OpenWrt, which has gone unfixed for months.

The problem is that OpenWrt have the “magic” ID of “XM” identifying all the Ubiquiti firmware images, suitable for Nano M devices. UniFi devices, however, use the “BZ” magic. So the UniFi build of OpenWrt will not actually work on a stock UniFi device.

The fix is very simple — download the OpenWrt image builder, edit the target/linux/ar71xx/image/Makefile file, and change the line

$(eval $(call SingleProfile,UBNTXM,$(fs_64k),UBNTUNIFI,ubnt-unifi,UBNT-UF,ttyS0,115200,XM,XM,ar7240))

to instead be

$(eval $(call SingleProfile,UBNTXM,$(fs_64k),UBNTUNIFI,ubnt-unifi,UBNT-UF,ttyS0,115200,XM,BZ,ar7240))

and then run make image PROFILE=UBNTUNIFI to build the image. I flashed the resulting image (openwrt-ar71xx-generic-ubnt-unifi-squashfs-factory.bin) onto my UniFi by first scp’ing it over, and then typing “fwupdate.real -m /tmp/openwrt-ar71xx-generic-ubnt-unifi-squashfs-factory.bin -d“.

For those who don’t want to go through the process, especially if you are getting an error like “Invalid version ‘XM.ar7240.v6.0.0-OpenWrt-r36088′”, I have uploaded pre-made images to my site.

It’s the same stock 12.09 build with those two magic bytes tweaked so it actually works on the UniFi.

Jon Oxer: Walktime Blog #32: MendelMax v2 unboxing, part 1

2013-05-16T01:27:59+00:00

The first half of my Mendel Max v2 3D printer just arrived. Let's take a look at what comes in the electronics package.

View or comment directly on YouTube: http://youtu.be/uD4on9Mei4s

Danielle Madeley: calling Melbourne Python and Perl programmers

Danielle — 2013-05-16T01:26:47+00:00

For the last couple of months I’ve been working for Infoxchange, a not-for-profit that provides technology to other not for profit. I’ve been working in the webapp development team, where we mostly work on webapps in the health and community sector using both Perl (for the older stuff) and Python/Django (for the newer stuff).

The government didn’t really work out for me, so this is a nice change. It’s relaxed, people wear jeans to work. We have fair trade tea and coffee and a delivery of CSA fruit every week.

It is busy though. We’ve got a lot going on, and not enough people to do it, so we’re looking for more. So if you’re a committed, talented Perl, Python or Web/Javascript programmer or devops who is in (or willing to move to) Melbourne, who wants to make a difference, you should get in touch with me. The pay is good (you will not be working for peanuts) and the team is fun.

We love open source, we contribute upstream, we have an organisation Github account. You can run what you want on your desktop. Developers have technical ownership over their work. Development is Agile.

Some technologies we love are Perl, Mojolicious, Python, Django, Javascript, jQuery, Bootstrap, Less, NodeJS, AngularJS, Github, Puppet, Debian and PostgreSQL. If you love any of those too, you should totally get in touch. If you love more technologies, bring those along too.

Arjen Lentz: 6 ‘Harmless’ Fads That Caused Widespread Destruction

Arjen Lentz — 2013-05-16T00:25:14+00:00

http://www.cracked.com/article_20411_6-harmless-fads-that-caused-widespread-destruction.html/

It turns out some fads have poisoned thousands, started wars, and enslaved entire nations, all for the sake of some dumbass thing people wanted to ride, wear, or eat.

No related posts

Lindsay Holmwood: Escalating Complexity

2013-05-15T13:12:45+00:00

Back in 2009 when I was backpacking around Europe I remember waking up on the morning of June 1 and reading about how an Air France flight had disappeared somewhere over the Atlantic.

The lack of information on what happened to the flight intrigued me, and given the traveling I was doing, I was left wondering "what if I was on that plane?"

Keeping an ear out for updates, in December 2011 I stumbled upon the Popular Mechanics article describing the final moments of the flight. I was left fascinated by how a technical system so advanced could fail so horribly, apparently because of the faulty meatware operating it.

Around the same time I began reading the works of Sidney Dekker. I was left in a state of cognitive dissonance, trying to reconcile the mainstream explanation of what happened in the final moments of AF447 (the pilots were poorly trained, inexperienced, and simply incompetent) with the New View that the operators were merely locally rational actors within a complex system, and that "root cause is simply the place you stop looking further" - with that cause far too commonly attributed to humans.

I decided to do my own research, which resulted in me producing a talk that has received the strongest reaction of any talk I've ever given.

On June 1, 2009 Air France 447 crashed into the Atlantic ocean killing all 228 passengers and crew. The 15 minutes leading up to the impact were a terrifying demonstration of the how thick the fog of war is in complex systems.

Mainstream reports of the incident put the blame on the pilots - a common motif in incident reports that conveniently ignore a simple fact: people were just actors within a complex system, doing their best based on the information at hand.

While the systems you build and operate likely don't control the fate of people's lives, they share many of the same complexity characteristics. Dev and Ops can learn an abundance from how the feedback loops between these aviation systems are designed and how these systems are operated.

In this talk Lindsay will cover what happened on the flight, why the mainstream explanation doesn't add up, how design assumptions can impact people's ability to respond to rapidly developing situations, and how to improve your operational effectiveness when dealing with rapidly developing failure scenarios.

The subject matter is heavy, and I while it's something I'm passionate about, it was an emotionally taxing talk to prepare, and a talk that angers me when presenting.

Time to let it sit and rest.

Binh Nguyen: Syrian Options

Binh Nguyen — 2013-05-15T13:09:00+00:00

The Syrian uprising has ballooned into a catasrophe on many levels after several years of fighting and it shows no signs of abating. Let's explore some of the options available to us:

- attempt to negotiate a ceasefire. It's clear that this is unlikely to hold though. It also feels as though a lot of previous attempts have been disengenuous or have been used to stall, seeking better terms, etc... Believe that only if there is greater force applied will be hold (more on this later).

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/05/14/syria-wants-details-about-us-russian-initiative-before-deciding-whether-to/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/world/middleeast/syria-developments.html?_r=0

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2013/05/15/Is-it-a-peace-or-war-plan-for-Syria-.html

http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Syria/FinalCommuniqueActionGroupforSyria.pdf

- increased support for the rebellion. It's not entirely clear just what exactly we're supporting here (if concerned about longer term spread of weapons from conflict develop/consider stronger but limited lifetime weapons). It was previously a peaceful uprising but it has since turned into violence with the problem excerbated by foreign combantants and groups who share links with terrorist groups and have other interests besides that of the Syrian people. Violations and various atrocities (from both sides) need to be dealt with as well.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/syria-oppn-condemns-heart-eating-video/story-fn3dxix6-1226642510509 http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/14/18244907-sheer-savagery-syrian-rebel-rips-out-soldiers-heart-human-rights-watch-says?lite

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/May-15/217157-syria-rebels-vow-to-punish-those-committing-atrocities.ashx

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/28/syrian-nerve-gas-claims-eyewitness

http://original.antiwar.com/srichman/2013/05/14/no-intervention-in-syria/

- direct and full intervention/invasion. We've seen Iraq/Afghanistan weren't clear cut and this one is probably going to be just as difficult if more so (how could we possibly make it any worse than it currently is?). It's also becoming clear that surrounding countries are already getting dragged in with regards to both the humantarian problem as well as the conflict itself with many of them being used as launchpads or support for military action in Syria itself. Invasion should be considered an option but only if all other options have been exhausted and have been proven to be unworthwhile.http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/05/15/turkey-hopes-to-convince-us-to-act-in-syria

- de-militarise the conflict. This means that no more (ANY) weapons whether are to be supplied to either side whether that means re-supply, fulfilling existing contracts, etc...

http://world.time.com/2013/05/14/putin-netanyahu-meet-to-discuss-syria/

Hopefully, this will also make both sides more amenable to genuine peace talks (clearly, will not work if one side continues to arm though).

- direct but limited intervention. One option that I've been considering is destroying all air-fields/military bases/large clusters of heavy weapons/artillery/munitions and so on, shutting down all borders inbound to Syria (not easy). This will result in a stalemate situation (especially if the neither side are continued to be supplied with weapons).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/13/six-ways-assad-has-turned-the-tide-in-syria/

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/30/179855633/c-j-chivers-on-the-ground-in-syria

Hopefully, this will also make both sides more amenable to genuine peace talks (clearly, will not work if one side continues to arm though). Another option that has been widely considered is targeted, direct action against regime leadership. There will of course be repercussions should this avenue be pursued...

- a pure peace keeping intervention? Long range strikes (as outlined in previous point) combined with an international, armed peace keeping ground force (rules of engagement mean that they their primary job will be to defend non combatants, themselves, and finally to maintain peace)? Peace keeping force must have clear agenda and provide prior warning. If there is any untoward activity they have a go ahead to use force to stop it whether that pertains to rebel or regime activity. It can not be stressed enough that this peace keeping force is not about joining in the conflict. It is about stopping it and getting back to normality as quickly as possible. Obvious problem is whether or not the fighting will simply start up again the minute the peace keeping force leaves?

- let them continue to fight it out until it's conclusion. Cynical but it also means that one side is likely to be a more complete victor which may result in a more stable long term situation.

- offer the current regime safe passage out. Unlikely to be accepted given some of the messages that have been sent out.

- don't bother trying to implement a ceasefire prior to creating a transition plan or running an election? If both sides can just maintain peace on their side of the conflict (clear lines of demarcation and buffer zones so that we can minimise break outs of fighting) while elections (obvious problems here especially vote those relating to 'tampering') are running perhaps we can figure out just exactly what the Syrian people actually want (this will also mean that we can disavow everyone of all possible doubt over what the desire of the actual Syrian population is). Who's in charge of running election? A combination of existing regime/rebels/neighbours with international observers? How can you when so many people are displaced (people in refugee camps in particular)? Require identification for them to participate while existing people can simply show up at polling booths. How much will displaced people skew the results of any potential election. Obvious questions are, whether they want existing regime or rebels to succeed? What should be the timeline going forward? How is normal life going to be restored? etc...

- break up of the country should be considered if it means a cessation of hostilities in spite of warnings.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/14/303424/iran-warns-against-syria-disintegration/

- half baked measures so far have proven unlikely to turn the tide. If there is intervention (in any form whether diplomatic, military, etc...) there must be far greater force behind it to simply get it over and done with so that everyone can get on with their lives.

- don't go into talks with any pre-conditions. Push hard but give peace a genuine chance. Not sure how some people can be so optimistic that UN June 12 plan has a genuine chance given the fact that the conflict has continued unabated and esclated for several years (I've said before and I'll say it again defense, intelligence, and defense should work together and only be pressing harder will be able to force a cessation of hostilities.).

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/analysis/2013/05/14/Arabs-Turkey-see-no-role-for-Assad-in-future-Syria-.html

http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Syria/FinalCommuniqueActionGroupforSyria.pdf

- provide flares and other camouflage options because it's clear that most of the weapons involved are fairly simple/non-guidance based. Likelihood that they will resort to carpet/cluster bombing even though they are already using makeshift weapons?

Key questions/issues:

- can you honestly say that Assad is fit and do the Syrian people want him to lead Syria?

- if there is intervention and there is a power vacuum is this worse than what would occur if we didn't intervene?

- the style/size of the intervention. Direct, continued covert, etc...

- even if we aren't directly involved what are the indirect impacts of continued conflict in Syria?

- will any leadership be better/worse than the previous one?

- what other moves are other stakeholders likely to make should further direct/indirect action occur?

- even if there is a transition is it going to be representative and will it hold?

http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/17146065/france-sees-snags-in-plans-for-syria-peace-talks/

http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/82916-france-warns-syria-conference-will-be-very-difficult

http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-cameron-hold-syria-war-summit-in-washington-more-weapons-for-al-qaeda/5334993

- if there is intervention does the International community support or lead?

- are current peace talk offers genuine?

- limited public support/appetite for intervention.

- the longer the fight goes on the more desperate people have become. Concern is that either solution breaks down because new leadership may be just as bad or worse than previously or else it breaks down simply because they aren't strong enough to deal with the issues that continue to stem from this conflict.

- is this a situation that needs to be 'managed' because it can't be fixed completely in future without long term commitment?

- something which needs to be kept in mind is that many International bodies need reform or are simply losing their relevance. I think that the after several recent incidents the United Nations is beginning to fall into this category as well. In which case, I think the question we should all be asking ourselves is whether some the power plays that are occurring are really worth it. At some point this isn't a question of interests, it's a question of humanity. It's a question of being able to distinguish between right and wrong, between human and primitive animal. If the United Nations doesn't give us the ability to do what is required, what is right in order to end this situation then the International community must surely see fit to either change the existing frameworks stopping us from doing so or find a way of working around them.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/05/13/jonathan-kay-forget-red-lines-for-assad-its-time-to-start-saving-innocent-syrian-civilians/

http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Syria/FinalCommuniqueActionGroupforSyria.pdf

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/assembly-expected-approve-syria-resolution-19181298

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/05/14/learning-the-wrong-lessons-from-israels-intervention-in-syria/

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/no-fly-zone-is-best-of-bad-options-for-syria-1.1393250

http://www.news.com.au/world-news/australian-aid-may-be-propping-up-syrian-regime/story-fndir2ev-1226642141799

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/05/15/world/syria-forum-prompts-guarded-optimism/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/13/syria-post-superpower-era-obama-indecision

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/assad-forces-gaining-ground-in-syria/2013/05/11/79147c34-b99c-11e2-b568-6917f6ac6d9d_story.html

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2013-05/14/c_132379592.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/opinion/ill-considered-advice-on-syria.html?_r=0

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iraq-history-at-bush-center-shows-need-for-caution-on-syria/2013/04/29/ea124816-ae80-11e2-98ef-d1072ed3cc27_story.html

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/jan-june13/syria2_04-29.html

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/05/syria-weapons-2/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-cameron-hold-syria-war-summit-in-washington-more-weapons-for-al-qaeda/5334993

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/world/middleeast/syria-developments.html?_r=0

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/349997/putin-netanyahu-set-for-talks-on-syria

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/russia-plays-the-missile-card/article4712306.ece

BlueHackers: Autism/Aspergers and Online Learning

Arjen Lentz — 2013-05-15T12:20:06+00:00

A resource link you may find useful:

http://www.onlineeducation.net/2013/04/05/autism-and-online-learning-a-guide-for-teachers

Online learning environments present an opportunity to better serve autistic students that teachers can learn to use effectively.

TasLUG: TasLUG May Meeting - Hobart

2013-05-15T11:26:08+00:00

I was abducted by the Resistance recently and forced to perform some interstate missions. As a result this month's Hobart meeting announcement is a little late:

When: Thursday, May 16th, 18:00 for an 18:30 start

Where: 69 Liverpool St, Hobart. (Map)

Agenda:

18:00 - early mingle, chin wagging, etc
18:30 - Question and answer session, plus any lightening talks
19:00 - I Like Your Old Window Manager Better Than Your New One

Byobu: Scott Bragg

Byobu is a GPLv3 open source text-based window manager and terminal multiplexer. It was originally designed to provide elegant enhancements to the otherwise functional, plain, practical GNU Screen, for the Ubuntu server distribution. Byobu now includes an enhanced profiles, convenient keybindings, configuration utilities, and toggle-able system status notifications for both the GNU Screen window manager and the more modern Tmux terminal multiplexer, and works on most Linux, BSD, and Mac distributions.

Enlightenment 0.17: Craige McWhirter

Enlightenment is not just a window manager for Linux/X11 and others, but also a whole suite of libraries to help you create beautiful user interfaces with much less work than doing it the old fashioned way and fighting with traditional toolkits, not to mention a traditional window manager. It covers uses from small mobile devices like phones (like Samsung's Android competitor, Bada) all the way to powerful multi-core desktops (which are the primary development environment).

Others: You?

Whilst there's no other planned speakers, everyones got an opinion (Unity? GNOME3?) so I think there's plenty of meat for other discussion.
20:00 - Meeting end. Many people go to the Brunswick for dinner.

May:

25th - Launceston meeting

June:

20th - Julius Roberts: All Your Computers Are Belong to Ansible

22nd - Launceston meeting

July:

5-7th - PyCon Australia, hosted in Hobart.

18th - 18th - WE NEED A TALK REQUEST OR OFFER

Arjen Lentz: Tillon’s Journey to Jaédeen – Part 1

Max — 2013-05-15T07:25:10+00:00

Voltaic was a nice place, but Tillon preferred Jaédeen, his birthplace. He missed the gardens and the architecture. Tillon often daydreamed about Jaédeen. His customers sometimes walked in to find him thinking not of his wares and how many quiln to sell them for, but staring into space with a faraway look in his eyes. They would promptly ring the brass attendance bell to grab his attention. “Out on the Duilon Sea again are we?” Inquired Slavando. “mmneh? what?” came Tillon’s reply. “So are you gonna sell this to me for 45 quiln or what?” “Oh yeah right the pack of heglo-spice… I’d rather sell it for 50.” Tillon replied. Slavando was of medium height with rather long legs and a short, slightly roundish torso. His face was that of a high-ranking businessman with a moustache and a fast mind. “46.” came the short reply “49.” Tillon suggested, not wanting to lose this item for much less. “47 and that’s as high as I’m willing to go.” after considering this for a moment Tillon said “deal.” and Slavando took the small pack of heglo-spice and paid the 47 quiln. “pleasure doing business with you.” Tillon complimented as Slavando walked out of his store. Then noticing the time promptly switched the sign on his door to “closed” and started sweeping and cleaning the shelves, then settling down in a chair counted up the day’s earnings. 165 weiln and 34 quiln was the total. “not bad.” Tillon thought aloud. Then, after finishing his felldrove-fruit soup, plodded gently to bed.

The next morning he once again awoke with the strong urge to be in Jaédeen. ‘That’s it’ he thought. ‘I’m tired of this constant daydreaming. Jaédeen is the place for me, not voltaic’ his thoughts continued. After hunting around for a reasonable service he decided to sell his little corner shop. He had already made plans in Jaédeen, just in case. He got a reasonable 12 gillienti and 800 weiln for it. Tillon then counted up his total money, 20 gillenti, 793 weiln and 85 quiln. He spent 150 weiln in total in supplies, including a pop-up tent made from high-quality blowhort hide, a water-sack, traveller’s boots and a magic tinderbox that contained, when opened, an everlasting flame. Tillon often marvelled at how wizards and witches could use such spells. The best he could do was purify water using a basic spell. “Hayo! Tillon! where are you off to this fine mornin’?” came Hectolo’s voice from somewhere down the road. “I’m off to Jaédeen due to a severely annoying habit of daydreaming about it non-stop.” Tillon replied. “Oh going adventuring are we?” “Kinda, but not quite. y’see I’m planning on moving to Jaédeen and making a living there.” “okay c’ya buddy! good luck on your adventures!” Hectolo then departed to areas unknown to Tillon. It was roughly noon when Tillon set out toward Voltaic’s front gate. it was located roughly north of Tillon’s old corner shop and wasn’t too far away. Tillon walked out of the gate after saying goodbye to the few friends he had made in Voltaic. He walked for the first 30 minutes down the main roadway, guided by a signpost that pointed the direction to Jaédeen and the 86km distance to it. The afternoon was, as things go, uneventful. Then at dusk he decided to set up camp off in an allocated traveller’s camp-site about 2km from Voltaic. he threw the tent on the ground, uttered the words that the box told him to and the tent magically popped up into place. He then used the magic tinderbox to light the pile of firewood that he had acquired from the pile in the centre of the camp-site. It emitted a blue flame which lit the firewood ablaze almost instantly. Tillon then proceeded to cook his deorr-steaks over the warm, red fire.

The following day at sunrise he buried the ashes of his former camp-fire and set off again heading south east towards Jaédeen. He went a considerable distance before encountering any people. then as he passed the intersection to An’ dunal, a major fishing hub, the number of people and deggle-drawn carts increased dramatically. “Hayo! sir! yes you the one with the green shirt. could you offer me a lift please?” Tillon asked a kind-looking man. “Ok… where you planning on going?” “In the long term I’m going to Jaédeen but it’ll be nice if you could give me a lift to Gemalia. I’ll be grateful if you do.” “sure thing! I’m actually going to Gemalia m’self.” “Bing-dandy! thanks, oh and what is your name?” “Gernando’s the name. what’s yours?” “Mine’s Tillon” “Ok, pleased to meet you! welcome aboard!” “thanks Tillon said stepping up into the carriage. it was a medium sized one with a few sacks of fruit on it and a storage chest for necessities. “I only have 2 rules here” Gernando stated to Tillon. “1 no swindling my stock. 2 I wont supply you with food, shelter, etcetera etcetera, so don’t ask for stuff.” “Seems reasonable.” Replied Tillon.

The day passed and night fell like a dark blanket once again. Tillon and Gernando had become acquainted with each-other and set up camp by the side of the road under the shade of a broad-leafed tree that Tillon could not identify. they set up the camp-fire away from the tree and Gernando’s deggles. “goodnight Gernando!” Tillon called from his tent before he fell asleep “Goodnight!” came the reply. A little while later Tillon awoke to a rustling sound on the outside of his tent. He assumed that it was just the wind blowing a tuft of grass against the side of his tent then the rustling came again, even louder this time. Feeling a bit frightened he undid the front of his tent and looked out. Tillon saw nothing abnormal excepting a metallic glint in the grass. Out of curiosity he reached for it and found that it was a sword with a fancy design on the guards, a soft handle made of some sort of smooth hide and an emerald sitting in the bottom-middle of the blade. Tillon sat there in stunned silence, holding the sword in both hands. He decided to put it in his tent and examine it in detail the next day.

No related posts

Stewart Smith: The EXAMPLE storage engine

Stewart Smith — 2013-05-15T00:27:25+00:00

The Example storage engine is meant to serve mainly as a code example of the stub of a storage engine for example purposes only (or so the code comment at the start of ha_example.cc reads). In reality however, it’s not very useful. It likely was back in 2004 when it could be used as a starting point for starting some simple new engines (my guess would be that more than a few of the simpler engines started from ha_example.cc).

The sad reality is the complexity of the non-obviousness of the bits o the storage engine API you actually care about are documented in ha_ndbcluster.cc, ha_myisam.cc and ha_innodb.cc. If you’re doing something that isn’t already done by one of those three engines: good luck.

Whenever I looked at ha_example.cc I always wished there was something more behind it… basically hoping that InnoDB would get a better and cleaner API with the server and would use that rather than the layering violations it has to do the interesting stuff.

That all being said, as a starting point, it probably helped spawn at least a dozen storage engines.

BlueHackers: New evidence on body clock and depression

Arjen Lentz — 2013-05-14T22:57:03+00:00

Researchers found something relevant to people with depression while working on something else (original article at Independent.co.uk, tnx Andrew for the link). In a nutshell, what they found was that people with severe depression had their body clock out of whack: they were essentially living in a different timezone. I don’t think it’s actually news to us, I wrote about this and it being the equivalent of jetlag in the BlueHackers HowTo. But, I do think it’s interesting in the sense that at least in the cases the researchers encountered, for people with severe depression there was a genetic cause. We like to know why things are the way they are, so this new info can help in that respect. Modern life, in particular with the type of work many of us do, makes it really easy to stuff up your day and night rhythm, and also your eating pattern which is actually related to this as well. Getting your day/night, daylight and food intake patterns right is generally a very important base. Not for everybody, but I think definitely for most of us. And while some of these things might still be hard for some, they’re relatively easy steps compared to others. It’s worth a try and they’re also specifically things you can get external help with – you can get a friend to come by for a walk at a specific time of day, or go get a meal. Once the new pattern is trained (can take up to three months but often it’s much sooner) you’ll find it much easier to stick to, and also that other tasks become easier. Mind you, I’m very aware that this is still easier said than done – I have my own company arranged in such a way that it doesn’t create nasty work hours, but I also have a family and thus in the mayhem (or even just because of the weather) I sometimes lose (some of) the pattern for a while. But, I’m now aware of it and that does make a difference already – it’s easier to fix. Typically my food pattern stays ok, but the morning walk loses out (by the way, it may be an afternoon walk that works best for you). Do you know what’s messed with my morning walk lately? The city council has closed off a footbridge crossing a creek (storm damage), and that was the only way through in that particular direction. I can create other walking loops but they’re less convenient for several reasons – I’ve walked some but it feels less comfortable. I’m generally ok with change but it’s funny how this is just very disruptive! How do day/night, exercise and food patterns work for you, and how have you tweaked them to work better for you? Please tell, it will help others.

Ian Wienand: Debugging puppetmaster with Foreman

Ian Wienand — 2013-05-14T13:26:51+00:00

This is a little note for anyone trying to get some debugging out of the puppetmaster when deploying with Foreman.

The trick, much as it is, is that Foreman is running puppet via Apache; so if you're trying to start a puppet master daemon outside that it won't be able to bind to port 8140. You thus want to edit the config file Apache is using to launch puppet /etc/puppet/rack/config.ru. It's probably pretty obvious what's happening when you look in there; simply add

ARGV << "--debug"

and you will start to get debugging output. One issue is that this goes to syslog (/var/log/messages) by default and is a lot of output; so much so that it might get throttled. Although you can certainly reconfigure your syslog daemon to split out puppet logs, an easier way is to just skip syslog while you're debugging. Don't be fooled by config options; simply add

ARGV << "--logdest" << "/var/log/puppet/puppet-master.debug"

to the same file to get the logs going to a separate file. Don't forget to restart Apache so the changes stick.

Paul Wayper: Modern kernels and uncooperative monitors

2013-05-14T12:26:24+00:00

Our main TV screen is a Kogan 32" TV hooked up to a Mini-ITX machine running a MythTV frontend on Fedora 18. Due to Kogan buying the cheapest monitors, which are the ones with the worst firmware, it has several annoyingly braindead features that make it hard to use with a computer:

When using HDMI, the picture is overscanned. In other words, they think that the digital signal is like an analog signal, and might not be synced correctly, so they expand the picture up.
When using VGA, the monitor reports no EDID.

Now, not having an EDID used not to be a problem when X did most of the heavy work of setting up the display, because you could, at a pinch, tell it to trust you on what modes the monitor could support. With a program like cvt you could generate a modeline that you'd stick in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and it'd output the right frequencies. This is what I had to do for Fedora 16.

The new paradigm now is that the kernel sets the monitor resolution and X is basically a client application to use it. This solves a lot of problems for most people, but unfortunately the kernel doesn't really handle the situation when the monitor doesn't actually respond with a valid EDID. More unfortunately, this actually happens in numerous situations - dodgy monitors and dodgy KVM switches being two obvious ones.

It turns out, however, that there is a workaround. You can tell the kernel that you have a (made-up) EDID block to load that it's going to pretend came from the monitor. To do this, you have to generate an EDID block - handily explained in the Kernel documentation - which requires grabbing the kernel source code and Making the files in the Documentation/EDID directory. Then put the required file, say 1920x1080.bin, in a new directory /lib/firmware/edid, and add the parameter "drm_kms_helper.edid_firmware=edid/1920x1080.bin" to your kernel boot line in GRUB, and away you go.

Well, nearly. Because the monitor literally does not respond, rather than responding with something useless, the kernel doesn't turn that display on (because, after all, not responding is also what the HDMI and DVI ports are also doing, because nothing is plugged into them). So you also have to tell the kernel that you really do have a monitor there, by also including the parameter "video=VGA-1:e" on the kernel boot line as well.

Once you've done that, you're good to go. Thank you to the people at OSADL for documenting this. Domestic harmony at PaulWay Central is now restored.

Matt Palmer: A Modest Vocabulary Proposal

Matt Palmer — 2013-05-14T06:26:50+00:00

I would like to suggest that the word “unprofessional” be struck from the dictionary – and anyone who uses it struck with a dictionary. It is a word which conveys no useful information or proposal for action, and is thus nothing but meaningless noise.

The purpose of communication is to adjust another person’s process of cognition. I’ve heard it said that “all communication is persuasion”, which is quite true – you’re trying to persuade someone to change what they think. We can consider the intention and effectiveness of an attempt to communicate in this light.

What is someone trying to achieve when they label a person or behaviour “unprofessional”? If we’re being charitable, we would probably say that they’re trying to highlight that something is bad, or could be better. However, just stamping our foot and saying “bad!” isn’t enough – it’s also important to provide some information that the recipient can act upon.

The problem with the word “unprofessional” is that it really isn’t specific enough on the subject of “what is wrong”. Have you ever had someone say something like, “your behaviour yesterday was really unprofessional”? They’re assuming you know what they’re talking about – and you might well have a reasonable guess – but what if you guess wrong? Should you never do anything you did yesterday, just in case that particular thing was unprofessional?

When I’ve caught myself thinking, “that was unprofessional”, of my own behaviour, or someone else’s, I think about what caused me to think that. Once I drill down into it, I usually come to the conclusion that what I really meant was, “I don’t like that”. Since I’m not paid to like things, that’s pretty much irrelevant as a reason to tell someone not to do something.

On the occasions when I come up with something more concrete, it is invariably a more useful expression than “unprofessional”. Things like, “it frustrates the customer”, or “it pisses off the person sitting in the next cube” are a much better expression of why something is bad than “unprofessional”.

I’d encourage everyone to keep a careful watch over themselves and those around them for use of the word. When you catch yourself saying it (or thinking it), examine your motives more closely. Whatever the more specific adjective is, use that instead. If it just comes down to “I don’t like that”, at the very least say that to the person you’re talking to. Don’t try and hang anything grandiose on your personal prejudices. You might come off as being petty, but at least you’ll be honest.

Glen Turner: Light bulbs

2013-05-14T02:04:23+00:00

At a party when some bore says that compact fluorescent lamps use more energy across their lifetime than incandescent lamps. I wasn't going to argue with someone with such a startling lack of economic thinking, but the view seems surprisingly widespread.

Let's start simply. After purchase the fluorescent uses 8W, the incandescent uses 60W. The fluorescent lasts longer than the incandescent. So the fluorescent uses less energy after purchase.

Prior to purchase the more complex fluorescent is going to use more energy to manufacture, but how much more? Well, energy isn't a free resource, so in a free market the energy used to create the good is included in the price of the good. So, the fluorescent uses less than $3 in energy, the incandescent less than $0.10. So the fluorescent has to save $2.90 across its operating life to make up for the additional energy taken to create it, which it does.

That leaves us with two externalities. Pollution generated during the manufacture of the fluorescent and pollution generated by the disposal of the fluorescent. My guess, for which I have no proof, is that the costs to the community of these two externalities do not differ by 30x between the incandescent and the fluorescent, which is what it would take to change the superiority of the fluorescent.

Updated: spelling corrected

Glen Turner: RIAA and iPod

2013-05-14T02:03:11+00:00

It had to happen and it finally has. RIAA are suing an individual for copying a track from a CD they bought to a PC. The legal uncertainty which allows this to happen is the downside of the fair use approach to copyright legislation, which lists principles of when the reproduction of works is allowed without a license.

What we have in Australia is fair dealing, a black letter law where each exemption from obtaining a copyright license is clearly defined. Making one copy of a CD track to place on your MP3 player is one of the actions listed.

Anyone who has used iTunes will notice the drafting error -- "one copy". iTunes makes two copies -- one is stored on the computer and one is stored on the iPod. Everyone who uses iTunes to copy CD tracks are breaching copyright. You need to rip the track directly to the MP3 player, something iTunes does not allow.

All of this is particularly ironic, since iTunes works the way it does to limit unauthorised music copying. If you use your iPod like a USB disk to copy tracks from your friends iPods then iTunes deletes those tracks when you reconnect the iPod back at home.

The Australian Copyright Act is also deficient because it fails to acknowledge that many CDs are shared property -- belonging to a household rather than to an individual. If a mother and daughter both rip the same CD then one of them has broken the law. Makes you wonder about the private life of politicans, who use the words "family friendly" but can't imagine how their legislation might translate to actions within the home (are we expected to put stickers on CDs saying "E ripped this -- hands off"?).

I think the small reforms to the Copyright Act concerning MP3 players were designed to prevent a community backlash when an organisation like MIPI prosecutes some unfortunate individual. Unfortunately, these two drafting errors leave the MIPIs of this world plenty of scope to generate embarrasment for politicans and ruin for individuals.

Glen Turner: US petrol prices explain a lot

2013-05-14T02:01:58+00:00

New Hampshire gasoline: US$3.00 per US gallon, which is $A0.90 per litre. Adelaide petrol: A$1.42 per litre.

Glen Turner: Mungo Maccallum

2013-05-14T02:00:26+00:00

One of the greatest political writers in the country has been writing for his local newspaper. Poltical corrections. He's never been very impressed by John Howard, treasurer or prime minister. Nor Peter Costello:

But if Howard was wrong about most things, he at least got Peter Costello right.

For eleven years the man sat their drooling, lusting after the leadership of his party, talking up a storm to his credulous colleagues, plotting with sycophants, sending out his dwarfish messenger Glenn Milne to relate improbable stories of his talent and support. He never actually had the guts to do anything about it, but by golly he let it be known that when the opportunity came, he would show us all.

And when his party was not only ready to offer him the prize, was indeed in real need of his services, Costello spat the dummy right out of the ground. Prime Minister, with all the trappings of office and all the resources of government, would be just fine; but leader of the opposition, the challenge Kevin Rudd took on at precisely Costello’s age before sweeping to victory in less than a year, looked just a little too much like hard work. Poor Petey-pie, too old at fifty, too lazy at any time.

Mungo's skill is to take what we all know, but to write it out so clearly that it seems new.

Glen Turner: nf_conntrack_helper_regsiter

2013-05-14T01:59:08+00:00

It all looks so easy, fill in a structure of the packets you want to see:

memset(&helper, 0, sizeof(struct nf_conntrack_helper));
/* Information about this conntrack module. */
helper.name = "skinny";
helper.me = THIS_MODULE;
helper.help = skinny_conntrack_helper;
helper.max_expected = 1;
helper.timeout = 0;
/* Send all Skinny packets to this conntrack module. */
helper.tuple.src.l3num = AF_INET;
helper.tuple.dst.protonum = IPPROTO_TCP;
helper.tuple.dst.u.tcp.port = htons(2000);

and then kick it off

ret = nf_conntrack_helper_register(&helper);

Now skinny_conntrack_helper() should be called for each TCP packet on port 2000. But it's not, it's called for almost anything but. The registration comes with a mask option, so I use that too, even though little of the kernel conntrack modules use masks (if so, how do they work? Do they work?)

helper.mask.dst.protonum = 0xff;
helper.mask.src.l3num = 0xffff;
helper.mask.dst.u.tcp.port = __constant_htons(0xffff);

No difference. Sigh. I'd love some up-to-date documentation at this point. But that appears to be too much to hope for. "Use the code Luke" is just confusion, since practice there seems contradictory. And I've wasted a whole evening over this, sigh.

Glen Turner: Cisco and me

2013-05-14T01:57:31+00:00

Having used Cisco Systems' code in my examples at the IPv6 Summit some people think I am anti-Cisco or something. That's absolutely not so. The reason I used their code was simply because I know and trust them.

I know that they hate having shortcomings in their software and that the LART will be wielded internally to make those go away.

I trust them that I can point these out in a public forum without Cisco people becoming upset. They have been in the industry long enough to know that not everything works as you would hope.

I could name manufacturers where neither of these points apply. Vendors whose name I would hesitate to name in public, whose configuration extracts I would never use in a public forum. [And no, I don't mean J or F]

Cisco are remarkably open, something they get far too little credit for. The networking world is full of manufacturers who have password-protected access to basics like documentation; who don't give customers access to bug databases; who monitor forums and delete threads that are the least bit critical.

That behaviour has set a good benchmark for their major competitors too. Juniper's early restriction of access to manuals and other materials has been removed and the access pretty much parallels that of Cisco's web site.

Glen Turner: Cisco can't do physical design

2013-05-14T01:55:38+00:00

I do wish Cisco would hire some decent mechanical engineers. Yes, I know they left and went to Juniper, but you've had a few years now to recruit some more.

Had a ECC error on a 6509-NEBS card, these are sticky errors and the card needs a power restart to get rid of them (and thus determine if they are random or not). Any other manufacturer I could drop the power to the card from the command line, but Cisco are "friendlier" to enterprise customers than that and I need to physically eject the card.

When I reinsert it the box reboots. WTF! Turns out this is a known flaw in the chassis design -- push the top end of the card in first. Nowhere is this mentioned in the documentation. Nor was it pointed out by the Technical Assistance Centre staffer who asked for the card to be reinserted -- rather that person was upset that I'd kept the task open whilst arranging a 3AM slot for hazardous work, saying that it was risk free and could be done at any time. [This is typical behaviour for the TAC, they get a task into Customer-Pend as quickly as possible under almost any pretext; then they try to close it within a few days, no matter what the actual state on the ground.] Hmmm.

Rang the TAC manager to bitch. They simply aren't interested. Cisco staff seem to think that a spontaneous reboot on a physical event isn't unreasonable. Very much like the early days of Windows when people came to ignore operating system crashes as just part of the whole computing experience rather than as an engineering failure.

Glen Turner: Left wing university staff

2013-05-14T01:54:32+00:00

Tim wonders why university staff are nearly all left wing. Take a person, they do a job helping others and the community when they could be making money (in my field the salary of a uni lecture is about half the going rate of the same expertise applied to business). That role naturally attracts people with left wing beliefs of the greater good of the nation.

Glen Turner: AusKick, you suck

2013-05-14T01:53:16+00:00

The AFL runs a football programme for kids. If you have a (a) 6 year old or (b) girl then don't bother. If you (a) and (b) then take her to netball instead.

This isn't about the qualities of the respective sports. I'm sure aussie rules could be adapted to young kids. This is about the aims of the sport's administrators and the quality of the events.

AusKick claims to have a programme for 6yos: that's a lie, they can go to training but can't play a game. Really motivating that! The training is a farce, the 6yos run around with 10yos; that is, small kids running with kids twice their speed and with a much better tactical sense. The small kids never get a look in.

Netball has teams by age: 6yo kids play 6yo kids. Yes, they are all hopeless. But they all get a chance to play and the nature of the game is that every position has to pass the ball. The emphasis of the coaches is that everyone gets to participate, everyone contributes as best they can.

I think the difference in the experince of the small kids comes straight from the aims of the adminstrators. The AFL is not interested in 6yos and it's not interested in girls -- it is the richest sport in Australia but also the only sport in Australia without a national women's competition. Netball's adminstrators just want to have kids playing the game. And this difference shows on the sportground on a weekday afternoon.

Glen Turner: Chilling effect of defamation on sharing equipment reviews

2013-05-14T01:51:35+00:00

Writing the slides for the IPv6 summit where I detail AARNet's IPv6 rollout. As part of that I tested a great deal of equipment and thought I'd share the results.

That's not going to happen, since it runs too great a risk of defamation. Our lawyer says that relying on a defence of truth isn't really practical. Even if I give the hardware and software versions tested (and what a drag that would be on a 30 minute presentation), those facts must imply the manufacturer's wider support for IPv6 and, arguably, that impression could be misleading.

There was a recent case where a restuarant review in a major newspaper was found to be defaminatory and this has considerably increased the risk of review-like activities.

Of course, you don't pay lawyers to tell you the law, you pay them to find a way through the law. So I'll be presenting test and evaluation criteria that listeners can run on equipment they intend to buy.

Glen Turner: Cisco IOS and the "network" statement

2013-05-14T01:50:25+00:00

This has to be the second-most misunderstood statement. Here's how it works.

Each routing process maintains its own routing table. So there is a table for BGP, a table for OSPF, a table for RIP, a table for static routes, a table for routes to connected interfaces and so on.

There is a forwarding table. This determines the next-hop of packets flowing through the router.

Entries in the routing table are placed into the forwarding table. If two routes clash then the routing protocol with the better "administrative distance" wins: connected > static > exterior routes > interior routes.

Entries in the forwarding table are placed in a routing table is there is an exactly matching "network" statement in the routing process's configuration and the entry in the forwarding table wasn't put there by this routing process.

Let's take the trivial case, a connected interface

interface Ethernet0
 ip address 1.2.3.4 255.255.255.0

router ospf 65000
 network 1.2.3.0 0.0.0.255

You often see this

ip route 1.2.3.0 0.0.0.255 1.2.3.255

router ospf 65000
 redistribute static

Don't do that, do this:

ip route 1.2.3.0 0.0.0.255 1.2.3.255

router ospf 65000
 network  1.2.3.0 0.0.0.255

Getting rid of the "redistribute" statement removes a common cause of routing loops. "Redistribute" should really be a hidden command, it's only useful for people who know what they are doing.

Glen Turner: Committed [political comment]

2013-05-14T01:49:04+00:00

Rudd, Howard just love "committed". But what of their own money are they putting forward? Usually, when a political movement is committed to something it does need to achieve government to start work. Movements opposed to poverty open soup kitchens, movements wanting more housing for the poor build houses for the poor.

Both political parties are "committed" to solving the disrace of Aboriginal living conditions. But neither party is paying for a single house or a single doctor, neither party has a single volunteer on the ground. You'll forgive me when I doubt people's commitment who are unwilling to put their own skin into the game.

Political parties have excellent fund raising teams, good management, many volunteers. The only reason they have failed to be an agent of change of their own accord is that they don't want change -- they simply want power.

Glen Turner: Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

2013-05-14T01:48:13+00:00

Testing, we've heard of it. "Gutsy" indeed.

Glen Turner: The Web and Benford's Law

2013-05-14T01:46:59+00:00

Benford's Law (Frank Benford, 1939) says that numbers starting with small numerals are more likely to be encountered in nature than numbers starting with larger numerals. Dr Karl has a good summary.

Although I can't be bothered to run the few thousand samples through Google, it looks like Benford's Law holds for web content. Note the distribution at (9) to (11):

hits(1) = 9,470,000,000), hits(2) = 3,110,000,000, hits(3) = 2,760,000,000, hits(4) = 2,430,000,000, hits(5) = 2,350,000,000, hits(6) = 2,050,000,000, hits(7) = 1,940,000,000, hits(8) = 1,880,000,000, hits(9) = 1,760,000,000, hits(10) = 2,560,000,000, hits(11) = 1,920,000,000.

Glen Turner: Security

2013-05-14T01:45:50+00:00

I've had a bad run with security issues. Reading the Linux NAT code I discover that it's not really meant to be a firewall. For example, unparsable packets are usually handled with NF_ACCEPT, which leaves a lot of room for nastiness. This choice makes sense from a NAT point of view -- many packets don't need NATing and so if you can't parse the packet, then just change the network-layer headers, punt it through and see how it goes. But from a firewalling NAT point of view, it's not so hot.

There's also a severe problem with port allocation. Linux NAT tries to use the same ports on the Outside of the NAT as on the Inside of the NAT. Handy for fault tracing. But consider a malicious Inside user who uses port 80. Assuming there is no one currently holding port 80, then the NAT will use port 80.

So we have a race condition on system start. Who will get port 80 first: our malicious Insider with the phishing web site, or our server. Well the networking starts before Apache, so the odds are stacked in favour of our insider.

Cisco need not look smug at this point. A little testing shows a problem in that camp too.

Thinking about it more, systems are plagued with race conditions on start. The sensible thing to do would be to configure a "client mode" firewall, bring up the system, then re-configure the firewall into a "server mode" stance. This carries the implication that host firewalls do have substantial benefits, something not appreciated by "corporate firewall appliance" vendors.

I don't understand much beyond networking, but I also wonder what joys are being unleashed by the current trend of operating systems allowing users to log in before the system initialisation completes. That race condition used to be avoided by setting /etc/nologin at system start and removing it once the system was running sucessfully.

I also don't understand the conntrack code. Each conntrack module seems to allocate a 64KB packet parsing buffer. That's going to lead to more packet copying than is healthy. But also, consider the "network applicance" case. Those vendors are going to install every conntrack module they can -- so that user's applications just work through their ADSL gateways. But most users won't use all of the protocols, so some of those allocations will never be touched. Even if the parsing buffer is retained, then lazy allocation of the buffer is called for.

Glen Turner: Standards and car stereos

2013-05-14T01:44:42+00:00

The Fader knob falling off was the last straw. I could cope with the lack of display and needing to change the volume with a coin in place of its broken knob, but not being able to have ABC Local Radio loud enough in the driver's seat without objections from the Anything-But-AM crowd in the back seat broke my will.

So, off looking for a solid CD+tuner. The Pioneer DEH-1950 is such a beast. Price ranged from $90 (JB Hi-Fi, Father's Day catalogue) to $210, so it paid to shop around. Strathfield and the like wanted another $90 to $120 for installation -- a job I can now estimate should cost less than $60 based on time and materials (using the standard hourly rate for auto electricians, since the skill level of an auto electrican would be higher than that of a car stereo installer). The products were designed to hit price points (up to $400 for the same chassis I bought): so I ignored the lure of additional features and stuck with the bottom of the range.

For the Luddites, I saw one cassette player in my travels.

Physical installation was simple. Thank you DIN for your standard-sized mounting. Of course, Pioneer had to subtely undermine DIN's work, their DIN-sized mounting not using the DIN mounting technique and the DIN special tool. I don't think the Pioneer arrangement is any more resistent to theft. Both the DIN mounting and the DINish Pioneer mounting can be abused to bolt in the unit at the rear, which I did so that the unit cannot merely be removed in a few seconds using the special tool.

The electricals were stupidly complicated. The old and new units had sockets, but they were different. The new stereo came with a header and pigtails. So the only thing to do is to reverse-engineer the old header, cut off the old header, and solder and shrinkwrap the pigtails to the cut wires. Total nonsense -- there's no reason the socket couldn't be standardised and all cars come with the matching header. Space in cars around the dash is too tight and too plastic for ordinary folk to be stuffing about with soldering irons.

Economists will see what is happening here. The difficulty of installation can be used to tie the sale to the installation -- and none of the "car stereo installers" I asked would install a car stereo purchased elsewhere. So we've got a market which cuts out the box movers -- the $90 units -- and forces most customers (those lacking electrical knowledge and soldering skills) into paying more for the unit and for installation on top of that. And installation is liable to be overcharged, since the ordinary customer cannot judge the skill required and the amount of work involved.

A lot of which would be fixed by forcing a standard connector onto the industry. In practice, importers would toss an adaptor into the box. Needless to say, Standards Australia are nowhere to be found.

The "car stereo installers" might not lose much business. The process of teenage boys buying doof-doof noisemakers is unlikely to resemble a rational puchasing decision.

Glen Turner: Election

2013-05-14T01:43:05+00:00

Over it already.

Joe Hockey has spent $121m on the WorkChoices ads. WTF? This for ads he said were "simple and without spin". Simple would have been a letter in the post, $0.60 x 8m households = $5m. We've got the third world happening in the Pittlands: sending $115m to TV owners rather than to aboriginal education, housing and health is criminal.

The suggested reduction in tax is stupid economic policy. That money will go directly into consumption and push up consumer goods demand. Since that's the demand that is currently driving interest rates, they will go up. So all we get is a transfer from income earners to bank shareholders.

However, government revenues do need to be reduced. The question is how to do this. The Hawke-Keating government once gave a non-inflationary wage increase by diverting it into superannuation. Given that most people still do not have enough retirement savings, that's probably the approach to take to a non-inflationary disbursement of the government's windfall revenue. And I think it would be good politics too, people are more scared of their welfare in retirement than is apparent.

Good old Nick Xenophon is running for the Senate. He needs about 15% of the vote, in the state election he got about 10%. In theory his election should depend on preference deals. Needless to say, Labor, Libs and Family First aren't interested in helping Nick. Which might be stupid of them, since I reckon Nick might actually get voted #1 by 15% of South Australians, which means that the party which does the preference deal would pick up the "odds and ends" seat.

As I said, I'm over this election on Day Two. It's not about the good of the people. It's about political dynasties fighting for the prize of government largesse.

Oh, bring me Pitt the Younger, we need his type in these times. His first and dying concern the guidance of his country through its worst hours. His eye on the money (he had to pay to defeat Napoleon and to lose the American Colonies), but his heart with the poorest people. But even more, bring me his friends. Bring me Wilberforce, that hedonistic dandy with the head of a politician but the heart of of a lion. Bring me the solid Grenville, the brilliant Nelson, the precocious Wellesley (so much cleverer than the older Wellington).

Even Homer thought the people of the Illiad better men than his contemporaries. What I would give for just one Worthy! But we have Paris rather than Hector: Daimoni' ou men kala cholon tond' entheo thumôi, laoi men phthinuthousi peri ptolin aipu te teichos marnamenoi: seo d' heinek' aütê te ptolemos te astu tod' amphidedêe: su d' an machesaio kai allôi, hon tina pou methienta idois stugerou polemoio. all' ana mê tacha astu puros dêïoio therêtai.

Glen Turner: The Australian IT Supplement

2013-05-14T01:41:51+00:00

Having read multiple front page articles in The Australian's IT supplement about SCO's claims of misuse of intellectual property by Linux, on Friday a US court found that SCO didn't own the intellectual property at all. How many lines in the IT supplement this Tuesday? Zero.

Glen Turner: Fleetwood Mac

2013-05-14T01:40:39+00:00

Some bands get played to death. I grew up in country NSW. Country AM radio is dire, I think they only had ten records. Fleetwood Mac was one of those bands. Ugh.

Of course I have been living in Semaphore for years now, well away from country radio. I was just listening to Old Fart radio (ABC local radio), practicing for retirement, when they played Fleetwood Mac. And, like stout Cortez on a peak in Darien, I realised that Fleetwood Mac are an astonishing group, not a crap band at all.

I'm not expecting the same discovery should I re-encounter Supertramp one day.

Glen Turner: Global warming options closing down to worryingly few

2013-05-14T01:39:26+00:00

Two of the options for dealing with global warming have run up against walls this week.

The cancellation of the development of the FutureGen clean coal power plant is the end of clean coal as an option for electricity generation.

Science carries a paper on the carbon costs of ethanol-as-fuel showing that this will increase emitted carbon. This surprising result is because ethanol crops force food crops into more marginal soils, and the benefits from ethanol can't make up for the addition carbon needed for the less efficient food production and distribution. Worse still, the falling efficiency of food production leads to starvation in some low income farming countries if biofuels are used within the US at the level at which fossil fuels are currently used.

None of this is happy news. Remaining viable options are: a radical reduction in the consumption of energy, solar, and nuclear (and it's unclear if nuclear will remain on the list, as there's been some scientific bastardry in studies of the carbon life cycle in nuclear power generation and we'll need to wait for GW Bush to leave office for the results). It also marks the end of the viability of the car. It's unlikely that this scale of social change in acheivable in the time required to avoid large environmentally-caused catastrophes.

Glen Turner: turnitin

2013-05-14T01:37:53+00:00

These guys are starting to get on my nerves.

Their plagiarism page has a pie chart with this data. Elsewhere on the site they say this data comes from their corpus of plagiarised papers.

How students plagiarize

Entire paper copied 1.00%

Significant plagiarism 29.00%

No plagiarism 70.00%

Now what are the odds of the two data points ending on an exact percentage? One in 10,000. So there's a 9,999 in 10,000 chance that the figures are not exact to degree to which they are presented. That's either sloppiness or academic misconduct (claiming a quality of result not supported by the data).

There is also a category missing. Surely some 0.01% or more of the papers can't be categorised as plagiarised or not?

What are the odds of the convenient 70%/30% split between no/yes plagiarism? Remember this data is claimed to be from real life, not marketing.

A stunning hypocrisy from a site claiming to be opposed to academic misconduct.

Glen Turner: Qantas and lost luggage

2013-05-14T01:36:52+00:00

A month ago I landed at Adelaide, on a direct flight from Canberra, and my bags had gone somewhere else. Virgin Blue gave me a call that evening and I had my bags by mid-morning.

Ten days ago my daughter landed at Adelaide, on a direct flight from Canberra, and her bags had gone somewhere else. Qantas gave us a reference number and a phone number to call in the morning.

That reference number calls up a record on a "Global Tracker" web site. It is a database record containing a description of the bag, the flight, and where to deliver the bag when it is found.

Now the bad news, when you call the phone number, Qantas simply read that screen back to you and tell you to keep waiting. You can ring the Baggage Services at the various airports directly, but they don't answer the phone in Sydney or Canberra and don't return answering machine messages in Adelaide. I went to the Adelaide airport and chatted to the baggage people, who searched for the bag. I asked if the same could be done in Canberra and Sydney, but they had the same contact numbers I had and couldn't get anyone to answer either.

Unless there is a miracle my daughter will never see that bag again. Qantas do offer some money after three weeks. But of course that's not much use in replacing the Learner Driver's Log Book (it turns out that if you lose this, in whatever way, you simply have to start over) or her own-made dresses.

The lesson would seem to be twofold. Firstly, don't trust the airline with your luggage. Hard advice considering the increasing restrictions on airline cabin baggage.

Secondly, mark you bag so obviously even Blind Freddy can spot it a mile away. If you describe your bag as "purple with diagnal yellow stripe" then it's not going to end up ignored in some corner like my daughter's brown suitcase.

And do put your name and mobile number on the luggage tag. Otherwise the airline just tries to match the description of the bag on the database with the description of found bags. That's bad news, since if the finder of the bag misdescribes it (maybe they don't notice the zipper) then it will never match the database entry for the lost bag.

Glen Turner: The new AIDS? XDR-TB

2013-05-14T01:35:09+00:00

Extensively drug resistant tuberculosis. It's time to pay for our over-use of antibiotics.

Every time you use an antibiotic you run the risk of not killing the bacteria, especially if the course of the antibiotic is abandoned when the patient feels better. This gives evolution room to operate, the more resistant survive, and eventually the entire population of bacteria are resistant.

To date, new antibiotics have been found and we set off down the path towards resistance again.

Now it is the End Times. We have no more new antibiotics. Overuse of the antibiotics (even giving them to perfectly fine chickens so they will grow with no individual care) has lead to bacteria which resist multiple antibiotics.

XDR bacteria have simply been through enough evolution to be resistant to all antibiotics. Treatment has to return to the pre-Penicillin era. That's fine for some bacteria, they can be treated with old-fashioned sulphur drugs, although this is not as effective and weaker people will die. But there was no effective pre-Penicillin treatment for the common disease tuberculosis.

XDR TB is the new AIDS because is has the attributes that made our response to AIDS so poor.

Complicated by religion. Many religions forbid homosexuality and some forbid condoms. Understanding XDR TB requires accepting evolution, something many Christian religions cannot do. Many of these religions can command more resources than public health agencies. As with AIDS some may use these resources to undermine public health efforts, such as the Catholic Church's view that condoms are ineffective in controlling the spread of HIV via sex.

Long lead times. Politicans had to make unpopular decisions that would not have an immediate effect. The same is true of XDR TB. For exampple, doctors should be required to justify any use of the second-line antibiotics and be prepared to be audited for all their antibiotic use. That oversight does not sit well on doctors view of themsleves, and any government suggesting it will make itself unpopular with a influential community for no immediate effect.

Confounded traditional public health measures. This was probably more true of AIDS, where the paranoia and lack of honesty of closeted homosexuals made it difficult to make AIDS a notifiable disease and to do contact tracking. But our era has cheap global air travel, which was only in its infancy in the 1980s. We don't have effective means for tracking people across the globe. And, as with AIDS, overblown privacy concerns may well stymie and effective response until it is too late.

As with AIDS, government action is lacking. Last week my daughter bought home a pamphlet saying that you should not use antibiotics for a common cold. That pamphlet is twenty years too late. The horse has long bolted, and the issue is now one of damage control.

A vaccine for TB exists, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, which is a weakened TB. As such it carries risks greater than other childhood injections and also results in positive diagnostic tests for TB. Western nations do not give the BCG vaccine to infants, because TB is not widespead and a simple test allows for better treatment of the occassional cluster of TB.

But worst of all, we don't know if BCG works anymore, and by how much. Measures of efficacy have wildly differing results, which appear to differ by geography, and we don't know why. BCG is a live bacteria, it is even possible that it has changed since it was widely used after WWII. We simply don't know yet.

There seems reasonable hope for new vaccines. Which is a relief after our ongoing failures with HIV. But if these do not appear within the next five years then we will have a public health disaster of the scale of AIDS.

Glen Turner: Risk and return

2013-05-14T01:33:43+00:00

Before any good view of the Microsoft Dynamics Live CRM it has set the terms for partners. And they are not good. MS's service is a Version 1, and it is priced like a Version 3. Worse still, Microsoft wants to sell this thing through partners, and they take most of the risk, face most of the cost, but hand 90% of the takings to Microsoft. Hmmm.

Glen Turner: 802.1x supplicant for Microsoft Windows

2013-05-14T01:32:47+00:00

If anyone has the skill, time and inclination to be funded to write a free-as-in-freedom 802.1x supplicant for Microsoft Windows Xp and beyond supporting EAP-TTLS+PAP and perhaps EAP-PEAP+MSCHAPv2 and EAP-GTC then now would be a good time to get in touch with an estimated time and cost and a portfolio of your previous work.

The motivation for this request is the end of the happy hour for a until-now widely-used free-as-in-beer supplicant. This is a serious request, but at a tentative stage.

Stewart Smith: The ARCHIVE Storage Engine

Stewart Smith — 2013-05-14T01:27:56+00:00

I wonder how much longer the ARCHIVE storage engine is going to ship with MySQL…. I think I’m the last person to actually fix a bug in it, and that was, well, a good number of years ago now. It was created to solve a simple problem: write once read hardly ever. Useful for logs and the like. A zlib stream of rows in a file.

You can actually easily beat ARCHIVE for INSERT speed with a non-indexed MyISAM table, and with things like TokuDB around you can probably get pretty close to compression while at the same time having these things known as “indexes”.

ARCHIVE for a long time held this niche though and was widely and quietly used (and likely still is). It has the great benefit of being fairly lightweight – it’s only about 2500 lines of code (1130 if you exclude azio.c, the slightly modified gzio.c from zlib).

It also use the table discovery mechanism that NDB uses. If you remove the FRM file for an ARCHIVE table, the ARCHIVE storage engine will extract the copy it keeps to replace it. You can also do consistent backups with ARCHIVE as it’s an append-only engine. The ARCHIVE engine was certainly the simplest example code of this and a few other storage engine API things.

I’d love to see someone compare storage space and performance of ARCHIVE against TokuDB and InnoDB (hint hint, the Internet should solve this for me).

Arjen Lentz: Average CO2 levels rise past nasty threshold | NYT

Arjen Lentz — 2013-05-14T01:25:12+00:00

The average carbon dioxide reading surpassed 400 parts per million at the research facility atop the Mauna Loa volcano on the island of Hawaii [...] The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years [...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/science/earth/carbon-dioxide-level-passes-long-feared-milestone.html

James Morris: Slides from my Security Subsystem Overview at LinuxCon Japan 2012

jamesm — 2013-05-13T11:27:21+00:00

Whoops. Looks like I forgot to post my slides from last year’s LinuxCon Japan talk on the Linux kernel security subsystem.

Here they are:

http://namei.org/presentations/kernel-security-state-linuxconjp-2012b.pdf

I’ll be giving an update at the upcoming LinuxCon Japan in Tokyo in a couple of weeks.

Stewart Smith: The MySQL Cluster storage engine

Stewart Smith — 2013-05-13T06:27:47+00:00

This is one close to my heart. I’ve recently written on other storage engines: Where are they now: MySQL Storage Engines, The MERGE storage engine: not dead, just resting…. or forgotten and The MEMORY storage engine. Today, it’s the turn of MySQL Cluster.

Like InnoDB, MySQL Cluster started outside of MySQL. Those of you paying attention at home may notice a correlation between storage engines not written exclusively for MySQL and being at all successful.

NDB (for Network DataBase) started inside Ericsson, originally written in a language called PLEX, which was internal to Ericsson and used in the AXE telephone switches. Mikael Ronstrom’s PHD thesis covered NDB and even covered things that (at least were) yet to be implemented (it’s been quite a few years since I leafed through it last). The project at Ericsson (IIRC) was shelved a couple of times, but eventually got spun out into an Ericsson Business Innovation company called Alzato.

Some remnants of PLEX can still be found in the NDB source code (if you look really hard that is). At some point the code was fed through a PLEX to C++ converter and development continued from there. Some of the really, really old parts of the source may seem weird either due to this or some hand optimization for SPARC processors in the 1990s.

In 2003, MySQL AB acquired Alzato and work on a storage engine plugin for MySQL to interface to the (C++ API only) NDB was underway. Seeing as the storage engine interface was so simple, easy and modular it would only take several years for the interface to NDB to become mature.

The biggest problem: NDB itself worked really well if your workload fit exactly what it was good at… if you deviated, horrific performance and/or crashes were not as uncommon as we’d have liked. This was a source of strain for many years with the developers and support team on one side and some of the less-than-careful sales team on the other. That being said, there have been some absolutely awesome sales people selling NDB into markets it truly fits, and this is why there’s barely a place in the world where placing a mobile phone call doesn’t go through MySQL Cluster at some point.

You should read Tomas Ulin’s post Celebrating 10 years @MySQL for a bit of an insight into how Alzato became part of MySQL AB (which later became part of Sun which became part of Oracle).

I joined the MySQL Cluster team at MySQL in December 2004, not too long after Alzato was acquired, but certainly when the NDB storage engine in MySQL 4.1 was in its very early stages – it was then by no means a general purpose database.

Over the years, MySQL Cluster gained both traction and features, making it useful for more applications. One of the biggest marketing successes of MySQL was the storage engine architecture and how you could just “plug in” different engines. The reality (of course) was far different and even though MySQL Cluster did just “plug in” to MySQL, it was certainly not a drop in replacement.

In MySQL 5.0, a bunch of neat new features were added:

Engine condition pushdown

This enabled conditions on non-indexed columns to be evaluated on the data nodes rather than having every row pulled up to the SQL node to be evaluated.
Batched read interface

So that queries like SELECT FOO FROM BAR WHERE A IN (1,2,3) were executed as a single network round trip rather than 3 round trips.
Query cache

Although the query cache should die, hey, at least it worked with NDB now…. in a way.
Reduced IndexMemory usage

Remember, NDB is an in-memory database, so saving a bunch of bytes for secondary indexes was a big thing.

the first release with things I really worked on was MySQL 5.1. My first talk (to a packed room) at the MySQL User Conference in 2006 was on new features in MySQL Cluster 5.1. I’m still quite proud of that talk even though I know I am a much better speaker than I was then (It would have been great to have had more guidance… but hey, learning from experience is good too).

We added a lot in 5.1:

Integration with replication

This is where row based replication was born. It was a real team effort with the NDB kernel part (going from memory and bzr logs) having been written by Tomas and Jonas seems to have a bunch of code there too. I worked a bunch on the NDB Injector thread in mysqld, Mats worked on the core row based code (at the time the most C++ like code in the entire MySQL world). You could now have a cluster replicate to another cluster with the giant bottleneck that is MySQL replication.
disk data

You could store non-indexed columns on disk. I implemented the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.FILES table for this, I was young and naive enough to think that the InnoDB guys would also fill out this table and all would be happy with the world (I’m lucky I haven’t been holding my breath on this one).
Variable Sized columns

A VARCHAR(255) would actually not always use more than 255bytes if you just stored a single character in it. Catch? Only for in-memory columns.
User defined partitioning

Because NDB desperately needed more options, we let the user choose how they wanted to partition up their data (per table).
Autodiscovery of schema changes

This was a giant workaround to the epic mess that is FRM files and data dictionary things inside the MySQL Server. It is because of all this code that when I went to rewrite the whole thing for Drizzle I took the approach of “just pass it down to the engines, the server must not attempt to know better”. FWIW, I’m still right: if the server tries to be clever you now have two places for bugs to be, not just one.
Distribution awareness

i.e. better selection of which data node to talk to for a particular query, reducing latency.
Online add/drop index.

How long did it take for other engines to get this? Let’s not think about that :)

After that the really interesting stuff started to happen, that is, the first major fork of MySQL: MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade Edition (CGE). Why? We had customers that simply couldn’t wait for MySQL 6.0 (after all, they’d still be waiting).

We had MySQL Cluster CGE 6.1, 6.2, 6.3 and now we’re into 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2. There is without doubt that it’s the longest serving and surviving MySQL fork. There were non-trivial changes inside the MySQL server too, which caused enough of a merge problem for the (small) Cluster team.

One big thing that you’re probably still all waiting for? Replication conflict detection and resolution in circular/multi-master replication setups. It was an NDB first and been used in production for a decent amount of time.

I remember a hack while on an airplane led to the CompressedBackup and CompressedLCP options (used zlib when writing out checkpoints/backups) – something that took more time than you’d think to go from prototype to production ready code.

The last few things I worked on in MySQL Cluster before going and working full time on Drizzle was the Windows port, online add/drop node and NDBINFO.

I’ve left out so many cool MySQL Cluster things that were worked on over the years (e.g. online add/drop column, rewriting of LCP code, micro GCPs, crash-safe DDL, the test suite). I really should mention the test suite, in lines of code it was over three times that of MyISAM.. and that was probably six years ago that I worked that out.

One thing to think about: when Innobase Oy was bought by Oracle and there was this effort to have a transactional storage engine that was inside MySQL AB rather than another company, I pointed out that I thought it would take less time adding the needed features to NDB and integrating it inside the MySQL server binary (and with the addition of online add node you could go from stand alone DB server to a full cluster with no down time) than it would for any of the alternatives to get to a suitable level of maturity.

I wish I put money on this… I put money on the MySQL 5.1 GA release date (which I was happy to loose), but in the years since you can see that InnoDB is still reigning supreme with all that came to replace it having fallen away for one reason or another. It’s still on track to have MySQL Cluster be the only real alternative (now also, funnily enough, owned by Oracle). I have to say, it’s kind of a hollow victory though, it would have been nice to see Falcon and PBXT be serious players in today’s market.

Arjen Lentz: Ground control to Major Tux: Space station dumps Windows, now uses Linux

Arjen Lentz — 2013-05-13T04:25:10+00:00

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/10/iss-linux/

An ISS spokesperson told press the switch was made because ISS astronauts and cosmonauts needed an operating system “that was stable and reliable.” Ouch!

No related posts

Stewart Smith: A few points on talking about the internet

Stewart Smith — 2013-05-13T00:28:13+00:00

There are a few things you should keep in mind when talking about the internet:

Use of the word “cyber” is not cool.
Whenever you hear the word “cyber” substitute it with “Information Super-Highway”… yes, it sounds that dated.
Use of the word “cyber” is applicable only in discussions relating to Doctor Who.
Whenever you see “facebook.com/BLAH” just think “AOL Keyword”. If you don’t know what AOL was, I likely have 437 trial CDs you can have.
There is no differentiation between life and online-life – just about everything is internet connected now. This very much counts for speech vs online speech.

A reminder: Leah and I are running in the upcoming MS Fun Run raising money for Australians affected by Multiple Sclerosis (MS). If you don’t sponsor us you’re going to die poor and alone. Really, I have an arrangement with all known deities to make it happen. Sponsor us here: http://register.mswalk.org.au/2013-MS-Walk-and-Fun-Run-Melbourne/Meep

James Purser: Throsby - you can tell it's a safe labor seat

James Purser — 2013-05-12T11:26:13+00:00

The federal seat that I live in - Throsby - is by all accounts a very safe Labor seat. Since it was created in 1984 it has been held by Labor. The current encumbent, former union secretary Stephen Jones retained the seat at the last election with 62% of the vote after preferrences were distributed. If the expected votergeddon happens in September Throsby will be on of the few seats that Labor retains.

Which of course means that it is a treasure to be made safe against the on coming tide of voter dissent.

Or it means that it's a valuable prize in the ongoing battle between the Labor Left and Right factions.

Which do you think has happened?

Let me give you a clue. It's just on four months until polling day and the Liberal Party, National Party and the Greens have each selected their candidates for the seat. The Liberals have Larissa Mallinson, the Greens have Shellharbour Councillor Peter Moran and the Nationals have decided to field Gary "Angry" Anderson. (note no links to the others because I can't actually find any pages for them)

The Labor party?

They've only just decided whether they're going to have a rank and file vote or not.

Last friday Labor announced that the Throsby candidate would be decided by a vote between the incumbent (and left faction warrior) Stephen Jones and nurse (and right faction battler) John Rumble. No word as to when this vote is meant to occure but it had better happen soon, because frankly, if they leave it any later, they're gong to miss the election.

The infighting in Throsby has been going on for years. with member for Wollongong Noreen Hay leading the charge from the right. As with all family arguments things started nasty and have only gotten worse. Any article published by the local paper is immediately flooded with angry comments from both sides, with the occasional liberal or greens supporter deseperately trying to get a word in edge wise.

So where does that leave us, the voters in Throsby? Well, I've spoken to a number of people and frankly they are jack of the infighting. Watching the local Labor party tear itself apart isn't exactly confidence building, especially considering how Federal Labor is viewed in general.

Who ever wins the pre-selection, they're gong to have a hell of a battle, not just against the other candidates, but the fall out from the internecine warfare that's consumed the local branches for the past few years.

Blog Catagories:

Politics

Russell Coker: Geographic Sorting – Lessons to Learn from Ingress

etbe — 2013-05-11T14:27:02+00:00

I’ve recently been spending a bit of my spare time playing Ingress (see the Wikipedia page if you haven’t heard of it). A quick summary is that Ingress is an Android phone game that involves geo-location of “portals” that you aim to control and most operations on a portal can only be performed when you are within 40 meters – so you do a lot of travelling to get to portals at various locations. One reasonably common operation that can be performed remotely is recharging a portal by using it’s key, after playing for a while you end up with a collection of keys which can be difficult to manage.

Until recently the set of portal keys was ordered alphabetically. This isn’t particularly useful given the fact that portal names are made up by random people who photograph things that they consider to be landmarks. If people tried to use a consistent geographic naming system (which was short enough to fit in large print on a phone display) then it would be really difficult to make it usable. But as joke names are accepted there’s just no benefit in having a sort by name.

A recent update to the Ingress client (the program which runs on the Android phone and is used for all game operations) changed the sort order to be by distance. This makes it really easy to see the portals which are near you (which is really useful) but also means that the order changes whenever you move – which isn’t such a good idea for use on a mobile phone. It’s quite common for Ingress players to recharge portals while on public transport. But with the new Ingress client the list order will change as you move so anyone who does recharging on a train will find the order of the list changing during the process and it’s really difficult to find items in a list which is in a different order each time you look at it.

This problem of ordering by location has a much greater scope than Ingress. One example is collections of GPS tagged photographs, it wouldn’t make any sense to mix the pictures of two different sets of holiday pictures because they were both taken in countries that are the same distance from my current location (as the current Ingress algorithm would do).

It seems to me that the best way of sorting geo-tagged items (Ingress portals, photos, etc) is to base it on the distance from a fixed point which the user can select. It could default to the user’s current location but in that case the order of the list should remain unchanged at least until the user returns to the main menu and I think it would be ideal for the order to remain unchanged until the user requests it.

I think that most Ingress players would agree with me that fixing annoying mis-features of the Ingress client such as this one would be better for the game than adding new features. While most computer games have some degree of make-work (in almost every case a computer could do things better than a person) I don’t think that finding things in a changing list should be part of the make-work.

Also it would be nice if Google released some code for doing this properly to reduce the incidence of other developers implementing the same mistakes as the Ingress developers in this regard.

Binh Nguyen: Going Green - Part 2

Binh Nguyen — 2013-05-11T10:39:00+00:00

This is a continuation of my previous post:

http://dtbnguyen.blogspot.com/2013/05/going-green.html

If you haven't already figured out already I'm a big fan of using the environment to aide us. To this end I've been thinking of some changes to current technology (obviously, some ideas are extremely feasible but others are probably best left for the distant future) to allow us to live a more sustainable future:

- been thinking about better use of aerodynamics in cars. Provided the car is light enough and there is sufficient speed we may be able to make use of dynamic aerodynamic technologies. For instance, in Formula 1 teams were recently playing around with 'Drag Reduction Systems' which basically involved a opening/closing a flap on the back of the rear wing. Let's take this a step further. We have a channel at the front which runs through the middle of the car which when adjusted can send air over the back or under the back end of the back of the car (whose shape could possibly be dynamically altered at will?). In affect we have what amounts to variable aerodynamics and therefore theoretical weight). Ultimately, at higher speeds the effective weight of the car will become lighter which means increased fuel efficiency, reduced wear on car parts (remember in my re-design we would be throwing away a lot of parts as well so the effect is compounded), more than likely a car which requires less servicing, etc... Of course, a lot of tweaking may be require to ensure 'safe' levels of upforce though at all times though I suspect this may be computer controlled... Moreover, if the design already has aerodynamics in mind we may be able to retro-fit wings and turbines for air flight at some stage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_vehicle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ground_effect_vehicles

Curious to know efficiency levels of flying cars? Are we ready to fly en-masse as yet?

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/cartech/coming-soon-your-personal-flying-car-20130509-2j8w2.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transportation

- been thinking about ECU modifications further. At traffic lights, we shut down our engines so that only one cylinder is used (a button somewhere or perhaps even automated)(we shut down cylinders as opposed to entire engine to reduce wear on batteries which is a problem with some existing systems). We should also have the ability to deal up/down cylinders, change timing at will, etc... The options are to provided would be similar to what is provided to Formula 1 currently but the options provided obviously be determined by manufacturers. Mandate transmission/engine modes performance, fuel efficiency/mix, etc... like they do in higher end cars?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-stop_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idle_reduction

- thinking more about reducing effective weight further without requiring extra power. One way is by altering our roads so that they are slightly magnetised. At the bottom of our cars (possibly the tyres/wheels (strategically placed to increase contact area)?) are also magnets/superconductors. They will repel one another and may possibly increase fuel efficiency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt_concrete

Such technology could possibly be investigate on existing rail based vehicles?

- reduction of hydraulics/mechanical techology and increased use of electronics and fly-by-wire technology in cars. For instance, instead of relying on power steering, differentials, rack and pinion steering mechanism we use electronics and other techniques. While power distribution would still be centralised we would have what basically amounts to two mini-gearboxes at the front wheels (or on each side) of the car. Changing the gearing in these gearboxes allows each tyre to turn at a different rate which ultimately means that not only can get rid of a lot of extra mechanical parts (and weight) but we can get better turning circles as well. Obviously, a lot of testing is required to get this right/safe though.

- make seats (and other non-essential components) entirely removable (apart from drivers seat?). Significant reduction in weight, allows people the flexibility of increasing cargo/seating capacity of car at will as well, and obviously means fuel savings as well. Consider same technique in aircraft as well? I've been on a lot of aircraft where there was only a small number of people aboard. Curious to know what the fuel savings would be? Should be stop particular flights from running if there isn't enough demand?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/04/130423-reshaping-flight-for-fuel-efficiency/

- thinking about the large/small car debate further. Let's say we go with one seat cars from now on but they also had the ability to be able to communicate with one another (similar to technology used in high end military systems such as the JSF). In effect, they could 'connect/communicate electronically' and take you to the same place at the same time (I'm thinking driverless as well as driver based world) anywhere/anytime. Moreover, we could dedicate a particular car to taking cargo in 'driverless mode' and if we so desired we could physically connect/detach them at will as well like in Lego/Transformers (I prefer to call it 'Transformatech').

http://www.forbes.com/sites/pikeresearch/2013/05/08/are-e-bicycle-sales-reducing-car-sales-in-europe/

- need to think about insulation further. As I previously indicate in other post films are one way of achieving it with windows but I think we should think further about using insulating materials in cars (impact of fuel consumption on cars?).

- thinking about means of further reducing effective volume of engines, power and fuel consumption but believe that cylinder reduction as outlined above may be enough?

- thinking about introducing something akin to 'suspended seating/shock absorption' in seats. If you've ever been involved in any form of accident (even low speed ones) you'll realise the level of shock that goes through the car. This would hopefully would reduce the number of whiplash incidents.

- obviously to make some of the technology above work we'll need to make our cars out of lighter materials. Cost is the big issue though...

- rig our traffic lights so that we don't have to start/stop so often (acceleration/decceleration are the biggest contributors to fuel consumption)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/us/to-fight-gridlock-los-angeles-synchronizes-every-red-light.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

- consider dynamic speed limits/signage as well which will mean that traffic flows as quickly/safely (increased average speed in low traffic areas will mean you arrive at destination quicker, which means less time road and less chance of accident?) as is possible?

- need to examine better methods of manufacture of technology.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/122231-solar-panels-made-with-ion-cannon-are-cheap-enough-to-challenge-fossil-fuels

One alternative means of dealing with the waste of silicon production I've been thinking about is by liquifying it and then spraying it on to a non-stick material (similar technique that they use in cooking). The resulting silicon is then 'peeled off'.

- further research into lubrication required. Longer term, I think we need to think about less mechanical/physical contact technologies though (superconductors, wireless, electromagnetic fields, etc...). If there is no contact there's no lubrication required...

http://www.siemens.com/innovation/en/news/2011/new-project-generator-with-superconductors.htm

- been thinking of this thermodynamic control issue. I've been thinking about something akin to a 'heat bubble'. Basically, we have a gaseous atmosphere around is more amenable to heating/cooling... Of course, finding a substance which is capable of doing this and is non-toxic/explosive? Possibilities with regards to cooking?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heating_pad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_heat_capacity

Another method is actually embedding heating pad style channels in our clothing (charged by putting them in the oven/microwave) so that we can basically have heat on tap.

- based on what I've read most cars use a form of heat pump to deal with heating. What if we start to use some of the heat from the engine itself though? We control the level of heat by changing level of seperation between car body and engine? and mix of ambient air and engine heat? Something else that probably needs to be looked at is air extraction. Based on what I've read a combination of extraction and new infusion of air is far better mechanism of ensuring new air circulation and hence termpature control.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_heating

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichrome

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/dec/14/energy.insideit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump

Would also like to see stronger use of chemically based heating technologies. If we use conventional electrical means in order to heat up something similar to a heat pack, then use chemical based heat energy from the actual heat pack itself thereafter, we can can further reduce further 'active energy consumption. The benefit is that based on what I've read 'Heat Pack' style technologies are quite re-useable and may actually be easier to maintain in the long term. Possibly consider 'magnetic cooling' or other sources of more efficient cooling?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_refrigeration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump

- thinking about introducing materials into wallpaper, carpet underlay, ceramic tyles (only where appropriate), paints and dyes so that they they provide a layer of insulation as well?

- use the ground in a better fashion as well. Based on what I've seen the temperature of the ground/sea is generally cooler than that of the air. If we had thermally conductive pipes that actually built into architecture and could be lowered raised at will (they could even be left in there permanently as a means of regulating overall temperature depending on ground temperature fluctuations with insulation being used when higher temperatures are required) we may be able to gain some form of passive cooling (heat tends towards cooler areas)?

- would like to see another design philosophy addition to our technology. We shouldn't think about energy being generated at centralised points only. We should try to de-centralise it as well. In previous post outlined using environment as a means of gaining energy. Believe that we should take it a step further. Whenever possible, we should take the position of not only mitigating energy requirements but becoming 'energy neutral' as well. Namely, the object in question should be able to have it's own source of power generation and storage. For instance, there have recently been stride into transparent solar panels. It's clear that efficiency is a problem but given time we may get to the point where our windows, walls, and even lights may be able to power our buildings.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/149163-mit-startup-makes-transparent-solar-cells-that-will-allow-your-smartphone-to-power-itself

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/energy/dubai-looks-to-rooftop-solar-power-revolution

In keeping with this theme of self power generation is something I called 'Tendril Technology'. For a while now, scientists have been experimenting with nanotechnology and tiny motors. What if we do the reverse? If you've ever seen a wind tunnel you'll see that they sometimes use strips of paper in specific locations to determine direction of flowing gas/liquids. Let's take it a step further. Rarely are the aerodynamics of any object perfect. If we can design tiny electrical generators that stick to particular circuits/areas of a vehicle (like tendrils) than we can make use of the movement of the car itself to generate free energy as the car moves. Of course, this will possibly come at the cost of drag and I'm unsure of the economics of the concept itself? Possibilties are of course endless if such technology is viable/works... We could generate energy ourselves by virtue of our own personal movement. In the meantime am thinking about kinetic based generators being used on cattle and other animals. If insted of just a cow bell, a power generator was also installed I'm curious how much 'free energy' we could create (similar technology to road/pavement based power technology as outlined in previous post)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_generator

- been thinking of other 'free energy' possibilities. One is based on sound. A speaker is driven through electrical current but it can also act as a microphone and generate current as well. How much electricity could you generate using such technology at airports, shopping centres, concerts, etc?

- more intelligent use of solar panels. One design that I saw for a solar farm involved a large number of materials directed towards a group/central point of solar anels. Take this further. If we use parabolic mirrors or have a series of moving mirrors that re-direct sunlight based on the position of the sun we can gain even further gains in efficiency?

- have been considering shield concept further. One option is to use space junk (old satellites, space stations, etc...)(we may need to develop a 'Scooper Bot' to herd junk into the correct area before we can commence building obviously) to build part of the structure for the final shields (one at both poles in geosynchronous orbit. Else low Earth orbit may be fine as well depending on the impact of the shield, size required, etc?). Others things to think about is whether we should make it static or do we allow it to have varying levels of power (like a blind that you can open/shut to varying degrees)? Whether we have multiple shields in regional areas to allow for better climate control around the world? If this is the case would we be able to finally control the weather? Would these sheilds provide any protection against solar flares? Could we also connect satellites/space stations to them? Would they have any impact upon our existing satellite networks and other operations? We'll likely require improved methods of joining/construction in outer space (we need to do this at some point down the line anyhow).

http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/world/spacewalk-bid-to-fix-iss-leak-594052.html

- even if we can't mandate use of green technology but we may be able to guarantee orders. Government forms huge proportion of GDP in a lot of developed countries and if we were able to guarantee orders of truly revolutionary green technologies that may increase the incentive for companies to make a bet on green technologies.

- better access/marketing of recycling facitilies require? Should we mandate levels of recycled product in appropriate areas?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_recycling

Possibly better develop better means of providing means of transferrance of recylable goods? Clear that we need some local options though we'll debate this issue in another post.

http://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20130424/NEWS/130429956/new-york-city-adds-rigid-plastics-to-recycling-program#

http://qz.com/82640/china-doesnt-want-your-trash-anymore-and-that-could-spell-big-trouble-for-american-cities/

- have been thinking about methods of automatically sorting landfill (it's clear that at some point we should be able to use robots). One uses pre-defined shape/colour coding of packaging. Another involves using facial recognition and then sorting based on a database of goods commonly found in supermarkets and shopping centres...

- it's clear that we still have significant problems with regards to reaching other planets.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/nasa-says-mars-travel-a-priority-for-united-states/story-fn5fsgyc-1226636397899

Perhaps we should consider setting up a moon base in the meantime? Experiments with life support, energy/food production, and mining in particular?

- should we start to have environmental efficiency levels on buildings as well?

- based on what I've seen a lot of energy storage technologies I've come across are thermally/environmentally dependent to extract maximum performance. Do we design them with insulation and active thermal management systems as well (already present in Lithium based technologies to some extent)?

- don't think we're dealing with Chinese dumping situation particularly well. Clear that many countries have issues with the Chinese though so it's obvious that they have a case. Problem with tariffs is that they will drive overall prices up. Consider taking it to the WTO? If tariff is preferred, make it smaller/take it and then use this to subsidise (partly or completely) local industry? It will hopefully drive prices downwards overall (dumpers now have to drive prices down further to compete or run the risk of being un-competitive (they may be willing to do so in the short/medium term)) and make adoption of such options much more easier/sensible down the line?

http://www.dw.de/eu-imposes-anti-dumping-duties-on-chinese-solar-panels/a-16798471

http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/chinese-kneecapping-solarpanel-rivals-20130509-2j97b.html

http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/eu-to-slap-hefty-tariffs-on-chinese-solar-pv-20130509-2j8tc.html

http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/germany-seeks-amicable-end-to-china-solar-tiff-20130514-2jiww.html

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/thomson-reuters/130513/eu-agrees-china-solar-panel-duties-boldest-move-yet

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christophercoats/2013/05/13/eu-finally-moves-on-chinese-solar-threats/

- some countries are clearly protectionist with regards to clean energy generation technologies in Europe or else don't want/have the resources to invest in such infrastructure. Consider opening up grids/lines between countries and provide excess energy across borders? Consider setting up joint ventures between countries? Thereafter, use equity shares to perhaps sell off to re-invest? Sovereignty/percentage share still remains the same ideally as was originally.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/-/world/17085680/analysis-central-europe-power-markets-to-stay-niche-as-banks-exit/

- as state previously more alternative fuel research required...

use thermal conditions/enzymes/catalytsts as a means of controlling electrical discharge rate?

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2013/05/09/chinas-vision-for-a-new-urbanization/

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/european-ministers-set-out-timetable-for-eu-ets-reform

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/winds-of-change-blowing-in-china/story-e6frg76f-1226637881187

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/sustainability-a-new-way-of-life/story-fn59niix-1226637910585

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/05/china_cap_and_trade_carbon_tax_the_country_may_lead_the_global_climate_change.html

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55047

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/29/1791811/bombshell-imf-study-united-sates-is-worlds-number-one-fossil-fuel-subsidizer/?mobile=nc

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323744604578470841012284404.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323528404578452483656067190.html?mod=trending_now_1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22491491

http://www.theage.com.au/business/carbon-economy/heavy-debt-weighs-on-chinas-renewable-energy-sector-20130514-2jiws.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/08/ed-davey-coalition-climate-change-sceptics

http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2013/05/how-much-has-the-climate-change-controversy-poisoned-the-well-of-environmentalism/

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/the-science-laureate-of-the-united-states/

http://www.boeing.com/stories/videos/vid_11_tailored_arrivals.html?Quartz-Tailored-Arrivals

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/105343-graphene-improves-lithium-ion-battery-capacity-and-recharge-rate-by-10x

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/106539-stanford-creates-everlasting-nanoparticle-battery-electrode-free-water-based-electrolyte

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/142962-princetons-nanomesh-nearly-triples-solar-cell-efficiency

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10882569

http://www.afr.com/p/technology/intel_super_chip_haswell_no_tablet_08kxaMcIN4ray5YvXoRk0O

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage

http://www.gizmag.com/research-carbon-dioxide-methanol/11483/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_battery

http://phys.org/news5805.html

http://www.theage.com.au/business/saviour-needed-for-australias-auto-industry-20130412-2hqwy.html

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/uni-is-all-about-teaching-not-research-papers-20130506-2j3dr.html

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/liberal-party-discontent-grows-20130509-2jau3.html

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/carbon-price-working-coal-slumps-clean-energy-soars-20130509-2jals.html

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/05/al_drivebywire/

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/05/lamborghini-egoist/

http://smh.drive.com.au/motor-news/lamborghini-singleseater-20130513-2jh4a.html

http://smh.drive.com.au/motor-news/vf-commodore-less-fuel-less-power-20130510-2jbht.html

Lev Lafayette: Searching for Email in a Text File

lev_lafayette — 2013-05-10T23:30:05+00:00

The following script searches through any specified text file for text before and after the ubiquitous email "@" symbol and outputs these as a csv file through use of grep, sed, and sort (for neatness). If the input or the output file are not specified, it exits after echoing the error and provides the correct exit code (1), to indicate error.

Lev Lafayette: How To Delete Many and Large Files in a Multitude of Directories

lev_lafayette — 2013-05-10T15:29:29+00:00

A couple of days ago I scambled together some notes on Backup and Synchronisation and spoke of the need to exclude certain directories (e.g., .gvfs, .wine) from synchronisation. Well, it turns out I ate my own dogfood. Backing up a desktop machine to a central server I discovered that I had did not exclude a .wine directory; it hadn't been used for a long time, I had uninstalled the program and frankly, I had forgotten about it. Well, a few hundred gigabytes later.

Chris Samuel: Melbourne Partial Solar Eclipse, May 10th 2013

Chris Samuel — 2013-05-10T13:27:06+00:00

This morning was a partial solar eclipse in Melbourne. Back up where we saw the total solar eclipse last November they got an annular eclipse which would have been spectacular, but work is too frantic at the moment bringing up a new machine to even think about going up!

The first glimpse of it was from the train going into work with (of course) eclipse glasses (from Ice In Space) and by the time I got to Richmond I remembered I’d not taken a photo so had a go with my phone and the eclipse glasses and came up with this:

My plan though was to go to the playing fields at the University of Melbourne where I’d learnt before (via Twitter) that there would be some astro folks. There was a small group of people there with a telescope set up to project onto a screen at the rear who were having fun trying to keep it on target as it wouldn’t lock into place. The nice thing about projections like this is that you get a nice big image, like this:

I had a couple of left over eclipse glasses from the total eclipse so I passed them around and left them with them, they seemed to go down well!

This item originally posted here:

Melbourne Partial Solar Eclipse, May 10th 2013

James Purser: End of the week notes

James Purser — 2013-05-10T13:26:00+00:00

Well it's been a busy week work wise and Angry Beanie wise, over all I'm pretty happy with how things are going.

I'm currently working on making some changes to the Angry Beanie site. I've already added the three latest episodes as blocks on the front page featuring HTML5 players, but I'm also looking at rebuilding the Show and Episode pages. I'm just not happy with the layouts, too busy and not exactly attractive to look at.

Aside from actually putting together the content, I have two focii for Angry Beanie. Getting more people to listen and putting together a fund raising plan that will allow me to expand what AB can do.

On the getting more people to listen side of things, I've been playing around with how I promote each episode on twitter. I've noticed that if I include a direct link to the audio file I get a lot more downloads than if I just link to the show page. Some of those downloads seem to be bots, but a lot seem to be legitimate listeners.

On the other hand, and this has to be me doing it wrong, Facebook and Google+ just don't seem to be doing it for me. I have 23 likers for the Angry Beanie facebook page and 29 circlers of the Angry Beanie google+ page (along with 81 +1's) but I'm not really getting any interaction. I tend to suck as a community building guy I guess :)

That's it for the moment, never fear, there will be more political and technical posts coming. It's not just going to be all Angry Beanie all the time :)

Blog Catagories:

angry beanie

James Purser: Some thoughts on enragening

James Purser — 2013-05-09T13:26:51+00:00

This is more of a rambling thought flow that anything with a particular focus.

Firstly, I need to post here more often. I've gotten out of the habit of actually sitting down and putting my thoughts to paper (as it were). Mostly because I've tried to keep away from stuff that could be called recreationally enragening.

However over the past few weeks I've come to the conclusion that at times, it's actually perfectly valid to be pissed off about something that you see/hear in the media. Not over things like Tony Abbotts "women of a certain calibre" comment, honestly if I was going to get pissed off every time Abbott said something stupid then I'd have a heart attack before I was 36.

Instead it's things like the fact that the Government wants to strip away the already meager welfare provisions for for asylum seekers who have the temerity to appeal an adverse decision. Or the fact that our "progressive" Government is being made to look reactionary and right wing by the New Zealand conservative government.

Or its watching the "ER MER GERD ABC IS BIERSED!" crap that flies around. Both those who call themselves the left and those who call themselves the right claim the ABC is biased against them.

"There are no conservative presenters on the ABC" is the cry from the right

"Why even is the IPA!" is the cry from the left.

Of course this all boiled up after the last time that Leigh Sales interviewed Tony Abbott. Because Sales didn't eviscerate Abbott and leave his bloody carcass on the floor for the forest wolves, people accused her of being the lapdog of the right (and that by no means was the worst of what she was accused of being or doing).

If you didn't like the interview, then fine, I personally thought that Abbott had been better trained for it, being able to keep repeating the same thing over again regardless of what question he was going to be asked.

What was really incredibly galling was the stench of hypocrisy (those in the know will recognise the phrase) over some of those who claimed to be on the left. Especially those who would take the opportunity to slam Abbott for being mysogynistic and then go on and being even bigger mysogynistic fuck knuckles by accusing Leigh Sales of orally servicing Abbott in no uncertain terms.

You don't get to do that. If you do that you lose, there is no winning and you just look like the monster browed idiot that you are.

Sigh.

As I said, this post was always going to be more a rambling thought thingy than anything else. I really do need to get back into practice.

Arjen Lentz: Why the mining companies don’t actually pay the tax | ABC

Arjen Lentz — 2013-05-09T02:25:07+00:00

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-08/iron-ore-producers-book-billions-in-mining-tax-credits/4678228

Well over billion in tax credits for the big four iron ore miners are a key factor slashing the revenue from the Federal Government’s Minerals Resource Rent Tax.

No related posts

Lev Lafayette: Backups and Synchronisations

lev_lafayette — 2013-05-08T10:30:17+00:00

The following is a brief introduction on how to write up a simple backup script in bash that takes advantage of the date command, and the use of rsync to produce a synchronised mirror, which could also be used for backup purposes.

Backup with bash

LA Subcommittees: SLUG AGM

jhesketh — 2013-05-08T10:27:54+00:00

On April 26th we held an AGM for the SLUG sub-committee and the following results where found. Recording can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjGapMKM0Ic

General report:

Nothing to report, no events happened apart from monthly meetings.

Meeting in March was not held due to poor communication.

Membership continues to decline.

Website is in disrepair and mailing lists barely functioning.

Need membership to step up and make things happen.

Does seem to be enough talks to keep doing talk format, agreed to keep the same format for now.

Both myself and Patrick are standing down from the committee.

I will remain being the SLUG contact at Google and hosting the event here at Google.

Patrick has committed to investigating what PLUG has done to increase membership.

Robert Smit <rmsmit05@gmail.com> stood up to be on the committee at the meeting.

Jiří Baum <jiri@baum.com.au> stood up to take a look at website and other administration issues. Agreed to join the committee too.

For subcommittee:

Sydney Linux Users Group

Ben Martin: Save Ferris: Show some love for libferris...

monkeyiq — 2013-05-08T08:57:00+00:00

Libferris has been gaining some KDE love in recent times. There is now a KIO slave to allow you to see libferris from KDE, also the ability to get at libferris from plasma.

I've been meaning to update the mounting of some Web services like vimeo for quite some time. I'd also like to expand to allow mounting google+ as a filesystem and add other new Web services.

In order to manage time so that this can happen quicker, I thought I'd try the waters with a pledgie. I've left this open ended rather than sticking an exact "bounty" on things. I had the idea of trying a pledgie with my recent investigation into the libferris indexing plugins on a small form factor ARM machine. I'd like to be able to spend more time on libferris, and also pay the rent while doing that, so I thought I'd throw the idea out into the public.

If you've enjoyed the old tricks of mounting XML, Berkeley DB, SQLite, PostgreSQL and other relational databases, flickr, google docs, identica, and others and want to see more then please support the pledgie to speed up continued development. Enjoy libferris!

Stewart Smith: OMG we appear to have entered a run for MS…

Stewart Smith — 2013-05-08T02:27:33+00:00

We are team MEEP – as that is the noise Beaker the cockatiel, our team mascot, makes. Stewart is going for 10 km, Leah is planning for 5 km … and Beaker will enjoy having two tired people to sit on afterwards. :)

We are taking part in the 2013 MS Walk and Fun Run in order to raise funds for people affected by multiple sclerosis (MS). MS is is the most common disease of the central nervous system and affects more than 23,000 Australians.

Did you know?

The average age of diagnosis of MS is just 30 years
MS affects three times as many women as men

MS Australia aims to minimize the impact of multiple sclerosis on all individuals affected by the disease, as well as their families, carers and the community, by offering a wide range of services, equipment and support. MS Australia’s goal is to assist everyone affected by MS to live life to their fullest potential and secure the care and support they need, until we ultimately find a cure.

You can sponsor us here: http://register.mswalk.org.au/2013-MS-Walk-and-Fun-Run-Melbourne/Meep

Tim Serong: Telework, Telework and the NBN

Tim — 2013-05-07T15:28:40+00:00

A few related (or semi-related) bits and pieces which turned up over the last month or so. The first is a video I was sent from onlinemba.com, entitled Telecommuting is Good for You and Good for Business. It cites a few studies showing greater productivity, reduced turnover and eco-friendliness (which I would tend to agree with based on personal experience). Unfortunately I can’t seem to see links to the studies themselves, but you should go watch it anyway, because it’s one of those cute “live animated” things, which I’m a sucker for.

That leads neatly to the second thing, which is from the iiNet blog, entitled The benefits of working from home. As with the above video, Yahoo gets a prominent mention for not allowing telework (although reports on that seem to be somewhat mixed). Anyway, benefits cited include lack of commute, lower overhead and fewer distractions, but the blog post does also make the very good point that you need to figure out whether or not telework is actually right for you. It also offers some tips I tend to agree with.

Now we get to the semi-related bit. Assuming telework is right for you, you want a good internet connection. As I’ve said before, “Yay NBN! Bring it on!“. As much disenchantment as I have with the major parties, this is something Labor is actually doing right. For an easy-to-appreciate comparison of what Labor and the LNP are proposing, check out How Fast is the NBN. Teleworkers, pay particular attention to the simulated Dropbox sync.

Chris Smart: Korora 18 released, and it’s the same as the beta

Chris — 2013-05-07T11:30:54+00:00

We have decided to make the existing beta release of Korora (Flo) 18 the final version, as the beta period did not reveal any major issues which warranted a new build. The existing beta images have simply been renamed, so if you already have the beta you also have the final release.

We would like to thank everyone who has tested the beta and provided feedback, and welcome everyone to download it and try too!

Known issues

Features

Derived from Fedora 18¹, this release comes with the usual Korora extras out of the box, such as:

Adobe Flash plugin
Experimental support for Valve’s Steam client
unburden-home-dir, which moves cache files (like in Firefox profiles) onto RAMFS at login
undistract-me, which pops up a GUI notification when a terminal command has completed
Tweaked KDE and GNOME base systems
Experimental support for Cinnamon desktop in GNOME
Third party repositories (Chrome, RPMFusion, VirtualBox)
Firefox as the default web browser (with integration theme for KDE)
Firefox extensions enabled (Adblock Plus, DownThemAll, Flashblock, Xclear)
Instant messaging client (Kopete for KDE, Empathy for GNOME)
Microblogging client (Choqok for KDE, Gwibber for GNOME)
Full multimedia support (excluding Flash, see next)
Jockey device manager to handle drivers such as ATI and NVIDIA
Video editor (Kdenlive for KDE, OpenShot for GNOME)
VLC as the default media player
SELinux enabled (particularly worthwhile for Flash)
and more..

Upgrade

It is now possible to upgrade from Kororaa 17 to Korora 18, thanks to Fedora’s FedUp tool. Should you encounter issues, please perform a fresh install. Users still on Kororaa 16 should install 18 as the older version is no longer supported upstream and you are not able to update to 18 directly as 16 does not include the FedUp tool.

Feedback

We’d love to hear your feedback, so download it today and let us know!

¹ Korora is not provided or supported by the Fedora Project. Official, unmodified Fedora software is available through the Fedora Project website.

Sam Watkins: pandora

sswam — 2013-05-07T07:30:41+00:00

I propose to create a simple Linux distro:

- based on (beyond) Linux from scratch, ports, sources via DVCS (git, hg, git svn)

- primarily for Open Pandora, also 686 / x86_64 PC

- include source code, dev tools, dev libs

- compressed single-file executable packages based on Pandora PND with some fixes

- separate defaults vs configuration

- include source configuration and compiled objects, for quick hacking

- support projects by donation, rating and feedback; a friendly nagware, enabled by default

- use get ideas from “suckless” Linux projects, such as static linking, musl libc

- all code changes reviewed by two or more maintainers before declared “stable”

- fix and avoid slow and broken things

Arjen Lentz: Trade Matters 2012 – AU DFAT

Arjen Lentz — 2013-05-07T04:25:23+00:00

http://www.dfat.gov.au/tradematters/index.html This infographic (on 2012 foreign trade) looks fairly problematic to me. We export mainly raw materials, and import oil and processed materials. That’s costly and inefficient: inevitable we’ll always lose on that balance. Images for Australia and QLD copied as DFAT doesn’t use URLs that will persist when the next edition comes out…

No related posts

Binh Nguyen: Going Green

Binh Nguyen — 2013-05-06T14:44:00+00:00

One of the things which I've always thought strange is that many people I know say that there always needs to be a winner and loser. I guess I've always believed that compromises are always possible which don't always negatively impact upon all stakeholders. I've always believed that so called win-win compromises are more often than not possible if you put the time, effort, and you have the ability/talent to be able to look at the problem at a deeper, more fundamental level.

This is particularly the case with some environmental, government, and business policies. I still remember when I was younger watching news programs which had protesters chaining themselves to trees as a means of stopping logging. It was a crude and often futile means of trying to get their message across. However, some part of it and a lot more science has meant that their warnings were ultimately being heeded.

The following are random thoughts regarding building a greener/more sustainable future without necessarily simultaneously ruining our existing lifestyles and economies. The obvious reason why this thought process is so appealing is that as the world's population continues to grow we will face growing issues with regards to natural resource depletion and replenishment. We need ways of dealing with these problems while not necessarily having to deal with massive changes to our lifestyles.

- always think big picture. Biggest polluters or those technologies that everyone uses but if efficiency can be increased can help us all drastically. Get everyone thinking about these particular problems not just the 'experts'. Sometimes a new approach is required and one of the things I've learnt is that what you can from one field is can sometimes be applied to another with sometimes surprising and fantastic results.

- teach people how to drive/fly/live in a more efficient manner and starting at a younger age. An example of this is driving and the difference between start/stop and smooth driving and how/why it often makes little difference in arrival time between start/stop and smooth driving. Another example, is running lab classes where you actually learn and interact with the environment.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/motorweektranscript.shtml

- tired of seeing postgraduate students doing inane, and sometimes useless, research projects. It's a waste of our money and their talent. A reduction in pointless/useless/redundant work. Encourage them to do something that has tangible value. It will be for their own personal benefit, will allow for an almost instant return of investment of government/private funding (depends on how they gained their place) and also benefits society as a whole. If you're smart enough to reach that level then you should be able to solve real world problems and make consequential discoveries. To this end I guess I'm proposing somewhat of a list/database of major and not no major problems that need to be fixed by both industry, academic, as well as society in general. These will form part of the basis for possible postgraduate work provided that there is of course approval for the project to go ahead. I've always believed that if you have the ability to do so you should dedicate part of your life to doing things that are likely to benefit society as a whole. This leads me to my next point.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/congress-tries-to-reset-science-grants-wants-every-one-to-be-groundbreaking/

- take the shackles off of scientists/researchers in advanced categories such as Formula 1. Clear that they have made some significant strides but it's clear that the rules have held them back from pursuing some potentially very worthwhile technologies/concepts. If they can at least do the pre-liminary work then the rest of the world can continue on from there. Else pay these particular people (either in their spare time or after they have retired) to pursue technologies for the greater good?

- alternative packaging. Particularly food and basic goods. You can advertise within decent packaging without having to go overboard. Look at things like toilet paper. Basically similar to vacuum/heat shrunk plastic. Expand concept to toothbrush, other foods, and you begin to see just how much of a saving can be made. Good for everyone since it saves of transportation costs as well. Create legislation to mandate volume of goods versus packaging percentage size?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excipient

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosage_form

- can we somehow reduce reliance on advertising and junk mail? Perhaps give advertisers an alternative means of supplying their junk (perhaps broadcast via phones, eBook reader style devices such as the Kindle, or else even wireless transfer each time you walk into or past a shopping centre?)? Smaller advertising/junk mail sizes/volumes? Smaller newspapers? magazines? More regulation of publications?

- when I was younger and conducting experiments I was often 'resource limited' so I learnt to live by the following, "if you can't buy it, build it". Learning through this fashion I learnt to resort to using to whatever was the closest approximation to the real thing that was possible. This allowed for rapid prototyping and minimal capital outlay on whatever projects/experiments I needed to be done. It also meant that I was forced to work with nature and existing science rather than against it. Suggest that this should be our first thought when developing new technologies/products. If at all possible, search for things which are naturally occurring (maybe even develop a global database. We'll expand on this in next point.) and use them as the basis for future technologies if/when required. Essentially, true bio/eco-technological development (good example of this is difference between standard LCD/LED technology and OLED technologies).

- better use/understanding of passive/bio-chemical/effects. Database or better knowledge of natural tendencies of systems that exist around us. Work with nature, rather than against it whenever/ever possible. May need to change laws to allow these thoughts/principles to proliferate though. Dangerous precedent already set when we have allowed patenting of certain critical effects that exist in nature. Could have the impact of holding back human scientific progress. More thought required...

- think about genetic modification of plants (add components so that we can kill them off easily if needed) that can be used to potentially start new ecosystems? Think about arid areas in particular and plants which can deal with low moisture environments? A lot of care required here to ensure we don't destroy native ecosystems, habitats...

- efficient/quality appliances? Biggest problems is rate of return. In some cases, people only recover cost or initial up front cost after several years. Something which many and especially those on a tight budget do not necessarily care about. Outlaw inefficient devices, subsidise efficient devices, both?

- better alternatives to showering, laundry. One alternative I saw in a science fiction series was based on a mist of synthetic substance. Technically, we're able to achieve something similar now. Basically, imagine having a shower that is essentially the equivalent of a steam bath. The first phase is based on a mix of steam, soap, and anti-bacterial liquid in a mist/vapour based form. The second phase, basically emulates a standard shower (it could be another mist phase though depending on your preference) but essentially amounts to what is a rinse. Interesting alternatives with regards to washing include ultrasonics which allows you to shift or remove dirt via high frequency sound waves. Results of commercial devices generally indicates that they are not as efficient as standard washing machines which use detergent though.

http://www.eternallysolar.com/Main%20link%20pages/flowrate.htm

- if it moves, naturally stores, or provides energy then we should look to extract all possible energy from it not just reduce emissions. Look at a power station for instance (currently a lot of major polluters use the equivalent of catalytic convertor systems/carbon filters anyhow), think about the cooling towers. What if we coat the outside of the towers themselves with solar panels? What if we add wind generators on top? What if divert some of the steam/waste water/liquid generated and funnel it down stream (remember the water is hot and in general higher temperatures leads to higher greater movement) into a tidal based energy generator? Where the fires are lit we will use the light to generate further power. Another example would be pavements, floors, and roads. Imagine if we use the an enhanced version of some of the dynamo/generator technology that is used to charge watches and other small appliances in them. Everything we move (even earthquakes would be a source of energy in this type of situation) becomes an energy source. Any and every piece of energy that can be extracted from objects in their most natural form will be utilised.

- people say that developed world should beat primary cost of carbon reduction but it's clear that some of the measures outlined here will have a negligible cost such as learning how to design more efficient homes. We should where ever possible share such information and incorporate into basic training/qualifications globally. It will help save help everyone in the long term and people in developing countries won't have to re-design goods/homes in future for better efficiency.

- we should think more about our modes of transporation. Explore whether people are willing to arrive at destination slower if their transportation was significantly cheaper (may require vehicles to be luxurious, give people the ability to work on such vehicles, or else allow people further time off work to make this work in the longer term?)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_vehicle

- even though cars have made significant strides it's clear that we can do things smarter/better. If you have ever watched traffic during a peak (or any depending on where you live) period you would have noticed that the actual average density is very close to 1. It sort of makes you wonder why you should have the other three seats there. Obvious solution is to build smaller cars and try to force people into them (higher tax for those who don't require larger/higher capacity cars is one option especially if there local petrol prices are too low to make a difference on cost of ownership. Never believed in broad based taxes/levies if they can be avoided. Have always believed that a part of society is engaging in behaviour that is causing detriment to the overall group they should be the first ones to pay/be held accountable and so forth.). Other option is to have large group of standardised vehicles within pre-set ranges that are then rented out. Similar to the way bicyles/trycicles are rented out in some cities. Could obviously also go converse with everyone owing small cars and only renting larger cars when required? Even though there are vents I find myself often having to resort to using air conditioning even though external air temperature is probably more than good enough. Opening the window doesn't work because that leads to rain. Learn from passive thermal control systems (satellite and some laptop technology in particular). On high end/performance cars air (Bugatti Veyron), magnets (Jetcars), and superconducters (Jetcars) are sometimes used as a means of slowing them down. Wonder how much effort/cost it would take to make them a realistic option on standard vehicles (think about never having to worry about brake manufacturing again far off in the distant future),

http://phys.org/news/2011-03-superconductors.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_electric_machine

http://www.siemens.com/innovation/en/publikationen/publications_pof/pof_spring_2006/motors_articles/superconducting_generators.htm

think about engine design. Much more advanced now than we were several decades ago but principles vastly the same. Chamber with piston combined with internal combustion. Look how much is involved in between though. Simplification of design would result in a more rotary style (and efficient) design (that is already used in many hybrid vehicles).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_cycle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_engine

fiddle around with ECU units on older cars. I recall several people experimenting with using a significantly reduced number of cylinders (1/2 out of 4/6). There's a point at which extra power is almost pointless due to speed limits anyhow. If we can (and if it doesn't cause undue reliability problems) we should think about reducing/rotating use of cylinders at the end of each service much like we rotate tyres.

- think about cause/effect issues and every single possible piece of waste that we (and our environment) produces and how we can extract maximum energy from it. For instance, exercise machines that also have dynamo/power generation/storage capabilities, retrofit KERS/dynamo based technologies on existing cars, laundry/kitchens (think about/work on safe detergents if current ones are 'too harsh') with divertor tap somewhere in house that can be turned on at anytime that can be used for irrigation (or other) purposes (only use sewerage system as a last resort but even think about using energy from that as well),

http://www.poopower.com.au/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas

guttering systems (diverted at will) that feed into systems inside of walls to provide for extra insulation during summer, solar/wind powered traffic lights/telephone booths, human food (if you can't sell it but it's still edible feed animals/give it away. Food wastage is a huge problem.) as well as animal feed (in particular ruminent animals which give off enormous amounts of emissions),

http://www.dw.de/farmers-fight-cow-farts-to-protect-the-climate/a-16702813

houses that aren't overly large and better suit the needs of the occupants and are therefore easier to control with regards to temperature/lighting,

more intelligent design of climate control systems (think about hot water heaters. Think about conductive pipes that would go into the walls or even into your house. Temperature control can be achieved by moving/elevating these pipes into out of the house walls.),

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_conditioning

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling

better design and use of blinds/drapes/films for environmental control (many blinds that I've come across felt like they amplified the effect of external heat/cold)(If you've ever studied heat shields on spacecraft then you would have heard of something called the 'Ablative Effect'. It's somewhat similar to the way insulation works. If we think about this concept further then we can take it further. One side will reflect, the other will absorb giving you another avenue for passive enrivonmental control.),

http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/Architectural/Glass/Products/Laminated-Glass-Films/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_film

think about what we can do with architectural designs particularly to do with lighting and environmental control. Suprising how much energy can be saved it we simply rely on nature/daylight, and make better use of materials (obvious ones are insulation and highly efficient roof tiles.), electronic screens which use energy from the sun in order to charge themselves.

http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/08/09/invention-the-new-pixel-qi-lcd-screen-works-in-full-sun/

http://www.pixelqi.com/

http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/04/23/pixel-qi-reveals-next-generation-display-with-retina-like-resolution-massive-power-savings/

inks that fade to nothing so that we can simply re-use it or don't necessarily have to bleach the paper to through the recycling process (I got this idea when a lot of my receipts were fading over a short period of time), devices, vehicles, and bags that have built-in solar panels so that we can charge our devices while on the road,

- we need to zoom in and out of problems. For instance, if better clothing materials existed (no need for drastic changes in cooling/heating if our clothing were

made of sufficiently good material, potentially with built-in passive cooling systems), we may not need to rely on large scale environmental control systems as much.

- need better ways/methods of sorting out waste, particularly in tip/landfill style situations.

http://www.abbott.com/citizenship/priorities/safeguard/environment.htm

- we need to be smarter with regards to technology especially with technology recycling and repair. Almost everything now has hit the point people just replace rather than repair. If it goes back to the factory systemic issues should be identified and possible remedies learnt from. If possible repair and re-sell or give away to locals in the area instead of sending it away as waste. Design systems so that they are easier to repair or else support better training of people in general.

- every satellite that goes up needs to have the ability to take out another satellite with it. Preferably they will be satellites under your own control so that we don't have to deal with issues of jurisdiction. All satellites must have the ability to de-orbit themselves from now on.

- should we consider/work on technologies which allow us to begin to consider flying above the parts of the atmosphere that are relevant?

- work backwards if at all possible. If the by-products of energy creation is clean or cleaner we may be able

- force manufacturers to open up with regards to power management on some of their devices. Sometimes the only way to achieve optimal results is if you have 'inside knowledge' or reverse engineer it. That way anyone can build software that can better manage the power output of these devices if required (hardware/software switches for most funtionality on your laptop/mobile devices so that you gain more granular control are quite common now though not so when software is ported to it)

Now for the not so simple, impracticle, and unrealistic stuff...

- take energy/product generation off-planet (reduce need for emissions on Earth). Something that others have thought of about before. Examples include: massive solar panels in orbit beaming back energy to Earth via wireless. Energy efficiency (of both the panels as well as energy transfer) is of course a huge problem; generating energy on the moon/other planets, storing it and then transporting it back to Earth. Obvious safety, time, risk/reward, cost/benefit, etc... issues at play here; mining natural resource on inter-planetary objects, creating the produce the product on their and bring it back (think about a highly advanced version of 3D printing).

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/the-future-is-printed-in-3d-20130417-2i0bv.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorite

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/drone-space-ship-app-to-help-robots-on-future-missions-20130422-2i971.html

- I think we need to stop thinking about space as a 'forbidden zone' for experimentation. Not only should be be looking to other planets for resources and a possible new home but we should also be looking to shape entire planets as well. Think about 'terraforming'. If successful we can run the same experiments back home on Earth as well if/when required. Perhaps even think about turning entire planets into energy sources? Ater all, think about the composition of some of the planets that are out there. They aren't too dis-similar to the basic ingredients that are used in electrochemical batteries (transferring the energy is an entirely different problem. We should not discount their possible use as a base for re-fuelling for other activities though.).

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/science/20130505_Mars_draws_closer.html

- recently we've been having trouble with emissions that drift into other areas. If we work on technologies that can control the flow of the particles (remember that some smoke detectors work on the principle of detection of ionised atoms, containment fields in plasma drive engines work in a similar fashion, and so would the fields that I proposed in the use of Anti-Weapons Technologies)(We can make it easier by making the by-product of chemical/industrial operations more 'cleanable/controllable' as well?) then perhaps we can also devise other technologies that will react with greenhouse emissions which will cause them to precipitate (liquid or solid). This can then more easily controlled (perhaps sent into outer space)?

http://www.theage.com.au/world/chinas-pollution-blamed-for-japans-dying-trees-20130425-2igfz.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

- we could try massive shields (physical or else Force-Field style technology though this is likely to be someway off into the future) in outer space. Idea which was floated decades back by firms wanting permanent, prominent, advertising.

- we're bathed in electromagnetic radiation (human and natural) at the moment. In fact, personal experiments indicate that Wifi I can reach about a dozen networks in my area alone using fairly standard equipment. Would be good if we could somehow devise a means of 'plucking' energy relatively passively from this. Have heard of experiments by service providers about providing energy via telecommunications towers, curious to see how far they can take it.

- we could try managing the problem by creating canals into natural/artificial basins/sinkholes inside of continental areas? Possibly for hydro/tidal-power generation?

- something I've been toying since the almost confirmed? discovery of the Higgs-Boson and containment chambers used in Plasma thrusters are mass based containment chambers (think 'mini-blackhole'). Imagine being able to accumulate enough Higgs-Boson particles to basically create enough gravity to be able to warp time/space to such an extent that we could control not only the size of the reaction but also the rate as well.). Basically any reaction (including explosive) could be controlled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor

- in general we need a lot more thought/research into stable, high density ('stable' is the key word here. Our work with Lithium and Nuclear based energy storage/generations should indicate how difficult these problems are to overcome.) storage of energy.

- same goes for energy generation as well. At the end of the day a lot of power generation systems are extremely primitive. Essentially, a lot of power generation works along the same principles. Kinetic energy is used to drive power generators, and so on... The basic principles haven't changed in a long time.

- with our current propulsion systems (and other technology) a lot of work needs to be done to be able to achieve inter-stellar/gallactic travel and to make inter-planetary/gallactic work more realistics. If you understand some of the complexities of rocketry you'll understand how dangerous, expensive, and inefficient it is... Work is being done on plasma/ion drives but chemical based engines still offer vast power/acceleration advantages. May need to consider more multi-stage/propulsion systems in future (work is already being done with regards to satellites in this space)?

Key issues/questions:

- many commercial operators are saying that they'll lose out in the long term if we do start using space as another frontier for resource exploration. I think we need to put this into perspective. If it's a question between profitability or survivival and living standards I think that most people are going to choose the former.

- in spite of all of the above, one thing that politicians (and other decisions makers) need to be keep in mind is that with few exceptions simply throwing money at the problem just isn't going to work. Science requires many different things. Among them talent, desire, motivation, inspiration, on top of finance. A scientist isn't going to come up with breakthrough concepts and ideas simply because he is given more money so why waste it? Use it on more pressing things...

http://www.economist.com/node/17723223?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709

- carbon tax and other levies are fine but honestly I think the greatest incentive is if we can develop technologies where there are benefits for everyone. If we do establish carbon markets or taxes probably best if don't float it for moment as it's clear that we're still feeling our way out and we can't really predict what markets are going to do (if we do float use try it on a smaller scale first to see what it's impact is). Set and review it every once in a while.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-04-18/china-to-complete-climate-change-law-draft-in-two-years

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2013/04/130418-europe-carbon-market-crisis/

- we've experimented with fuels and green-tech before but it's clear that unless the alternative is just as good people will not move to it. This has particularly been the case with bio-fuels and even recycled paper (I remember when they first used and they were clearly inferior and less popular).

http://www.euractiv.com/energy/study-biofuels-took-10-cyprus-ba-news-519165

- doesn't matter what the technology is it must be proven to work. Too many cases of pseudo-science or just plain fraud.

- ultimately I believe that the question of environmental conversation is a problem that is rooted in science not economics. Greater co-operation, focus, a better policy framework which supports our environment, and research on 'Green technologies' required if we are to succeed in being able to manage our environment.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/dannykennedy/2013/04/18/119000-reasons-why-solar-is-a-united-states-success-story/

http://www.utilityproducts.com/news/2013/04/26/cheap-soy-catalyst-produces-hydrogen-fuel.html

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/breakthrough-in-solar-efficiency-by-unsw-team-ahead-of-its-time-20130505-2j117.html

One example is the following is if there is something that is truly ground-breaking and clearly superior we should use the laws to mandate usage of such technology when/where ever possible (in a similar fashion to the way in which we mandate safety equipment on newer cars). This provides a strong incentive to invest money into research and development in 'Green Technology' because the risk is balanced by the knowledge that if you succeed there are chances of a 'windfall'.

- it's clear that there are some issues that are contentious even though they are clearly important. Things like the environment, gun reform, healthcare, education, etc... all form a group of policies which even if politicians want to pass they are still beholden to various interest groups and backers. I propose that at a certain juncture (number of times a policy has been put forward but the situation remains deadlocked) I'd like to see something similar to a jury being convened. It will basically act as confirmation that the policies in question are in the national interest, allow deadlocked situations to be broken, and give politicians some 'breathing room' with regards to being able to pursue policies that are genuinely in the national interest rather than having to compromise their decision making all the time for the sake of elections of vested interests. To make it more more manageable you would only be able to convene such a jury a limited number of times per term and only on important issues that must be fixed for the long term benefit of the country/region in question.

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-329_en.htm?locale=en

http://ecogeneration.com.au/news/climate_change_authority_seeks_comment_on_review_of_emissions_targets/081154/

http://www.elp.com/news/2013/04/26/washington-using-executive-authority-to-account-for-the-greenhouse-gas-emissions-of-federal-projects.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/18/us-china-climate-eu-idUSBRE93H0ER20130418

http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/03/18041136-greenhouse-gas-levels-near-milestone-highest-in-millions-of-years?lite

http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Science%2Band%2BTech/Story/A1Story20130506-420598.html

http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/power-demand-slump-saps-emissions-20130506-2j315.html

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/news/2013/4/29/science-environment/industrialised-nations-greenhouse-gas-emissions-dipped-2011

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/greenhouse-gas-levels-highest-in-3m-years-20130428-2imrr.html

http://theconversation.com/learning-from-europes-carbon-price-crash-we-need-a-carbon-bank-13860

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/photon-to-electron-conversion-0418.html

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/coal-gets-rogue-status-in-fight-for-clean-earth-20130407-2heqk.html

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/04/15/report-us-makes-messy-progress-on-global-warming-policy

http://climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/the-policy-climate/

http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/fossil-fuel-funding-grossly-inconsisent-with-warming-limits-20130419-2i424.html

http://www.afr.com/p/national/no_payout_for_dick_smith_small_australia_sfIS4sQuh0AA0CaSI2pcUK

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/electricity-prices-set-to-drop-as-european-links-come-into-play-20130423-2icz4.html?google_editors_picks=true

http://news.yahoo.com/slow-scary-france-quits-nuclear-state-institute-154437859--finance.html

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/greenpeace-israel-can-generate-half-its-electricity-without-polluting.premium-1.516795

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/coal-producers-ignore-policy-on-carbon-20130429-2incv.html

http://phys.org/news/2013-04-earth-center-degrees-hotter-previously.html#ajTabs

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/us-looks-at-deeper-arctic-role/story-e6frfkui-1226624204219

James Morris: Linux Security Summit 2013 (New Orleans) – Call for Participation

jamesm — 2013-05-06T10:27:17+00:00

The CFP for the 2013 Linux Security Summit has been announced.

The summit will be held across the 19th and 20th of September in New Orleans, co-located again with LinuxCon and Linux Plumbers. Note that presenters and attendees at LSS must be registered as LinuxCon attendees.

We’ll be following a similar format to last year, with a day of refereed presentations, followed by subsystem updates and break-out sessions on the second day. We’ll probably finish up around lunchtime on the Friday for people needing to head home that day, but check the final schedule for details once it’s published.

The CFP is open until 14th June, with speaker notifications to be posted by 21st June.

If you’ve been doing cool and interesting work in Linux security, be sure to submit a proposal!

Arjen Lentz: Snake in the Garden

Arjen Lentz — 2013-05-06T05:25:11+00:00

I noticed birds making a lot of noise outside (no cats about). That usually means a snake either in a tree or on the ground, and so it was this time. I managed to take a picture before it moved on. It seemed to be about 2m long, probably a carpet python (Morelia Spilota). Beautiful!

OSDC 2009 – call for papers reminder

BlueHackers: Paul Miller: back online after a year without the internet | The Verge

Arjen Lentz — 2013-05-05T23:06:57+00:00

http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back-online-after-a-year-without-the-internet

I was wrong. One year ago I left the internet. I thought it was making me unproductive. I thought it lacked meaning. I thought it was “corrupting my soul.” It’s a been a year now since I…

Danielle Madeley: First thoughts on RedHat OpenShift

Danielle — 2013-05-05T06:26:54+00:00

I’m looking for a PaaS provider that isn’t going to cost me very much (or anything at all) and supports Flask and PostGIS. Based on J5′s recommendation in my blog the other day, I created an OpenShift account.

A free account OpenShift gives you three small gears¹ which are individual containers you can run an app on. You can either run an app on a single gear or have it scale to multiple gears with load balancing. You then install components you need, which OpenShift refers to by the pleasingly retro name of cartridges. So for instance, Python 2.7 is one cartridge and PostgreSQL is another. You can either install all cartridges on one gear or on separate gears based on your resource needs².

You choose your base platform cartridge (i.e. Python-2.6) and you optionally give it a git URL to do an initial checkout from (which means you can deploy an app that is already arranged for OpenShift very fast). The base cartridge sets up all the hooks for setting up after a git push (you get a git remote that you can push to to redeploy your app). The two things you need are a root setup.py containing your pip requirements, and a wsgi/application file which is a Python blob containing an WSGI object named application. For Python it uses virtualenv and all that awesome stuff. I assume for node.js you’d provide a package.json and it would use npm, similarly RubyGems for Ruby etc.

There’s a nifty command line tool written in Ruby (what happened to Python-only Redhat?) that lets you do all the sort of cloud managementy stuff, including reloading cartridges and gears, tailing app logs and SSHing into the gear. I think an equivalent of dbshell would be really useful based on your DB cartridge, but it’s not a big deal.

There are these deploy hooks you can add to your git repo to do things like create your databases. I haven’t used them yet, but again it would make deploying your app very fast.

There are also quickstart scripts for deploying things like WordPress, Rails and a Jenkins server onto a new gear. Speaking of Jenkins there’s also a Jenkins client cartridge which I think warrants experimentation.

So what’s a bit crap? Why isn’t my app running on OpenShift yet? Basically because the available cartridges are a little antique. The supported Python is Python 2.6, which I could port my app too; or there are community-supported 2.7 and 3.3 cartridges, so that’s fine for me (TBH, I thought my app would run on 2.6) but maybe annoying for others. There is no Celery cartridge, which is what I would have expected, ideally so you can farm tasks out to other gears, and although you apparently can use it, there’s very little documentation I could find on how to get it running.

Really though the big kick in the pants is there is no cartridge for Postgres 9.2/PostGIS 2.0. There is a community cartridge you can use on your own instance of OpenShift Origin, but that defeats the purpose. So either I’m waiting for new Postgres to be made available on OpenShift or backporting my code to Postgres 8.4.

Anyway, I’m going to keep an eye on it, so stay tuned.

small gears have 1GB of disk and 512MB of RAM allocated
I think if you have a load balancing (scalable) application, your database needs to be on its own gear so all the other gears can access it.

Peter Lieverdink: Operation Hubble

cafuego — 2013-05-05T02:27:17+00:00

I got a telescope a few years back and though it works well for looking through with human eyes, it's been close to impossible to use with with a digital SRL camera mounted at the eyepiece. The problem is that the camera body can't move close enough to the tube to obtain focus on objects futher away than about 20 metres. Of course, that's not very useful for a telescope (unless you'e into bird-watching).

The camera can be made to focus with the addition of a barlow lens, but the only one of those I have magnifies by a factor of two and adds some blurring, so that's not really an ideal solution either. What I really want is to put the camera at prime focus using only the primary and secondary mirror.

On one of my bi-annual google searches for a solution I stumbled across the suggestion of a Hubble style operation to mount the telescopes primary mirror a bit closer to the secondary mirror, so making the focal plane move a bit further away from the tube. However, the original post is rather low on detail.

From the images added to the original post, it looked like the poster had used book binding screws known as "chicago screws" or "sex bolts" (not be confused with Andrew) to replace the thumb screws on the end of the telescope, to give the mirror assembly more inward travel and longer springs to prevent vibration.

Components

I found chicago screws at a craft store, but they turned out to be a bit short and made it nigh impossible to collimate the mirror by giving close to no purchase (compared to the thumb screws).

On my quest to find a matching longer screw head for the chicago screws, I ended up at a hardware store where one of the clerks actually found some used 5mm × 45mm machine screws that appeared perfect for my needs, but unfortunately he couldn't find any springs to match.

A bit more googling on the tram home though, led me to the RS Components website, which lists a plethora of varied size and strength springs. Including one that appears to fit :-) I ordered a set and a few days later I had everything I needed for my Hubble style telescope surgery.

Disassembly

To remove the primary mirror assembly, unscrew the small black screws from the bottom of the telescope (you can stand it on its front for this) and carefully lift the entire assembly out of the tube. Unfortunately, the screws that keep the assembly attached to the backing plate are half obscrured by the rpimary mirror, so that will need to be removed too. You need a small screw driver to carefully undo the six screws that keep the mirror in place. Carefully lift the mirror off, put it in a safe place and cover it to keep dust off.

Remove the thumb screws and the backing plate, then turn the assembly over. You can now remove the screws that attache the mirror assembly to the backing plate and replace them with your longer ones.

Provided you got the correct springs (mine are 11mm diameter, 56mm long, 1mm piano wire), they should fit perfectly and push the mirror away from the backing plate with a fair bit of force. Add the backing plate and put the thumb screws back on. You may need to compress the springs quite firmly to accomplish this.

When that's done, all that remains is to reinstall the mirror and gently reinsert the whole assembly back into the tube.

Insert error

When I performed this last step I found that it was close to impossible to insert the mirror back into the tube. On closer inspection, some scratches on the mirror assembly implied it was catching on the small screws that keep the end cap in place. These would appear to be just the slightest bit too long. D'oh!

I wasn't about to go off again and find some more screws, so instead I simply reversed these. The screw head is now on the inside of the tube and the hex nut is on the outside, allowing the mirror assembly free travel. If you do this, just be sure to not have any clothing catch on that screw when you're out in the field.

I've not yet had the time to properly try this new setup to see if it makes any difference to focusing, fingers crossed!

Tags:

Colin Charles: Trip Report: OpenWest Conference

Colin Charles — 2013-05-04T16:26:21+00:00

I attended the OpenWest Conference in Orem, Utah, and have to say its one of the best community organised conferences. There were over 840+ people at the conference (with more walk-in’s), representing a greater than 100% growth rate compared to last year’s conference.

I gave a talk about MariaDB, and its safe to say that we’ve got many new features that that it’s getting very hard to go in-depth in a span of an hour.

One of the highlights for me was attending talks. I give so many talks, and spend a lot of time talking to people about MariaDB and MySQL, that I very rarely get to see other talks or learn new things. So OpenWest was very welcome from that aspect.

On Thursday, I saw a wonderful presentation by Dave Wellman on Hadoop 101 and the Big Data Hype. That’s an excellent slide deck with lots of animations. Rasmus Lerdorf gave an excellent presentation on PHP in 2013 – very detail oriented, I learned a lot about PHP 5.4.

The highlights for Friday were the two morning keynotes – both Rasmus Lerdorf and Mark Callaghan gave thoughtful speeches. I gave my talk (thanks for the nice words Mark), received lots of good questions and feedback (thanks to being right before lunch), attended Mark’s MySQL Q&A which was a great conversation for an hour. Many were interactive. I stuck around for Steve Meyers presentation Database Optimization for Web Developers, which was a 2hr tutorial and a good walkthrough.

Overall, a great time at the conference. Not to forget all the social time chatting with Mark and Steve. I’ve enjoyed my trip to Utah (first time here), and thanks to Steve for having us speak about MariaDB, and the captive audience.

Linux Users of Victoria (LUV) Announce: May 2013 -- Beginners' Workshop, Supercomputers

ljk — 2013-05-04T10:29:15+00:00

Start: May 18 2013 12:30

End: May 18 2013 17:00

Start: May 18 2013 12:30

End: May 18 2013 17:00

Location:

VPAC Training Room, 110 Victoria Street, Carlton South

Link:

http://luv.asn.au/meetings/map

Lev Lafayette, A Beginner's Introduction to Supercomputers

General Workshop Area:

At the LUV Beginner's workshop you can come along and work with Linux enthusiasts to assist you in setting up your system the way you want. This could include friendly advice on partitions, distributions, configurations, networking and specific applications. Bring your laptop!

The Melbourne OLPC Club meetings are co-located with the Beginners' Workshops. If you are interested in the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project, please come and join in!

LUV would like to acknowledge Red Hat for their help in obtaining the Buzzard Lecture Theatre venue and VPAC for hosting, and BENK Open Systems for their financial support of the Beginners Workshops

Linux Users of Victoria Inc., is an incorporated association, registration number A0040056C.

May 18, 2013 - 12:30

TasLUG: Statewide Committee Voting Is Open

2013-05-03T10:26:11+00:00

Nominations for the statewide commitee have been received and we now have a poll up to confirm the uncontested positions and collect votes on the remaining ones.

The following positions were uncontested:

* President: Craige McWhirter (ruagair)

* Treasurer: Scott Bragg (mrfaulteh)

* Media Muse: Mathew Oakes

Congratulations to Craige, Scott and Mathew.

Nominees for the two remaining "Community Champion" positions are:

* Scott Bragg (mrfaulteh)

* Scott Evans (VK7HSE)

* Chris Neugebauer (chrisjrn)

* Tim Serong (tserong)

The poll can be found here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GC7TKRZ

To reduce the impact of spam/duplicate votes, we are asking people to provide an email address that is associated with a TasLUG website account, or a TasLUG mailing list subscription (both are worth having anyway, and signup links can be found on this site). These email addresses will not be used for anything other than removing invalid/duplicate votes. Addresses will also not be associated with votes and the data will be destroyed at the end of the poll.

Many thanks to "returning officer" bleeter for coordinating this!

Please discuss further on the mailing list or in the forums.

Ben Martin: Indexing on limited hardware... what to do

monkeyiq — 2013-05-03T06:37:00+00:00

Libferris supports many indexing libraries and technologies through its plugin interface. Larger systems can use a PostgreSQL plugin which is tailored explicitly to get the most out of that RDBMs for larger file server indexes. For smaller end, there are memory mapped files, clucene, soprano, or SQLite. I've been doing some tinkering trying to milk extra performance out of the indexing plugins for ARM machines lately. Note that if you are using debian, the CLucene you'll want is the 2.x series, currently only packaged for experimental.

For testing purposes I built a fairly tiny index of only 130k files. An interesting test case is looking for specific files which have paths that match against a regular expression and returns a fairly small chunk of results. For this case, about 115 resulting files using a four character substring search as the regex. These are a common query for looking for files when you don't recall the exact ordering of the directory names or where a directory was. Small number of results, regex to pick them.

The memory mapped index implementation (boostmmap) uses boost IPC and multi indexed collections created in memory mapped files to maintain the index. The index has also a digram index for each URL allowing regular expressions to resolve through index rather than needing evaluation against full URLs.

The SQLite index is fairly vanilla and doesn't include many customizations for sqlite. Whereas the PostgreSQL index implementation does use many of the features specific to that database. Neither the SQLite or boostmmap indexes in the public libferris repo attempt to do any compression on URL strings or the like.

A fairly basic index on 130k files is about 80mb using either memory mapped files or SQLite. Caches are cleared by echo 3 > drop_caches. Using an odroid-u2 with emmc flash, on a cold cache the SQLite index comes out about 10% faster than the boostmmap for a query finding 115 files. Turning off the regex prefilter index in the boostmmap makes it 10% slower again. This is a trade off, a very fast CPU and a disk with great file location and single extents will show less or no difference with the prefilter as reading 80mb from disk will take less time and the CPU can run 130k regexes very quickly. The prefilter requited only 124 regex evaluations, without the prefilter all 130611 URLs needed a regex evaluation.

The interesting part is with a warm cache the boostmmap is about twice as fast overall as the SQLite index. This is a big difference as the timing is for overall complete run time from the command line, and there is some overhead in starting up the index query itself. As usual, things vary depending on if you are expecting frequent queries (warm cache), have a very fast CPU (regex eval is relatively less costly), or need multiple updaters (SQLite allows it, my memory mapped doesn't).

To then experiment a little further, I brought the ferris clucene plugin into the mix. I disabled the explicit prefilter index on regex code for initial testing, the index became about 70mb and could resolve the query on a cold cache in about 65% the time of the SQLite plugin. On warm cache the clucene was slowest, which is mainly due to the prefilter being disabled and the fallback code making the URL query a WildcardQuery with no pre or postfix to anchor the query on.

Next time around I'll see how speed effective the prefilter index is on clucene. I know it slows down adding documents (you are indexing more), and is larger (I haven't optimized for index size), but it will be interesting to see the performance on the eMMC device for the prefilter.

TasLUG: Second Annual TasLUG Statewide Gathering This Weekend!!

2013-05-02T13:26:21+00:00

Wow, time moves quickly!

For anybody who needs a reminder, we've got out second ever TasLUG statewide gathering happening at the Ross Town Hall this weekend.

This is a chance for people from all around the state to come together and get to know/share knowledge with other Free/Open Source Software enthusiasts. People are encouraged to bring along a machine or a laptop or a mobile device or whatever's applicable to share with the community the sort of things they do with Free/Open Source Software.

Saturday May 4th

Ross Town Hall

Our rough schedule looks something like this:

* 10:00pm - 12:00pm: Mill around, get to know each other, show off any gear/projects we may have brought with us

* 12:00pm - 1:00pm: Break for lunch

* 1:00pm - 1:30pm: Housekeeping/Statewide committee stuff

* 1:30pm - 3:00pm: Presentations/lightning talks for anybody who wants to give one

* 3:30pm - 4:00pm: Pack up

* 4:00pm onwards: Go home/BBQ/whatever anybody is up for

Google Maps link

Hope to see everybody there!

Ben Martin: Filesystem Indexing: Taking the reins

monkeyiq — 2013-05-02T10:31:00+00:00

To index data using a small ARM CPU without much RAM you might like to break the indexing run down into many parts, and get more explicit control over what is happening. The below will index all files on /DATA-PATH in batches of 5000 files at a time with libferris. This will use whatever index plugin you have setup for ~/.ferris/ea-index (the default metadata index). Be that PostgreSQL, SQLite, boost memory mapped files, clucene or whatever.

I'm currently racing the boost memory mapped index with the SQLite backed index on simple URL queries against the filesystem. This is being done on about 2ghz ARM machines with either 512 or 2048mb of RAM. The boostmmap plugin is of my own design and contains some smarts while executing regular expression matching against unanchored strings (.*foo.*). Unfortunately the boostmmap plugin is not as smart as it could be regarding scattered updates, transactions, and journaling, which slows it down a bit in the index creation phase relative to the SQLite plugin.

The below is a skeleton bash script to get started adding files. Another option is to ssh into the remote host and run find(1) there which can be much faster over network filesystems. The whitelist environment variable is to override which metadata libferris will index. If your index indicates it wants sha and md5 digests, the act of calculating those can dominate indexing time. An explicit whitelist keeps index adding times down with the obvious side effect of limiting what you can use in your queries. Such a limited list of metadata as in the below brings the index closer to what locate provides.

#!/bin/bash

rm -rf /tmp/fidxtmp

mkdir -p /tmp/fidxtmp

cd /tmp/fidxtmp

find /DATA-PATH | split -l 5000

export LIBFERRIS_EAINDEX_EXPLICIT_WHITELIST="name,size,mtime"

for if in x*

do

echo "adding $if..."

cat "$if" | feaindexadd -v -1 >>/tmp/ferris-index-progress.txt

done

Then you can find all your PDF files for example using the following:

feaindexquery -Z '(url=~pdf)'

The -Z tells libferris not to try to lstat() or resolve URLs to see if they exist currently. Much faster results but at the cost of not weeding out things which might have moved since they were last indexed.

And all the files which have been written this year

feaindexquery -Z '(mtime>=begin this year)'

Unfortunate about needing the quotes as bash wants to do things with naked parenthesis.

Save Ferris! Or just donate to an open source project or organization of your choice if you like the ferris posts.

Entire paper copied	1.00%
Significant plagiarism	29.00%
No plagiarism	70.00%

Planet Linux Australia

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: Using Twitter stats to find where the bogans live.…

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: 26 Everyday Occurrences In Australia http://t.co/g…

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: 2300 year old Mayan pyramid demolished for road fi…

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: Using context to compare govt budgets http://t.co/…

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: Strangely, this all seemed so normal back when I w…

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: Stupid mistakes every start-up owner makes http://…

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: Microsoft reads your Skype Chat messages http://t.…

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: Space Oddity, recorded by an astronaut on the Inte…

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: The Do’s and Don’ts of Picking Technology for Scho…

Sridhar Dhanapalan: Tweet: How learning to code helps to learn important life…

Russell Coker: Advice on Buying a PC

A Historical Perspective – the PC as an Investment

Buying Something Expensive?

Understanding How a Computer Works

Getting a Quality System

Conclusion

Steven Hanley: [mtb] Another ride to Kosciuszko (almost)

James Purser: Throsby - a quick catchup

Lindsay Holmwood: How we do Kanban

What on earth is this?

How does Kanban work for the Software team?

Managing flow

Limiting WIP

Visualising flow

Arjen Lentz: Open Letter to Origin Energy (Gas)

Related Posts:

Craige McWhirter: TasLUG State-Wide Meetup in Ross

Craige McWhirter: Sixty Tea-Trees of Preparation

Craige McWhirter: Hamish vs Spicks and Specks

Craige McWhirter: Hamish's First Day at AusKick

Ben Martin: Some amateur electronics: hand made 8x8 LED matrix

Stewart Smith: New libeatmydata release

Francois Marier: Three wrappers to run commands without impacting the rest of the system

Prioritizing I/O

Polluting the disk cache

Turning off disk syncs

TasLUG: Launceston May Meeting

Russell Coker: Voltage Inside a Car

Conclusion

Russell Coker: Effective Conference Calls

Glen Turner: Planet-wide apology

Jeremy Visser: OpenWrt 12.09 (Attitude Adjustment) on Ubiquiti UniFi

Jon Oxer: Walktime Blog #32: MendelMax v2 unboxing, part 1

Danielle Madeley: calling Melbourne Python and Perl programmers

Arjen Lentz: 6 ‘Harmless’ Fads That Caused Widespread Destruction

Related Posts:

Lindsay Holmwood: Escalating Complexity

Binh Nguyen: Syrian Options

BlueHackers: Autism/Aspergers and Online Learning

TasLUG: TasLUG May Meeting - Hobart

Arjen Lentz: Tillon’s Journey to Jaédeen – Part 1

Related Posts:

Stewart Smith: The EXAMPLE storage engine

BlueHackers: New evidence on body clock and depression

Ian Wienand: Debugging puppetmaster with Foreman

Paul Wayper: Modern kernels and uncooperative monitors

Matt Palmer: A Modest Vocabulary Proposal

Glen Turner: Light bulbs

Glen Turner: RIAA and iPod

Glen Turner: US petrol prices explain a lot

Glen Turner: Mungo Maccallum

Glen Turner: nf_conntrack_helper_regsiter

Glen Turner: Cisco and me

Glen Turner: Cisco can't do physical design

Glen Turner: Left wing university staff

Glen Turner: AusKick, you suck

Glen Turner: Chilling effect of defamation on sharing equipment reviews

Glen Turner: Cisco IOS and the "network" statement

Glen Turner: Committed [political comment]

Glen Turner: Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

Glen Turner: The Web and Benford's Law

Glen Turner: Security

Glen Turner: Standards and car stereos

Glen Turner: Election

Glen Turner: The Australian IT Supplement

Glen Turner: Fleetwood Mac

Glen Turner: Global warming options closing down to worryingly few

Glen Turner: turnitin

Glen Turner: Qantas and lost luggage