Track Listing: 1. Make the Road by Walking 2. Tired of Fighting 3. Home Again! 4. Montego Sunset 5. Karina 6. The Traitor 7. The Contender 8. Birds 9. Esma 10. Going the Distance Dunham Records (DUN 1000)

It is not often that I blog about a record or CD purchase that I have made, but occasionally a new release comes out that goes the extra distance and really stands out among the rest. Last time, back in May 2007, it was Hypnotic Brass Ensemble's War/Mercury 10" single, this time it is the Menahan Street Band's Make The Road By Walking album. For me, this is the release of 2008. To quote the wikipedia entry: The Menahan Street Band is a collaboration of musicians from Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, El Michels Affair, Antibalas and the Budos Band, brought together by musician/producer Thomas Brenneck to record hits in the bedroom of his Menahan St. apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn. With influences reaching beyond the funk/soul/afrobeat architecture of their other projects into the more ethereal realms of Curtis Mayfield and Mulatu Astatke, the Menahan Street Band creates a unique new instrumental soul sound that is as raw as it is lush. Make The Road By Walking takes it name from an organization named "Make the Road By Walking" which is located around the corner from Menahan Street (on Grove Street) which "catalyzes change for low-income New Yorkers by working in five Impact Areas: Expanding Civil Rights and Civic Engagement; Promoting Health for all New Yorkers; Improving Housing and Fostering Environmental Justice; Winning Justice in the Workplace; Promoting Access, Excellence and Opportunity in Education." It sounds like every community could do with an organisation such as this. The "Make the Road By Walking" organisation, in turn, takes its name from the poem Proverbios y cantares XXIX by Antonio Machado (1875-1939): Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Searcher, there is no road. We make the road by walking.

November 20, 2008 08:54 AM - (Comments)

It took two months, but finally the hard disk replacement for the MacBook has come. Of course I'll think twice before ordering anything else from Alternate (ES), not to mention the fact they served the SD cards without micro adapter (which means they're useless to me)...

Anyway that was not the point. The point was, as you may have guessed, I tried the latest Debian installer for Lenny, which is beta 2 at this moment:

First, the niceness of jigdo downloading the first amd64 DVD image flawlessly and without a single retry.

Second, wodim burning it without error in a disc I had forgotten for two weeks inside the drive.

Third, being able to swap broken disk and the new one despite Apple's instructions to change it forgot to mention you need a very small torx screwdriver to detach the drive from the pulling tab it has (it's located deeply inside and the tab is necessary for removing it).

Fourth, partitioning and installing MacOS X... well, last time I tried dual-boot it didn't work at all, so I had to try again, and with a 320 GB disk using less than 10% for a proprietary OS doesn't look like a great loss ;-). Partitioning is a bit tricky, as detailed in the wiki, but the Disk Utility method worked fine for me. Scheme was 30-2-288 (more or less), you'll discover later why. Worth to mention that the MacOS X showed a lot of upgrades after setting up the wireless, including an EFI firmware upgrade (new boot ROM version is MB21.00A5.B07). I installed all of these before continuing.

Fifth, installing rEFIt, though this one has no trick...

Sixth, rebooting and installing Lenny beta 2 from the DVD. To run an encrypted system two partitions are required, one for /boot (unencrypted, bootable) and other for the encrypted filesystem, hence the two partitions defined. I forgot to add a swap partition, but a swap file can be added later. The uswsusp package will warn about lacking swap, but seems it does complain even if you have a swap partition. You have to avoid installing bootloader at this point, because MBR layout is not the same that GPT (which Disk Utility wrote), hence bootloader installer would be misled.

Seventh, rebooting and entering rEFIt's disk utility, which immediately offers to resync MBR to match GPT layout. Wonderful.

Eighth, restarting Debian installation again, having to reinstall, because the filesystem inside the big encrypted partition is not recognized and had to be reformatted. Not a great problem though. Finally installing grub in the /boot partition, and finish installation.

Et voilà!

Upon restart, rEFIt menu shows both MacStuff and the penguin, and both work fine... in fact I'm writing this from the new Safari in MacOS X, because the wireless card in Debian is still to be configured, but that's another story...

Note: if you're going to try this, first of all read the wiki like I did, it has been improved a lot.

November 12, 2008 11:53 PM - (Comments)

If you think Debian has one of the most time consuming and complicated process to join in, now look at this nice mess our beloved ftp master produced and one of the effects that caused. Despite of helping Joerg with one of his packages I'm not the one to told anybody what to do with their time, but fixing any of the RC bugs which are preventing Lenny to be released would have been more useful for Debian than writing such proposal. Introducing more classes of people in an already clustered project will only end on more problems and, IMHO, doesn't help to address the problems it's supposed to solve.

November 06, 2008 06:51 PM - (Comments)

6.30 pm - baby eating
7.00 pm - father and mother start eating dinner while baby’s calm
7.10 pm - baby starts crying, parents postpone dinner
7.30 pm - baby eating
8.00 pm - finish dinner hastily while baby cries in the background
9.00 pm - baby still cries
10.00 pm - baby stopped crying, thanks to having his mouth full of milk
11.00 pm - baby cries again, pauses as you take him in your arms
11.30 pm - baby resumes crying after getting his diaper changed
12.30 pm - baby suddenly stops crying
12.31 pm - dad gets up in fear that baby stopped breathing.
12.32 pm - baby is breathing. notices dad, wakes up and starts crying again.
12.33 pm - dad hates himself.

November 06, 2008 11:36 AM - (Comments)

Yep, another vacation period gone. Lately I'm posting from vacation on vacation, so it may seem I'm on permanent vacation, but, of course, that's not true. It's just I'm more lazy than often, maybe influenced by reading of Why I Fucking Hate Weblogs! this past week. Or maybe not, as I'm posting again ;-)

As these post tend also to be a recapitulation of my, well, activities (or part of them), this will be no exception. In no particular order...

The claws-mail and extra-plugins packages are now in experimental (they require a libetpan which is only in experimental, so no other choice was possible here). Because a strange bug which made CVS Claws Mail crash on exit in my box, I found some motivation to start from scratch again my build script and make it something different: package CVS for Debian. Primary target was to prove that the bug was not in Claws but somewhere else in the build chain, which resulted a right intuition. Secondary was to have an automatic CVS packager, so I could still use CVS and Debian packages and the added benefit of keeping packaging always synced with upstream requirements (otherwise build breaks).The result can't be other than another wild beast. As you may figure out, these experiments are only possible thanks to the strong commitment of the Claws Mail Team in keeping CVS break-free.

Went to watch "El hombre almohada" (ES), which we liked a lot. Curiously we met and old friend and his girlfriend at the theatre, and shared the usual desires to date for some drink, but I still didn't feel motivated to call him. While is no excuse, he didn't do either, anyway I'm happy to know things go fine for them.

Movies have also taken some time, right now I can remember "Burn After Reading" which we laughed nicely (Silvia more than me though) and "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" which didn't left me the same sweet mouth-taste than the first part.

I've seriously decided to take over my long procrastinated final project at university and finally get my grade. The idea was born several months ago, but got a sudden stop when I went to Madrid early this year. Now I'm back with it. There was some work done previously, and this week of vacation was preparing all the development environment which a Java based webapp requires... which is more of the same I have at work (well, except I'm on Linux here, not XP :-P), but I preferred not to innovate in order of getting things done right.

At least tomorrow is still vacation...

October 19, 2008 06:32 PM - (Comments)

Ça y est, Paul est né ! Depuis le temps qu’on l’attendait, on n’est pas déçus : c’est le plus beau :-)

Il est né le 13 octobre à 16h48. Voici trois photos de lui à quelques heures :

Paul a une heure

Le lendemain matin (le 14)

Il commence à avoir de nouveau faim !

Vous aurez plus de nouvelles sur le blog quand nous rentrerons de la maternité :-)

October 14, 2008 11:56 AM - (Comments)

Click here to see more superheroes.

      

October 12, 2008 11:02 PM - (Comments)

One of the things done when a web application is done is collect the HTTP information contained in the request. I did some things in PHP5 and there was (and is) an environment variables named ‘$_SERVER’ which contained information collected by the web server about the request.

In rails, there is the array named ‘request.env’ which contains a lot of items with the http request information, for instance if you want to get the client ip address or the browser used you can use the sentences ‘client_ip = request.env[”REMOTE_ADDR”]’ and ‘client_browser = request.env[”HTTP_USER_AGENT”]’.

A list of what is retrievable is :

• SERVER_NAME
• PATH_INFO
• REMOTE_HOST
• HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING
• HTTP_USER_AGENT
• SERVER_PROTOCOL
• HTTP_CACHE_CONTROL
• HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE
• HTTP_HOST
• REMOTE_ADDR
• SERVER_SOFTWARE
• HTTP_KEEP_ALIVE
• HTTP_REFERER
• HTTP_COOKIE
• HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET
• REQUEST_URI
• SERVER_PORT
• GATEWAY_INTERFACE
• QUERY_STRING
• REMOTE_USER
• HTTP_ACCEPT
• REQUEST_METHOD
• HTTP_CONNECTION

Something simple, as everything contained in RoR

October 12, 2008 05:22 PM - (Comments)

Clo and I are following a few TV series, mainly police-related ones like C.S.I Las Vegas. While these series provide a rather entertaining way to spend one hour, I’m increasingly having a gripe about them.

They surreptitiously instill a few dangerous equations in one’s mind. Watch closely, and you’ll notice that only culprits ask for a lawyer, for example. Innocent suspects just cooperate without the slighest need of following correct police procedures, like the right to a lawyer, the right to remain silent, or the right to refuse anarchic searches.

The ones who refuse any of these are always culprits in the end. There’s a subliminal message for you, couch potatoe: why do you refuse to cooperate if you have nothing to hide? Your lack of transparency makes you look guilty.

This isn’t limited to C.S.I., other series, like N.C.I.S, even push the concept a bit further, often evoquing the Patriot Act to remember watchers that if you don’t comply, they just have two words to say to be able to disappear you to Guantanamo: “Terrorist suspect”. Say goodbye to trials, lawyers, and any sort of human justice. You’d better not get in the way and let go of your rights if you’re innocent. As an innocent, you have nothing to hide, right?

All of these examples may seem a bit US-centric, although I’m french — I don’t watch French TV series often, mainly because they’re mostly crappy rip-offs of US TV series. But from the little I watched, it seems the same applies to them — just translated to french and using (bypassing) our own laws.

I find this scary. I’ve read a few pages off the PDF of “Little Brother” by Cory Doctorow (and quickly decided to buy the printed edition, as it seems to be worth a read); it’s a fictional story of how USA could turn into a fully-feature surveillance country after a terrorist attack; and he has a good example of how idiotic this “if you’re not a criminal, you have nothing to hide” mentality is:

There’s something really liberating about having some corner of your life that’s yours, that no one gets to see except you. It’s a little like nudity or taking a dump. Everyone gets naked every once in a while. Everyone has to squat on the toilet. There’s nothing shameful, deviant or weird about either of them. But what if I decreed that from now on, every time you went to evacuate some solid waste, you’d have to do it in a glass room perched in the middle of Times Square, and you’d be buck naked?

October 12, 2008 10:20 AM - (Comments)

libetpan 0.57 has been released.
This is for the needs of claws-mail.
Thanks to claws mail, releases of libetpan occur more often I am also thinking about writing an API to produce messages more easily.
This will be based on the work done in etpanX. If you think about an API which is currently hard to use, just tell me.

For hype-ness purpose, I am writing this from my iPhone 3G, with wordpress iPhone application.

      

October 10, 2008 05:51 PM - (Comments)

Paul released 3.6.0 on last Friday, with a bit of pain which could have been avoided by two things: checked translations with msgfmt -c (which translators seem to often forget), and a better Sourceforge.net interface (which is a long-standing problem).

Then I’ve started to package it and then, the problems started:

• It crashed hard on Maemo - due to the new menu code. Fixed.
• I forgot to include the new Enchant dependancy in Ubuntu packages, breaking the spellchecker. Rebuilt, fixed. Fixed?
• The MIME parts icons were invisible on Maemo, for strange Gtk widget requisitions problems. It had always worked everywhere… Fixed, anyway.
• Multiple, strange crashes happened to Ubuntu users in extra plugins - due to my rebuild of the core with spellchecker support, which changed structures sizes, and I didn’t rebuild extra plugins, making plugins look in the wrong place for preferences, for example. Fixed.
• Crashes in vCalendar, due to a “leak fix” I did which in reality introduced a double-free. Fixed. (The first one to say that gotos are evil gets my foot to the bottom - gotos aren’t evil. Programmer’s stupidity is).
• SSL handshakes failures with some IMAP servers using my Ubuntu packages. A bug I introduced in libetpan when built against GnuTLS. Fixed in libetpan, and fixed in Claws.

It now seems to be under control, but most of these problems are in the source of libetpan 0.56, Claws Mail 3.6.0 and vCalendar 2.0.1, which means that if my packages work, packages made by other people, not aware of these issues, contain this issue. So, we plan to release a 3.6.1 at the end of the week if Paul can, and Hoa plans to release libetpan 0.57, so that our lives and users’ lives are easier during the next development cycle.

And all of these problems are my own fault, which makes it very frustrating. I hate releasing crap, and all of these, apart the invisible-icon-on-Maemo bug, could have been avoided if I double-checked stuff a bit better at the time I did it.

Oh, and Mandriva packages have not been done, because their SVN is frozen for the 2009.0 release. I had been annoyed by that at first, but in the end, maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t push that into their release!

October 06, 2008 03:59 PM - (Comments)

It’s been a while since the last post… So, Clo is still more pregnant than ever, and the due date is in less than two weeks now. I could become a father in the next hours!

Waiting for this to happen, and given that everything’s ready towards the baby’s arrival, I tried to help make Claws Mail 3.6.0 a really good release.

After two release candidates, most of the bugs seem ironed out; I’ve prepared the most I could to be able to quickly build packages after the release, as I usually do Mandriva, Maemo and Ubuntu packages, it can take quite a bit of time and that’s if nothing fails. I often experience Murphy’s law when trying to build packages.

As if these three distribution packages weren’t enough, I started looking at the Windows issues that the Gpg4win team faced. I was tired of having a crappy broken build of 3.0.0-rc2 with no SSL and no IMAP. So the good news is that currently, the SVN version of Ggp4win builds Claws Mail 3.5.0cvs138, with the following notable changes:

• IMAP
• SSL
• NNTP
• No more leaking 50 megs when changing folders
• Various buglet fixes (crashers, annoyances)
• Better integration to the windows theme
• Notification plugin
• RSSyl plugin
• VCalendar plugin
• GtkHTML2 Viewer plugin

It’s most probably not bug free, but at least it starts to have a large enough subset of Claws’ feature not to be ashamed of it.

Users of the old windows versions are encouraged to start from scratch (by removing Claws-Mail and mailboxes from %APPDATA%).

You can get the (now current) installer here: gpg4win-light-1.9.8-svn929.exe.

September 29, 2008 06:07 PM - (Comments)

Hi

As some of your know, I am using Ruby on Rails (RoR) to develop web applications. Some time ago I read this post in the ‘Ruby On Windows‘ blog about coding Ruby and RoR using this IDE (although I think that all this effort done by the Sun boys is with JRuby in mind, not thinking in Ruby itself.

Leaving this ‘little’ detail apart, Netbeans is a good IDE (open-source and free) to code using Ruby and RoR with syntax highlight, code completion and indentation, css preview and other useful features (more info here) contained in it (and it runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris).

It is available here.

September 27, 2008 11:49 AM - (Comments)

Things done from time to time tend to be forgotten.

This is one of these things

   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON db_name.* TO 'user'@'%'
   IDENTIFIED BY 'some_pass' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Creating a new user with all privileges on a database.

September 26, 2008 05:19 PM - (Comments)

This morning I was coding something ‘just for fun’ using RoR (because there are a lot of different apps which do what I’m trying to do) when I obtained an error with the SQL sentence “SELECT * FROM `configuration_values` WHERE key = ‘gallery_title’”. The error’s description was this one:

Mysql::Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘key = ‘gallery_title’) LIMIT 1′ at line 1: SELECT * FROM `configuration_values` WHERE (key = ‘gallery_title’) LIMIT 1

After this, I launched this query in the mysql client because I didn’t have a clue about what was hapenning and the error’s description was this other one;

mysql> SELECT * FROM `configuration_values` WHERE (key = ‘gallery_title’) LIMIT 1;
ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘key = ‘gallery_title’) LIMIT 1′ at line 1

After googling a little, I discovered that ‘key’ is a mysql’s reserved word and I had to put it like this:

   SELECT * FROM `configuration_values` WHERE `key` = 'gallery_title'

Hope this helps to somebody (including me in a future time :-D)

September 26, 2008 03:51 PM - (Comments)

James Holstun's essay Rational Hunger: Gerard Winstanley's Hortus Inconclusus in Pamphlet Wars, Prose in the English Revolution, is refreshing reading. He hits the nail on the head in both the way he exposes certain historians disregard for the historical significance of the Diggers, and in his clear insight into why the Diggers are still relevant today and how the oppression that they faced is still being faced today. It also clarifies that the problems of enclosure don't ever dissipate. It is well worth a lengthy quote:

September 25, 2008 04:41 PM - (Comments)

Hi there

I’ve been a long long time without using perl to do my home things.

I don’t know what people do when a file is needed temporarily. In my case, I use a tmp directory in my $HOME. But the problem appears when I try to remove the old files (I never know what to do). The solution is the most radical one, execute everyday a script (a perl script in this case) to remove the files older than x days.

I have coded a little script to remove the files older than 30 days with perl and I have rediscovered the time functions (Time::CTime), like these ones:

   # This is the file.
   $info = stat($file);

   # This is today.
   $now = strftime('%Y%m%d', localtime());

   # This is file's creation date.
   $created = strftime('%Y%m%d', localtime($info->mtime));

   # This is the file's last modification date.
   $updated = strftime('%Y%m%d', localtime($info->atime));

This entry is only a note (it will be useful for me and my bad memory). If it is useful for you, it is a good entry.

September 24, 2008 09:36 PM - (Comments)

PaperLess was first a simple document scanner for Mac OS X.
Since it was not that easy to find the produced document and since searching the documents was also a pain, I had to create some kind of library that would contain all the documents. Creating folders for documents is a pain, then, I chose not to let the user do this and rather let him type a name and a comment so that he can search his documents. This is 2.0.

Available for download (Mac OS X).

Note: this is not open-source.

      

September 24, 2008 08:07 AM - (Comments)

libetpan 0.56 has been released. - better support for Client certificates - bug fixes it’s available for download. What’s next ? I am planning to produce an easier API to produce MIME format within the next release. And of course, bugfixes. For example debian #498790.       

September 24, 2008 07:56 AM - (Comments)

September 21, 2008 04:22 PM - (Comments)

Voici trois techniques pour résoudre un problème avec une administration, valable pour les situations pénibles où les impôts envisagent un redressement, où les impôts vous demandent deux fois la taxe d’habitation, où la CAF a manifestement oublié de vous verser la prime de naissance, où la CPAM ne s’occupe pas de vous payer votre congé maternité, …. Bref, tous les cas où vous vous retrouvez possiblement créancier de l’état.

Technique A

• Téléphonez. Vous pourrez résoudre le problème facilement et raccrocher.
• Attendez 15 jours. Voyant que rien ne s’arrange,
• Téléphonez. Vous pourrez résoudre le problème facilement et raccrocher.
• Attendez 15 jours… etc.

Technique B

• Envoyez une lettre avec les justificatifs requis
• Attendez de recevoir par retour de courrier, une demande pour plus de justificatifs (originaux, pas photocopies)
• Envoyez une nouvelle lettre avec les originaux requis
• Recevez par retour de courrier la même demande pour les même justificatifs originaux que vous n’avez plus.

Technique C

• Téléphonez et prenez un rendez-vous.
• Préparez votre sac. Mettez-y l’intégralité de vos différentes pochettes à paperasse.
• Allez au rendez-vous, discutez avec le monsieur, donnez lui les différents papiers dont il a besoin les uns après les autres.
• C’est plié.

J’utilise avec succès la technique C depuis un certain nombre d’années, et jusqu’ici je n’ai jamais eu besoin de retourner au même endroit pour le même problème une deuxième fois. En plus les conseillers sur lesquels je tombe sont à chaque fois compétents et sympathiques ; la seule difficulté est qu’il faut avoir des pochettes à paperasse à peu près triées… Mes amis qui utilisent les méthodes A ou B ont moins de chance, leurs histoires se transforment en sac de noeuds à chaque fois, ce qui leur fait rater les délais, et au final leur coûte plus de temps, et plus d’argent.

September 11, 2008 04:59 PM - (Comments)

Hi

Yesterday night I noticed in this entry (mine of course) a pretty example of SQL injection. The sentece I am writting about is this one:

   object = Object.find(:first, :conditions=>"id = #{foo_id}")

I checked this book and it must be:

   object = Object.find([first, :conditions=>['id = ?', foo_id])

A bad SQL sentence can be very dangerous if somebody wants to do something wrong using entries like “%–” or “p%’–” to close the SQL sentence (something similar to “SELECT * FROM users WHERE login LIKE ‘#{@login}%’”) without any value but % in order to obtain all the values in the table (if the query is in the users table it can show all the users with their passwords). This is an example that everybody can learn something with this kind of mistakes.

Btw, this mistake has been corrected

September 08, 2008 08:56 PM - (Comments)

Metallica

• Seek And Destroy (Live 1985)
• Seek And Destroy (Jason on Vocals)
• One
• Sad But True
• Orion (Live with Robert Trujillo)

September 06, 2008 03:55 PM - (Comments)

Hi

I’m sure a lot of you experiment the frustrating experience of having a lot of pieces of paper in your hands with phone numbers, software ideas, things to do, information found in the Internet,etc and you don’t know how to solve this problem. I have to confess that I was one of you…until now.

Two days ago I was checking some Linux magazines to get the useful articles and throw to the paper bin the rest of the magazines I don’t need at all when I read an article about wikis without database behind them aka mini-wikis. This article spoke about Wikipage, PWP, MoinMoin, PmWiki and Dokuwiki. This article was very interesting because I need something for my personal use without a lot of features and these wikis were valid options and after reading the article I thought I founded a solution for my problem (althought they used a web server and PHP/Python). I was wrong because the solution was in the next page and its name was TiddlyWiki.

TiddlyWiki is a wiki coded using only HTML and Javascript so the only thing you need to use it is a browser. You can donwload it from here in the Download section clicking on the Download button and saving the file with an apropiate name. After that open it using your favourite browser. You will be ready to use it. It is extensible with plugins, configurable and you can change its look and feel with themes hosted here.

I’m becaming a little pieces of software like this or sqlite, using them in the situations which they are designed for.

Hope this entry helps you to throw the pieces of paper from your pocket to the paper bin :-).

August 30, 2008 09:05 AM - (Comments)

Work

Yep, supposedly I'm on vacation, but these are not going to be as fun as other years. First Silvia couldn't choose vacation period on September, as we would have wanted and had to split vacation between August and October. I don't like to be on vacation on August for several reasons, but as this year we don't have money to go those nice places we used to go most of these reasons vanish. So far we're practicing some short-range tourism, like having lunch in Cudillero and going back home by evening, and some house-keeping ungrateful tasks, like cleaning windows (no pun intended!). I expect the October period to be less static, because not going somewhere feels a bit like having no vacation.

Debian

My Debian stuff is mostly frozen now, as we're in the way of getting Lenny released soon. The newmail crasher is finally fixed also in Debian, so, unless something really nasty appears in the meantime, current versions will be the ones shipped in Lenny CDs/DVDs. The only thing I miss is not having a more updated themes package, because current release dates from beginning of 2007 and doesn't contain any of the new PNG themes.

Hardware

As some may already know my MacBook hard disk (Hitachi 160 Gb) died two or three weeks ago. I've been able to recover most of data from it, thanks to SystemRescueCd and some help to mount encrypted partitions by hand. Unfortunately one of the lost pieces was the trial-error-made deb package with a mostly working driver for the Atheros wifi card of the MacBook (but only with kernel 2.6.21). As I was stupid enough not to document the process or backup it I guess I will have to start from scratch with that again or fall-back to MacOS X for wifi connectivity.

The MacBook was 1 year and few months old, but there's a known conflict between which warranty Apple provides (1 year) and the one supposedly granted by the Spanish law for consumer goods (2 years), and Apple is actively rejecting to follow it (no links, but Google is full of stories). Therefore I've decided not to fight on lost battles and just buy a replacement (another Hitachi but 320 Gb, still don't have it though). Of course I will think thrice before buying anything more from Apple. And for those wandering, no, I don't like to pay another heap of euros for the "AppleCare Protection Plans" when the law already gives me almost the same for free.

I only hope the disks of my main box not to start failing soon (they're two, they're older and they're spinning most of the time: 14:41:56 up 24 days, 22:07, 13 users, load average: 0.11, 0.08, 0.09).

August 21, 2008 12:53 PM - (Comments)

Il y a quelques jours, Unixgarden a publié sur son site un ancien article que j’avais écrit pour Linux Pratique, qui visait à présenter Sylpheed-Claws — qui ne s’appelait pas encore Claws Mail :-)

Voici l’article. Ça me fait de vieux souvenirs, je l’ai écrit entre la version 1.9.14 et 1.9.15, c’est à dire début octobre 2005. Le canal IRC était #sylpheed, sur IRCNet. On avait encore le plugin ClamAV, pas encore de plugin PDF re-disparu depuis, et les plugins TNEF Parser, SpamReport, S/MIME, RSSyl, GtkHtmlViewer, AttRemover, AttachWarner et Archiver n’existaient pas encore. On a fait du chemin :-)

August 20, 2008 07:11 AM - (Comments)

Linux Hater is right in many of his claims, especially when talking about (non-existing) ABI or even API compatibility of the Linux kernel across versions. Everything is fine as long as your hardware is working out-of-the-box, but as soon as something is not supported out-of-the-box, you're up for a major nightmare.

The past few days, I've been trying to migrate one of our systems from Windows XP to Linux. That box has a few pieces of non-standard hardware installed, mostly sensor systems. Many of those drivers have not found their way into the kernel yet. So let's see..

• Installed Xubuntu 8.04 LTS
• Install kernel headers, build system, etc.
  
• Contact vendor of USB Relais and ask for Linux kernel module
• Surprisingly, got a module that (after minor modifications) compiles and even works!
• Test USB camera. No luck with the Orange iBOT2. Apart from the iBOT2, our framework also supports UVC cameras. Bought a Logitech UVC camera (look out for the "Vista-ready" sticker), which works out of the box in Ubuntu 8.04! Yay!
• Get and compile CAN driver. Seems to work nicely.
• Contact measurement camera vendor, and ask for Linux drivers. Got drivers for a 2.4 kernel. After some investigation, also got experimental drivers for a 2.6 kernel that's been developed on 2.6.13 (and is GPL'ed OSS, btw).
  
• Got the camera driver to compile and load on Hardy's kernel with major modifications. Getting camera info (like chip temperature) works fine, but grabbing images results in kernel panic. Unfortunately, grabbing pictures from the camera is a rather important feature...
  
• Heard rumours that the camera driver works at least up to kernel version 2.6.17
• Try to get kernel packages for something around 2.6.17. No luck on Hardy.
• Clone vanilla kernel git repository, compile kernel 2.6.17. After several attempts, the self-compiled kernel even boots up!
• Compile camera driver again. Grab a first picture! Yay!
• Unfortunately, now the whole rest of the system is pretty broken. Hardy doesn't seem to like a manual kernel-downgrade.
• Got the idea that it might be easier to upgrade a kernel, than to downgrade it. Killed the whole system and installed Xubuntu Dapper 6.06 LTS, which comes with kernel version 2.6.15. Maybe that version will work too, and I won't even need to upgrade..
  
• Compile all external drivers again
• Test if the UVC camera still works. Of course -- it doesn't.
• Download UVC kernel module from svn (there are no snapshots available). Try to compile it -- no luck. Try to find the latest svn revision number that actually compiles with Dapper's kernel by bisection. Compiled and loaded that kernel module.
• Now, let's test with our framework
  
• Oh no -- our framework depends on newer versions of installed libraries (Boost, Qt, etc. pp.) than what is available for Dapper. Grab Boost, Qt, and all other libs from upstream, and compile them.
• Oh no, the cmake build system backported to Dapper doesn't contain all necessary modules either (FindPkgConfig.cmake, others). Get those modules as well. No need to say that the backported cmake build system behaves slightly different to what is installed on Hardy as well.
  
• Compile and start the program. Oh no, crash deep inside Qt. Right -- no OpenGL support without proprietary graphics drivers. Install those as well.
• Test UVC camera. It works!
  

August 19, 2008 06:12 PM

It’s been a long time since I last blogged! I’ve been really busy with real life…

As you may know, dear reader, my wife (Clo) is pregnant and we’ll have a baby soon (in about 50 days !), so we’ve been preparing stuff in advance. Over the last monthes, we’ve redone the floor in the future baby’s room, created cupboards, painted things, we’ve boughtfurniture , we’ve moved our “office” in the living room, we’ve built a few things, we spent time in baby stores to make lists, see what we needed, buy a few things, etc.

Now we’re almost ready, so we’re waiting :-)

Also, there’s been a whole lot of people at home to visit us - both of my sisters, Clo’s brother, my mother, Clo’s parents, … Very nice! If only we knew we’d just have to make babies to bring them over! ;-p

Yes, I’ve been linking to Clo’s blog everywhere. Not my fault if she blogs more than me!

On the Claws Mail front, I’ve put some days off to use and, following the announce of the GTK team of GTK+3, I’ve removed every fucking deprecated line in our source code and rewrote code that worked; just because the GTK+ guys can’t be bothered with keeping deprecated code around, I’ve rewritten about 10.000 lines, I think. Thanks, dudes. We’ve also been able to fix a good number of bugs, and added support for client SSL certificates.

Maybe we’ll release soon…

August 17, 2008 05:37 PM - (Comments)

Last Friday was holiday for me, and like previous year I went to the Candás Sardine Festival. This time it was a bit different because seems now I have my five seconds of fame on the globalised TV. Only a hint: I'm the one on green, and Lucho is the one pouring (escanciando) the cider.

August 07, 2008 11:44 AM - (Comments)

Trying to use rails cache is something hard to be, specially if you are a rails newbie.

After watching a video in http://railscast.com (and after trying to code my own cache because I didn’t know rails has one), I decided to test the rails cache using the console. This was it:

 $ ruby script/console
 Loading development environment (Rails 2.1.0)
 >> Rails.cache.write('date', Date.today)
 NoMethodError: undefined method `cache' for Rails:Module
         from (irb):1

After that I decided to google a little and after that I modified the environment.rb file, contained in the folder config (adding the line ‘RAILS_GEM_VERSION = ‘2.1.0′ unless defined? RAILS_GEM_VERSION ‘) and voilà:

 $ ruby script/console
 Loading development environment (Rails 2.1.0)
 >> Rails.cache.write('date', Date.today)
 => Wed, 06 Aug 2008

Hope this helps

UPDATE: I have to say that I set the RAILS_GEM_VERSION environment var to 2.1.0 and it didn’t work.

August 06, 2008 09:15 PM - (Comments)

William Paley wrote in his Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, (1785, Book VI, Chapter 2),

there is nothing in the human character which would more surprise us, than the almost universal subjugation of strength to weakness — than to see many millions of robust men, in the complete use and exercise of their faculties, and without any defect of courage, waiting upon the will of a child, a woman, a driveller, or a lunatic. And although … we suppose perhaps an extreme case; yet in all cases, even in the most popular forms of civil government, the physical strength lies in the governed. In what manner opinion thus prevails over strength, or how power, which naturally belongs to the superior force, is maintained in opposition to it; in other words, by what motives the many are induced to submit to the few, becomes an inquiry which lies at the root of almost every political speculation.

The question still remains some 200 years later. How is it that the proletariat, despite complaints and a common agreement that "this isn't right", subjugate themselves to the law-makers and wealth-controllers of their nations, when they not only help to build and maintain the proverbial prisons within which they are contained, but at the same time hold all the keys to the locks and are able to free themselves from this bondage?

August 03, 2008 08:09 AM - (Comments)

Despite reading some problems with it, some related with the new mail client -- but I don't use it, of course ;-) -- I decided to do it for first, and, if it works as promised, for last time too:

# ./flasher-3.0.amd64 -F RX-44_DIABLO_4.2008.23-14_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin -f -R  
flasher v0.8.1 (Jan  5 2007)

SW version in image: RX-44_DIABLO_4.2008.23-14_PR_MR0
Image 'kernel', size 1536512 bytes
        Version 2.6.21-200823maemo3
Image 'initfs', size 2286848 bytes
        Version 0.95.16-200823maemo2
Image 'rootfs', size 125042688 bytes
        Version RX-34+RX-44+RX-48_DIABLO_4.2008.23-14_PR_MR0
Image '2nd', size 8192 bytes
        Valid for RX-44: 0808
        Version 1.1.16-200823maemo1
Image 'xloader', size 9216 bytes  
        Valid for RX-44: 0808
        Version 1.1.16-200823maemo1
Image 'secondary', size 100736 bytes
        Valid for RX-44: 0808
        Version 1.1.16-200823maemo1
Image '2nd', size 8192 bytes
        Valid for RX-44: 0801, 0802, 0803, 0804, 0805, 0806, 0901, 0902
Image 'xloader', size 9216 bytes  
        Valid for RX-44: 0801, 0802, 0803, 0804, 0805, 0806, 0901, 0902
        Version 1.1.16-200823maemo1
Image 'secondary', size 100736 bytes
        Valid for RX-44: 0801, 0802, 0803, 0804, 0805, 0806, 0901, 0902
        Version 1.1.16-200823maemo1
Suitable USB device not found, waiting
USB device found found at bus 001, device address 009
Found device RX-44, hardware revision 0805
NOLO version 1.1.6
Version of 'sw-release': RX-44_2008SE_1.2007.42-19_PR_MR0
Sending xloader image (9 kB)...   
100% (9 of 9 kB, avg. 2250 kB/s)  
Sending secondary image (98 kB)...
100% (98 of 98 kB, avg. 8943 kB/s)
Flashing bootloader... done.
Sending kernel image (1500 kB)... 
100% (1500 of 1500 kB, avg. 8774 kB/s)
Flashing kernel... done.
Sending initfs image (2233 kB)... 
100% (2233 of 2233 kB, avg. 11110 kB/s)
Flashing initfs... done.
Sending and flashing rootfs image (122112 kB)...
100% (122112 of 122112 kB, avg. 6928 kB/s)
Finishing flashing... done

August 02, 2008 12:06 PM - (Comments)

• Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
• Weezer - The Good Life
• Children Of Bodom - In Your Face
• Blind Melon - No Rain
• Muse - Plug In Baby

July 28, 2008 07:29 PM - (Comments)

• Midge Ure - Breath
• The Fray - How To Save A Life
• Brad - The Day Brings
• A-HA - Hunting High And Low
• Jet - Look What You’ve Done

July 27, 2008 09:22 PM - (Comments)

After a long time without writing, I start a new section called “Youtube links”.

This is something I do in my browser to listen to my favorite bands when I’m coding at work. These are my first five links:

• RHCP - Dani California
• Machine Head - Imperium
• The Cult - Wild Hearted Son
• The Gathering - Strange Machines (Live)
• Candlebox - Change

Hope you enjoy these videos as much as I do

July 26, 2008 04:02 PM - (Comments)

The twenty-four orders of rogues and vagabonds, as detailed in Thomas Harman's pamphlet, Caueat for Commen Cursetors, London 1566. (quoted from Frank Aydelotte, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds, 1913)

Rufflers sturdy vagbonds who begged from the strong and robbed the weak Upright Men vagabonds who were strong enough to be chiefs or magistrates among their fellows Hookers or Anglers thieves who stole clothing and other light articles by pulling them through an open window with a hooked stick Rogues ordinary vagabonds, weaker than the Upright Men Wild Rogues rogues born on the road, of vagabond parents Priggers of Prancers horse thieves Palliards beggars who excited compassion by means of artificial sores made by binding some corrosive to the flesh Fraters sham proctors, who pretended to be begging for hospitals and lazar houses Abraham Men pretended mad men Whip-jacks vagabonds who pretended to be ship-wrecked sailors Counterfeit Cranks beggars pretending the falling sickness Dommerers sham deaf mutes Tinkers and Pedlars who ordinarily used their trades as a cloak for thieving Jarckmen makers of false licences Patricoes hedge-priests Demanders for Glimmer men or women begging for pretended losses by fire Bawdy Baskets female pedlars Autem Morts women who had been married in church Walking Morts unmarried whores Doxies female companions of common rogues Dells young girls not yet broken in by the Upright Men Kynchin Morts female children Kynchin Coes male children
How did Harman and his associates deal with such rogues? Torture and capital punishment were not beneath them, as is shown in the following quote on apprehending a dommerer:
Hauing on a time occasion to ride to Dartforde, to speak with a priest there, who maketh all kinds of conserues very well, and vseth stilling of waters ; And repayringe to his house, I found a Dommerar at his doore, and the priest him selfe perusinge his lycence, vnder the seales and hands of certayne worshypfull men, had thought the same to be good and effectuall. I taking the same writing, and reading it ouer, and noting the seales, found one of the seales like vnto a seale that I had aboute me, which seale I bought besides Charing crosse, that I was out of doubte it was none of those Gentlemens seales that had subcribed. And hauing vnderstanding before of their peuish practices, made me to concaeue that all was forged and nought. I made the more hast home ; for well I wyst that he would and must of force passe through the parysh where I dwelt ; for there was no other waye for hymn. And comminge homewarde, I found them in the towne, accordinge to my expectation, where they were staid ; for there was a Pallyarde associate with the Dommerar and partaker of his gaynes, whyche Pallyarde I sawe not at Dartford. The stayers of them was a Gentlemen called Chayne, and a seruant of my Lord Kéepers, cald Wostestowe, which was the chiefe causer of the staying of them, being a Surgien, and cunning in his science, has séene the lyke practices, and, as he sayde, hadde caused one to speake afore that was dome. It was my chaunce to come at the begynning of the matter. "Syr," (quoth this Surgien) "I am bold here to vtter some part of my cunning. I trust" (quoth he) "you shall see a myracle wrought anon. For I once" (quoth he) "made a dumme man to speake." Quoth I, "you are wel met, and somwhat you haue preuented me ; for I had thought to haue done no lesse or they hadde passed this towne. For I well knowe their writing is fayned, and they depe dissemblers." The Surgien made hym gape, and we could sée but halfe a toung. I required the Surgien to put hys fynger in his mouth, and to pull out his toung, and so he dyd, not withstanding he held strongly a prety whyle ; at the length he pluckt out the same, to the great admiration of many that stode by. Yet when we sawe his tounge, hée would neither speake nor yet could heare. Quoth I to the Surgien, "knit the two of his fyngers to gether, and thrust a stycke betwene them, and rubbe the same vp and downe a lytle whyle, and for my lyfe hée speaketh by and by." "Sir," quoth this Surgien, "I praye you let me practise and other waye." I was well contented to sée the same. He had him into a house, and tyed a halter aboute the wrestes of his handes, and hoysed him vp ouser a beam, and there dyd let him hang a good while : at the length, for very paine he required for Gods sake to let him down. So he that was both deafe and dume coulde in short tyme both heare and speake. Then I took that money I could find in his pursse and distributed the same to the poore people dwelling there, whiche was xv. pence halfepeny, being all that we coulde finde. That done, and this merry myracle madly made, I sent them with my seruaunt to the next Iusticer, where they preached on the Pyllery for want of a Pulpet, and were well whypped, and none did bewayle them.

July 18, 2008 12:35 PM - (Comments)

No Quarter a zine about radical history http://anarchistpirates.blogspot.com Issue 3 of No Quarter has recently been published. This issue contains… • A reprint of Lost Utopias by Ron Sakolsky, "scholar of music, revolution and radio", from issue 3 of his self-published, anarchist-surrealist zine, Oystercatcher. • An interview with a member of the Bristol Radical History Group, an independent collective exploring history from below. They have staged some remarkable events, all without any funding from universities, political parties, business or local government. • The trial statement of nineteenth-century French anarchist Émile Henry (1872 - May 21, 1894). He attempted to dynamite a mining company which was in dispute with its striking workers, only to have the bomb discovered before it was detonated and retrieved to the police office, where it did detonate, killing several policemen present. Later he would mis-throw a bomb into a bourgeois café, slightly injuring a few bourgeois, wounding three persons with gunshot whilst making his escape. He was executed at 22 years old. • Many reviews of related books and films. For details on how to obtain a copy of No Quarter #3, see the No Quarter blog.

July 18, 2008 10:54 AM - (Comments)

Between the years 1626 and 1632 there were massive anti-enclosure riots in western England. Collectively known as The Western Rising, these riots occurred in Gillingham Forest on the Dorset-Wiltshire border, the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, Braydon Forest in Wiltshire, Feckenham Forest in Worcestershire and Leicester Forest. The cause of the uprising was the Crown's policy of disafforestation and enclosure, denying the immemorial, customary rights of common held by all. The main body of the rioters was made up of artisans, landless peasants and wage-earners as, although the Crown had consulted with and offered compensation to the Lords and landowners for their losses, the rights of the majority, who were landless peasants and relying upon the forest and its raw materials for subsistence, were ignored and their rights had no basis in the Crown's laws.

Most of those escaping punishment were persons of the lower orders. The Crown's object was to capture and punish the ringleaders in order to set an example to others and to break the spirit of the rank-and-file. Since Stuart government took it for granted that a ringleader was a person of quality, gentlemen were prime suspects, while artisans and laborers would more easily have escaped notice.

A recurring theme in official opinions on the Western Rising is that the belief that the lower orders were incapable of organizing and directing themselves and, consequently, that persons of quality were behind the riots. This was, of course, only one manifestation of an opinion universally held in the seventeenth century. It is expressed, for example, in that near-limitless storehouse of the period's aphorisms and commonplaces, the essays of Francis Bacon. In "On Sedition" Bacon ascribes the root of sedition to poverty in the common people and discontent among their betters: "If poverty and broken estate in the better sort be joined with a want and necessity in the mean people, the danger is imminent and great: for the rebellions of the belly are the worst." Sedition required the better sort to provide leadership, "for common people are of slow motion, if they will not be excited by the greater sort."

Buchanan Sharp, In Contempt of All Authority, Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586-1660
(University of California Press 1980), 130-131

July 18, 2008 07:21 AM - (Comments)

Tired of the classic livejournal theme, I've switched to something else. Not specially better, not specially worse.

July 17, 2008 04:49 PM - (Comments)

English version below.

Aujourd’hui 15 otages des FARC ont été libérés par l’armée colombienne. Je me réjouis pour eux, et je suis complètement impressionné par la méthode employée. Au lieu de s’aplatir et d’échanger une otage contre un certain nombre de guerilleros, la Colombie a planifié une opération militaire et l’a parfaitement mise en oeuvre.

Après avoir localisé les otages par quatre mois de reconnaissance sur le terrain, ils ont utilisé la méthode de l’ingénierie sociale qui marche tellement bien quand elle bien utilisée, pour convaincre les FARC qu’un ordre venu d’en haut leur demander de transférer 15 otages plus profond dans la jungle pour plus de sécurité. Et une poignée de soldats s’est pointée en t-shirt du Che dans un hélicoptère repeint, s’est posée au milieu d’une soixantaine de guerilleros, a embarqué 14 otages et 2 gardiens des FARC, a redécollé, et a neutralisé les 2 gardiens avant de retourner à leur base.

Le tout avec zéro coups de feu tirés, et zéro victimes. J’imagine à peine la dose d’adrénaline contre laquelle ils ont dû lutter durant l’opération…

English:

Today 15 hostages of the FARC have been released by the Columbian army. I’m really happy for them, and I’m also quite impressed by the method employed by the army. Instead of bending down and trading one hostage for a number of FARC guerilleros, they’ve set up a perfect military operation with no negociation.

Based on information gathering and social engineering via radio, they managed to locate the hostages, managed to convince the FARC that hostages had to be transferred for more security, did not to blow their cover after landing, did neutralize the two FARC embarked with them in the helicopter, and made it back to their base after having shot zero rounds and made zero victims. A mission perfectly done, and I only can imagine the amount of adrenaline they had to manage during these twenty minutes!

July 03, 2008 04:14 PM - (Comments)

Did you know that Meretrix Technologies “Care About Your Needs”? That could not tell you anything special, unless you remember that meretrix is latin for prostitute. Good to know that they’re ISO9001 certified .

See: http://www.meretrix.com/.

Are they really serious, trying to be funny or simply ignorant?

Moreover, quoting the main page:

[..]
We’re about performance, because you’re about performance, and we’re about unleashing the dynamic energy of today’s technology for you! We understand the importance of standards-compliant open systems technology, and we can provide the complete solutions that you need.
[..]
Here at Meretrix Technologies, we understand the value of Continuous Quality Improvement. We believe that if we can provide constant improvement in our services, that their quality will continue to increase as a result, particularly over time, and that will, of course, mean greater performance over the long run.
[..]

They sell blue pills maybe?

And also:

[..]
And as part of the Meretrix Vision, as seen by our founder, respected technologist, humanitarian, and bon-vivant Harry Mantakos, we believe that anyone who takes this web page seriously is a complete idiot. Hell, I wasn’t even wearing pants when I wrote it.
[..]

Definitely not serious. Woud you present your founder with such a picture?

June 20, 2008 09:53 AM - (Comments)

Knowing the history of the relationship between Claws Mail and Sylpheed, it was amusing to read the release announcement for Sylpheed 2.5.0 earlier this week:

    * New features
          o The vertical 3-paned view mode was added.
          o The feature to save SSL peer certificate was added.
          o The option 'Treat HTML only message as attachment' was
            added.
          o The feature to confirm missing attachments was added.
          o The feature to confirm recipients before sending was added.

Why is this amusing? It is amusing because Claws Mail, (née Sylpheed-Claws), started life as the development branch of Sylpheed, where new features could be added, tested and improved before going into the Sylpheed main branch — at least, that was the agreement which was reached and the agreement which instigated the start of the Sylpheed-Claws project — in order to make Sylpheed better rather than to make a better Sylpheed. To cut a long story short, although the movement of code from Claws to Sylpheed was happening early in the project, (Actions, Colour Labels and Templates originated in Claws, for example), this movement slowed and then ground to a halt. We had code and features in Claws that were well-tested and stable and yet the migration to Sylpheed was not happening, and little or no reason was communicated as to why this stagnation was occurring. Eventually it became obvious, without ever being said, that the features/code already written in Claws were not ever going to get into Sylpheed, and that Sylpheed was a one-man-band, a one-party system, as it were. So, naturally, the Claws Mail team decided to fork the project and go in its own direction. We started out with the aim to make Sylpheed better, and ended up with a better Sylpheed.

o The vertical 3-paned view mode was added.

In Claws Mail since version 2.8.0 (February 2007). Claws Mail also has additional 'Wide message', 'Wide message list' and 'Small screen' layouts.

o The feature to save SSL peer certificate was added.

In Claws Mail since version 0.8.5claws (October 2002)

o The option 'Treat HTML only message as attachment' was added.

With Claws Mail's clearer display/layout, an option such as this is unnecessary and irrelevant.

o The feature to confirm missing attachments was added.

Added as a plugin for Claws Mail in November 2006.

o The feature to confirm recipients before sending was added.

This feature is not in Claws Mail, but I wonder who actually needs a feature like this?

June 19, 2008 05:21 AM - (Comments)

I’ve seen this mentioned in a few geek news outlets, the Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable. 1.5 meters of CAT5 cable for $500 — but then your music will sound so much better than with $1.5 cables !

The Amazon reviews are mostly hilarious. I wonder how large the target market can be for this, which is the perfect example of Snake Oil Product :-) The tags are mostly right.

June 17, 2008 07:42 AM - (Comments)

Je viens de me rendre compte que mon chat Crapule fait un blog dans mon dos. C’est plutôt incroyable !

June 16, 2008 04:57 PM - (Comments)

the hancock project. A film by Bruce Gilchrist & Jo Joelson (London Fieldworks)
Institvtvm Pataphysicvm Londiniense
Department of Reconstructive Archaeology, dora 4
DVD. For distribution only to members and friends of the Institute. 33 signed copies (I to XXXIII), and 99 copies numbered 1 to 99.

Compared to Hancock, Gainsborough comes across as a rank amateur, while Paul Cézanne is frankly contemptible. … Hancock craftily demonstrates that it is more socially valuable for artists to manifest the contradictions of their calling as specialist non-specialists, than to buttress the spectacle without even realising that art is irredeemably reactionary. Hancock intuitively understands that those capitalism condemns to be artists must simultaneously and by necessity join with the proletariat in allowing the real anti-art to begin. Our task is to create a new world, and all of anarchism can be found in the ridiculous idea that bohemians may live groovy lives while the rest of us are oppressed by the tyrannies of exchange.

Stewart Home, Tony Hancock as "The Rebel": Warhol before Warhol, or From The Art of Commerce to the Business of Art, Encomia for Anthony Hancock (Eds. Alastair Brotchie & Magnus Irvin) (London Institute of 'Pataphysics, 2002)

June 14, 2008 12:06 PM - (Comments)

for d in `ldd /usr/local/bin/claws-mail | cut -d\( -f1 | cut -d\> -f2 | sed 's,\s,,'`; do dpkg -S $d 2> /dev/null; done | cut -f1 -d: | sort -u | xargs | for p in `cat`; do dpkg-query -W $p; done


Nice, isn't it? ;-)

For the curious: it gives all package names and versions of the libraries a binary depends upon (recursively, per ldd, and errors discarded, so beware!).

June 11, 2008 09:27 AM - (Comments)

The enclosure movement and the slave trade ushered industrial capitalism into the modern world. By 1832 England was largely closed, its countryside privatized (some even mechanized), in contrast to a century earlier when its fields were largely open—"champion" country, to use the happy technical term—and yeoman, children, women could subsist by commoning. By 1834 slavery had been abolished in the British empire whereas a century earlier, on 11 September 1713, the asiento licensed British slavers to trade African slaves throughout the Americas. Together the expelled commoners and the captured Africans provided the labor power available for exploitation in the factories of the field (tobacco and sugar) and the factories of the towns (woolens and cottons). Whether indentured servant, West African youngster, former milkmaid, or woodsman without his woods, the lords of humankind looked upon them indifferently as laboring bodies to produce surplus value, and so emerged the Atlantic working day, which entirely depended upon a prior discommoning.

The legal cliché is that the American constitution is written, while the English is unwritten. Strictly speaking this is untrue inasmuch as both have stemmed from the Magna Carta of 1215. The important difference between English and American constitutional development is not that one is unwritten and the other is written. The difference is Africa. The maintenance and expansion of unwaged labor on the plantation where slaves produced surplus value was indispensable to American constitutional and revolutionary history, whereas the salient English development was the statutory enclosure of lands and privatization of all attempts at commoning. The Atlantic multitudes were divided by race in the emerging constitution. The Charters of Liberties were contested in this process. The enclosure movement, opposed by English commoners, conveniently ignored the Forest Charter. The movement to abolish slavery used Magna Carta and helped put it back into the English working-class movement.

Peter Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto, Liberties and Commons for All (University of California Press 2008), 94-95

June 07, 2008 07:30 AM - (Comments)