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Friday - September 10th | | 23:30 | | Og Maciel: Django Developer Kit Appliance 1.2.2
| | 1 hit |  
Foresight Django Pony
I have been working hard (time permitting, off course) on migrating the appliance to a slim Foresight Linux
base in order to upgrade the underlying python from 2.4 to latest 2.6.x, plus other goodies such as a newer kernel and the very latest versions of your favorite versioning control systems! This will also mean that I won’t have to maintain several packages on different places and will be able to leverage of the work being done on Foresight!
As always, choose from the following image types:
Remember that the appliance comes with its own management system that can be accessed by pointing your browser to https://YOUR-APPLIANCE-IP:8003 and logging in as the admin user (the default password the first time you boot your appliance is password, but you will immediately be asked to change it during the 1-step setup wizard). From there you can also configure backups, updates, and manage system services.
I hope you’ll enjoy the appliance and next time I hope to be announcing the newer Foresight Linux platform!
 | | 22:00 | | Paul Tagliamonte: Ohio Linux-fest!
| | 1 hit |  
I’m on the bus to OLF. See you all soon!
| | 22:00 | | Gerfried Fuchs: Lenny: 900 RC bugs
| | 1 hit |  It is a while since we managed to get below the 1000 stable RC mark
. Last weekend we managed the next mark, that is we are below 900
now! Obviously my effort during the RCBC
did take us a fair step in that direction, but I don't want to take full credit for it.
The last bit that got us below the 900 happened through an event of last weekend: The current point release of lenny
. Be aware that the BTS doesn't know about proposed-updates, so bugs closed through uploads to there only are seen when they hit the main pool—which is the reason for point releases. It were something around 25 RC bugs that were closed by that. I haven't checked who exactly is to thank here, but looking at the non-DSA packages one finds some perl packages and at least two font packages. Thanks to the corresponding teams for their help!
I plan to continue these efforts, so if you think it's a good idea you might want to flattr it
. I think this quote sums up the motivation behind this pretty well:
<jwilk> Yay, only 900 bug to fix and we can release lenny! Oh wait...
/debian
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permanent link
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Comments: 0
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| | 19:30 | | Canonical Design Team: This week in design – 10 September ..
| | 1 hit |  I don’t want to sound like a broken record but “PHEW! What a week”. Next Thursday will be our final freeze for Maverick. After this point it’s full steam ahead bug fixing, checking translations and making sure everything is ready for the release on the 10th Ocotober.
The main news from the design team is that a lot of us are working on bug fixes and the last changes to the desktop. Otto’s been hard at it on a new wallpaper and we’ll talk to you more about that next week. The release is really stabalising now and if you’ve not yet upgraded as I’ve said in previous posts hop on over to the dailies server
and try it out. At least whack it on a USB stick and boot from it. You’ll be a happier richer human being for it*.
On the font typeface front you’ve no doubt enjoyed the updates this week from our guest bloggers at Dalton Maag. There’s more to come and if you haven’t looked I encourage you to take a look at Bruno’s post about the slant on the Hebrew characters
.
As promised Lilly
introduced herself in a fine post and followed that with a report on dConstruct
. UK readers may be aware of dConstruct
, an annual conference on design held in Brighton
on the south coast of England. It looks like it was a great event this year and I’d encourage you to go and look up the talks online – you can listen to them in their podcasts section
.
And also on the team front we announced that we are hiring
!
And finally … we ended this week by taking a look at some of the new things that are and will soon be appearing on the Ubuntu shop. The one that really took our fancy was the travel mouse
which is already available!
And on that shamelessly self promoting note thanks for all your comments and feedback. Have a great weekend!
* Canonical and Ubuntu in no way guarantee that you’ll be a happier richer human being once you’ve tried Maverick. Perhaps boot and watch this video
. It’s the best I can do … it’s late on Friday and I want to go home …
| | 18:30 | | Launchpad News: Recent posts from Planet Launchpad
| | 2 hits |  Just a quick look at some of the recent posts to Planet Launchpad
:
| | 17:30 | | Canonical Design Team: Which way to slant the Hebrew
| | 2 hits | Here is a design conundrum: which way to lean the Hebrew Italic design. Logic, and probably common sense, would dictate that it should slant in the reading direction. However, I think we have to consider wider implications on this issue, and I would like to ask for the community’s opinion on this issue. Personally, I would design the Hebrew backward slanting, meaning in the same direction as the Latin.
Some years ago we designed a corporate font for which we faced exactly the same question. After much deliberating and consulting with a number of Hebrew users and typographers it was decided that it should be backwards. The decision was based on the fact that the Hebrew would often be shown in tandem with the Latin and that two have two differing Italic slants would create too much of a textural disturbance in a layout. Furthermore, if a Hebrew text is set, in Italic, and a Latin word needs to be introduced the opposing Italic angles would tend to create an awkward texture. This is particularly true where numbers are used since in modern Hebrew the Latin numeral system is used throughout. Of course a separate set of numerals can be designed and accessed via script specific OpenType feature but its correct use very much depends on the application recognising OT in the first place.
Bruno Maag
During our work on the Hebrew design for this client we learnt that there are no typographic rules that dictate any direction of slant and that generally readers are comfortable with either treatment. So, for these reasons I feel that the Hebrew Italic should follow the slant direction of the Latin.
| | 15:00 | | Stéphane Graber: Edubuntu gets a new installer
| | 2 hits |  One of our goals for the Maverick development was to enhance our installation process.
Previously in 10.04 we introduced a way to test LTSP
straight from the Live DVD and then install it or the Netbook-Edition interface at the end of the install.
It worked great but we then received reports from users telling us they didn't see a way to install either LTSP or the Netbook interface during the install.
That was because we didn't have the time to properly integrate it in Ubiquity (Ubuntu's graphical installer), so you had to click on two icons on the Live desktop at the end of the install.
I'm very pleased to say that this time is over and that starting with today's daily build, we probably have the easiest way to install LTSP or the Unity interface ever!
Here's what it currently looks like:
So all you need to do now is to tick one or two tickboxes and wait for your system to install. After reboot you'll have your Unity environment or LTSP or both !
That change was basically the last thing left on our Maverick roadmap, so we now have an updated installer slideshow
, that additional installer step, a cleaned up look&feel and a few additional packages. We just need more testing and we'll be ready for 10/10/10.
You can get that daily build here: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/edubuntu/dvd/20100910/maverick-dvd-amd64.iso
| | 15:00 | | Brett Alton: Performance Issues and rsync
| | 2 hits |  I'm upgrading my external hard drive from 1.5 TB to 2.0 TB. Not a big jump, no, but it's a good opportunity to throw the 1.5 TB it in the closet for backup/storage.
My 1.5 TB external was hooked up to my Dell Mini 9 netbook and used as a media server as I found it far too small (dimensions-wise) to be used for programming or school. Since the old external was already attached, I threw on the new external, formatted it to ext4 using gparted and started transferring the data.
Here's the command I used:
sudo rsync -avrz /media/external/ /media/external_/
D'oh! Can anyone catch what I did?
My Dell Mini 9, equipped with a less-than-powerful Intel Atom N270 was gobbled up by the command, almost making the netbook unusable.
You see, I'm used to using the tar command tar -xvzf filename.tar.gz which extracts an archive of files.
Well for tar, '-z' means
-z, --gzip, --gunzip --ungzip
meaning that the file is compressed with gzip.
For rsync however, '-z' means
-z, --compress compress file data during the transfer
Yikes! My little Intel Atom N270 was trying to compress all my files before transferring them! Not good nor efficient for local transfer.
If you're transferring MB or GB of data over a network (and have the time and CPU power to compress files), then by all means, use the '-z' with rsync. But don't use the '-z' flag when copying data from one local hard drive to another, especially when using a netbook. That's reserved for people by the name of Brett Alton.
The transfer is now happily running on my Core i5 430m, transferring 1.5 TB of data without sweating
| CPU breakdown |
|---|
| CPU | CPU-usage | Cores/Threads | Speed | Cache (L2/L3) |
|---|
| Intel Core i5 430m | 3% | 2/4 | 2.26 GHz | 2x256 kB / 3 MB | | Intel Atom N270 | 97% | 1/2 | 1.6 GHz | 512 kB |
Here is the suggested command to use (changing the path names of course):
sudo rsync -av /media/external/ /media/external_/
Good luck!
| | 14:30 | | David Tomaschik: Broadcom does the Right Thing
| | 2 hits |  Looks like Broadcom is doing the right thing: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/09/broadcom-announces-official-open-source-drivers-for-linux.ars
They’ve released fully-open drivers for 3 of their 802.11n chipsets. I hope this’ll spread to more of their hardware, but regardless, it’s a great move. No longer will Broadcom be an absolute contraindication to my buying hardware. Thanks Broadcom!
| | 14:30 | | Canonical Design Team: Third update to the Ubuntu Light Them..
| | 2 hits | Still Andrea Cimitan, still good news for you 
This is a small blog post to list few of the changes we did to light-themes:
- Menuitem speedup, hurray!!!
 - Subtle shadow on inactive notebook’s tabs
- White text color on GtkProgressBar
- Increased visibility of the resize gripper
- Fixed contrast applied to elements in GtkStatusbar
- More compatibility with custom color specified in Appearance Preferences
- Increased contrast between text and background
- Tweaks to the odd row color inside GtkTreeView
I really hope to see the updated packages in maverick soon.
As always, we appreciate your feedback. It’s important keeping the good communication we are establishing with you: if you notice, some of the changes came from your precious comments 
See you soon guys, and enjoy your weekend!
| | 12:30 | | Liel Fridman: Great Hoborg is under control – version 2..
| | 2 hits | Hello everybody,
it's the first time I write in English, so please send me language corrections in the comments.
However, in today's post I am going to tell you about the Israeli Ubuntu LoCo's IRC bot, Hoborg.
Two months before, Ddorda
posted a post about the bot named 'Great Hoborg is under control'. This month, I started to develop a new version of Hoborg. Because the previous bot was very slow, I prefered to use the Twisted
Python network engine. After some tests of the bot, I can see that this decide was great, because it saved many lines of socket code and it also made Hoborg really fast  .
In this month's meeting, we used it instead of the old bot. I didn't have time for debugging it, so the polls did not reset, but after the meeting we fixed it(and thank's to Moshe Nachmias for fixing the text output and uploading it to the Wiki).
After that, I worked on additional features, such as adding commands that return only text and commands that return very useful links, adding multiple-choices polls, adding search command in Google Israel, and finally adding a web-based control panel base (We will release our offical control panel sperately after we'll end it).
Now we are going to add HTML logging, plugin system, and some additional functions to make it a full-time bot and to allow it to replace the French bot, uBOTu-fr.
Also, El'ad
said me that he plans to replace his logging bot, Logically, with Hoborg in the ##linux-il channel.
If you want to get the source code of Hoborg, you can by cloning our offical git repository
.
Hope you will enjoy our work,
Li'el (and the other developers of Hoborg)
| | 11:30 | | Canonical Design Team: dConstruct 2010
| | 2 hits | Once again Brighton-based Clearleft prepared something special for those who attended this year’s dConstruct conference. Ivanka and myself had the pleasure to be amongst the lucky ones who managed to grab a ticket.
The line-up was formed by some of the most prominent names in design thinking:
- Brendan Dawes
- David McCandless
- Hannah Donovan
- James Bridle
- John Gruber
- Marty Neumeier
- Merlin Mann
- Samantha Warren
- Tom Coates
Other
people
have written
in-depth write-ups
about each of the talks, and the podcasts of the sessions are freely available here
(along with more information about each speaker), so I’m going to focus mainly what the highlights of the conference were for me.
Highlights
My personal favourites this year were David McCandless (‘Information is Beautiful
’) and James Bridle (writer and publisher at Bookkake
).
McCandless’ presentation was about data, lots of data. He showed us how he has been bringing clarity to the amalgam of undecipherable information we are faced with every day, in the papers, the Internet, etc; how some of that data is contradictory and confusing instead of clarifying. McCandless does this by analising the data and translating it into beautiful, clear infographics. Not just the aesthetics, but also the relevance of the graphics made for a rather amusing and inspirational presentation.
Photo by David Parsons
Bridle talked about “the value of ruins”, not physical ruins, but online ones. What happens to forgotten websites, where do the ruins of the Internet go, and historiography — the history of history. I have to confess Bridle’s talk was my favourite one: it was brilliantly presented, entertaining (somehow some speakers forget that the audience is there to be entertained, not sleep), and clever without being patronising. The highlight of his talk came when he presented us with 12 printed volumes containing the whole history of Wikipedia’s page “Iraq War
” page (shown in the photo below). To be honest, he probably had us all at “Geocities”…
Photo by Marko Mrdjenovič
I also really enjoyed the message from Merlin Mann’s (of 43 Folders
fame) presentation. He talked about being a nerd, which for him meant being interested and passionate about something, the uneasiness of knowing that there is always something more to learn, and the importance of always looking for ways to improve yourself. He also mentioned Ubuntu and Canonical in his talk…
Mr Mann talked for almost one hour without the aid of slides, which was rather impressive and very well done.
Everything elseAs a regular conference attendee, I’ve made some friends over the years that are too ‘conference junkies’. It’s always a pleasure to see everyone again, have a few drinks and enjoy a nice chat. The couple of nights that I spent in Brighton for dConstruct weren’t an exception.
Brighton also charmed everyone with a beautiful weather on Saturday morning, so a few of us had a stroll around the seaside and on the famous Brighton Pier (including a terrifying visit to the Horror Hotel!).
I’ve uploaded some photos
(mostly of Brighton) to Flickr, but a search for the ‘dconstruct’ tag
will produce far better (and more relevant) photos.
Looking forward to the next one!
| | 11:00 | | Christophe Sauthier: Free Banner for approved LoCo teams !
| | 2 hits |  If you are involved in a Loco Team this post, might interest you !
Following a work that has been lead by the LoCo Council, Canonical agreed to provide some gifts to each approved teams, including a banner. This is detailed on the Wiki
.
We (the LoCo Council) have setup an email address to gather all the needed informations. If you are in an approved LoCo Team, please ask of one your point of Contact to send and email to bannerrequest@reponses.net with the following informations:
- Loco name
- Contact person
- Full postal address including post/zip code
- Telephone number of contact
- Any other relevant shipping info (e.g. CPF number for Brazil) Please also keep in mind that this process will be quite long (may be a couple of months), so be patient once you have sent your request !
| | 9:30 | | Mark Shuttleworth: Daily dose of Scribus trunk
| | 2 hits |  We’ll be using Scribus for much of the DTP internal to Canonical. Our templates etc will be published in Scribus, so folks who need to knock up a flyer or brochure have the pieces they need ready to hand. However, there’s a problem, in that the stable Scribus package is really quite old.
The Scribus team is making good progress on the next version of Scribus, but I couldn’t find an easy way to test their trunk. So I thought to make a PPA with a daily build. Whenever I’m testing or evaluating a new app I like to check out trunk, just to get a feel for the pace of activity and quality of the work. A crisp, clean, stable trunk is a sign of good quality work, which will likely mean good quality elsewhere like documentation and project governance. Chaos on trunk means… chaos generally, as a rule.
I wrote to Oleksander Moskalenko, one of the upstream developers and Debian maintainer of the Scribus packages, including a complete set of Ubuntu packages with pretty awesome documentation for how to get the newer versions for testing. He kindly offered to review the package and made some suggestions for things to look out for. And then I got lucky, mentioning that I wanted to do this on #kubuntu-devel, because Philip Muskovac turns out to be in the middle of a quest to do daily build PPA’s of most of KDE!
We already had a Bzr import of Scribus trunk
for some reason, so tip is easily accessible via LP and bzr.
Philip knocked up a package recipe combining trunk with a clean packaging branch
based on Oleksandr’s scribus-ng package. Et voila, LP is now doing all the work to deliver us a nice dose of Scribus goodness
every day. So here’s an invitation to DTP-heads everywhere: if you’d like to see the very latest work of the Scribus team, just add that PPA to your sources and grab scribus-trunk:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:scribus/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install scribus-trunk
Generally, if the packaging branch is clean, a daily build is pretty stable, it might need a tweak now and then but that work is useful to the packager as an early warning on packaging changes needed for the next version, anyway. And it’s usually easier to fix something if you know exactly what changed to break it 
I’d like to thank Philip and Oleksandr for rocking the park, and the Scribus folks for a wonderful tool that will get wider use now within Canonical and, hopefully, elsewhere too.
The Scribus trunk packages seem to work very well on Unity, the Qt/dbusmenu integration is tight in this newer version, so it’s very usable with the panel menu and launching it full-screen feels right on my laptop. I’m enjoying the extra detailed control that Scribus gives with the use of fonts over apps like OO.o and AbiWord, since I’m becoming a font nerd these days with all the work on Ubuntu.
There is a flag day transition to be aware of, though, as newer Scribus files are not compatible with those of the stable scribus. Nevertheless, both this trunk build and the scribus-ng packages Oleksandr maintains seem pretty stable to me, so we’ll be using the newer format and holding our breath till the actual release. No pressure, team Scribus 
| | 8:00 | | Bilal Akhtar: FOSS libraries should learn from PHP
| | 2 hits |  PHP
is the golden scripting language that powers more than half of the world’s websites (probably much more). It is quick, fast, simple and robust. However, the main thing that I like about it is its manual
.
The PHP manual contains detailed information about each and every PHP function in each and every PHP extension that is shipped with the PHP Package. That’s not all. It also has user-contributed notes at the end of every page, and also contains information on creating and installing PHP Extensions. Furthermore, the manual can be downloaded
for free in many languages.
Many FOSS Programming languages and libraries have incomplete documentation, and sometimes you won’t get enough information about a particular function in the docs. Python’s case is different. Its documentation covers as much of the language as PHPs, but it is difficult to search and use. I have got lost in such documentation many times, and unable to get enough information on small stuff after a lot of digging.
I try to stick to PHP whenever I can, because of its simplicity and, of course, its manual’s robustness. I hope the other libraries catch up with its documentation.
| | 7:00 | | Aaron Toponce: Ramadan – Week 4
| | 2 hits |  My third second week of experiencing Ramadan is already documented
, this is week four.
Ramadan has come to a close. It’s the end of an old month and the beginning of a new. At the beginning of the new month, a festival called Eid ul-Fitr
is celebrated for three days, while Muslims eat, play games, enjoy each others company and all around have a good, wholesome time with each other. Because I’ve been fasting all month, I wanted to celebrate Eid as well. Even though I’m the only one in my family who has been fasting, I still wanted to celebrate it with my family. So Saturday, we’ll be having our own little “mini-Eid”. It will be a pot luck, with assignments made to each of the family members. We’ll have some games for the little ones, so they don’t get bored while the adults converse with each other. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
Initially, when I wanted to celebrate this month, I had three objectives in mind:
- Raise awareness that Islam is not a religion of Terror.
- Learn more about the Islam culture- what they believe, how they dress, why they pray, et cetera.
- Grow closer to God.
I can easily say that all three of these objectives were met far beyond anything I would have expected. I had no idea that I would make so many friends and learn so much. I received constant warmth from Muslims the world over, local and remote. I received encouragement and strength from family members, when I was tempted to break the fast, and stop Ramadan. I learned self-control over succumbing to temptation. But more importantly, my testimony and strength in God increased ten-fold. As a result of Ramadan, I’m a better person. I’ve elevated to a new height that I’ve not been before. I’m not saying this to boast. I’m saying this because I would highly recommend anyone else to participate, Muslim or non-Muslim. I may very well do it next year, and years following. It’s such a rewarding and spiritual experience. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
It was unfortunate that I had encounters from people that don’t see Islam in the true light. There were many times I had to defend this religion and its beliefs. I had discussions about the “Ground Zero Mosque” that were very politically charged. People have said things to me that I’m sure many probably regret saying now. However, despite these experiences, Ramadan was rewarding and uplifting overall.
Lastly, I had the opportunity to read the Qur’an from cover to cover during Ramadan. What a rewarding and uplifting book! For those who are unaware, it teaches many of the same commandments and doctrines that the Holy Bible teach. For example, no sinner can dwell with God, unless he be repentant and call upon God for forgiveness. It teaches of chastity, honesty and doing good to all men. It teaches against idolatry. It also teaches about the same Holy Prophets that are found in the Holy Bible. Namely Adam, Moses, Enoch, David, Solomon, Job and John. It teaches that Jesus was no the Son of God, but an Apostle as others who came before him. It also teaches that Jesus was not crucified for the sins of man, but that this is a perversion created by the Christians. And of course, it teaches about Muhammad, the last prophet who brought about the Qur’an through inspiration from the angel Gabriel.
All-in-all, the Qur’an is a good book. It reads different than the Bible, and for those who aren’t used to eastern writing, it can seem a but redundant. However, I found the Qur’an very enlightening, and I found myself agreeing with most of its teachings (being Christian myself, there are some core beliefs that are different, obviously). If you are curious about the Qur’an, you can receive a gorgeous complementary copy
from CAIR- the Council for American-Islamic Relations
. It’s a big hard-bound book, with glossy full-color pages. On each page is the original Arabic, a translation into English, a pronunciation guide on how to pronounce the Arabic with English characters, and an interpretation by the translator of the volume. Further, each Surah (chapter) is prefaced by a summary of what you are about to read, where that Surah fits chronologically with the rest of the book and some additional insight into the history of Muhammad during that time. In a nutshell, the length of the Qur’an is similar to that of the New Testament, and should be quick reading.
As a side note, I was quite upset to learn about Pastor Terry Jones willing to burn copies of the Qur’an, and the reasons why he thinks everyone should. It was clear to me that he has not read any verses from the Qur’an, or he and his congregation would rethink their position. I blogged an Open Letter to the Pastor
, urging him to rethink his position. If he doesn’t, I’ll be praying for heavy rain, to prevent his bonfire.
I can’t help but think of the crazy timing I’ve had in choosing to participate in Ramadan this year. First with the Ground Zero community center, now the Pastor burning Qur’ans. All in one holy month. My purpose for raising awareness that Islam is not a religion of evil was put to the test all month long. I was in many debates and conversations both in person and online. I’m glad I decided to do it this month. I just hope it did some good.
I wish all the Muslims in the world peace and posterity. May God bless you with great patience as you endure the hate from many American people.
Here is how my last week went:
- 22 Ramadan- After having breakfast, the standard Grape Nuts and yogurt with orange juice, I had a Zinger
, and no sooner did I eat it, then I immediately got sick. It was such a horrible mistake. And really, I don’t know why I had one. I don’t like them to begin with. I guess the idea of something sweet was too tempting. Anyway, all day I was sick to my stomach over eating that Zinger. Many times I thought that I should definitely take some medicine to feel better, but I couldn’t bring myself to break the fast. My will was too strong to stop. I figured I could deal with it throughout the day, and I did. I was eager to eat something for Iftar, and take medicine to feel better.
- 23 Ramadan- Today, I needed to get to the school earlier than normal to finish up some homework that was due for that day. So, I grabbed some breakfast at Burger King before starting the fast. Generally, I don’t like fast food, but it held me over a lot longer than Grape Nuts normally do, and I didn’t feel sick to my stomach like having that Zinger. Also, I attended Iftar at the University of Utah for the Muslim Students’ Association University of Utah. An event that went from 6pm to 8:30pm. $10 at the door goes towards helping the victims of the Pakistan flood. It was a wonderful event, and it was good to meet more Muslims and converse with them why I was participating. As a result, I got home a bit later than usual.
- 24 Ramadan- Went to school to get homework all caught up for the week, so I would be ready for Monday. I was in a study group, and a couple of times I was offered snacks. I declined, of course, and we continued our study.
- 25 Ramadan- Today was fast Sunday for our religion. Normally, you start your fast the night before right after dinner, and you hold to the fast until dinner on Sunday. However, because I’ve been fasting all month long, I opted for continuing in the tradition of Ramadan, by opening my fast that morning, and ending it at sunset like normal. Also, I shared my testimony on fasting to my congregation at church.
- 26 Ramadan- Struggled today keeping the fast. Had many times where I wanted to eat, and was very tempted to do so. Also learned about Pastor Terry Jones in Florida wanting to burn Qur’ans. I was floored and upset that someone could be so insensitive. After learning of this news, not only did I blog it, but I’ve been praying fervently that it rains in Gainesville, Florida.
- 27 Ramadan- I was invited to a restaurant by a fellow student for Iftar. Her father owns a restaurant in Salt Lake City, and they fed me at no charge, while I ate with their family. It was good to “break bread”, so to speak, with them, and learn about their family and history. I also finished the Qur’an. I was a bit behind in my reading up to this point, but I didn’t have much left to go, and I got it done.
- 28 Ramadan- Nothing much happened today. Finished off Ramadan with some pasta and corn. It’s going to be weird not fasting tomorrow.
Ramadan Sa’eed!
| | 3:00 | | John Baer: GTK Impression – Progress Bars
| | 2 hits |  The gnome progress bar is the visual method used to display activity. I usually think of the progress bar displayed during a large file copy. Impression progress bars follow the same design as the scroll bars; a flat bar in a hallow trough. Generally they are thin but the width may increase in the event progress metrics are displayed.
Nautilus Multi File Copy
Flickr Preview
The progress bar also offers an opportunity to add color to the presentation. In the case of Impression the progress bar is displayed in orange, Night Impression dark aubergine. Other options such as candy striping are absent.
Firefox File Download
Flickr Preview
Other areas where the progress bar is presented is Firefox downloads, Brasero CD burning, Rhythmbox, Update Manager and others.
Brasero
Flickr Preview
 | | 1:00 | | Siegfried Gevatter: Zeitgeist 0.5.1 released!
| | 2 hits |  On behalf of the Zeitgeist Project
team, I am pleased to announce the immediate availability of Zeitgeist 0.5.1
.
What is Zeitgeist?
Zeitgeist is an event-logging framework for desktop and mobile devices. Applications can push events into the log, and anyone can query the log via the rich query API. The logged events are semantically categorized and can come from any sort of activity, such as file usage, communications, browsing history, etc.
The Zeitgeist engine is a user-level service and does not provide a GUI. It is intended to support dedicated journalling applications and deep integration with other desktop components.
Where?
Downloads: https://launchpad.net/zeitgeist/+download
(zeitgeist-0.5.1.tar.gz
)
About Zeitgeist: http://zeitgeist-project.com
Wiki: http://live.gnome.org/Zeitgeist
News since 0.5.0
2010-09-09: Zeitgeist 0.5.1'Spongebob is not
funny'
Engine:
- Don't use the return value of Extension.post_insert_event() when
dispatching the post insert hooks. The post_insert_event() method
has no return value.
- Initialize ZeitgeistEngine after RemoteInterface, so that --replace
does its job before the main engine and extensions start (LP: #614315).
- Added support for queries on the Subject.Storage field of an Event
(LP: #580364).
- Some optimizations in the find_events() method. Also the profiling
data is much more useful.
Python API:
- Check arguments of Event.new_for_values() and Subject.new_for_values()
(LP: #580372).
- Redefined the result of TimeRange.always(), UNIX timestamp '0' is now
the left corner of the interval (LP: #614295).
- Added a new helper module called zeitgeist.mimetypes which basically
provides two functions (LP: #586524):
* get_interpretation_for_mimetype(), which tries to get a suitable
interpretation for a given mime-type.
* get_manifestation_for_uri(), which tries to lookup a manifestation
for the given URI.
- The DataSource model now provides easy access to the information it
holds through properties.
Overall:
- The tool to build our ontology now supports rdflib2 and rdflib3
(LP: #626224).
- Added 'make check' and 'make doc' commands to the rootlevel Makefile
(LP: #628661)
- Translation updates.
- Updated test suite.
- Documentation updates.
- Translation updates.
Related posts:- Zeitgeist 0.3.3 is out!
- Zeitgeist Data-Source Registry
- Zeitgeist is out!
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© Siegfried-Angel Gevatter Pujals, 2010. |
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| | 0:30 | | Jorge Castro: No need to complicate your life...
| | 2 hits |  For some reason people always think that having seperate / and /home partitions is necessary to having a healthy Ubuntu system.
I don’t know why people keep recommending this but I am doing my best to spread the word
that you don’t need to go through all that noise. If you don’t believe me you can read the recommendation
from the guy that writes the installer. If you have seperate drives or run multiple distros then that’s fine. Separate partition on a laptop with one disk? Don’t need it. We’ve supported this for over two years
!
As always, when touching a disk you care about with a partitioning tool, BACKUP, regardless of whatever method suits you.
Next thing you know people will start recommending clean installs instead of upgrades! (Pro tip: If upgrades weren’t an official and supported recommendation then we wouldn’t ship an upgrade tool!)
| Thursday - September 9th | | 23:30 | | Martin Owens: Ubuntu Insurance?
| | 2 hits |  This idea popped up in a completely different conversation and I haven’t explored the full dynamics of the idea and how it would play out legally but:
What if Ubuntu users paid into an insurance fund. The fund’s aim would be to record the primary software and hardware used by the customer and to employ programmers and QA people to ensure that this software and hardware works in the next release and with critical updates?
This would be in contrast to the idea of paying individually for bugs to be fixed. Such as having bounties or pay only bug trackers.
The goal of course would be to collectively take responsibility for maintaining the code we have that makes our computers do amazing things. Make sure that this is sustainable and reduce the requirement for guides and “toxic workarounds” for sets of problems that crop up in releases.
Would you pay into such a scheme? Do you know users who would? Is there enough money in our ecosystem to really pay people to do a good job on fixing problems or are we just not big enough yet?
What are your thoughts?
| | 22:00 | | Ante Karamatić: 1%?
| | 3 hits |  There have been many people claiming Linux didn’t pass 1% market share. There have been many people claiming Linux users are geeks that don’t go out.
That green over there is - Linux.
Website is about - adventure sports.
| | 19:30 | | Jorge Castro: Dear broadcom,
| | 2 hits | Thank you
, and welcome!
| | 18:30 | | Chase Douglas: Magic Trackpad drivers land in Ubuntu Maveric..
| | 2 hits | If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you’ll note that I’ve been spending some time adding Magic Trackpad functionality to the current Magic Mouse driver in the kernel. I’m pleased to report that the changes have landed both in Ubuntu and upstream in Jiri Kosina’s HID tree as it awaits merging into Linus’ tree. It will be available in Ubuntu 10.10 and hopefully in Linux 2.6.37.
There is still one remaining issue with the driver, however. The protocol used by the device is unique, and this poses challenges when trying to work with the HID layer. In Ubuntu we are papering over the issue, but Michael Poole has a patch that may resolve it once and for all. I plan to test the patch out soon, and I hope it is suitable for inclusion upstream.
| | 18:30 | | Canonical Design Team: Charactersets
| | 2 hits | In this latest post discussing development of the Ubuntu family of fonts, Bruno discusses scope, charactersets and what’s coming as part of the Ubuntu typeface. Where do you begin, where do you stop? In the case of the Ubuntu font project, the second part of the question is easily answered – when all the glyphs are designed to cover our planet’s languages and other, more specialised needs. But how much do you begin with, to offer a comprehensive tool to the user base. When we design fonts for our corporate clients we normally offer a Latin A Extended characterset which is sufficient for pretty much all their needs. However, the Ubuntu font project is not your bog standard corporate project but instead the fonts are used by a wide community. Accordingly, we felt that the Latin also needed to include the B Extended part supporting less common languages. When defining the initial scope of the project we also suggested that Greek and Cyrillic need to be available, in part because of their close relationship with Latin. The initial font release in Ubuntu 10.10 will contain Latin A+B Extended, Greek Polytonic and Cyrillic Extended. For Greek, we normally only create a Monotonic setup but we wanted to ensure that the fonts could instantly be used within the Greek academic environment allowing classic texts to be set. Eventually, all 13 font styles will have this language coverage as a minimum. Arabic and Hebrew will also become part of the for core font set, and whilst we have not got any other scripts planned we are starting to define design parameters for Devanagari, although that is not part of our initial brief for the Ubuntu font suite. Not every language using one of the above scripts will be covered – we are aware of that and are currently collecting your comments to this respect, and for the fonts to be updated in the future. We are discussing with the Canonical design team how this is best achieved ensuring the design and technical quality of the fonts is maintained. I hope to give you more info on this during the forthcoming UDS in Orlando. Bruno Maag | | 17:30 | | Canonical Design Team: Allow me to introduce myself…
| | 1 hit | My name’s Inayaili (most people call me either Yaili or Lily though) and I’m the new web designer in the Canonical’s design team — just started last Tuesday.
It was a busy and exciting week: lots of meetings to become familiar with the company and with everyone working here in the Millbank headquarters, and, of course, there was the dConstruct conference, in Brighton on Friday, which I had the pleasure to attend once again. (Watch out for my next post!)
A little bit about me: I’m Portuguese, I live in London, and I do web design and HTML and CSS. I also enjoy writing about those subjects and about the work that I do, so hopefully I’ll be able to set time aside as often as possible to write here on the design blog.
I’m really excited about working at Canonical: the team is formed by unbelievably clever people, driven and committed to making any project that they’re working on the best possible.
And who wouldn’t be happy about working with a view like this one, right?
| | 17:00 | | Raphaël Hertzog: Can Debian achieve world domination withou..
| | 1 hit |   Facebook is not very popular among free software hackers. When I announced my Facebook page on identi.ca (see here
) I got a few replies suggesting it was odd for me to use Facebook.
Indeed there are many good reasons why Facebook should be avoided: it is a centralized and proprietary service that is not very privacy-friendly. But the truth is that lots of people are using it (even Debian developers, can you recognize them on the picture?) and some are using their Facebook news feed as their main source of news.
You might wonder how many persons that represents, so here are the figures: the Debian
Facebook page has 48,361 fans and the Ubuntu one
has 247,932 fans. That’s right, an announce put on the Debian facebook page would reach more persons than the most popular announce list that Debian is currently running (debian-announce@lists.debian.org has about 29,000 subscribers
). Unfortunately that Debian Facebook page is empty and I don’t even know who the administrator is. The Ubuntu page on the contrary is properly configured to relay news from The Fridge
and Jono Bacon is posting some custom updates from time to time.
Debian contributors regularly mention “world domination” as the ultimate goal of the universal operating system (I even feature this in my blog header banner!  ). But working towards world domination means — in my opinion — that we should communicate our ideals of freedom to as many people as possible, even if they are using a service that we don’t want to promote.
The Debian social contract
acknowledges that some users have to use non-free software and we provide the non-free section for them. In the same spirit, I believe we must have a presence on Facebook. That does not mean that we endorse Facebook, and we should surely promote Joindiaspora
once it’s usable. But in the mean time we should reach out to Facebook users and allow them to follow us with the platform of their choice.
That’s the choice I recently made when I decided to setup a public facebook page
featuring my free software work, my blog and my book. So if you are a Facebook user, click here to visit my page
and click on “Like” if you want to follow this blog in your Facebook news feed. I also share interesting Debian or Ubuntu related articles that I discover while reading my RSS subscriptions.
Below are the usual facebook widgets for the 3 pages quoted in this article (they might not show up if you read this article through an RSS feed):
No comment
| Support my work
 | | 14:00 | | Canonical Design Team: Meekat like the sun?!
| | 1 hit | Today I got another e-mail from a statue. There’s a perfectly normal sentence … This time from a beach where Rick says he’s having an amazing time relaxing after his conference!
So what have we learned so far, apart from the fact that an unattended Meerkat is likely to wander off if left for too long? Well he seems to enjoy the beach and is making friends along the way. I think he’s still in Brazil …
If you see Rick please let me know!
| | 11:00 | | Bilal Akhtar: Looking forward to Launchpad’s downtime
| | 1 hit | As we all know, Launchpad (aka LP) will be down today
from 8:00 AM UTC to 9:30 AM UTC and read-only from then until 11:00 AM. I am lookingforward to this disruption. Why? The reason is, when LP goes down, developers are forced to take a break.
My MOTU application
is awaiting endorsements from more than a week, and there are only 5 days left for the meeting, yet I still have 4 more endorsements pending. The developers seem to be very busy these days, and this is a golden opportunity for me to poke then and get my application endorsed!
Now it appears LP has gone down  Most of the channels are now filling up with people talking about offtopic things, and joking around. I’ll go and join them, see ya there!
| | 9:00 | | Martin Meredith: Mini Rant: Emails
| | 1 hit |  Please, those of you who send me emails, remember the following:-
- An email has a subject line – use it
- If you put a proper description in your subject line, it’s easier for me to find the email again
- The subject line is that – what the email is about. It’s NOT meant for the entire content of your message, no matter how brief
- If you send me an email entitled “FYI” – Don’t bitch at me when I don’t reply.
- If you ask a question, and it’s a vague one, don’t get annoyed at me when I ask for clarification
 | | 6:30 | | Ralph Janke: Evolution does not follow a path guided by scie..
| | 1 hit |  Some of the discussions about the divergence or convergence of
the two stackexchanges sites Ubuntu
and Unix/Linux
shows that the discussion is lead not on the same dimension, but on two different ones.
The proponents of a convergence have a scientific categorization in mind, a taxonomy
, similar to the way plants and animals are categorized, or the Dewey Decimal system
in a library.
For these dimension of thinkers, sites that are subsets of one another, or sites that have considerable overlap in the possible set of questions are an aberration. It does not fit in the universe of this style of thinking.
The other dimension come from the observation of the communities. Communities do not grow according to the taxonomy scientist like to use. Taxonomies are simplifications which might be accurate for the purpose of a limited observation sufficient for the particular science. However, they are not sufficient for the needs and feelings of the communities.
read more
| | 5:00 | | Ralph Janke: Ubuntu.stackexchange has passed the 1000 questi..
| | 1 hit | After only 41 days, the Ubuntu stackexchange site
has reached a new milstone - 1000 questions. Thanks for everybody who has participated so far. Please continue on to make sure we will reach more than 2000 questions before the end of the public beta.
read more
| Wednesday - September 8th | | 23:30 | | Jorge Castro: Some progress on Daily Builds
| | 1 hit | We’ve been working with the Launchpad team to give upstream projects the ability to spin up daily builds
.
It’s pretty straightforward to make a recipe, the one I use for shotwell is:
# bzr-builder format 0.2 deb-version 1.0+{time}
lp:shotwell
nest shotwellpackaging lp:~ubuntu-desktop/shotwell/ubuntu debianI was on holiday for a bit, so I clicked on this expecting it not to work, since it didn’t when I left. Then launchpad when ahead and did it.
NICE! What I’ve done here is basically grabbed upstream Shotwell trunk, the packaging from our desktop team, send to Launchpad, and it spit out dailies. Now we’re cooking with Crisco; we’ll be able to easily make daily builds of everything we ship on the desktop right off the bat, and anything we can import. That’s a pretty nice service for application authors, thanks Launchpad!
Check out the documentation
, and please remember that it’s still a work in progress, but we’ve got top people working on it. ;)
| | 22:00 | | Jordan Mantha: from the crimsun files
| | 1 hit |  Going through my “scratch” note I found the following quote:
C is beautiful. C++ makes me weep. Java stabs me in the gut. Python pours me wine.
That is all.
 | | 16:30 | | Thierry Carrez: The 6 dimensions of Open Source
| | 1 hit |  Why do people choose to participate in Open Source ? It’s always a mix of various reasons, so let’s try to explore and classify them.
TechnicalThe first dimension is technical. People like open source because looking directly in the code gives them the ability to understand the behavior of their software. No documentation can match that level of precision. They also like the ability to fix it themselves when it’s broken, rather than relying on usually-broken support contracts. Any non-Fortune500 that tried to report a bug to Microsoft and get it fixed will probably get my point. Sometimes, they like the ability to shape and influence the future of the software, when that software uses open design mechanisms (like Ubuntu with its free and open-to-anyone Development Summits). Finally, they may be convinced, like I am, that open source software development methods result in better code quality.
PoliticalNext to the technical dimension, we have a political dimension, more precisely a techno-political dimension. People like Free software as a way to preserve end-user freedom, privacy and control over technology. Some powerful companies will use every trick in the book to reduce your rights and increase their revenue, so its more and more important that we are aware of those issues and fight back. Working on free and open source software is a way to contribute to that effort.
PhilosophicalVery close to the political dimension, we are now seeing philosophic interest in open source software. The 20th century saw the creation of a consumer class with a new divide between those who produce and those who consume. This dissociated usage of technology is a self-destroying model, and contributing models (or participative production models) are considered to be the solution to fix our societies for the future. Be a producer and a consumer at the same time and be associated with technology rather than alienated by it. Open source is an early and highly successful manifestation of that.
EconomicalBack on the ground, there are strong and rational economic reasons for companies to opt to fund open source development. From most virtuous to less, we first find companies using the technology internally rather than selling it : sharing development and maintenance costs among several users of that same technology makes great sense, and makes very virtuous open source communities. Next you find companies selling services around open source software: being the main sponsor of a project gives you a unique position to leverage your know-how around software that is freely available. Next you find open core approaches, from companies making a business selling proprietary add-ons to those using open source as crippleware. Finally, at the bottom, you’ll find companies using “open source” or “community” as a venture capitalist honeypot. They don’t believe in it, they resist implementing what it takes to do it, but they like the money that pretending to do open source will bring them.
SocialA very important dimension of open source is the social dimension. Many people join open source projects to belong to a cool community that allows you to prove yourself, gain mastery and climb the ladder of a meritocracy. If your community doesn’t encourage and reward those that are in this social dimension, you’ll miss a huge chunk of potential contributors. Another social aspect is that doing work in the open (and in all transparency) is also great publicity for your skills and to get employment. The main reason I got hired by Canonical was due to my visible work on Gentoo’s Security team, much more than to the rest of my professional experience. Finally, the sheer ego-flattering sensation you get by knowing that millions of people are using your work is definitely a powerful drive.
EthicalThe last dimension is ethical: the idea of directly contributing to the sum of the world’s common knowledge is appealing. Working on open source software, you just make the world a better place. For example, open source helps third-world and developing countries to reduce their external debt, by encouraging the creation of local service companies rather than encouraging to buy licenses to US companies. That sense of purpose is what drives a lot of people (including me) to work on open source.
Did I miss anything ? What drives you to participate on open source ? Please let me know, by leaving a comment !
 | | 16:00 | | TurnKey Linux: TKLBAM: a new kind of smart backup/restore sy..
| | 1 hit | 
Drum roll please...
Today, I'm proud to officially unveil TKLBAM (AKA TurnKey Linux Backup and Migration): the easiest, most powerful system-level backup anyone has ever seen. Skeptical? I would be too. But if you read all the way through you'll see I'm not exaggerating and I have the screencast
to prove it. Aha!
This was the missing piece of the puzzle that has been holding up the Ubuntu Lucid based release batch. You'll soon understand why and hopefully agree it was worth the wait.
We set out to design the ideal backup system
Imagine the ideal backup system. That's what we did.
Pain free
A fully automated backup and restore system with no pain. That you wouldn't need to configure. That just magically knows what to backup and, just as importantly, what NOT to backup, to create super efficient, encrypted backups of changes to files, databases, package management state, even users and groups.
Migrate anywere
An automated backup/restore system so powerful it would double as a migration mechanism to move or copy fully working systems anywhere in minutes instead of hours or days of error prone, frustrating manual labor.
It would be so easy you would, shockingly enough, actually test your backups
. No more excuses. As frequently as you know you should be, avoiding unpleasant surprises at the worst possible timing.
One turn-key tool, simple and generic enough that you could just as easily use it to migrate a system:
-
from Ubuntu Hardy to Ubuntu Lucid (get it now?)
-
from a local deployment, to a cloud server
-
from a cloud server to any VPS
-
from a virtual machine to bare metal
-
from Ubuntu to Debian
-
from 32-bit to 64-bit
System smart
Of course, you can't do that with a conventional backup. It's too dumb. You need a vertically integrated backup that has system level awareness. That knows, for example, which configuration files you changed and which you didn't touch since installation. That can leverage the package management system to get appropriate versions of system binaries from package repositories instead of wasting backup space.
This backup tool would be smart enough to protect you from all the small paper-cuts that conspire to make restoring an ad-hoc backup such a nightmare. It would transparently handle technical stuff you'd rather not think about like fixing ownership and permission issues in the restored filesystem after merging users and groups from the backed up system.
Ninja secure, dummy proof
It would be a tool you could trust to always encrypt your data. But it would still allow you to choose how much convenience you're willing to trade off for security.
If data stealing ninjas keep you up at night, you could enable strong cryptographic passphrase protection for your encryption key that includes special countermeasures against dictionary attacks. But since your backup's worst enemy is probably staring you in the mirror, it would need to allow you to create an escrow key
to store in a safe place in case you ever forget your super-duper passphrase.
On the other hand, nobody wants excessive security measures forced down their throats when they don't need them and in that case, the ideal tool would be designed to optimize for convenience. Your data would still be encrypted, but the key management stuff would happen transparently.
Ultra data durability
By default, your AES encrypted backup volumes would be uploaded to inexpensive, ultra-durable cloud storage designed to provide %99.999999999
durability. To put 11 nines of reliability in perspective, if you stored 10,000 backup volumes you could expect to lose a single volume once every 10 million years.
For maximum network performance, you would be routed automatically to the cloud storage datacenter closest to you
.
Open source goodness
Naturally, the ideal backup system would be open source. You don't have to care about free software ideology to appreciate the advantages. As far as I'm concerned any code running on my servers doing something as critical as encrypted backups should be available for peer review and modification. No proprietary secret sauce. No pacts with a cloudy devil that expects you to give away your freedom, nay worse, your data, in exchange for a little bit of vendor-lock-in-flavored convenience.
Tall order huh?
All of this and more is what we set out to accomplish with TKLBAM. But this is not our wild eyed vision for a future backup system. We took our ideal and we made it work. In fact, we've been experimenting with increasingly sophisticated prototypes for a few months now, privately eating our own dog food, working out the kinks. This stuff is complex so there may be a few rough spots left, but the foundation should be stable by now.
Seeing is believing: a simple usage example
We have two installations of TurnKey Drupal6:
-
Alpha, a virtual machine on my local laptop. I've been using it to develop the TurnKey Linux web site.
-
Beta, an EC2 instance I just launched from the TurnKey Hub.
On both I install and initialize tklbam:
apt-get update
apt-get install tklbam
# initialize tklbam by providing it with the Hub API Key
tklbam-init QPINK3GD7HHT3A
Note that in the future, tklbam will come pre-installed on TurnKey appliances so this part will be even simpler.
I now log into Alpha's command line as root (e.g., via the console, SSH or web shell) and do the following:
tklbam-backup
It's that simple. Unless you want to change defaults, no arguments or additional configuration required.
When the backup is done a new backup record will show up in my Hub account:
To restore I log into Beta and do this:
tklbam-restore 1
That's it! To see it in action watch the video below or better yet log into your TurnKey Hub
account and try it for yourself.
Quick screencast (2 minutes)
Best viewed full-screen. Having problems with playback? Try the YouTube
version.
Getting started
TKLBAM's front-end interface is provided by the TurnKey Hub
, an Amazon-powered cloud backup and server deployment web service currently in private beta.
If you don't have a Hub account already, either ask someone that does to send you an invite, or request an invitation
. We'll do our best to grant them as fast as we can scale capacity on a first come, first served basis.
To get started log into your Hub account and follow the basic usage instructions. For more detail, see the documentation
.
Feel free to ask any questions in the comments below. But you'll probably want to check with the FAQ
first to see if they've already been answered.
Upcoming features- PostgreSQL support: PostgreSQL support is in development but currently only MySQL is supported. That means TKLBAM doesn't yet work on the three PostgreSQL based TurnKey appliances (PostgreSQL, LAPP, and OpenBravo).
- Built-in integration: TKLBAM will be included by default in all future versions of TurnKey appliances. In the future when you launch a cloud server from the Hub it will be ready for action immediately. No installation or initialization necessary.
- Webmin integration: we realize not everyone is comfortable with the command line, so we're going to look into developing a custom webmin module for TKLBAM.
Special salute to the TurnKey community
First, many thanks to the brave souls who tested TKLBAM and provided feedback even before we officially announced it. Remember, with enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow, so if you come across anything else, don't rely on someone else to report it. Speak up!
Also, as usual during a development cycle we haven't been able to spend as much time on the community forums as we'd like. Many thanks to everyone who helped keep the community alive and kicking in our relative absence.
Remember, if the TurnKey community has helped you, try to pay it forward when you can by helping others.
Finally, I'd like to give extra special thanks to three key individuals that have gone above and beyond in their contributions to the community.
By alphabetical order:
- Adrian Moya
: for developing appliances that rival some of our best work.
- Basil Kurian
: for storming through appliance development at a rate I can barely keep up with.
- JedMeister
: for continuing to lead as our most helpful and tireless community member for nearly a year and a half now. This guy is a frigging one man support army.
Also special thanks to Bob Marley, the legend who's been inspiring us as of late to keep jamming till the sun was shining. :)
Final thoughts
TKLBAM is a major milestone for TurnKey. We're very excited to finally unveil it to the world. It's actually been a not-so-secret part of our vision from the start. A chance to show how TurnKey can innovate beyond just bundling off the shelf components.
With TKLBAM out of the way we can now focus on pushing out the next release batch of Lucid based appliances. Thanks to the amazing work done by our star TKLPatch developers, we'll be able to significantly expand our library so by the next release we'll be showcasing even more of the world's best open source software. Stir It Up!
| | 14:00 | | Aaron Toponce: An Open Letter To Pastor Terry Jones
| | 1 hit | Dear Pastor Terry Jones-
I understand that on September 11th, you plan on carrying out the act of burning Qur’ans with your local church. Do you seriously realize the significance of the act you’re about to carry out? This will create all sorts of complications and security concerns for our troops in Afghanistan. This will cause and fuel much emotion throughout our own country as well. You say that you and your church plan on carrying firearms to the event, in the case your lives are threatened. Do you realize that there could be a shootout at your event? You could die, as well as members of your congregation, for burning Qur’ans. Is this something you’re willing to do? Put your own congregation’s lives on the line for your personal hatred towards Islam?
I would ask if this is the Christian thing to do, but I already saw an interview of you on ABC News, and know what your response would be. Except, what does it mean when Jesus Christ said
:
12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.
Or again, in Luke
:
31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise
Even a lawyer asked Jesus what he should do to obtain eternal life
:
25¶ And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
Most people, Christians and non-Christians alike, are familiar with this law knows as the “Golden Rule
“. Even Islam, the religion you hate so much, teaches that a true Muslim must do good to others
, and treat them as they would want to be treated. To be a Christian, that is, to follow the teachings of Jesus, means to actually follow the teachings of Jesus. Jesus never advocated war. He never advocated hate. He taught that you should
44. … Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.
and further that
29. … unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also.
Do you understand what Christianity is about? Do you really?
It’s unfortunate that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon happened on September 11th, 2001. Not only did America mourn, but the world. The Council for American Islamic Relations
, and other Islamic organizations, raised money and provided countless acts of service to help provide relief for those families that lost loved ones in the attacks. World leaders, including including those of Islamic faith, expressed their sincere condolences to our country. It’s been 9 years since the attacks, all of the rebuilding, all of the love and charity from others, all of the support from so many, you are willing to put on the line, for your own personal gratification and hate.
Even putting religion aside, I’m a member of the Ubuntu community. Ubuntu was chosen because of the philosophy it stands for and the meaning it conveys
. It’s a philosophy everyone should stand for, and I’m proud to be a member of a community where such a high regard for human dignity and respect is held.
One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.
– Archbishop Desmod Tutu
This past month, as a Christian, I’ve been fasting
with Islam the entire month of Ramadan, from dawn to sunset. It’s been a difficult task, but I did it primarily to raise awareness that Islam is not a religion of terror. I’m fasting, because of prejudiced people like you and the radical, extreme actions they take and the views they hold. I’ve read the Qur’an, now four times. I know what it teaches. I know the basic tenets and beliefs of Islam. I have many, many Muslim friends. I understand what Islam stands for, and it’s not the message you are trying to convey. I hope, somehow, that my actions have an effect on others, and it would mean the world to me if they somehow changed your mind.
I know your upset. I know you have a lot of fiery emotions that have boiled over. You want to make a stand against terrorism, and you want to be heard. Well, you have been heard. You have had the spotlight. You have the world listening. Our own government is urging you to stop, and think what ramifications your act of burning Qur’ans could have on the American public, and the world stage at large. Don’t go through with it. Don’t put lives in danger, because of your feeling towards Islam. Your act of burning Qur’ans is no different than the terrorist act of those who flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Stand on higher ground.
If you do decide to continue with your act of terror, then I hope it rains in Gainesville, Florida, hard enough to prevent you from building your bonfire. Further, I hope that no one’s lives are taken by your decision to burn the Qur’an, both at your church, and around the world. Step down Pastor Jones, step down.
Sincerely, a loving Christian, praying for you,
Aaron Toponce
| | 11:00 | | Canonical Design Team: Exciting things in the post!
| | 1 hit | A couple of months back Marcus and I got a call from a magazine in Japan who wanted to produce stickers for Ubuntu. We’d _just_ signed off the new logo and word mark and so we collaborated back and forth and finally yesterday the finished article arrived!
Ubuntu Magazine - Japanese edition
And here are the lovely stickers!
They look great! We’re very excited to see this stuff out there and being made by other people using the assets available in the design toolkit
!
| | 7:00 | | Maia Kozheva: A Tale of Two Houses
| | 1 hit |  Once upon a time, there were two houses standing across a street. They looked quite different, and their residents didn’t meet each other much — only a few times a year did they meet on the Freedom Square to discuss things like maybe painting entrances the same color, so passers-by don’t get confused about the different looks. Sometimes those discussions actually led somewhere.
One resident, whose name isn’t important to our tale, once lived in house one for a few years, and a year ago she went to house two. She heard, of course, that this old crumbling house on the other end of the town was recently renovated with blue glossy walls and all-new windows, but she left that particular one years ago and had no intention of going back. (And the last time she went there to visit her parents, she found out that on the inside it was mostly the same old smelly stuff, just hastily swept under the carpet in most places.) One day, after a vacation, our resident returned to house two to find out it was torn down and rebuilt, and now looked promising both on the outside and on the inside — however, she also saw that most of its rooms sported nothing but bare walls, so, joining a pack of similarly minded residents, she packed her belongings and went back to house one, where her heart always belonged anyway.
And thus, another year has passed. One day, however, after returning from work, she suddenly found the house surrounded with yellow tape and “Under Construction” signs. The chief architect gathered the residents and explained that they learned from the history of house two, and so they were going to renovate this house one patch at a time. He showed some mockups, which most people agreed looked promising, and so they went their own ways, careful not to trip over newly dug pits in the ground.
Since then, our resident grew more and more confused with every passing month. Everywhere she went, she saw builders bickering about the direction of the effort, with everyone insisting on things being done their way. One day, when passing through the house’s garden, she overheard the following conversation:
Designer #1: [Wearing an orange shirt] Look at this garden — it’s grown old and unattended. The bushes are all different, some have overgrown, some look sickly. I say we demolish this garden and make another one on the same spot, give each plant a strict square spot, and my gardeners would tend to them.
Designer #2: Actually, on our New and Improved plan, it clearly shows that after the garden is destroyed, this spot is going to be cobbled with flat black bricks. We’re planning to make an all-new different garden on the other side of the house, so we have to reject your plan.
Six months passed, however, and the renovation was nowhere near finished, so the chief architect announced it was going to be delayed for another six months (and showed a different design for the final look, completely different from before). In the meantime, our resident thought she sort of liked the orange-shirted designer’s idea of bringing the old garden into shape, and went to ask what a well-known news announcer who lived in the same house thought of the idea. The response was:
“Pah! The only people who care about the new garden now are those wearing orange like you! Clearly, if I supported the idea I’d have to dress the same, and I like my grey and blue, so for now I’ll stick with the old garden.”
So our resident decided to wait again until the house was finished. However, a month before its new deadline, the chief architect gathered everyone yet again and said it was going to be delayed for six more months — and showed yet a third mockup, completely different from the other two, yet curiously similar to what the orange-shirted team was building a street away. Meanwhile, the construction effort continued to deteriorate. Keeping along with the “one patch at a time” motto, some floors of the house switched to using a newly-built different elevator, which was like the old one but different (and its cabin evidently had less attention put into decorations). So whenever she wanted to go to a floor, she had to learn, often by trial and error, which of the two elevators to use.
Finally, she decided that while the construction effort was still underway, she could as well redesign her own apartment to go along with the times. Seeing how her bedroom looked especially messy, she threw together a mockup for a new arrangement and wondered whom she could discuss it with. She was pointed to some big-name professional designers who helped renovate the exterior of the house, so she went to them with her plan. The following discussion ensued.
Resident: Look, I’ve got some plans for a new bedroom, and they’re shaping up nicely, so I wondered if maybe you could offer some suggestions to tweak it before I go along with it? I know you people are big on minimalism, so I kept it reasonably simple. Look, here’s a bed, a TV, a computer desk, and a closet. I tried to keep it in accordance to your Design Guidelines, but maybe I’ve missed something?
Designer: Well… [looks] First of all, do you really need a bedroom?
Resident: ?!
Designer: Many people don’t have a standalone bedroom, they just put the bed in one of the other rooms.
Resident: Well, as it stands, I like to sometimes keep the bedroom’s door closed when people are visiting, but it’s not like this is an issue — I can easily find my way there from anywhere in the apartment.
Designer: You could actually get rid of the TV.
Resident: Uh… as it stands I do watch TV, not often, but occasionally.
Designer: It’s extra clutter, and more electronics to take care of. You could just buy a bigger monitor and connect it to your computer.
Resident: Er… okay. Well, many people I know of have TVs in their rooms, but maybe it’s redunant in my case indeed.
Designer: And the computer desk can be merged with the closet.
Resident: What?!
Designer: Just make a shelf in the middle and put the computer on there, and keep your clothes and bedsheets in the compartments above and below.
Resident: [scratches head] Maybe…
Designer: You don’t need two doors, by the way. Scrap this one and reroute this other one to exit into your hallway.
Resident: Actually, that other door leads to the balcony, so I could breathe fresh air from that new garden.
Designer: Exiting from bedrooms directly to balconies is a bad paradigm, we discourage it. It confuses the residents — bedrooms are for sleeping.
Resident: But wait, all these people have balconies connected to their bedrooms… [lists a few big-name, well-respected residents]
Designer: Balconies will go away in the New and Improved house, to be replaced with slick smooth walls. We’ve talked to the guys in orange about this, and they agree with the change. They won’t be in the new edition of the Design Guidelines either.
Resident: [sigh]
At this point, a different designer starts talking about a mockup he has prepared for a new library room. Our resident, interested (she likes reading books), asks to see it. The mockup is on one half on the page, and shows one huge shelf stretched across the entire wall, with all the books on it. The other half has text about how having multiple shelves apparently interferes with the new planned “teleport around the house in two foot taps” feature. The design of yours shows that only a small portion of this new ubershelf is going to be shown at a time, and the user will have to press a button to make the slit slide and stop over books they want.
Resident: Why not just use multiple shelves like every other library out there? I use your current design exactly because it’s a traditional library with none of those newfangled ‘chromey’ features that all the libraries are adopting now.
Designer: Our research indicates that the frames of the shelves take valuable space that people would prefer to use for books.
Resident: I guess I’ll have to stick with my old library, then, or ask someone else to renovate it.
At this point, designer #2 turns around to show text written on the back of his blue shirt: “The construction industry is just a bunch of idiots hating each other”.
Resident: Erm… I realize it’s a joke, but that’s because I’ve grown thick enough skin over the years around you to let it pass. But imagine if someone completely new comes here and sees this — is it the impression we want to be promoting? Many neighbors give us weird looks as it is.
Designer: Well, that text is true.
Frustrated, the resident turns away and leaves, deciding to make her room over however she sees fit, and just let her guests judge.
The moral of this parable is left as an exercise to the reader.
| | 0:00 | | Joe Barker: iPhone 4 – HDR Photo Feature
| | 1 hit |  I’m sure that, to a lot of the people reading this on Planet Ubuntu
, this post will be of little interest. If you’re one of these people, I apologise, please glance over this post 
To everybody else, what I’m about to discuss, and demonstrate, is some sample photos, and my thoughts, however brief, on the new HDR photo option coming in iOS 4.1 next week.
Sample 1
Sample 1
Sample 1 - HDR
When we compare this to the second image, we can see that the cupboard on the left is that little bit clearer, and you can see that the wall on the right hand side is, in fact, red. Further to this, that overly-intrusive laptop screen, which was previously bright white, is now much clearer, and far less intrusive, you can make out much more of the on-screen detail. The cupboard in centre-shot also appears lighter, especially in the areas surrounding the unit.
Sample 2
Sample 2
Sample 2 - HDR
SummaryOne thing I did notice, was the lack of flash on HDR photo’s. The software prevents the use of both at the same time, which, initially, I found somewhat odd and incredibly frustrating. I had a play around taking images with flash on, and HDR on, but still found no way to add the two together. It then dawned on me this morning, that when a photo is going to need a flash to provide the necessary lighting, chances are the HDR image would like almost exactly the same, and provide no benefits.
Nonetheless, I’d like to see the option, in a subsequent iOS update, for the ability to have both on, where it’s possible to set the flash to ‘Auto’ with HDR on, and if a flash is required due to low level lighting, don’t take a HDR photo. Something like this, in my opinion, would make the feature better than it already is. In all, I have to say, I’m pleased with the update – mainly because I don’t take photo’s all that often, so it doesn’t really benefit me to go out and purchase a proper digital camera, but a 5 megapixel camera with HDR functionality that’s on a device I carry around all day anyway, is perfect for me.
| Tuesday - September 7th | | 21:30 | | Kees Cook: cross-distro default security protection review
| | 1 hit |  The recent work
by MWR Labs does a reasonable job showing Debian’s poor security and why I am so frustrated
about it: we have not been able to move very quickly at getting it enabled. While my hardening-includes
package is available to maintainers that want to turn on protections for their builds, it’s still a far cry from having it be distro-wide, and it doesn’t protect people that build stuff by hand. We were able to solve this in Ubuntu very directly a while ago by improving the compiler itself.
Since SSP and FORTIFY_SOURCE can only be confirmed (it’s not possible without source analysis to see if it should have been enabled), it would be nice to see what binaries differed between distros on this. Most of the “SSP disabled” stuff are binaries that lack character arrays on the stack to begin with, and the FORTIFY_SOURCE stuff may have done all compile-time protections. The comments about “other distributions could potentially enable it for a few more binaries” is a bit misleading since, for all but Debian, both SSP and FORTIFY_SOURCE are enabled for all builds.
I did appreciate the nod to Ubuntu for being the only distro without by-default PIE that built Firefox with PIE. Given that Firefox is the #2 most vulnerable piece of software in a desktop distro, it was important to do it. (The #1 most vulnerable is the kernel itself — I’m counting number of fixed CVEs for this stat.)
The kernel analysis by MWR seems rather incomplete. Also, it’s not clear to me which distros were running a PAE kernel, which would change some of the results. I didn’t see any mention of several other userspace protections that the kernel can provide, for example:
- symlink and hardlink protections (Gentoo Hardened and Ubuntu 10.10 only)
- PTRACE protections (Gentoo Hardened and Ubuntu 10.10 only)
And a ton more that only Gentoo Hardened could boast, due to their use of grsecurity.
I’d also be curious to see performance comparisons, too. They compared 4 general-purpose distros against a tuned-specifically-for-security-hardening distro, which seems a bit unfair. How about comparing against vanilla Gentoo instead? I can tell you who would be best then. :)
| | 21:00 | | Ubuntu QA blog: Announcing the Next Ubuntu Bug Day! - 2010-0..
| | 2 hits |  Fellow Ubuntu Triagers!
This week's Bug Day target is *drum roll please* apt!
* 100 New bugs need a hug
* 43 Incomplete bugs need a status check
* 100 Confirmed bugs need a review
apt is not the biggest name in packages, but it sure is important to
keep your system up-to-date. It gets involved whenever we use Synaptic
Package Manager, apt-get, and Software Center, to name a few places.
Bookmark it, add it to your calendars, turn over those egg-timers!
* Thursday, 2010-09-09
* http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20100909
Are you looking for a way to start giving some love back to your
adorable Ubuntu Project?
Did you ever wonder what Triage is? Want to learn about that?
This is a perfect time!, Everybody can help in a Bug Day!
open your IRC Client and go to #ubuntu-bugs (FreeNode)
the BugSquad will be happy to help you to start contributing!
Wanna be famous? Is easy! remember to use 5-A-day so if you do a good
work your name could be listed at the top 5-A-Day Contributors in the
Ubuntu Hall of Fame page!
We are always looking for new tasks or ideas for the Bug Days, if you
have one add it to the Planning page
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/Planning
If you're new to all this, head to
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs
| | 20:30 | | Christopher Denter: PyMT 0.5.1 Bugfix Release
| | 1 hit |  OK, small news very quick: We released PyMT version 0.5.1 which addresses quite a bunch of problems that were discovered since the release of PyMT 0.5. See the changelog
and the website
.
| | 17:30 | | Gerfried Fuchs: flattr
| | 1 hit | I started to give flattr
a try, too. It is a social micropayment site and the similarity of its name to the verb flatter is on intention. It is meant to say thanks in small amounts month by month to 'things' you like. One such thing I created is my blog—you can find the link to it below every entry. To be able to flattr someone one needs to create an account on the site and put money into their account. After that it's possible to follow the flattr button links. If you are reading my blog on my site and have JavaScript enabled you just have to click the flattr part of the image (not the number) to do so. If you are reading it through my feed
or with JavaScript disabled you will have to click a second time on the flattr site to make the flattring happen.
Another thing I've created is Debian BTS: cleaning up
. I use this link in my mails to the Debian BTS for my stable RC cleanup efforts, or general proper closing of bugs that aren't getting archived. Through the help of UDD I've created me helpful overview pages
of bugs that need attention for this.
The third thing I've created is Package Maintenance
. If you are a fan of one of the packages I maintain and want to thank me for taking proper care of it, feel free to also click this one. Please be aware that this shouldn't be seen as an Upstream appreciation—if one of the projects I package for Debian uses flattr themself then you should definitely (also) consider flattring them for their own.
About Upstream projects that use flattr: One of the packages I invest quite a lot of effort into started using flattr: wesnoth
. They have put the flattr button on their entry page at wesnoth.org
, here is the direct link to their first and general thing: The Battle for Wesnoth
.
Please be reminded that the things you did flattr in a previous month can again be flattred the next month. This is especially true for general purpose things like what I am using currently. Others might create things for every single blog entry, or very specific tasks, to allow people to flattr them more often in a month and get a bigger share of the cake. So keep in mind which things are general ones and consider returning to them.
Enjoy!
/debian
|
permanent link
|
Comments: 0
|
| | 17:30 | | Benjamin Mako Hill: Selectricity Source
| | 1 hit |  After a semi-recent thread
on debian-devel
, I poked around and
realized that I'd never actually gotten around to formally announcing
the release of source code for Selectricity
, a piece of web-based
election software designed to allow for preferential decision-making and
to provide "election machinery for the masses." Selectricity is useful
for a range of decisions but it targets all those quick little decisions
that we might want to decide preferentially but where running a vote
would be overkill.
Things were delayed through a drawn out set of negotiations with the MIT
Technology Licensing Office over how to release the code under a free
software license of my choosing. I was swamped when things finally came
through. Over time, I managed to forget that I never did a formal
announcement, never setup a mailing list, and never did all those things
that I have tried to teach other people in the Free Software Project
Management HOWTO
. Code just sort of appeared on my website under the
GNU Affero General Public License
. It was until the debian-devel
thread that I remembered I'd never made a formal announcement. Sorry
about that!
The git repository has been online
and accessible through searches for
more than a year now. Most folks who wanted the code seem to have been
able to find it there. Indeed, a number of people have set up their own
instances and a few have submitted patches to the code! But more
visibility for the source means more empowered users, more visibility
for free software, and more developers.
So I've shipped all the code into a project in Gitorious
(its like
GitHub, except free
), announced things on the Selectricity Blog
,
changed the Selectricity footer of to include a prominent link to the
source. I've also created a mailing list
. The Gitorious project
page
includes a wiki.
I also want to mention this all here because the attention of the
current development team seems mostly to have moved on to other
projects. The current team seems able to keep the hosted version up and
running, and even gets around to little improvements now and then, but
there's definitely room for new life and new leadership.
There are some nearly-complete and "complete minus further testing"
features in the development tree that might provide low hanging fruit
for folks interested in elections and decision-making who might want to
get involved in Selectricity development. If you're interested and know
(or want to learn) Rails, feel free to check out the code
, introduce
yourself on the list
or contact team@selectricity.org
to coordinate.
| | 17:30 | | Raphaël Hertzog: How to use multiple upstream tarballs in D..
| | 1 hit | Since the introduction of the “3.0 (quilt)” source format, it is now possible to integrate multiple upstream tarballs in Debian source packages. This article will show you how to do the same with your own package shall you need it. It’s quite useful to easily integrate supplementary plugins, translations, or documentation that the upstream developers are providing in separate tarballs.
Step by step explanationWe’ll take the spamassassin source package as an example. The upstream version is 3.3.1. The main upstream tarball is named as usual (spamassassin_3.3.1.orig.tar.gz) and contains the top directory of our source package. We already have a debian directory because the package is not new.
Upstream provides spamassassin rules in a separate tarball named Mail-SpamAssassin-rules-3.3.1.r901671.tgz. We grab it, rename it to spamassassin_3.3.1.orig-pkgrules.tar.gz and put it next to the main tarball. The “pkgrules” part is the component name that we choose to identify the tarball, it’s also the name of the directory in which it will be extracted inside the source package. For now that directory doesn’t exist yet so we must create it.
$ mv Mail-SpamAssassin-rules-3.3.1.r901671.tgz spamassassin_3.3.1.orig-pkgrules.tar.gz
$ cd spamassassin-3.3.1
$ mkdir pkgrules
$ tar -C pkgrules -zxf ../spamassassin_3.3.1.orig-pkgrules.tar.gz
This is already enough, the next time that you will build the source package, the supplementary tarball will be automatically integrated in the generated source package.
$ dpkg-buildpackage -S
[...]
dpkg-source -b spamassassin-3.3.1
dpkg-source: info: using source format `3.0 (quilt)'
dpkg-source: info: building spamassassin using existing ./spamassassin_3.3.1.orig-pkgrules.tar.gz ./spamassassin_3.3.1.orig.tar.gz
dpkg-source: info: building spamassassin in spamassassin_3.3.1-1.debian.tar.gz
dpkg-source: info: building spamassassin in spamassassin_3.3.1-1.dsc
The supplementary tarball is now part of the source package but we’re not making anything useful out of it. We have to modify debian/rules (or debian/spamassin.install) to install the new files in the binary package.
A special case: bundling related softwareIn very rare cases, you might want to create a bundle of several software (small perl modules for example) and you don’t have any main tarball, you only have several small tarballs. Rename all the tarballs following the same logic as above and when building the source package you can ask dpkg-source to create an empty (and fake) main archive for you with the option --create-empty-orig:
$ dpkg-buildpackage -S --source-option=--create-empty-orig
Use with care as the version number you give to the bundle is what users will see and it’s likely unrelated to the version number of each individual software.
Common mistakesForgetting to extract the supplementary tarballIf you forget to extract the content of the supplementary tarball in the pkgrules directory, dpkg-source will emit lots of warnings about those files being deleted. In fact, you did not delete them but you only forgot to create them in the first place.
dpkg-source: warning: ignoring deletion of directory pkgrules
dpkg-source: warning: ignoring deletion of file pkgrules/20_fake_helo_tests.cf
dpkg-source: warning: ignoring deletion of file pkgrules/60_shortcircuit.cf
[...]
Using a bad version number for the supplementary tarballSometimes the supplementary tarball has a version of its own that does not match the upstream version. You must still name the file in a way that matches the upstream version of the main tarball otherwise it will not be picked up by dpkg-source and it will generate a new patch in debian/patches/ containing the whole new directory.
It’s possible to encode the version number of the supplementary tarball in the component name (in our example above we could have picked “pkgrules-r901671″ as component name) but this means that the name of the associated directory will regularly change and you must adapt your packaging rules to cope with this.
However this last trick has the benefit of being able to update the additional tarball without bumping the upstream version. A sourceful upload of a new revision of the package will be accepted by the archive: the main tarball is ignored since it’s unchanged but the supplementary tarball is taken since it’s a new file for the archive (it has a different filename).
Be sure to move away old versions of the additional tarball when you do that if you don’t want to upload several versions of the same tarball by mistake!
Misextracting the supplementary tarballdpkg-source is very smart when it extracts the supplementary tarball and you should be as well when you manually extract it.
If the tarball contains only a single top-level directory, that directory is extracted, renamed to match the component name and moved in the source package directory.
If the tarball contains several top-level files or directories, then the target directory is first created and the content of the archive is directly extracted into that directory.
Here are commands to install the files in both cases (we’re already in the source package directory):
$ mkdir pkgrules
# Archive contains a single top-level directory
$ tar -C pkgrules --strip-components=1 -zxf ../spamassassin_3.3.1.orig-pkgrules.tar.gz
# Archive contains many top-level entries
$ tar -C pkgrules -zxf ../spamassassin_3.3.1.orig-pkgrules.tar.gz
No comment
| Support my work
 | | 15:30 | | Launchpad News: Launchpad unavailable 9th September 2010 08...
| | 1 hit | On Thursday the 9th of September we’re rolling out the latest Launchpad code to our servers. At the same time we’re taking the opportunity to carry out some server maintenance.
This work will take around three hours from 08.00 UTC and will include a 90 minute period of complete downtime, followed by 90 minutes of Launchpad in a read-only* state.
Downtime starts: 08.00 UTC 9th September 2010
Launchpad returns in read-only mode: 09.30 UTC 9th September 2010
Launchpad expected to return to normal: 11.00 UTC 9th September 2010.
We’re sorry for the relatively short notice of this service disruption.
* In read-only mode, Launchpad’s web interface is available for browsing. Other aspects of Launchpad, such as uploading to PPAs and pushing to code branches, are offline.
| | 15:30 | | Martin Owens: Please Poach Our Users
| | 1 hit | As a member of the Ubuntu community I consider myself as much a part of the Free Software community as any member of any other distro. Each distro has it’s strengths and I have absolutely no problem with users flowing out of Ubuntu and into other FreeDesktop systems such as Debian, Fedora or even closer distros like mint and ubuntu-studio. I don’t even mind users leaving Ubuntu to compile their own distro:
| | 10:30 | | Daniel Holbach: Who are your mentors?
| | 1 hit |  Jorge
and Allison
blogged about their mentors and start into the Open Source world and I thought it would be a great way to thank at least some of the people who helped me get started. So I started thinking about who all helped me out in one way or the other in the last few years and I realised that there’s incredibly many people I should’ve been thanking years ago already.
- One person has constantly been there for me in the last 6 years: Michael Vogt
. I got to know him in Dortmund, the city where we both studied. We quickly became good friends and although we now almost live 700km apart we stayed in touch and talk on the phone every second day. What I love about Michael is that he’s pragmatic, modest, thoughtful and generally a lot of fun. I’m incredibly glad he helped me out like he did.
- Sébastien Bacher
was the first person I worked with on a daily basis. Luckily he was very patient with me and explained lots of packaging details to me. We both grew up close to the Franco-Allemande border, which probably was the reason why we instantly got on very well. We laughed a lot when working together.
There’s dozens of other people who helped me out, got me thinking and changed how I saw things, but I’ll probably save them for future blog posts. 
Today it’s been almost exactly five years since I’ve been with Canonical and six years in the Ubuntu community. Everybody was fantastic to me and still is. Thanks a lot also to other folks who were there for me in the early days (Oliver Grawert, James Blackwell, Jane Fraser, and loads and loads of others).
You know who you are and thanks a lot for the time with you.
| | 8:00 | | Nathan Haines: Ubuntu Hour Lake Forest, September 9th
| | 1 hit | 
As school starts and summer ends, many of our lives get busier. Amidst this bustle, there's no better reason to take a break Thursday night and join other Ubuntu fans for Ubuntu Hour!
The next two Ubuntu Hours are:
Thursday, September 9th, 2010, 6pm - 7pm - RSVP
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010, 6pm - 7pm - RSVP
The general idea for Ubuntu Hour is that we meet up for an hour someplace public wearing with some Ubuntu stuff visible (some clothing or a sticker or something) and just chat for an hour. We want to be welcoming of those who notice us and are curious about Ubuntu. The next date is:
Not only is it fun to meet local Ubuntu fans, but we can also be a valuable introduction to Ubuntu for others. Wear that cool Ubuntu or Linux shirt or your laptop with the Ubuntu stickers. We'll also follow the Ubuntu Code of Conduct
while we're there. Easily summarized as 'be excellent to each other,' we'll simply be examples of the wonderful Ubuntu community.
Panera Bread
is a casual restaurant that has fresh bread, soups, and sandwiches and free wi-fi access. I'll have my laptop and an Ubuntu shirt, so please feel free to come up and say hi. It's also a good chance to bring along friends who are curious about Ubuntu.
Panera Bread - 23592 Rockfield Blvd., Lake Forest, CA
http://www.yelp.com/biz/panera-bread-lake-forest
Sometimes Google Maps doesn't like the address itself, so you can use this link to see the correct location on Google Maps - http://ur1.ca/0cec5
| | 6:30 | | Benjamin Humphrey: OMG! Ubuntu! interviews GNOME co-founder,..
| | 1 hit |  
The OMG! team sit down for an exclusive interview with Frederico Mena, one the founding fathers of GNOME.
Federico along with Miguel de Icaza worked together in the late 90s to start the GNOME project – the desktop environment that Ubuntu and many other distros use.
Everyone knows and loves it, but how did it all start?
Check out the full interview (well worth a read) over at OMG! Ubuntu!
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/09/omg-exclusive-interview-with-gnome-co-founder-federico-mena/
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