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GRAFFITI -- July 14 thru July 20, 2003>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message.. |
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July 14, 2003 - Updates at 0700 EST
Good morning. Yesterday was both less and more successful than expected. I really didn't get much done. But I feel okay about that, and relaxed quite a bit, so there. I did post a couple of pictures of the tomato patch yesterday This is going to be a full week, and that's a good thing, as my Marcia's back on the Left Coast for a week of legal eagle meetings with the company poo-bahs. Lee is with her, as is Judy. I've got our Sally to keep me company, and Ebony is over to keep Sally company. It's all really very confusing for the tiny brain that our little blonde Sally has, but she does alright, too.
I'm going to be working a little more on fiber today, and probably a fair amount on a new Samba implementation using the second beta in the Samba 3 series. Someone's got to use it for testing, even if we don't need it for anything but authentication, PDC and master browser services. The file server is another Samba/NFS box that's been rockin' right along for several months now without a hitch.
I suppose I'd best kiss Marcia goodbye, and get on the road. Her airporter shuttle should be here shortly. You have a great day, too.
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July 15, 2003 - Updates at 0715
Good morning. Have I mentioned recently that I hate computers? No, I thought not. Well, it's true. Of course, if the bloody things worked right all of the time (and users would simply apply the three-gray-cells-rubbing-together method before crying out for assistance), then I'd be right out of a job. But still, you'd think that I'm deserving of a little gratitude, some sense from the stinking machines that what I do has value for them. But no! What do I get? Intermittent packet losses from all the home boxen, inside and outside the firewall, ranging from the low twenties to the high seventies (those are percentages of packets lost). Hell - I couldn't even complete an SSH authentication session. I was only able to post yesterday because I logged in from work to the home box, found the coast to be clear, and ran the upload script before items went to a hot place in a woven carrying device. I finally shut everything down here, last night, for about five minutes. Then I brought devices back online, from the pipe inwards. Everything seemed OK until just now, and there's never going to be a way to know if it was my equipment or Comcast's. I say just now, because everything's gone all molasses-y again. Sigh.
Oh, and with an extra dog, no Marcia and chores, yesterday evening just disappeared in a haze of bill paying, dog feeding, voice mail mazes, yard watering, Quicken backups, head petting and belly scratching. So I've nothing extra special to report today, yet. I'll keep my eyes open for more later. Meantime, I'm headed down to Potomac to work at a client's abode for a bit, apparently there are router problems. I'd best put the mutts out one last time and get on the road, drop those bills off at the post office, and join the commute. See ya!
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July 16, 2003 - Updates at 0643
Yeah, I know, up too early. My eyes feel like someone threw a beach's worth of sand in there. But there's lots to do. I've already fed the mutts, made coffee. I'm forcing down some breakfast. I say that because normally I don't eat for the first couple of hours after I get up. I'm not very successful at it this morning, either. I've had a few bites of an oatmeal breakfast square, but feel not at all like finishing it. The coffee's going down well, though.
From a SecurityFocus email yesterday, I ran across this article, Linux Firewall-related /proc Entries. There's some really good information there - it's worth reading and then checking/setting the appropriate entries for any Linux box you have connected directly to the internet, or to any untrusted network. My friend Roland says that all networks are untrusted. Given the fact that I use ONLY SSH to get around between my machines here in the home network, I guess I'd have to agree with him.
There's an new, interesting and um... peaceful, if you will, article up on Eric Raymond's blog. Yeah, I know, he writes about Coding and Politics, so he's banned by the SonicWall content filtering system (and probably others, for all I know). But if you can, get over to read The Myth of Man The Killer. It's worth a second read, too.
I've got continuing network issues here this morning. The connection is behaving like a yoyo, with more of the slow/lost packet problem that I was seeing over the last couple of days. I wish I could isolate it to a single piece of equipment inside the house here, or prove that it's outside. I'll need one piece of information or the other to call Comcast. Ah, well. I'd best be going. Yesterday's work went well, overall, and today should be the same. Have a great day!
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July 17, 2003 - Updates at 1906
Evenin'... I just got home, and I'm whacked. A moderately successful day. It appears the fiber is in a state of happiness and ready for some distance testing tomorrow, so that'll be fun. I looked hard at the PDC-ness of Samba 3.0beta2, and it looks like it can do what we want it to do, but not without some testing to be done, and there's not time for that now, so it's back-burnered. The weather's glorious. I know, I've seen it from office windows and from behind a steering wheel. Now to feed me and the dogs (not in that order, neh?). Sorry for the late post, but better late than never. More tomorrow. See ya!
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July 18, 2003 - Updates at 0700
Good morning. Thus begins day five of this edition of Week Without Marcia. I've eaten a lot of steak and ice cream. Oh, and pasta, too. I think I had some vegetables and fruit in there someplace, but clearly not in the ratios appearing in any sane food pyramid. By the way, have you had enough with competing interest food pyramids? I know I have. Call them what they are: Food Ponzi Schemes, designed to separate you (and me) from the foods we love. Sure, I don't eat well, I won't live quite as long (in an actuarial sense), but I'll get a lot less pleasure out of life. I've few vices left, and eating what I want, when I want, is one of them. My weight stabilized again, six months after we stopped smoking, up about 60 pounds. If I ever find the gumption to exercise on a steady basis, I could probably trim 25 or 30 off of that, and hold it there. I might yet do that one day, when the mood to be consistent about it strikes me. Meantime, I'll continue to regard diet as a four-letter word, one that happens to be "die" with a 't' affixed to the end for some odd reason.
Did you see the new Conyer/Berman Bill? What a load of crap!!! Especially their method of causing the possibility of file sharing to be a felony: "...the placing of a copyrighted work, without the authorization of the copyright owner, on a computer network accessible to members of the public who are able to copy the work through such access shall be considered to be the distribution, during a 180-day period, of at least 10 copies of that work with a retail value of more than $2,500.''. I think he just said that 10 downloads of a shitty Madonna song (is there any other kind?) is worth 2500 dollars. What planet are these legislators from, and is that where they got whatever they're smoking? And I believe that they defined copying as being equivalent to being accessible? Um, no. Copying is copying, and accessible is accessible. Just because there's mustard rotting on the shelf in the top cabinet (my analogy to a Madonna song), it doesn't mean that anyone's going to reach for it and put it on their ice cream. Yuk! But seriously, folks. The RIAA and the MPAA's trained attack legislators are headed down another path to criminalize a large part of their constituency (I mean voters, not the corporate entities who bought and paid for the right to fuck the people with a legislative agenda). Talk to your congress-critter and anyone else who's opinion might matter - tell them you think this sucks (if you do... if you don't, I'd love to entertain a counter-argument).
I might register as a Democrat, just to vote for Howard Dean. I haven't taken the time to do enough research yet, but so far he seems like the closest thing I've seen to a stand-up guy (in a national political sense), ever. He blogs, on his own site and as a guest blogger on Lessig's site. There's the 7 million or so that he's managed to raise in increments of less than a 100 dollars from people like you, me, and Joe down at the local slurp and shine. That makes him beholden to... um, regular folks. That's kind of refreshing, in a way, eh?
Today we've got fiber testing, and a serial port terminal server to finish configuring. There's bound to be other fun stuff along the way - I've a long drive and a long day ahead, finishing up with picking up Marcia tonight at BWI. Also, don't forget to think good thoughts for my love, she'll be in surgery next Friday. Now I'll call this a post, and head on my merry way. Have a great day!
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July 19, 2003 - Updates at 1010
Good morning. Of course, that's nearly what I said to Marcia by the time her plane actually got here last night. She arrived shortly before midnight, having been delayed by a late plane into Chicago (not her's, the connecting flight). By the time we got luggage, drove home, let Sally be happy all over Marcia, and fell sideways into bed, it was pushing past 0100. I'm still tired now, and have a light caffeine headache (I've had none since yesterday morning, a rarity).
Yesterday saw the fiber working properly, site to site, for the first time in two weeks of trials. The big bummer was four out of ten brand new single-mode jumpers bad. That was definitely a show stopper for a while, and we didn't know it. All is better now, though. Weather-wise, the humidity built yesterday, and was supposed to break with storms last night, but other than a little light rain, there was nothing.
Now I'm going to get that coffee, and try to plan my day. More later, as the mood and opportunity strikes. See ya!
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July 20, 2003 - Updates at 0936
Good morning. Friday saw another Bitkeeper flamewar on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (aka LKML). For those of you who don't know, Bitkeeper is the source code management software that was adopted by Linus and others to assist in kernel development, replacing the creaky old CVS setup that previously existed. Bitkeeper is a product of Bitmover, Inc and is primarily the brainchild of a bright and engaging fellow by the name of Larry McVoy. I've met Larry briefly, and heard him speak at an SVLUG meeting, a while back.
Bitkeeper is liberally licensed: you can use it for free in a couple of different ways, this is from the simplified version of the license that comes of typing bk help license on a system with Bitkeeper installed.
BitKeeper has multiple licensing models: =>free with no Open Logging (aka single user), license is the BKL. =>free with Open Logging, license is the BKL. =>commercial, license is the BKCL.
To get the full BKL, I typed bk help bkl. Therein it is explicitly stated that the free-use versions of Bitkeeper are explicitly for the purposes of Open Source development, and that Bitmover may ask that your repositories be opened at any time. Additionally, Bitmover restricts the license to use on projects that "...this
License is not available to You if You and/or your employer
develop, produce, sell, and/or resell a product which con-
tains substantially similar capabilities of the BitKeeper
Software, or, in the reasonable opinion of BitMover, com-
petes with the BitKeeper Software."
Well, duh! Bitmover has a business model that appears to be working, and they don't want free use of their product to be used to destroy their business model. But every once in a while some (money == food, rent and other nice things)-challenged moron sets out to lambast McVoy and Bitkeeper for not being free enough, in the FSF sense of things. Then Larry gets exercised, and other people jump on the bandwagon, and soon there's yet another BK flamewar on the LKML, like this one, that started on Friday by RMS... Well, anyway, let me just say that I think Larry's in the right on this one, every time it comes up, even if his arguments sometimes spin out of control. Now. on to other topics.
Today's guest head is St. Emacs himself, Richard Stallman. The man who put the Free back into Free Software, RMS is an outspoken advocate of freedom. His views are uncompromising and utterly consistent with his desire to work only on software that uses a free licence, allowing the source code to be freely distributed. This, of course, puts fear in the hearts of any enterprise that makes money off of selling proprietary software. The drill, of course, is to sell docs and services and consulting - but those things don't command the same 80% margin that, say, a copy of MS Office does, even at OEM prices. Stallman founded the GNU project and the FSF, as well as writing Emacs and GCC and GDB among many other utilities. A good jumping off point for learning more about RMS is his entry in the Wikipedia.
Yesterday, I mowed the carpets and vacuumed the lawn, or perhaps the other way around. We also did our shopping for the week, and got supper out. I have a few more small chores today, and assorted things to work on up here on the computer. Marcia's doing the Viking Gallery thing today, and again on Tuesday, before the long surgical recovery break. I guess that I'd best wrap this up and get on with things. Have a great day!
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
All Content Copyright © 1999-2003 Brian P. Bilbrey.
