Reently there have been intense discussions between developers of my favorite Linux distro, Gentoo. They are complaining about the lack of directions and about where Gentoo is supposed to go. Developers seem to be leaving the project in droves as jugded from the announcements on their planet. Here is my completely unimportant opinion: Continue reading →

My colleague Stefan got married last week. I attended the ceremony, held by a (married) catholic in an protestant church in Zurich, which I found interesting. He was entertaining too, so I enjoyed it a lot (I had never seen anyone splashing sacred water so enthusiastically before).
Matthias’ blog entry has a photo showing how lovely the couple looks.

The celebration afterwards was cool too, with a live band playing, and completely vegetarian, yet delicious, food. The catering firm put on quite a show, with e.g. lots of fog flowing from the dessert buffet.

All the best Susann and Stefan!

Via Karim R. Lakhani’s Infrequent Musings:

The Sheep Market is an incredible example of distributed work and micro-contributions.

The data is staggering:
– 10,000 sheep created by workers on Amazonââ

Linux.com | Using screen for remote interaction
Screen takes this feature, which is called multi-display mode, to the next level with multi-user mode. In multi-user mode more than one user can access and control a screen session. The problem with this mode is that it’s not obvious how to set it up. Here’s what I ultimately figured out with the help of some Google searching:

1. Set the screen binary (/usr/bin/screen) setuid root. By default, screen is installed with the setuid bit turned off, as this is a potential security hole.
2. The teacher starts screen in a local xterm, for example via screen -S SessionName. The -S switch gives the session a name, which makes multiple screen sessions easier to manage.
3. The student uses SSH to connect to the teacher’s computer.
4. The teacher then has to allow multiuser access in the screen session via the command Ctrl-a :multiuser on (all screen commands start with the screen escape sequence, Ctrl-a).
5. Next the teacher grants permission to the student user to access the screen session with Ctrl-a :acladd student where student is the student login ID.
6. The student can now connect to the teacher’s screen session. The syntax to connect to another user’s screen session is screen -x username/session.

At this point the teacher and student both have control of the session. Note that there are security implications to this — the student is operating the session as the teacher and could potentially do something to damage the system. If you don’t trust your students then you should probably use a special teacher account and not your normal login account. The teacher can also make the student’s session read-only. To do this, use the aclchg screen command to remove write access for the student: Ctrl-a :aclchg student -w “#”. The student can then only observe the teacher’s actions. Otherwise, the teacher will have to let the student work on the honor system.

Thanks to Peter JÃ

Linux News: Implementation: Defense Dept. Report Urges Adoption of Open Technology

After a couple of weeks with my shiny new Nokia 770, I thought I should post some thoughts and feedback.

First of all: What is the N770?
Nokia describes it as a completely new category of gadgets, they see it neither as a mobile phone nor as a regular PDA. It’s a Linux based handheld that is intended to give you easy internet access wherever you are.

I ordered it through the Nokia webshop, and although shipped from Belgium, the device was promptly delivered 3 days later to me in Switzerland.

The device looks solid, the only thing that’s cheesy are the supplied stands in which one can put the 770 like in a cradle. However, they fall over whenever you touch the 770 so they are next to worthless.

What I love about it, is the instant-on hibernation. Whenever you slide the cover on the 770 it goes to sleep (the battery lasts for about 7 days then), when you open the cover it’s on again. Instantly. Wow, I wish my laptop were like this.

STILL MORE TO COME HERE

This London Underground map is a real gem, all the names are written as anagrams and some are quite funny. Mousing over the names reveals the true name.
UPDATE: It had to be removed as the London Transport People claimed copyright violations. A jpeg of the map is mirrored here.

A couple of cool sessions today. I especially enjoyed Brian Butler’s talk on topic spaces in digital communities. He was basically simulating how signal-to-noise ratios affect community membership under various circumstances (such as high or low message process cost).
In the afternoon I took an extended nap (conferences are hard work, even if you are not interested in job placement talks ;-)) before doing a short touristy sightseeing trip. In Atlanta you can visit the Aquarium, the Coca-cola museum, or CNN. Unfortunately, the were no more CNN studio tours, so I simply had a Burger at Wendy’s and watch CNN for an hour…
Although interesting, I am looking forward to going back tomorrow.