Planet Claws Mail

Colin Leroy: Ancien article sur Sylpheed-Claws

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:11:13 +0000

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

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

Holger Berndt: Linux driver nightmare

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:12:00 +0000

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

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

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

Being a supporter and developer of OSS software myself, I can understand the reasons of the kernel developers for not maintaining a stable ABI (or even API) for kernel modules. But for the user, this is just a major pain, that ultimately renders Linux unusable on many environments.

Colin Leroy: Lots of things

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:37:41 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe we’ll release soon…

Ricardo Mones: Sardine festival

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:44:28 +0000

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

Miquel: Rails cache

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:15:18 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

Hope this helps

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

Paul: The physical strength lies in the governed

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 08:09:51 +0000

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

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

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

Ricardo Mones: Diablo enters room

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:06:07 +0000

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

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

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

I didn't do any backup, so I've started from scratch again with it. Just for reference the detailed instructions for flashing are described in maemo.org wiki.

Miquel: Youtube links 2008-07-28

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:29:23 +0000

Miquel: Youtube links 2008-07-27

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 21:22:52 +0000

Miquel: Youtube links list

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:02:19 +0000

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

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

Hope you enjoy these videos as much as I do

Paul: Rogues and Vagabonds: The 24 orders

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:35:39 +0000

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

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

Paul: No Quarter #3

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:54:44 +0000

No Quarter
a zine about radical history
http://anarchistpirates.blogspot.com

Issue 3 of No Quarter has recently been published. This issue contains…

• A reprint of Lost Utopias by Ron Sakolsky, "scholar of music, revolution and radio", from issue 3 of his self-published, anarchist-surrealist zine, Oystercatcher.
• An interview with a member of the Bristol Radical History Group, an independent collective exploring history from below. They have staged some remarkable events, all without any funding from universities, political parties, business or local government.
• The trial statement of nineteenth-century French anarchist Émile Henry (1872 - May 21, 1894). He attempted to dynamite a mining company which was in dispute with its striking workers, only to have the bomb discovered before it was detonated and retrieved to the police office, where it did detonate, killing several policemen present. Later he would mis-throw a bomb into a bourgeois café, slightly injuring a few bourgeois, wounding three persons with gunshot whilst making his escape. He was executed at 22 years old.
• Many reviews of related books and films.

For details on how to obtain a copy of No Quarter #3, see the No Quarter blog.

Paul: The Western Rising

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:21:46 +0000

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

Facing extreme poverty, having access to the land stolen from them, their customary rights denied, and enjoying no rights in law, the pulling down of the enclosures was the only course of action possible. Although many were involved in the riots, (sometimes as many as 3,000 rioters), only few were arrested. This was due to the view of the ruling class that the commoners were incapable of organising themselves, as Buchanan Sharp puts its in In Contempt of All Authority, Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586-1660:

Most of those escaping punishment were persons of the lower orders. The Crown's object was to capture and punish the ringleaders in order to set an example to others and to break the spirit of the rank-and-file. Since Stuart government took it for granted that a ringleader was a person of quality, gentlemen were prime suspects, while artisans and laborers would more easily have escaped notice.
A recurring theme in official opinions on the Western Rising is that the belief that the lower orders were incapable of organizing and directing themselves and, consequently, that persons of quality were behind the riots. This was, of course, only one manifestation of an opinion universally held in the seventeenth century. It is expressed, for example, in that near-limitless storehouse of the period's aphorisms and commonplaces, the essays of Francis Bacon. In "On Sedition" Bacon ascribes the root of sedition to poverty in the common people and discontent among their betters: "If poverty and broken estate in the better sort be joined with a want and necessity in the mean people, the danger is imminent and great: for the rebellions of the belly are the worst." Sedition required the better sort to provide leadership, "for common people are of slow motion, if they will not be excited by the greater sort."

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

This was ruling class naïvety, as there were no rogue gentlemen leading the revolt and the commoners, of course, were more than capable of organising themselves.

Here we are about 400 years later and what has changed? The middle class are now doing the dirty work of maintaining inequality, whilst the ruling class hide themselves from public view. The proletariat are viewed as the ignorant masses or chavs, whilst the media encourages them to fight amongst themselves and reinforces their lack of self-belief and self-worth. Their history is largely hidden, their identity fragmented. At some point morning will come and it will be time to wake up.

Ricardo Mones: Theme change

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:49:42 +0000

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

Dinh Viet Hoa: bloody sunday

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:10:38 +0000

In a front of a school, in Bordeaux:

Colin Leroy: Social engineering FTW!

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:14:17 +0000

English version below.

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

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

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

English:

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

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

Tristan Chabredier: Laughin’ my ass off: meretrix ISO-certified works

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:53:57 +0000

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

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

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

Moreover, quoting the main page:

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

They sell blue pills maybe?

And also:

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

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

Paul: Sylpheed Apes Claws Mail

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:21:09 +0000

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

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

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

o The vertical 3-paned view mode was added.: In Claws Mail since version 2.8.0 (February 2007). Claws Mail also has additional 'Wide message', 'Wide message list' and 'Small screen' layouts.
o The feature to save SSL peer certificate was added.: In Claws Mail since version 0.8.5claws (October 2002)
o The option 'Treat HTML only message as attachment' was added.: With Claws Mail's clearer display/layout, an option such as this is unnecessary and irrelevant.
o The feature to confirm missing attachments was added.: Added as a plugin for Claws Mail in November 2006.
o The feature to confirm recipients before sending was added.: This feature is not in Claws Mail, but I wonder who actually needs a feature like this?

Coming up: An exhaustive list of the differences between Claws Mail and Sylpheed. (See what features Sylpheed might have in 5 years!!)

Colin Leroy: Ripping off audiophools, $500 at a time

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:42:13 +0000

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

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

Colin Leroy: Mon chat blogue

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:57:02 +0000

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

Paul: The Hancock Project

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:06:43 +0000

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

Anthony Hancock, Paintings & Sculpture: A Retrospective Exhibition ran for 14 days in September 2002 at The Foundry, London. It allowed "for a complete re-assessment of Hancock's contribution to the art of his time" as the Department recreated "the entirety of Hancock's known pictorial output, as well as his most important sculpture (the magnificent and imposing Aphrodite at the Waterhole)." Magnus Irvin, gave a practical demonstration — by reconstructing Hancock's only known "action painting" Aphrodite at the Waterhole (on the Horizontal) — on the exhibition's opening night, 7 September 2002 vulg. (in reality New Year's Eve 129 EP by the 'Pataphysical calendar).

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

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

Links
Anthony Hancock, Paintings & Sculpture: A Retrospective Exhibition
The London Institute of 'Pataphysics
Anthony Aloysius St. John Hancock at Wikipedia
The Rebel (1961) at The Internet Movie Database
Magnus Irvin
Stewart Home
Alfred Jarry at Wikipedia
George Melly at Wikipedia
Simon Watson Taylor at Wikipedia
Henry Snowstorm
Collège de ´Pataphysique
London Fieldworks

Ricardo Mones: Command of the day

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:27:35 +0000

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

Nice, isn't it? ;-)

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

Paul: The Power is Always on the Side of the People, when they Choose to Act

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 07:30:10 +0000

The enclosure movement and the slave trade ushered industrial capitalism into the modern world. By 1832 England was largely closed, its countryside privatized (some even mechanized), in contrast to a century earlier when its fields were largely open—"champion" country, to use the happy technical term—and yeoman, children, women could subsist by commoning. By 1834 slavery had been abolished in the British empire whereas a century earlier, on 11 September 1713, the asiento licensed British slavers to trade African slaves throughout the Americas. Together the expelled commoners and the captured Africans provided the labor power available for exploitation in the factories of the field (tobacco and sugar) and the factories of the towns (woolens and cottons). Whether indentured servant, West African youngster, former milkmaid, or woodsman without his woods, the lords of humankind looked upon them indifferently as laboring bodies to produce surplus value, and so emerged the Atlantic working day, which entirely depended upon a prior discommoning.
The legal cliché is that the American constitution is written, while the English is unwritten. Strictly speaking this is untrue inasmuch as both have stemmed from the Magna Carta of 1215. The important difference between English and American constitutional development is not that one is unwritten and the other is written. The difference is Africa. The maintenance and expansion of unwaged labor on the plantation where slaves produced surplus value was indispensable to American constitutional and revolutionary history, whereas the salient English development was the statutory enclosure of lands and privatization of all attempts at commoning. The Atlantic multitudes were divided by race in the emerging constitution. The Charters of Liberties were contested in this process. The enclosure movement, opposed by English commoners, conveniently ignored the Forest Charter. The movement to abolish slavery used Magna Carta and helped put it back into the English working-class movement.
Peter Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto, Liberties and Commons for All (University of California Press 2008), 94-95

Colin Leroy: The Grumpy Editor reviews Claws Mail

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:58:05 +0000

“These developers seem to have their priorities in the right place.”

Jonathan Corbet of LWN published last week a review of Claws Mail. I’m quite happy about what he says, his review is quite positive and, as I like his work a lot, I’m pleased!

Ricardo Mones: Bye Madrid, hi new home

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:56:17 +0000

The result has finally been unleashed yesterday to me, and as expected, I'm not going to work in Madrid anymore with the client I was assigned for the last three months.

The result was obviously not the desired for my company, because, in abstract, it may have been a nice contract until 2009, but it's very difficult to compete with meat factories which lower the prices more than 30 percent over an adjusted budget. Anyway this prevented myself from having to take a plane every monday and friday for, probably, the rest of the year. There's also a negative part, like not meeting anymore soon with some Debian dudes in Alfredo's, like the dinner we had two weeks ago.

On the positive side, we're now living at our new home, though still setting things up. Lots of boxes and stuff spread on the floors, which is slowly being sorted and relocated. Still waiting for the dinning's room sofa, so we have to watch TV japanese style and have dinner in the kitchen. Fortunately internet connection seems to work smoothly, but now we have less bandwidth. To cut some costs the basic package was the choosen, which currently is a 4 Mbit download / 300 Kbit upload cable link.

My debian stuff is basically frozen since last post, though I've been able to sponsor one vagalume release and upload the 2.5 release candidate of sylpheed, which, by the way, is having a strange bug on some architectures. Public thanks goes to fgeek, which has allowed me to steal a little of his home bandwidth and cpu to maintain my IRC presence during this transition period.

Colin Leroy: Deux photos

Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:46:23 +0000

Deux photos, de nous et de Clo, prises par Maman ce week-end. Et il y a aussi quelques nouvelles sur le blog de Clo :-)

Colin Leroy: How to change Dell’s BIOS settings from a Linux command-line

Wed, 21 May 2008 12:23:51 +0000

To be able to change BIOS settings from the command-line on a Dell Poweredge, you need the syscfg utility. It’s very useful when you want to change a configuration on, for example, 32 nodes at once, without having to plug screen, plug keyboard, reboot, change setting, reboot 32 times. Here is how I installed it on the CentOS 5 distribution :

# cd ; wget -q -O - http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/bootstrap.cgi | bash
# yum install srvadmin-hapi
# wget ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/sysman/dtk_2.5_80_Linux.iso
# mkdir dtk
# mount -o loop dtk_2.5_80_Linux.iso dtk/
# cd dtk/isolinux/
# cp SA.2 ~/SA.2.gz
# cd; gunzip SA.2.gz
# mkdir stage2
# cd stage2
# cpio -i < ../SA.2
# cd lofs
# mkdir dell
# mount -o loop dell.cramfs dell/
# mkdir -p /usr/local/sbin ; cp dell/toolkit/bin/syscfg /usr/local/sbin/
# umount dell
# cd
# umount dtk

And voilà! You can now use syscfg:

# /usr/local/sbin/syscfg –biosver
biosver=1.5.1
# /usr/local/sbin/syscfg –virtualization=enable
virtualization=enable

I’d have preferred an easier way, but couldn’t find syscfg’s RPM.

When deploying that to a lot of nodes, you probably don’t want to go through all the associated network downloads of the first phase (wget of the yum repository, yum, and wget of the 230MB iso), so you can take shortcuts:

# for node in $(list_of_nodes); do scp /usr/local/sbin/syscfg /var/cache/yum/dell-hardware-auto/packages/srvadmin-*.rpm $node: ; ssh $node “mkdir -p /usr/local/sbin; mv syscfg /usr/local/sbin; rpm -ivh srvadmin-*.rpm”; done;

Salvatore De Paolis: Trento’s rain

Mon, 19 May 2008 21:22:05 +0000

Run and see the train just in front of you while several stairs are still missing…

Looks like the typical experienced way of loosing trains also if time to time you may fail. I failed with it and the odd rhythm got a start, probably it got some pause and finally it ended in the morning. Some step, four at time and you get into a square with a curious(!)(?(!))) policeman) dressing a blue uniform and a <-cosh.Uhm…it was probably more hilarious for them to see him while he tried to drive people as they were customized cars: yeye, but the park is nice and the small artificial lake too, just a bit black&white as all other things, but the sky seems disappeard.

Now is just walking and looking for a room, but is not that hard as it seems to be. A coffee news and fingers are prepared to a new odd rhythm while a gray iron woman is wishing to expose her beat of nuisance.

Finish, get up, walk, move, run a bit, the sky is still cromium-plated, some steps and a rest. Oh damn ****

Greetings to the cute Markus

Holger Berndt: Reactions to the Debian - OpenSSL - disaster

Sun, 18 May 2008 21:20:00 +0000

I really wanted to abstain from commenting the Debian OpenSSL disaster. I have however read far to many false claims and bloodcurtling comments to leave them uncommented.

Clearly, the Debian's OpenSSL maintainer has messed up seriously. Very seriously. He is the one to blame for thousands of machines being easily attackable during a time period of about 2 years.

It's not as if the OpenSSL team was unblamable of this misery though.

The original query of the Debian Developer resulted in an unfortunate answer of an OpenSSL team member, and other than that ignorance. Another mail about a year later clearly says that a patch commenting out those lines made it into Debian, again with no feedback, so even the "If OpenSSL had known that this should go into Debian..." argument is invalid. I wonder why, since an OpenSSL guy claims that this mistake is so obvious and that upon seeing the patch, "we (the OpenSSL Team) would have fallen about laughing, and once we had got our breath back, told them what a terrible idea this was."

I am not going to comment on the the claim that openssl-dev was the wrong mailing list, as Branden's blog post leaves nothing to add on that topic.
The claim that making OpenSSL Valgrind-clean is just a minor, unimportant cosmetic fix is wrong. The OpenSSL library is typically used by programs with network access. The developers of these programs often use Valgrind to catch memory access failures, which could easily compromise the security of the machine if not detected. Being able to Valgrind your code without drowning in OpenSSL warnings and errors is an important thing.

Using very questionable (see point below) constructs in the code without even a source code comment is not something to be proud of either.

The claim that the original OpenSSL code is not buggy is wrong. The claim that the "harmless" part of the disastrous patch is just harmless is wrong. It fixes a serious bug in OpenSSL. Using uninitialised objects with allocated or automatic storage results in undefined behavior in C.

It may add Entropy to the pool. It may crash. It may send out a tarball of your .ssh and .gnupg directories to ronald@mcdonald.com without letting you know.

All three options (and any other option) is completely valid at program run time, or even at compile time.

For example, this is a program that I use to predict the lottery numbers of the next five years:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()

{

int a;

a++;

printf("%d\n",a);

return 0;

}

What? This doesn't work for you? Welcome to the wonderful world of undefined behavior.

In the light of this, above linked comments sound almost ironic.

I feel Debian has learnt a lesson out of this. Can the OpenSSL team say the same?

Disclaimer: These are solely my oppinions. I speak for no project or company or whatever. I am in no way affiliated to either OpenSSL or Debian. Both are outstanding, impressive free software projects.

Miquel: Remembering STP

Sat, 17 May 2008 10:53:52 +0000

This is one of the Stone Temple Pilots’s best song.

Miquel: FNM - Rock In Rio II

Fri, 16 May 2008 18:41:14 +0000

One of the best live show ever !!!!

A lot of great bands, this is a sample (Faith No More).

Colin Leroy: Lazily testing memory

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:19:33 +0000

I had, until recently, a problem when it came to test memory on the nodes in my lab. Until now, I was able to PXE boot memtest+, but had to go down to the lab and plug a screen to check the output. Multiple annoyances: first I had to move my ass to the lab room, then I add to do some difficult things to plug a screen to the node, then I had to come back from time to time and look at the output. All of these right in front of the cooling units, which blow some really cold air now that they work correctly.

This morning I investigated in the source code of memtest+ and found out it supports output to serial consoles since recently!

A little upgrade later, I can now boot memtest+ with the console=ttyS0,57600 command line parameter and just watch my serial line output, without moving at all! Yay!

DEFAULT memtest console=ttyS0,57600

LABEL memtest

KERNEL images/tools/memtest

Viva PXE!

(Btw for those who’ll find funny to use DEFAULT memtest… PXE boot choices are updated via a cgi script called from an intranet tool, which itself is wrapped in a little GTK systray applet. This applet allows to reboot, shut down, power on, reinstall various distributions, follow serial line, open an ssh connection, on the lab’s nodes. This tool is also useable via command line for scripting power).

Colin Leroy: Infractions sans voiture

Sun, 11 May 2008 18:22:58 +0000

Encore une fois aujourd’hui, j’ai entendu quelqu’un expliquer que ne pas respecter le code de la route à vélo, ça fait perdre des points sur son permis. Comme ça commence à m’agacer, je l’écris:

Conformément à une circulaire du 23 novembre 1992, il ne peut y avoir retrait de points que pour les infractions commises au moyen de véhicules pour la conduite desquels un permis de conduire est exigé. (3.1d)

Griller un feu rouge, prendre un sens interdit, faire des excès de vitesse sur la rocade… Vous pouvez faire tout ceci à vélo, et vous risquerez une amende pécuniaire - mais certainement pas un retrait de points sur votre permis.

De la même manière, vous pouvez faire n’importe quoi à rollers et vous exposer à une amende maximale de 4 €, si vous vous faites choper sur la route : en tant que piéton (statut légal des personnes à rollers ou skate board), l’article R.412-34 de code de la route vous interdit d’utiliser la chaussée lorsqu’un trottoir existe. 4 €, pas plus, pas moins.

Paul: Unofficial Claws Mail ClamAV™ Plugin v3.4 unleashed!!

Sun, 04 May 2008 09:43:03 +0000

The first official release of an unofficial Claws Mail plugin is now available.

It is available from the Unofficial Claws Mail ClamAV™ Plugin page here on this blog.

This latest release of the plugin will build against the ClamAV™ 0.93 (libclamav 4:1:0) release and all older versions, once it is patched, of course. The necessary patch is also available from that page.

I will continue to maintain this unofficial plugin for at least as long as I am using the plugin.

See the page for more details.

Colin Leroy: En 2008, comment déclarer ses impôts en ligne

Sat, 03 May 2008 08:06:32 +0000

Hier, j’ai essayé de déclarer mes impôts en ligne sur www.impots.gouv.fr. Jusqu’ici, ça marchait impeccablement depuis 2003 pour moi. Hier, j’ai eu des soucis:

Avec Firefox 3 beta 5, ça plante dès le début avec une zone d’applet grisée et “Applet signview bail” dans la barre d’état du navigateur. Qu’à celà ne tienne!
sudo apt-get install firefox-2
Avec Firefox 2, pas de java. Un symlink manquant: sudo ln -s /etc/alternatives/xulrunner-1.9-javaplugin.so /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/
Ensuite, avec Firefox 2 toujours, la déclaration elle même se passe bien; le seul problème est au moment de la signature numérique: “Erreur technique (n° 100)“. Argh!

Finalement, voici comment en 2008, j’ai réussi à déclarer mes impôts avec mon ordinateur sous Linux:

Je pense que c’est de la faute de Sarko.

Miquel: Note about Rails (and other framworks)

Sat, 03 May 2008 06:52:21 +0000

As some of you know, I’m developing a web at home using RoR. This framework makes your life easier than before with all its utilities and work done by it that you don’t have to do. But there is something that can make you go crazy when you look for only a row in the database using an object. You can do it as follows:

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

If you forget to include the part ‘:conditions=>’ and write

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

rails will return the first row of the table, “id = #{foo_id}” will be lost in the twilight zone and you will go crazy looking for the problem (specially if you are a beginner like me).

I hope this helps to somebody.

Paul: Bullshit companies

Thu, 01 May 2008 08:36:31 +0000

Everyone is familiar with this, no doubt…

I recently switched power supplier, because the previous one's prices were rising steeply. The previous company had overcharged me, my final statement from them told me as much. Two months later they still hadn't paid me back, so I telephoned their 'customer support' line, (not a free call), to get it sorted. A fortnight later my cheque arrived. The accompanying letter began with, "As promised here is a cheque for …" — As promised! As promised? They take my money, keep hold of it, force me to give them more money just to enquire about it, and then present themselves as the good guys! Hey npower, is it so hard to say sorry?

Meanwhile virginmedia announce that they "always try to listen to what our customers tell us and because you didn't think the premium rate call charge for our technical support helpline was right, we decided to do something about it!" — as if it never occurred to them that their charges were high until some customers mentioned it. And in a sickeningly informal manner, "That means that now you can get the help and support you need, totally free, just like you asked." Well, thanks mate! You're a real pal. I hope this won't eat into your vast profits and require Branson to have a lifestyle change.

[suggested soundtrack: Alternative TV - You Bastard - The Image Has Cracked, 1978]

Miquel: It’s our fault

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:06:02 +0000

Some people say that we are geeks, nerds, freaks and a lot of things more, we wonder why is so difficult to promote the open source and free software. This two sentences are the result of actions done by us.

Yesterday I was reading some web pages (because I am in holiday so I have a little of time) and I linked to a page from a company (I won’t put the name here) which is trying to make money using and promoting open source software (good thing). This company is based in Barcelona and offers hardware with free software, support and all the software’s vanilla flavour used is catalan (the language spoken in Catalonia).

All this is good, great, amazing and a lot of positive words more but, there is one thing which is wrong in all this situation. If you want to make money, if you want to be professional (and you need to seem professional), you can not include in your web page this image

People see this image and thing that you are a group of weirdos in a little room next to Pl. Catalunya trying to do something that other people is already doing.

That’s the reason why I thing that a big part of the success of open source is our responsability and doing this we are not helping it to success (it’s our fault not to do it seriously).

I have to say that all this post is written from RESPECT to what you are doing guys (this don’t want to be an offence).

Ricardo Mones: Blackout

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:42:15 +0000

No, it's not a Britney's album reference and probably not as dark as the subject suggests, but the home change (which is not going to effectively happen until June 1st) requires the Internet connection I'm using to be removed from our current hired flat. Thanks to our much beloved Asturian ISP I perfectly know that from May 1st the current contract will be finished (and service dropped) and on 8th they will take back the cable-modem, but I have no fscking idea when the new contract and the new connection will be ready at the new home, despite having solicited it two weeks ago.

If that were not enough, and thanks to Murphy's law, my main IMAP mailbox (the account I have at the university since twelve years ago) seems to have disappeared into /dev/null. Service failures were not uncommon from time to time, but now I can connect and both mutt and Claws Mail keep on saying I have no INBOX, which looks pretty true from the little I can see when ssh'ing the mail server. I've already redirected the forwarders, but if telecable cancels also the current mail accounts associated with the contract I'll have to do again. And seems also I've been subscribed to a lot of lists with that address from aic.uniovi.es, because i'm not receiving any mail from debian lists... which is a real pleasure for now :-D. Fortunately Claws lists were double subscribed and I can read them on gmail, I hope the failures from the uniovi address aren't causing excessive trouble to our listmaster ;-).

On the Debian front the bugs for all sylpheed-claws related packages have been issued, so expect them to disappear soon from the unstable archive (they already were removed from testing several weeks ago). Bye bye sylpheed-claws, we won't miss you.

Paul: Claws Mail article in Linux Magazine

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:52:23 +0000

Following the awful review of Claws Mail in issue 86 of Linux Magazine — awful because of its inaccuracies — I wrote a critical blog post and informed the editor, Joe Casad, of my post, thoughts and feelings. He quickly responded, apologising and offering further coverage of Claws Mail in the form of a full article, if I would like to write it. What a great response, it couldn't have been any better!

The article is now written and published in issue 90 and can be downloaded in PDF format via this page.

Too bad about the seagull feet, I would have preferred to see The Manticore, a "gigantic red lion with a human face and three rows of teeth [whose] nails are twisted into talons, like drills and […] teeth are cut like those of a saw"^[1], or Humbaba, who "had the paws of a lion and a body covered with horny scales; his feet had the claws of a vulture, and on his head were the horns of a wild bull".^[1]

[1] Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings

Colin Leroy: Ads - bye!

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:15:11 +0000

I recently experimented with ads on the blog. Ten days later, I’m now sure they’re not worth the inconvenience/uglyness. They brought me a grand total of $0.16, which means $0.016 per day, approximately €0.010. Bye ads :-)

Miquel: Old articles…a good thing

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 21:28:19 +0000

English is not my mother language (as most of you have noticed reading my posts). The fact is that I have to check some words while I’m writing an entry in my blog, an email or other written documents. At work, where unfortunatelly I have to use HaseXP, I use a translator called babiloo, a GPL Java app which I haven’t found for linux.

Some minutes ago, I was writting a composition for my english classes and I didn’t know how to translate a word to english. Googling a little, I found an entry in a lug website named bulma, which is the mother of my lug (badopi), titled ‘Wordtrans: un Babylon para Linux‘ written in 2001 which showed me this application to translate these words that I don’t know in english.

Old articles have their usefulness too.

UPDATE: This application is available in Debian (stable, testing and unstable), which is the GNU/Linux distro I use at home.

Ricardo Mones: claws-mail 3.4.0, dudesconf 2

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:09:08 +0000

The claws-mail packages have reached the 3.4.0 version. These include several important fixes, so all users are encouraged to upgrade. I planned to include Colin's pre-release multiple-fixes patch in a previous upload but finally the lack of time and the near release date provoked this upload hadn't occurred. There's something new in the packaging because I've switched all the copyright files to machine-interpretable copyright format. This is not mandatory (just a proposal) but I think it's interesting enough to support it. I'll be giving a lightning talk about this proposal within the Dudesconf-II event, the small debconf-like conference to be celebrated in A Coruña in a couple of weeks. I'll be traveling by car with chipi, another Debian developer which came with me last year, and baby, who has been recently promoted also to Debian developer (yay! congratz Miriam! welcome to debian.org, the republic of the spammed people! :-)). Hopefully that week I won't be traveling to Madrid for working, otherwise it could be very tiresome. Unfortunately I have to do it tomorrow, so once the claws-mail-extra-plugins have finished uploading (in process right now) I'm going to bed ;-).

Miquel: Migrations in RoR

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 15:16:51 +0000

Hi there

Lately I am working on a personal project using and learning Ruby on Rails (a.k.a. RoR). It is a very useful framework known and used worldwide (it is an impressive creation).

I am creating models and mysql tables using migrations now. To create a table RoR helps to the programmer including in it a column named id, an int(11), which is the table’s primary key (something helpful) but including the attribute auto_increment. It is the behaviour that tables have normally but now I need a table with a column named id created as the primary key but without the attribute auto_increment (because it is a table which is a specialization of another one).

This is a cumbersome task because you have to google a lot to find out how (and there are several ways to do it). The easiest way to do it is (IMHO because I’m still a newbie using RoR):

  def self.up
    create_table :groups, :id=>false do |t|
        t.column    :id,          :integer, :null=>false
        t.column    :name,        :string,  :limit=>50, :null=>false
        t.column    :description, :string,  :limit=>150, :null=>false
      t.timestamps
    end

    execute("ALTER TABLE groups ADD PRIMARY KEY(id)")
  end

My frustation in this case is that I have to use a SQL sentence ‘ALTER TABLE’ to define the column ‘id’ as the table’s primary key. I wish there was a migration’s sentence to define a column as primary key without using the execute sentence.

If somebody knows a different way to do it using only migration commands, please write a comment.

Colin Leroy: Claws Mail’s IMAP implementation…

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 07:09:56 +0000

…rocks.

A user told us on the mailing list that he got a crash. It was SIGXFSZ, File size limit exceeded… Due to the protocol log file growing too much, probably 2 or 4 gigabytes…

The end of his log reads:

IMAP4< 8918737 OK Status completed.

The number at the left is the transaction id of the IMAP protocol, incremented by 1 on every command. That means almost 9 millions commands :-) Our user started Claws Mail on March 10, it crashed on April 17 only due to the log file.

Comforting to read that :-)

Colin Leroy: iPod back up :-)

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:21:44 +0000

A few days ago I was annoyed at hard disks, after the little one in my iPod died. I considered buying a brand new iPod, but I didn’t really want to spend 250 euros on a shiny new mp3 player that has a color screen, whereas my scratched old mp3 player with its black and white screen… plays music just as well, and that’s all I want.

So I ordered just the hard disk from an Ebay seller (which I recommend if you need the same…) for only 40 dollars. I received it today, swapped the disks, and reformated the iPod following a nice howto which spared me the shame of begging a colleague for a Windows machine with iTunes installed. (Yes, it’s a geeky howto involving fdisk and dd, but I’m not scared at all by the shell, and I don’t care about whether it’s user friendly or not. It’s Colin friendly, and that’s all I want).

And now it works again just fine, and gained 10GB of capacity in the process :-)

Colin Leroy: Ads

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:20:06 +0000

I’m experimenting with ads on the blog; they should be FOSS-oriented and not too intrusive… I’ll see in a few weeks whether that’s interesting to keep or not.

Colin Leroy: Damn moving parts!

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:36:19 +0000

Hard disks are fragile. I know it since a while, and I’m prepared: I have good, up to date backups made automatically every night or week, depending on the data’s importance. OK, I know it! but I’m getting tired of it: Saturday, smartd reports read errors on my server’s /dev/hdc. I order two IDE disks (in order to have a spare available next time). Sunday, my mother calls me for help: her iBook’s hard disk has failed utterly just before she did a migration to her new laptop. 4 years of data lost; doing backups was on her to-do list since a year, but the old saying is verified again: no one does backup properly until they experience a loss of important, unique data (like digital pictures or emails). And today, I get on my train back from work, power on the ipod, but no music for me:

I ordered an 1.8″ disk (for about eight times less than a new iPod, but still, it’s annoying.)

Colin Leroy: Saine paranoia, partie IV : pourquoi les laisse-t’on faire ?

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:03:34 +0000

En français - Saine paranoia, partie IV : pourquoi les laisse-t’on faire ?

“Mais que fait la police”, vous demandez-vous… Il paraît surprenant que ce genre d’activités reste impunies. En effet ! Les responsables et bénéficiaires de ce genre d’arnaques sont en général recherchés, et parfois arrêtés. Cela reste, hélas, rare, car ils sont souvent suffisamment prudents pour éviter de laisser des traces directes les incriminant. Certains, en général les Veuves du Regretté Général Machin, utilisent des comptes emails jetables (sur hotmail, yahoo, etc) étant donné qu’ils ont besoin de correspondre ensuite avec leurs victimes pour transformer l’essai. Ils ne se connectent sur ces comptes que par des cybercafés, des proxys anonymisants, etc : jamais de leur accès internet chez eux.

Les autres, les arnaqueurs à large spectre ainsi que les spammeurs, utilisent des réseaux de machines piratées (appelés Botnets). Ces machines peuvent être des serveurs mal sécurisés, ou encore de simples ordinateurs de particuliers qui ont attrapé un virus - car maintenant, les méchants virus destructeurs de données, programmés par de petits génies de l’optimisation et de la discrétion, sont chose rare. La plupart des virus actuels se contentent de se cacher sur votre ordinateur, ne causent aucun dégât afin d’éviter d’être repérés, et transforment votre ordinateur en plaque tournante d’arnaques - c’est beaucoup plus rémunérateur à long terme. Dans votre dos, votre PC enverra donc de nombreux spams, un serveur Web y sera installé qui contiendra une copie du site de Paypal ou autre, etc.

Le mode de propagation principal de ces virus est, là aussi, l’email - provenant d’un autre PC infecté. Lorsque vous recevez un mail avec des photos d’une quelconque célébrité à poil, une vidéo marrante à regarder, ou encore un faux retour d’email avec une pièce jointe, la plupart du temps, un virus dans la pièce jointe attend sagement que votre curiosité vous pousse à l’ouvrir. Le fait que l’email en question provienne d’un inconnu ou d’un contact connu (ami, etc) n’y change rien : l’adresse d’expéditeur est fausse et trafiquée. Soyez sûr d’avoir un bon antivirus à jour.

Le moyen le plus efficace de se débarasser de ces nuisibles, puisque les arrêter est difficile, serait de rendre l’activité moins rémunatrice et plus compliquée. Certains (rares) fournisseurs d’accès Internet coupent l’accès à leurs abonnés chez lesquels ils détectent un trafic suspect (milliers d’emails envoyés, etc) jusqu’à désinfection, mais la plupart ne le fait pas, étant donné que lesdits abonnés râlent quand cela leur arrive.

In english - Sane paranoia, part IV : Why aren’t they stopped?

It sounds surprising that this kind of activities aren’t punished. Indeed! The individuals responsible for (and who benefit from) such scams are generally actively wanted by the authorities, and sometimes arrested. This is, unfortunately, rare, because they’re often cautious enough to avoid leaving directly incriminating trails. Some of them, generally the Widows of the Regretted Late General Blahblah, use throw-away email accounts (on hotmail, yahoo, …), as they’ll need to correspond with their victims in order to cash in on their scam. They only connect to these accounts from cybercafes, anonymous proxies, and so on; never from their own internet account at their place.

The others, the large spectrum scammers and the spammers, use networks of pirated computers (called Botnets). These computers can be badly securised servers, or simply private computers who got infected by a virus - these days, rare are the mean, destructive viruses that we were used to. The majority of modern viruses just hide in your computer, cause no visible harm in order to avoid being detected, and turn your computer into a so-called zombie, spewing out hundreds and thousands spams every hour, getting a web server serving a copy of Paypal’s site, and so on.

The main propagation mode of these viruses is, as usual, email - often coming from another infected computer. When you receive a message with pictures of a random celebrity naked, a funny video to watch, or sometimes, a fake email bounce with an attachment… most of the time, there’s a virus in the attachment waiting for your curiosity to make you open it. The fact that said email comes from a random stranger or a known contact (best friend, wife, boss, …) is irrelevant: the sender’s address is faked and doesn’t mean anything. Make sure you have a good, up-to-date antivirus.

The best way to get rid of these parasites, as arresting them is difficult, would be to render their activities less financially rewarding and more complicated. Some rare Internet service providers cut their subscribers’ access when they detect suspect traffic (thousands of sent emails over a short period of time, for example); but most don’t, as this process is rarely well-received by the affected people.

Colin Leroy: Saine paranoia, partie III : les arnaques ciblées

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 10:37:46 +0000

En français - Saine paranoia, partie III : les arnaques ciblées

Les précédents comptaient bien vous avoir. Leur technique, qui fonctionne, requiert tout de même du courage. Il en faut, pour correspondre avec une centaine de pigeons en parallèle, leur extorquer le maximum par la persuasion, continuer avec la dizaine restante, les presser jusqu’à la moëlle, avant de recommencer avec de nouvelles victimes potentielles.

Ce serait quand même vachement plus pratique de n’avoir rien à faire pour arnaquer les gens, n’est ce pas. C’est la catégorie des arnaqueurs paresseux, qui a monté un autre type d’email piégé… L’email de phishing. Comme son nom l’indique, il s’agit là d’aller à la pêche, mais à la pêche à la nasse, pas question de s’enquiquiner à attendre que ça morde. (la faute d’orthographe dans phishing n’en est pas une. Elle indique la nature cybercrime de la chose).

Les emails de phishing se présentent généralement sous la forme d’alertes de sécurité, de la part de grands sites très connus où l’on peut manipuler de l’argent - Paypal, Ebay, votre banque…

Ces emails seront inquiétants :

Cher Membre PayPal,
En raison des mesures de securité que vous offre PayPal, vous êtes prié de suivre les étapes fournies et de confirmer vos informations en ligne pour la sûreté de vos comptes. Cependant, la non-comfirmation de vos informations peut avoir comme conséquence la suspension provisoire de compte.

(Fautes de français laissées intactes).Suivra un bla-bla habituel sur les procédures de sécurité :

Veillez à ne jamais communiquer votre mot de passe à des sites frauduleux. Pour accéder de manière sécurisée au site PayPal, saisissez l’URL PayPal (https://www.paypal.com/fr/) pour accéder au site authentique de PayPal.

Rassurantes, ces procédures de sécurité ! S’ils me disent tout ça, ça devrait être un vrai mail, n’est ce pas ? Un pirate ne se couperait pas l’herbe sous le pied ainsi ?

Ben si. Ça marche mieux comme ça, car, malgré les lignes précédentes, la plupart des gens cliqueront quand même là :

Vous êtes prié de suivre les étapes fournies et de confirmer vos informations en ligne pour la sûreté de vos comptes. Cliquez ici pour commencer la procedure.

Vous avez cliqué ? Ici j’ai modifié le lien pour pointer sur un site totalement différent et inoffensif ; mais le mail en question vous aurait renvoyé sur un site qui n’est pas celui de Paypal, mais qui y ressemble à s’y méprendre. Sur celui-ci, on vous aurait demandé de remplir toutes les informations demandées par Paypal (dont votre mot de passe, numéro de carte bancaire, et même parfois, code secret de carte banquaire). La page d’aide de Paypal à ce sujet détaille bien la chose.

J’ai pris Paypal comme exemple ici, mais ne vous en faites pas, vous recevrez de faux emails du même genre “de la part” de votre banque, Ebay, votre fournisseur d’accès Internet (souvent “nous avons détecté des activités illégales sur votre compte”, mais pas seulement), etc.

Ne cliquez jamais sur aucun lien, d’aucun email provenant d’un site qui gère pour vous des choses importantes, comme votre argent. En cas de doute, connectez-vous via votre raccourci enregistré, ou en tapant l’adresse à la main. Si le site avait quelque chose à vous signaler, ce sera via le site lui-même, pas via email.

Partie IV - Pourquoi les laisse-t’on faire ?

In english - Sane paranoia, part III: targeted scams

The previously mentioned scammers hoped to get you, but their method, although it works, still requires a certain amount of motivation. One needs motivation to manage corresponding with a hundred of possible targets at once, squeeze the most out of them using persuasion, continue with the remaining dozen, go as far as possible, and restart the whole process with new potential victims.

Wouldn’t it be much more practical to be able to scam large numbers of people almost automatically? It’s exactly what lazy scammers thought, and implemented in another kind of trap email: the Phishing email. As its name implies, it’s about going to fish, but using a net - no bothering and waiting for bites!

Phishing emails generally look like security alerts from big, known and trusted e-commerce websites that manipulate money - Paypal, Ebay, your bank…

These emails will be scary:

Dear PayPal customer,We recently reviewed your account, and we suspect an unauthorized transaction on your account. Protecting your account is our primary concern. As a preventive measure we have temporary limited your access to sensitive information.

These emails will usually have a few paragraph about the importance of security procedures:

Make sure you never provide your password to fraudulent websites: To safely and securely access the PayPal website or your account, be sure to verify the link found in the address bar. This must be https://www.paypal.com/.

These security procedures really are reassuring, aren’t they? If they warn me about security, that must be a real email, isn’t it? A mean bad guy wouldn’t screw himself up this way?

Well, yes, he would, because its works better like that. Just write these security procedures, and be sure that most people would still click on the link just after:

We require you to complete an account verification procedure as part of our security measure. You must click the link below to securely login and complete the process. Click here to activate your account.

Did you click? Here, I changed the link to point to a totally different and inoffensive website; but the quoted email would have sent you to a website that isn’t Paypal’s, but that looks exactly the same. On this fake website copy, you would have been asked about a lot of information (including your password, credit card number, and even, sometimes, credit card’s PIN code). Paypal’s help page about the subject explains this really well.

I used Paypal as an example here. But don’t worry! You’ll also get fake mails “from” your bank, “from” Ebay, “from” your Internet Service Provider (usually along the lines of “we detected illegal activity from your account” - but not only), and much more.

Never click any link on any email from any site handling important things like your money. If in doubt, log in via your bookmark, or type the address yourself. If the website has something to warn you about, it’ll do so via the site itself, not via email.

Part IV - Why aren’t they stopped?