Just upgraded NetworkManager and nm-applet among other things and got this in the nm-applet popup that normally displays the available networks:
device not managed
The fix is in this Debian bug report:
Either (a) edit
/etc/network/interfacesto comment out the interfaces you want NetworkManager to handle or (b) changemanaged=falsetomanaged=truein/etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf.sudo killall nm-system-settings
(It doesn't look like you need
to bounce /etc/init.d/networking or
/etc/init.d/network-manager—I tried those but
that nm-system-settings process is what you really
need to kill.) If you can read this the Debian laptop
is back on the net.
Student Statement on The Right to Research: "Learning and inquiry are impeded when scholars lack access to fellow researchers’ work, and when students lack access to the work of scholars before them."
Seth Godin: Textbook rant. Andy Oram: Four roles for publishers: staying relevant when you are no longer a gatekeeper
Worried about SHA-1? Read The code monkey's guide to cryptographic hashes for content-based addressing.
a hardware hacker ponders flu viruses
Advice from 2005, still not yet applied to GPL enforcement: "Registered trademarks, copyrights, and certain trade names may be recorded with the U.S. Customs Service."
So there's probably an anti-Linux back channel for Digg users. I wonder how many private lists are devoted just to promulgating URLs to pump or slag on other services.
Posted Sat Jun 27 10:00:58 2009Auren Hoffman points out that, thanks to free libraries and tools, companies are able to do more software engineering and build more stuff with fewer people, but the salaries for those increasingly productive software people haven't kept pace. (Rands explained: "It’s this pile of high-value, well-maintained code that is helping shrink the average size of the engineering team because it’s allowing us to focus less on writing new code and more on integrating existing code to get the job done with fewer people and in less time.")
Another way to put it is that you can look at an IT project as made up of two complementary goods: code and maintenance programming. If the price of one good falls, thanks to open source and the price pressure it puts on the whole industry, then the other good's price should go up. Software company stock prices are on the way down, reflecting the lower value of a drive full of source code, but where are all the pay raises for programmers?
We used to have a productivity paradox of increasing IT spending but no productivity to show for it. Now we have more programmer productivity but without the increased pay. Auren suggests two possible explanations: offshoring and decreased need.
Yes, IT employers in the USA have an indentured servitude program in the form of H-1B visas, and yes, there's some shake-out of code monkeys if not every project has to implement every little piece. But still, more value per software developer year should mean higher wages, even if developers have to give up on constantly reimplementing the same stuff. And the H-1B program is full enough that for most raise-seeking programmers, replacing you with an H-1B employee isn't a credible threat.
Other possibilities: in most cases, the employment market for software developers is a Market for Lemons. Badly informed employers won't pay more for a value-creating developer than for a code monkey. If that's the problem, then developers who contribute to open projects and can show their contributions accepted upstream should have an advantage, just from the signaling value. "Hey, if he were a bozo, would his name show up so much in 'git log' on example.org?"
Maybe programmers just don't negotiate well. If that's the problem, we should see substantially higher salaries for less negotiation-averse programmers, such as the people who have to work both for a company and with an upstream project.
I don't know. I think we're in the process of moving from high-value software brands and mostly anonymous hackers to a system more like professional sports, where both franchises and individuals have brand names and revenue.
Posted Fri Jun 26 14:28:18 2009This is a story I heard from a guy whose friend was one of the pranksters. And you're reading it on the Internet right now, so it must be 100% true. I made up the name and left out the location, though.
Jake had a job on a tree-trimming crew, cutting back a long stretch of trees along a utility right of way. All the guys in the crew would show up in their own trucks and work their way down, trimming trees as they went.
One day, Jake showed up with a brand-new compact pickup. He started bragging on the great gas mileage he got, and how much money he was saving, so the rest of the crew decided to have some fun with him. They had gas cans handy, so it was easy to pour a litte gas in Jake's tank when he wasn't looking. Naturally, Jake's bragging got more and more intense. "You can't believe how long it's been since I had to put gas in this truck."
When Jake bought the truck, there was a problem with the weather stripping on the passenger door, and the dealer didn't have the right piece of rubber. When they got it in, they called Jake, and he took the truck in to get it replaced for free. The truck wasn't scheduled for any other work, just the one little piece of rubber. But the next day, when Jake brought the truck back to work, the other guys started siphoning a little gas out every day.
When Jake noticed, he took the truck back to the dealer, demanding to know what they changed. But they didn't change anything. But Jake didn't believe them. He took it back a couple of times, but when he first complained about it to the rest of the tree-trimming crew, someone started laughing, and they all cracked up, so they had to tell him.
Posted Sat Jun 13 07:53:57 2009Malware alert for Microsoft Windows users: Remove the Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant (ClickOnce) Firefox Extension. One more on Green Dam: pwned! "Any web site the user visits can redirect the browser to a page with a malicious URL and take control of the computer."
Dave Root: The Most Useful Rope Knots for the Average Person to Know (a knot I learned in the Boy Scouts is really a "Zeppelin Bend.")
Gov. Schwarzenegger Launches First-in-Nation Initiative to Develop Free Digital Textbooks for High School Students (via Open Access News)
Use GNU xargs to run many tasks in parallel (via Justin Mason)
Atul Gawande: What a Texas town can teach us about health care.
Hg-Git Mercurial Plugin at github.com.
"For instance, economics journals published by commercial publishers are six times more expensive per page than those of noncommercial publishers. Such price disparities are a clear sign of inefficiency and excess profit-taking." -- Peter Suber (Trying to sell inefficiency and excess profit-taking to economists? That's like getting the cigarette machine contract at the medical school.)
Great moments in Fair Use video editing: Mother of All Funk Chords thru-you.com is down right now, though.
Awkward Zone? Never if the dudes are free software freaks. Start talking about spam filtering, laptop battery saving, window manager hacks, or news feed reading tools, and it's like you grew up in the same neighborhood.
Tom Limoncelli on Improving attendance at Linux Users Groups: "Have a designated person show up early and just say 'hi' to everyone that walks in."
Posted Sat Jun 13 07:53:57 2009It's now been more that ten years since Eric Raymond wrote Conventions at Light Speed: What Hackers Can Learn From SF Fandom. Today, some of the best-run conventions are hacker events. SCALE is still one sign short, but otherwise follows Eric's advice well. Since "Conventions at Light Speed" came out, most of the big-time IT events are dead or struggling, and the hacker events are booming.
Yes, I'm working on OpenSource World (Registration!) which is the new version of one of the corporate-style events, LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. OSW is learning to do a lot of this stuff right, but isn't there yet. But a lot of the corporate events haven't made it this far.
rm -rf ~/speakers: Ditch the speaker lounge but have plenty of informal space with seating, beverages, and power outlets. The hotel lobby and bar at SCALE are always packed. Instead of a regular conference plus a secret speakers-only 31337 conference, you get a better experience for everyone.
Web design: Keep the old web sites up. Abstracts are loaded with names and keywords, and make cheap Google-bait.
Fair admission price: Charge admission—not enough that people can't afford it if they're paying for it themselves, but enough to keep out people who aren't serious. Offer early bird and student discounts, and a bunch of passes and discount codes for exhibitors. A little price discrimination works better than a lot of qualification and filtration.
Cheap printed show guide: Print a decent schedule and exhibitors list, but don't splash out on expensive design and paper, and don't print too many extra copies. (Melinda Kendall suggests going paperless, but that doesn't work when you have broke-ass students as well as early-adopter corporate VPs with the latest smartphones.)
One more random idea. The USENIX Technical Conference has had a table of stickers that you can put on your badge to show your interests and affinities, and Eric mentions sticker sheets at science fiction conventions, too. It seems like a cheap investment for distribution and project community managers to send a sheet of small (1cm or so) badge stickers to each event. Make it easy to spot other Ununteros or PHP developers or GNOME users or whatever.
Posted Tue Jun 9 11:11:50 2009"Remember, the "terrorist threats" that plague Boston include blinking signs, blinking name badges, and Linux. Would you trust the police there with automatic weapons?" -- Bruce Schneier
Posted Wed Jun 3 08:47:22 2009Updated 3 June 2009: UK usage of "half mast" and "vocal chords," thanks to James Cranch.
Updated 2 June 2009: a couple more flag ones. Thanks to Winston Churchill (via Nick Moffitt) for the Union Jack entry.
"bailing wire" It's actually baling wire. This used to be the stiff steel wire that held hay or straw bales (no i) together. Since it was common on the farm, baling wire came in handy for the kind of repairs that non-farmers would use a piece of coat hanger for today.
copyright protection is a legal concept, not a DRM system. A DRM-free copy is not "without copyright protection."
"free reign" Should be "rein." Or better yet, get off your horse before you fall off and rewrite the sentence without the cliché.
"half mast"/half staff A flag is only at "half mast" when it's on a ship or at a naval facility. On land, it's half staff. (In the UK, "half mast" is correct for flags on land, too.)
"more unique" Unique means one of a kind. Every unique thing is exactly as unique as any other unique thing. There's no such thing as more or less unique.
"Stars and Bars" The "stars and bars" flag was not the one painted on the car in "The Dukes of Hazzard." It was an earlier Confederate flag with horizontal stripes.
"under weigh" Either weigh anchor, or get under way, or use land-based words.
"Union Jack" The national flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the "Union Jack" only when the Royal Navy displays it. It's the "Union Flag" or just the national flag of the UK otherwise.
"vocal chords" A chord is a set of musical notes. A cord is a structure in the body. (The Oxford English Dictionary does include "vocal chords.")
"Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print." -- George Orwell
Posted Mon Jun 1 19:29:52 2009Linux-based MiFi gets a fan at the New York Times.
Two computers in heavy use at Crosstown Community Center. One is LiveKiosk, the other is Webconverger. Both seem to work fine, although one doesn't have Adobe Flash set up.
People really hate telemarketers.
Carole Rylander explains "Crafting Your 30-second Elevator Conversation."
Some Notes on Distributed Key Stores by Leonard Lin.
"The Defense Information Systems Agency asked technology companies on Wednesday for ideas on how to build an e-mail defense system on the perimeter of its networks that can scan 50 million inbound messages a day to catch spam, viruses and cyberattacks." In other news, the Ottoman Empire is looking for contractors to update the Medina city wall.
Got a screensaver password? Toddler accidentally buys $15,600 digger on auction site
Posted Thu May 21 09:10:53 2009Jim Zemlin at the Linux Foundation joins in writing an over-broad open letter against implied warranties for software.
The problem is that software as the subject of a transaction can be either speech or a device, or usually both. The kind of disclaimer that's appropriate for a speech product is not appropriate for something that the vendor intends to be purely a device.
When Grandma goes to the drugstore for her heart pills, the pharmicist doesn't get her to sign a form saying, "hey, I could have given you Ecstasy instead by mistake, but I disclaim all warranty." When you deal with regular people, and take their money, you have to be accountable. Every other industry can deal with the obligation of an implied warranty, and as software grows up, it's going to have to as well.
That’s what the American Law Institute is trying to capture here. For every chilling effect on a development site or a beta program, there's a slick software executive ripping off a user. I've seen enough of the latter from the customer side to understand the lawyers' perspective on this. The implied warranty needs to shut down the rip-offs but leave the development process alone. That line is what the ALI is trying to get at with the free/paid distinction. Maybe free or paid is not the right dividing line, but there needs to be one. The industry should be helping to set the line, not asking for a no-bag-limit hunting license on users.
A lot of software is speech, not product. If you participate in an online development forum, you don’t expect to get perfect code every time you do a “git pull origin” or install a proprietary beta, just as there’s no warranty that a drug that produces positive results in a medical journal will cure what ails you.
But a TiVo or a BMW with iDrive is a product, and no fine print should make it a non-product. The software industry is maturing and dealing with regular people on their own terms. And this industry shouldn’t make the same mistake the credit card industry did—arguing for one-sided terms until the whole thing started to collapse. Arguing for an unconditional right for fine-print-writing lawyers to protect their clients from the consequences of shipping broken products would be counterproductive. The software industry needs to clearly label software as either technical communication or actual product, and apply the appropriate level of liability to each. Eventually the users, and their lawyers, are going to impose some kind of implied warranty, and we should do it on our terms, applied to real products but not software as speech.
Posted Mon May 18 10:19:38 2009Older stuff: archive
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