Rambling around foo

HOWTO: GIMP - create a text-with-halo effect

2012-01-20T02:04:00.007+02:00

A small tutorial I made about an effect I used in the previous interviews (in English), so, for consistency, I had to recreate it, even after Kino was no longer available in Debian Wheezy.

I'll probably upload more videos like this about cinelerra, pitivi, gimp, audacity and other software I use for the work I do for our „Sceptici în România”/ „Skeptics in Romania” podcast (The podcast is in Romanian, but we are preparing also a project for the international audience, too).

And in case you are wondering, yes, this podcast is part of the reasons I wasn't able to do any work for Debian lately!

What's common between Windows 7 and GNOME 3 / gnome-shell?

2012-01-16T18:02:00.002+02:00

Update: I managed to make sound work. For some weird reason, a mute switch option of some the many (and who knows how useful) switches of my sound card was enabled. Now the damn thing works. Did I mention that since I did the upgrade all my sound cards (I have a USB sound card, too) have listed as available inputs all the inputs of my internal sound card (mic, front mic, line in, CD, etc.) in Audacity? That makes for a very confusing and loooong sound input sources list! The upside is that I can finally record clips from televisions that do not provide such a feature and FastVideoDownload doesn't handle.

I also seem to have found a possible fix for the caps-ctrl issue in Xfce4 (obviously, setting "-option ctrl:swapcap" in ~/.Xkbmap, instead of that Alt modifier).

As I said in my previous post, I will tell you what do GNOME 3 and Windows 7 have in common.

Before everything else, I want to make it clear that when I am saying GNOME 3, I am referring to Debian Wheezy's GNOME 3, since I recently upgraded from Squeeze on my laptop. I'll probably drop a line or two about that, too.

First, I'll tell you about the (boring, probably for many) experience with Windows 7. As I said before, my new job requires me to use a Windows machine, so up until a few months ago I was using Windows XP with some additional software and tweaks to make it usable. Then came the Windows 7 „upgrade”. I am using quotes since the more appropriate term would be „fresh installation on a new partition”, not even close to what Debian users are used to call an upgrade.

So after a fresh Windows 7 installation, my first shock was the fact there was NO Quick Launch*. Some of you might be laughing, but I had never used Windows 7 up until then, just saw it on a laptop of a friend of mine (Ovidiu, one of the guys with whom I am doing this podcast, went to Denkfest with, and made these interviews). That was the first shock. Initial discussions about this with Windows users lead me to believe Quick Launch was dead and for some unexplained reason, I believed them. Later, much later, a week ago, to be precise, I found out that you can bring back the Quick Launch through some convoluted way**. Up until that point I had to have some icons pinned to the task bar, but some others on the desktop (and I hate that) because some of them, like Cygwin, if pinned, would start a cmd console, since Win 7 pins the process, not the starting script.

Among other things which broke in Win 7 and used to work fine in XP, the Virtual Dimension application which provides me with a virtual desktop, was the first one which was broken. I have been using a liniar 4 desktops-wide virtual desktop for over 5 years and I am worthless and inefficient if all my apps are on the same desktop. Mail application is always on the first desktop, work and file managers are on the second, the third is for extras and multimedia editing while the fourth is my gateway to the internet, containing the browser, instant messenger, or whatever.

The shortcuts I use to get to the various desktops are Win+1 ... Win+4 keyboard shortcuts, but the M$ Evil Empire decided that those shortcuts are going to start or bring foreward the first, second and so on applications pinned on the task bar. And you can't change those shortcuts***. Nor is disabling just those possible since they are all disabled through a huge switch which disables ALL Win+x keyboard shortcuts, among which Win+E (file expolrer) and Win+D (Show Desktop) were also. Luckly, Win+L (lock screen) was not disabled. So I disabled al those Win+ shortcuts, since I need virtual desktops.

Now, imagine if I had to start a Cygwin console and I had all sorts of apps open! Win+D was disabled, so I had to minimize the apps covering the desktop shortcut for Cygwin, click on the icon to start it, bring back the minimized windows and go on with my work. What a waste of clicks, mouse movement, energy and time, just because some dudes thought a Quick Launch-like feature was useless****.

You might wonder already what do those '*' sings mean. Well, sadly, that's what GNOME 3 / gnome-shell and Windows 7 have in common.

Gnome 3 was a shock for me. An empty desktop right after upgrade. No panels, no shortcuts*, no power indicators, no wicd indicator, no virtual desktops, no desktop icons, (I have a few dirs and docs there). Sounds like an Evil Empire decision, doesn't it?

Luckly I have been using Tilda as my always-ready console and I could fire up iceweasel from the console in order to understand where my panel disappeared.

I then realised that the upgrade brought me Network Manager, that app which wicd replaced. As a consequence, I had no working wlan since Network Manager made sure to mess up with the network manager I chose.

After looking through the documentation of Network Manager and realising I either had it set up to leave wlan0 alone or I didn't understood NM's documentation, I simply stopped the service, which let Wicd its job flawlessly.

The first thing I searched was „Gnome 3 panel” or something of that sort and I was confronted with the obvious option to appeal to the Forced Fallback Mode which was disabled. I figured I either had an old version, or Debian disabled this feature (hoping they provided an alternative). There was also the option to conform to this convoluted way of working** with Actions and such uselessness like that. I still wonder, what is the purpose of the „Favourites” bar on the left side, since it's accessible only after wasting a lot of mouse movement and time? For Joe's Pesci sake, I use focus under mouse just to avoid needless mouse and keyboard manipulation. Why? Why? WHY would I want every time I need to start or SWITCH to another application to move the mouse to the upper-left corner then take my hands off the mouse to type, move the mouse downwards or move across the whole width of the screen to get to my beloved virtual desktops and pick the app I want?

Making a long story short, after even trying XFCE4 (which for some unknown reason resets almost immediately my keyboard layout to the default layout with the Caps on Caps, instead of my preferred and set Ctrl on Caps - yes, it's global), I managed to find GNOME Shell Frippery** which made the experience better.

Later I found out that GNOME 3's file manager, Nautilus, has decided that an „up on level” button is useless, since the default is to use that uncopy-pastable button location bar instead of a sane text location bar. And it seems the GNOME developers decided this*** and I should conform to it.

To add insult to injury, those icons on my old panel are apparently useless**** and even in the fallback version I can't get them back. Or so the GNOME developers decided.

At some point this sunday, don't know how or why this change happened, producing sound was impossible. I know the problem is pulseaudio since when I kill the pulseaudio daemon from the console I can play audio. BTW, great timing, just when I needed sound the most, before releasing episode 32 of our podcast (yay, I reaslised that xfce just decided to reset my caps to be caps, after setting to ctrl a few minutes ago).

I know I praised pulseaudio when I first tried it, but failing to make it work out of the box or after some tinkering is a deal breaker for me, so I removed it. Now I find it that is a default in GNOME, yet all it manages to do is prevent audio from working. At least on my machine.

Other problems? Gnome Power Manager manages to hang and block my session, GNOME managed somehow to fail to start at some point. Yeah, and that sound problem which I didn't fix yet, didn't went away after removing all the pulseaudio packages which could be removed (e.g.: ryhtmbox depends on libpulse0, same do some other apps like audacity, so I couldn't remove all pulse related packages).

I got involved with Debian and GNU/Linux because it was tweakable and customisable, didn't use to force all sorts of option on me and now I find with its increasing popularity it becomes more and more like a product of a corporation which decides to change some things just to change and totally disregadring user experience and uses.

So, in the light of all of these problems I think it's time to probably consider trying KDE. Is it any good lately?

Another Windows tip - How to store cvspass login for CVSNT

2012-01-09T19:47:00.007+02:00

Since I am currently working on a Windows machine at work I am looking for ways to make this thing work in a sane way. The latest insane thing is the fact that I wasn't able to log on a CVS server at work from WinCVS (which uses CVSNT) with my regular credentials, while the cached password in Cygwin did work with the Cygwin CVS.

So the obvious fix was to copy the .cvspass file from cygwin to whereever CVSNT kept its cvspass file. Well, it isn't that easy, since CVSNT keeps such passwords in the Windows registry. But since I had no previous logins with CVSNT, I didn't knew what to put in the registry.

I found really easily that the key is under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\cvsnt\cvspass, but how do I save it? Looking at the line in my cygwin .cvspass I saw the line had the format:

/1 :pserver:username@our.cvs.server.net:/u S()meh4s'h00

I finally found out that I have to create a string value with the name ":pserver:username@our.cvs.server.net:/u" and the value data that hash "S()meh4s'h00" and plainly ignore the first field.

Stay tuned. The next article will be about what's common between Windows 7 and GNOME 3 / gnome-shell, since I upgraded my home laptop to wheezy (I really wanted to use pitivi 0.15), and my desktop at work to Windows 7.

Speechless...

2011-10-31T12:07:00.002+02:00

No words can express how grateful I am to the genius of this man.

Thank you Dr. Sagan!

Do you agree that Linux desktops are here?

2011-03-30T12:54:00.003+03:00

I found some time ago this site which aims at proving that Linux desktops are currently over 1%. So, I registered my and my wife's Debian GNU/Linux desktops to contribute to the statistic.

http://www.dudalibre.com/gnulinuxcounter?lang=en

As publicity for GNU/Linux, this project has potential to put Linux on the radar of more producers, so, please, add your desktops to the counter!

HOWTO: Making Windows usable and avoiding accidental sending of mails in Microsoft Outlook

2011-03-07T13:31:00.013+02:00

I've changed jobs recently and after 5 years of not having to work with a Windows system I am having all sorts of adaptation-to-Windows problems at the new job.

First I just had to have the usual X-mouse behaviour and so I installed True X-Mouse Gizmo for Windows. This provides focus under mouse, middle click paste after select (not perfect, but it works), right click to push to bottom the window.

Second I had to have a virtual desktop, so I installed Microsoft's Virtual Desktop Manager from the PowerToys page. I tried another virtual desktop manager before using MSVDM, but I found it too clumsy so I switched to MSVDM which I knew from way back when I used Windows the last time. Good, now I can have my applications organised the way I am used to.

UPDATE: I gave up on MSVDM in favour of Virtual Dimension since I wasn't able to send a particular window to the intended desktop unless I had in the taskbar all apps visible (Shared Desktop option). I might try other suggestions (Virtual Dimension does not have a way to send a window directly to a specific desktop, but just to the neighbours of the current one.)

Third, I had to make Caps Lock work as Ctrl. I just can't go back to an inferior setup. I found information on this page and ended up at this page from where I got a zip file with various registry keys which allow the deactivation of caps, or turning it into another Ctrl.

Fourth, I am used to write with diacritics in Romanian with the secondary layout of the standard (SR 13392:2004), so I rushed to Cristian Secară's page for the keyboard driver since on XP the Romanian layout is retarded (some history in which some arbitrary German guy decided y and z had to be switched on Romanian keyboards and some other similarly weird stuff). Since the installation, my keyboard behaves according to this layout:

Things started to look well, but I soon was reminded that Outlook is an idiotic mailer since it doesn't require a confirmation on send, not even if you didn't set a subject. And this is problematic since sending the mail is done via Alt+S, so if the current layer is NOT Romanian, when I want to type „ș” (s with a comma below), a fairly common character in Romanian words, you end up looking like an idiot on the recipient side since they receive an incomplete mail. Remember, no confirmation AND no default spell checking before send. Yay!

At my second such accidental mail sending (of which the last two were sent to the same person), I decided to see if this can't be fixed. I initially looked for changing the short cut, but I couldn't find it (I might be inept at finding things in Windows, remember, I haven't touched Windows systems in the last 5 years) but I found another workaround and decided it's good enough to share with other people that might hit the problem.

Just setup a delay rule following these steps.
1. Go to Tools....Rules Wizard
2. Click 'New' Rule
3. Select "Check messages after sending"
4. Click Next on "Which conditions you want to Check?" dialog.
5. Press yes to "This Rule will be applied to every message" message box
6. In the "What do you want to do with message?" dialog, Select "Defer delivery by a number of minutes"
7. Select your favourite number of minutes.... I usually select 2 mins.
8. Select Finish. and close the Rules Wizard.

Now everytime you send an email it will sit in your outbox
for specified number of minutes. If you ever wanted to change it, delete it etc, You have sufficient time to do it :)

I used 3 minutes for the delay. At least now I can prevent looking retarded in front of people... more than necessary :D .

Oh, and Windows' clock display is retarded. It shows, by default, the hour and minutes, but there's no way to change that in a sane way. If you want the date, you must hover over the clock and it shows it, but the day of week is missing. Great job! You can see that information, too, but you have to drag the toolbar to be 2 or even 3 rows high (here it requires 2, but I've seen people saying they needed 3) to get that information, too. Great! One has to choose between wasting desktop real estate and having access to useful information. Or you could install an independent application for the clock... retarded. I am not making this shit up.

I hope this helped.

Upgrade from lenny to squeeze - first impressions

2011-02-09T21:52:00.005+02:00

Update: I reported the deluge issues and added a new problem about the lack of click on tapping on the touchpad.

I know that installation reports and upgrade reports need to be submitted to the BTS, but I just want to point out some issues for people that might hit the same issue on upgrade from lenny to squeeze.

But before that I must say I like the new Debian site(s) look.

Issue number one: When upgrading from lenny's deluge to squeeze's deluge, the new version of the app is quite different from the prevoious version. Here are some things to take into account:

when starting for the first time the new version it will take ages to check (and probably recalculate some checksums); make sure you don't mind the I/O activity when you start it; a torrent will not be available until this check is done
the new version relies on a client-server model which is disabled if you use the "classic mode" (Edit->Preferences->Interface)
some features available in the old version are not available in the new version (e.g.: graph for traffic and embedded search function)
some features are availbale as modules, but there are just a few modules
when starting the graphical interface in the new mode, don't use the "Start daemon" button, use the "Connect" button. If you start the daemon via the "Start daemon" button the "Connect" button will become "Disconnect" although the client is NOT connected. Using the "Connect" button directly solves the problem.
There is an ugly side panel (on the left side) which, IMHO has no real function or use, except filtering in the view the active downloads or similar things
when choosing the place to save a torrent and trying to set that place as the default location, deluge will not remember that setting
closing now (with the daemon option) the app will close just the client, but the server/daemon will remain in the background, unless is explicitly closed (there is a dedicated menu entry)

Issue number 2: I seem to experience some weird glyph/graphic area reshuffling in GNOME (maybe X?) after recovering from hibernate. With a total (according to my current sloppy counting) 5 resumes, things get back to normal, but I suspect the next hibernate-resume cycle will restart the glyph reshuffling cycle.

By glyph/graphic area reshuffling I mean alterations of the shapes of the glyphs (and some areas on the background picture) in such a manner that it seems that within a set of 8/16/N (?) lines are shifted/rotated sideways with some undefined and different ammount each, but in a reproducible manner ("b" will always be doodled in the same way, no matter if is in the word "be" or if is in the word "absurd".

I'll try to provide some picture in the bug report, once I report this issue in BTS.

Update: I reported this in Debian's BTS and upstream (with screenshots, too). I am not convinced the problem is in the kernel since I tried an old kernel and saw the same issue. I suspect X is at fault.

Issue number 3: This is more like a convenience issue. In the past I was using "hibernate" with uswsusp which I understand is now broken beyond repair and replaced by pm-utils. The thing I miss in the hibernate process now is the ability to abort the hibernation process as it was possible in lenny's uswsusp by pressing the backspace key during the storing of the state on disk phase.

Issue number 4: The upgrade process was quite tedious because once I tried upgrading aptitude, python2.6 was pulled in and almost all apps ended up needing upgrading due to the chaining of necessary package upgrades.

Issue number 5: For some weird reason pulseaudio was initially installed making playback of any audio impossible (the apps wanting to emit noises would just freeze but they were TERM-inatable) and later I've seen a default null audio sink was defined for me. Killing pulseaudio and removing the ~/.pulse directory fixed the issue (but I should probably see why pulseaudio didn't work properly in the first place because I suspect the problem will reappear at the next restart - I usually use hibernate).

Issue number 6: Tapping the touchpad no longer results in a click. Maybe some packages got removed? And, no, it is the same when I remove the external mouse, so it is not because of some smart behaviour of that sort.

Otherwise I am quite satisfied with the result of the upgrade. A huge "thank you" to all people involved in the development of squeeze.

Picking up the pieces

2011-01-19T20:15:00.007+02:00

Update: After trying KiBi's suggestion to take advantage of this information, I looked for more info on the issue and found this conversation. A git upgrade to the backported git 1:1.7.1-1.1~bpo50+1 version, and git svn rebase started pulling the right stuff in. Yes, I left the svn-remote.svn.rewriteRoot stuff set to the old value and the svn-remote.svn.url to the new value.

Keywords:

Unable to determine upstream SVN information from working tree history

when running git svn reabase

As I said yesterday, I am going to come back to being active in Debian.

I remember looking a little at my page on the Debian Wiki and it was clear that it was stale. (I sometimes find it amusing how I presented myself „my name is Eddy Petrisor”.) For some reason now the wiki seems to be down.

Two days ago I tried to get the Wormux/Warmux upstream source but git svn appears not to like the rename although I even modified the .git/config and .git/svn/.metadata, but it still wasn't satisfied and answered in a bad mood with this message (after a long waiting period):

$ git svn rebase
Unable to determine upstream SVN information from working tree history

And, yes, I am aware of the compromise and I changed my password for the project on gna.org.

I guess is better if I try to take a look at the RC bugs for the moment.

Back to coding and similar stuff soon

2011-01-19T00:39:00.003+02:00

There has been a quite long hiatus in my Debian activity, first due to my involvement in OpenStreeMap and later due to some personal reasons. This has left the packages I was responsible for basically without a maintainer, even in the case of the game packages which should have been taken care by the Debian Games Team. Sadly, it seems the principle „there are other people which can get involved” was at work in this case.

The good news is that I foresee a period when I will be able to get involved again in Debian work, although I don't know yet how long will it take to start and how long will it last.

The first thing on the agenda should be the Womux - Warmux rename and packaging the latest version of the game.

And yes, currently I am totally clueless about the state of squeeze release and the RC bug count. If I get fast enough back in the Debian work wagon, I'll probably try to help fix a couple of RC bugs here and there.

Back after the operation

2010-12-09T10:57:00.003+02:00

As I said more than a week ago I was about to undergo an operation.

Now, 10 days after the operation I must say I am still not 100% recovered and I experience a weird sensation as if the nose is way too empty, especially the left nostril. During this period since the operation I have been experiencing head aches, and an almost continuous sensation of an empty left maxilar sinus, the side on which the cyst was before. This sensation is amplified after a nose blow or after the regular nose post-op cleanings.

I hope this is not Empty Nose Syndrome.

This was a ton of fun

2010-11-23T02:20:00.002+02:00

This past saturday I passed by this man in the park. He was calling and feeding some squirrels.

He was kind enough to give me some walnuts to call the squirrels myself. He did this without even me asking.

It was such a wonderful experience for me, especially since the last squirrel gently touched my index finger while trying to get the walnut from my hand. Its paw was so cold and it felt very smooth and gentile.

I don't know when, but I will definitely go with a bag of walnuts of my own and spend some time there.

An operation is due

2010-11-16T21:59:00.003+02:00

I have been experiencing pains and discomfort for some time now due to a cyst inside one of my left sinuses. Next week I am scheduled for an operation to remove it. After that I will have another operation in order to reduce (but hopefully eliminate snoring).

I am a little scared. I am especially scared about the possibility the anestesic would numb me but not turn me unconcious of the pain.

HP All-in-one models - the way to extort money

2010-10-31T19:23:00.003+02:00

Dear HP,

I bought a HP Photosmart C5380 All-inOne multifunctional unit. It is supposed to be a printer, a scanner and a copier, being able to print on paper, CDs, DVDs and photopaper.

First of all I dislike the way you force me to buy new ink cartridges even if there is still ink in the current cartride. I hope somebody reverse-engineers as soon as possible your 364/364XL cartridge chips so I can use my printer at a price lower than that necessary for a tank fill for my car!

Second, even if one of my cartridges is „missing or defective”, the previous one, the empty one which the current one replaced, is definetly OK, so fuck you and your money extrosion schemes.

Third, and the reason for this rant, is that even if ALL the cartridges are empty, I should be able TO USE THE FUCKING SCANNER FUNCTION, since it doesn't depend on the fucking supposedly missing ink! But I can't because you decided that scanning probably needs ink, otherwise I don't understand why would you block the functioning of the whole unit because of some presumed missing ink issue.

I should probably return this device and ask my money back because of this and when they deny this to make a huge scandal about it.

So, HP, FUCK YOU, you well dressed money extortionists!

Under the weather...

2010-10-07T20:10:00.001+03:00

I've been having a cold for a week now. Horrible. My plans of jogging regularly have been messed with by this inconvenience. I hate caughing.

Fixing a bookmark corruption in Iceweasel/Firefox

2010-09-13T01:51:00.005+03:00

At some point in the past my bookmarks broke in such a way that I wasn't able anymore to alter in any way the bookmarks, deletions, additions, reorganisation, nothing worked.

Way before this event I set up a git repo in my .mozilla directory and committed everything in the directory (except obvious cache files and such) in the repo. I didn't make a cronjob with this since I didn't thought of a proper way to make sure the browser wasn't started (the data might have been inconsistent at commit time), and, since most of the time I have the browser started, it seemed rather useless to try to automate for a very, very small window of time when the browser data would be in a consistent state. As a consequence, I did occasional manual commits in the git repo.

When the bookmarks issue appeared I realised that my last git commit was so old that it didn't made any sense to try to restore since I would have had lost bookmarks, passwords and plugins. So I made a checkpoint commit os the broken profile and resorted to all sorts of manual attempts at fixing the issue, but all my efforts of playing with the bookmarks.* files proved to be useless.

I concluded that icewesel/firefox 3.5.x was using some other mechanism and decided to dig into the issue at some latter time when time allowed me to analyse and fix it. Today was that day.

I began by creating a backup for the bookmarks via the Bookmarks Manager export function. After a hickup, it managed to save a proper bookmarks.html file. I tried to import that file, but the breakage remained.

Then I decided I should prepare for the worst, installed an addon which allowed me to save all stored passwords and created a new account (started firefox from the command line with 'firefox -ProfileManager') with the intention to transplant files from the old files into the new one. Short after that I realised that it would be smarter to commit the new profile, too, import the bookmarks from the backup file and replace the touched files back into the old profile.

After the import and closing the browser, git informed me that the modified files were:

XPC.mfasl
XUL.mfasl
cookies.sqlite
localstore.rdf
places.sqlite
pluginreg.dat
urlclassifier3.sqlite

At this point the modification of the binary .mfasl files looked very ugly to me, but I had a hunch that the only relevant file to my problem was the places.sqlite file and I went on to check the contents of the file with sqlitebrowser. After inspecting also the urlclassifier3.sqlite file (whose contents were unreadable), I decided to give it a try at simply placing the places.sqlite file in the old profile and see if the problem would be fixed that way. After all, I had the whole profile's state in git so any breakage could have been undone easily.

I started firefox using the old profile and the problem was fixed. Yay!

Now I have my bookmarks back and a suggestion for the mozilla people: please don't keep useless files like bookmarks.html in the profile once they become outdated, they are misleading.

P.S.: I still have to think of a way to make automated sane commits. Maybe I'll try to make an iceweasel/firefox addon. This could be a nice idea since I could learn something new, too.

[content:lang:ro] I wrote to my representative

2010-08-25T16:03:00.010+03:00

This post concerns Romanian politics, internal affairs and improper direction of public funding for new hideous churches in spite of education, culture, health, technic development and old monuments. Thus I will write this in Romanian. Curious foreigners can try to read the text via Google's translation.

Din cauză că suntem în secolul XXI și consider că e o prostie imensă să băgăm bani în biserici în detrimentul educației, culturii, sănătății, dezvoltării tehnice și a vechilor monumente, iar politicul din România pare dornic să dea bani cultelor, am ajuns la concluzia că este cazul să-i scriu reprezntantului meu (teoretic) în Parlament, Deputatul Florin Iordache. Am aflat de ce colegiu aparțin uitându-mă aici și apoi în lista oficială cu deputații.

I-am trimis textul de mai jos:

Mă numesc Petrișor Eddy și sunt unul dintre cei pe care îi reprezentați în Parlamentul României. Este pentru prima dată când scriu unui parlamentar care mă reprezintă în conducerea statului român și o fac pentru a-mi exprima în mod clar și răspicat ideile și opinia în ceea ce privește subiectul pe care îl voi discuta mai jos. Am 30 de ani, sunt programator, am muncit și mi-am plătit taxele de când am fost angajat, din anul 4 de facultate până în prezent, adică de vreo 6-7 ani. Nu, acest mesaj nu este un strigăt de ajutor, nu aștept pomeni, nu am milogit niciodată, mereu am muncit deși văd că pentru unii parazitismul fiscal a devenit un mod de viață. Din acest motiv sunt revoltat.

Sunt revoltat pentru că:
- deși plătesc taxe și impozite care ajung la peste 60% din venitul brut, nu primesc în schimb nici un fel de servicii, nici un fel de infrastructură, nici un fel de respect, nici un fel de eficiență
- deși lucrez de ceva timp, am observat că pe unde am lucrat competența și performața erau o necesitate; în aparatul de stat nu este cazul
- deși sunt destui ca mine care plătesc taxe și impozite, vocile noastre sunt ignorate și banii noștri sunt aruncați pe fereastră de cei ce administrează fondurile colectate.

Domnule deputat sunt revoltat că de 15 ani de zile dispar în medie aproximativ 4 școli zilnic și apare, tot în medie, o biserică la fiecare 2 zile, iar asta se întâmplă cu accepțiunea aparatului politic. Spitalul din Caracal, ca orice alt spital din România, e prost dotat, nu există personal suficient, nu are fonduri pentru medicație pentru pacienți, pe scurt, este un dezastru care e pe cale să se întâmple. Și cu toate astea, banii se duc spre biserici. Se fac donații de școli și terenuri către biserică, în mod ilegal și abuziv chiar în județul Olt.

Ultima perioadă în care religia a condus lumea s-a numit Evul Mediu și cred că orice om care a trăit măcar 5 ani în secolul XXI poate să observe că nu religia ne-a adus mari beneficii, ci știința și tehnologia. În Evul Mediu „tratamentul” se făcea prin „sângerări”, „tăieri sub limbă”, „scoaterea argintului viu” și tot felul de alte superstiții fără nici un efect pozitiv sau chair cu efecte negative.

Între timp umanitatea a progresat și am descoperit medicina, curentul electric, am explorat universul, am aterizat pe Lună, am pus zeci de sateliți artificiali pe orbită, am aflat foarte multe despre univers și lumea care ne înconjoară, am inventat noi materiale (plasticul, pânzele impermeabile, kevlarul), am investigat lumea fără idei preconcepute după metoda științifică, iar lucrul acesta ne-a îmbunătățit viața în toate aspectele ei. Sperantă de viață a crescut de la aproximativ 30-40 de ani în Evul Mediu, la 70-80 de ani în prezent, totul datorită științei aplicate. Datorită tehnologiei și științei pot să vă scriu aceste cuvinte și știu că vor ajunge la dumneavoastră, nu datorită unor incantații sau ritualuri, nu datorită telepatiei, deși mediul ăsta de transmisie se apropie foarte mult de ceea ce definește ca fiind telepatie :-) . Cu toate astea, unii consideră că religia trebuie finanțată pentru că e religie, nici măcar pentru că ar avea programe sociale, contribuții cuantificabile reale, nu, doar pentru că este religie.

Am citit foarte multe articole din presă, articole bine documentate, și am senzația că trăiesc într-o lume inconștientă când văd cum banii care ar trebui să ajungă în drumuri, școli, spitale, cercetare, medicamente, programe sociale cu real impact, ajung în noi și noi biserici de beton în timp ce monumentele istorice, bisericile din lemn, mănăstirile cu adevărat valoroase sunt lăsate în paragină. Asist cu o senzație de dezgust continuu la felul în care ne batem joc de cei ce ne salvează viețile, medicii, de cei ce ar trebui să ne facă educația, profesorii, de cei ce ne sting casele dacă iau foc, pompierii, și, de felul în care ridicăm misticismul religios la rang de virtute. Este de-a dreptul jignitor și aberant ca alfabetizarea științifică în secolul XXI să fie atât de joasă încât să avem 42% din populație care cred că Terra este centrul universului, să avem oameni care cred că astrologia este științifică, să NU avem nici măcar o universitate în top 500 în lume, este jignitor să fim în permanență în coada tuturor clasamentelor pozitive și în fruntea tuturor celor negative.

Recent money.ro a publicat un articol în care esitma foarte conservator că averea Bisericii Ortodoxe Române se învârte la peste 3 miliarde de euro, are scutiri de impozite, are zeci de afaceri și cu toate acestea, statul continuă să scutească cultele de impozite, ba chiar le oferă bani într-una. La o asemenea avere nu cred că mai poate fi vorba de necesitatea finanțării de către stat. Oamenii pot decide să doneze direct către bisericile lor bani și nici nu mai implică pierderile inerente ce apar datorită administrării fondurilor de către stat.

Statul nu este un organ aparte, statul trebuie să muncească pentru mine, cetățeanul, iar eu sunt împotriva acestui tip de batjocorire și înapoiere voluntară a noastră îndreptată împotriva noastră. Alexandru Ioan Cuza a secularizat averile mănăstirilor închinate celor de la muntele Athos, deci unor terți extreni țării, așa cum aflăm din scrierile istoricului A.D. Xenopol, deci nu există nici o obligație a statului să finanțeze o instituție anacronistică:

A.D. Xenopol „Domnia lui Cuza Vodă Vol.I”, „CAP. VIII. AI doile minister Cogalniceanu Secularizarea”, pagina 291:
«Nu vom atinge de cît împrejurările care au condus la redobîndirea averilor, ajunse în stăpânirea călugărilor străini, atingînd chestiunea închinărei mănăstirilor pănîntene către acele din Răsărit, numai întru cît va fi de nevoie, spre a înțalege măsura secularizărei însuși.»

Din aceste motive și multe altele, deoarece sunteți și reprezentantul meu în Parlamentul României, vă cer ca să votați pentru proiectul de lege inițiat de domnul Prigoană în ceea ce privește tăierea finanțării personalui clerical de către stat și cât și a altor legi care ar putea duce la eliminarea privilegiilor pe care le au cultele, în condițiile în care singurul motiv real și corect pentru care o entitate ar putea beneficia de scutiri de taxe sau privilegii fiscale sunt doar cele ce nu urmăresc interesul financiar și, totodată, au un impact social cuantificabil în mod clar.

Dacă doriți, aș fi bucuros să vă răspund la eventualele întrebări sau neclarități în ceea ce am scris, dacă este nevoie.

Vă mulțumesc anticipat!

L-am trimis joi, încă n-am primit răspuns de nici un fel. Pasul doi e să sun. Măcar să înnebunească dacă tot sunt nesimțiți. Așa că, puteți afla de ce colegiu aparțineți și apoi puteți identifica pe cel/cea ce vă reprezintă în Parlament. Scrieți-le, sunați-i, a venit momentul măcar să se enerveze, dacă nu să-și facă măcar o poleială de datorie.

OpenLDAP and Active Directory - authentication issues

2010-08-19T16:49:00.003+03:00

At some point I had to debug an issue with some code I worked on in the past. It was using OpenLDAP to connect to an Active Directory server to get some information. At some point I got a report that the authentication failed with an ugly error.

Username is stored. Authenticating as domain\user.
Enter password:
ldap_search_ext: Operations error (1)
additional info: 00000000: LdapErr: DSID-0C090627, comment: In order to perform this operation a successful bind must be completed on the connection., data 0, vece

I looked for the meaning of that error and after some staring at different possible explanations, I ended up on a page dealing with some python-ldap code. My code was in C, but it was clear it was the underlying library issuing the error message, so I looked at what it said:

Normally, this error indicates that you're attempting to bind anonymously, which Active Directory (sensibly) doesn't allow by default. We were supplying credentials to bind, though, and changing the base DN on the search to a sub-OU was all that was necessary to get the search to work. It turns out that python-ldap was binding anonymously, so the error was only sort of a red herring.

This was really strange because the authentication was actually done, as it was obvious from the messages and the traffic (analyzed with wireshark). Later in that post there were some hints that indicated that parts of the data might be stored on another server and the suggested fix was to instruct the library not to try chase referrals.

ldap.set_option(ldap.OPT_REFERRALS, 0)

I tried to see what was going on with our server using a ldapsearch command and at the end of the output there were some referrals specified.

[..]
# search reference
# refldap://ForestDnsZones.domeniu.ro/DC=ForestDnsZones,DC=domeniu,DC=ro

# search reference
# refldap://DomainDnsZones.domeniu.ro/DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=domeniu,DC=ro

# search reference
# refldap://domeniu.ro/CN=Configuration,DC=domeniu,DC=ro

# search result

# numResponses: 5
# numEntries: 1
# numReferences: 3

Bingo! So, after looking at the man page, I added this bit of code:

+ /* do not chase referrals */
+ if (ldap_set_option (ld,LDAP_OPT_REFERRALS,LDAP_OPT_OFF)!=LDAP_SUCCESS) {
+  ldap_perror(ld,"ldap_set_option");
+  return NULL;
+ }
+

And then it worked. I hope this helps others that might be in the same situation as I was.

How to: git push via ssh; alternative users on the same host

2010-02-26T04:45:00.007+02:00

Let's assume you're part of a project X that uses git for version control on a server host.it. Due to historical reasons your login on machine host.it is 'eddyp'. You're also part of another project Y which is hosted on server host.me. In this project you have always used 'eddy' as your ssh login for the git push.

Now, project Y decides to change hosting and moves the repo on server host.it. Since the logins were also migrated, now you have login 'eddyp' for project X and login 'eddy' for project B.

You changed the URI in remote.origin.url, but you are faced with this error when pushing from project Y to server host.it:

Counting objects: 7, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done.
Writing objects: 100% (4/4), 476 bytes, done.
Total 4 (delta 2), reused 0 (delta 0)
error: unable to create temporary sha1 filename ./objects/56: Permission denied

fatal: failed to write object
error: unpack failed: unpacker exited with error code

The problem is that you are probably trying to login with 'eddyp' on server host.it from project Y since you ~/.ssh/config contains a 'user eddyp' clause for host host.it.

You can avoid this problem and identify to server host.it with different logins depending on the project via a small nice trick using fake hostnames in ~/.ssh/config:

Host eddyp.host.com
User eddyp
Hostname host.it

Host eddy.host.com
User eddy
Hostname host.it

And setting the remote.origin.url setting accordingly in the repo for project Y and project X:

eddy@projx $ git config remote.origin.url ssh://eddyp.host.it/srv/git/projx.git

eddy@projy $ git config remote.origin.url ssh://eddy.host.it/srv/git/projy.git

Busy, busy, busy and lazy me

2010-01-15T13:01:00.005+02:00

It has been quite some time since my last post. I have been involved in quite a few things and the last part of 2009 which left no time for anything else. At the begining of 2010, just to set things on a good tone from the new year, I went on a snowboarding vacation to Austria to Kitzbühel.

Presidential campaign and pure irrationality in Romania

I got involved in Remus Cernea's presidential campaign, which was quite a success, considering the media blockade he was subject to. Unfortunately, Romanians seem to more and more indoctrinated, idiotic and gullible, probably thanks to newer generations that come through public schools after 12 years of religious indctrination and media promoting stupidity, non-values, ignorance and so on.

The more I live in this country, the more I realize how I don't feel like fitting in, because I refuse to be a mindless sheep, a moron, listening to anything the news at 5 say (those living in Romania know what I mean). I obstinately form my own ideas and question everything.

Significant event in my life

In September 2009 a life-turning event took place in my life - don't worry, is nothing bad, is pure good - and my eyes opened entirely. I have bacame a sponge trying to know more and more and this has helped me see the world with new eyes, from a new perspective, without lies or preconceptions.

Now I am thingking freely.

I am sorry for not going into details, but I have my reasons. Those who have the eyes and brains to understand what I am talking about, surely have understood by now what has happened to me ;-) .

Snowboarding vacation

At the begining of this year I went with my wife and some friends to Austria for a vacation. Kitzbühel's slopes and conditions were very good (bad points were only due to a couple of areas where snowboarders had to open at least one binding).

View Larger Map

Weather was good and snow was icy only late in the afternoon. I was quite suprised to see stores close at 6pm, but overall, it was a well deserved vacation and I enjoyed it very much. My wife's skills on the board got better, although the third day some beginner skyer broke one of the bindings of my wife's snowboard and she had to use a rental instead. The rental was a quite new Burton board and Otilia got used to it and liked to the extent that we decided the next board we buy (for either of us) will be a Burton.

Did it worth it to drive 1500 km (roughly 1000 miles for the metric system challenged people :-P) for this vacation? Definitely! Did I enjoy the drive? Well, let's just say that the 950km from Kitzbühel to the Romanian border were made in approximately the same time it took us to make the last 550km to Bucharest, while 110km of those last were on the A1 "highway".

I'll probably put some photos from my vacation somewhere on the intenets, but don't hold your breath :-P .

Instead of conclusions

I know I promissed a lot of people to take care of some things like Wormux and some kernel bug debugging and I didn't kept my promise. I appologise, yet I don't expect anyone to accept my appologies. I am still unsure when I'll get back to that. I still care for Debian, yet the day has only 24 hours and I have to use at least 7 of those on sleep.

Vote at the presidential elections!

2009-11-21T20:32:00.002+02:00

Yesterday was the last day of presidential campaign, the most poisonous campaign since 1989, when the communist rule has fallen ... or so says history.

This campaign period was one of firsts of all kinds, mostly bad.

This is the first presidential campaign:

when, as a voter, one could clearly see polls were doctored massively as a means to influence the voters
when the internet was crucial and almost the only means of spreading ideas for the campaign of a candidate, Remus Cernea
in which an important internet news site, hotnews.ro, decided not to publish polls anymore
when the public television didn't perform its duty to organise a debate with all the candidates at the same time
when candidates were separated in two groups: "insignificant candidates" and "important candidates"
when some candidates refused to participate in public debates, except on their own terms, as if it was a service done by them to others
when candidates accused each other of being afraid to participate in face to face debates, while it was clear that this was true for many
when a candidate, Remus Cernea, was kicked out of a debate where he was previously invited, without being given a reason
when journalists' investigations found that all major parties had during the last year donations from at least 100 politicians with a declared income lower or identical to the donated sums totalling up to 91 millions of new lei (RON) (approximately 22 million euros)
when we have proof directly from frauders that all major parties prepared to fraud the elections via electoral tourism, electoral bribes and vote purchase
when a referendum was used as a electoral means by one of the candidates
when opponents twisted and re-twisted others' electoral message
when an illegitimate organisation organised a debate with only the first three candidates
when it was announced that special polling stations were made to target people voting away from home, not allowing such voting on special lists in regular polling stations; also the special polling stations will be, for the first time, monitored via webcams which will record the voters when they insert the bulletin
when some candidates clearly stole ideas from others mid-campaign
when I decided I am going to vote out of conviction and cast a positive vote for Remus Cernea

This is the first time I realise how important it is for everybody to go and cast a vote for the candidate they prefer to dilute the effects of the frauds.

Go and vote for the candidate you agree the most!

Don't cast a "useful vote", otherwise you will disservice your prefered candidate in three ways:

you're strentghning one of the adversaries
your prefered candidate will be in a worse position to negotiate with others the implementation of some of the points on his platform in case he doesn't win
you're canceling one of the votes somebody did vote for the one you prefer

Don't forget, tomorrow, the 22nd of November spare some 15-30 minutes and vote for the person that represents you most! Don't follow the flock, vote sincerely!

Vote, because your vote counts! Otherwise why would they bother to convince you to vote for them?

Presidential debate

2009-11-14T13:14:00.004+02:00

I can't believe this happened. It seems the important presidential candidates have agreed for a face to face debate. I am leaning to thinking that the questions are prepared in advance, but that's better than no debate.

The debate will take place today, 14th of November at 15:00, but I am unsure if this will be broadcasted live since is not clear from the article.

Mircea Geoană challenged Traian Băsescu to the debate, the later accepted but considered normal the liberal candidate should be there. Crin Antonescu accepted the challenge, too. Remus Cernea confirmed his presence, too. The funny thing is that Mircea Geoană will not participate.

So, I hope some television will broadcast this live at 15:00.

This Sunday, already 5 years...

2009-11-13T16:34:00.008+02:00

This Sunday, we celebrate already 5 years since the initiation of the successful „Save Carol Park” civic action. Back then, the park and the mausoleum were in danger of being destroyed to make room for a cathedral, in spite of special status of the park, the already too low green spaces per capita ratio, in spite of the legal status and in spite of public opposition.

Nice to see it will be celebrated Sunday, 15th at 13:00 at Arenele Romane, and regular people being invited there (linked page in Romanian):

http://remuscernea.ro/2009/11/sarbatorim-5-ani-de-la-salvarea-parcului-carol/

I'll certainly be there!

View Larger Map

Know your rights!

2009-11-04T01:10:00.021+02:00

It is only a few days since my last post about the referendum which is due to happen on the same day as the Presidential elections, but I am forced to make another post because there are lots of incorrect views on the subject.

So let's try take the issues one by one and see what is the problem with every one of them, using reason and the information we have available from more mature democracies than Romania's.

What's the referendum about

The referendum, in this case, is about two issues:

reducing the number of representatives (deputies and senators)
transforming the Parliament from a two-chamber Parliament into a one chamber Parliament

Information on the subject

For an election such as the referendum (basically asking the population on a subject of national importance) every citizen has the right to be correctly informed about the options of the referendum, what each implies, what are the pros and cons for every option, what problems does the referendum tries to resolve.

There is no information on the subject, no videos, no spots, no fliers, nothing, just biased posters (I'll explain later).

Debate on the subject

In order to have a correct information, a clear public debate which should happen, without the pressure of a presidential campaign at the same time as the debate.

Well, we have no debate, so I guess there is no problem of overlapping (sad, but true), but on the other hand, there is no information on the subject.

Analysis of the options

Now let's analyse the two proposed measures in opposition to the current situation.

reducing the number of representatives

pros

reducing costs
minorities have a bigger influence (they can defend their rights - see comments for explanations)

cons

easier to corrupt (obtaining a corrupt 5% in a 300 seats parliament is easier than in a 500 seats parliament)
minorities have a bigger influence (they are disproportionally powerful, in regard to the population they represent - see comments)
absence of a representative with a big vote power could allow passing an abusive law (to pass a regular law there is a need of a majority relative to the number of present representatives, not the total number), but, in a numerous parliament, the absence of a person isn't that risky (other colleagues would be present to stop the abusive initiative)

one chamber instead of two

pros

faster processing of decisions
less bureaucratic

cons

in the current system there can be a passive vote (law passes silently if not discussed) which has just one occasion to be caught, while in the current system silent passing is allowed only in one of the chambers, but needs to be discussed in the other
there is a chance that one chamber might amend/catch abusive initiatives with "two chambers", but with "one chamber" there is one chance only
more prone to power abuse

So, there are pros and cons for all solutions, but now we can make an informed decision and know the risks for each option.

This shouldn't have been taken in haste without any public debate.

I don't want to influence anyone's vote, so I'll abstain from telling my options.

The president has the right to associate his image with one of the options.

OK, let's analyse that.

The law doesn't explicitly forbids this, but there are some recommendations from Venice on fair elections (sorry, I couldn't find the link) which say that in a vote such as the presidential elections there shouldn't be an unfair advantage for one of the candidates. Why is that relevant? Because the current president actually uses the referendum as his campaign and he's speculating people's innate hatred for political figures.

His election material is only comprised of virulent attacks at the representatives or calls to the population to vote in favour of both questions.

Why is that unfair? Because the current president is using his current position (president) as launch ramp for his campaign as a candidate.

OTOH, if the seal of the presidency was used instead his face, the problem wouldn't have been that bad.

Organisational issues

There were various rumours about how the voting will take place. Here is a list of things I heard:

there will be a single list for both presidential elections and referendum and there will be a single column for signature to confirm your presence at vote
there will be one paper, but two columns for signatures
no matter what the list looks like, you'll be given both sets of ballots, but you can annul the one you don't want to vote on

All the variants above are incorrect from a democratic pov, but to different degrees:

a single signature covering for either of the vaiants "presidential vote only", "refrendum only", "both" asks for trouble because unused ballots in "only" variants might be added later to the valid votes as if they were expressed by voters; since there is no distinct count for each of the ballots to confront that with signatures, before the counting period one could use unused ballots and vote for you on the issue you didn't want to express an opinion on
informing on what to do in some cases such as "only" vote is essential to prevent fraud; e.g.: strike through the cell corresponding to the the election you don't want to express a vote on, instead of signing
giving the ballot unconditionally to everybody, leaving you to decide to annul it or not is abusive, because vote is not compulsory in Romania; more than that, this artificial presence burst (even with void votes) could end up validating the referendum since a 50%+1 presence is needed to pass Constitution modification, as we have here

So, recap:

favours fraud by allowing inside people to obtain untraceable/unaccounted ballots
preventing fraud isn't of any concern, it seems (and could be achieved)
forced voting might lead to validation of the referendum because the voting presence is sufficient, even if there are many annuled ballots

Vote validation and artificial voter presence

Since validation of a referendum on the changes on the constitution depends on sufficient voter presence (there is some mandatory threshold, but I can't find references now), it is in the interest of people wanting to promote the changes to mobilize people to vote.

By different measures the vote presence at the referendum is artificially increased raising the risk of validation, when people, in fact, wouldn't want to validate it and would, to express neutrality, will be be forced to annul the ballot.

Also, a high presence in the referendum might increase the number of voters for presidency, and the people mobilized this way may have a high chance to be biased in favour of the current president because he associates himself with the violent message against the representatives.

What does it take to implement, if referendum passes

If the referendum passes, the changes aren't immediate. The proposed changes are discussed in the Parliament and a final proposal for the constitution changes is made; after approval of the proposals by the Parliament, the ball goes back to population for final approval.

This means it will take a while to see a changed parliament.

Conclusions

Romania is not a true democracy yet and there are areas where individuals should know what their rights are and not let authorities fool them into buying any argument uncritically.

Romanians must learn their rights so they can't be manipulated whenever somebody wants to trick them into some scheme by knowingly omitting issues and creating insane situations.

Romanians, wake up, learn you have rights, form your own oppinion, as distinct individuals, then we might see a change.

Remus Cernea - direct phone intervention at Sinteza Zilei

2009-11-02T23:32:00.002+02:00

Remus Cernea called at Sinteza Zilei on Sunday, November 1st:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOzQO8mAm1Y

Referendum in November in Romania - a fair analysis

2009-10-30T01:00:00.004+02:00

Yes, is another post on politics, sorry to those expecting a technical one. I'll come back to those, as soon as I get back to such activities :-) .

For Romanians which want a clearer picture of the referendum about to happen in Romania on the same day as the Presidential elections, which are the theoretical and practical implications of the referendum, take a look at this short and clear analysis:

http://packardb.blogspot.com/2009/10/referendum-noiembrie-2009.html