• Search for:

• Archives

  Select Month November 2011  (1) September 2011  (1) July 2011  (2) June 2011  (2) May 2011  (2) March 2011  (1) November 2010  (2) August 2010  (1) July 2010  (1) June 2010  (2) April 2010  (2) March 2010  (1) February 2010  (1) January 2010  (2) December 2009  (2) November 2009  (2) June 2009  (1) May 2009  (3) February 2009  (1) January 2009  (1) December 2008  (2) November 2008  (1) October 2008  (1) September 2008  (1) August 2008  (1) July 2008  (2) June 2008  (1) May 2008  (2) April 2008  (2) March 2008  (3) February 2008  (1) January 2008  (2) December 2007  (4) November 2007  (2) October 2007  (3) August 2007  (3) July 2007  (2) June 2007  (4) May 2007  (2) April 2007  (2) February 2007  (5) January 2007  (3) December 2006  (9) October 2006  (5) September 2006  (4) August 2006  (1) July 2006  (5) June 2006  (2) May 2006  (12) April 2006  (21) March 2006  (8) February 2006  (3) January 2006  (5) December 2005  (1) August 2005  (1) July 2005  (2) June 2005  (1) May 2005  (2) April 2005  (3) March 2005  (2) February 2005  (3) January 2005  (1)

• Recent Comments

  • My Bookmarks » Ubuntu 12.04 Development update on First Community Appreciation Day
  • Ubuntu 12.04 Development update on First Community Appreciation Day
  • Links 1/10/2011: Firefox 7, ODF 1.2 | Techrights on Jukka Ehto is the Linux Contributor of the Year 2011 in Finland
  • Jukka Ehto is the Linux Contributor of the Year 2011 in Finland : the … | What is Linux on Jukka Ehto is the Linux Contributor of the Year 2011 in Finland
  • Ubuntu One se actualiza y llega al millón de usuarios - Siskatec on Call for operators in #ubuntu-server

• Subscribe

  
  Full Feed
  Comics-only Feed
  

• Small print

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
  
  Cartoon artwork created with Stripgenerator; dialogue copy/pasted from #ubuntu-offtopic on Freenode.
  

  ---

Today, the Ubuntu community is observing the first Community Appreciation Day, for good reason. I have never worked with a stronger community. Ever since Ubuntu was born in 2004, I have argued so much with people who disagree with me, in such a civilised manner, having a great time and eventually coming up with consensus. There are other free software communities who create wonderful stuff, but Ubuntu is unique because of its ethos or respect and mutual help. I wish to be able to serve this community for a long time still.

Thank you for these years, and may there be many more.

The Finnish Linux User Group FLUG has awarded Jukka Ehto, the IT chief of the city of Kankaanpää with the Linux Contributor of the Year Prize. Lehto managed a large virtualization and desktop project(1) in the city, using Red Hat’s virtualization technology. In the process, he shaved off about 50% of his budget and 10% of the average time to deploy a new workstation. The prize includes a 2000 euro award.

Jukka’s example is a great reminder for all of us that using your brain is allowed even in the public sector. :)

The committee also decided to give two honorary mentions. These go to Jarkko Moilanen for his great work in the Meego Network Finland community, and Hannu Martikka who has done wonderful work in advancing Linux awareness in Nokia.

Congratulations to all!

(1) I know I know, the story smells like Red Hat marketing, but I couldn’t find a better one in English quickly.

For some time already, it has been evident that #ubuntu-server needs more operators. If you are interested in joining our great team of operators, please see this wiki page for instructions and apply no later than August 5th.

Also have a look at this old post which I wrote a while ago but still has some relevant advice.

Thanks for your sacrifice :)

Today, I learned through twitter and CNET that LimeWire did not steal $75 trillion from starving artists after all. They settled with the RIAA for pocket cash worth $105 million instead. The sum is still probably big enough to stop you from copying that floppy. Or not. Who knows!

The funny thing in the CNET article was a photo of the RIAA’s victorious (I suppose) legal team exiting the honorable (I guess) United States Federal Court, lead by RIAA’s Senior Vice President of Litigation, Jennifer Pariser. Here they are, courtesy of CNET, photo blatantly stolen linked to:

I was amused by the fact that the RIAA has a litigation officer at the VP level, and wondered out loud on #ubuntu-offtopic whether or not they have an any artistic execs that high up the corporate ladder. Faithful to modern journalistic ethic, I can’t be arsed to check but instead I’ll just say: probably not. You can quote me as saying I think “the lawyers are more high than the artists in the RIAA.”

bazhang also noted a nice symbiosis between government and the Hot Air industry:

Very deep.

We need more operators in #ubuntu and #ubuntu-offtopic. If you are interested in joining our great team of operators, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IRC/IrcTeam/OperatorRequirements and apply no later than Saturday the 14th of this month.

Also have a look at http://www.siltala.net/2010/03/24/ops-teams-applications-announcement/ which I wrote a while ago but is still relevant.

Two seats are becoming available in the IRC Council, so we reached out for nominees to serve on the Council. The nomination period has ended,
but the IRCC and the Community Council are unhappy with the low number of nominees. We need more nominees, and are therefore now extending the nominations period until Friday, 2010-12-03, 23:59 UTC.

If you considered nominating yourself for an IRC Council position during the nomination period but decided against it, please reconsider. If you did not think about nominating yourself, please do so now. The election process is described on the wiki.

Here’s your chance to ensure smooth IRC governance and improve it!

I have been aware of Free Beer for years, but I have never come across it on my physical adventures, so unfortunately I have never had a chance to taste it. On the other hand, I’ve often attended cocktails and other occasions where I’ve had the chance to sip some non-free beer freely. An entry in the Free Beer blog (which in turn references an entry in Lessig’s blog) got me thinking about the free speech vs. free beer dichotomy again.

We can chuckle at the idea, as I certainly have, of Free Beer that is “free as in free speech” but not “free as in free beer”. But it is one of the best pedagogic instruments we have.

Free Beer is now at version 4.0, and everyone is invited to brew some, improve the recipe, and share their improvements with the community of beer lovers all around the world. Anyone is also free to brew Free Beer in their commercial brewery and sell it on the market as a commodity, essentially asking their customers to think not about “free beer” but “free speech”. The open source recipe is constantly improving because of the effort put in by the distributed, volunteer beer hackers, as well as because of competition between the commercial brewers in the market. I think this is easier to explain than Red Hat.

Beautiful. We have won.

Sometimes, new people /join #ubuntu-offtopic. They do! Some of them are directed from #ubuntu because they are chatting away on subjects that don’t belong to a support channel. Sometimes malicious friends tell them that #ubuntu-offtopic is lots of fun and thus trick them to /join as a practical joke. Most of the time, I suspect it’s just a simple typo in the /join command, or perhaps an elusive Pidgin bug.

Sadly, most people never read the channel topic upon /joining, which is very sad and leads to a lot of confusion. Then again, some people are so devoted that they even check the topic on #ubuntu-offtopic. Go figure! Naturally, those who are not familiar with the channel culture and do read the topic, will be very confused. For the past few months (since April at least), the #ubuntu-offtopic topic has contained the greeting, “Welcome to the new, more optimized #ubuntu-offtopic!” which has caused some nervous giggles and a lot of questions. Since #ubuntu-offtopic regulars never answer a question (at least seriously), I decided to try and take a stab at this mystery.

(Disclaimer: please do not take this as a promise of public parsing of any other parts of the topic at this or any future article. I can try for my standard, very high, consultation fee, but the gratis public service only covers this one freebie.)

Some people speculate that the “optimization” of #ubuntu-offtopic is a friendly jab at the famously efficient build process of Gentoo binaries. Others claim that it refers to the quality of conversation on the channel, very thoroughly stripped of sanity, detached of any real phenomena, and lack of requirements to coherent language. Some say it’s just a random thought added to the topic by an unstable operator on a Monday. All of these are very plausible and educated guesses.

However, my extensive empirical studies have lead me to conclude that the optimized nature of #ubuntu-offtopic refers to this ambitious vision developed by rww and mc44:

Sadly, we have not really seen this optimization effort bear fruit. Channel regulars keep blabbering pretty much as inefficiently as before, and new users almost never take the time to investigate the optimization algorithm. Instead, they are content with just having a short laugh at the topic and join the discussion about LOLcats, comparative flashlight brightness, popular music and the evils of proprietary software.

The failure of a majority of users to adopt this very efficient mode of conversation might be due to reluctance to search for suitable XKCD strips to express their point of view, and the extra work required on the receiving side of communication for checking the corresponding strip. Granted, this presents a fairly steep learning curve in the beginning, but anyone can see how highly effective our offtopic chatter would be after all the comics are memorized. Think about the reduced workload and bandwidth savings on freenode’s servers if idle chatter is conducted using the rww/mc44/xkcd protocol! These savings could be redirected for the benefit of support and development channels, and everybody wins. As a side effect, one of the greatest winners would be Randall and the XKCD web site. Think about the increase in page views!

I say, laziness is no excuse for inefficiency!

Next Page →