04 July 2009
Digital NZ launched Make It Digital last week
http://makeit.digitalnz.org/
This includes a section where public propose and vote on collections they'd like to see make digital (and it seems implied they want it open as well)
http://makeit.digitalnz.org/voting
Top of the voting at the moment is:
Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHRS)
Electoral Rolls
School Journal
Lyttelton Times, 1851-1929
The Press (Christchurch, 1861- )
Stones Directories, 1884-1955
The New Zealand Herald, 1863-
I'd be nervous about today's electoral roll being online, but the electoral role from 50 years ago would be huge benefit to researchers without the same concerns.
Many of these are private publications, but outside the 50 year copyright monopoly.
Others, such as Journals of the House of Representatives are produced by our government - by people who work for us.
Government datasets are created using taxpayer money, they belong to us, hence I want easy access to them.
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02 July 2009
01 July 2009
Enjoy: NZ Government letters show that standard procurement rules now apply to Microsoft software, and NZ may be at an IT tipping point:
http://nzoss.org.nz/news/2009/ssc-and-med-post-g2009-procurement-advice Microsoft Office, SoftMaker Office and OpenOffice are all put to the test - but ranked by compatibility with MS rather than ODF standards:
http://infoworld.com/d/applications/better-office-alternative-softmaker-office-bests-openofficeorg-445 NASA And the Japanese Trade Agency collaborate to produce the most complete terain map ever of Earth, covering 99% of it. It's free:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8126197.stm A sneak peek at what is happening to the Firefox web browser after we've all upgraded to 3.5:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/167662/beyond_firefox_35_a_sneak_peek_at_mozillas_next_browser.html And finally. A couple of interesting experiments have shown that radioactive decay is seasonal. Why? Damn fine question:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227141.400-solar-ghosts-may-haunt-earths-radioactive-atoms.html Vik :v) Diamond Age Solutions Ltd. http://diamondage.co.nz
The slashing of Adult and Community Education (ACE) funding will have a devastating impact on the ability of people to learn Sign Language in community classes, says Lynne Pillay Labour Spokesperson for Disability Issues.
“The majority of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) classes are delivered through community education and are used by parents and families of deaf children, teachers, nurses, police, and workmates. They are taught by trained NZSL tutors based on a curriculum especially developed for community classes.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2009/06/26/1245b6a21a74
http://www.guide2.co.nz/politics/news/sign-language-classes-not-affected...
http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/Business/QOA/b/9/a/49HansQ_20090625_00...
Other info on this issue:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0906/S00353.htm
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/features/2544933/Dark-times-lo...
etc... just google.
The Government announced in the 2009 Budget that ALL funding for adult education in schools (“evening classes” or “night school”) will end in December 2009. The Government regards the programmes that schools offer as mere “hobby” classes and if schools want to continue, all courses they offer will have to be “self-funded” - this will mean that the fees will increase by 50% or more at some schools and 200% or more at others, if schools decide to continue which is unlikely.
This axing of the funding will also mean that schools will no longer be able to pass on funds to local community groups who also provide classes for adults, training for volunteers and support for many of the disadvantaged in our communities. English language programmes for migrants and refugees will also disappear or will have to cost several hundred dollars more.
Night classes make such a tiny portion of the education budget (0.6%) but they are of such benefit to the community.
Refugees and migrants learn to speak English.
Parents, friends and colleagues of the Deaf learn Sign Lanuage.
New Zealanders learn foreign languages, which myself and colleagues use in business.
I learned Te Reo Maori at a night class.
Budgeting classes, something incredibly important right now, will either become far too expensive or disappear completely.
Fees at my local are currently about $80 per 16 week course - They tell me this will increase to $160 or $320 per course. I doubt they will run, as most of the students cannot afford this.
If you are concerned about the impact of these cuts, you can contact, by email or letter:
Your local MP
AnneTolley, the Minister of Education
Bill English, the Minister of Finance
Trevor Mallard or Maryann Street, Opposition Spokespeople for Education
It is FREE to write to any MP. You just have to send it to FREEPOST Parliament, PO Box 18888, Wellington.
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Mono is a free/libre/opensource implementation of C#.
C# is a programming language that came out of a closed source software company named Microsoft. - and Microsoft own patents on C#.
Thus there's a threat hanging over any free software that relies on mono/C# - what if Microsoft suddenly decides enforce their patent.
Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation have released a Why free software shouldn't depend on Mono or C#.
The problem is not unique to Mono; any free implementation of C# would raise the same issue. The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents. (See http://swpat.org and http://progfree.org.) This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger.
Let me add my voice to this - don't write programs in C#.
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30 June 2009
Other people have written and talked (in Lecture 3) about writing the perfect patch for a Free Software project. The goal there is to increase the likelihood that a patch will be accepted by the project developers. Integrating and testing patches takes time and so reducing that burden is essential when interacting with busy maintainers. Especially if they're volunteers. Here's what I try to keep in mind when preparing a patch. Use the right options to diffThese two options should always be part of your call to the diff command: - -u: use the most common patch format, unidiff.
- -p: include the name of the function that's being changed.
and this one can be useful if the output seems unnecessarily large: - -d: try hard to find a smaller set of changes.
Minimize the number of changesYou need to draw attention to the changes that you're proposing and remove all other potential distractions: - Follow the coding style of the original file. Your changes must fully blend in or they are likely to be rejected.
- Do not re-indent existing code. This will make it look like you modified every line.
- Pay attention to whitespace changes. In particular: end-of-line characters, trailing spaces and tab-versus-space differences. Use the dos2unix or unix2dos commands if you need to.
- Gratuitous refactoring of existing code. Unless the refactoring makes your change smaller or easier to understand, keep it for another patch.
Of course all of the above would be acceptable patches on their own, just not combined with other types of changes. Only one logical change at a timePatches often need to be broken up into a series of logical changes to avoid these two extremes: - the gigantic patch which adds a number of features and fixes a couple of bugs but scares everybody
- a series of interdependent patches which all relate to the same change and must all be applied together
It's a bit of a balancing act, but a good rule of thumb is: - to have one patch per feature or bug and
- to try to find the smallest (yet meaningful) change which can be applied on its own.
It's not just about the patchYour patch can be really good, but the email (or the bug tracker update) announcing it should also contain: - a good description of the problem it solves and how it solves it
- the output of diffstat to give an idea of the size of the change
29 June 2009
I've pondered for some days writing a post being an woman working with and contributing to open source software for the Down under feminists carnival - such a post would include how awesome it is to work in this great field.
Such a blog post would also include the seriously negative sexist incidents that happen from time to time. Especially the high profile ones. (They're not the norm, and they happen infrequently)
In the past when I've reported on such negative incidents on my blog (3 times) I've received email telling me to stop pointing it out. Usually it's from open source project leaders and people I do respect in the open source community. The form of the email is usually a very very long essay explaining that describing what has happened to me or my friends at a conference is going to damage the community, the project, and is going to drive women away from the field. Please be quiet.
They ask me why I want to do such a horrible thing to open source as to blog about the things that happen. Very clearly I'm part of the problem by reporting it. Often they'll throw in something about me not understanding how open source culture works.
So on that note, I'm not going to write the post after all - I don't have the energy.
Instead I encourage you to check out the Geek feminism wiki
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Enjoy: French president Sarkozy addresses the joint French government for the first time since Napoleon to push his "3 Strikes" internet law:
http://torrentfreak.com/sarkozy-says-he-will-go-all-the-way-with-3-strikes-090623/ There are 11 fonts that are OK to use when designing web pages. If your site uses others, fix it:
http://dustinbrewer.com/fonts-on-the-web-and-a-list-of-web-safe-fonts/ Intel gets a 3G modem licence off Nokia, giving them entry to the field of making all-in-one RF chipsets icroporating 3G, WiFi & WiMax:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8114059.stm A single organic molecule is created that emits both orange and blue light, which appears white in an LED. Hopefully efficiency improves:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17355-lightbulb-molecule-has-a-bright-future.html And finally. As Sarychev Peak volcano errupted, the International Space Station passed overhead - and someone had a camera handy:
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn15018-pick-of-the-pictures/16 Vik :v) Diamond Age Solutions Ltd. http://diamondage.co.nz
=== linux.conf.au Call For Papers ===
linux.conf.au ( http://www.lca2010.org.nz ) is pleased to announce the
opening of its Call for Papers for the coming linux.conf.au, LCA2010!
LCA2010 will be held from Monday 18 January 2010 to Saturday 23 January
2010 in Wellington, New Zealand.
linux.conf.au isn't just a Linux conference. It is a technical
conference about Free and Open Source Software, held annually in
Australasia since 2001 - covering everything from the Linux Kernel and
the BSDs to OpenOffice.org, from networking to audio-visual magic, from
hardware hacks to Creative Commons.
=== Important Dates ===
Call for Papers opens: Monday 29 June 2009
Call for Papers closes: Friday 24 July 2009
Email Notifications from Papers Committee: Early September 2009
Registrations open: Mid September 2009
Conference Dates: Monday 18 January to Saturday 23 January 2010
=== Information on Papers ===
The LCA2010 Papers Committee is looking for a broad range of papers
spanning everything from programming and software to desktop and
userspace to community, government and education but there is one
essential:
The core of your paper must relate to open source in some way,
i.e., if it's a paper about software then the software has to
be licensed under an Open Source license.
The LCA2010 Papers Committee welcome proposals for Papers on the
following topics:
* Kernel and system topics such as filesystems and embedded devices
* Networking topics such as peer to peer networking, or tuning a
TCP/IP stack
* Desktop topics such as office and productivity applications,
mobile devices, peripherals, crypto & security and viruses and
other malware
* Server topics such as clusters and other supercomputers,
databases and grid computing
* Systems administration topics such as maintaining large numbers
of machines and disaster recovery
* Programming topics such as software engineering practices and
test driven development
* Free Software and Free Culture topics, including licencing and
Free and Open approaches outside software
* Free Software usage topics, including home, IT, education,
manufacturing, research and government usage.
Most presentations and tutorials will be technical in nature, but
proposals for presentations on other aspects of Free Software and Free
Culture, such as educational and cultural aspects are welcome.
LCA2010 is pleased to invite proposals for three types of papers:
* Presentation - 45 minutes
* Tutorials - 1 hour and 45 minutes (short)
* Tutorials - 3 hours and 30 minutes (long)
Presentations are 45 minute slots (including questions) that are
typically a one-way lecture from you to the audience - the typical
conference presentation. These form the bulk of the available
conference slots.
Tutorials are either 1 hour and 45 minutes, or 3 hours and 30 minutes
in length, and work best when they are interactive or hands-on in
nature. Tutorials are expected to have a specific learning outcome for
attendees.
To increase the number of people that can view your talk, LCA2010 may
video the talks and make them publicly available after LCA2010. When
submitting your proposal you will be asked whether materials relating
to your paper can be released under a Creative Commons ShareALike
License.
For more information, see:
http://www.lca2010.org.nz/programme/papers_info
=== About linux.conf.au ===
linux.conf.au is one of the world's best conferences for free and open
source software! The coming linux.conf.au, LCA2010, will be held at the
Wellington Convention Centre in Wellington, New Zealand from Monday 18
January to Saturday 23 January 2010. LCA2010 is fun, informal and
seriously technical, bringing together Free and Open Source developers,
users and community champions from around the world. LCA2010 is the
second time linux.conf.au has been held in New Zealand, with the first
being Dunedin in 2006.
For more information see: http://www.lca2010.org.nz/
=== About Linux Australia ===
Linux Australia is the peak body for Linux User Groups around
Australia, and as such represents approximately 5000 Australian Linux
users and developers. Linux Australia facilitates the organisation of
this international Free Software conference in a different Australasian
city each year.
For more information see: http://www.linux.org.au/
=== Emperor Penguin Sponsors ===
LCA2010 is proud to acknowledge the support of our Emperor Penguin
Sponsor, InternetNZ.
For more information see: http://www.internetnz.org.nz/
=== Papers Enquiries ===
LCA2010 Papers Committee
Email: papers@lca2010.org.nz
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28 June 2009
Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO, 1991:
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today... A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose."
P.S. The New Zealand government has proposed allowing unlimited software patenting. Submissions due 2nd July.
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At the Wellington OLPC Friends in testing session yesterday, the beginnings of plotting for a OLPC/Sugar miniconf for LCA2010 began.
Leading the charge is Tabitha Roder, along with from Walter Bender and the Wellington OLPC team. They've called for others in the region to join their bid [olpcfriends.org]
While i was at the testing session I decided to try my hand at a hello world sugar app. (Sugar is the environment running on the OLPC XO laptops)
Someone sent me a link to Sugar installing on FLOSS manuals, which tell that all i need do is:
apt-get install sugar
well, that bit works - but X will crash and die back to GDM after starting. Turns out the Jaunty version doesn't work.
/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
Setting IM through im-switch for locale=en_NZ.
Start IM through /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/all_ALL linked to /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/default.
/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/jarabe/desktop/meshbox.py:19: DeprecationWarning: the sha module is deprecated; use the hashlib module instead
import sha
/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/jarabe/desktop/keydialog.py:17: DeprecationWarning: the md5 module is deprecated; use hashlib instead
import md5
The folks on #ubuntu-sugarteam tell me it works in intrepid(the previous edition of ubuntu) -- and there's a new version in karmic (the upcoming, unreleased, next version of ubuntu).
I grabbed the karmic version - it's the exact same version as the broken one in jaunty - and compiled it. Alas, same errors.
I'd like to report this as a bug. the ubuntu sugar team wiki says:
The bug reporting page contains useful information on how you can report bugs in a way that will helps the team to process them more efficiently.
however the bug reporting page says only:
TODO
i'll try virtualbox instead.
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4 June 2009 marks 20 years since the day Chinese army opened fire on Beijing students protesting in Tiananmen Square.
No one knows for certain how many people died over the two days. The Chinese Red Cross initially reported 2,600, then quickly retracted that figure under intense pressure from the government. The official Chinese government figure is 241 dead, including soldiers, and 7,000 wounded.
Eyewitness accounts of the events on the night of June 3 and the early morning of June 4, 1989 continue to emerge from former student leaders and intellectuals, broadening the scope of the original reporting of the massacre by Western media outlets.
Further reports show that the theatre of the massacre spanned across Beijing, and was densely concentrated on Chang'an Avenue, literally the "Forever Peace Street," or the main approach to Tiananmen gate where citizens returned to locate missing protesters driven from the square hours before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
Video footage shows the military repeatedly open fire here on unarmed citizens and medical personnel advancing toward Tiananmen Square to locate the missing and assist the wounded.
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Video of the "Manners Mall Emo Song"
(manners mall is a Wellington pedestrian area, which is soon to be ripped out and replaced by a bus lane. The indigenous population are being forced to relocation - here's a song about it in the native manners mall style: emo).
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27 June 2009
I spend Friday afternoon at the aotearoa digital arts symposium.
I brought with me 50 DVDs of Ubuntu Studio. Alas i didn't realise they aren't live CDs, install only. Douglas rescued me as he brough with him 25 CDs of standard ubuntu januty so folks can try before they install.
The laptops that turned up were half windows laptops, and half mac os. All recent hardware and generally very tech savvy people as you expect from "digital artists".
Five people left with Ubuntu studio, - many more CDs handed out. Some turned up without a laptop, but took CDs with them to try later.
Also spent some of the time talking about OLPC, Freedom in general, and opensource that works on closed source OS like Audacity (audio editor) or Gimp (kinda like photoshop).
All in all, a good afternoon.
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26 June 2009
A high school competition recently launched by a number of Recording Industry lobby groups calls on high school students to come up with new promotional ideas for a campaign about “Respecting Creativity”  . Mark Rickerby has written an excellent response to the competition here , questioning it’s bias and suggesting ways in which the competition might instead encourage critical thinking around an incredibly complex debate: “it is utterly unacceptable that students are being encouraged to plainly regurgitate corporate opinion to gain NCEA credits when they could be learning to think critically for themselves.”
Rickerby explains,
“If students proceed step by step through these questions as the teaching guide suggests, they are led to the conclusion that there is a single coherent argument that is ‘factual’ and ‘correct’ in this situation. Unfortunately it isn’t quite that simple.”
“In actual fact, the entire body of orthodoxy relating to intellectual property is disputed in many different ways by many different organizations, and it is utterly wrong-headed to encourage discussion based on shallow common sense hand-waving without researching the history of copyright law and why it exists, let alone ignoring popular alternatives to copyright, and the influence of these alternatives on the possibilities for creative work.”
“It may not be immediately clear to students that the ideals being promoted by lovemusic.co.nz are representative of music industry lobby groups and corporate interests who are sponsoring such competitions in order to have their agenda brought into the classroom in a ‘friendly’ and easily digestible format.”
Under the guise of lovemusic.co.nz the Phonographic Performances NZ and Recording Industry lobby group friends are seeking fresh ideas from the youth on how to spin their piracy propaganda for World IP Day. The competition website states that judges “will be looking for cutting edge designs that communicate clear messages and appeal to the target audience… Winning entries will be used in the promotion of World IP 2010.”
Rickerby continues: “Teachers must be encouraged to present this topic in a critical way that focuses on controversy, providing resources and links for students to understand both sides of the story. Focusing on the idea of respecting creativity is a distraction from the real question of who is trying to benefit from this creativity. It is disingenuous and patronizing to treat students as if they are incapable of considering the dispute in neutral terms and forming their own value judgements.”
And we agree. Letters of disappointment may be directed to the sponsors of this competition: the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Education, and the Copyright Council of NZ.
Read the full post at Mark Rickerby’s site .
Last weekend I attended the Digital NZ hacktest. A large group of hackers getting together to try out the new Open Data API.
Here's the blurb explaining who they are:
DigitalNZ is a collaborative initiative led by the National Library of New Zealand. We work with a wide range of contributing institutions and organisations. Without these content providers and their content, DigitalNZ would not be possible.
There was coffee, lollies, pizza. And a good group of people making mashups. I had a few ideas for mashups so i reached for good old reliable perl. Before long I had a perl module completed, which I've shared with the world on cpan:
http://search.cpan.org/~shiny/Net-DigitalNZ-0.15/lib/Net/DigitalNZ.pm
For now there is only the search method, but i've started the get-metadata methods and soon some more for images etc. This can be found in my Git Hub repo.
and the mashup? coming soon.
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Here i'm quoting from Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore, but i wonder how much different New Zealand's members of parliament are:
The average age of a Member of Parliament is 55. And I point that out, only to underline the fact that the average Canadian watches about 26 hours of television a week. Those under the age 25, it's about 12 hours a week. But they're consuming more media than ever before. But, they're consuming it where they want it on their iPhones and on their Blackberries and on their PVRs and on their laptops. And they're doing it through mechanisms that didn't exist.
And you'd be surprised the number of Members of Parliament who have never held an iPhone, who couldn't tell you, functionally, how a Blackberry works and have no idea how these things integrate. And when you ask the average member of Parliament "How do you consume your music?" They'll say "well, maybe I'll go out and buy a CD and drop it in the thing or maybe I'll hear something on the radio on the way" and you say "How do you watch movies" and they'll say "Well, I'll go out to the theater when I have the time on a Friday night or maybe rent a DVD at home" and you say "How do you listen to radio or get your news?" and they'll say "Well, I'll sit at 6 o'clock after the meal, finish a steak and watch the news, or get the paper in the morning."
The old way of doing things is over. These things are all now one. And it's great and it's never been better and we need to be enthusiastic and embrace these things.
I point out the average age of a member of parliament because don't assume that those who are making the decisions and who are driving the debate understand all the dynamics that are at play here. Don't assume that everybody understands the opportunities that are at play here and how great this can be for Canada. Tony is doing his job and I'm going to do my job and be a cheerleader and push this and to fight for the right balance as we go forward. The opportunities are unbelievable and unparalleled in human history.
(transcribed by the folks a Tech Dirt)
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25 June 2009
(crossposted from CreativeFreedom.org.nz)
This is a quick reminder that the CFF are holding a workshop on Copyright tomorrow morning, Friday 26 June, at the Aotearoa Digital Arts Symposium 2009, in Wellington. Come along!
–
Introduction to Copyright in NZ, 10am - 1pm, Friday 26 June, Victoria University School of Design, 139 Vivian Street, Wellington
Join Bronwyn Holloway-Smith for an introduction to the weird, wonderful, and confusing world of copyright: its history, how it works in NZ and internationally, how it is changing, and what this means for artists, educators, and other producers and users of copyrighted works. This workshop will dispel some of the myths surrounding copyright in NZ and facilitate discussion in the eternal hope of finding that elusive balance between public and private rights to that which is copyable.
The Symposium runs for the full weekend: Friday 26-Sunday 28 June
Cost: $50 (waged), $30 (unwaged) - includes Enjoy opening, screening, and the ‘ADA free lunch’.
For workshops alone the cost is $20 for a full day (two) or $15 for one.
This cost includes lunch and coffee.
For registration and more information visit http://symposium09.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
It’s no new fact that some organisations that claim to represent artists don’t always accurately do so. In the US, one of the musicians who had a song illegally downloaded by Jammie Thomas-Rasset has sprung to her defence, horrified by the exorbitant penalty placed on her by the RIAA’s victory in court . Earlier this week Moby expressed outrage at the situation. Now, ars technica reports that “Jammie Thomas-Rasset was held liable to sharing 24 songs, including one by pop crooner Richard Marx. But the lawsuit wasn’t done in Marx’s name—this week, he called out the recording industry’s “greedy actions.”".
Marx states:
“As a longtime professional songwriter, I have always objected to the practice of illegal downloading of music. I have also always, however, been sympathetic to the average music fan, who has been consistently financially abused by the greedy actions of major labels. These labels, until recently, were responsible for the distribution of the majority of recorded music, and instead of nurturing the industry and doing their best to provide the highest quality of music to the fans, they predominantly chose to ream the consumer and fill their pockets.
“So now we have a “judgment” in a case of illegal downloading, and it seems to me, especially in these extremely volatile economic times, that holding Ms. Thomas-Rasset accountable for the continuing daily actions of hundreds of thousands of people is, at best, misguided and at worst, farcical. Her accountability itself is not in question, but this show of force posing as judicial come-uppance is clearly abusive. Ms. Thomas-Rasset, I think you got a raw deal, and I’m ashamed to have my name associated with this issue.”
More here and here .
Image sourced from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RichardMarx-2008.jpg
Moodle and Mahara complement each other quite well, and it’s been possible for a while to set up SSO between them.
We do a lot of Moodle+Mahara with SSO for our clients - and most of these are hosted on the same web server, but following the instructions in the document I linked above can be tedious and time-consuming!
So I wrote an auto-config script that does the work for us!
to keep it simple at this stage it is a single file, it contains lots of hard-coded error strings, and doesn’t always display them as pretty as it should, but it works!
just drop the file into your moodle/admin directory and call it via the browser (you will need to be logged in as an admin to use the script)
if your Mahara install has been dropped into your Moodle webroot, or if it’s in the directory above your moodle webroot it will automatically find it, and display the path in the form on the screen - if not, you will need to know the server path to your mahara install - it’s the same as the $CFG->dirroot you have configured in the Mahara config.php
Once you’ve entered the Mahara dirroot on the form - hit execute, and it will go through all the steps necessary in Moodle and in Mahara to configure them to talk nicely to each other! - when it gets to the Mahara configuration, you will be asked to login to Mahara - make sure you login as an admin!
the file is available here (although I’ll put it in contrib and the modules & plugins db at some point soon)
keen to hear of any issues you experience or any ideas for improvment!
24 June 2009
Miniconf are mini 1 day conferences (or sometimes 2 days). They happen on the Monday and Tuesday of LCA Linux conferences. The 2010 conference is in Wellington, and the call for miniconf proposals is open now.
By proposing a miniconf you're agreeing to host it: you find the speakers (usually you do your own call for papers after you announce your miniconf) and you find volunteers to do the MC announcement of the next speaker etc. The Main conference will find you a room, and AV gear etc.
They mini confs provide great variety to the conferences - the topics are diverse
Here's a list i've compiled of miniconfs from the past.
2009:
Open Source Databases
Linux Kernel
System administration
MythTV
LinuxChix
Mobile Devices
Business of Open Source
Linux Security
Multimedia
Virtualisation
GAming
Freedom
2008:
Community Wireless
Debian
Education
Embedded
Fedora
Multimedia
Security
Virtualisation
Distro Summit
Gaming
Gentoo
Gnome
kernel
LinuxChix
MySQL
System Administration
2007
Debian
Gnome
Education
Embedded
Virtualisation
MySQL
Research
Gaming
Kernel
Postgres
OpenOffice
LinuxChix
Here are some things I know the NZ opensource community is into, and I'd like to see proposed by somebody for Wellington 2010:
Linux/opensource Automobiles
Opensource in Governments
Opensource in Mobile and/or Telecommunications.
One Laptop Per Child / Sugar.
Anything else that's awesome and happening, especially by local in Wellington, New Zealand and Australia.
and inevitably someone will do a cloud talk -- how about anti-cloud?
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some ugly news about the Amazon kindle (The ebook reader)
The books are resticted by DRM-ed, as we already knew, but there is a re-download facility if, for example you lose your kindle and buy another, have it replace on warrunty, or maybe upgrade to a kindle version 2 later.
however, the publisher can choose to turn off re-downloading - or limit it to 2 or 3 downloads. Especially ugly is, amazon don't tell customer what restrictions the publisher has has chosen.
Those books you bought are only yours to read if you never move from your original kindle you bought it on.
Not such a big deal if it's a flick of a story you want to read once - but what if it's an encyclopedia?
http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/19/kindles-drm-rears-its-ugly-head-and-...
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23 June 2009
The linux.conf.au 2010 organising team is proud to announce the first keynote speaker for LCA2010!
Our first speaker has a distinguished reputation in the free software world, with significant contributions to Debian, Ubuntu and OLPC across a variety of areas including development, policy, advocacy, activism, education and writing. He is an active board member with several non-profit organisations including The Free Software Foundation and Software Freedom International, and he is involved in the global discussion of copyright, software patents and free culture.
We'd like to welcome Benjamin Mako Hill as our first confirmed keynote speaker for LCA2010!
For information see the full announcement
ComputerWorld report that UK government spokesman has now confirmed to what a recent report did not state explicitly: “We currently have no intention of legislating to terminate the accounts of persistent copyright offenders [...] We don’t consider this to be a proportionate response, especially given the importance of internet access in today’s society, where many services including banking, health and education are increasingly delivered online. Disconnection is even less fair in situations where a number of people in a household may share one broadband account.”
We have previously discussed why internet termination is a disproportionate punishment that harms many people for the actions of one:
One of the key issues with s92A was its potential to punish innocent people for the actions of others the s92A review expresses a preference for disconnection, saying that a “guiding principle” of the review is for the “process leading to account termination” to be clear. Fines would be much more appropriate.
There are many alternatives to disconnection, for example royalties or fines. Fines are more targeted than disconnection - punishing the guilty person, but not innocent people who happen to share the connection, and obviously this should be of concern to anyone with a shared internet connection. For artists, royalties or fines have the potential to include payment for copyright infringement, whereas indirect punishments that harm innocent people will simply reflect badly on artists.
Due to New Zealand’s geograpical isolation the internet is a vital tool for connecting to the rest of the world, and is also becoming more pervasive with vital services moving online such as parts of government, health care (records, scheduling) and social interaction tools (newspapers, phone, email, social networks). Disconnection may hinder people’s ability to pay bills, operate their business or do their job, access banking, education, insurance, etc. Due to this the internet is already a necessary service like other utilities such as the phone and postal systems. With internet use showing no signs of slowing, in future years disconnection will be seen as a shortsighted and increasingly unfair penalty. Last week France moved against disconnection and joined the majority of the European Union who are against this form of penalty. What will New Zealand do?
As we are once again facing the possibility of internet disconnection as the government’s chosen punishment for infringement, the CFF strongly recommend that this inventive penalty be ruled out.
The misery drupal module will :
make life difficult for certain users. It can be used:
As an alternative to banning or deleting users from a community.
As a means by which to punish members of your website.
To delight in the suffering of others.
Currently you can force users of a certain role to endure the following misery:
Delay: Create a random-length delay, giving the appearance of a slow connection. (by default this happens 40% of the time)
White screen: Present the user with a white-screen. (by default this happens 10% of the time)
403 Access Denied: Present the user with an "Access Denied" error. (by default this happens 10% of the time)
404 Not Found: Present the user with a "Not Found" error. (by default this happens 10% of the time)
There are hooks for developers to unleash and contrive more misery.
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The NZ Open Source Society is having an Auckland meet-up on this coming Wednesday (24th). Anyone interested in the wider aspects of Open Source, getting it into schools, government and so forth and who happens to be in the area might want to come along.
Venue is hopefully Red vs Blue (RvB) at 155 K Road, starting at 6:15 pm with initial mingling expected at 6:00.
If you plan on coming, let me know so I have a vague idea of the headcount.
The NZOSS will be making an exclusive announcement to Auckland based members and Free Software advocates about the G2009 and how we can change our government. Please spread the word and generally light the fires of revolution.
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22 June 2009
The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that ASCAP (equivalent to APRA) have filed a briefing in a court battle asserting that legally purchased ringtones could be up for “public performance” costs if your phone rings in a public place. “This will doubtless come as a shock to the millions of Americans who have legitimately purchased musical ringtones, contributing millions to the music industry’s bottom line. Are we each liable for statutory damages (say, $80,000) if we forget to silence our phones in a restaurant?”
Dan Cohen over at GearDiary has noticed a strange thing about the Amazon Kindle . He wiped the device and tried to download his legally purchased books again only to told “Cannot be sent to selected device you’ve reached the maximum number of times you can download the book.”. He called customer service… “and that’s when I got the surprise. ‘How can I find out how many times I can download any given book?’ I asked. He replied, ‘I don’t think you can. That’s entirely up to the publisher and I don’t think we always know.’” The issue of what exactly you’re buying with digital material is going to be an increasingly complex, and DRM that prevents backups will inhibit use of paid content. The Kindle was recently criticised for reducing equality amongst disabled people by blocking access to accessibility features.
21 June 2009
i'm really sick of people, when they learn i'm not doing something because I'm pregnant, will then say "But people have been doing that while pregnant since forever and been fine!"... because, that's actaully complete bullshit.
Women have been miscarrying pregnancies since forever - and at times getting themselves also into serious medical danger.
and seriously, I'm not going to listen to your idiotic theory ahead of medical advice.
KTHNXBYE.
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