notebook tag:www.tonimueller.org,2009-08-08:/blog//1 2012-02-21T23:43:29Z Sapere aude! ("Dare to think!") Movable Type 4.36 Privilege To Have A Passport tag:www.tonimueller.org,2012:/blog//1.42 2012-02-21T23:29:00Z 2012-02-21T23:43:29Z It has long been held as a mark of a free society that every citizen is allowed to travel, wherever they want, and governments that denied their citizens the right to travel, have long been denounced as oppressive regimes. Not... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html It has long been held as a mark of a free society that every citizen is allowed to travel, wherever they want, and governments that denied their citizens the right to travel, have long been denounced as oppressive regimes. Not being entitled to a passport, has long been unthinkable in the west. Today, this gem sheds some light on the state of one of those societies that claims to be the freest ever, worldwide:

http://kdvr.com/2012/02/21/denver-family-stranded-after-passport-denied-because-of-crease/

Quote:

“To have a passport is privilege, it’s not entitled to you by citizenship.”

I can only hope that the guy who made this statement is rather a nobody than a government official. But nevertheless, the interpretation of what a passport is (property of the respective government, not the holder), and what the right to a passport is (a privilege instead of a basic, unalienable right for everyone) should raise awareness with all freedom-loving people in the west about domestic problems.

]]> WebKit als Nachfolger des IE6? tag:www.tonimueller.org,2012:/blog//1.41 2012-02-09T22:54:08Z 2012-02-09T23:07:51Z Gerade stolpere ich über einen Artikel, der die aktuelle Fassung des IE6-Problems, nämlich die Fraktionierung des Web, durch die Marktmacht von Browsern auf Mobilgeräten anprangert. Im Kern geht es darum, daß WebKit, als Basis von allen Browsern von Apple und... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html Gerade stolpere ich über einen Artikel, der die aktuelle Fassung des IE6-Problems, nämlich die Fraktionierung des Web, durch die Marktmacht von Browsern auf Mobilgeräten anprangert. Im Kern geht es darum, daß WebKit, als Basis von allen Browsern von Apple und Google, den mit Abstand größten Marktanteil bei Mobilbrowsern hält, und daß die Webdesigner in der Folge nur noch für WebKit designen, nicht aber für andere (Mobil-) Browser. Damit sind wir wieder da, wo wir mit IE6 und FrontPage aufgehört zu haben glaubten: Diese Webseiten funktionieren nicht, wenn man sie mit anderen Browsern anschaut. Technisch liegt dem die unsachgemäße Nutzung von inoffiziellen Leistungsmerkmalen zugrunde, die Apple und Google längst hätten zur Standardisierung einreichen können und sollen. Daß sie dies bisher unterlassen haben, ist im Grunde unlauterer Wettbewerb und droht dementsprechend, einen Rückfall in IE6-Zeiten zu bringen, weil jeder Hersteller irgendwie “kompatibel” sein muß, dieses Ziel aber mit offiziellen Mitteln dank fehlender Standardisierung nicht erreichen kann.

Der Originalartikel erschien in dem Weblog des Autors, der Mitglied des des entsprechenden Standardisierungskommitees im W3C ist:

www.glazman.org

Ich kann seinen Aufruf, entsprechend kaputte Seiten zu boykottieren und nur im Zusammenhang mit diesem Fehler zu erwähnen, nur voll unterstützen, und hoffe, daß meine verehrte Leserschaft dies ebenso sieht.

]]> Coverage Testing in Pyramid tag:www.tonimueller.org,2012:/blog//1.40 2012-01-10T11:50:50Z 2012-01-10T12:11:32Z The normal project layout, generated by the scaffolding for Pyramid projects, generates a project structure like this: project/ package/ tests.py (or tests/*) In conjunction with Jenkins, it turns out that nose’s plugin for Cobertura-style output fails to discover the test... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html The normal project layout, generated by the scaffolding for Pyramid projects, generates a project structure like this:

project/
            package/
                          tests.py (or tests/*)

In conjunction with Jenkins, it turns out that nose’s plugin for Cobertura-style output fails to discover the test modules properly. Instead of saying

`$ nosetests --with-xcover`

one needs to also specify the configuration file:

`$ nosetests -c development.ini  --with-xcover`
]]> Plone Setup Gotcha on Debian tag:www.tonimueller.org,2012:/blog//1.39 2012-01-10T11:39:09Z 2012-01-10T11:50:44Z I am using zc.buildout together with a virtualenv to generate my Plone instances. It turns out that Zope requires the Python Profile be installed. However, under Debian, the relevant package, python-profiler has made it to non-free instead of main, due... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html I am using zc.buildout together with a virtualenv to generate my Plone instances. It turns out that Zope requires the Python Profile be installed. However, under Debian, the relevant package, python-profiler has made it to non-free instead of main, due to the licensing of that package. As a result, you only discover that testing doesn’t work until Zope tries to import the profiler, and falls over.

In order to get things to run, you need to do the following:

# Add non-free to the set of repositories that you want to use. Eg.:

  deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian stable main

would have to become

  deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian stable main non-free

# Run apt-get update (obviously). # Now you can apt-get install python-profiler, and you should be all set.

]]> Theism, as Explained by a Mathematician tag:www.tonimueller.org,2011:/blog//1.34 2011-12-24T15:47:00Z 2011-12-24T20:34:37Z For some time, it has irked me how to best expose the logic behind (monotheistic) religion. Not resorting to ZOMGitsCriss’s crude, but accurate “elves up your butt” comparison, or to Pat Condell’s blazing series explaining history, though quite focussed on... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html For some time, it has irked me how to best expose the logic behind (monotheistic) religion. Not resorting to ZOMGitsCriss’s crude, but accurate “elves up your butt” comparison, or to Pat Condell’s blazing series explaining history, though quite focussed on only one such creed, this one relies on simple mathematics, and it does not require more than elementary school level education on your behalf to understand:

Have a few nice days off, altogether. Hope you enjoy your family and friends.

]]> Freedom and the Internet tag:www.tonimueller.org,2011:/blog//1.36 2011-12-24T14:53:38Z 2011-12-24T15:15:11Z It has recently surfaced that an Israely company sold Internet control software to Iran. While the story has an ironic twist, it goes on to highlight some problems with the current trend to “manage” the Internet, detailing the possible adverse... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html It has recently surfaced that an Israely company sold Internet control software to Iran. While the story has an ironic twist, it goes on to highlight some problems with the current trend to “manage” the Internet, detailing the possible adverse effects of such technology on Internet users (like facilitating their arrest and torture). Unfortunately, the article refrains from presenting the facts in a neutral way, but instead points fingers at supposedly rogue states while conveniently ignoring the fact that such technology would work just as well against citizens of Western countries, acting up on their respective governments. They might wake up to quite similar fates when eg. their governments become discontent with the Occupy movement gaining more traction (whatever you might think of that movement in the first place) - and you had your first impressions on that. See for example here, here, or here if you missed it so far. Instead of calling for more vendor-control over such software, the emphasis should be placed on generally banning such software in the first place.

As a techie, I can safely say that often, not having such controls to “monitor” and “manage” usage, but simply using larger, dumber pipes, would probably be equally cost effective, or even cheaper. The only adverse side effect, from the perspective of the carriers and the government, will be that they would have to loosen their grip on the populace (ie, you and me).

Which is basically a good thing, isn’t it?

]]> Finanzkrise tag:www.tonimueller.org,2011:/blog//1.33 2011-12-09T20:31:37Z 2011-12-09T21:04:21Z Der unten verlinkte Beitrag zur Finanzkrise verdient meiner Ansicht nach eine breite Beachtung. Wie man die Vorschläge daraus in dem aktuellen organisatorischen Rahmen umsetzen könnte, wäre noch zu diskutieren. Die Zeit drängt allerdings. Attac: Stellungnahme zur Finanzkrise... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html Der unten verlinkte Beitrag zur Finanzkrise verdient meiner Ansicht nach eine breite Beachtung. Wie man die Vorschläge daraus in dem aktuellen organisatorischen Rahmen umsetzen könnte, wäre noch zu diskutieren. Die Zeit drängt allerdings.

Attac: Stellungnahme zur Finanzkrise

]]> Truncated URLs in Firefox tag:www.tonimueller.org,2011:/blog//1.32 2011-11-28T08:48:49Z 2011-11-28T08:55:56Z For some time, I have been annoyed by recent Firefox’s behaviour to truncate the front of URLs so that “http” or “https” are not shown. I would rather have the full URL shown, and so I poked around about:config and... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html For some time, I have been annoyed by recent Firefox’s behaviour to truncate the front of URLs so that “http” or “https” are not shown. I would rather have the full URL shown, and so I poked around about:config and found browser.urlbar.trimURLs. Set this to false, and the full URLs are shown in the urlbar (formerly known as location bar).

]]> Joy And Fun with(out) Network Neutrality tag:www.tonimueller.org,2011:/blog//1.31 2011-11-03T10:24:56Z 2011-11-03T10:44:51Z Just today I had an experience about what it can mean to have no network neutrality, taken from my professional work: A client wanted to check out his brand-new VPN gateway, utilising IPSEC from his road-warrior client and a mobile... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html Just today I had an experience about what it can mean to have no network neutrality, taken from my professional work:

A client wanted to check out his brand-new VPN gateway, utilising IPSEC from his road-warrior client and a mobile connection, but it just didn’t seem to work. While testing, we found the following:

  • The client could not ping his VPN gateway.
  • No ISAKMP packet arrived at the gateway.

He then cross-checked with wireshark to see which packets actually leave the system, and found that the relevant packets were being sent out by the PC, but didn’t arrive at his VPN gateway. This is a strong indication that the mobile carrier blocked his IP packets.

This is not the first, but only the latest such incident I saw in my career.

Needless to say, a carrier who blocks users’ packets, is about as useful as a car without an engine…

I demand that carriers who call their service “Internet”, be required to indiscriminantly allow all (halfway sane) packets through. I am almost comfortable with someone blocking packets that have no return route (ie., if someone spoofs their source IP number), but that’s about all restrictions I can think off the top of my head that I might consider acceptable.

]]> 15.10.2011: #globalchange tag:www.tonimueller.org,2011:/blog//1.29 2011-10-11T19:30:49Z 2011-10-12T00:17:14Z Für den kommenden Samstag ist ein weltweiter Protesttag geplant, an dem in derzeit 662 Städten gegen die derzeitige Politik, hauptsächlich im Zusammenhang mit der Bankenkrise, und für mehr Demokratie demonstriert werden soll. Alle Leute, die nicht damit einverstanden sind, daß... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html Für den kommenden Samstag ist ein weltweiter Protesttag geplant, an dem in derzeit 662 Städten gegen die derzeitige Politik, hauptsächlich im Zusammenhang mit der Bankenkrise, und für mehr Demokratie demonstriert werden soll. Alle Leute, die nicht damit einverstanden sind, daß unsere Steuergelder auf Jahre, vermutlich aber eher auf Jahrzehnte hinaus für - meiner Meinung nach - dubiose Bankenrettungen verpulvert werden, während ansonsten an allen Ecken und Enden gespart wird, sind aufgerufen, sich zu beteiligen. In Deutschland scheint Attac federführender Organisator zu sein, und man erwartet viele Piraten bei diesen Veranstaltungen.

Hier sind ein paar Daten zu den Veranstaltungen:

  • Demo in Köln: 11 Uhr Chlodwigplatz
  • Webseite: http://15october.net/ (deutsch: http://15october.net/de/ )
  • Karte mit allen Veranstaltungsorten: http://map.15october.net/main
]]> The Case Against Google Chrome tag:www.tonimueller.org,2011:/blog//1.27 2011-08-25T14:16:04Z 2011-08-25T14:32:28Z There are two web browsers, based on the Google Chrome codebase: Google Chrome (of course) Chromium The latter is a free-software-only version of Google Chrome, having the spyware features of the original Google Chrome ripped out, and that can be... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html There are two web browsers, based on the Google Chrome codebase:

  • Google Chrome (of course)
  • Chromium

The latter is a free-software-only version of Google Chrome, having the spyware features of the original Google Chrome ripped out, and that can be eg. installed in Debian using apt-get.

Today, I wanted to try the extensions, since the original browser is suitable for not much more than simply looking at a web page. But if you want any kind of extensions, like eg. maybe AdBlock, or the SpeedMeter, or the SessionManager, or whatever else would benefit you as a user, you immediately find yourself locked out of Google’s Webstore. By the way… the name is already giving away what the problem really is: Google, like about any other vendor I am aware of, wants to reduce you to a user, and cut down on your abilities to create, or use the software in ways you deem fit, instead of only ways they deem fit. So, there is eg. no simple way to download the extension to your hard disk drive, maybe for later digestion - no, you can, at best, install the extension online, into your current profile. And if you somehow lose that, you get to try again. So they can not only track every move of you, they can also manage the availability of their extensions to you as they choose. Like eg. Ad sales going down? Poof, no more AdBlock for you.

This way, you sell out your freedom and your privacy in the same way to Google than you probably did before, to Microsoft and Apple, and a plethora of other companies.

Now my question to you is: Are you prepared to accept that, and if so, why?

]]> The Deficit And The Taxes tag:www.tonimueller.org,2011:/blog//1.26 2011-08-15T23:28:18Z 2011-08-15T23:39:09Z Today I was alerted to an interesting read in the New York Times, where Warren Buffet asked for higher taxes. Now this guy isn’t exactly known for wasting money, and probably has good reasons for asking for a tax increase... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html Today I was alerted to an interesting read in the New York Times, where Warren Buffet asked for higher taxes. Now this guy isn’t exactly known for wasting money, and probably has good reasons for asking for a tax increase (not decrease). Incidentally, someone else also alerted me to the “budget puzzle” in that same newspaper, which I find quite interesting, although also very much limited. I wanted to share my results, and invite you to comment. And please, if you have something like this for Germany, I’m very much interested in that, too!

]]> Trackers - a Rough Overview tag:www.tonimueller.org,2011:/blog//1.25 2011-05-30T18:56:59Z 2011-06-01T08:25:40Z very superficial comparison between Roundup, RT, Trac, and Redmine. Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html I’ve been asked to compare various issue trackers. While I don’t really feel qualified do to so, I have an opinion nonetheless. So here are my two cents about it:

  • There are trackers for various use cases, various technologies, and licenses (eg. Jira is imho mostly commercial software).

  • I’ve not yet found a package which is equally suitable for handling customer (self-?) support tasks outside of software development, and software development tasks.

  • I don’t have real experience with Jira, and only a very cursory impression about eg. OTRS (Perl) and Mantis (PHP).

  • From all trackers I have seen so far, OTRS, RT (Perl) and roundup (Python) are basically suitable to customer support tasks, but less suitable to software development tasks.

  • OTOH, Trac and Redmine seem to support software development tasks much better (and Redmine, written with RoR, much better than Trac, written in Python, imho).

For me, so far only Roundup and RT mattered for the customer-support space, but I intend to take a look at OTRS, now that they claim to support ITIL-conformant processes (whatever that means, but it’s a requirement of some potential customers). When I talk about RT, I mean RT 3.x, not RT 4.x. I also ignore all PHP stuff for principal reasons.

  • Roundup’s advantage, compared to RT, is that it is very lightweight.

  • Roundup’s permission system seems to be more flexible than RT’s, but all-in-all, changing anything requires rolling out a new revision of the installation (eg. to include the new permissions). This stuff is highly intertwined with the rest of roundup, and I’ve yet to see (didn’t try) how to eg. migrate the database from one version of the software to the next.

  • RT’s advantage is the much larger functionality out of the box, and esp. support for distributed workflows, with auto-escalation, re-assignment, hierarchical tickets with dependencies, statistics, multiple external authentication sources and what-not. It’s much more heavy-weight, though, and the UI is clumsier, too. RT can be scripted, and the scripts seem to end up in the database, making it comparatively easy to migrate an instance. It’s Perl, though, and the main author(s) are afaik on the forefront of Perl development themselves, so you frequently find that you have to pull in brand-new versions of modules from CPAN that you’ve never heard of, and that have had little exposure.

  • OOTB, RT’s permission system is much more powerful than what is distributed with Roundup, though.

  • Roundup seems to be much more geared towards a “one customer project, one tracker” situation, where eg. general access control is of not very high importance.

In the software development space, integrating a tracker, a wiki, and a repository browser was popularized probably by SourceForge, and has led to the creation of packages like Trac and Redmine, the latter allegedly being a clone of Trac (imho it isn’t, if you run the two side-by-side).

  • Roundup has no integration with either a wiki or a repository browser out of the box, so one would have to do manual work to use it in that manner. One also has to find suitable wiki and repository browser software to integrate with, first, and except for the wiki (MoinMoin), there are imho no obvious candidates.

  • Of the remaining two, Redmine imho has much better support for multi-project scenarios, seems to support a broader range of databases, and also provides much more functionality.

  • It can also be much easier extended by Joe Average User because of a plethora of plugins, supporting popular use cases.

  • Redmine appears to be easier to host than Roundup, using thin.

Links:

]]> 在北京找不到工作作自由软件开发 tag:www.tonimueller.org,2011:/blog//1.24 2011-05-28T11:34:09Z 2011-05-28T11:40:52Z 你好！ 如果你知道一个工作有这个特点和g供给够钱，请联系我。 谢谢！... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html 你好！

如果你知道一个工作有这个特点和g供给够钱，请联系我。

谢谢！

]]> ZopeProfiler on Plone4 tag:www.tonimueller.org,2011:/blog//1.22 2011-05-04T12:03:08Z 2011-05-04T12:44:48Z As per the author’s statement, using ZopeProfiler together with Plone4 is unsupported. It really is. First, get a current version of ZopeProfiler instead. Implement in your buildout as usual and run buildout. In the relevant instance’s (eg. secondary) zope.conf, one... Toni Müller http://www.tonimueller.org/about.html As per the author’s statement, using ZopeProfiler together with Plone4 is unsupported. It really is. First, get a current version of ZopeProfiler instead. Implement in your buildout as usual and run buildout. In the relevant instance’s (eg. secondary) zope.conf, one has to enable it, too:

enable-product-installation on

You also need to fix the output from the pstats module. In Debian, this is located at /usr/lib/python2.6/pstats.py. Copy to your virtualenv’s lib/python2.6 and manually apply the patch mentioned here: http://bugs.python.org/issue7372

After that, following the instructions generally works, except for that the site now runs orders of magnitudes slower, and (at least) I get this error when trying to view the stats (sample traceback):

2011-05-04 13:47:56 ERROR Zope.SiteErrorLog 1304509676.940.218731970327 http://localhost:9082/Control_Panel/ZopeProfiler/showHigh
Traceback (innermost last):
  Module ZPublisher.Publish, line 127, in publish
  Module ZPublisher.mapply, line 77, in mapply
  Module ZPublisher.Publish, line 47, in call_object
  Module Shared.DC.Scripts.Bindings, line 324, in __call__
  Module Shared.DC.Scripts.Bindings, line 361, in _bindAndExec
  Module App.special_dtml, line 185, in _exec
  Module DocumentTemplate.DT_Let, line 76, in render
  Module DocumentTemplate.DT_Util, line 202, in eval
   - __traceback_info__: stdnameRe
  Module <string>, line 1, in <module>
  Module Products.ZopeProfiler.ZopeProfiler, line 237, in getStatistics
  Module pstats, line 353, in print_stats
ValueError: I/O operation on closed file

I’ve seen the latter error on various other occasions as well, esp. when a long time has passed between the original activity and the display of results (eg. when running ExternalMethods). If someone has a fix for that, I’d highly appreciate it!

]]>