KDE Blogs 

A few weeks ago the spam filter at Canonical which was doing a good job of keeping the flood of viagra opportunities at bay was turned off, and I've had trouble keeping up with my e-mail since then. Most of the servers I have access to are virtual servers and not powerful enough to run spamassassin without killing the other virtual servers on the machine. So I've turned to another option which is to send all my e-mail to GMail and set GMail to forward it back to me, which has the handy side effect of filtering out the spam. There's surprisingly little delay in the extra roundtrip and it has the handy side effect of keeping a copy of all my e-mail should I accidently run rm -rf / on the server that I read it from. In the 24 hours since settings this up I've got 800 real e-mails (not that many considering I subscribe to kde-cvs, kde-bugs-dist, ubuntu-wiki and other high traffic lists) and 300 spams, with only 1 false positive. Read More

Look at it this way for a moment: If I, as an end-user, bought a car from Ford, that does indeed contain technology infringing some patent owned by DaimlerChrysler -- would there by any likelyhood that Ford would sue me, the end-user? However, if I, as an end-user, buy a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, that *may* contain (well, it doesn't, and never will, as Novell strongly reassures me) software patented technology owned by Microsoft -- would there be any likelyhood that Microsoft would sue me, the end-user? Let's do a little thought experiment. Read More

Jason Matusow, Microsoft's Senior Director for IP and Interoperability, emailed me to point to his blog entry. There he responded to my own one that hints to the fact that Novell calls a "joint letter to the Open Source Community from Novell and Microsoft" a document that Microsoft calls "An Open Letter to the Community from Novell". Read More

Oh, cool. Novell's PR department needed only a week to produce FAQ that'd actually answer frequently asked questions. Press releases full of quotes, long words and other strange stuff are simple, but a plain and clear explanation of what's going on apparently takes time for some unknown reason. And, since pretty much everybody has already tried to interpret various aspects of the deal, including here on Planet KDE, why couldn't I as well? I'm no lawyer, I don't understand it that much and I don't know anything more than what's written in the FAQ and the announcements, but after all that didn't stop many others either. Read More

Bugs are bad, I think we all agree on this. One of the most evil kind of bugs are those that appear only during installation or installation related procedures. I wrote in an earlier blog that I have been helping the Debian-KDE packagers fix a bug. Unfortunately, due to a side effect (I hate side effects), a newly installed KDE would no longer find the KControl modules! The bugs does not appear when upgrading the packages since the old, wrong, directory is still there. So it took someone with a fresh installation to even discover the problem :( Read More

Novell has published some more details about their recent business agreement(s) with Microsoft. This time it is about some financial details involved. (Looks like they are required by law to reveal these details to the SEC.) Read More

During the last days I updated the existing packages, added the until now missing KDE modules to the KDE:KDE4 project of the openSUSE build service and fiddled a bit until all packages built successfully for SUSE Linux 10.0, SUSE Linux 10.1 and Factory. I will make no promises if they work :-) - they are just snapshots of last Sunday's SVN. I think we will update regularly to newer SVN versions to ease development/porting work or just for the curious who are eager to try if they can see progress on the way to KDE 4. Read More

Warning this blog will content adult subject matters and some really disturbing stuff. I prefer to advise you before you decide to read it. And also leave your brain at the door because it could be permanently damaged. You have been warn! Read More

Today's reading recommendation #1. Extracts: HOW THEY STOLE THE 2006 MID-TERM ELECTION by Greg Palast, for The Guardian (UK), Monday November 6, 2006 Here's how the 2006 mid-term election was stolen. Note the past tense. And I'm not kidding. And shoot me for saying this, but it won't be stolen by jerking with the touch-screen machines (though they'll do their nasty part). While progressives panic over the viral spread of suspect computer black boxes, the Karl Rove-bots have been tunneling into the vote vaults through entirely different means. For six years now, our investigations team, at first on assignment for BBC TV and the Guardian, has been digging into the nitty-gritty of the gaming of US elections. We've found that November 7, 2006 is a day that will live in infamy. Four and a half million votes have been shoplifted. Here's how they'll do it, in three easy steps: Theft #1: Registrations gone with the wind On January 1, 2006, while America slept off New Year's Eve hangovers, a new federal law crept out of the swamps that has devoured 1.9 million votes, overwhelmingly those of African-Americans and Hispanics. The vote-snatching statute is a cankerous codicil slipped into the 2002 Help America Vote Act — strategically timed to go into effect in this mid-term year. It requires every state to reject new would-be voters whose identity can't be verified against a state verification database. Sounds arcane and not too threatening. But look at the numbers and you won't feel so fine. About 24.3 million Americans attempt to register or re-register each year. The New York University Law School's Brennan Center told me that, under the new law, Republican Secretaries of State began the year by blocking about one in three new voters. How? To begin with, Mr. Bush's Social Security Administration has failed to verify 47% of registrants. After appeals and new attempts to register, US Elections Assistance Agency statistics indicate 1.9 million would-be voters will still find themselves barred from the ballot on Tuesday. [....]        ( ----> more) Read More

Today's reading recommendation #2. Extracts: Steal Back Your Vote Published by Greg Palast November 6th, 2006 in his blog A lot of advice we're getting from our progressive friends is to take photos of your ballot and silly stuff like that. Well, that's all about how to complain after they steal it. I have a better idea: Win, don't whine. The regime's sneak attack via vote suppression [see, "How They Stole the Mid-Term Election"] will only net them about 4.5 million votes. You should be able to beat that blindfolded. As that will cost about 5% of the vote. That means you can't win with 51% of the vote anymore. So just get over it. If you can't get the 55% you need for regime change, then you're just a bunch of crybaby pussycats who don't deserve to take charge. #1: Vote Early, Vote Often Vote today — at early voting stations — so you can spend tomorrow bringing out others to vote. Also, if you're challenged, you've got another day to bring in more ID or scream bloody murder to your county elections board about your missing registration. #2: Gang Vote Arrive with five! Never go bowling, make love or vote alone. And volunteer at get-out-the-vote operations. It's worth it just for the stale donuts, cold coffee and hot democracy. #3: Tell Them to Take Their Provisional Ballot and... If they try to hand you a "provisional ballot," scream bloody murder. If there's a problem with your ID or registration, demand adjudication from a poll monitor, come back with proper ID, or demand appeal to the county supervisor of elections. But don't just walk away. If it's provisional or nothing, take it — then return for the count to defend it. [....]        ( ----> more) Read More