Comments for The ongoing struggle

Comment on Copying block devices between machines by Brian

Brian — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:46:30 +0000

Aljoscha, I have to admit that I haven’t actually implemented lvmsync yet. I really wish it wasn’t in Ruby, but we might be able to completely rewrite it.

Comment on CentOS 6 in a chroot by fallback

fallback — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:46:20 +0000

Hi,
thanks for this solution.

It’s strange. Centos5(32bit) and rhel6(32bit) did work with arch=x86_64 within a chrooted enviroment.

Comment on SSH launchers for Ubuntu Unity by Bernd Schlapsi

Bernd Schlapsi — Sun, 06 May 2012 09:29:14 +0000

Thanks for your “review” and your opinion on the SSH Search Lens. I’m the author of this lens and I’m open for suggestions and I’m also willing to take some patches or pull requests for my source code.

At the moment there is no standard way to define the used terminal software. I’m thinking about a configuration, but Ubuntu don’t provide a way to add configurations to a lens.
Yes the AppArmor stuff isn’t that easy. I wrote the source code and got help from some Ubuntu/Canonical guys for the AppArmor profile and the general packaging stuff.

I wrote the same extension for the gnome-shell (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/73/ssh-search-provider/) and the there is no AppArmor and the packaging and deployement is much much easier. With the latest shell version they are providing a standard way for configurations, but I didn’t find the time to implement this. I hope I will add this feature to the extensions in the future…

Comment on Mutt pager/index view, and colour scheme by Alys

Alys — Wed, 02 May 2012 23:10:00 +0000

OMG! I have Mutt configured like crazy, but I have never experimented with pager_index_lines. That is damn sexy! Thank you.

(Beats the hell out of KMail. )

Comment on Is “Chinese whispers” racist? by Nim

Nim — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 07:05:00 +0000

@Andy,

The use of Wikipedia as source material is not really conclusive, not simply because of the ambiguity of the text but that it’s just an opinion as well.

Having said that, clearly, they’ve gone and done some research, but again, unless there are specific references to conversations had or documents where the phrase was used in the racist terms people are assuming here, then we’re back to square one, opinions only.

As you can see from the comments, there are three distinct opinions here;

One, those who have grown up with the phrase being in reference to the game, so would naturally – on closer inspection – believe it to be based on a racist origin. Given the name of the game is different in different countries, Russian Gossip in some places, this would make sense as it would only be called Chinese Whispers in recent times – circa 100 years or so – if it were based on a racist stereotype.

Two, those who have jumped on this for no more reason than on perpetuate the potential racist undertone for the sake of either, playing the victim against the bad guys in the West, or to show how amazing everything Chinese is, so get stuffed. Either way, it’s a bit of a silly position.

Three, those who are looking for the origin with an open mind, and not letting the previous starting points from leading them to any rash conclusions.

However, given the way in which this is all going, I think people would prefer to demonize the phrase as it serves their purpose more effectively than if it were a harmless remark from the past

I know which I’d prefer it to be

Comment on Is “Chinese whispers” racist? by Mirielle Leconte

Mirielle Leconte — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:55:59 +0000

Thank you, Evelyn, for reporting “party line” for Los Angeles. Can you please tell me the approximate years (1940s? 1950s? etc.) that you heard the game called by that name?

Comment on StartCom’s free SSL certificates by Mark

Mark — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 01:23:15 +0000

Being a complete newbie to SSL certificates, I am a little confused. I have signed up from the startcom site – but then am at a loss as to how to actually get the free SSL certificate (Express Lane is not an option). There is no support to ask. I apologise for going off at a tangent to the main discussion, but would appreciate a little guidance.

Comment on Is “Chinese whispers” racist? by Robert Benjamin

Robert Benjamin — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:26:29 +0000

I didn’t realise too that it’s an idiom created by the English;historically they do have a knack of being racist(exemplified throughout the world, eg in Southern USA,Australia,Canada,New Zealand,etc)

Even tho we may have progressed a fair bit since the colonial days, there are still latent underlying racism among white people; there’s no denying that but mercifully,that is diminshing day by day.

it is comforting to know that once feelings are expressed by the offended party(ies),there’s generally an acceptance that offending terms or remarks don’t get repeated ; well. at least that’s what we all hope for in the interest of world peace ,harmony and understanding.
It’s up to the younger generation to show the way forward and shake off the old garbage.
Shalom

Comment on Adventures in entropy, part 1 by Andy

Andy — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:36:40 +0000

It seems to be based around a laser beam, and isn’t yet commercialised. I don’t think I will be plugging this into my colo servers any time soon!

Comment on Adventures in entropy, part 1 by Chris O'Neil

Chris O'Neil — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 06:50:23 +0000

Found this press release on another means to generate entropy for true random number generation. They use a quantum vacuum source.

Sounds of silence proving a hit
Wednesday 11 April 2012
http://news.anu.edu.au/?p=14431