Finally...

In case you've missed it - Ghostscript 8.60 is out!!! It's GPL licensed and the merge with ESP Ghostscript is complete. At last...

...

By the gods...
83% GeekMingle² - Free Online Dating

The Ubuntu Tribe movie official poster

The Ubuntu Tribe movie official poster, originally uploaded by ubuntutribe.

Join the Tribe!

Planet update

Wake up young man, it's time to wake up
Your love affair has got to go
For 10 long years, for 10 long years
The leaves to rake up
Slow suicide's no way to go, ohh
Blue, clouded grey
You're not a crack up
Dizzy and weakened by the haze
Moving onward
So an infection not a phase
Yeah, oh

Mad Season - Wake Up

As some of you already noticed, Planet PLD Linux was moved to our Subversion repository. So from now on you can keep track of your feeds yourself :P No, really!

If you know of any other PLD related feeds out there, just drop me a note.

WTF?

What's wrong with all those people? First Anna and Platyna, now Kathy Sierra. Why do people have fun insulting and threatening others? And yes, I know what I'm writing about — been there, seen it and even physically felt it...

The world has still a lot to learn, I hope we all can react in such cases and let them understand that they hurt others...

Postal

Look what came with the post today:

So it's time to find some spare disk space for it and finally try Solaris! Sadly, tomorrow is Shutdown Day so it will have to wait a bit :(

...

Sorry, at a special request this post will be in Polish only...

No to Lula mnie dorwała, więc odpowiadam:

1. Nie znoszę pająków, ale tylko tych z długimi odnóżami (wiecie, te chude takie). Do małych pajączków (takich czarnych, malutkich) jakoś nie odczuwam wstrętu i nawet pozwalam im czasem po sobie spacerować jak się na mnie dostaną.


2. Jestem grafomanem amatorem, chociaż wiele dziewczyn twierdzi, że podoba im się to co piszę.


3. Nie lubię większości produktów składających się mleka/masła i pochodnych. Po prostu nie smakują mi i nienawidzę, jak ktoś mi wciska takie jedzenie...


4. Mimo dość młodego wieku (choć ja tam zawsze mówię, że stary dziad już jestem), chciałbym mieć dzieci. Tak – już, teraz. Co dziwne, chyba nie za bardzo potrafię się z nimi obchodzić. Cóż, i tak nie jest dane mi to sprawdzić w najbliższym czasie...


5. Mam kłopoty z tym, by coś dobrego lub nieznanego o sobie powiedzieć. O, patrzcie – właśnie wymyśliłem ostatni punkt!

Tylko jak tu teraz znaleźć pięć osób. Uwaga wyznaczam: carstein, katka, krzak, hmmm reszta już brała udział w tej zabawie, więc niech to będzie "Trójka Drombo" :P

The hard life of a CSO

On Carstein's blog there's another article about the life of a CSO, but this one is concentrating on the placement of IDS/IPS.

Although sometimes things seem to be a little bit obvious, it's always better to stand on the shoulders of giants than try to reinvent the wheel over and over again. It's an interesting lecture so go and read :).

Are they nuts?

Seems like a popular company is utterly stupid patenting things that they acknowledge that were stol^H^H^H^borrowed from other products. This time it hit BlueJ's Object Bench. You can read about it on Michael Kölling's blog.

As a sidenote - I have just noticed that the same company posesses a patent for color management in X11R6 here in Poland! Geez...

..black holes and revelations..

Far away from the memories
Of the people who care if I live or die

Starlight
I will be chasing the starlight
Until the end of my life
I dont know if it's worth it anymore

Hold you in my arms
I just wanted to hold
you in my arms...

Muse – Starlight

WARNING: you don't need to read this, you have been warned!

Didn't I say that life sucks? No? Then it sucks. Maybe even more than a blackhole. Do you know the feeling when suddenly everything seems to break and fall down a cliff?
It's exactly how I feel. Yes, I know the situation isn't as bad as it seems to me, but still...
A few days ago Mariusz wrote about setting targets, but somehow it's hard to do. Maybe it's just me, maybe it's because I don't have a good opinion about my skills and abilities (likewise social and professional). I'm one of those people who need to be told they're worth something, because they remember too good all that bad stuff thrown at them when they were young, either by the teachers or collegues. You know, it doesn't really matter that I know they were wrong, I don't need them to prove anything but it still sits somewhere inside, getting out in the worst possible moments. Ehh,I don't know, I think I need a drink...

Planet update

As some of you already know the planet has been updated - if you notice any troubles please drop me a note somewhere (e-mail, jabber, snail mail, whatever...)

Oh, and don't forget to head over to carstein - this time it's Acting under fire, crisis management in a nutshell ;)

It's official...

She eyes me like a pisces when I am weak
I've been locked inside your Heart Shaped box for weeks
I've been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap
I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black

Nirvana - Heart Shaped Box

...nearly (I don't have the paper work done yet..). I'm a Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology! At last, I thought it would never end, now I can get back to some real work especially that my life is getting better, at least I think...

TODO for the next month?

• finish Ulysses by James Joyce


• restart the translation for Scribus' docs


• get back into programming


• generally more stuff

So many things seem to have happened around me in the last few months, but I'm still standing still and can't move... But this time I hope to change it...

Your office is on fire....

Your office is on fire - are you prepared? What do you leave behind and how fast can you recover from a disaster? If you don't posses a plan for such situation then you shoud rush over to Carstein's blog and read Part 4 of the "So you want to be a CSO" series!

Hmm, BTW maybe it's time to translate the series into English? If your interested just drop me a note, if Carstein won't do it I'll do (if he allows me to ;)

DRM once again...

There's an open letter over at list.7thguard.net regarding the implementation of DRM in Polish law. I'll try to provide an ęnglish translation for you, although it'll be very rough, blame my poor English skills for that (as a sidenote - I must do something with it if I want to relocate somewhere else...)

We, the undersigned, oppose the implementation of such restrictive regulations regarding Digital Right Management.

The proposed changes in copyright law presented by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage fully legalize systems which allow content publishers freely restrict access to works in digital form. The circumvention of such restrictions are proposed to be penalized with up to 3 years in prison. Those changes will have negative impact on Polish culture, they will hinder or even prevent access to its treasures, lower the position of content creators and harm consumers.

Freedom of knowledge and information is world's biggest achievement - the right to use works in libraries, museums, universities and together with friends. All that because the Fair Use rule. But the proposed changes legalize DRM will eradicate this. Existing today laws which permit the usage of various works for peronal use or which allow sharing them with friends, for educational use, for academical purposes will, free access for libraries, using different works in your own and even accessing them by disabled persons will become empty words. This is also dangerous for the future of Polish culture, because fair use is essential to creativity.

A world, which is proposed to us by the new law project, is a world where you can listen to a song only on one audio player, the movie you have bought will erase itself in a few months, where you can't record a TV show on video and where lending a book will be a crime for which you can be sent to jail.

We don't want such a world. When implementing legislation regulating the usage of DRM systems one should try to keep proper balance between the interests of publishers, creators rights for proper payment and the constitutional rights of society to participate in the cultural life of the nation.

The legislation regarding DRM systems is implemented because that's a required directive of the European Union. But this law doesn't remove fair use, it does even require that member states protect competition and consumer rights. In the EU member states, especially in France and Germany, European law respects those aspect. We should make use of their experience.

The Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, Internet Society Poland, Stowarzyszenie Przyjaciół Integracji and the Polish Librarians Association have publicated their proposals in this matter. We call the Polish government and Parliament to consider their positions

If you want to be a CSO then be a good one...

Over at Carstein's blog there's another part of the So you want to be a CSO? saga. This time about internal procedures - how to write them to be efficient and where to use them. I think you'll find it an interesting lecture...

Of course I don't need to tell you that they are needed, but handle them with care. You don't want to learn them all by heart like some companies require, they should be there to reach for them whenever it's needed, so just the generel guidelines should be clear - exceptions can (and in my opinion even should, but opinions on that differ) be included in the text of the procedure. Like Carstein said - a diagram is worth a million words, but only if it's good. I could tell some stupid examples where diagrams said absolutely nothing about the workflow, like when a process was beggining at the controler (on the diagram, and even some places in the text!) when the normal workflow in such environment was that the operator received the document first. After a couple of such procedures most people end up just ignoring them and doing it the way it's best, which in turn can possibly wreck havoc in the system. OK, enough of my ranting - head over to carstein before he finishes part 4 of it, which should be real soon...(in Polish only sorry, maybe he'll translate it sometime for us or I'll do it when I'll finally have my bachelor degree...)

Geek Purity Test?

Your Geek Purity Test Results

You answered "yes" to 38 of 129 questions, making you 70.5% geek pure; that is, you are 70.5% pure in the geek domain (you have 29.5% geek in you).
Your Weirdness Factor (AKA Uniqueness Factor) is 19%, based on a comparison of your test results with 191614 other submissions for this test.

The average purity for this test is 80.1%.
The first submission for this test was received December 30, 1995.

---

Return to The Armory's Purity Test Page
Go to the Armory Home Page

Hmm, note to myself - don't click on links on other blogs

So you want to be a CSO?

No I don't want to be a CSO but there's a series of interesting articles about becoming one over at carstein's blog. Here you can find part 1 and part 2.

AC again...

Like the topic says — I'm using PLD Ac again, although it resembles Ra more and more, but hey - at last Mono and Windows.Forms seem to work now :D (they didn't in Th, even when wolf said SOA #1)

Anyway - I hope to install Th somewhere after my engineering degree, when I should have some more spare time. What I would like to see by that time is a working NetworkManager, Sabayon and Peselus ;>

Just joking, I know - SOD #1 :/

I'm fed up....

That's it, I'm fed up and currently downloading Kubuntu Dapper Flight5. At least for now it will sit on my laptop. It's just a shame I couldn't make PLD Th work properly with my WiFi card and sound (it did work in Ac thoug, but I don't have the time now to reinstall it from scratch, yeah I removed the chroot just before I've noticed that my sound doesn't seem to work :/) we'll see how Kubuntu works (and if I can get the latest Scribus cvs up a running before saturday :P) but I hope to get Th up and running in a few weeks when I'll have some more spare time...
Oh, and I invite everyone to come and visit me this weekend at "Otwarte źródła wolnej kultury" ("Open Sources of Free Culture") which are run in Poznan by the ACTUS Association (sorry, no english version of the page yet, just go and see the about us page)

Google's quest for world domination?

Hmm, after recently watching EPIC 2014 I never thought of the idea that Google might handle all of my needs. But hey, here it is - the Google Calendar, or at least some screenshots of it.
It seems that Google still isn't evil, because I can see there some interesting features like submitting iCal calendars from other applications, so I can still use my favourite scheduling application!
I'm not scared of the Google Grid, I have nothing to hide, those things I wish to keep secret are always encrypted and stored on my private mail/group/whatever servers anyway. Private information is just that - information. There were always ways to gather them in ways which harmed people more than filling out a couple of web forms (just remember the polish SB just a few (sic!) years ago..). Google's version of the history has one advantage, mostly anything is safe from the Digital Dark Age, thanks to the use of open standards (like that one that you can copy your e-mails from your GMail account via POP3).

Oh, and BTW help save http from an other evil company...