First, I would like to apologize to everyone who put so much effort into qunu.
Current Status:
The server has been taken offline. There are no backups which are current, the latest is one month old.
Why:
The server that was just taken offline was to be a temporary home lasting one, maybe two months. We were then going to find a more permanent setup. As with most things that have a deadline it received no attention until it was necessary.
Apparently there was some confusion as to the date which the account was to be canceled. It was scheduled to be taken offline on December 21, 2007. However, the server was taken offline nine days before the scheduled time (e.g. today)
A few weeks earlier, Mickaël at process-one had generously offered to take qunu off our hands. So we had finally found the home we had been looking for. I had even started the process of getting all the data off the server. Unfortunately, the transition is not going as smoothly as I had hoped.
Once again, qunu will suffer through a period of downtime before it is finally resurrected again. Maybe qunu should be renamed Phoenix or Lazarus
At some point when all the kinks are worked out, probably next month, qunu will be started at its new home. Don’t hold your breath, but don’t give up hope either.
Just ran into this emacs key binding. Someday I need to just read the manual and mark all the stuff I wish I knew already for later study. But since I will probably never do that here is yet another cool thing in emacs which I didn’t know about:
C-x h runs the command mark-whole-buffer
which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `simple.el’.
It is bound to C-x h,
Not only can you edit videos in emacs now, but you can also create music. My initial response was WTF!? However, after watching the demo videos, I can see the practical uses.
I am going to be meeting with Mickaël Rémond at an adhoc ejabberd meeting. afaik, the location is undetermined, however, I am flying out in the morning and have decided that Gramstand is as good of a place as any for now. (primarily thanks to stumbling onto a coworking blog). Will probably move onto a more pub-like venue later on.
I am hoping to meet a few erlang/ejabberd devs on this trip. If not, the chance to chat with Mickaël f2f will definitely be worth the 1.2hr plane ride.
I am taking Jetblue flight1 from Buffalo to JFK and landing around 10:00am. Then finding my way from Queens to Manhattan via the subway. It looks like I will have about 8hrs to play with in nyc.
If you have the time or inclination give me a ring at 585-705-1877 I will be hanging out at gramstand writing erlang.
You should be congratulated. This is a level of incompetence of which I have not seen since ’90s.
My scathing insult aside, what is that? The world has moved on. There are ther platforms out there such as OS X and Linux which have fully capable web browsers. You really should look into hiring a new web team if thats the best they can do.
I have been avoiding these social hype sites for a while now. I have
simply failed to see the benefit. (besides sucking yet more of my time.)
Today, stpeterposted that jaiku had a jabber interface. Anything that
allows me to quickly utilize their service via emacs is very
enticing. Since I use emacs-jabber jaiku was
simple.
While I was able to setup a profile quickly and get it setup
in jabber via xmpp:jaiku@jaiku.com I
have yet to find anyone I know on there. I have 348 people in my roster
and not one of them is on jaiku. Oh well.
I suppose the price one pays when they ignore all the social crud
crusting up the edges of the web is that they don’t know anyone
there. (Also, not blogging for a while probably might have something to
do with it.)
I just had an interesting chat with hawke about presence and transports. It may seem pedantic, but I think it strikes at an important point. A lot of clients assume that a jid must have a node; miranda,iChat,gtalk come to mind. If that jid lacks a node then it must be a transport, e.g. behave fundamentally different than a typical IM client connection. In other words the jid is being used to determine the basic functionality of an entity on the xmpp network.
Below is the chatlog, but it can be summarized as:
hawke asserts that presence is a mutual agreement for communication
I assert that presence is a reflection of an entities availability
This post is a solicitation for opinions.
Below is the chat log
[12:11] hawke> since most clients will show the quser
service as a transport, instead of (or as well as) sending the
message, just send offline presence.
[12:11] hawke> then they can just log back in
[12:11] hawke> instead of the ’status on’ message
[12:12] zion> thats a bit client specific though
[12:12] hawke> How so?
[12:12] zion> quser is not intended to be a transport
[12:12] zion> just because it doesn’t have a node in the jid
[12:13] hawke> I’ve not seen a client that determines
transport vs. other contact any other way.
[12:14] zion> emacs-jabber ;)
[12:14] zion> yeah… that semantic is annoying
[12:14] zion> so I don’t want to encourage bad habits
[12:14] zion> the client should disco to find out what it is, not use
the jid to assume
[12:14] zion> to many clients to that, and it sucks
[12:15] hawke> True
[12:15] zion> the jid is an identifier, nothing more
[12:15] hawke> But even so, the same thing applies to
quser as actual transports
[12:15] hawke> you still log on and off by sending
presence
[12:15] zion> no… there is not log on/off
[12:15] zion> I added that ability because it was requested
[12:16] zion> its a presence aware node on the jabber network
[12:16] zion> it doesn’t proxy your messages to another network
[12:16] hawke> I think the distinction between
“list/delist” and “logon/logoff” is pretty unimportant for this
purpoose.
[12:16] hawke> too many “o”s.
[12:16] zion> it is important actually
[12:17] hawke> oh?
[12:17] zion> if you go ‘away’ on aim/msn/yahoo then you are still
reachable
[12:17] zion> you are still connected to that network
[12:17] hawke> How does that relate?
[12:17] zion> so there is a diff between list/delist and logon/logoff
[12:18] hawke> Going “away” is different from logging
off though
[12:18] zion> thats my point!
[12:18] hawke> If I send offline presence to a
transport, I am logged off not set away
[12:18] zion> exactly
[12:18] hawke> if I send offline presence to quser, I
am delisted/no longer reachable to the qunu web service
[12:19] zion> there is NO logoff from qunu
[12:19] zion> you will not be listed
[12:19] zion> but quser can still contact you
[12:19] zion> since you are still on the jabber network
[12:19] hawke> Obviously.
[12:19] zion> qunu is a jabber service, not a transport
[12:19] zion> there is a distinct difference and the semantics of a
transport do not apply
[12:20] hawke> I know that; the logic is the same
though — log off/on.
[12:20] zion> if you log off aim, can the aim network still contact
you?
[12:20] zion> no
[12:20] hawke> Only the terminology is different.
[12:20] zion> no its not
[12:20] hawke> but that’s “can’t” vs. “won’t” isn’t it?
[12:21] zion> presence is significantly different than network
connection
[12:21] hawke> if I log off of quser, it
won’t/shouldn’t be inviting me to rooms.
[12:21] zion> inviting is only one activity
[12:21] zion> and there is no ‘log off’ quser
[12:22] hawke> Sure there is
[12:22] zion> *sigh*
[12:22] hawke> if I send offline presence, I am logged
off
[12:22] hawke> am I not?
[12:22] zion> if you send me offline … does that mean I am a
transport?
[12:22] hawke> I am no longer listed in the web
service, and I won’t be invited to rooms any more.
[12:23] zion> just because your client forces those terms in the UI
does not define it
[12:23] hawke> No. I’m not saying it is a transport.
I am saying that the particular action of sending online/offline
presence that applies to transports also applies to quser
[12:24] zion> right. if you send directed offline pres to quser, then
it will think you are offline and treat you accordingly
[12:24] hawke> Yes.
[12:24] hawke> though it will still respond to
messages.
[12:25] zion> I lost track of where we are… we seem to be
disagreeing about something, but saying the same things
[12:26] zion> you want quser to behave like a transport by sending
presence offline instead of using status on/off
[12:26] hawke> Let me restate my suggestion: The status
of quser should reflect the user’s listed status on the quser web
service.
[12:26] hawke> yes
[12:26] zion> my argument is that is not appropriate, because quser is
not a transport
[12:26] hawke> quser is a presence proxy.
[12:27] hawke> (and metadata bot, but that’s not
relevant for this purpose)
[12:27] zion> so quser should send an offline presence to the user
[12:27] zion> which will hide it from the roster ui
[12:27] hawke> I think so, yes. Sending the message,
so that they notice is also valuable.
[12:28] zion> but quser is not offline
[12:28] zion> and the user is not offline
[12:28] hawke> True.
[12:29] hawke> Well
[12:29] zion> imo, pres should indicate the availability of an entity.
[12:29] hawke> the user is “offline” as far as the
website is concerned.
[12:29] zion> not exactly correct. the website is just a jabber
client.
[12:30] zion> so the user is delisted from results, but not offline
[12:30] hawke> and with transports, presence doesn’t
indicate whether the service is available either
[12:30] hawke> it indicates whether or not you’re
logged in to it.
[12:30] hawke> For the purposes of the website, what’s
the difference between being delisted and offline?
[12:30] zion> currently, nothing ;)
[12:31] hawke> QED.
[12:31] zion> qed?
[12:31] hawke> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q.E.D.
[12:32] zion> ex: we are going to be incorporating pubsub into the
service
[12:32] hawke> OK..
[12:33] hawke> Does the users presence have any effect
on pubsub?
[12:33] zion> it should
[12:33] zion> e.g. if they are really ‘offlien’ vs ‘away’
[12:34] zion> if pres != chat || online then they are delisted
[12:34] hawke> OK..
[12:34] zion> if pres != chat || online || dnd || away || xa then send
them pubsub events
[12:35] hawke> So, only send them pubsub events when
they’re offline, or am I missing a status there?
[12:36] zion> only send them pubsub events when they are connected to
jabber, if they are offline don’t
[12:36] zion> there is a diff between ‘I am connected’ and ‘I am
online/away/xa/etc..’
[12:37] hawke> but surely you can send pubsub events
regardless of quser’s status?
[12:38] zion> of course… we could set it to offline and still send
stuff
[12:39] hawke> As I see it, the user sending directed
offline presence [to quser] means “I don’t want you to talk to me any
more”; quser then sends its own offline presence confirming that.
[12:40] hawke> So when quser decides “I’m not going to
talk to you any more” it should do the same thing.
[12:41] zion> you assertion is that presence is a mutual agreement of
communication
[12:41] zion> my assertion is that presence is a reflection of an
entities availability
[12:41] zion> regardless of its role
[12:42] hawke> OK, so amend that to add “…unless you
talk to me first.”
No plan survives contact with the enemy. This was made abundantly clear when Qunu was released as alpha for the public to abuse. As with any alpha there were countless problems that I dealt with on a daily basis. Clients insisting that a jid must have a node, xdata limitations in iq:register, double subscriptions, broken muc support, etc…
For some of these problems I was able to hack up a work around, such as quser@qunu.com as a subscription proxy for quser.alpha.qunu.com. A few of them had no decent solution and I had to suggest other clients. The wiki page, http://qunu.com/wiki/index.php/Documentation, has a list of clients which have the bare minimum feature set.
The default gtalk client does not support muc or groupchat. Since a lot of people had a gmail account they naturally tried to use their gtalk clients. Making the brash assumption that gtalk behaved like every other xmpp server I directed them to the above list of working clients to try. After several confusing chats and some poking of my own I quickly discovered that gtalk is not xmpp.
That may sound rather harsh so let me qualify that. While google’s xmpp-like servers may follow the letter of the xmpp RFC’s they most certainly do not follow the spirit. The reason I say this is that the gtalk servers will block any stanza which their default client will not understand regardless of which client you are actually using. This means that even if you wanted to get cool new features by using another jabber client, gtalk will block the stanzas before they get to your client. Not only do you have to get a different client, but you have to use a different server. *sigh*
The biggest issue, at least for qunu, is muc invites. GTalk silently drops them regardless of which client is on the other end. disco requests are reported assuming the default client. iq:version is always reported as not implemented, again ignoring the client.
Of course there is no bug/issue report system at google. Thus this blog post. Hopefully someone at gtalk will see this and file a bug. Of course, if you need further clarification, feel free test this yourself or ping me at zion@openaether.org
After many long nights and lots of bug squashing we are finally ready to open up Qunu for general abuse. This is an invitation for everyone in the jabber community to try it out. Let us know what you think and how Qunu can be made better.
So what is Qunu?
<marketing-speak>
In a nutshell, Qunu is a Jabber-based ‘ask-an-expert’-style service that you can ‘tag’ yourself with. Qunu allows you to use your existing jabber client instead of forcing you to lurk on a web forum, irc channel or muc room. In essence, people looking for help come straight to you, the expert.
</marketing-speak>
How it works
Someone on our site searches for help in an area in which you have tagged yourself. They can request an anonymous chat with you. We then send a MUC invite to your jabber client which you can accept or reject. We only send thru invitations when you’re online and available, and you can change your presence with us at any time. You have total control.
<marketing-speak>
It’s a great way to give your expertise back to the community in a non-annoying,
non-intrusive way. You can give help when it’s convenient for you, and best of all, you get to see the ‘thank you’.
</marketing-speak>
How to get in
In order to accommodate the various ‘quirks‘ of all the jabber capable clients out there we have setup lots of ways to get in.
Use the site at http://alpha.qunu.com. This is simply a custom jabber client via html and javascript.
Does anyone who is going to the meeting know how to sign or would a friend/family member be willing to go and sign? A new member wishes to attend and needs someone to interpret. Send all replies to lugor@realtime1.com.
The January 19th meeting will take place from 7:00 - 9:00pm at RIT first floor lab in building 74 at RIT. This building is adjacent to building 70. This will be an Linux distro and applications install and customization meeting for those of you currently having install or customization problems. Please bring in your PC any extension cords, power cords and power strips you may need. Please e-mail me at lugor@realtime1.com with your install/customization problems prior to the meeting so we can prepare.
I would like to get some volunteers to bring in copies of their favorite Linux distro and volunteer to be installers, customizers, etc.... Please e-mail me at lugor@realtime1.com if you wish to volunteer with your expertise and what Linux distro you can bring included in the email. Thanks.
I will post the list of installers and distros available on the LUGOR lists and Planet LUGOR. Hope to see you there!
A lot of days I come home from work and don't want to look at computer problems. My main system before the 'Big New System' is 'psycho' a 3.2 gHz P4-HT and it's running sweet and all I want to do is veg out and surf the web.
My explanation, excuse, on why I have left the story of BNS aka 'titan' hanging.
I have twice upgraded the bios and my key click and strange mouse problems are reduced enough that I can do an update all. After an update everything works OK, kinda.
I wiped the system and installed Fedora Core 4 x86_64 and updated it. My disappointment is that too many applications I want to use are non existent or not really written to take advantage of x86_64. When you add the pain of removing the 64bit version of firefox and installing the 32bit one so that flash, realplayer and java work correctly it just isn't worth it. Xine and mplayer were quite unstable also. maybe it's me.
I wiped the system and installed CentOS x86_64. It was more stable than FC-4 but still had all the pain. By the by, I got the most stable results with FC-4 and CentOS by loading the system then using the 'dag' repositories to upgrade. I like that site.
Next I tried kubuntu, the kde based version of Ubuntu. I like it. I am using kubuntu 5.10 x86 and things just work. The install is dead easy and the user account, other than the window behavior focus, is very well configured. Fonts look good the desktop and applications locations are very well thought out. Kubuntu is a single disk install and very basic with some quirks. I can understand needing to run 'apt-get install build-essentials' to set up the development environment but why isn't the installer smart enough to know wht processor(s) I have. I also needed to run 'apt-get install linux-686 linux-686-smp'. Not hard but you have to know you need to do this. Nothings perfect. If anyone is interested in installing [k]ubuntu I strongly suggest registering on the ubuntu forums site. Very active and very helpful. After a little searching I added some repositories and was able to easily add and upgrade everything I needed.
This is not the whole story by any means, I installed and wiped 9 different distros and now I am going to leave titan alone for a while and get more familiar with kubuntu.
My current final word on this story is that I am less than impressed with AMD Athlon 64 4200 x2. With 2 gigs of ram fast disks and more I expected the system to be faster. Doing things like image conversion with xnview and gimp I don't think the system is as fast as my 3.2 gHz Pentium 4HT. However, when doing more than one thing at a time, I mean why should I wait to convert 200 images or burn a dvd or some such, the AMD x2 shines. So, some things take a little longer but I'm not waiting for it.
Well, I only received 223 worm e-mails yesterday. I want to thank all those Windows users out there for reminding me again (and again....) why I use Linux. With people using phones over ip when will it be a crime to harbor worms when it delays the ability to send out a 911 call due to the high volume of e-mail traffic? I 'm including the owner's of the Window's machines that send out the worm e-mails and not just the creator of the worm as basically partners in crime. If you don't discover and remove the worm in a timely fashion shouldn't you also be considered a criminal like the creator of the worm?
I found an article about a $100 laptop in development at MIT that will run Red Hat Linux. I guess it will be a way for third world children and others to move into the computer age one person at a time. The article also indicates the laptop will be available for retail sale to others for about $200 dollars. What impact it will have on the world is unclear to me as you'll need more than a laptop to move into the computer age (isp, access point to isp, printers, etc...), but it is a starting point. The article can be found at TECTONIC: MIT $100 laptop to run Redhat.
Found this great article on wired about where geeks and turkey cooking collide. This is a fun read. See the article here Turkey Lovers Gobble Up Tech. Have a happy thanksgiving all.
Good news! Planet Lugor now resides at the same server as our web site. You can now use the url
http://planet.lugor.org to reach Planet Lugor. I will shutdown the one at www.realtime1.com by this Monday.
I want to thank all those that have helped make this possible. They include Gabe Shepard, Ralf Durkee and Justin Ziemniak to name a few.
A few weeks ago I started in on a new computer system.
Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200 dual core cpu
NVIDIA 6600 GT graphics
Couple of 250 gig SATA hard drives
Optical ...yada yada.
First problem was that although the motherboard said I had a dual core cpu Fedora Core 4 didn't think so. I threw on Windows just to check and Windows also thought I had a single cpu.
Gigabyte said the motherboard was suitable for X2 dual core, what's up?
Nick Francesco of Sound Bytes fame has 2 repeating cures for computer problems.
1) Update the bios
2) Reinstall the O.S.
He was right with #1, there was an update for the bios only available at Gigabyte's Taiwan site and not at any mirrors and it's beta. But it worked and a reinstall of the O.S as per #2 worked. Tada!
After installing Fedora Core 4 I set up user accounts and the root configs and all is well. Fast machine!
I used 'yum update' and then installed the NVIDIA graphics driver, version 7676. All hell broke lose. The mouse started jumping all over the screen doing random clicks all on it's own. Screens opening and closing, fonts changing and colors flashing. Yikes.
I replaced the ps2 mouse with a usb mouse and rebooted. All was well for a few minutes until the keyboard repeats started to go crazy.
% rpm -Uvh would look like rrrrrrpppmmmmmm -------UUvvvvhhhhhh
Then the mouse went wacky again.
OK, I tried installing Kubuntu. Kubuntu was happy, happy but I don't really know the idiosyncrasies of Kubuntu and I don't want to learn right now. Plus I couldn't get a DVD to play smoothly. Did I mention that I also had this problem with Fedora Core 4?
I tried CentOS version 4.2 which is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linus v4. It's a commercial OS and should be more stable than Fedora. I skipped the NVIDIA driver because I suspected it was the problem.
Well, the mouse was happy but the key repeats was still with me. I could and did turn off keyboard repeats and that was that. But I like keyboard repeats!
DVDs didn't play smoothly either. Things were kind of sluggish. Hummm, nothing in messages.
After a great deal of google'ing I found out that they (and they know who they are) broke the kernel. By default Fedora Core 4 uses the 2.6.11 kernel and I used this while setting up the system. After the yum upgrade I would have a 2.6.13 or 2.6.14 kernel and it has issues with SLI motherboards and X2 cpus. I thought it was NVIDIA because I did all at once but not so.
I reinstalled FC4. One thing I really hate about yum is that I can't configure it to ignore new kernels, it's all or nothing.
A co worker suggested apt-get and the 'dag' repository. I went to http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/
install the version of 'apt' found there and upgraded my new system with all upgrades, but not the kernel then, because I like to live dangerously, I installed the NVIDIA driver.
That’s it. It’s the kernel. Somewhere after the 2.6.11 kernel SLI and X2 support was broken. There are still problems with the 2.6.14 FC4 kernel and I have not found a patch yet. But currently my DVDs play fine and the keyboard and mouse are behaving themsleves.
Found out that the keyword "keyword" in the config.ini file causes Planet to stop working correctly.
That's why none of the rss feeds would import correctly. Removed the offending keyword and all is well,
Guess I'll have to drop them a line and let them know..
![[RSS 1.0]](images/rss10.jpg)
![[RSS 2.0]](images/rss20.jpg)
![[FOAF]](images/foaf.jpg)
![[OPML]](images/opml.jpg)
