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december.21.2009 10.07 am New Chromium Packages Sorry it took so long, but there are new chromium packages available now. You may notice some key differences: * Most of the component libraries that chromium uses/includes/bundles are now built as shared libraries (except webkit, and a few other smaller one). They all live in the chromium-libs subpackage. Please note that these shared libs are only used for chromium (and courgette), and do not end up in the ld.so cache. * Courgette, the binary diff utility is in its own subpackage, dependent on chromium-libs. You do _not_ need to install the courgette package to use the chromium browser. Some behind the scenes changes: * I simplified my patches quite a bit. This will hopefully make it easier to rebuild from newer source checkouts. * This will probably be the last Fedora 10 build. Time to consider updating. * The previous package build will now be kept in http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/o Oh yes, one more thing. If you have SELinux enabled, you might discover that chromium no longer starts. It throws an error like this: /usr/lib64/chromium-browser/chromium-bro libraries: /usr/lib64/chromium-browser/libsandbox.s segment prot after reloc: Permission denied This is because chromium is now loading its components from shared libraries. Jussi Lehtola reports that this fixes the issue for him: chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/lib64/chromium-browser/libsandbox.s Further emails show that several other bits need this workaround: chcon -t texrel_shlib_t /usr/lib*/chromium-browser/*.so This is because some of the chromium bits were built without -fPIC. I'm working on a fix, it should be resolved with the next build. |
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november.30.2009 04.00 pm Chromium: Why it isn't in Fedora yet as a proper package ( Cut lots of technical dialog that may be uninteresting to some. ) |
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november.19.2009 10.05 am Things an Unprivileged Linux User Must Not Be Able To Do An Unprivileged Linux User Must Not Be Able to: * Add, Remove, or Upgrade system software (packaged or otherwise) * Read or Write directly to/from system memory * Load or Unload kernel modules * Start or Stop System Daemons * Edit System-wide configuration files * Access other users home directories (unless explicitly granted permission by another user) * View or Change another users password * Add or Remove User accounts * Change the System Clock * Shutdown or Reboot the System (unless they are the only user logged in, and they are logged in locally) * Read from System Logs containing any information about user activities (System logs live in /var/log/*) * Write to System Logs (directly) * Write a file outside of /tmp or their user home directory (unless explicitly granted permission by another user) * Load or Modify PolicyKit or SELinux policies * Change SELinux Enforcement levels * Listen on a network port lower than 1024 * Mount or Unmount Partitions or Network Shares (excluding automounted local devices such as USB flash drives, and devices explicitly configured by the root user for unprivileged use) * Change or Disable firewall settings What else am I missing? Note: A user with sudo access is not an unprivileged user. A user who knows the root password is not an unprivileged user. A user placed into an "admin" group is not an unprivileged user. |
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november.05.2009 05.24 pm going walkabout (well, flyabout anyways) Tomorrow, I am taking my the longest plane ride ever: I'm going to Brisbane, Australia for a week. Sadly, it is not a week of vacation, but instead, a week of building bridges and improving communications between groups at Red Hat. Okay, so maybe I might sneak out of a meeting or two to go see a Koala Sanctuary. This is my first trip to Australia, and will be the Fifth continent I have had the chance to visit. (Only Africa and Antarctica to go!) I still have a ton of stuff to do before I go (including laundry), but I think all of my Fedora 12 bits are in the right place, so that can go forward without me (or Paul). |
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october.29.2009 05.45 pm New chromium packages Thanks to the work of Craig Schlenter, Evan Martin, and Joel Stan, there is now a workaround patch (albeit, a hack) for the chromium issue where certain websites wouldn't load. New chromium packages with this patch applied are rsync'ed to the main repository now, so you should be able to get an update by running: yum update chromium v8 |
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october.23.2009 12.35 pm chromium updates? where are they? You may have noticed that the chromium packages haven't updated in a while. There is a reason for this. The dirty details are here: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issue The high level overview: Some pages are failing to render (notably, msnbc.com) with the Fedora chromium builds. When those pages get processed by WebKit (in chromium), they were triggering a glibc double free error. This looks like a legitimate bug in chromium (or at least, in chromium's webkit copy), but tracking it down has not been easy. My Fedora chromium packages use system libs whenever possible (including making v8 into a standalone shared library), which involves a fair amount of patching and packaging voodoo. However, in the interest of trying to track down that bug and get it fixed, I've set that work aside and focused on reproducing the bug in a build from a completely "virgin" source tree checkout. Unfortunately, when I do that, I hit another bug, preventing chromium from even building (I'm not entirely sure why I didn't hit this before in the packaged builds, except that v8 is built separately for me, so I may be sidestepping it entirely). Evan Martin and Craig Schlenter on the Chromium team have been very patient and helpful in trying to debug this issue. Hopefully, we'll be able to get chromium building on Fedora again (specifically, I'm focusing on rawhide x86_64, although, all current versions of Fedora seem to suffer from this equally) and reproduce and then squash this pesky double-free bug. |
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october.12.2009 10.32 am muuuuusing I need to make the time to write here more. I enjoy having an outlet to write, where I can muse, tell stories, and generally, express myself. Too often, it gets dropped down underneath other items on my todo list and never happens. I need to correct that. Tonight, I'm going to see Ghostbusters at Coolidge Corner Theater. I'm told I need to try to have a social life before the coming of baby boy (still not named yet) puts a stop to it. |
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september.20.2009 02.24 pm musings on Atlanta Linux Fest and contributing responsibly Flying back home from Atlanta Linux Fest today. I enjoyed the show, and I thought my presentation was well received by the 15 people who attended it. Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity to hear any other sessions, aside from the closing remarks. I spent most of the day on my feet, talking to folks about Fedora at our table. I did enjoy the event I was a bit unsettled at how obviously biased towards Ubuntu the event was, even with Canonical as a premier sponsor. The fan worship of Mark S. was rather creepy, and I was not the only one to point that out. His prerecorded video apparently aired at least four times during the day, which is arguably three times too many. Airing it during the closing just felt like wasted time to me. Also, it felt odd that they used that time to do a raffle that only involved folks who had participated in Ubuntu specific events. (Oh, and that raffle went on far far too long.) Something about the layout of IBM facilities also unsettles me, I always expect to come across a minotaur around a dark corner. A good percentage of our questions involved: * Where is the coffee? (Answer: There is none.) * Where are the bathrooms? (Answer: Turn right, then right again, then on the right.) * Where are the vending machines? (Answer: There are some in the cafeteria, but they're not accessable.) * Where is the cafeteria? (Answer: Turn left until you hit a glass wall, then walk right, past the Ubuntu clustering, keep going until you dead end.) * Why is the schedule in the handout wrong? (Answer: Dunno. Trust the signs on the doors.) * Where are the sessions/particular meeting room? (Answer: Turn right, then left, then eventually on your left. A map would have been useful.) There was also no power outlets accessible at our table, or the table next to us, which prevented them from doing credit card sales (and really hurt their business). The lack of drinks not affiliated with lunch was something that I thought was trivially resolvable, so I sent David Nalley off to the nearby Kroger and he returned with enough Coke, Diet Coke, and bottled Water to keep everyone hydrated and/or caffeinated for the rest of the show. Now, I don't mean to sound overly negative here. As I said before, I did enjoy the event. It's a new show, growing very quickly, and with any such event in its relative infancy, you'll have these growing pains. I have a high degree of confidence that some of these issues will be resolved next year. Some things that I particularly enjoyed: * Talking to a hacker about how through transparency and courage, he could accelerate and improve upon a coding project he had been working on in private. * A discussion with a gentleman involved with Plone about how Zope (and its lack of support for modern Python) was being held back from widespread adoption and future exposure through distributions * Talking about chickens with Ellen Ko from Google. * Watching Bradley Kuhn find GPL violations in DVR firmware, and later, having a great discussion about licensing issues (is it sad that I seem to enjoy that the most these days?) * Getting a t-shirt with my name on it (spelled correctly, no less!) * Seeing a penguin painted on the hood of a car * Near death experiences in a car driven by Dave from lottalinuxlinks.com There was one thing that was bugging me, but it wasn't really about the conference, it was more something that was said (out loud in public) during the conference by a key Canonical employee (names left out intentionally, because I see no interest in name-calling). He said "Canonical will contribute to upstream only when it benefits Ubuntu." Now, if you look at that from a logical perspective, it makes sense. You don't see Red Hat spending a lot of money or time contributing to the upstreams for open source projects that we don't ship or use in any way, but at the same time, I doubt anyone expects either Red Hat or Canonical to do so. After giving it some thought, I determined that what bugged me about it was that it was said as a sort of excuse, an attempt to rationalize bad behavior. Now before anyone starts accusing me of inciting distribution wars, or interpreting my words to mean something they do not, lets get a few points in the open: * I am not saying that Canonical does not contribute to FOSS. There is clear evidence of this, in works like bazaar, upstart, gwibber, and even Launchpad (eventually) * I don't hate Ubuntu or Canonical because they are "popular", or because they are perceived as competition to Red Hat or Fedora. I think healthy competition is great, even necessary for open source to succeed and maintain momentum. What bugs me about this excuse is that it seems to be the perpetual evolving excuse whenever concerns are raised about how and when Canonical decides to be involved with upstreams, especially upstreams that they do not control. For a while, I would hear about how small Canonical is in comparison to others, which always felt like a really cheap copout, because A) Canonical is extremely well funded thanks to Mr. Shuttleworth and B) Staffing parity to others should not be (and IMHO) is not a requirement to be active and involved with upstream communities. If it was, Red Hat should simply give up, because we cannot compete with Google or IBM. In its current incarnation, it's spun to try to make the concerns seem unreasonable, when they really are not. In Fedora, like in many other FOSS communities dependent on upstream initiatives, we know that our involvement with those upstream communities is key to not only own success, but also, their continued growth and success. Instead of saying we "will contribute to upstream only when it benefits Fedora", we say "we always contribute to the upstreams that make Fedora possible". It might mean the same from a logic point of view, but it is totally different in spirit and practice. It is a commitment to good behavior, not an excuse (or rationalization) for bad behavior. In thinking about this, I do believe that some of this behavior is inherited from Debian (like much of Ubuntu is). Debian is notorious for carrying Debian specific patches containing bugfixes, security fixes, and enhancements which are never taken outside of the confines of the Debian pkg. Upstream rarely sees these patches, unless they go digging through Debian. Sometimes these patches are good, sometimes they're not so good (openssl anyone). I'm sure there are some Debian packagers who work closely with upstream to get fixes merged, but I have to say that in my experience, I find more often than not, the first time upstream sees a Debian patch is when I email it to them as part of my role as a Fedora maintainer. I think that Ubuntu has adopted much of that "good enough" mentality, which is easy to do. After all, Ubuntu users aren't complaining because a bug got fixed or a feature added in Ubuntu, but when those changes aren't driven upstream as part of the process, the spirit of Open Source is lost, and the opportunities to accelerate open source upstreams and kickstart new innovations to a wider audience are ignored. I think that Ubuntu and Canonical have a tremendous opportunity to be a responsible participant in the larger FOSS community, to make a public committment to working closely with upstreams and to not carry distribution local changes except when absolutely necessary (and to document those changes clearly). They are doing some interesting work, and have access to a large quantity of already finished patches from Debian. I continue to hold out hope that they will rise to that challenge. More of my thoughts are contained in my presentation from Atlanta, available here (which I wrote before the show, honest): http://spot.fedorapeople.org/Cultivatin |
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september.14.2009 09.50 am Upcoming Linux Events   I'm presenting at both of these events, but don't let that discourage you from attending. ;) I've not been to Atlanta Linux Fest before, but I'm happy to see another Linux community show on the East Coast. I still have mostly fond memories of the old Atlanta Linux Symposium events. I have been to Ohio Linux Fest before, and I highly recommend it to anyone within driving distance (or even farther). |
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september.08.2009 10.18 am Voodoo computer repair Yesterday, my new Thinkpad T500 managed to get water spilled on it. It promptly powered down and steadfastly refused to power up. I dried it off, inside and out, then tented it in front of a box fan for a few hours, but it still refused to turn on. I pulled the hard drive out and slapped it in my old T60, and it worked fine, so I used that for the rest of the day, then called Lenovo this morning, fully expecting that the mainboard would need to be replaced. When I spoke to a Lenovo technician, she asked if I had dried it off, put it under a fan, and I replied that I had. Then, she asked me to do the following: * Disconnect the power cord and remove the battery * Press the power button ten times, and on the last one, hold it for 30 seconds. * Reconnect the power cord and battery When I did this, my system came back to life. That is officially the strangest repair I have ever seen, even stranger than the time I kicked a PC and brought it back to life. Kudos to Lenovo, and whatever animal they sacrificed to accomplish this feat. :) |
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august.18.2009 02.24 pm i can haz baby? Finally, the secret is out: My wife Pam is pregnant, she has posted about it with pictures here: http://pam.livejournal.com/325117.html I am very excited, a bit nervous, but unafraid. There is very little that a baby can do to me that a Red Hat customer hasn't already done (or wanted to do) to me. ;) It does mean that some of my Fedora related travel will have to be curtailed for a while, although, I'm still going to be presenting at Atlanta and Ohio Linux Fests in September. I didn't submit a paper for consideration for LCA, because that really wasn't going to work, but maybe next year I'll finally get to go. I just hope that Tadpole (our nickname for the new baby) likes SPARC. ;) |
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august.17.2009 05.59 pm Python Development Engineer position Want to hack on Python for a living? Red Hat wants to hire someone to maintain Python for RHEL and Fedora. Basically, we're looking for a python guru to work full time on improving Python upstream and make sure that we are taking good care of Python in our distributions. Interested? Submit your resume here: https://redhat.ats.hrsmart.com/cgi-b There is also more information at that URL on the job requirements. Note that it says that it is in Westford, MA, but for the right candidate, we'll be accommodating, so don't let that hold you back. Please pass this along to anyone you think might be interested! If you have questions, feel free to either email me (my contact information is in my profile) or reach out and touch me across the internets in the multitude of places where I lurk. However, to be considered, you do have to submit your resume/CV to that URL up there, so don't just send it to me. |
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august.15.2009 02.02 pm Chromium packages update (Wow, has it really been June since I posted last?) Original information about Chromium and my little repository here: http://spot.livejournal.com/308900.h Today's build of chromium (well, technically yesterday's at this point) is built for both x86-32 and x86-64. If you were previously using chromium.i386 (or .i586 on F-11) and you want to use the native client, you'll need to run: yum remove chromium v8 , then, yum install chromium v8 will work. If you just run yum update, you'll keep getting the 32bit version. There is still quite a bit of stuff that needs to be done before it can go into Fedora proper, but I'm making good progress. Also, if you know of anyone who would like to hack on Python for Red Hat as their day job, please point them to me. |
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june.18.2009 06.14 pm still on vacation but... I still found the time today to make new chromium Fedora packages for interested testers: http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/ While you can certainly download the packages and install them manually, you can also setup a yum repo: Put this: ### [chromium] name=Chromium Test Packages baseurl=http://spot.fedorapeople.org/ch enabled=1 gpgcheck=0 ### in /etc/yum.repos.d/chromium.repo Then, just: yum install chromium (Plus, you'll just get automatic updates as I make newer packages. Theoretically, I might be able to try to do automatic daily builds, but the patches I'm applying seem to break every other day or so.) The packages are i386/i586 only (and the i586 chromium is a bit of a lie, it isn't compiled with the correct optflags yet) because chromium depends on v8, which doesn't work on 64bit anything (yet). Also, plugins don't work at the moment and some of the tab functionality doesn't work right, but as a general web browser, it seems functional enough. (And, it seems to pass the Acid3 test, which isn't surprising at all, since WebKit does and Chrome uses WebKit.) I'm still on vacation, so I'm not going to go into detail on how painful Chromium is to package or hack on, why I'm having to patch it up so much, or why I'm not sure it will ever make it into Fedora proper, those stories will have to wait for a later date, when I have more time. Now, I will return to eating too much unhealthy food and being as lazy as possible. :) |
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june.07.2009 07.40 pm Fedora Elections As mentioned in lots of places, Fedora is currently having elections for: * 5 FESCo Seats * 3 Fedora Board Seats * Fedora 12 Naming I'm running for re-election to the Fedora Board, and would certainly appreciate your vote. However, even if you don't feel like voting for me, if you're eligible to vote, please do so: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/voting/ To vote, you must have a signed Contributor License Agreement (CLA). For FESCo and Naming elections, you also need to be a member of one other Fedora Group. I voted! You should too. :) |
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may.29.2009 03.43 pm How you know your Free or Open Source Software Project is doomed to FAIL (or at least, held back fro This was inspired by my recent efforts to look at Chromium, but these are just some of the red flags I generally have observed over the years written down. == Size == * The source code is more than 100 MB. [ +5 points of FAIL ] * If the source code also exceeds 100 MB when it is compressed [ +5 points of FAIL ] == Source Control == * There is no publicly available source control (e.g. cvs, svn, bzr, git) [ +10 points of FAIL ] * There is publicly available source control, but: * There is no web viewer for it [ +5 points of FAIL ] * There is no documentation on how to use it for new users [ +5 points of FAIL ] * You've written your own source control for this code [ +30 points of FAIL ] * You don't actually use the existing source control [ +50 points of FAIL ] == Building From Source == * There is no documentation on how to build from source [ +20 points of FAIL ] * If documentation exists on how to build from source, but it doesn't work [ +10 points of FAIL ] * Your source is configured with a handwritten shell script [ +10 points of FAIL ] * Your source is configured editing flat text config files [ +20 points of FAIL] * Your source is configured by editing code header files manually [ +30 points of FAIL ] * Your source isn't configurable [ +50 points of FAIL ] * Your source builds using something that isn't GNU Make [ +10 points of FAIL ] * Your source only builds with third-party proprietary build tools [ +50 points of FAIL ] * You've written your own build tool for this code [ +100 points of FAIL ] == Bundling == * Your source only comes with other code projects that it depends on [ +20 points of FAIL ] * If your source code cannot be built without first building the bundled code bits [ +10 points of FAIL ] * If you have modified those other bundled code bits [ +40 points of FAIL ] == Libraries == * Your code only builds static libraries [ +20 points of FAIL ] * Your code can build shared libraries, but only unversioned ones [ +20 points of FAIL ] * Your source does not try to use system libraries if present [ +20 points of FAIL ] == System Install == * Your code tries to install into /opt or /usr/local [ +10 points of FAIL ] * Your code has no "make install" [ +20 points of FAIL ] * Your code doesn't work outside of the source directory [ +30 points of FAIL ] == Code Oddities == * Your code uses Windows line breaks ("DOS format" files) [ +5 points of FAIL ] * Your code depends on specific compiler feature functionality [ +20 points of FAIL ] * Your code depends on specific compiler bugs [ +50 points of FAIL ] * Your code depends on Microsoft Visual Anything [ +100 points of FAIL ] == Communication == * Your project does not announce releases on a mailing list [ +5 points of FAIL ] * Your project does not have a mailing list [ +10 points of FAIL ] * Your project does not have a bug tracker [ +20 points of FAIL ] * Your project does not have a website [ +50 points of FAIL] * Your project is sourceforge vaporware [ +100 points of FAIL ] == Releases == * Your project does not do sanely versioned releases (Major, Minor) [ +10 points of FAIL ] * Your project does not do versioned releases [ +20 points of FAIL ] * Your project does not do releases [ +50 points of FAIL ] * Your project only does releases as attachments in web forum posts [ +100 points of FAIL ] * Your releases are only in .zip format [ +5 points of FAIL ] * Your releases are only in OSX .zip format [ +10 points of FAIL ] * Your releases are only in .rar format [ +20 points of FAIL ] * Your releases are only in .arj format [ +50 points of FAIL ] * Your releases are only in an encapsulation format that you invented. [ +100 points of FAIL ] * Your release does not unpack into a versioned top-level directory (e.g. glibc-2.4.2/ ) [ +10 points of FAIL ] * Your release does not unpack into a top-level directory (e.g. glibc/ ) [ +25 points of FAIL ] * Your release unpacks into an absurd number of directories (e.g. home/johndoe/glibc-svn/tarball/glibc/src/ == History == * Your code is a fork of another project [ +10 points of FAIL ] * Your primary developers were not involved with the parent project [ +50 points of FAIL ] * Until open sourcing it, your code was proprietary for: * 1-2 years [ +10 points of FAIL ] * 3-5 years [ +20 points of FAIL ] * 6-10 years [ +30 points of FAIL ] * 10+ years [ +50 points of FAIL ] == Licensing == * Your code does not have per-file licensing [ +10 points of FAIL ] * Your code contains inherent license incompatibilities [ +20 points of FAIL ] * Your code does not have any notice of licensing intent [ +30 points of FAIL ] * Your code doesn't include a copy of the license text [ +50 points of FAIL ] * Your code doesn't have a license [ +100 points of FAIL ] == Documentation == * Your code doesn't have a changelog [+10 points of FAIL] * Your code doesn't have any documentation [ +20 points of FAIL ] * Your website doesn't have any documentation [ +30 points of FAIL ] === FAIL METER === 0 points of FAIL: Perfect! All signs point to success! 5-25 points of FAIL: You're probably doing okay, but you could be better. 30-60 points of FAIL: Babies cry when your code is downloaded 65-90 points of FAIL: Kittens die when your code is downloaded 95-130 points of FAIL: HONK HONK. THE FAILBOAT HAS ARRIVED! 135+ points of FAIL: So much fail, your code should have its own reality TV show. Anyone want to guess how many POF (points of FAIL) Chromium has? |
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may.28.2009 10.07 am The Vendor Client Relationship This is so sad and true. I really wish some of my old customers could have seen this. |
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may.27.2009 09.18 am Hockey is not Fedora Sorry Greg, but:  The Bruins would have at least won one of those games... :/ |
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may.18.2009 11.41 am Videos of Representative Democracy in Action: Pam's Hen Warrants at Arlington Town Meeting I finally finished cutting up all the pieces of footage concerning Pam's Hen Warrants from the Arlington Town Meeting and uploading them to youtube. There is more than an hour of discussion in there, but I tried to cut it into relevant pieces. Unless you're really interested in how Arlington Town Meeting works, you probably only care about the second video on this page, which is Pam's 10 minute presentation on why she wanted to change the law. And in case you've forgotten, she pulled it off! Both Articles passed! I am super proud of her efforts. ( Videos of the Arlington Town Meeting Discussion on Articles 11 and 12 (Pam's quest to change the town law to permit keeping of small numbers of hens for eggs) ) |
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april.27.2009 10.47 am Understanding Trademark Infringement As the Fedora Legal guy, I get to deal with a lot of FOSS legal issues. This morning, someone pointed out this blog post: http://zenhabits.net/2009/04/feel-the-f It is worth pointing out a few things: * The average individual does not understand the law. * The average individual thinks they have a solid understanding of the law. The question was posed: Is a phrase really trademark-able? The answer, like most things involving the law (and or lawyers) is "Sometimes." If you look at that link, most of the comments are fanboyish, and many of them confuse copyright with trademark. However, there are at least two notably useful comments. Specifically, the comment from "Elizabeth Potts Weinstein" is on point, but it is worth quoting "Jeff G"'s response (which he quotes from: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metasc “The standard is “likelihood of confusion.” To be more specific, the use of a trademark in connection with the sale of a good constitutes infringement if it is likely to cause consumer confusion as to the source of those goods or as to the sponsorship or approval of such goods. In deciding whether consumers are likely to be confused, the courts will typically look to a number of factors, including: (1) the strength of the mark; (2) the proximity of the goods; (3) the similarity of the marks; (4) evidence of actual confusion; (5) the similarity of marketing channels used; (6) the degree of caution exercised by the typical purchaser; (7) the defendant’s intent.” Now, for simplicity, you can usually sum it up the trademark usage check process like this: * Does the use of the trademark fall within the set guidelines for Fair Use? (in the US, this is defined by the terms of the Lanham Act, and the interpretations established in case law) * Is the trademark being used in a way that might confuse another product in the same space? (e.g. I can't call my new soda "Croca Cola" or "Popsi") For how Leo used it in Twittering, they easily meet both criteria (it is clearly Fair Use, and the scope of the Twitter is well outside that of published works, no one will confuse a 180 character Tweet for someone else's book.) So, even if "Fedora Is Awesome" is trademarkable as a book title, as long as no one tries to use it in their own book title (e.g. "Why Fedora Is Awesome") without permission, or make confusing derivations as book titles ("Fedora Is Awwsum"), they're almost certainly fine. Recently, I had to notify someone that their chosen name for a rebuild of Fedora, "Cowboy Hat Linux", was not okay. If we run it past the same simplified tests, it is clear why: * They're not explicitly using "Red Hat Linux", so they aren't trying to qualify as a Fair Use case. (They were, however, using Fedora's trademarks to describe itself.) * The term is clearly in the same space as Red Hat Linux (it is a Linux distribution), and it is confusing (as would be terms that rhymed (Dead Rat Linux) or terms with single words replaced (Fish Hat Linux). The individual was amenable to the situation, and ended up dropping the "Hat" from the name to avoid confusion (Cowboy Linux is acceptable). In addition, I did not hit him with a form letter to Cease and Desist, we had a conversation about Fedora's concerns, and came to an happy resolution. So, to bring this back to Leo's Tweet, is the phrase "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway" trademarkable? Yes, within the scope of its use as a book title. Does Leo's Tweet infringe upon that trademark? Nope. IANAL, I just help Fedora out with their legal issues, and serve as a liason to Red Hat Legal on such matters |
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april.21.2009 05.50 pm plurking it up I spent some time this afternoon reviving gwibber for Fedora 11 and rawhide. Once I got it working again (thanks to the template-theme-engine branch), I remembered that I really wanted it to support plurk, so I spent more time getting that working. Then, when it was all polished up and ready to submit to upstream, I find this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gwibber/ Of course, that was disappointing to read, but it's his call. So, I went to Plurk and sent them an email (through their contact us form) asking if they would state that using the "Unofficial API" within the terms of service (of course) is something they're okay with. Hopefully they'll be cool with it and say so publicly. Then, I can send in my patch. |
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april.16.2009 02.52 pm Embedding into LJ posts I have a wonderful wife who is a Bruins fan! Today is her birthday. She already got her present from me, a nifty new Garmin Nuvi GPS for her car. She's also having a party this weekend! I stole this from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} lixieThankfully, I don't have the problem in this video. :) pam is a Bruins fan!When I went to make this LJ post, I couldn't remember exactly how to embed a YouTube video, so I ended up going to the web client to figure it out. Then, I added support for it into logjam. It works, but it isn't how I wanted it to be.  This is what the embedded media dialog looks like now.  This is what I wanted it to look like. I used the gimp to chop it together. Trying to figure out how GTK works spatially just gives me a headache. I suspect my brain isn't wired right to understand it. The patch is here, in case anyone wants to take a shot at making it look more like what I want. |
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april.14.2009 03.33 pm Boston Sci-Fi/Fantasy Meetup I finally got off my butt and did what I'd been saying I should do for months now: I made a Boston Sci-Fi Meetup! I couldn't believe there wasn't one... so now there is! The first meetup will be on May 5 at John Harvard's Brew House in Cambridge, feel free to pass this along to anyone who might be interested. And no, I am not at all ashamed of my geekiness. :) |
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april.06.2009 08.47 am The Red Sox Okay, so I'm not clueless about sports. I understand that people are fans of sports. But here's what I don't get: The Red Sox Let me try to explain. When I lived in Chicago, lots of people loved the Cubs (or even the White Sox). Sure, on a game day, the area around Wrigley would be covered with folks in Cubs hats, shirts, whatever. But they didn't wear Cubs branded merchandise EVERYWHERE. Not to the mall, not to Olive Garden, not to work, not to church. Red Sox people do this. Now, fanatics, I understand. There were enough Cubs fanatics who lived, breathed and sweated out Cubs, but you'd see them and think, wow, he/she has gone a little too far. What I don't understand is how 90% of Boston residents have somehow turned into this. Initially, when I moved here, I thought it was just holdover from winning the World Series, I can understand how being the champions makes you extra proud of your team. But they didn't win the World Series last season, and it didn't go away. When I'm in an airport, I can usually pick out someone from the Midwest or Chicago, but I have to wait for them to speak, and listen for an accent. I can pick out the person from Boston because every single item of visible clothing is branded with a Red Sox logo. I'm a NHL fan. I just bought Bruins season tickets for next year. I own an official team jersey. I wear it when I'm going to the game. I DO NOT WEAR IT WHEN I'M GOING TO THE MOVIES. I DO NOT WEAR IT TO CHANGE MY OIL. Am I missing something? Did they forget to mail me the new resident pamphlet when I moved in, "Why You Must Wear Red Sox Branded Garments At All Times Or Cthulhu Will Eat Your Soul"? Asking the locals hasn't really helped. Most of the time, it feels like I'm asking a dog why it is licking its own balls. If I get an answer, it usually is "well, they were so bad for so long, and now they're not." Sadly, this generally fits the Cubs as well, so I'm not buying it. I also occasionally get "You don't undastand 'cause youa not fom hea." So far, I haven't been able to identify anything in the water supply, but I bought an industrial filter, just to be safe. After all, the locals do have an unhealthy love for "Dirty Water". Can anyone make sense of this? |
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