EDORA 14 is an adorable distribution, at least on the KDE (4.5) side of it. I only had problems in the repository and ones that were not truly Fedora’s fault. Image-related functions gave me a hard time in Fedora because of a known conflict and version numbers. It was not simple to resolve even after hours of trying. I consider myself to be an expert user (not guru) and unless I start compiling from source code as I did 5 years ago, Octave will be a challenge to use. Over on a Kubuntu machine I had no such issues. As the pictures below show, things worked perfectly well without any effort at all. Say what you will about Ubuntu GNU/Linux, but it does tend to work rather well.

My goal is to do my entire daytime job under a true GNU/Linux/KDE experience with Gnash, no proprietary codecs, and even Konqueror (KIO/kio and sftp/ssh support make it indispensable) as the only Web browser along with Okular, LyX (not OpenOffice.org), and other great Qt/KDE SC programs. There are some limitations in use, but there are usually ways around those (although never as easy to install as Firefox extensions for example). In addition, advances in the Web itself can prove a tad tricky. The nature of the World Wide Web and the Web browsers which change over time is not predictable, so presentations that worked alright with background pictures in the past no longer appear correctly, unless the code is redone (I still use S5 for presentations. It is an excellent presentation tool I’ve used happily for over half a decade).

The main issue I’ve had with Fedora is to do with Octave, which I hope to replace MATLAB with. MATLAB was the last bit of proprietary software I was still using on GNU/Linux (since I began using GNU/Linux exclusively at work, around 7-8 years ago). The problem is not at all exposure to Windows or Mac OS; I never need those, but proprietary software in general is the problem here because of lock-in (practicality), which makes it not a purely philosophical argument.

After wasting many hours trying to get Octave to work the way I want and need it to work under Fedora 14 I decided to just virtualise another distribution under Fedora. The first thing which occurred to me is that VirtualBox was not available (see below).

In the mean time I also decided to give Mint a go for the first time (I was curious after doing a special audiocast about it). That was a smooth experience luckily. Debian makes it daunting for one to download, so after a couple of minutes I left their Web site. Here’s Mint’s less-than-perfect download experience, assuming one particular route:

Fedora makes it a lot more user-friendly when one downloads an ISO. There are usability issues here as most people cannot tell the difference between the different files.

To run it I needed a hypervisor and here is what Fedora had under the virtualisation category (descriptions would help enw users):

In summary, it is a bit of a shame that one needs to have those barriers; using Octave is not a case of using basic applications, but I was hopeful that Fedora would make it easy. I still reject MATLAB at all costs and I avoid installing it because Octave is doing almost everything that I need. In a future post I hope to write about Linux Mint.

few days ago I started working with Fedora 14. So far, so good, at least as far as the desktop machine goes (a laptop is another story and Kubuntu runs fine on another desktop). Something has just happened in Fedora which never happened to me before. Kate (an editor) got stuck and its memory (RAM) consumption went up through the roof to over 1.5 GB, so obviously it froze the system for a while. The process needed to be forcibly killed.

Now, it’s not entirely clear what happened there (maybe a program bug), but this is unusual and it looks bad for Fedora or for KDE (or the combination in Fedora 14 KDE spin). What did happen is that SELinux came up with an error implying that it stood in Kate’s way and maybe it’s partly responsible for this type of behaviour. It yielded the following error, implying that it was trying to help when in fact it seemed like it only stood in the way.

Summary:

SELinux is preventing /usr/bin/kate (deleted) “mmap_zero” access on <Unknown>.

Detailed Description:

SELinux denied access requested by kate. The current boolean settings do not
allow this access. If you have not setup kate to require this access this may
signal an intrusion attempt. If you do intend this access you need to change the
booleans on this system to allow the access.

Allowing Access:

Confined processes can be configured to run requiring different access, SELinux
provides booleans to allow you to turn on/off access as needed. The boolean
mmap_low_allowed is set incorrectly.
Boolean Description:
Control the ability to mmap a low area of the address space, as configured by
/proc/sys/kernel/mmap_min_addr.

Fix Command:

# setsebool -P mmap_low_allowed 1

Additional Information:

Source Context unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1
023
Target Context unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1
023
Target Objects None [ memprotect ]
Source kate
Source Path /usr/bin/kate (deleted)
Port &ltUnknown>
Host blueberry
Source RPM Packages
Target RPM Packages
Policy RPM selinux-policy-3.9.7-3.fc14
Selinux Enabled True
Policy Type targeted
Enforcing Mode Enforcing
Plugin Name catchall_boolean
Host Name blueberry
Platform Linux blueberry 2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686 #1 SMP Mon
Oct 18 23:56:17 UTC 2010 i686 i686
Alert Count 112
First Seen Sun 14 Nov 2010 09:35:01 AM GMT
Last Seen Sun 14 Nov 2010 09:35:17 AM GMT
Local ID 4d9759c9-e672-475d-bf61-151d1688909a
Line Numbers

Raw Audit Messages

node=blueberry type=AVC msg=audit(1289727317.378:856): avc: denied { mmap_zero } for pid=1880 comm=”kate” scontext=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023 tcontext=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023 tclass=memprotect

node=blueberry type=SYSCALL msg=audit(1289727317.378:856): arch=40000003 syscall=192 success=no exit=-13 a0=0 a1=100000 a2=0 a3=4022 items=0 ppid=1629 pid=1880 auid=500 uid=500 gid=500 euid=500 suid=500 fsuid=500 egid=500 sgid=500 fsgid=500 tty=(none) ses=1 comm=”kate” exe=2F7573722F62696E2F6B617465202864656C6574656429 subj=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023 key=(null)

For years I’ve been working with no data loss, but this time I had to revert back to a previously-saved version of a document I worked on and then rewrite bits of it. Perhaps I had enough confidence in the system to only hit save (CTRL+S) once in a very long time. This experience has taught me to save my work more often but more importantly it showed that Fedora can act rather bizarrely where Kubuntu never did. As a result of this behaviour I was unable to save my work. SELinux implies there was an “attack” on the system, but obviously there was not.

Propeller in 2008 (I was ranked higher at some stages)

HINK before you touch Cloud Computing. The term “Cloud Computing” is vague and broad. It refers to all sorts of things and it’s malicious in the sense that it tends to take both data and control away from the user. That’s why I call it “Fog Computing”, avoiding marketing euphemisms.

Many people gradually take their computer activities online (e.g. photo sharing, news readings) and there is always risk when there is a mediating party either between peers or between a producer and a peer. This mediator offers a so-called ‘cloud’ or a Web platform under which people engage in some activities. This gives the mediator/intermediate enormous control and makes all parties dependent upon this mediator, e.g. for advertising, lifeline, costs, features, and data.

Yesterday I received another reminder of why I must not ever trust so-called ‘clouds’ or Web platforms that store my data in some mysterious proprietary form and give me no access to this data (except data slices that are presented as Web pages, not raw data).

So, what’s it all about?

AOL has money to spare in order to buy the Microsoft-funded Arrington with his rag while at the very same time AOL betrays a vast community of existing users at Propeller (good treatment to few bloggers, but not for a site with like a million members). Well, AOL has just killed Propeller with no prior warning. I have been on this platform for over 4 years and submitted about 24,000 stories there. It all vanished overnight without warning (none that I saw), just an apology. The whole site was shut down. The Webmaster appears to have also blocked the Web Archive a couple of years ago.

Propeller shows why social networks and Fog Computing are a risk. One day you just can’t access your messages, submissions, etc. It’s just like that and it’s not a violation of the terms of service. The mediator (AOL in this case) is allowed to do this.

So yesterday I asked, “Can #identica and #twitter guarantee that they won’t just suddenly announce shutdown one day? What about #reddit #digg #facebook etc.?” I wrote this as part of my Fog Computing cautionary tale. “Has #identica yet implemented a feature for exporting one’s entire user history in a way that makes it displayable/usable? And #twitter,” I asked.

“I’m not a tech person,” replied a peer, “but would assume it should be possible to transfer into own status net app (I believe it is free/libre)”

My reply was that the “first thing I did when I joined #identica was check I could export just in case. At the time there was no such option.”

As far as I know, none of the Web platforms I’m on allows me access to my own data in a form that I can interpret without access to a server I neither own nor control. If that does not scare you, wait a few years. No Web site lives forever and life of a Web site is often just a matter of money; it doesn’t need to make sense to keep it alive, it needs to make money to keep it alive.

In order to decease dependence on E-mail, starting today I will have an automated response channeling people to other routes of communication. Here is the template:

From: Roy Schestowitz – Autoreply Message

Re: %subject% – Message Received

%from%,

I am in the process of replacing E-mail correspondence with other, more effective & real-time means of communication. I still read my E-mail, but I do not read it regularly. I will collect messages about once a week, which makes manual filtering of spam a lot faster.

If you are willing to have a conversation with me, please consider creating/using an account in identi.ca < http://identi.ca/ > (or Twitter) where I can be contacted by handle @schestowitz. Alternatively, you can find me on IRC, under the Freenode network at channel #techrights

If the E-mail is urgent, please send mail to [redacted], which I will read more regularly. For an explanation of why I prefer to phase my E-mail accounts out, see < http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html >

E-mail is still necessary for management of online accounts and sometimes passing of files (there are other means for that too). Due to high volumes of spam & phishing, E-mail is also dangerous. I wrote a great deal about E-mail since 2004. 6 years later I’m giving up.

This is just disgusting. The Great Society of Our Time is once again preparing for a mass-slaughter of innocent animals. It’s hiding the severity of the act behind propaganda words.

The proposal “is killing pure and simple to balance the books for an agency whose reckless management has caused immeasurable harm to a national treasure at considerable cost to the American taxpayer,” Heyde said.

Maybe it’s not the ‘unfit to live’ horses that should be euthanized after all. What happened to human mercy? Whose planet is it?

have been a very vocal critic of the BBC, which is still perceived by many as the Auntie that can never do any wrong and can also always be trusted (de facto stance). For a variety of reasons, the BBC has been aligning with many commercial interests and you are warned that the channel (like many other broadcasting/publishing companies including Fox News and CNN) are serving agenda, not news.

In my personal case of criticism, I am most aware of the BBC’s ties with Microsoft and battles against common rivals. Now that Ashley Highfield is out, it’s claimed that he has moved to a place where could do more damage, so we should keep an eye on him.

An official complaint that was served against the BBC was returned recently as they responded to the official complaint with a “F*ck Off”. The European Commission (Neelie Kroes’ departments) should investigate this further along with similar cases involving Public Broadcasters.

The reason for writing this is actually my return from a short encounter with the Chinese protest against the BBC. It’s still taking place in Manchester and about 1,000 people attend. The BBC seems to have rubbed many people the wrong way for their commercial slant and national agenda. They continue to portray the Olympics torch’s journey as one that is filled with loud protesters instead of focusing on the millions of protesters that rally along. In order to increase damage to the reputation of the Chinese nation, which seems like the next superpower of the world, there is also an inaccurate portrayal of the incidents in Tibet.

Keep an eye on what you watch and remember that most broadcasters, including the BBC, serve you propaganda (or personal point of views, approved by moderators and funding sources). To many readers, this won’t be news, but it’s worth a quick reminder. Don’t trust anyone. See different points of view for yourself and make a balanced judgment. It will make you smarter and will simplify your understanding of seemingly complex situations.

Intel Against Our Children

Intel sabotaged and even strove to ‘kill’ the OLPC charity by derailing it off a mass-production route. It’s disgraceful. Then they made a deal with Nick (project head) to shut him up. If you want proof, I’ve collected articles from the press here and here. Criminal-minded companies like Intel ought to be punished already. They are already an abusive, convicted monopoly in some nations, but the Bush administration turns a blind eye.

Analysts Are Often Shills in Suits

Analysts are paid by companies to dig their dirt. Red Hat seems to be a recent victim of their wrath. One analyst, for example, has already got one damaging prediction on Red Hat totally wrong and then disappeared into a distant cave (not to admit the ‘mistake’).

See this podcast from last week. In many cases analysts are little more than shills in suits. Gartner and IDC, for example, are funded by Bill Gates. Steve Ballmer shouts at the analysts on the phone and there are records in antitrust memos about hiding disclosures (a misconduct)

Google’s ‘Innovations’ That Weren’t

Innovating Lock-in

Google acquired the company which used the ‘wrong’ (platform-dependent) tools to build Picasa, which isn’t innovative at all. They would probably need to rewrite the whole application just to make it properly run in platforms other than Windows.

It’s better to just buy companies whose software is build not for just one platform. Wine patches are a nice gift though. At least Google’s work on the Windows-centric Picasa continues to bring good patches to Wine, which benefits other applications too.

Innovating Buyouts

Let’s use a better example. Take into account another acquisition (KeyHole) and be aware that ‘Google Earth’ has always been OpenGL+QT, making a native port trivial for most platforms to enjoy. One thing to point out here is that Google takes pride in Google Earth, claiming it is its own innovation (they even suggested that in an interview with me).

Google is like Microsoft in that respect. It buys more ‘innovation’ than it creates. And these acquisitions are typically proprietary.

Environment Concerns

The British government’s study on servers revealed that Linux can be 50% greener than Windows. The study says a lot about aging, but little about utility where GNU/Linux enjoys even more advantages (fewer Linux servers are needed to handle the same loads).