Κόλαση

Δυο Θεσσαλονικείς έχουν πάει στη Κόλαση και λέει ο ένας στον άλλο:

– Φιλαράκι, καλή η Κόλαση δε λέω, αλλά Χαλκιδική δεν είναι

(Προσαρμοσμένο από ανέκδοτο που είχε πει ο Σταρόβας πριν ένα μήνα στην ΕΡΑ ΣΠΟΡ: “Φιλαράκι, καλός ο Παράδεισος δε λέω, αλλά Χαλκιδική δεν είναι”)

Mulberry is back!

Κάποτε ήταν ο μόνος λόγος για να χρησιμοποιώ Windows:

Hi folks,
Finally, after much effort, I have regained the rights to Mulberry and am making it available for free as of today. See:

<http://www.mulberrymail.com>

Some things to note:

1) It is free to anyone – no registration codes needed.

2) A new v4.0.5 version is available on the website. This simply removes the registration requirement and updates copyright notices etc.

3) There is no formal support for the product as there was before. Instead ‘community’ support via mailing lists and other resources will be used. I will make a best effort to respond in a timely fashion to issues, but see note (4) below.

4) This effort is purely a personal one on my part – all the work I do on this is being done in my (limited) spare time.

5) It is free but not open source. That’s an issue that we can discuss moving forward…

6) Also, major new features/revisions etc are out of the question right now (though I have a few pet projects that were being worked on before and which I will likely continue). Fixes to existing problems will be done as time allows. Hopefully if we find a way of dealing with issue (5) that may change – but that’s really going to depend on the level of interest from people willing to commit their own time to this as opposed to one of the other open source equivalents.

Hopefully those of you still using Mulberry and hoping to continue to do so for a while at least will find this good news.

—
Cyrus Daboo

Ίσως ο καλύτερος IMAP client που υπάρχει.-

Zone Soccer: A Game of Time and Space (part 1)

Φίλε Herman οι παίκτες της ομάδας που προπονεί ο προϊστάμενός σου χτες ήταν lost in time και lost in space.

On related news:

Είμαστε οπαδοί και όχι εγκληματίες
άνθρωποι κι εμείς με ελευθερίες. Ultras 7

Πανό που σηκώθηκε με την είσοδο των ομάδων στον αγωνιστικό χώρο. Ελπίζω κάποιος από τους Ultras να το μεταφράσει…

Το χτεσινό ματς πάντως ήταν Rivaldo+10:

-A casa!

(part 2)

Metcalfe’s Law

Μερικοί φαίνεται πως μπορεί να ισχυριστούν οτιδήποτε (ακόμα και εφαρμογή ενός “νόμου” σε λάθος πεδίο) για να καταφέρουν μια ηχηρή δημοσίευση. Τι γίνεται όμως όταν ο πατέρας του “νόμου” ζει και απαντά σε μεγάλα κέφια;

Πράγματι “Metcalfe’s Law is wrong” για το πεδίο εφαρμογής όπως το ορίζουν στη δημοσίευσή τους, αλλά σίγουρα όχι στο πεδίο εφαρμογής για το οποίο τοv εξέφρασε ο Metcalfe. Από σύμπτωση διάβαζα χτες το IEEE/Spectrum στο λεωφορείο και κοίταζα το συγκεκριμένο άρθρο, συζητώντας το με ένα συνάδελφο στη δουλειά, αλλά δεν περίμενα τόσο γρήγορα να δω την απάντηση του Metcalfe1. Κυρίως γιατί με το φίλο μου είχαμε σκεφτεί ορισμένα overlay netwroks στα οποία ισχύει ο νόμος / κανόνας ακόμα.

Ακόμα κι έτσι όμως, το κομάτι του άρθρου με τίτλο “Probe further” οδηγεί σε ορισμένους άλλους εντυπωσιακούς νόμους / κανόνες / θέσεις με πιο εντυπωσιακά κατά τη γνώμη μου το Long Tail και το νόμο του Wirth2 (software is slowing faster than hardware is accelerating).

[1]Που δεν είναι και τόσο γρήγορα τελικά αν σκεφτεί κανείς πως το άρθρο δημοσιεύτηκε τον Ιούλιο του 2006.
[2]Ο νόμος του Wirth έχει εκφραστεί εμπειρικά πλειστάκις στα ntua.* ως “η Visual Basic κάνει κακό στον προγραμματισμό” από τουλάχιστον 5 (then) frequent posters.

XandrOS 4 Home Edition – Premium and Greek language support

Since we as a country have not standarised on a keyboard, when trying to install support for Greek on a linux machine you will find out that there exists an overlay keyboard (gr) over the us keyboard and a defined language for Greek (el). So what you have to do on a XandrOS 4 Home Edition – Premium to get Greek working is become root and:

# cd /etc/X11/xkb/symbols
# ln el gr
# cd pc
# ln gr el

Other sites explain in detail why the mixup between using el and gr. Remember, this is a quick hack and not the solution.

Update: You should also run a dpkg-reconfigure -plow locales and add el_GR (ISO-8859-7) and el_GR.UTF8

Mundobasket 2006

Μετά το Dribble & Drink που κάλυψε το Mundial 2006, ανακάλυψα και το http://mundobasket2006.blogspot.com/

In English: Roaming on the Net I found out http://mundobasket2006eng.blogspot.com/ which covers FIBA‘s World Championship 2006 in an excellent way!

While you’re still here: Ban him from playing basketball ever again.

Update #1: Που είναι ο Varejao; Οέο; Οέο;

Update #2: Σας ευχαριστούμε

Install Debian/testing (Etch) on a Sun X4100

The X4100 is a fantastic piece of equipment. Sun supports on it Solaris 10, Red Hat Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9. Hey, if it runs RHES and SLES, it runs Debian right? Right. You will find a number of guides on the net that describe how to remaster the installation CDs to support the machine. Well here is how I did it using yesterday’s (2006/08/16) i386 debian installer1:

First of all, you will save yourself a considerable amound of time if you spent some time with ILOM, especially the web interface, not the serial nor the ssh one. The web interface has a Java Web Start terminal application that works very well with the the debian text-based installer.

In my case the X4100 has two SAS disks which I configured to a (hardware) RAID-1. I followed the steps of the debian installer and proceeded to reboot the machine. Here come the tricks needed for the machine to run Debian:

The debian installer thinks that the (RAID-1) disk is sdi. However it installs a 486 kernel which thinks that the disk is sda. So on reboot you have to modify GRUB to boot from sda and on single user mode. After you give the root password issue the following commands:

# mount -o rw,remount /dev/sda1 /
# cd /etc
# mv fstab fstab.sdi
# sed -e 's/sdi/sda/' fstab.sdi > fstab.sda
# cp fstab.sda fstab
# cd /boot/grub
# mv menu.lst menu.lst.sdi
# sed -e 's/sdi/sda/' menu.lst.sdi > menu.lst.sda
# cp menu.lst.sda menu.lst

And reboot (I choose to “reset” from the ILOM power control). Now you are OK, with the minor difference that you are running a 486 kernel instead of an SMP one. So:

# apt-get install linux-image-686-smp

and you are all set, or maybe not… The Debian 686-smp kernel loads as modules what is needed for MPT Fusion and LSI stuff. For some weid reason this has the result that 50% of the time on boot the kernel recognises the (RAID-1) disk as sdi and the other 50% as sda (yes, here we go again). But have no fear! If instead of modules you compile the support for MPT Fusion and LSI into the kernel you are OK (the disk is recognised as sda all the time). Grab the linux sources from Debian:

# apt-get install linux-source-2.6.16

and use make-kpkg to build it. The diff between my config and debian’s stock kernel is bellow:

# diff config-2.6.16-yiorgos config-2.6.16-2-686-smp
3,4c3,4
< # Linux kernel version: 2.6.16-yiorgos
< # Wed Aug 16 15:42:35 2006
---
> # Linux kernel version: 2.6.16
> # Sun Jul 16 03:04:43 2006
1149c1149
< CONFIG_SCSI=y
---
> CONFIG_SCSI=m
1155c1155
< CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD=y
---
> CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD=m
1174c1174
< CONFIG_SCSI_FC_ATTRS=y
---
> CONFIG_SCSI_FC_ATTRS=m
1176c1176
< CONFIG_SCSI_SAS_ATTRS=y
---
> CONFIG_SCSI_SAS_ATTRS=m
1206,1209c1206,1209
< CONFIG_MEGARAID_MM=y
< CONFIG_MEGARAID_MAILBOX=y
< CONFIG_MEGARAID_LEGACY=y
< CONFIG_MEGARAID_SAS=y
---
> CONFIG_MEGARAID_MM=m
> CONFIG_MEGARAID_MAILBOX=m
> CONFIG_MEGARAID_LEGACY=m
> CONFIG_MEGARAID_SAS=m
1322,1324c1322,1324
< CONFIG_FUSION_SPI=y
< CONFIG_FUSION_FC=y
< CONFIG_FUSION_SAS=y
---
> CONFIG_FUSION_SPI=m
> CONFIG_FUSION_FC=m
> CONFIG_FUSION_SAS=m
1326,1327c1326,1327
< CONFIG_FUSION_CTL=y
< CONFIG_FUSION_LAN=y
---
> CONFIG_FUSION_CTL=m
> CONFIG_FUSION_LAN=m

Now your X4100 is ready for use.

[1] Yes I know that I am running a 32bit OS on a 64bit machine.