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Bugger - I can't set up the rewrite rule on my web host... and they're on the other side of the planet. Bit of a delay now while we sort this bit out...

How about that - I turned off the mod_rewrite logging, and the file dialog went away. Gah. Well, I've got the registration and login process working now. Sample session:

[outpost:~/src/roundup/roundup]$ python2 setup.py register
running register
We need to know who you are, so please choose either:
 1. use your existing login,
 2. register as a new user,
 3. have the server send you a password reminder email, or
 4. quit
Your selection [default 1]: 2
Username: richard
Password:
 Confirm:
   EMail: rjones@ekit-inc.com
You will receive an email shortly.
Follow the instructions in it to complete registration.

I get the email, click on the link and it responds "Registration Complete". I then:

[outpost:~/src/roundup/roundup]$ python2 setup.py register
running register
We need to know who you are, so please choose either:
 1. use your existing login,
 2. register as a new user,
 3. have the server send you a password reminder email, or
 4. quit
Your selection [default 1]: 1
Username: richard
Password:
Server response: Submission OK

Yay.

I've been working on getting the user and journalling support into the module catalog web interface, which has been going well. So far I'm supporting only Basic auth, but will eventually support Digest too. Unfortunately, I spent the train ride this morning fighting with apache and mod_rewrite to get the Authorization header passed through to my cgi-bin. I eventually got it going, but there's a strange side-effect: when accessing the cgi through tcpwatch it works fine, but directly with Konqueror, it doesn't (I get presented with a file download dialog.

I've been to a few python-au-inspired get-togethers, and they've generally been fun (although attendence varied greatly. It's nice to see another is being organised.

So the trial has finally come around, and Winona's in court facing charges that could land her in jail for three years. As TheStar.com notes, the defence includes the following:

Defence attorney Mark Geragos said that the department store had her credit card on file and that Ryder told a clerk to keep it open. He said that when Ryder was detained she said, "You've got my credit card; you can do what you want with it."

This, in addition to the impending disqualification of the witness accounts that have changed during the lead-up to the trial. Then the complete lack of evidence on the alleged smoking gun surveillance video which was found to be anything but convincing. The dropping of the felony drug charges because carrying a couple of no-name brand knockoffs of tablets that you have a prescription for turns out to be not illegal. The case really is hanging together by quite dodgy threads...

Sadly, as the independent.co.uk points out:

Some of Ms Ryder's supporters have expressed amazement that the case was not settled before coming to trial, and have accused prosecutors of trying to make a name for themselves on the back of her celebrity. The truth, though, is that almost everyone stands to gain from turning California vs. Ryder into a media circus - the pundits, the television shows and, of course, the lawyers.

... everyone, that is, except Winona.

Detlev Offenbach has announced Eric v3 to the world. It's looking really nice - it's a pity I just never got into IDEs ;)

... or so says the latest book to be given the Vatican's seal of approval:

Based on their study of original sacred texts, Elisabetta Broli and Roberto Beretta's book carries a preface by Gianfranco Ravasi, a member of the Vatican's cultural committee, congratulating the writers "who, like hounds, have gone in search of these pseudo-biblical truffles, as malodorous as they are delicious".

So this is the second bunch of people of the Christian faith to come out speaking about the faith and the ... what's the word? "misstatements" that are made... though of course this is talking about much longer history, not just US right-wing fundamentalism.

ta anthony

A spin on the "war on drugs" ad campaign linking drugs to the various consequences of the drug tade:

The second ad, which opens on a man at a gas station, features a child's voice-over throughout: "This is George." Then we see a close-up of a gas pump. "This is the gas George buys for his car." Next we see a guy in a suit. "This is the oil company executive who makes money on the gas George buys." Close-up on Al Qaeda training film footage: "This is the terrorist organization supported by money from the country where the oil company does business." It's followed by footage of 9/11: "We all know what this is." And it closes on a wide shot of bumper-to-bumper traffic: "The biggest weapon of mass destruction is parked in your driveway."

(ta, eccles)

Over at fair.org they've got a list of quotes from the media comparing the reporting about weapons inspectors in 1998 to 2002. In their words, "What a Difference Four Years Makes"...

The chief U.N. weapons inspector ordered his monitors to leave Baghdad today after saying that Iraq had once again reneged on its promise to cooperate--a report that renewed the threat of U.S. and British airstrikes.

--AP, 12/16/98

Information on Iraq's programs has been spotty since Saddam expelled U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998.

--AP, 9/7/02

(via robot)

I've had a few people poke around the interface, and a couple of people have used the registration code. No direct comments yet though :(

Well, I've added a search form which handles basic filtering. Neatened up the display code too. I've got a TODO list, which may or may not be actioned depending on enthusiasm from the community. Things like manual entry, user identification, download url and full package submission. The last won't be implemented on the 'cat since I can't afford to rent hat sort of disk space.

I've posted to the distutils mailing list asking about Trove support too - it has come up a few times in the mailing list archives, generally with "hey, this'd be useful" and "yeah, that sounds cool" but no-one ever actually included the Trove attributes in the metadata set...

Ho hum. Perhaps I need to write a PEP or someting...

Now that's neat.

A new project attempting to create a complete atari emulator in python with pygame. Currently ROMS are just starting to run, work is proceeding on input handling.

via pygame

The Reg has a t-shirt on sale that features another of the classic 419 scam variants, the scam from beyond the grave.

ON THE 21ST OF APRIL 1999, MY CLIENT, HIS WIFE AND THEIR THREE CHILDREN WERE INVOLVED IN A GHOSTLY MOTOR ACCIDENT ALONG SAGAMU EXPRESS ROAD. MY CLIENT AND HIS ENTIRE FAMILY UNFORTUNATELY LOST THEIR LIVES IN THE ACCIDENT.

It's a bit longish from the Washington Post, of all papers...

via anthony

A little more hacking, and the modules are up and running. Copy register.py to your python lib "distutils/command" directory (typically something like "/usr/lib/python2.1/distutils/command/"). Then run "setup.py register" in the way you normally run your distutils setup command. Your package should then be listed [temporary hosting removed]...

On the train this morning, I quickly hacked together:

1. register.py (not complete) -- a command class definition for distutils that HTTP POSTs the distribution metadata to a URL (would default to .. oh .. something on python.org)
2. config.py, store.py and webui.py (not complete) --- handle the HTTP side of things, using sqlite to store the metadata submitted (keyed off name, version)

So the intention is that just after people run "setup.py sdist" the also run "setup.py register" which registers the distribution's metadata with the searchable server.

There's a bit more work to go, but the basics are there. I'll be setting the web UI up on mechanicalcat as a test run. The ask for feedback. This is my attempt to just geting something done so we can kick-start a python module repository. Don't care how the next step proceeds (uploading of actual distributions) ... don't care. Gotta get something out...

That's the word from the gun nuts.

Maybe they should get themselves out to see a movie and try to calm down.

And on the subject of an anti-gun rally, the nuts had this to say:

The state's largest gun-grabbing group will hold its yearly group-grope on the Federal Plaza on Monday. Certainly all the antigun politicians will be there tripping all over each other to see who will portray themselves as being the most antigun. Intermixed with all the damning statements about the NRA (most of the folks in the crowd can't even spell NRA) will be silly awards for silly poems and a sappy story from some mom whose honor student kid was gunned down at 3 a.m. on his way home from the library to choir practice.

Of course, we'll hear how the little angel wanted to be a doctor. Question, how come all these dead kids wanted to be doctors? Obviously, wanting to be a doctor is the problem, not guns.

On this subject, here's a conversation from the talkback radio from GTA3:

Lazlow:

"Al-right, another award-winning show on Chatterbox. Today we're talking about anything, it seems. If you have something to say about anything, call now. Hello caller. You're on Chatterbox"

Caller:

"Yeah, hi, I love the show, love hearing people's opinions, that's what made this country great. People. And opinions. And stuff. Most of all, guns. I've had it with people whining about 'guns kill people,' guns don't kill people, death kills people. Ask a doctor, it's a medical fact. You can't die from a bullet. You can die from a cardiac arrest or organ failure or a major hemorrhage, small piece of metal ain't the problem. Besides, I only use my machine-gun in the safety of my own home and car. I ain't hurting nobody. And countries that don't have guns ain't American."

Lazlow:

"Y-you know that's a really good point. Countries that don't have guns aren't American. You know, if more people had guns, we'd have less shootings in this country."

... just the kind of argument one could imagine these people using. Only one of these is not real. Sometimes I'm really, really glad I don't live in the US.

Obesity may be America's secret weapon in war on terror.

"The average American today is between fifty and seventy pounds overweight," said Dr. Charles Reardon, author of the study. "That means that a terrorist who hopes to fit in here would have to eat like a pig to do so."

via anthony

Rev. Jan Linn et al deliver a very lucid smack-down to Falwell:

It is not Christian in attitude or actions because both represent what Jesus spoke and acted against. Those who lead the Christian right are the Pharisees of today's Christianity. They play the role of moral and thought police, condemning to hell anyone whose actions they consider wrong and whose views are different from their own. Their religiosity runs a mile wide but their spirituality is an inch deep.

... and ...

In our view the Christian right gives new meaning to Mohandas Gandhi's comment that he might have become a Christian had he not known so many.

via Common Dreams

Paul Krugman, over at nyt.

... you can't understand what's happening in America today without understanding the extent, causes and consequences of the vast increase in inequality that has taken place over the last three decades, and in particular the astonishing concentration of income and wealth in just a few hands. To make sense of the current wave of corporate scandal, you need to understand how the man in the gray flannel suit has been replaced by the imperial C.E.O. The concentration of income at the top is a key reason that the United States, for all its economic achievements, has more poverty and lower life expectancy than any other major advanced nation. Above all, the growing concentration of wealth has reshaped our political system: it is at the root both of a general shift to the right and of an extreme polarization of our politics.

via anthony

I think someone, somewhere needs to collect up all the 419 scam premises - I know I've received a lot of variations, and got a completely new one today which makes quite a story:

Due to the military campaign of LAURENT KABILA to force out the rebels in my country, I and some of my colleagues were instructed by Late President Kabila to go abroad to purchase arms and ammunition worth of Twenty Million, Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars only (US$20,500,000.00) to fight the rebel group. We were then given this money privately by the then President, LAURENT KABILA, without the knowledge of other Cabinet Members. But when President Kabila was killed in a bloody shoot-out by one of his bodyguards a day before we were schedule to travel out of Congo, We immediately decided to put the funds into a private security company here in Congo for safe keeping. The security of the said amount is presently being threatened here following the arrest and seizure of properties of Col. Rasheidi Karesava (One of the aides to Laurent Kabila) a tribesman, and some other Military Personnel from our same tribe, by the new President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the son of late President Laurent Kabila, Joseph Kabila.

The kitten saved from the pool of tar earlier this week is doing just fine, and has been named Licorice (because it is black even when washed of tar). Go Kitty :)

ta rachel for passing that on

Things are a bit messy these days, but somehow I managed to squeeze out a bugfix release of Roundup.

Yay me.

sigh

Red Hat, the Linux vendor, has struck a small blow against the DMCA by

RHSA-2002-158 is an errata kernel which addresses certain security vulnerabilities. Quite simply, these vulnerabilities were discovered and documented by ppl outside of the US, and due to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act legislation in the US, it is potentially dangerous to disclose any information on security vulnerabilities, which may also be used in order to circumvent digital security - i.e. computer security. For this reason, RH cannot publish this security information, as it is not available from the community in the first instance. The www.thefreeworld.net site allows for accessing this information, but requires you agree to terms which protect the author and documenter of the patches from being accusations that they themselves have breached DMCA.

via the reg

The second patch release for Python 2.2 is out.

I seem to be following an odd-release-number (1.5, 2.1) rule at present. I've only peripherally played with 2.2 - mostly to check that Roundup works with it.

I guess the biggest concern is that I'll start using the doovy new features in Roundup and I'll force prospective users to upgrade too. I'd rather not do that just yet - I'll wait until the Linux vendors get themselves up to the 2.2 mark before I jump. Redhat's done that, which is good - but realistically no-one uses a ".0" Linux release ;) I'm not sure where the other vendors are at...

Hurm, 2.2 does include the new email package ... that'd be really nice to integrate into the mail handling parts of Roundup.

This lot have developed the software I've been waiting for... playing the audio and video media from the home PC on the PS2.

Currently only for the US, and only in pre-release. But soon... (from the FAQ)

We intend to have versions for all regional PS2's.

At the moment we do not support any USB Ethernet devices. We currently only support the Sony Ethernet adapter. We will be looking into expanding this in the near future.

And from the forum:

QCast currently only supports .mp3 audio tracks [for DivX], but we will support AC3 tracks soon

(ta, toby)

xrefer is a rather nice online reference library using freely available reference books.

The list of books crosses several disciplines, and is cross-referenced well.

The prosecutors trying to nab Winona on felony drug charges have realised it'll never stand up in court (apparently buying a cheaper version of prescription drugs is not actually a felony after all). They're still going all out (ie. felony grand theft and vandalism) for her alleged shoplifting of $4000+ of store goods. To repeat the relevant bit from the Slate article last week:

... of all 5,000 grand theft felony cases filed in Los Angeles County last year, not one defendant was facing penalties as harsh as Ryder's. In fact, in all cases involving theft exceeding the amount alleged in Ryder's case, the defendants received standard misdemeanor plea deals. The district attorney's office has refused to accept a plea for anything less than a felony in Ryder's case.

It's really starting to look like someone at the L.A. district attorney's office really wants to take down a celebrity. At the moment, it's unclear what the penalty for the remaining charges would be.

As seen in a comment on "They're Trying To Give Our Kids The Gay!"...

Lord, protect me from your followers

on morons.

Courtesy of The Reg and NTK: wearable in-jokes for outcasts. Heh, the "404 /shirt/tie not found" is back in stock. The viral marketing design is my favourite though - it's always kinda stuck in my head for some reason ;)

Robert Fisk summarises the facts that the US population are being forced to forget to support invading Iraq.

... let's list exactly what we really must forget if we are to support this madness.

Older news, but relavent here is the Institute for Public Accuracy "Detailed Analysis of October 7 Speech by Bush on Iraq".

from Common Dreams

Some poetry assembled from quotes by the Leader Of The Free World.

Apparently the owner of this clock got into a lot of trouble.

Pity, it's a bloody good clock, and quite the artistic statement too.

(via obscure)

United Nations Security Council Resolutions Currently Being Violated by Countries Other than Iraq. From the editor's note:

In its effort to justify its planned invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration has emphasized the importance of enforcing UN Security Council resolutions. However, in addition to the dozen or so resolutions currently being violated by Iraq, a conservative estimate reveals that there are an additional 91 Security Council resolutions about countries other than Iraq that are also currently being violated. This raises serious questions regarding the Bush administration's insistence that it is motivated by a duty to preserve the credibility of the United Nations, particularly since the vast majority of the governments violating UN Security Council resolutions are close allies of the United States.

via robot

Another history of the resolutions regarding Israel and Palestine gives enlightement on the veto power the US has used.

Now I have choice! ... I wonder if the controls have been improved to the Timsplitters 2 level...

APT, Mp3 and DVD Playback ... the easy way to view your DVDs on your home computer.

Burnout 2... review snippets:

Forget everything you know. Whether you liked Burnout or not, it matters not. The simple fact of the matter is that its sequel will change your perceptions of the driving game genre, and the capabilities of the PlayStation 2.

From the minute you first boot up Burnout 2 it has you smiling. As you progress through the 'anti GT' Offensive Driving 101 tutorial (where you learn how best to drive badly?) the smile extends to a full-on cheesy grin as you realise just how stupendously fast the game engine is, and by the time you're charging into streams of head on traffic you're screaming like a cheerleader having her first orgasm.

The reviewer is certainly enthusiastic about the game :)

George Monbiot's article "Inspection as Invasion" gives a good summary of the repeated efforts by the US to prevent a peaceful resolution of the current problems with Iraq.

On July 4 this year, Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations, began negotiating with Iraq over the return of UN weapons inspectors. Iraq had resisted UN inspections for three and a half years, but now it felt the screw turning, and appeared to be on the point of capitulation. On July 5, the Pentagon leaked its war plan to the New York Times. The US, a Pentagon official revealed, was preparing "a major air campaign and land invasion" to "topple President Saddam Hussein". The talks immediately collapsed.

Via the same site, Robert Scheer writes "Truth on Iraq Seeps Through" about a report released by the CIA late last week.

So what we have here is our top intelligence agency endorsing the past success of a peaceful, enforceable disarmament technique that our allies and the United Nations support, while our president and his Cabinet repeatedly belittle it as a sham.

(both via Common Dreams)

Oh yeah, the Roundup presentation I gave last night to a bunch of System Admins (SAGE-AU, Vic branch) went really well. I ended up talking pretty much to time, even though I hadn't a) rehearsed, or b) looked at a clock once during the presentation :)

Didn't bore anyone to sleep, and they were interested enough to ask some good questions during and after the presentation.

Pretty happy with the whole thing :)

The state government has released its plan for Melbourne in 2030 (the linked information site is a bit over-designed, but has lots of information fairly well laid out). It's the culmination of two years of planning and public consultation. It's got a lot of good stuff there - plans for slowing the sprawl, increasing public transport usage (neat map) from the current dismal 9% to at least 20%, encouraging greener practices ...

I'm fairly excited by the thing, actually. Let's see if it can get the funding it needs...

From The Chaser:

BAGHDAD, Thursday: Saddam Hussein has launched a pre-emptive strike on the United States to prevent it from pre-emptively striking Iraq first. Hussein said he has intelligence that the US had developed weapons of mass destruction and planned to use them to attack Iraq.

See the analysis on urbanlegends. Some of the "report" is pretty funny though:

Among comments made concerning the specific testing of President G. W. Bush, his low ratings were due to his apparent difficulty to command the English language in public statements, his limited use of vocabulary (6,500 words for Bush versus an average of 11,000 words for other presidents), his lack of scholarly achievements other than a basic MBA, and an absence of any body of work which could be studied on an intellectual basis. The complete report documents the methods and procedures used to arrive at these ratings, including depth of sentence structure and voice stress confidence analysis.

A masterful spin on a common scam: I am the widow of the late President George W. Bush ...

Some of the comments are pretty special too :)

ta, anthony

Yeah, this is an old story, but I wanted to make sure it hit my archives ;)

Dungeonmaker creates labyrinths and dungeons using artificial life methods. Is very neat, and I need to use it in something, someday...

kioslaves (tutorial) in KDE are modules that implement new protocols for Konqueror to play with. kioslaves for HTTP and FTP were written fairly early on, and handle all things to do with those protocols.

kioslaves that I've played with in the past include man (eg. man:vim), info (eg. info:emacs), devices, floppy and webdav. Today I've been using the audiocd ioslave, and it roxxor :)

Typing "audiocd:/" in the konqi URL bar, I get a listing of the contents of the audio CD in the drive - by track number, or by track name (having looked the CD up on freedb) or... and this is the neat part ... by track name with .ogg extension. It gives an estimate of the resultant file in Ogg Vorbis format, and if I drag-n-drop copy any of those files to disk, it automatically rips the file. Neat :)

No more wrestling with the crappy grip interface for me! :)

.. to get a full listing of the kioslaves installed, go to the Konqi Help menu, select Konqueror Introduction, then Specifciations, and down next to Transfer protocols click "many more".

The crop circles are still coming out, and these ones are fairly amazing.

ta tobe

I recommend NaNoWriMo to anyone who's ever though it'd be neat (or a life's dream, or anywhere in-between) to write a novel. 50,000 words in one month. Just over 1,600 words a day. Eminently achievable, if you don't pay much attention to the detail.

I participated last year, and made it in time with just over 50,000 words. Only one person has actually read my novel end-to-end, and it wasn't me :)

This year, the word counters are back, this time with verification. They're also including a "novel-in-progress excerpt area", which worries me - it might scare people off. It was pretty hard keeping on going last year reading some of the quite decent prose that other writers were coming out with. In the end though, it's a personal challenge, and a very worthwhile one at that.

"National" hasn't been an applicable name since about the second year of the event. It's definitely global, with a strong Aussie following.

I played the demo of TS2 that came with the latest aussie PS2 mag. It really is quite an amazing game :)

The gameplay is very smooth, and the controls are the best of any first-person game I've played on a console. The fine aiming will still take some getting used to - I'm finding that almost every game has different response curves to the analog sticks. Practise would improve that quickly though.

The environment ranges from very well done (the overall structure) to kinda bland in the detail. The character animation is superb though, and quite fun to watch.

The sneakiness of the demo was a lot like MGS2, only without the horrid "cut" scenes (which felt like they took more than half of the game time)

I don't like my chances, but I reckon I'd like this game and GTA:Vice City in my xmas stocking (barring any other amazing releases between now and then :)

With first impressions like:

TimeSplitters 2 is already looking like the answer to every console owning FPS fan's dream

... the controls are the sweetest, most responsive we've ever come across for a console FPS. Gone are the days of making wild lurching movements as you attempt to move yourself around. Suddenly the PS2 Dual Shock feels like it was positively made for games of this type. For the first time, the old "I wish I could use a keyboard and mouse" moans are becoming redundant.

The visuals are also stylistically beyond just about anything attempted on the previously humble PS2.

... I start seriously thinking about my Christmas Season game list :)

"Why Winona Ryder will do time for O.J.'s crimes."

Either the Los Angeles district attorney's office is seeking payback for the O.J. Simpson trial, or District Attorney Steve Cooley is gunning for an Oscar.

...

Then, there is the felony "drug" charge. At the time of her arrest, Ryder was in possession of two tablets-two-of endocet, the generic version of Percocet. She has the prescription for the Percocet, by the way. But the DA's office is pursuing the drug charges because she had the generic version rather than the pricey designer kind. (Evidently Ryder's taste in painkillers is less extravagant than her taste in handbags.)

...

The fact that there were felony charges filed at all is astonishing in its own right, as an exposé conducted by the entertainment tabloid Extra, Celebrity Justice (dogged friend to celebs everywhere!) revealed that in court records of all 5,000 grand theft felony cases filed in Los Angeles County last year, not one defendant was facing penalties as harsh as Ryder's. In fact, in all cases involving theft exceeding the amount alleged in Ryder's case, the defendants received standard misdemeanor plea deals. The district attorney's office has refused to accept a plea for anything less than a felony in Ryder's case.

An interesting read: Alex Encel's HDTV story appears in crikey.

It was just a few days ago that Alston announced plans to force HDTV into all new televisions sold, regardless of whether the consumer wanted it or not. Apparently he still doesn't get that there's no real reason for us to want to switch over (ignoring the slightly-better-than-cable picture quality)

The second, and last beta release for KDE 3.1 is out. Something on the order of 1000 bugs have been fixed in this release (including a couple that I reported/helped solve ;)

It's popular... it took a while to find an FTP mirror that'd let me log in, too :)

Just as I thought everything was going to hell... a couple of good news stories pop up.

Interesting choice of casting (ta kate)

... what a relief ...

The US is rapidly losing its tenuous reasoning behind attacking Iraq. So before anyone can go in and potentially prove the US is just making all this shit up, they have to attack. "The US is demanding the UN Security Council pass a final resolution detailing possible military action before the inspectors return."

Who's the f*king rogue state now?

Can't wait 'till we Aussies get one of our own!

I played with the docutils python documentation sandbox yesterday, but it's got a fair way to go. I'm going to have another look at it today.

I just ran epydoc over the Roundup source. It was a tedious affair as it isn't very smart about documenting packages. The structure of the output was very nice though.

Harper's magazine has an excellent review of weekly events which I've never seen before.

Their latest index is up for September (which is a brilliant collection, as always).

ta anthony