Looking for the Guilty

Why "free as in beer" still sucks

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:27:00 +0000

For my diploma thesis, I used a program called WU-BLAST. I had my ideological difficulty with using it, because it was not Free Software, but only "free for academic use". I was told to be pragmatic about it. It is still in use at the department with no usable replacement in sight. And now -- it is proprietary.
Note to external world: University of Washington, you greedy suckers!
Note to self: Never ever again rely on such software. I'd rather write the necessary software myself than ever use that stinking pile of non-Free shit again.

GDL (GNU Data Language) patch for Debian Lenny

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:58:00 +0000

The current version of GDL doesn't compile on Debian Lenny. It bails out with:

...
hdf_fun.cpp: In function 'BaseGDL* lib::hdf_sd_dimgetid_fun(EnvT*)':
hdf_fun.cpp:398: error: invalid conversion from 'DLong*' to 'int32*'
hdf_fun.cpp:398: error:   initializing argument 3 of 'intn SDgetinfo(int32,
char*, int32*, int32*, int32*, int32*)'
make[3]: *** [gdl-hdf_fun.o] Error 1

Apparently it's because of a missing cast or something. Here's a fix. I thought I'd share it, because I looked all over the web for a fix, but google only spit out one link, which was basically leading to a Debian package building fail-log. Enjoy! (Of course, I couldn't be bothered to try and find out the sizes of DLong and int32, so my fix is maybe a little clumsy, but has the best chances of working even if there's a difference between the two ;-)

Has Been Tapped bit revived?

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:11:00 +0000

UPDATE: ...it was an April's fool joke, but I soooo bought it...

I was, literally, rolling on the floor laughing and biting in the carpet as I read this [german version via heise, google-translation here]. I'm going to paraphrase a part of the Heise article, simply because the idea is so infinitely funny :-)

The ECN bit of the TCP/IP protocl has traditionally been used as a HBT marker, i.e. "has-been-tapped". Secret services used to set this bit to signalize that the travelling data packet has already been tapped and that other secret services need not double the effort to tap it again.

Managing my home directory with `git`

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:00:00 +0000

Having to work on multiple computers is a pain, home-directory-wise. Being a /bin/bash kid, I'm using a console to interface my computer. I do so even today, with all the graphical bells and whistles around... I even managed my files from a terminal while using MacOS X! As an upside, a more or less meaningful home directory structure crystallized over the years.

The problem is now that everywhere I end up having an account, I always find myself sooner or later loosely replicating the home directory structure from my main computer (i.e. my laptop). The more time I spend on the other computer (at work, for example), the more precisely my new work environment looks like the one on my laptop. At some point, I end up copying stuff from my laptop to whereever I need to work (scripts, config files, documents etc). Ultimately, at some point, I end up rsync-ing entire trees resembling huge parts of my home directory from one computer to the other. That's when it becomes a major pain in the ass...

Looking for the Guilty

Why "free as in beer" still sucks

GDL (GNU Data Language) patch for Debian Lenny

Has Been Tapped bit revived?

Managing my home directory with git

Managing my home directory with `git`