01:33: Completely-unmaintained packages that YOU USE...

On Ubuntu, you can get a list of packages that are installed on your system but completely unmaintained by running this command:

dpkg --get-selections | grep '\Winstall' | cut -f1 | xargs apt-cache show | egrep '^Filename: pool/(universe|multiverse)/.*' | sed -re 's:.*/([^_]+)_(.*)_.*:\1:' | less -N

Packages in this list have not had time allocated to them for integration or QA prior to release, and they do not receive regular security-updates or bug-fixes following initial release.

As one moves further off-centre from Ubuntu's primary target-audience, the number of items in that list increases, and which items they are becomes more unsettling.

For example: I prefer to use the official GNOME web-browser, Epiphany--for reasons nicely summarised on Daniel Bo's weblog. Ubuntu shipped no updates for Epiphany during the lifetime of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), despite there having been several provided by Ubuntu's upstream community--with the first update making its way into Debian just 2 weeks after the initial (random?) snapshot was made for Karmic. That's no updates for the GNOME web-browser available through Ubuntu until the next release, 6 months later. If you stick with Ubuntu's Long Term Service (LTS) releases, then you can expect to go 2 years with no updates for this or any other package in the `universe' or `multiverse' sections of Ubuntu.

Having my web-browser, or anything else that faces the network, go without security-updates should be unsettling enough; but there are other items in my list that are even more unsettling: packages like gnutls-bin, which is supposed to be a security tool. And there are enough other `minorly-unsettling' items in my list that the sheer number of them all together is itself unsettling.

A friend was surprised to find that the "OTR" plugin for Pidgin, which he used to keep his IM conversations secure, is in universe-- which, again, means that he cannot expect security updates for it. So much for his secure conversations.

How many items are in your list, and what are they?

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20:51: Love Bug(fix): libvisualid 0.2.1

It's Valentine's Day and libvisualid 0.2.1 is out, to fix some bugs that managed to escape with version 0.2.0; changes include:

• Automatic complexity-limiting is actually enabled.
• A divide-by-zero bug affecting the rendering of line-glyphs with exactly one `rib' sub-glyph has been fixed.
• Under-reporting of the complexity added to Line-glyphs by multiple `ribs' has been fixed.
• Two issues in the best-common-substring logic used to associate file-names with pre-existing VisualID-glyphs for other, related files have been resolved: memory-leaks have been fixed, and strings that were treated as circular are now treated correctly.
• The VisualID Explorer now renders glyphs with a fixed 1:1 aspect-ratio, scaled without distortion to fit the available drawing-area.

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09:09: Baby's Drawings

The latest libvisualid code produced this, during testing:

When I asked Jay what he saw in it, he said, "three houseflies forming a political party".

I printed it out and brought it to Pam, who responded, "what's with the flies?". I told her that it was a VisualID. She trimmed it and hung it on the refrigerator.

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22:39: Jenny on WikiReader

A while back, I lent my WikiReader to my sister in law. She seemed to like it, so my wife and I got her one of her own as a christmas-present.

Her response was enthusiastic:

Oh! I've been so lonely without it--whenever I have a question, I think `oh, I'll just... oh..., I don't have it anymore!'

Her husband followed-up with:

It's just amazing the amount of stuff in there.

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20:01: OpenStreetMap for socio-linguistic studies

I thought this was interesting:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=32.047&lon=35.172&zoom=9&layers=B000FTF

If you take a close look at the labels, you'll notice that they're in two different languages--mostly, the ones in the west are in Hebrew and the ones in the east are in Arabic, with some intermixing in some places.

As the sidebar says, OpenStreetMap is a (worldwide) community-driven mapping project--to create freely-available map-data that everyone can use, augment, republish, etc.; in the same vein as Wikipedia, Ubuntu and the GNU Project, the Creative Commons project, etc.

So, basically, what you're seeing in that map is that the map made by the community is labelled using the languages of the people who made (their parts of) the map: the Israelis (and Jews?) made their contributions in Hebrew, and the Arabs made their contributions in Arabic; the mostly-Arabic regions are mostly labelled in Arabic, the mostly-Hebrew regions are mostly labelled in Hebrew, and you can see the dividing lines by looking at the linguistic distribution that the people themselves have plotted (and, if you zoom in enough, you can see it right down to the level of street- and building-names).

But there is actually something encouraging about this: regardless of the divisions, everyone is working together on the same project. There's at least some semblance of peace and greater `brotherhood of man' in that.

Actually, `a shared project to create freely-sharable maps of the world' does sort-of fit with the next lyrics in that song, too:

A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

Well..., it's a start.

My Hebrew teacher remarked:

This IS very interesting. I wonder if there is actually some cooperation in the making of the map. While borders are still in question, and land still "disputed", I will have to take a closer look at this to see how it all works out.

You can actually get a glimpse at the collaborative process by looking at this:

http://openstreetbugs.appspot.com/?lon=35.172&lat=32.047&zoom=9

That's a view of the same area in OpenStreetBugs, which is one of the tools used by people working on OpenStreetMap.It's the same map, but with markers that indicate known errors, gaps, routes that are on someone's `cartography to-do list', etc.

If you hover your pointer over the markers, textual descriptions of why the markers are there will pop up. If you click on a marker, then you can add a comment to that `bug' (like, "I know that street--I'll check the signs and fix it tomorrow!"); and, if you create an account, you can even edit the map to submit your own contributions (e.g.: fixing a problem; adding new routes, junctions, labels; etc.).

The online editor-tool is called "Potlatch", and there's some documentation for it in the OpenStreetMap wiki:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Potlatch

Interestingly, though most of the labels in this map are in Hebrew or Arabic, there are some that are in English.

Some of the `bug reports' on the map are also in English, and some of them are in different (local?) languges.

In the case of bug-reports, I suspect that it's just that English is one of the more prominent international-collaboration languages. But in the case of labels on the map, I think that it just means that someone was interested in having an English label--it may have been someone who either lives there and speaks English, or an English-speaking foreigner who submitted a route that they traced while they were visiting, or even someone abroad who just thought that there was value in having an English label there--and who was able to get enough community buy-in to make the label stick; "Gaza Strip" and "Gaza City", for example, certainly have international interest.

I'm not sufficiently literate in either of the predominant languages to be able to figure out whether any of the places with English labels also bear Hebrew labels, or are they all exclusively one-or-the-other, but I wonder about that: I see some labels that appear to be very close-together, but it's not clear to me whether they're labelling the same thing or not.

I'm not really clear about all of the details about how the project works (either socially or technically)--my experience so far is just as user, since all of the areas to which I've actually been seem to already be very well-mapped (including data in the sister project: OpenCycleMap, which documents routes/paths and services relevant to pedestrians and bicyclists).

I too wonder how things like actively disputed areas work out in OpenStreetMap. It's a very interesting point that OSM may provide a `living' map in the same sense that we've discussed Hebrew being a `living language' in Hebrew class.

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