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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in LinuxChix aggregator's InsaneJournal:

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    Friday, March 19th, 2010
    7:09 am
    Terri: Mailing lists of The Future! [cue sci-fi sounds effects]

    http://terriko.dreamwidth.org/24251.html

    I was really thrilled to see both Máirín Duffy and Luis Villa talking about mailing lists this week.

    Before I talk about their posts, though, I want to tell you two awesome things related to Mailman:

    1. The Mailman logo contest is now closed and the steering committee (including me!) is deciding how to narrow down the field before we put it to a vote. Check out all the awesome entries here!

    2. Systers has been accepted as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code. And I'm going to be part of their totally awesome team of mentors! They're hoping to get a whole lot of improvements for their mailing list, and a lot of these are the same sort of improvements we generally want for Mailman, so I'm really hoping we'll be able to use some of that code in Mailman 3. Check out our proposed list of projects: I'm most excited about the archives one, but there's lots of awesome in that list. (Student looking for a summer project? Apply!)

    Okay, now that I've talked about my announcements, let's talk about those posts I mentioned, and how they're connected to my upcoming work with Mailman.

    ( In which I talk about the awesomeness of dynamic sub-lists and improvements to the archives )

    I'm really excited to see other people thinking about the problems of mailing lists... and I'm even more excited to say that thanks to Systers, Google and a team of SoC students, we may be seeing the mailing lists of The Future sooner rather than later!

    Expect me to be talking about this stuff a lot over the coming months, and if you've got suggestions regarding Mailman, now's an even better time than usual to tell me about it. Don't be shy!
    Thursday, March 18th, 2010
    6:56 pm
    Deb Richardson: Make someone’s day

    http://www.dria.org/wordpress/archives/2010/03/18/1489/

    Feedback is an interesting thing. Critical feedback, while incredibly valuable and vital to improving and learning, can also sort of gut you. And working out in the open — in this crazy transparent fishbowl that is the Mozilla project — critical feedback can often come fast and furious. It’s great, of course, and absolutely fundamental to how we do things, but it does require a thick skin, and it can be profoundly exhausting at times.

    On the other hand, positive feedback is absolutely energizing. Those moments where someone goes out of their way to say “thanks” or “awesome job” or “you rock” really does make it all worthwhile. Feeling appreciated — knowing that someone genuinely cares about and values the work you do — can often make the difference between something being a burden or a joy. For me, receiving positive feedback is the most powerful motivator out there — more so than money, fame, or anything else.

    Rypple (which we use at Mozilla) recently built a new feedback mechanism into their service called “kudos” that you can use to send someone a quick “thanks”, “you’re awesome”, or “you rock” sort of message. The message you send is visible to everyone in the organization, so serves as a public note of appreciation. Other people can comment on the kudos as well, so there’s a way to quickly add a “+1″ or otherwise pile on the love. You can read more about the Rypple kudos feature (and an ongoing contest they’ve launched to promote it) over at WorkplaceHero.com.

    The Rypple kudos system really is fantastic. We don’t often go out of our way to publicly acknowledge the awesome things our coworkers do, but Rypple has given us a fun, fast, simple, lightweight, and unintimidating way to do so. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you should — take a minute to send a kudos and make someone’s day :)

    3:06 pm
    Deb Richardson: Ideas for screencasts & video introductions?

    http://www.dria.org/wordpress/archives/2010/03/18/1480/

    video camera icon
    Johnathan Nightingale and Rob Campbell recently put together fantastically useful screencast introductions to Bugzilla (Johnath) and Firebug (Rob). The response to these has been phenomenal, so I’ve been gathering suggestions for other screencasts we could put together to help people learn about our tools, code, culture, community, and so on.

    So far, people have suggested the following:

    • Lifecycle of a Bug – introduction to the stages involved in fixing a bug from start to end
    • Building Firefox – introduction to getting the Firefox source code and compiling it, while going over the basics of hg
    • Test Frameworks – introduction to the different test frameworks we use, and how to write a basic test in each of them
    • Drinking from the Firehose – how to stay on top of the news, difference between “stream of development and ideas” and “announcments”, how to understand things like what the next milestone is
    • Bugzilla for Developers: Getting your patch into the product – how to nom for review; how to determine if you need to nom for approval, blocking, etc.; writing tests; checkin wrangling; watching the tree.
    • Gaining Traction – how to publish that wicked cool idea you have; how to rally people around it to see if there’s interest; moving from idea to implementation
    • How to navigate the code using MXR/DXR
    • How to use and contribute to MDC
    • Writing your first automated test
    • How to do your own screencasts/videos
    • Mozilla Developer Tools & Workflow
    • How to optimize edit/compile/test loops
    • Presentation tips & tricks

    What other screencasts or video introductions do you think would be useful for learning Mozilla and getting involved with the project and community?

    3:28 pm
    ROSE Blog: Rikki's Open Source Exchange : ROSE Blog Interviews: Margarita Manterola, Debian Develop

    http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/ROSE-Blog-Rikki-s-Open-Source-Exchange/ROSE-Blog-Interviews-Margarita-Manterola-Debian-Developer

    "The amount of open source software keeps always growing, but the amount of Debian Developer does not."
    8:59 am
    Teri Solow: Transmissions from 2010-03-18

    http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TerisDigs/~3/RkzXW6hkHq8/


    No tags for this post.
    Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
    10:00 pm
    6:08 am
    Jessica: Cake is better than pie.

    http://www.sweetvenus.org/2010/03/cake-is-better-than-pie/

    Earlier, I happened upon this amusing-yet-totally-wrong blog post about pie and cake. I had to stop and re-read what it was trying to sell me. Pie? Better than cake? People really think this way? So, I have prepared a rebuttal.

    Don’t get me wrong, I like pie. Some of it. Not that fruit-filled stuff. (C’mon, it’s dessert. It’s not supposed to be healthy!) Chocolate pie is good. Kentucky Derby pie is great. Boston Cream Pie is the best. Oh, wait. That’s not even really pie, is it? It’s cake. And it’s pretty sad when the best a dessert has to offer is really just something else in disguise.

    Now, point by point…

    #1. They say that while cake initially tastes better, pie’s enjoyment lasts longer. Um, what? What kinds of cakes have you been eating? Cake is enjoyable from the first bite to the last, and usually then I want more. They even admit that CAKE TASTES BETTER.

    #2. They say that unequal frosting distribution is a minus for cakes. Um, at least cakes have frosting.

    #3. They say that a greater amount of the pie is enjoyable. Apparently there are people who just like frosting and only the frosting. These people have never had a well-made cake. I think they just need to expand their cake tasting beyond Wal-mart’s bakery.

    #4. They claim that because pie charts exist and cake charts do not, this makes pie better because it’s more scientifically viable. Well, cake is more mathematically viable, as there is a cake number and not a pie number. (And pi does not count; it’s not even spelled the same.)

    #5. This was the most messed up point of all. They claim pie can be eaten in more situations and provide this little chart:
    pieversuscake7

    Um, what? First of all, why is pie equal with cake on birthdays? Who has ever heard of birthday pie? Please. Any child that ended up with a birthday pie would be the laughingstock of all their friends. I’ll give Halloween to pie, if they are referring to pumpkin pie, though I’ve never actually eaten pumpkin pie on any day other than Thanksgiving. And Christmas? Have we not heard of fruitcake? While it’s the black sheep of the cake world, it still counts. And they’ve left out one important event: weddings! Weddings have cake (usually)! Finally, birthdays and weddings both can happen year round. Halloween? It’s once a year. The graph should have looked more like this:

    cakevspie

    Even pie fans should see this goes right to cake.

    #6. They claim that cake has longer-lasting negative consequences because it can cause diabetes when eating a lot over time. News flash: so can pie.

    So now that I have debunked all of their claims, I would like to add one more thing that weighs this heavily in cake’s favor. The cast of Lost? They like cake.

    8:49 pm
    3:47 pm
    ROSE Blog: Rikki's Open Source Exchange : Women Represented in List of 50 Most Powerful Voices

    http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/ROSE-Blog-Rikki-s-Open-Source-Exchange/Women-Represented-in-List-of-50-Most-Powerful-Voices

    12% of the list = women
    1:34 pm
    Magni Onsøien: Today's compulsory update.

    http://magnio.livejournal.com/600322.html

    Yes, I am still pregnant. Just writing a compulsory update now, so you don't have to bug me about my silence. A very good tip I got just recently - i.e. way too late - was to announce a due date two weeks later than the official one. The tip is hereby spread to anyone who might need it in the future. Also remember that the median (not average) birth date for non-induced non-premature first-time pregnants is 41 weeks and 3 days (from last menstruation), while the official WHO length of a pregnancy is 40 weeks, and the Norwegian pregnancy is 40 weeks and 2 days.

    My todo lists are getting empty. Yesterday I made banana bread. Today I ate some banana bread and froze some banana bread. I also remove snow from some of the trees in the garden to avoid breaking branches from heavy weight. It's above-knee-depth snow on the veranda now, and rain predicted for tomorrow and a few days to come. If I don't think too much about the environment and about filling the machine up before doing a load, I could do some laundry. And I cleaned the dishwasher yesterday.

    I also believe it is possible to be bored after birth, so be aware of more dull posts for any time in the future, pre and post birth.
    8:59 am
    Teri Solow: Transmissions from 2010-03-17

    http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TerisDigs/~3/zkkPU9vbshc/


    No tags for this post.
    5:48 am
    Michelle Murrain (tech): Drupal 7

    http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ZenOfNonprofitTechnology2007/~3/Cfr7Lbz5Tu8/drupal-7.html

    I’ve been doing a bit of playing around with Drupal 7 in my copious spare time (not a whole lot of that!) I’ve also been keeping track, a bit of how the development process is going, and what things will look like. One thing to say – it feels like as big an improvement as Drupal 6 was to Drupal 5.

    Of course, mostly, Drupal is only as good as it’s contributed modules (that’s a bit more of a stretch, now, because many of the key contributed modules, like CCK, are now in core Drupal.) So when folks like us, who build sites that depend on Drupal 7 can start using it is a bit up in the air, although there is a movement to get many modules ready for Drupal 7 at it’s release. But some may well not make it. We’re guessing that we’ll start building production sites in Drupal 7 starting in late summer, early fall, depending on requirements.

    A note: the standard process for deprecation of old Drupal versions is that when a new version of core comes out, the one two versions back stops being officially supported. So Drupal 5 will no longer get security updates and the like. Already, many module developers have stopped supporting versions of their modules that work on Drupal 5. (The salesforce module maintainers recently made that decision, as have others.) So certainly a site running Drupal 5 won’t stop working, but it will become vulnerable without security updates to core or modules, and it will get increasingly difficult to maintain and add features to. So it might be a good idea to budget the time and money to upgrade as soon as possible if you are on Drupal 5. If you are on Drupal 6, you’ve got a while yet, but Drupal 7 certainly has some great advantages, particularly in user experience, to look at.

    3:54 am
    Brenda Wallace: icky air new zealand advert

    http://www.coffee.geek.nz/icky-air-new-zealand-advert.html

    This Air NZ facebook campaign starts out well, with some jokes about spooning.

    then turns into the narrator assaulting a passing jogger, and forcing him to spoon.

    then the narrator assaults a woman lying near a swimming pool in a bikini, and forces her to spoon with him too

    then i stopped watching the crap.

    WTF AIR NEW ZEALAND!

    12:18 am
    Brenda Wallace: So, where in our national parks will New Zealand go mining?

    http://www.coffee.geek.nz/so-where-our-national-parks-will-new-zealand-go-mining.html

    Aparently New Zealand is gonna start some open cast mining operations in the middle of our national parks.

    Where?

    Forest and Bird obtained a copy of the report, and leaked it.

    Conservation organisation Forest & Bird has uncovered Government plans to allow mining in 7000 hectares of high-value conservation land in the West Coast’s Paparoa National Park, Great Barrier Island and the Coromandel Peninsula.

    The areas are:
    • Te Ahumata plateau on Great Barrier Island (about 700ha)
    • Otahu Ecological Area (396ha) and Parakawai Geological Reserve (70ha) near Whangamata and 2500ha near Thames township
    • Eastern Paparoa National Park, near Inangahua (3000ha)

    http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/what-we-do/publications/media-releases/f...

    So, what animals live there?

    “We’re not talking about gorse-covered hillsides with the odd tree in these areas. We are talking about rare native Hochstetter’s frogs, endangered brown teal, mature forest and pristine wilderness areas.”

    so, lets all go mining on top of endangered species. Lovely.

    But is it New Zealanders that are going mining? The other mining operation i'm familiar with is Waihi - Martha Hill became Martha Hole slowly through my teenage years living in the Waikato, as the open cast mine pulled out the gold. That employed a bunch of New Zealanders in Waihi, but the true wealth left the country to the owners of the mine: Newmont Australia Ltd. Are we going to sell bits of our National Parks overseas to be mined? Does it even matter who profits?

    Martha Mine

    This, coupled with our government's sudden, outta the blue, decision to be supportive of Whaling, makes me wonder if the current party really expects to be in power after the election.
    Where did the whaling idea come from? Does anyone believe the official stance that NZ will support whaling in order to make it not happen anymore. That logic is missing something. Someone please tell me what motivates our elected government to want to support whaling?

    Yeah, Whales are pretty -- but who cares about the pretty.. if they were butt ugly it would still be a problem. Whales are endangered - that's why we need to stop killing them. Killing endangered species for food, or for science that is merely a cloak for a food industry is wrong. Quit clobbering the endangered species.

    wgtn_harbour_whale.jpg
    Humpback in Wellington Harbour

    Whale mural
    Wellington Mural

    Patti's Rainbow Warrior Adventure
    My amazing friend Patti, and some Whales, on board the Rainbow Warrior at sea.

    Without a doubt man is the worst animal on the planet!
    Whale hunt in Iceland

    Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
    2:54 pm
    Renata: To be continued…

    http://renata.org/post/to-be-continued/

    Mais duas semanas se passaram desde que eu cheguei. Peguei um friozinho legal (entre -5, nos primeiros dias, e atualmente está fazendo 10 positivos durante o dia) e precisei DESESPERADAMENTE comprar meias, casacos, essas coisas.

    Gasta-se uma graninha nos primeiros dias, montando casa, comprando roupa e comida. Outra coisa que é meio chata é tirar documentos. E eu tive um pouco de dificuldade (e ainda estou tendo) de me adaptar ao clima seco, muito seco. Minha pele surtou e estou descascando. Uma tonelada de creme nas mãos e no corpo e mesmo assim meus dedos estão se desfazendo. Bizarro, muito bizarro.

    Cara, o lugar onde estou morando é INCRÍVEL. É um condo vagaba, quarto-e-sala, com 10 apartamentos por andar, suburb total, mas o lugar em volta é ABSOLUTAMENTE LINDO, tem metrô na porta, tem o Bloor West Village do lado – ou seja, eu não preciso ser motorizada para viver, pois chego ao centro com facilidade.

    O centro de Toronto é uma coisa à parte para qualquer ex-paulistano ou ex-carioca. Você olha, olha e fica procurando os carros na rua. Eles falam pacas de trânsito, que tem hora do rush, que é difícil arrumar vagas. Deixa um canadense uma semana em São Paulo. Ok, eu peguei um metrozinho e um bonde cheio na Spadina, que é downtown mesmo, mas, haha, “cheinho”, totalmente aceitável, cerca de um ponto depois eu consegui sentar. Nem pensar em comparar com o metrô das nossas queridas capitais. A lógica é muito, muito simples: aqui não tem densidade demográfica o suficiente para lotar os meios de transporte ou os lugares. Então, eles não sabem do que estão falando quando dizem “lotado”. Haha, lotado.

    Fazendo compras: vi um monte, UM MONTE de brasileiro de mimimi que a comida canadense sucks, que não encontrava isso ou aquilo no mercado, que mimimi ai que saudades da buchada de bode do meu tio. Vamos ser honestos: tem coisas, como requeijão, catupiry, e congelado sem gordura trans, que pelo visto só o Brasil faz por você.

    Agora, pessoal, Ovomaltine? Biscoito Maria? Po, eu frequento o mercado mais vagaba de Toronto, o NoFrills… Tá tudo lá nas prateleiras. Nescafé, café Melitta… Dá pra comer de forma muito parecida sim. Concordo que se você for comer igual canadense, em um mês vai engordar 10kg. Tudo aqui é rico em gordura trans (ou pelo menos gordura saturada) e vem em embalagens enormes. O único queijo saudável que encontrei foi o cottage fat-free. Até a ricotta deles tem trans-fat!!! Eu gostava do leite de soja sem açúcar da batavo, porque era low-carb e cheio de nutrientes, aqui é um parto achar um leite de soja que não contenha açúcar. TUDO tem açúcar, e em grandes quantidades. Por isso o alerta para olhar bem as embalagens e não engordar 10kg.

    Por outro lado, as bebidas diet frequentemente são adoçadas com Sucralose, ao invés de Aspartame. Sucralose aqui é um pouco mais acessível que no Brasil.

    Para os amantes de café brasileiro, sugiro a aquisição de uma cafeteira. Café canadense é fraco. Eu gosto. Mas eu gosto de chá, não de café, o que explica muita coisa. Sou feliz com Tim Horton’s & Cia mesmo.

    Comendo fora: restaurante de rua em Toronto é quase sempre restaurante oriental – e são os restaurantes baratos. Se você curte comida spicy, qualquer thai vai te fazer feliz por uns 10 dólares. E eu andei comendo camarão nos restaurantes tailandeses. Frutos do mar aqui têm um ótimo preço e são de ótima qualidade. Os japoneses oferecem opções de almoço estilo bento – salada, missô, prato principal arroz e sobremesa – de 10 a 12 dólares. Tenho comido bem pacas.

    As bebidas em Ontario são vendidas em lojas do governo, a LCBO. Achei, de modo geral, a variedade muito boa e os preços bem decentes. Algumas coisas, como Kahlúa, são mais caras que no Brasil, porém o preço em geral compensa. Dizem que na Europa os preços são ainda melhores. E a IcelandAir vende passagens para a Europa por 299 dólares…(piada interna)

    Viver aqui é definitivamente mais barato que viver em São Paulo. Eu estou tentando catar um lugar pra fazer exercício, mas a piscina mais próxima da minha casa não é exatamente “próxima”, o que não é muito estimulante. Tem uma piscina do condomínio, mas ela é mais uma POÇA.

    Sempre posso nadar no High Park, mas, piscina outdoor no Canadá? Haha, me poupe.

    Agora que já tenho casa, comida e todos os documentos, vamos pra tarefa mais árdua, que é achar emprego. Agora sim, eu vou ter MUITO trabalho.

    8:59 am
    Teri Solow: Transmissions from 2010-03-16

    http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TerisDigs/~3/Feg23FIbZvc/


    No tags for this post.
    Monday, March 15th, 2010
    11:58 pm
    Brenda Wallace: Any conservatives here?

    http://www.coffee.geek.nz/any-conservatives-here.html

    Lawrence Lessig's TED talk from 6th March - what liberals can learn from conservatives:

    more at http://lessig.blip.tv/

    10:01 pm
    9:20 pm
    Brenda Wallace: EU tells USA where to stick their secret treaty.

    http://www.coffee.geek.nz/eu-tells-usta-where-stick-their-treaty.html

    EU Parliament tells USA's USTR it will not participate in secret treaty negotiations and calls for public release of ACTA documents.

    The EU voted 663:13 in favour of the following:

    1. Reminds that the Commission has since the 1 December 2009 the legal obligation to immediately and fully inform the European Parliament at all stages of international negotiations;

    2. Expresses its concern over the lack of a transparent process in the conduct of the ACTA negotiations which contradicts the letter and the spirit of the TFEU; is deeply concerned that no legal base has been established before the start of the ACTA negotiations and that no parliamentary approval has been asked for the mandate;

    3. Calls on the Commission and Council to grant public and parliamentary access to ACTA negotiation texts and summaries in accordance with the Treaty and the Regulation 1049/2001 on Public Access to Documents;

    4. Calls on the Commission and Council to pro-actively engage with ACTA partners to rule out any further negotiations of an a piori confidential nature and to timely and entirely inform Parliament about its initiatives in this regard; expects the Commission to make proposals already prior to the next negotiation round in New Zealand in April 2010 and to demand that the issue of transparency is put on the agenda of that meeting, and to refer to Parliament the outcome of this round immediately after its conclusion;

    5. Stresses that, unless the Parliament is immediately and fully informed at all stages of the negotiations, Parliament reserves its right to take suitable action, including bringing a case before the Court of Justice in order to safeguard its prerogatives;

    6. Calls on the Commission to conduct an impact assessment of ACTA's implementation on fundamental rights and data protection, on the ongoing EU efforts to harmonise IPR enforcement measures, and on E-Commerce, prior to any EU agreement to a consolidated ACTA treaty text, and to timely consult with Parliament about the results of this assessment;

    7. Welcomes affirmations by the Commission that any ACTA agreement will be limited to the enforcement of existing IPRs, with no prejudice for the development of substantive IP law in the European Union;

    8. Calls on the Commission to continue the negotiations on ACTA in order to improve the effectiveness of the IPR enforcement system against counterfeiting;

    9. Urges the Commission to ensure that the enforcement of ACTA provisions - especially its provisions on copyright enforcement procedures in the digital environment - are fully in line with the acquis communitaire; demands that no personal search is undertaken at the EU borders and requests full clarification of any clauses that would allow for warrantless searches and confiscation of information storage devices, such as laptops, cell phones and MP3 players, by border and customs authorities;

    10. Considers that in order to respect fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and the right to privacy, with full respect for subsidiarity, the proposed Agreement must refrain from imposing any so called "three strikes" procedures, in full respect of the decision of Parliament on article 1.1b in the (amending) Directive 2009/140/EC that calls to insert a new para 3 a to article 1 Directive 2002/21/EC on the matter of "three strikes"

    11. Emphasizes that privacy and data protection are core values of the European Union, recognised in Article 8 ECHR and Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which must be respected in all the policies and rules adopted by the EU pursuant to Article 16 of the TFEU;

    12. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council and the Governments and Parliaments of ACTA negotiation participants.

    Read more at Michael Geist's blog:
    http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4848/125/

    Geist has the most comprehensive coverage of ACTA, and many other copyright and "intellectual property" issues in the world. He writes mostly from a Canadian perspective, but is also an expert in the applicable international politics and law. He has written and published a very good Guide to ACTA

    and now a baby photo:
    2010-03-15 10.58.59.jpg

    9:21 pm
    Brenda Wallace: Pedestrian survival techniques

    http://www.coffee.geek.nz/pedestrian-survival-techniques.html

    Crossing at intersections is more dangerous, and time consuming, than crossing between intersections -- mostly because there are far more directions of traffic to check at an intersection, and because you can't predict which driver is going to drive right through the red light.

    Here's a blog post on the way the law favours vehicle driver's convenience over pedestrian safety.

    http://discoveringurbanism.blogspot.com/2010/03/pedestrian-survival-tech...

    and now a baby photo:
    2010-03-16 09.43.31.jpg

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