Older blog entries for Marcus (starting at number 99)

This is what I did two weekends ago.... Presenting my teams work to the local Internet community called "Kommunikationsnetz Franken e.V." (dialin provider, content hoster, and meeting place for Internet freaks) where I am a member of. It was quite well received to look into the work of the local Linux distributor.

My slides are available as PDF (in german).

Last weekend I was at home with my parents, helping to work in my grandmothers part of the forest where we want to plant broad-leafed trees (inmidst of the firs).

I also whipped up the first version of the Security Team page on opensuse.org.

Mildly curious.... As security team we occasionaly get request to "tighten" security of the system.

One of those is to change the default umask of the home directory to 077 (readable only for the user).

When replying back that Opensource is about sharing of information we usually get back wild eyed stares from americans.

I think this shows some difference between european and american company culture:

• Europeans assume everything is forbidden (especially looking at other peoples stuff) except when expliclity allowed.
• Americans assume everything is allowed except when explicitly forbidden.

A strange mindset for me as a european.

Also, what is the good thing of creating every user with its own group? And why should it have something to do with security?

I would like to be in Brisbane now. :(
I remember fondly my vacation there and the warm climate. Compared to cold rainy november here in Germany this would be like paradise. *sigh*

Wine 0.9.2 is out, uploaded SUSE RPMs until late night yesterday.

I have nothing useful or cheering up to add.

One week of work past and I only now caught up with processing E-Mail and fiscal year turnover caused distractions.

Sorry to see lots of Novell colleagues go :(

Good to see the earlier KDE vs GNOME decision being revised in favor of our customers who continue to get the choice.

Wine 0.9.1 has arrived just 2 weeks after 0.9! I got 10 small bugfix patches in (vacation pays off ;)

Not much security updates done this week, hopefully more next week.

Pascal, there is also an official statement from our press department.

I really wonder how Kurt can state vague thoughts as facts. *sigh*

My vacation is ending now, sadly with rain outside
I slept into the days, hacked on WINE (ole automation stuff mostly), worked on cleaning out WINE bugzilla and read Calvin & Hobbes Complete Edition.

Also checked if the Nikon Coolpix P2 is available at "buy it and take it home" stores (not yet, only at certain webstores).

Things not done: gphoto hacking, even though it would be necessary to do some.

On vacation. Trying not to read workmail.

I am going to relax at home for this vacation and try to finish some left over stuff I keep pushing in front of me for a year now, like WINE and gphoto hacking.

Speaking of WINE, we released 0.9, the first BETA, yesterday. Download the SUSE packages here (also available via the regular apt or from my /pub/people/meissner/wine/ directory on ftp.suse.com+mirrors).

I tested amarok over the weekend and I am impressed... Its a generation better than xmms, featuring all kinds of collection, online download of lyrics, album covers, wikipedia information and similar.

Refering to Karls Picture: I was there too..

Funny lines in the new Maxfeld station, including: "Some people confuse calculating with inventing." (I should have really taken a picture of this line.)

Nice brunch with IRC friends beforehand in Cafe Tibet, in Nuernberg St. Johannis, a nice tibetian/indian cafe/restaurant.

Not much hacking this weekend, and more management than hacking this upcoming week (as most of the previous weeks).
*sigh* Off to work...

Week over... busy weekend ahead.

Not much stuff apparently done this week even though I feel tired.

The first MTP device now works under Linux!
The iRiver T10, a MP3/OGG player, supports MTP ... And by just adding the USB IDs to libgphoto2/camlibs/ptp2/library.c we made it work.
Interesting is that it does not report the PTP device class, but speaks PTP.
Hub has concerns that we stray off the path of "libgphoto2 is for cameras".... Well, yes. But at least the device works and the user is happy. :)

Still waiting for the Nikon Coolpix P2. Impatiently.

Hate: Lots of things.

Late fall ... Nice weather ... of the style where the sun shines while you are at work. Sun is going down when I am leaving work (6pm) currently, this gets more and more depressing.

OpenSUSE mailinglists are flooding my mailbox. Time to start to filter more.

And so much people who think that a simple knob (engineering speak: "silver bullet") turning will suddenly get large speedboosts. People. If it would be that easy, why haven't we done it before yet? *sigh*

No evangelist there yet to step in front of the choir yet... And openSUSE needs one. Or not? *sigh*

Sonja ... you should always take a camera. Especially to breath taking greece. Incidently, did you that the best camera is the one that you have with you when you take that one picture of your lifetime? :)

Just returning from the SUSE Linux 10.0 release party... Too much beer and cocktails, way better mood as on earlier parties. Several of our betatesters were here over the day for introduction on current SUSE strategy and some forward looking things.

No Opensource stuff to rant on today. ;)