NetworkManager on Debian says: Device not managed

Just upgraded NetworkManager and nm-applet among other things and got this in the nm-applet popup that normally displays the available networks:

device not managed

The fix is in this Debian bug report:

1. Either (a) edit /etc/network/interfaces to comment out the interfaces you want NetworkManager to handle or (b) change managed=false to managed=true in /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf.

2. sudo killall nm-system-settings

(It doesn't look like you need to bounce /etc/init.d/networking or /etc/init.d/network-manager—I tried those but that nm-system-settings process is what you really need to kill.) If you can read this the Debian laptop is back on the net.

Syndicated 2009-07-04 06:23:02 from Don Marti

Friday MLP...Friday!

Student Statement on The Right to Research: "Learning and inquiry are impeded when scholars lack access to fellow researchers’ work, and when students lack access to the work of scholars before them."

Seth Godin: Textbook rant. Andy Oram: Four roles for publishers: staying relevant when you are no longer a gatekeeper

Script and Screen

Worried about SHA-1? Read The code monkey's guide to cryptographic hashes for content-based addressing.

...even if you pay your premiums for years, if you ever fall seriously ill, they will do their best to find a way to cancel your insurance.

a hardware hacker ponders flu viruses

Advice from 2005, still not yet applied to GPL enforcement: "Registered trademarks, copyrights, and certain trade names may be recorded with the U.S. Customs Service."

So there's probably an anti-Linux back channel for Digg users. I wonder how many private lists are devoted just to promulgating URLs to pump or slag on other services.

Syndicated 2009-06-27 17:00:58 from Don Marti

Productivity Paradox 2.0?

Auren Hoffman points out that, thanks to free libraries and tools, companies are able to do more software engineering and build more stuff with fewer people, but the salaries for those increasingly productive software people haven't kept pace. (Rands explained: "It’s this pile of high-value, well-maintained code that is helping shrink the average size of the engineering team because it’s allowing us to focus less on writing new code and more on integrating existing code to get the job done with fewer people and in less time.")

Another way to put it is that you can look at an IT project as made up of two complementary goods: code and maintenance programming. If the price of one good falls, thanks to open source and the price pressure it puts on the whole industry, then the other good's price should go up. Software company stock prices are on the way down, reflecting the lower value of a drive full of source code, but where are all the pay raises for programmers?

We used to have a productivity paradox of increasing IT spending but no productivity to show for it. Now we have more programmer productivity but without the increased pay. Auren suggests two possible explanations: offshoring and decreased need.

Yes, IT employers in the USA have an indentured servitude program in the form of H-1B visas, and yes, there's some shake-out of code monkeys if not every project has to implement every little piece. But still, more value per software developer year should mean higher wages, even if developers have to give up on constantly reimplementing the same stuff. And the H-1B program is full enough that for most raise-seeking programmers, replacing you with an H-1B employee isn't a credible threat.

Other possibilities: in most cases, the employment market for software developers is a Market for Lemons. Badly informed employers won't pay more for a value-creating developer than for a code monkey. If that's the problem, then developers who contribute to open projects and can show their contributions accepted upstream should have an advantage, just from the signaling value. "Hey, if he were a bozo, would his name show up so much in 'git log' on example.org?"

Maybe programmers just don't negotiate well. If that's the problem, we should see substantially higher salaries for less negotiation-averse programmers, such as the people who have to work both for a company and with an upstream project.

I don't know. I think we're in the process of moving from high-value software brands and mostly anonymous hackers to a system more like professional sports, where both franchises and individuals have brand names and revenue.

Syndicated 2009-06-26 21:28:18 from Don Marti

MLP: knots and xargs

Malware alert for Microsoft Windows users: Remove the Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant (ClickOnce) Firefox Extension. One more on Green Dam: pwned! "Any web site the user visits can redirect the browser to a page with a malicious URL and take control of the computer."

Dave Root: The Most Useful Rope Knots for the Average Person to Know (a knot I learned in the Boy Scouts is really a "Zeppelin Bend.")

Gov. Schwarzenegger Launches First-in-Nation Initiative to Develop Free Digital Textbooks for High School Students (via Open Access News)

Use GNU xargs to run many tasks in parallel (via Justin Mason)

Atul Gawande: What a Texas town can teach us about health care.

Hg-Git Mercurial Plugin at github.com.

"For instance, economics journals published by commercial publishers are six times more expensive per page than those of noncommercial publishers. Such price disparities are a clear sign of inefficiency and excess profit-taking." -- Peter Suber (Trying to sell inefficiency and excess profit-taking to economists? That's like getting the cigarette machine contract at the medical school.)

Great moments in Fair Use video editing: Mother of All Funk Chords thru-you.com is down right now, though.

Awkward Zone? Never if the dudes are free software freaks. Start talking about spam filtering, laptop battery saving, window manager hacks, or news feed reading tools, and it's like you grew up in the same neighborhood.

Tom Limoncelli on Improving attendance at Linux Users Groups: "Have a designated person show up early and just say 'hi' to everyone that walks in."

Syndicated 2009-06-13 14:53:57 from Don Marti

Truck prank

This is a story I heard from a guy whose friend was one of the pranksters. And you're reading it on the Internet right now, so it must be 100% true. I made up the name and left out the location, though.

Jake had a job on a tree-trimming crew, cutting back a long stretch of trees along a utility right of way. All the guys in the crew would show up in their own trucks and work their way down, trimming trees as they went.

One day, Jake showed up with a brand-new compact pickup. He started bragging on the great gas mileage he got, and how much money he was saving, so the rest of the crew decided to have some fun with him. They had gas cans handy, so it was easy to pour a litte gas in Jake's tank when he wasn't looking. Naturally, Jake's bragging got more and more intense. "You can't believe how long it's been since I had to put gas in this truck."

When Jake bought the truck, there was a problem with the weather stripping on the passenger door, and the dealer didn't have the right piece of rubber. When they got it in, they called Jake, and he took the truck in to get it replaced for free. The truck wasn't scheduled for any other work, just the one little piece of rubber. But the next day, when Jake brought the truck back to work, the other guys started siphoning a little gas out every day.

When Jake noticed, he took the truck back to the dealer, demanding to know what they changed. But they didn't change anything. But Jake didn't believe them. He took it back a couple of times, but when he first complained about it to the rest of the tree-trimming crew, someone started laughing, and they all cracked up, so they had to tell him.

Syndicated 2009-06-13 14:53:57 from Don Marti