gundy dot org

Christer Edwards pointed me to the best bug report I’ve ever seen:

Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace.
This is a bug, which Ubuntu is designed to fix

Microsoft has a majority market share | Non-free software is holding back innovation in the IT industry, restricting access to IT to a small part of the world’s population and limiting the ability of software developers to reach their full potential, globally. This bug is widely evident in the PC industry.

Steps to repeat:
1. Visit a local PC store.
What happens:
2. Observe that a majority of PC’s for sale have non-free software pre-installed
3. Observe very few PC’s with Ubuntu and free software pre-installed

What should happen:
1. A majority of the PC’s for sale should include only free software like Ubuntu
2. Ubuntu should be marketed in a way such that its amazing features and benefits would be apparent and known by all.
3. The system shall become more and more user friendly as time passes.

Good work Ubuntu! Now, get that bug closed; it’s a blocker!

Vote because you can. Vote because you should. I don’t care who you vote for, but you have a civic duty to get yourself to the voting both and participate in your government.

Also, with voter turnout as low as it is, I figure there are about 60% of the people who have no business complaining about politics or government officials. More to the point… If you didn’t vote, then shut-up. I stopped caring about your opinion on our government just after you did.

Things are always harder then they’re supposed to be. Plugging in a SIP client to Asterisk should be easy, right? Well, it is, if everything is just perfect. I took a few notes and a few screenshots to help others if they find this fairly typical setup is more difficult then it should be.

Here are the relevant parts (IP addresses and mailbox number changed to protect the innocent) of my sip.conf:

[general]
port => 5060
bindaddr => aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd
disallow => all
allow => ulaw
allow => alaw
context => sip-users
canreinvite => no
nat => no

[gabe]
username => gabe
secret => ****
mailbox => 1337
callerid => Gabe Gunderson <1337>
type => friend
host => dynamic

To to avoid NAT issues (on my side, not the server side), this communication is going over an OpenVPN connection. Make sure your tunnel is up before you start Ekiga and go to the preferences page. Set “Listen On” to tun0 and not eth0 (which is the default). The settings don’t seem to “take” until you restart Ekiga.

I like to keep things simple in the codec department. The VSP we’re using offers only G.711 (U-LAW or PCMU and A-LAW or PCMA). We’re using U-LAW since it’s the standard here in the U.S. and it costs the CPU very little to go from U-LAW < => U-LAW. It’s a little fatter in the tubes, but that’s not a big deal on this particular install.

Here’s a typical Account. I’ve chosen to use names for sip users instead of numbers. It makes the configs a little easier to read and you can always map numbers to names in the dial-plan.

If you have problems, there are a few things you can do to help figure out what’s going on.
Try the following:

• Run Ekiga from the command line with the debug switch:
  ‘ekiga -d 2′
• Or get specific debugging from Asterisk, like so:
  server*CLI> sip debug peer gabe
  SIP Debugging Enabled for IP: aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:5060

This blog details a new service that allows you to make FREE phone calls… there are strings attached.

The deal is that you get a free 6 minute phone call, but you give up your privacy. The calls get published on the Internet for the world to hear. It’s better then tapping the pay phone at the state liquor store at 2:00 A.M. And so, we now get to sit and listen as people “air their dirty laundry” to the world for the price of a 25 cent phone call. Jerry Springer has nothing on these guys.

From the source blog:

He (James Bowman of for60secs.com) explained that they envision a few different kinds of user for the phone service, such as people who are very price-conscious or shameless self-promoters who view it like reality TV - you give up privacy in exchange for fame.

And now you will never have to wonder “So she is 100% alive?” Warning: many of the calls contain strong language.

How did this information cross my path? It’s powered by the very cool Open Source Asterisk PBX.

How come I can’t settle on a Jabber server? I’ve tried them all and none sticks out as my clear favorite. They all have things I love and hate about them. Oh well, I’ll pick one and get it running soon. I think I’m going to base my decision on which one has the best LDAP support.

Any ideas?

P.S. If you need me before I get my jabber server re-installed, I can be reached by email at the same address [gabe (a) gundy.org].

Arrrr, feed me your pets…

You ever get lost in Wikipedia? Tonight was one of those nights. I don’t remember how I got there and don’t remember where I exited. 2 hours gone forever.

I did happen across the Anarchist’s Cookbook page and a few related links. To my great fear and uneasiness, I read this from the Anarchist’s Cookbook’s “recipe” #23:

23. Tennis Ball Bombs - by The Jolly Roger

Ingredients:

• Strike anywhere matches
• A tennis ball
• A nice sharp knife
• Duct tape

[Snip]HOWTO[/snip]

Then, when you see a geek walking down the street, give it a good throw. He will have a blast!!

D’oh! We are all targets!

Looks like my Xen hacking has been delayed TYAW (till yet another weekend). I just got a Dom0 installed and was bootstrapping another install to use as a template for DomUs when the Ubuntu servers went out. At first, I thought it was the network because it was hit and miss. Then after about 10 minutes of that, it was a solid miss. They are still offline today.

The command that will not work:

debootstrap –include=language-pack-en,wget,openssh-server –verbose \
–arch i386 dapper installdir http://archive.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu

I’m glad it wasn’t *real* work I was trying to get done.  I guess it’s time to setup my own apt-get mirror.  Anyone know how that would be done on Ubuntu?

Does anyone know what kind of spider this is?

I found one in my basement and two in my garage this week. I think the farmer cutting his field last week must have left them looking for new homes. I hadn’t seen any until that time.

Even with all of the sites on the Internet that have identification charts, I still can’t seem to find on that looks just like it.

Why does everyone think they need to talk in “orders of magnitude” just to sound smart?

When you don’t state the ratio and you’re only talking a single “order of magnitude,” it would be much easier and concise to say “about 10 times.”

If you’ve ever read slashdot, you know what I’m talking about.