Over on the Ubuntu Marketing Mailing list earlier today, Steve Langasek issued a call for input, below is what he had to say:

The first beta of Lucid Lynx is coming up next week, on March 18.  It would be good to have a refresh of https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LucidLynx/TechnicalOverview leading up to this with more input from people who can say what's great about Lucid instead of just people like me who spend our time enumerating all the things that are wrong with it. :-)  What's great about the Ubuntu 10.04 beta that you want our users to know?

Take a look at the wiki and see if you can help answer slangasek's question -"What's great about the Ubuntu 10.04 beta that you want our users to know?"

You-in-Ubuntu: Checking out the history of the "Funky Fairy" naming system!

Part 3 and final of my series on configuring Ubuntu's new grub2 boot menu. I translate a couple of commonly-seen error messages, but most of the article is devoted to multi-boot machines. If you have several different operating systems or Linux distros installed on separate disk partitions, grub2 has some unpleasant surprises, so see my article for some (unfortunately very hacky) workarounds for its limitations.

Why use Grub2? Good question!
(Let me note that I didn't write the title, though I don't disagree with it.)

Monday saw the announcement of the International Women’s Day competition winners.

Well, most of them. Jono had unfortunately misunderstood what we had asked of him and hence promoted, and not drawn the second winner randomly. Oops! (We’ll blame it on his runaway glasses). Thankfully, being a man of his word, he has managed to right this. During his q&a ustream broadcast yesterday, he drew a truly random winner… Caterina Brigandi!

Congrats again to Elvira, Karen, Jen and now Caterina! Thank you all so much for participating.

A friend was trying to get some of her laptop's function keys working under Ubuntu, and that reminded me that I'd been meaning to do the same on my Vaio TX 650P.

My brightness keys worked automagically -- I suspected via the scripts in /etc/acpi -- and that was helpful in tracking down the rest of the information I needed. But it still took a bit of fiddling since (surprise!) how this stuff works isn't documented.

Update: That "isn't documented" remark applies to the ACPI system. Matt Zimmerman points out that there is some good documentation on the rest of the key-handling system, and pointed me to two really excellent pages: Hotkeys architecture and Hotkeys Troubleshooting. Recommended reading!

Here's the procedure I found.

First, use acpi_listen to find out what events are generated by the key you care about. Not all keys generate ACPI events. I haven't get figured out what controls this -- possibly the kernel. When you type the key, you're looking for something like this:

sony/hotkey SPIC 00000001 00000012

You may get separate events for key down and key up. It's your choice as to which one matters.

Once you know the code for your key, it's time to make it do something. Create a new file in /etc/acpi/events -- I called mine sony-lcd-btn. It doesn't matter what you call it -- acpid will read all of them. (Yes, that means every time you start up it's reading all those toshiba and asus files even if you have a Lenovo or Sony. Looks like a nice place to shave off a little boot time.)

The file is very simple and should look something like this:

# /etc/acpi/events/sony-lcd-btn

event=sony/hotkey SPIC 00000001 00000012
action=/etc/acpi/sonylcd.sh

Now create a script for the action you specified in the event file. I created a script /etc/acpi/sonylcd.sh that looks like this:

#! /bin/bash
# temporary, for testing:
echo "LCD button!" >/dev/console

Now restart acpid: service acpid restart if you're on karmic, or /etc/init.d/acpid restart on earlier releases. Press the button. If you're running from the console (or using a tool like xconsole), and you got all the codes right, you should be able to see the echo from your script.

Now you can do anything you want. For instance, when I press the LCD button I generally want to run this:

xrandr --output VGA --mode 1024x768

Or to make it toggle, I could write a slightly smarter script using xrandr --query to find out the current mode and behave accordingly. I'll probably do that at some point when I have a projector handy.

At the recently concluded pycon2010 in Atlanta, there were some discussions about diversity, women etc... I suppose, much of my energy would have been saved if I had published this mail earlier or even blogged about some individual sexist behaviors. Nah, its not fear, rather I try to avoid talking about evil creepy stuff on my blog which is personal. But during various discussions realized that many folks dont know what you experience on an individual level on *random-list in the floss community, unless you talk about it...its the first step.

Hi $PersonsName,

As i write this mail the words "Out the creeps publicly" uttered by a devel (who shall go nameless) comes to my mind and hence i'd prefer to not be anon and back my words under the pseudonym 'svaksha'. $PersonsName, do feel free to suitably trim my long train of thoughts and I wont be offended if it does'nt make it to your article as /self is too late in all probability -- my mental resources are wound up around a lexical parser atm.

Initially when i used to hear all the women speak about their experiences i took comfort in the fact that i am not alone in hoping for change. But i had not factored in the possibility that change is tougher when "clueless new idiots" follow in the steps of "sexist old timers". Over the years the attitudes towards diversity still remains sexist, especially within the Indian community where cronyism is normal.

My observations are largely India-centric salted with some experiences on international lists and sans a timeline ...

The usual personal mails asking for personal details under the guise of "i want to volunteer" or guised as a personal interview (since when did marital status become relevant to floss contribution?). Another peculiar one was a guy writing emails in different scripts despite my requests that i didnt understand them. It was when i requested a friend to translate them that i realised why -- personal questions in a non-english script meant fewer people would know he was asking personal questions.

Then there was this instance of a jerk trying to crack into my server when he became aware of my gender.  I was happy with the anonymity --- Very very few folks (i trusted) knew my location and real name but that changed when I founded the Ubuntu-Women project, was termed a "militant feminist" (a pejorative term for Feminazi).  This pejorative was echoed in the Indichix (LC-India) mailing lists in 2008 to avoid answering the question of 'controlling a woman's group by proxy' - cronyism and elitism is gender-neutral The personal attacks descended into personal life queries (hint:: the coffee, splenda thread) by one Indian male who subscribed to grrls-only mailing list by pretending to be a woman. Gah, so much for the "cultural_Indian" !!

Other experiences include an smtp header spoof of my mail id to send a sex-related email ; an indian devel in his interview wanted to be stuck in a lift with me even while he admits to never having met me. Another was the death threats from "mikeeeeusa" on DW which went off-list ~~ IIRC around 5 women were the initial targets but Clytie (an AU contributor) had threats sent to her teenage daughter too.

http://eaves.ca/2009/07/06/structurelessness-feminism-and-open/ has a point I could relate to viz.elites and cronyism -- both of which are true as far as the local Indian floss community is concerned. I've heard past incidents of getting cronies to use social engineering (a bully's crony will pretend to be your friend and find out where you work, etc..) and use pressure tactics (complaining to your superiors/boss@work --the easiest way to bully an individual who fears losing his/her livelihood) to silence disagreeing voices -- This may probably not be sexist as it happened to an indian male (who shall remain anonymous) floss volunteer, but i'm writing this to highlight a deeper and more serious problem within the fragmented Indian floss community.

Pretending to support women racks up the positive Publicity Karma (hence commercially lucrative) while one can continue to be being elitist and deny decision making power via "cronyism" (the elites will use red herrings and out-shout the newbies who disagree under the cries of "show me the code") on the side. A very subtle game that is hard to decipher on a superficial level.

However, when subtle aggressiveness is reserved for the local community members only very few folks outside that circle are aware of it. This small subset of highly aggressive Indian men will never exhibit this negative attitude on the international project lists and irc channels where they do participate, because it will permanently damage their reputation which is never good for business or landing a job in future. Also, international lists/irc/etc... have lesser bystanders[0] taking care of SEP[1].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem]

If readers are thinking its a malaise with the whole Indian community or a cultural baggage, its not. There is a lot of positive stuff happening thanks to many individuals who are polite and respectful and dont feel threatened by (wo)men. There are many men and women who continue their good work on an individual basis but unfortunately they are relegated to the  back-burner by pompous self-promoting jerks. I'm personally hoping to see a truly open community initiative like LCA or debconf (and others like it) happen in India.

Regarding including links and threads, i am undecided. The marketing gimmick "bad publicity is still free publicity" is another reason why I prefer to avoid blogging too much about negative behavior as it can acquire a cult-like halo and an easy way to fame for other men or newbies, especially when they see peers getting away with it. While technical (like a ddos attack,...) misdemeanors are punished quickly i've not yet heard an a$$hat being ostracized or boycotted from the community and this despite there being discussion and more discussion and protests about the said negative behavior.

Besides, the online world is so small that there is the danger of forming a mental picture of an individual and getting over-familiar via blogs, twitter, irc, lists, etc... Its possible that judging folks during real life meetings based on these preconceived assumptions is another cause of social behaviour problems.

I dont have any magic answers and have always believed that community action is the best way to solve the problem. Yet, getting women to speak-up openly against the negative attitude is a lot harder, especially when they feel they will not get any support as the lone voice, statistically speaking.  Few folks will want to waste their time tackling a regular barrage of red-herrings and logical fallacies. Ex. using the term "we" is (sometimes purposefully) misunderstood as taking over control and using "I" is interpreted as "the problem is singular in nature" and _one_ person is statistically too small to figure in change -- hence the status quo remains. This tactic works very well in situations when no change is desired.

Y'all probably are aware of all this so i'll stop as i've got to leave now.

ciao,
-vid

As you've probably guessed, the above was my mail sent to an unarchived women's list. I'm also reproducing (with permission) an exchange with another floss contributors who wrote after he read the above e-mail:

Devel: And you cant have a community of human beings and donkeys right? That's why I refuse to believe most of the Indian FLOSS communities are communities at all. I dont care and I dont bother.

Me: That is the scary bit...everybody stops caring. When I stop caring its just downhill then. Somewhere we have to make an effort to build the community, sustain it and grow.

Devel: You have to make sure the community is worth it.

One should not expect women to say *Stop harassing/stalking*. Given the low female participation, women are an even smaller number in the existing scheme of things and the lack of space to speak up within projects is another crucial point that gets overlooked.  Instead of telling women how to adjust to sexist bullying, men within a project must learn to speak up if they wish to see change. Most times that action is taken against those who manage to offend those in power, else in floss communities sometimes one can get away with any negative behaviour with zero repercussions.

In my years within most Libre software projects, the common thought that surfaces is the expectation that "change is slow" because positive results with respect to reducing sexist behaviour takes time. I disagree.  Is it that women have to be offended with negative attitudes or sexism for action to be taken? Why cant a lone individual (irrespective of gender, nationality or any other criteria) say "stop being a jerk" and get tons of community support. If there is a lack of community support, its due to apathy and a lack of firmness and strong action with low tolerance to negative behaviour by every person involved in the floss community.  This is not as easy as typing this blog entry was, since it needs impartial and strong leadership qualities. 

We need an attitudinal change on an individual level if we dont want a gesellschaft instead of a community where people care for others. FLOSS Communities are still made up of individual people who use the same technology they create. Women (add foo-group of choice) should not be the diversity tokenism card for spin doctors trying to prevent a PR disaster!

Whilst I was quite happily sleeping yesterday morning, the International Women’s Day competition winners were announced. The popular vote prize went to Elvira Martinez “tatica1″. The second prize went to Karen Y. Perez, and Jen Phillips got an honourable mention for her awesome analogy-style story.

You can read all the stories and see the record of votes on the Ubuntu Women wiki.

Thanks so much to everyone who entered and voted (and Jono for announcing). The competition was heaps of fun to organise and now we have lots of stories to show that we forge our own paths to Ubuntu just like the guys do!

For those unfamiliar with the title of this blog post, let me introduce you to one of the most important tags in Launchpad: regression-potential.

What bugs tagged as regression-potential mean? Basically, they mean that a regression has been found in the development release of Ubuntu (Lucid Lynx, at the moment of writing).

Why are they so important? Because it means that a regression has been found but, good news, we still can do something about it.

These bugs are specially important in the kernel. Nobody likes to see hardware, working in previous versions of Ubuntu, failing once upgraded to the new one.
Jeremy Foshee, a QA member of the Kernel team, is trying to avoid as many regressions in the kernel as possible. As announced in several mailing lists, he is going to be organizing a weekly bug day of kernel bugs marked as regression-potential from today and until the release of Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). If you want to help avoiding regressions in Lucid, every Tuesday, you can check the Kernel Bug Day page, which includes a list of bugs that need some love. If you have doubts on how to help, please, join the kernel team on #ubuntu-kernel at freenode IRC, and feel free to ask any question.

The more people helping triaging regression-potential bugs, the fewer regression-release bugs Lucid will have.

Since Google Summer of Code is coming up again very soon Sven, Phil and I will be doing a short info session at the University of Karlsruhe on Thursday at 4pm in room HS -101 in building 50.34 (Infobau). We’ll be giving a short intro to GSoC and tell a bit about how GSoC works in KDE and Debian and of course answer lots of questions. If you’re planning to apply this year you should definitely show up Please drop me a short email if you want to attend at lydia at kde org.

If you’re not in Karlsruhe or anywhere near there are info sessions in other cities around the world listed in the GSoC calendar.

I never blog recipes. But while I was making rouladen today, I remembered when I first tried to make it, and discovered that the recipes on the web were all for something entirely different than the delicious rouladen my mom used to make. Mom got the recipe from a German babysitter named Betty who used to take care of me when I was little. It was fantastic and I haven't had anything else like it anywhere, so I asked Mom for the recipe, adapted it a little for my crockpot, and have been enjoying it ever since.

Apologies for the lack of precise quantities. This is how we do recipes in my family, and I'm not great at following precise instructions anyway, and in any case, the recipe originally came from Mom watching Betty make it once.

Crockpot Rouladen

Flank steak - lay it out flat.

Mustard - whatever kind you have lying around. Paint a thin layer onto steak. I personally hate mustard, but it doesn't taste like mustard in the final dish so it's okay.

Bacon - maybe 5 pieces. Cook to not-quite-crisp, to get rid of some of the fat. I cut off some of the fat too, but I'm weird that way. Lay strips on top of mustard.

Bread crumbs - Sprinkle on top of bacon. A little or a lot, as you wish. Enough to leak out when it's rolled, as it thickens the sauce nicely.

Roll steak up and secure with skewers or string. Watch the grain and roll it so that when you slice it, you'll be slicing across the grain. This will seem weird and wrong and you'll want to roll it up the other way because this way you'll end up with a long skinny thing that doesn't fit in the pot. It'll taste just as good either way, but it'll be a lot easier to eat if you roll it up the right way.

Brown steak a bit in small amount of oil, any kind ... maybe use a little of the bacon grease.

Onions, sliced - I don't like onions, so I leave them out.

Tomato sauce - one regular-sized can. Pour over steak. Add a little water too, up to about 1/3 can, if you want more sauce.

Salt, pepper, spices as desired. I add a little cinnamon, to make it taste more like Grecian Chicken (another tomato-sauce recipe where googling gets entirely the wrong result, and if I ever find it I'll be sure to blog it) or like the chicken tikka masala at Bollywood Cafe (which has no resemblance to tikka masala anywhere else, but is wonderful). I usually toss in a couple of bay leaves too, and whatever else I feel like adding that day.

Cook in the crockpot maybe 6.5 hours on high, longer on low. Also works fine simmering in a pan on the stove -- check it about 2.5 hours but expect it to take 3 or so. It doesn't hurt to baste occasionally, or add water if it starts to look dry (in the crockpot that usually isn't needed).

In the last hour or two, toss in:

Raisins - maybe a double handful (a couple small boxes).

When it's done, it should be falling-apart tender.

Serving: Cut small rounds, ladle sauce over them, and serve with noodles or bread.

Enjoy!

Remember how I said that the voting for the International Women’s Day competition was open?

Well that statement only stays valid for about the next 16hrs or so.

There’s also a substantial number of people who’ve gone through, read all the stories and submitted their votes, but have not followed the instructions that were emailed to them. They really ought to do that. The token that is emailed out is how you validate your email address — votes are held in quarantine until this happens.

Obviously as I’m very new to being involved in the Ubuntu community, I didn’t go to Dallas for UDS Lucid Lynx earlier this month, however, I did decide to do as much remote participation as I could. I was quite surprised and pleased by how well remote participation was set up and how well it [...]

It’s been ages since I even really looked at this place, but it’s time for me to start over and get going with it again.   In the past 18 months or so I’ve graduated college, moved, started a job in publishing, somehow kept said job in publishing, and somewhere along the way really gotten lost from [...]

Guess who is looking for artists? - Ubuntu User Magazine!

I finally decided to bite the bullet and install Lucid Alpha 3 to my laptop last night, mainly due to the fact I couldn’t wait to experience the shininess of the new design and the “light” themes. It all went well and it booted, which was a significant improvement from Alpha 2, even if the screen resolution wasn’t correct. I noticed a bug then and reported it, however I didn’t do it properly which caused a bit of kerfuffle when I realised it was NVIDIA’s fault and had nothing to do with Ubuntu directly! I don’t know what happened to that one, I think it went down in the list. I have since found and reported more (bug numbers 521908 and 533201), so hopefully they will get fixed!

I do love Lucid, it’s lovely and shiny and the new “light” themes are lovely, especially the incredibly shiny white/silver coloured one with the Apple style icons. At first last night I hated the new position of the close/minimise/maximise buttons, but now I’ve got used to them and with the shininess I think they go quite well; they’re certainly better than they were in Karmic! I think I’ll install it to my desktop when beta 1 comes out.

That’s another point, some of the UK LoCo team are trying to complete the en_GB translations of Lucid for beta 1 and so I’ve been doing that as well, very entertaining!