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Daniel Mettler – Page 43 – A changelog by Daniel Mettler

Author: Daniel Mettler

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miguel on pdc

miguel de icaza has published his impressions of the pdc. insightful non-ms perspective.

the thing still irritating me is that since the release of the clr/cli specs the gnome/ximian ppl seem to be much more interested in clr/cli compatibility than in co-operation with kde. on one hand, the first is probably important for the long-term success of linux on the desktop, on the other hand the latter is crucial for the short-term survival of gnome/gtk as more and more distros bet on kde/qt. maybe it’s time for novell (backed by bigbrother and strategist ibm) to stimulate the kde/gnome/ximian/mono/qt/gtk co-operation as well, now as they own both ximian and suse.

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hddtemp

hddtemp is a great little tool for all those who already experienced hard disk crashes/failures caused by overheating. to prevent future crashes, i’ve hacked a tiny bash-script, hddtempmonitor as a simple wrapper. with this script, i’m “deliberately” on the safe side – preventing a fatal disk failure has priority over maximizing server uptime (at least atm, when time is scarce). for now, it does the job it’s supposed to do, but it really should be improved (feel free to do so). some random points: season awareness, fuzzy logic, adaptation, state awareness, increasing temperature thresholds to prevent possible endless rebooting, moving average, mean, confidence interval, confidence level, combination with external temperature sensor, combination with an ids, selective process kill, command line options instead of hardcoded vars, sms gateway, logging. etc. etc.

the script is called from /etc/crontab:

# mettlerd: hddtempmonitor (hard disk temperature monitor)
*     * * * *   root    /usr/local/bin/hddtempmonitor >/dev/null 2>&1
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volume daemon

vold volume daemon for linux:

But there already is an automounter in Linux! Why do we need this ‘vold’?
Something I did never like about the automounter is that its auto mounting is somehow special. Devices are not mounted automatically when they are available but when they are accessed. Another point that really annoyed me was that when I plugged in my Memory Stick in Windows or in Mac OS X, I needn’t do anything else – it just worked. I plugged it in on Linux and … nothing happened (as usual..). I could live with the mount process but its not only that. The device names may change if you have more that one hotpluggable device depending on which device you plug in first.

according to clemens, vold is in fact very similar to the volume daemon ‘vold’ found on Solaris or the ‘autodiskmount’ on Mac OS X. hmm.. polling/busy waiting?

i need to check it out as soon as i find some spare time (a rare thing lately and probably also for the next few months). i wonder whether there are any synergies with the new, planned devfs replacement.. possibly. perhaps an opportunity to get rid of hardcoded devices in the “scan file”.

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Handing-over of Borland Together ControlCenter UNIZH Site License Management to the IFI

I’m pleased to announce that the management of the Borland Together ControlCenter UNIZH site license has been handed over to the IFI. Many thanks to Beat and Daniel for their kind and unbureaucratic willingness to care for the continuation of the license management. Future license management is thus up to the IFI which may imply some changes in handling, service and availability.

During the transition period, you will still be able to request your copy of the site license key file from this site. After the transition period, you will automatically be forwarded to the new site (please update your bookmarks).

Happy coding and modelling! :)

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speed, apple and a broken hi-fi set

once more i’ve noticed how much faster my old (but actually fine) vaio notebook is when running lean fluxbox as window manager instead of using full-blown desktop environments such as kde or windows. as i prefer fluxbox anyway i’ll probably keep it like this for a while.

so far, i haven’t heard anything new from apple regarding their 15.2″ aluminium powerbook screen problems. this is lousy. i don’t know yet whether i should risk ordering it anyway and let apple just fix it if required. after all, i still think that both mac os x 10.3 and the new powerbooks are great things.

in other news, my hi-fi set doesn’t work properly anymore. troubles with l/r channels, low frequencies (aka “give me bass, baby”) and the audiocd drive. that’s a pity. i think it’s time to get rid of it (yep, we’re living in a “junk society”). i’m thinking about not replacing it but re-activating my workstation’s 5.1 digital surround boxes instead. i prefer listening to web-radio (lounge-radio.ch, radio42.com etc.) anyway (much better sound, no news, broader choice, international stations, no advertisement). of course it’s also more suitable for listening to mp3/ogg, audiocd etc.. hmm.. yes, i think i will soon have my do-it-yourself mediacenter pc ;)

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changes

a) blogrolling.com was way too unreliable and sluggish. i thus replaced it by the previous simple but reliable and fast link list. my suggestion to the blogrolling-gang: use active tracking of changes instead of just relying on pings.

b) added a new plugin called simplecomments. it treats trackbacks (“pings”) as comments which makes it handy for creating “last comments/pings” listings. the relevant code on this site is:

<div class="sidetitle">
Latest comments/pings
</div>

<div class="side">
<MTSimpleComments lastn="5" sort_order="descend">
&lt:MTSimpleCommentIfTrackback>
<a name="trackback-<MTPingID>"></a>
 » <b><a href="<MTPingURL>"><MTPingBlogName></a></b> 
 (<a href="<$MTPingURL$>"><$MTPingTitle$>..</a>)<br />
</MTSimpleCommentIfTrackback>
<MTSimpleCommentIfComment>
<a name="comment-<MTCommentID>"></a>
 » <b><$MTCommentAuthorLink$></b> 
<MTCommentEntry>
 (<a href="<$MTEntryLink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$>..</a>)
</MTCommentEntry><br />
</MTSimpleCommentIfComment>
</MTSimpleComments>
</div>

c) added a category archive and a listing of category mappings for each entry. further added some numbers for counting entries per category and per month.

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semantic web vs. semantic web

mindmanager X5 Pro for the semantic web?

if we’re talking about the “semantic web” as basically just another “non-intelligent” tool for intelligent people, then tools such as mindmanager (as any other content editing/linking tool) might indeed be helpful for building it (why shouldn’t it be? ;)

my take is (as stated earlier), that this kind of “semantic web” is possibly fine for the next say ten years or so. it’s a rather pragmatic view of the “semantic web” but as a matter of fact this view suffers from an old-fashioned approach which will never allow the “semantic web” reach a higher level than that of just being a tool. (there are many problems with the current approach such as the frame-of-reference, categorization, generalization, adaptation, symbol grounding problems, lacking emergence etc.)

if however we are interested in making things intelligent, a new approach is needed. this approach should try applying some of the principles of “new ai” (brooks, pfeifer et al.) in “virtual worlds” (true “new ai” advocates may shudder when reading this ;). i have some ideas how to start with this.

a good starting point for anybody interested in this field is “understanding intelligence“.