As of today, RHN subscribers can download Red Hat 9 (not 9.0). Included in 9, you'll find devlabel :-). Though, its an older version which doesn't support partition specific identifiers. Hopefully I'll get that rectified soon.

With each day of the war, I find my trust in all media outlets diminishing. Still, this is scary.

So is this.

Very exciting article here (via slashdot). Hitachi, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba are banding together to flesh out an Internet/TV standard. One day, every website will become its own TV network...very cool. As well it talks about Matsushita and Sony collaborating on Linux based consumer electronics and though no official connection is made in the blurb, I wouldn't mind my tv running on linux either.

Also makes you wonder when Apple will realize the opportunities to become the pre-eminent Linux desktop manufacturer. They've already switched to a Unix base.

Looks like amongst other states, Texas is considering extending the DMCA. They'd like to outlaw systems that conceal your identity on the internet. These would include such things as firewalls and VPNs which is absolutely laughable. Though, I must say, I can't find myself getting all wound up about things like this. When such ludicrous legislation comes around it will either get defeated before passage or the blowback after passage will be so acute that actually passing the legislation would lead to the beginning steps of dismantling the idealogy behind the DMCA. This is a dangerously optimistic stance and I'm glad to have it.

Though, I also find it interesting that so many state legislatures are all simultaneously scheduled to discuss taking this extension up. Its obviously a concerted effort by someone (read CORPORATE). I wonder who it actually is. Although, given their route through state legislation, it also makes you wonder whether the federal McCain/Feingold campaign finance bill is working. Until now, I'd never heard of a bill that was so dumb that Congress wouldn't even pick it up ... maybe the donor money to pissed-off constituent ratio wasn't within the right range for the Congressmen.

Devlabel 0.29.12 is available here.

* Fixed installation script to make it more helpful (it now informs that you need uuid.h to be installed, which can be found in the e2fsprogs-devel package).

DKMS 0.25.14 is available here.

* Added mkdriverdisk support. This will make a floppy driver disk image for the driver that you specify. Currently, the only driver disk distro supported is Red Hat. For example: dkms mkdriverdisk -m qla2x00 -v v6.04.00 -k 2.4.18-3BOOT -d redhat.

* New -d, --distro parameter. This is only used currently with mkdriverdisk. Otherwise, dkms should be distro agnostic.

* Added support to rename drivers after they are built. This can be specified in dkms.conf as such: MODULE_NAME="qla2200.o:qla2200_6x.o qla2300.o". In this particular example, the 2200 driver would be installed as qla2200_6x.o while the qla2300 driver is installed without name change as qla2300.o.

* Internally, symlink locations are now determined by using the readlink command.

* Added the Red Hat BOOT config as one of the config files that dkms looks for during builds. This allows building for redhat boot kernels without having to specify the --config option.

* Fixed a bug in read_conf that caused the wrong MAKE_ subdirective to be used.

* You no longer must be root to run a dkms build

* Updated the man page

The Iraqi vice president, Yassin Ramadan, was shown on live TV last night berating the American war effort and now claiming that Iraq was in possession of American POWs. As more of these senior leaders make it known that they are alive, the more it discounts my previous blog that perhaps someone at the top had led a coup against Saddam. I guess it was just wishful thinking.

Update: I was obviously wrong here.

I have no real evidence to back this claim. What is known, however, is that someone in Iraq's top circles must have sold out Saddam Hussein in our "decapitation attack". al-Sahaf is the Iraqi Information Minister and I happened to be watching some late night war coverage last night when I caught part of a 20 minute press conference that he led.

First, I must say, I was quite astonished that MSNBC would give an open microphone to the dissident remnants of our enemy. While it was strange to see a full-out press conference, complete with 20 news microphones, given by an Iraqi official, it was stranger given his rather temperate rhetoric. Sure, he called Bush a murderer and a criminal and denied our success stories as propoganda, but at times he seemed almost comical, mocking our technological prowess. He made no claims that Americans had killed any Iraqi civilians and, when asked, flatly stated that Iraqis had been unable to capture any American POWs. While he made repeated claims that we had wounded 207 Iraqi civilians, it never went any further than that. Where was the great Satan propoganda?

Continuing my music blogging for today, it looks like The Dead will be playing Austin on July 4th. I'm not familiar at all with Two River Canyon Amphitheatre, but apparently, its in Spicewood, TX.

Perhaps someone can fill me in, but I hear that Two River is South Park Meadow's replacement and that it's supposedly really cool. I think this event might be part of the Willie Nelson 4th of July Picnic.

Phish is going back to Limestone, Maine, this August to have a festival. Previously they've held "The Great Went" and "Lemonwheel" on the Loring Airforce Base and it seems like its on again. Here's the news link.

UC chokes in the first round ... big surprise.
Ohio State doesn't make it into the tourney ... still, big ten tourney over-achievers
Ohio State loses to GTech in NIT ... now I owe a co-worker lunch

Getting my hands on an OSU National Champion Coke can .... f-in priceless

This unoriginal entry brought to you by the mind of someone educated at THE Ohio State University. Go Bucks!

* Fixed a bug during install when archiving original modules. Thanks to Kris Jordan (kris at sagebrushnetworks dot com).

In the first Iraq war, Saddam never was put in the situation to play his "I'm going to die" card. I wonder what it will be.

TechTV (or some like-minded network) should create a Blog News Program. They hire some techno-anchor and use tools like Technorati or DayPop to track interesting stories and blogs related to these stories. Of course, this would apply to the geek crowd and geek news, but it could actually be a viable way for a technology related TV station to cover non-tech news-- punditry minus the talking heads. I'm going to go submit this idea to The Screen Savers.

For Linux to successfully take root and become a part of the mainstream, it will inevitably require the backing of some large corporate efforts. By all means, Austin is at the forefront of these trends and this is well underway.

First mention, of course, goes to Dell who is leading an organic approach to bringing Linux into the enterprise, certifying and factory-installing Linux on its entire line of Servers and Workstations. As well, in conjunction with Dell, Oracle has opened a Linux center in Austin. IBM's Linux Technology Center, though virtual in nature, is affiliated and centered in Austin. HP and Intel both obviously also have a presence in Austin, and likely do work with Linux here, though I am unaware of any specific efforts (let me know).

Less commercial entities like South By Southwest also have a Linux-twang bringing in the likes of Richard Stallman, founder of Gnu, while also using Linux to stream audio from some of the many SXSW music peformances going on this week. Also worthy of mention are the ongoing Linux Top Gun events which attempt to turn hacking into a spectator sport. Good luck on that one.

So, Linux may not be ready to pervade the home of your neighbor next door, but if concentrated efforts like these continue, it can't be far off. It's nice to be living in a city progressive enough to drive this.

Well, it looks like someone's already got a whole website devoted to sending your settlement money to the EFF. I guess its just that good of an idea. Check out the website here.

Do you think its weird that the weatherman is this television personality that gets really excited about good weather but spends his entire day inside predicting the weather?

In agreement with this discussion at Ars Technica and with the same idea a co-worker had, I'm donating my settlement money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The music industry was earlier found guilty of price-fixing the cost of CDs and had a window (which is now closed) where you could sign up to receive your share of the settlement. It comes out to $12.60 a person and I'll be endorsing my check over to the EFF, which is a non-profit that is dedicated to defending our digital freedoms. Let me know if you plan to do the same.

New versions, as always, available here.

* I added patching support in dkms.conf. You can now specify PATCH0=<patch_filename>, PATCH1=..., etc. in your dkms.conf and the patches will be applied in numerical order to your source each time before it builds. All patches are expected to be in -p1 format and should be installed into the /usr/src/<module>-<module-version>/patches/ directory.

* With patching support also comes kernel specific patches. These should be entered in the form of PATCH_<kernel-regexp> in dkms.conf. If the <kernel-regexp> matches to the kernel you are currently trying to build a module for, then this patch will be applied. All kernel specific patches are applied after generic patches.

* All module builds now occur in the directory /var/dkms/<module>/<module-version>/build/. Before each build, the source is copied into this directory for /usr/src/<module>-<module-version>/. If a build succeeds, then this directory is emptied after the build. However, if a build fails or if patches fail to apply, then this directory is left with the source in it so that further troubleshooting can be done.

* There is no longer a limit to how many MODULES_CONF entries can be placed in dkms.conf (used to be a 5 entry limit). As well, the format was changed from MODULES_CONF_<#>=... to just MODULES_CONF<#>=...

* DKMS no longer sources in /etc/init.d/functions as this is Red Hat specific and was not utilized anyway.

* Modules are no longer assumed to end with .o. This means the explicit built name of your module must be specified in dkms.conf.

follow up:

if it took 500 years from the point where we realized earth wasn't flat to being able to orbit our planet, does this mean in another 500 years we'll be "orbiting" our universe?

If there's one thing I learned from my high school German class teacher, its that JFK mispoke and when in Berlin, he actually exclaimed that he was a jelly doughnut. Turns out she was wrong.

Now, physicists are saying that the universe may be doughnut shaped. Can you believe people used to think the world was flat?

I saw this article on NYTimes this morning about Time Warner/AOL's new tivo like device. I've got to say, I completely agree with BoingBoing. Dubbed "MystroTV", this thing is just horrible. It attempts to be a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) but is laden with DRM to manage your rights (DRM having about as much to do with helping you manage your rights as a ticketmaster convenience charge is about being convenient to you). Unlike tivo, one could not skip through certain commercials with a fast forward button, share recorded programs with friends, and not have full access to record all programs.

This concept product is just yet another example of the failure of old-economy content distribution companies in understanding that the avalanche of technological adoption both current and coming has completely destroyed tradional methods for deriving income. Though I do have strong faith that we'll soon see the tide turning away from such feature crippled products for the sake of "licensing," it does seem for now that these media giants have still not learned their lesson from the music swapping that has already turned the corner and moved straight on to video and whatever else you can imagine sharing. The bubble may have burst, but the chewing gum hasn't lost its flavor. They're screwed, and making crappy products surely won't help them.

And speaking of their current crappy products, lets talk about time warner's current Tivo system which I have. Living in Austin means living in a city of early adopters and as such, it is one of TW's test markets. The NYTimes articles makes brief mention of it, but Time Warner is hedging their bets as they currently have a DVR cable box available in Austin that works just like tivo. And, unlike their new dream product, this one isn't crippled ... on purpose. Sure, the thing works well enough, but its got some issues:

* It reboots often, perhaps 4-5 times a week. This takes about 3 minutes.
* You cannot reliably expect it to record your program if you've set it to record all instances of a show.
* Because of this, you are pretty much forced to manually select every single thing you want to record.
* If you are recording two programs at the same time, you can't watch anything else live.
* The program guide randomly forgets to highlight things you've set to record in the future.
* It has no ad-skip feature, but you can get pretty good with the "triple fast-forward" followed by an "instant replay."

Oh, to be an early adopter. Sure, I've never used the real tivo before, but even with this meager offering, I'm still somehow satisfied, especially given the potential I see in it. Of course, the same can't be said of Mystro. Do they really believe that people would actually give up one for the other? They'd have to be stupid, and, unfortunately, they haven't shown much brilliance as of yet. Perhaps they'll just simplify it all by taking away the choice. That's some rights management.

DKMS got Kernel Traffic'ed. I hope this leads to more feedback on the software as I have seen little as of yet. Kernel Traffic #208 For 7 Mar.

I've seen many articles recently about North Korea's belligerence (sp?). They've buzzed our fighter planes, restarted their reactors, embarked on two separate missile tests. This is very shrewd work on their part. Then, this morning, I saw this article on Time about Iran nearing completion of a giant uranium enrichment plant. It all points to the hidden costs of this war.

Of course, to begin with, you cannot really get a good estimate of what this war with Iraq will cost. The Bush administration gives out lean figures that we all know aren't true and won't elucidate at all on what the post-war occupation costs will be (oh wait, we'll suddently remember Iraq is filled with oil and balance our costs that way). But, there are some real non-tangible costs to this war that don't even have anything to do with the losses to our international stature. These are the costs of a forced hand. We want this war so badly and are willing to go to such lengths against such public enmity, that we are forced to sit on our hands as other rogue regimes take advantage of this very opportunity.

And, who can blame North Korea? The actions they are taking right now are part of an extremely well calculated effort to not be our next target. They are taking full advantage of our unilateralism to send out their message now, while they can, that they will not stand to be next. Since we cannot possibly deal with the complexities of both situations, they are, in effect, establishing precedent. With this precedent, our options will be much fewer once the war concludes.

It seems Iran is doing likewise. Will we defeat Iraq and fix the 12 year old loose ends in that nation? Yes. Will we at the same time create a whole slew of new complications in doing so? Also, yes. Will it all balance out? Who knows? I do know that as we all keep getting more and more technologically advanced, we cannot stop nuclear proliferation forever. Eventually such proliferation is inevetible. And once we realize this, it will be like drilling in Anwar with fuel cell cars on our 15 year horizon. Or like attacking Iraq now.

Did I mention Dick Cheney's Halliburton has won the contract for Iraq oil firefighting?

let's try again. link.

Is it bad form to link to one's own blog? In anycase, this is a test entry to try out trackback. Here's a link to yesterday's entry.

EMC has officially qualified Red Hat Linux 8.0 with Dell Servers. This is with the QLogic 2342, 2340, 2310 and 2200 HBA cards with the 6.04.00 QLogic driver. The Dell supported RPM can be downloaded here. I'll update my Linux page with this information later. Of course, RH Advanced Server 2.1 and RH 7.3 are both also supported with these cards and driver.

I just finished the beginning switchover to Movable Type. Pretty great stuff so far.

Check out DKMS which is on my linux page. Dynamic Kernel Module Support is a framework to allow driver drops built directly from source so that Linux solution providers no longer have to wait for kernel drops to fix driver issues. Its good for other reasons as well, check out my post on lkml for more info. Its released by me under the auspices of Dell under the GPL.