#geek posts

[mutantdalek-smith-iii]

Obi Wan: the diplomat from Naboo is already there

Me: 😀

Obi Wan: not Senator Amidala, Representative Binks

Me: 😰

[mutantdalek-smith-iii]

The Clone Wars Season 1: well, I suppose it's got to be a bit childish seeming as it's a kids show

The Clone Wars Season 6: shit, this makes episode III seem childish

[peelman]

Back in January, I wrote an article for Opensource.com arguing that judges need to be educated on open source licensing. A recent decision from the Eastern District of Virginia makes it clear that …

My buddy Ben wrote up some great thoughts on the recent ruling against a child pornographer in Virginia.  Unless “fixed” by a higher court (because honestly, who expects Congress to do anything at this point?), the connections the judge drew here could have dangerous implications for privacy and security in the digital world.

[peelman]

keybase-gpg-github - Step-by-step guide on how to create a GPG key on keybase.io, adding it to a local GPG setup and use it with Git and GitHub.

I generally despise PGP/GPG, but Keybase has made it useable, and Git using it to sign commits means I will probably keep it around this time...

[peelman]

Thoughts on systemd

I finally got a 16.04 Ubuntu box up and for the most part, its been happy and stable.  I did have some weird issues with system startup when using a static IP; setting a static IP (and gateway, and DNS servers, etc) caused several system services to fail (and delay system startup while they took forever to timeout).  Use DHCP (and a static lease, we’re not heathens), the issues disappear.  There was some insight on that delivered via Nick Craver, but troubleshooting that was a royal pain in the ass, since the problem appears to be deeper than config changes can solve.

I don’t think systemd was ready for prime time, on any of the platforms it is on, but I also recognize that live fire testing is the only way a lot of this stuff is going to be discoverable and get fixed.  It reminds me of Launchd when Apple launched it on Tiger.  It sucked.  Straight up, it was not a good experience.  Fast forward to Snow Leopard, and it had matured into a fantastic service manager.

I think systemd is in the same boat launchd was in 2006.  Its going to take a while to work out the kinks.  In the mean time, I’m probably going to leave anything production on 14.04 for a long while yet.   But in the long term, its going to be a net gain.

[peelman]

How many more ways will I find to document the broken ActiveSync implementation that Rackspace has?

This morning I found one more via Microsoft's own Outlook for iOS.

Question of the day: when I tag Rackspace in this, will one of their fanatical support reps once again reach out and try to "solve" my problem despite not knowing the difference between ActiveSync and Exchange?

All I know is they have until this spring. If no headway is visible by then, I will be testing and in all likelihood jumping ship to Amazon's WorkMail. I hate migrating email services every 2-3 years, but I hate this half ass implementation bullshit more.

[peelman]

Well that is just terrible news.

Mark Shuttleworth may be the father of Ubuntu, but Ian is most certainly it’s grandfather, and Debian remains a touchstone of the Linux community. A significant portion of my Linux learning and background were done on Debian and Ubuntu continues to be my default distro today.

And as a fellow Purdue alumnus and Guy-Who-Calls-Indiana-Home, it makes it all the more troubling. My condolences to his family and friends, and I hope he and his work continue to inspire the Linux community, and the broader tech community for generations.