You know you’re a sad Geek when..

Following some links about the new Gnome Network Manager included in Ubuntu 9.04 I found a blog by Dan Williams who was responsible for much if not most of the underlying work that has made it such a pleasure to use with 3G network devices.

This article where he complains about the firmware on one of the new Huawei 3G cards brought a smile. Been there dude! I often had exactly the same reaction when testing my own cellular device discovery code against various hardware. Then I realized just how sad it was to be able to fully understand and sympathize with a comment like:

…the response to AT+GCAP is simply “+CIS707-A, +MS, +ES, +DS, +FCLASS”.  No, it’s not prefixed with “+GCAP: ” like every other modem on the planet that I’m pretty sure the relevant standards (TIA/EIA/IS-131, TIA/EIA-602, and V.250) require..

I need to give this new Network Manager a proper try out on some diverse hardware now as it seems possible that it finally gets Ubuntu up to a level where it is as good an experience as that seen on the best Windows systems.

Libertas still banging on.

Just noticed that Libertas are clearly still chasing their “Vote No to Europe” agenda. I just got this Google ad piped into my Slashdot RSS feed:

I’m still waiting for an adequate explanation on precisely what their links to fundamentalist Catholic groups is, what exactly Declan Ganley’s personal agenda is in relation to EU politics and well what exactly they actually stand for because nothing is really clear when it comes to Libertas.

For an outfit that is relatively small they certainly seem to have a lot of money and for a group that implies that they espouse a libertarian agenda it would be very appropriate for them to clearly state where that comes from on and how they spend it. It might also be nice if they explained to the general Irish population what their flavour of libertarian thought actually stood for.

Everything you ever wanted to know about VMware vSwitches

I just came across a fantastic series of blog posts from Ken Cline at “Kens Virtual Reality Blog” that ties up pretty much everything you will ever need to know about configuring networking in ESX 3.5 \ ESXi. No doubt there will be some significant changes in ESX 4 but even so this is a great resource. There are 5 parts to this so far, all the earlier items which explain all the background detail are linked from this fifth part where Ken makes some hard and fast recommendations around how to tie it all together to create robust and effective ESX network design decisions.

The Great vSwitch Debate (Part 5).

He covers everything from the basics of creating vSwitches and Port Groups, VLAN tagging – clearly explaining what VGT\EGT\VST tagging variations actually mean and how they are enabled, load balancing options and their usefulness (or not) especially in relation to 802.3ad \ LACP\PaGP, NIC failover especially with regard to Beacon Probing and Link State Tracking on your physical switches, security options (Forged Transmits\MAC Address changes, Promiscuous mode) and a lot more. Definitely recommended for anyone who either builds or wants to understand ESX installations.

G20 Demonstrations: “Riots” & The Media

Way back in the ‘80s there was a commonly held belief that at least some of the rioting that was taking place during the troubles in NI took place mostly for the sake of, if not at the instigation of the international media. I’ve no idea if that was actually true but the G20 demonstrations last week produced a rather dramatic set of still and video reports showing a bunch of “rioters” breaking into an RBS branch, breaking windows and throwing a computer monitor about on the street. It was dramatic coverage and was presented, for the most part, along with comments that indicated that while most of the protests were peaceful that there were some really nasty bits such as this…

I had thought something was a bit funky about the Sky news footage I saw but I didn’t save a copy and forgot about it until earlier today when I came across a link from Craig Murray to the pictures below. I found this Sky News article (with Video) that covers the same incident but it isn’t the footage I saw live. It shows the dozens of cameramen though, very clearly tracking the every move of what appears at that point to be a single “rioter”.

Amyway here’s one shot of part of the horde of photographers in an image from Postman Patel :

http://postmanpatel.blogspot.com/2009/04/smash-capitalism-cameras-ready-roll.html

There are at least 11 serious cameras of one sort or another in that shot. Now there may be some amateurs in there with serious prosumer grade SLR’s but there’s at least a half dozen press types in that view.

Now look at the reverse angle from a few moments earlier courtesy of Theresa at Comedie Humaine:

http://comediehumaine.blogspot.com/2009/04/fourth-estate.html

 

Another 20 Cameras – and the vast majority of them must be press too (Theresa conveniently circled the cameras in red and the subjects in green). Her comment that this is more like performance art than riot is spot on.

And even better we have a good view of the fact that it was only 5\6 “rioters”.

There’s also a view from inside (although this might have been taken much later) which shows a police cameraman. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3455/3404568155_1ec4776a64.jpg

30 (and maybe a lot more) press and 5 “rioters” ? Didn’t anyone to think to politely ask the lads to, well you know, just cop on and stop?

It all seems more like an orchestrated Reality TV show gimminck than a “riot” if you ask me. It’s too stupid to even warrant thinking it might be a set up but I’d love to know how it actually played out and what exactly goes through the heads of press photographers when they are clearly the reason a particular event is taking place but they just continue to snap away? It’s a mad, mad world alright.