At first I was not so impressed. The first chapters mostly felt like filler content. Actually I can’t even remember the main arguments brought forward in those chapters. However the last chapter really made up for this lack of content in the first chapters. I think the quote below sums this up nicely:

“For the person who understands code, the whole world reveals itself as a series of decisions made by planners and designers for how the rest of us should live. Not just computers, but everything from the way streets are organized in a town to the way election rules (are tilted for a purpose vote for any three candidates) begin to look like what they are: sets of rules developed to promote certain outcomes. Once the biases become apparent, anything becomes possible. The world and its many arbitrary systems can be hacked.”

Source: Program or be programmed

Filtering on the server allows me to easily switch between mail clients like Mutt, Thunderbird and webmail without having to wonder about each client’s specific filtering options. The server deals with the filtering and serves my mail via IMAPS to whatever client I might use to read my mail. Procmail served me well, but it’s arcane ‘language’ to construct rules by which emails are sorted into different folders is a pain to use.

It became harder and harder for me to create correct rules to filter my mail. This resulted into less important mail cluttering up my inbox hiding the important mail and even important mail being sorted into the wrong folder. So I set out to find an alternative for Procmail.

Surprisingly it took way longer than I anticipated to find an alternative to Procmail. Apparently most people just deal with Procmail’s arcane mumbo jumbo language. After some failed attempts I stumbled upon maildirproc by Joel Rosdahl. As Joel puts it:

maildirproc is a program that processes one or several existing mail boxes in the maildir format. It is primarily focused on mail sorting — i.e., moving, copying, forwarding and deleting mail according to a set of rules. It can be seen as an alternative to procmail, but instead of being a delivery agent (which wants to be part of the delivery chain), maildirproc only processes already delivered mail. And that’s a feature, not a bug.

The greatest feature of maildirproc is not even mentioned in this quote: it uses the regular Python programming language to construct rules by which your mail will be sorted. Python is widely regarded as a great readable programming language which suits both aspiring as well as advanced developers. By using Python it is quite easy to construct rules to filter emails. The documentation and examples of maildirproc should have you up and running within minutes.

Personally I still use Procmail as MDA, but it only makes sure my emails will be put into the inbox. Maildirproc will take care of the sorting. I run maildirproc using cron, so that I can see every mail coming in, but all the less important stuff will get automatically sorted every minute or so.

I highly recommend using maildirproc to sort your email instead of Procmail!

chip "w83627dhg-*"

	label in0 "Vcore"
	label in1 "+1.05V"
	label in2 "AVCC"
	label in3 "3VCC"
		set in3_min 3.3 * 0.90
		set in3_max 3.3 * 1.10
	label in4 "Vdimm"
	label in5 "+5V"
		compute in5 @*4, @/4
	label in6 "+12V"
		compute in6 @*16, @/16
		set in6_min 12 * 0.90
		set in6_max 12 * 1.10
	label in7 "3VSB"
	label in8 "Vbat"

	ignore fan1
	label fan2 "CPU Fan"
	ignore fan3
	label fan4 "Case Fan"
	ignore fan5

	label temp1 "MB Temp"
	label temp2 "CPU Temp"
	label temp3 "Case Temp"

	ignore cpu0_vid

I’m using a ReplaceRegexp filter to change WordPress’ wp-config.php file. In this file a constant WP_DEBUG is defined false and I would to change it to true. I have defined the regex and provided a property with a string “true”. However this string will be casted to a bool and causes strange sideeffects.

Consider this build.xml example:
<!– setup wp config specific properties –>
<property name=”wp_config.wp_debug” value=”true” />

<!– Setup the wp-config file –>
<!– thanks to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/974963/phing-and-wordpress-configuration –>
<target name=”setup-wp-config” description=”Copies the wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and sets up the parameters for the test site”>
<copy file=”./wp-config-sample.php” tofile=”./wp-config.php”>
<filterchain>
<replaceregexp>
<regexp pattern=”(define\(‘WP_DEBUG’, )\w+(\);)” replace=”\1${wp_config.wp_debug}\2″/>
</replaceregexp>
</filterchain>
</copy>
</target>
If you would run this it would not work as expected. Changing the property to “foo” it does work as expected. This is probably related to this thread:

http://phing.tigris.org/ds/viewMessage.do?dsForumId=1083&dsMessageId=958537

Using the workaround in the thread the example becomes:

<!-- setup wp config specific properties -->
    <property name="wp_config.wp_debug" value="(bool)true" />

  <!-- Setup the wp-config file -->
  <!-- thanks to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/974963/phing-and-wordpress-configuration -->
  <target name="setup-wp-config" description="Copies the wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and sets up the parameters for the test site">
    <copy file="./wp-config-sample.php" tofile="./wp-config.php">
      <filterchain>
        <replaceregexp>
          <regexp pattern="(define\('WP_DEBUG', )\w+(\);)" replace="\1${wp_config.wp_debug}\2"/>
        </replaceregexp>
      </filterchain>
    </copy>
  </target>
Thus by adding the type (bool) to the property value forces Phing to work correctly with boolean values as strings. Thanks Hans Lellelid for this workaround!

A bug has been filled with Phing. See this ticket #633

 <!-- setup wp config specific properties -->
    <property name="wp_config.wp_debug" value="true" />

  <!-- Setup the wp-config file -->
  <!-- thanks to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/974963/phing-and-wordpress-configuration -->
  <target name="setup-wp-config" description="Copies the wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and sets up the parameters for the audition test site">
    <copy file="./wp-config-sample.php" tofile="./wp-config.php">
      <filterchain>
        <replaceregexp>
          <regexp pattern="(define\('WP_DEBUG', )\w+(\);)" replace="\1${wp_config.wp_debug}\2"/>
        </replaceregexp>
      </filterchain>
    </copy>
  </target>

“Some instructions:

List your partitions:

ls /dev/sd*
If you haven’t got an encrypted disk just do (where sda5 is the corrupted
partition):

fsck /dev/sda5
If you are using an encrypted hard-disk (i do) do

sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda5 something
where sda5 is the encrypted partition and someting is the name under which
you will find the partition (/dev/mapper/something).

The install Lvm and look for volumes :

sudo apt-get install lvm2
sudo pvscan
sudo vgscan
The last command should list the at least one volume-group
Enable it or the ones you’re interested in

sudo vgchange -a y groupname
Now list the logical volumens

sudo lvscan
Your drive you’re interested in should now appear under /dev/mapper

do a fsck

sudo fsck /dev/mapper/logical-volume
Lots of errors! Off course you want to have them all fixed. REBOOT!
This worked for me!”

To remove the ^M characters at the end of all lines in vi, use:

:%s/^V^M//g

The ^v is a CONTROL-V character and ^m is a CONTROL-M. When you type this, it will look like this:

:%s/^M//g

In UNIX, you can escape a control character by preceeding it with a CONTROL-V. The :%s is a basic search and replace command in vi. It tells vi to replace the regular expression between the first and second slashes (^M) with the text between the second and third slashes (nothing in this case). The g at the end directs vi to search and replace globally (all occurrences).

So I am a bit lucky in that my father is a very experienced programmer who also gave me the bug. One of the first things he said to me when I started programming for more than just fun or OSS, was that he never judged other programmers code. He would correct it, point out flaws in it, but always with a suggestion of how to do it better. The reason for this is that in the world that we have to live in, of deadlines, PHBs and evil marketing folks who spring new features on a development team right before a release, you never know why someone’s code is the way it is.[...]

source: mprorock on reddit

The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today. I’d never have had the ability to run whatever stupid, potentially harmful, hugely educational programs I could download or write. I wouldn’t have been able to fire up ResEdit and edit out the Mac startup sound so I could tinker on the computer at all hours without waking my parents. The iPad may be a boon to traditional eduction, insofar as it allows for multimedia textbooks and such, but in its current form, it’s a detriment to the sort of hacker culture that has propelled the digital economy.

Perhaps the iPad signals an end to the “hacker era” of digital history. Now that consumers and traditional media understand the digital world, maybe there’s proportionally less need for freewheeling technological experimentation and platforms that allow for the same. Maybe the hypothetical mom doesn’t need a real computer. As long as real computers stick around for people who do need them, maybe there’s no harm in that.

Wherever we stand in digital history, the iPad leaves me with the feeling that Apple’s interests and values going forward are deeply divergent from my own. There’s nothing wrong with that; people make consumer decisions every day based on their values. If I don’t like the product that the iPad turns out to be once released, I’m free to simply not buy it. These things have a way of evolving, and I won’t preclude the possibility that Apple eventually addresses concerns about the openness of the device.

For now, though, I remain disturbed. The future of personal computing that the iPad shows us is both seductive and dystopian. It’s not a future I want to bring into my home.

Source: http://al3x.net/2010/01/28/ipad.html

This quote (emphasizes are mine), perfectly reflects my concerns with regards to computing, but also our society in general, and the closed, proprietary direction some companies and people want to take us into. I belief that this direction will turn out to be a dead-end street and I hope we can prevent this from happening before causing it too much harm. This also highlights my arguments in favor of: sharing, openness, free software, accessibility and the right to play, destroy(mostly accidentally, sorry), create, tinker and experiment. In my humble opinion that is the only way to learn, innovate and work towards new, sustainable ways of living on this planet.

So here’s a song (see also the embedded movie at the end of this post) by a guy who definitely has experienced these issues and wrote a song about Internet Explorer being mean again. This one is for al you web developers out there. Have a nice weekend!