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Sara Cammeresi

From a house ad heard on the radio:

...visit 1071theplanet.com. Or for you hardcore programmers, that's h-t-t-p, semicolon, backslash backslash, 1071theplanet.com.

posted by Sid at 13.57 / 873     [ Comments: 1 ]

Speaking of hardcore programmers, as any UNIX person worth his salt knows, revision control is a necessity for developing software of any significant degree of complexity. To date, CVS has been the best free revision control system available. Unfortunately, CVS suffers from a number of deficiencies, most notably its lack of atomic commits, poor branching, a lack of whole-repository versioning, etc.

For some of my own stuff that only I work on, I have been using PRCS, a system that corrects some of these issues, but does so at the expense of being network-aware. Its inability to work across a network obviously precludes its use in any serious environment. Perforce is a pretty good system (we used it when we were developing OpenBLT), but it is commercial and costs $600 per seat.

But hope has returned! The Subversion [warning: poopy web page] project solves all of the problems with CVS, and it's free! To run it, you need Apache 2.0.44 built with mod_dav and mod_dav_fs, and all you have to do is load the svn module into your Apache server and perform some small miscellaneous configuration.

I am very impressed with Subversion, and I have moved a few of my projects into an SVN repository from PRCS already. After atomic commits and O(1) branching/tagging (there is no difference between the two in Subversion), I would have to say the neatest feature is versioned file properties. To each file, you can attach any number of properties (akin to file attributes in BeOS) which are stored as normal, versioned files in the repository. So when I noticed that updating my working copy was overwriting my files' mode bits in ways I didn't like, I just added a property to all of my files called `mode,' stored the file mode I wanted for each file and directory in it, and wrote a Python script to read the properties and get everything set up.

While Subversion is still technically in development, the Subversion people stopped using CVS about 1.5 years ago and have been using their own stuff ever since without a single loss of data. When it goes into a release mode, I will probably become a Subversion Nazi and say that anyone who doesn't switch to it without a really good reason is stupid.

posted by Sid at 14.20 / 889     [ Comments: 0 ]

From CNN:

• President to speak at 20.00 EST, will say Saddam Hussein must leave Iraq to avoid war
• Administration official says a 72-hour ultimatum `is in the right ballpark'
• US, UK, Spain will not seek second UN vote; White House says diplomacy has ended

I specifically call attention to the word `ended' with regard to the diplomacy to-date. That's a very undiplomatic word, and I like it.

Update: Iraq have hit back:

• Iraqi foreign minister responds by saying Bush should leave office instead

I laugh in their general direction!

posted by Sid at 12.42 / 821     [ Comments: 3 ]

Remember back on 25 January how a bunch of human shields left for Iraq with the goal of protecting power plants, bridges, and other infrastructure with their own bodies?

Well it turns out that when they got there, Saddam presented them with a different plan. Instead, he wanted them to guard military and other sensitive installations. So instead of remaining in Iraq to endure a (very) short future of immolation, they declared success, albeit a frustrated one, and they left, only to have their transport break down in Lebanon with their operator left to appeal to the world for some £3,100. The poor bloke.

posted by Sid at 16.08 / 964     [ Comments: 0 ]

I was unaware until today of the magnitude of our ongoing psyops campaign in Iraq.

posted by Sid at 13.03 / 835     [ Comments: 0 ]

Witnesses in Kuwait report a 16-mile-long convoy of tanks, armoured personel carriers, fuel trucks, and other military vehicles is assembled and ready to roll into Iraq.

US soldiers have been instructed to begin taking anti-nerve-agent tablets.

Seventeen Iraqi soldiers have already surrendered to US forces in Kuwait.

Only five hours to go....

posted by Sid at 14.08 / 880     [ Comments: 0 ]

And so the bombing has begun, about 1.5 hours after the deadline. I've got to hand it to Bush this time.

posted by Sid at 20.51 / 160     [ Comments: 0 ]

And now the Hiptop SDK and simulator is out. So many great things going on today!

posted by Sid at 21.07 / 171     [ Comments: 0 ]

We apparently got intelligence regarding where Saddam Hussein was, and attacked that location. I wonder if we bagged him.

posted by Sid at 22.13 / 217     [ Comments: 0 ]

Saddam says that we unbelievers are going to hell, God willing. So he fired four missiles into Kuwait. Two were apparently shot down, and the other two didn't hit anything. Yawn.

posted by Sid at 08.39 / 652     [ Comments: 0 ]

CNN have published a side-by-side image comparing the man on Iraqi state television following the opening salvo last night who purported to be Saddam and a photograph of the true Saddam. The White House won't give an opinion on whether that's the real guy or not, but it sounds like it's possible that we did indeed bag him last night.

More bombing. Ground clash at the Iraq-Kuwait border with very heavy artillery fire.

posted by Sid at 11.29 / 770     [ Comments: 0 ]

Anti-aircraft artillery fire in Baghdad, bombing, burning buildings, Marines have crossed the demilitarised zone and entered Iraq.

posted by Sid at 12.45 / 822     [ Comments: 2 ]

Uday, the son of Saddam, has allegedly suffered a brain haemorrhage after getting into a bit of a barney. [via Mr Garner]

posted by Sid at 14.10 / 882     [ Comments: 0 ]

Iraq expel CNN's journalists from Baghdad. Pentagon official says today is A-day (shock and awe). Intelligence sources report that Saddam may be alive, but he is not in minute-to-minute control. Large explosions in Baghdad and much AAA fire.

posted by Sid at 12.04 / 794     [ Comments: 0 ]

So after we destroy the government of Iraq and occupy the country, what then? Well we won't have any involvement at all after that, if you listen to French President Jacques Chirac because after that, France and the UN and the rest of the Axis of Weasels will be deciding what to do with Iraq.

There is only one proper response to someone who wants to ride on your coattails and leech off of the upside you create while risking none of the downside: Get Lost.

In other news, Saddam may have left the residence that was bombed on Wednesday on a stretcher.

posted by Sid at 15.12 / 925     [ Comments: 1 ]

Iraq's propaganda information minister gives us the real skinny (for some definition of real and reality):

`In hospitals there are 207 people, woman, children, and other civilians. And we'll take you if you like to visit them and see for yourselves,' he told journalists at a news conference Saturday.

Calling the bombing in Baghdad a `cowardly assault,' al-Sahaf denied US claims that they launched more than 300 missiles.

`We have calculated in a small area of Baghdad, 19 missiles fell. I went there and saw parts of these missiles -- 19 missiles in a very small area,' he said. `Therefore I expect tons of missiles have been shot down by the Iraqis.'

Iraq's information minister also said the United States is so desperate to show progress that it `kidnapped' thousands of Iraqi civilians and forced them to dress up like soldiers, pretending to surrender to coalition forces in the oil-rich Faw peninsula of southern Iraq.

Al-Sahaf said, despite the lies playing out in the media, Iraqi soldiers were holding their ground and intense fighting continues.

He's irritated that we injured 207 people? They killed between 70,000 and 150,000 Kurds in 1989 including some 5,000 through nerve gassing.

It's worth noting that this same minister brought his Kalashnikov to an earlier press conference.

Update: When asked by a reporter when Saddam would next be appearing to speak, something in which one would think he should be very interested given the ferocity of the recent bombing of Baghdad, the minister's response was `Next.' I think he's either dead or not in very good health.

posted by Sid at 08.48 / 658     [ Comments: 0 ]

In case you speak Old English, you might want to visit the Circolwyrde Wordhord to brush up your vocabulary of technical terms. Or in the words of the ealde spræc: Ræde tha gehæmendan larboc.

If you speak Esperanto, you might want to check out an index of technical roots, or if you're looking for something else, you might want to use Google Esperanta.

Klingon speakers (which I am not), might want to use Google tlhIngan Hol.

posted by Sid at 12.14 / 801     [ Comments: 1 ]