I was thrilled this morning to finally come up with what I hope is a fix for a bug in ConsoleKit that has been plauging a lot of users, judging by the number of subscribers and duplicates on the Ubuntu bug

I was happy to get upload fixes for various other bugs and sponsor some more from other members of the community.

I was pleased to see a group of people to come together to prepare uploads for the 2.24.1 release of GNOME.

I enjoyed going to my favourite curry restaurant for lunch and listen to the stories from my friend's trip to Malawi.

I was disappointed to read an article on the dailywtf.com today after I saw a pointer to it.

I was saddened to read this post in response.

Carolyn, if on the off chance you read this post, I'm sorry that you feel that way. I can only hope it doesn't end your involvement with our community, though I would understand if it did, it can't be easy to be involved with a community which makes you feel like that, no matter how infrequently. I can only promise that I will try and discourage things I see which I feel are likely to provoke similar reactions, and do my best to build communities that are welcoming. I also apologise in advance for those times when I fall short.

-- This post belongs to Lionel Richie

I recently attended Lugradio Live in Wolverhampton. During the live recording of the show they were discussing how things have changed since the started the show. Aq was saying that things are less interesting nowadays, as everything just works. I disagree that it's less interesting, not spending time compiling drivers for my video card means I can spend time on other things.

I bought another laptop this week, and so I can personally attest that the developers involved should be proud, all of the hardware was supported out of the box, with just a few minutes following instructions on a wiki page to get everything working properly. Also, all of those little tweaks won't be needed in a few months time, as the developers have fixed the problems.

However, I also disagree that everything just works. Even though it took me only a couple of hours to install and get all of the hardware working, I'm still setting up the laptop. Why do I have to spend ages configuring all of the applications, even though 90% of the settings will be the same as on my other laptop? I could copy across my dotfiles, but there could be more done to help me move just those that make sense to be on another machine. (I don't think I would want to copy the whole of .mozilla/)

There's more though. Though I have two laptops running linux next to each other, it's not that easy to move a file between them. Why do I have to enter details of my contacts more than once? Why isn't it trivial for me to send off an email to someone I am chatting to on IRC? I could go on.

The work on the kernel, drivers and installers that meant that it only took me a couple of hours to get up and running is a fantastic achievement; it's what allows us to ask questions like these. There is more that needs to be done in these areas, but we need to expand our ideas of what should just work.

I don't wish to discredit those that are working on this sort of problem, there should be more people helping them. We need other developers to appreciate the issues, and support those trying to tackle them.

If you agree with me then don't complain about it, fix it. Find a project working on a problem that you care about and support them however you can. I realise the irony inherent in telling everyone this at the end of a post like this, I hope you will forgive me.

-- This belongs to Lionel Richie

Hello Planet Ubuntu.

This feels like I've just made it on stage with my favourite band.

Today I was accepted as an Ubuntu member through the Universe Contributors group. Thanks to all those that helped me achieve this. There's been a load of other people join this group recently. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, and we're going to have some great releases coming up.

It's an interesting time to be joining planet, with yesterday's CC meeting discussing what role the planet should play in our community. I think that Emma had a good post touching on how we should conduct ourselves. (Hey Emma, when are you going to become a member so that more people see your insightful posts? And the animal ones too, I like those)

Emma refers to a poem by Robert Frost in her post, I had heard of it before, but I had never read it, so I hunted it out. I recommend reading it.

Mending Wall
Robert Frost (1874-1963)

SOMETHING there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

From http://www.bartleby.com/118/2.html

I love Stephen Fry, everything he does is great, but also seems to come with a touch of quality as well. His documentaries are probably a lesser known part of his work, but they are equally fantastic; the two-part documentary on manic depression was particularly notable.

Last night a watched a new documentary presented by him, and while it was neither as moving or as personal as the others I have seen it was still interesting and enlightening. This particular documentary was about Johannes Gutenberg, the printing press that he invented, and the impact which this had upon the world.

He explained that the printing press, and the increased access to knowledge that it allowed, was a major factor in the Renaissance, which radically changed the world, and can be seen in the world in which we live today.

In Gutenberg's time the Church was the most powerful organisation. He worked with the church, and tried to show them the benefits of his idea to them. It was suggested that he would never have succeeded if he had not courted the Church. If the printing press was indeed the catalyst for the Renaissance, and the Renaissance was the start of the decline in the power of the Church that we see today, then the Church's embrace of the printing press could be said to have precipitated their loss of power and influence.

Are there any ideas at the current time that are as powerful as the idea of the printed word? During the programme their were a couple of references to the growth of the printing press being similar to that of the growth of the Internet in recent years.

The Internet, like the printing press before it, allows a new group of people to have direct access to information. Will that access cause a fundamental shift in our world and our lives?

Is there a dominant force in the world which will be diminished by the Internet? Are they currently embracing it as a tool which they can use to entrench their position? Are we thinking too small; is there something we haven't thought of yet that is going to have an even more radical impact?

The lecturer who taught me evolutionary computing was also a devout Christian, who believed that the world is the way that it is because God created it, rather than it evolving via natural selection.

This was quite surprising to us when he revealed this, but he did not see a problem with holding this view. He recognised that there was a fundamental conflict between Darwinism and Creationism, but not one between his work and his religious beliefs. He could see that the theory of natural selection could be an effective optimisation algorithm where the form that the solution would take was not entirely clear, but it was not his belief that this was the mechanism by which humans arrived on this earth.

It's an interesting feature of science that he was able to hold this position and still research in the field. At one point in the year he did give a lecture on creationism itself. This was not one of the lectures that made up our course, it was an optional lecture at luchtime, open to the whole engineering faculty and other members of the University. I did not attend, but many people got very excited beforehand, seeing it as a chance to go and argue with a holder of this belief and try to discredit the idea. Perhaps they were also spurred on by the fact that he was a man of science, and so potentially more likely to listen to an argument of logical reasoning.

I don't think anyone convinced him, and I doubt anyone ever will, he has obviously confronted this issue many times in the course of his work and still holds the two potentially conflicting ideas in his head.