Ramblings of Narc

I’m severely low on tuits these days, especially round ones (laugh, it’s supposed to be funny ), but when I get one I need to:

• set up my newly-acquired D-Link router as the common gateway to the Internet, in place of the old computer currently doing this (implies moving any and all port forwards there, too)
• possibly set up a DNS server (BIND, probably) on one of the other computers (most likely bast)
• set up mum’s computer so she doesn’t have to work on the current router anymore (thus clearing it up for the next step)
• set up the current router as network-attached storage, running SAMBA and possibly NFS and probably SVNserve, too, on an Ubuntu Server Edition (plus transferring any of the data we want to keep off its current drives and onto different ones before formatting to ext3)
• (added to the above) look into the possibility of consolidating the four drives on the current router into a single logical partition (or perhaps two) using some kind of software RAID. This may or may not be a good idea, considering the age of the drives and their possibility of failure

Aside from all this, I have a bunch of other running around to do, most specifically involving putting a bunch of documentation together and finally becoming a one-man company so I can be paid more. I’ve unfortunately been slacking off in that department.

ETA: And that’s my quota of 1 post for this month, and just in time, too, October’s about to start. Boy, does time fly, or what?

(*) – WTB == “want to buy”; “round tuit” == common joke/wordplay around the statement “I’ll do it when I get around to it”.

I’ve been promising pictures of my small collection of H0 scale trains for a while now, so here come some pictures (click the pictures for larger versions):

I linked to my short story, Safeguard, before, but since then I’ve closed the wiki it was originally on.

Today, I finally transferred it to my new wiki, and updated the links in the older post. So, in case anyone wanted to find it, it’s here now, where I expect it’ll continue to exist forever. Or, at least, until I no longer have either a domain, a web server, or I die. Whichever comes first.

I should probably write more short stories soon…

Since my hands are no longer tied by having to keep the mail server up on Hermes, I can now reboot, reformat, and re-all-that-other-nice-stuff on that computer — and so I’m setting up to finally do something I really like the thought of: putting Ubuntu on it. To do that, though, I need to first back up everything on it — and the first part of that is getting the backup down to a more manageable size, which I’m doing by deleting everything I don’t like. This is expected to be a lengthy process (and, so far, it has been), but it’s well worth it.

I’m cleaning up my junk! And that’s a good thing.

In keeping with the previously mentioned tip about getting stuff done, I’m now starting to work on a problem I’ve been avoiding for several months — moving the mail server.

First part, setting up Postfix on bast to be authoritative for narc.ro, and do all the things my current mail server does. Will it end well? Watch this space, updates forthcoming as progress inevitably ensues (possibly with hilarity; most likely not). Current time: 2:34 am.

Update: 5:15 am and I have Postfix doing most of the important stuff. Counting them:

• receiving mail on the catch-all
• receiving forwarded mail from gmail
• not being an open relay — from default config, so not taking credit for it
• receiving mail on various blackhole accounts — and sending them straight to /dev/null

What isn’t there anymore:

• SpamAssassin. No great loss for me, as the only thing it was doing was marking emails as spam. My main filter has always been the blackhole.
• DNS Blacklists. Also no great loss, for the same reason as above. Further, I’ve heard it’s pretty easy to get on one of them, but very hard to get off them. So, no problem.
• SSL/TLS — wasn’t in use, since SMTP is secured by the anti-relay setup, and POP3 isn’t even open to the Internets. If someone (like me) wants to get their mail remotely, they can tunnel through SSH. And I can, have done, and will continue to do so.
• SPF/DomainKeys/etc. Same argument as above: not in use.
• Antivirus. Never received a virus in email. Don’t have any clueless users. So, no need.
• POP3 “forwards”. This might be a problem, as I did have a couple of email accounts I was fetching mail from using POP3. OTOH, the single important emails getting delivered to that account can be redirected through GMail, whose forwarding works fine. Come to think of it, I can have GMail fetch the emails remotely, and get those spiffy spam filters in on it, too! Not bad.

So, in conclusion, there’s not much I’m missing, and in exchange, I now have a much freer computer that I can power down at night and install Ubuntu on (when I can find some space for a complete backup). Very very good trade.

Seriously, that’s all it takes.

No more putting things off because they’re “going to take too long”. Or because they’re unfamiliar. If something is going to be a net benefit to you, go for it. Right now.

I’m taking my own advice right now and setting up my mother’s computer, the first step in overhauling all the computers in the house. It’ll be a pain figuring out where to back stuff up temporarily (I’m switching most computers from Windows to Linux, so that will involve some hard-drives getting reformatted from NTFS to Ext3), but I’m going to do it. Starting now.

As a consequence, the mail server will be down starting now. I’ll update the post when everything’s back up and running. Excuse me, I’m about to Get Stuff Done™.

UPDATE: Partly done — I’ve decided to do some computer surgery and swapped cases with one of mine. Mail server is up and running again. More downtime tomorrow, around the same time.

Last week, my father, Cristea Sandulescu, finally gave up his struggle on this earth. After more than 23 years battling Ankylosing Spondylitis, and seven months battling cancer (of the lungs and brain), further complicated by almost complete blindness (due to the cancer), Dad decided the time had come to leave. He will be missed by both me and my mother, who loved him very much and were with him throughout most of this struggle.

My biggest problem in all this has been to explain how I felt. I was aggrieved, yes, but not so very severely. I didn’t regret his death — I was happy he didn’t have to fight anymore, happy he didn’t have to live with the pain and suffering inflicted on him by all these things. I was (and am) also happy to have had a chance to know him, and talk to him on equal terms, and happy that we had nothing left unsaid between us.

But putting all this into words somehow doesn’t seem to explain it properly, and I worried that perhaps I seemed cold-hearted, or maybe in denial of the events happening around me. Which is where the amazing Randy Cassingham of This is True came in.

In an email conversation on the topic, he said the following (quoted with his permission):

Death is not only a true part of life (a fact many westerners try to ignore), but many times it’s a welcome end. When someone is suffering, it’s more obvious, but sometimes one is getting no more out of life and is ready to move on. My father was one of those; he was simply done, and I simply cannot feel grief over the extremely successful life he led — and was done with. He died in December — the day after he turned 89.

Randy is a brilliant writer and entrepreneur, as well as an extremely intelligent man — and his understanding, along with all the support I received from my (surprisingly many!) friends, helped me through these difficult times.

So, to all of you who helped, whether by a kind word, a hearty handshake, or even just by listening: thank you all.

This XKCD forum thread is very interesting, and worth the read-through.

Note: I’ve never been diagnosed with depression or any other mental disorder, but nor have I given anyone the chance to do so. I don’t honestly want to know for certain, either. Also, I don’t really trust the Romanian medical system, at least in psych- fields. I have an irrational fear of most medications, and don’t trust Romanian psychs to do anything other than to recommend exactly that.

ETA: Yes, I am very much aware I might be hypochondriac, and that it’s possible nothing’s wrong with me, etc., etc.. I’d prefer an informed medical opinion, but I don’t trust the people who could offer one.

I’ve been reading The Free Software Definition as published by the Free Software Foundation, and considering how I could use that with regards to my projects.

Well, I haven’t read about copyleft yet, but considering that’s mostly a GNU thing, and I’m not GNU, I’d rather make my own license. However, I do like their wording and enumeration of the four basic freedoms. Therefore, my first draft Narc License v. 0.5 looks like this:

[Program Name] is Free Software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html. Therefore, you are hereby accorded the following freedoms:

• You have the freedom to run the program anytime, on any platform, for any purpose.
• You have the freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. For this purpose, the source code is made available at [source code URL] in packages whose names end with “-source”.
• You have the freedom to redistribute copies at any time, for any cost, and for any purpose.
• You have the freedom to modify the program in any way, and release your modifications to the public at any time, for any cost, and for any purpose. You are explicitly NOT required to release modifications under this exact license, or any other. You are explicitly NOT required to notify anyone of your modifications, the release thereof, or of their intended purpose.

In accordance with these terms, please note that:

• I, as the programmer, am not under any obligation, legal or otherwise, to support, assist, or otherwise help with the program.
• I make no promises that the program will function in any sense of the word. While I make a good faith effort to ensure that it will not break, the fact remains that I am only human. I am not to be held liable for any foreseen or unforeseen consequences or side-effects of breakage of the program.
• I make no promises that the program will perform a useful task, or that it is fit for any particular purpose. As stated above, I have made a good faith effort to ensure the software is useful. However, I am not liable for any lack of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program is with you.

However, please note that I have an interest in making the software function and be useful, therefore you are encouraged to contact me at [email address] to notify me of any failings in the program, or to request assistance from me, or simply to state that the program is useful to you.

In short: in return for the freedom to do anything with the software, you are assuming the responsibility that I may not respond or assist with any inquiries regarding it. I will try to do so, but I make no guarantees.

Please be aware that the legal status of software licenses is currently unknown (as of 2008-04-07), and this license may not be legally binding in your legal jurisdiction.

Reviewing courts are hereby asked to apply local law that most closely approximates an absolute waiver of all civil liability in connection with the program, unless it can be proved that an additional statement was made, in writing and signed by me, the programmer, whereby liability is being assumed.

Not having researched the field very deeply, I can’t say if this is similar, in letter or in spirit, with any other software license currently in existence. I also can’t honestly say that I care either way.

You are welcome (nay, encouraged) to comment on any part of the license. I haven’t used it for anything yet, but I intend to release at least TNChat under this license.

ETA: Having read more, it occurs to me that the FSF is mostly concerned with keeping their work free, whereas all I care about is that the version I’m releasing be free. More accurately, they’re worried about “proprietary developers” using their (zomg) free software to make proprietary software (OHNOES!). Me, I don’t care if they do that. I don’t even ask them to tell me about it. I guess if I cared about it, I’d use GPL.

Well, there’s nothing stopping me from switching to GPL later.

ETA2: FSF to the rescue again: this license here is for Non-copylefted free software. Just a step above public domain, in that it doesn’t mean I can’t re-release under different terms later. According to the same page, public domain specifically means “not copyrighted”, and that’s not exactly what I want.

And since I’m stuck on the GNU website, one more piece of reading: Why Software Should Not Have Owners.

ETA3: Having browsed many other sources (no links, sorry; there’s too many of them), I’ve come to several conclusions:

• firstly, it’s a bad idea to lose GPL-compatibility;
• explicitly allowing derivative (or creative derivative) works to be relicensed under any terms is a bad idea;
• GPL is not the only GPL-compatible license out there; GNU APL is an interesting idea;
• shorter doesn’t necessarily have any influence on better, and I like short;
• writing a new license is bad because it’s hard to get right, and fragments the community;
• the Eiffel Forum License, v2 looks good. As far as I can tell, it makes all the points I wanted to make in the above, and does so in a much shorter and cleaner format;

I guess I’ll be joining Sean B. Palmer in using EFL (his reasoning is offered here and resonates very well with me).

So lately I’ve been working with XUL. Specifically, I’ve been trying to recreate the (very old) Flash client for TNChat made by a friend (sorry, no link; I can’t be arsed to locate one).

As a result, ladies and gentlement, I present to you: Codem TNChat v. 0.3 (zip, 6.31 MB) (incl. XULRunner).

For those of you with some experience with XULRunner, you may wish to download the source code (zip, 146 kB) instead.

Update: Just fixed a bug that was preventing URLs from turning into links — download TNChat v. 0.3.1 (zip, 6.31 MB) or TNChat 0.3.1 source (zip, 146 kB) instead of the above.

Please note the following:

• You’re looking at an Alpha version. I couldn’t crash it easily, but I haven’t honestly tried very hard. That means it may or may not work for you. If it doesn’t, send me an email and I’ll try to help you get it working.
• What you see in this version may not necessarily still exist in the next. Alpha versions are not feature-complete, nor stable. In other words, if you get used to this version, I can’t guarantee the next one will look exactly the same.
• XULRunner can be a bit of a bitch sometimes, either refusing to run, or taking an inordinate amount of time to start up. If you think this has happened, try the following:
  1. Go to Start -> Run…;
  2. Type in “taskkill /f /im:xulrunner.exe” (without the quotes)
  3. Click “OK” or hit the Enter key
  4. Wait a second or two and then try running TNChat again.
• The server for this client is running on my computer. As such, it’s my bandwidth, and my Internet connection. At this time, there is no way to kick or ban users. Please don’t make me build that in sooner than I expected.
• For the same reason as above, a warning: if my Internet connection dies, so will the server. I’m sorry for that, but I can’t control my ISP (if I could, I’d have a better pipe!).
• Finally, if the interface doesn’t seem very straightforward to you, email me or ask in the comments about it. I promise to update this post with any notes resulting from such questions.

Finally, the server is not yet available to the general public, though you may, of course, ask politely for a copy.

Oh, and I know the /buzz sound is annoying. I’ll replace it in some future version.

Another Update: There is now a protocol documentation available, for those curious.

I recently had someone tell me: “Not many people care if others are depending on what they say. I admire that you do.”

For some reason, that made me think. It wasn’t clear to me why, at first. I just thought it was odd.

And then it hit me: I didn’t think it was something I should be admired for. Why? Because caring if others are depending on me isn’t about integrity (though that is the end result, it’s only a bonus), it’s about responsibility.

The way I see it, I’m responsible for everything I say. If someone asks me what the best way to fix their computer is, and I give them bad advice that trashes it, they’re going to come to me and be pissed off that I trashed their computer. And they’d be right.

So the statements I make are carefully researched to be truthful, or close enough that nobody’s going to be coming to punch me in the face for trashing their computer. This extends to non-professional statements I make because it’s a habit I’ve taught myself, and so the result is integrity — I’m reliable — but it’s not because I’m actively trying to be reliable, it’s because I just don’t want to be punched in the face.

I miss being asked how to do something. Even if I didn’t know the answer, the fact of being asked made me feel like I was a point of contact, a reference.

More than that, when I didn’t know the answer, I did have some ideas of where the answer might be. A bunch of times I’ve searched for something and found it in 30 seconds because I knew where to search.

I miss being a reference. I miss being important. And very directly useful.

So go ahead, ask me something. I’ll do my best to help.

I get really irritated by people who write every paragraph as one single very very long sentence that looks like they’re on crack and really can’t stop typing because if they did they would get taken away by the IRS man and then be forced to stare at a wall for 15 hours a day and the wall would stare back ’cause there’s mini-micro-cameras in the walls that feed to a huge wall-sized TV that everybody in the local town square looks at. *takes a deep breath*

For the girls among them, I finally have something to say: “You can’t be female, you have no periods!” Evidently, this can work similarly on a male (“You must be a guy [...]“).

I’m very amused by what that says about me… does it make me seem female?

On a more serious side-note, what irritates me about people who spell and punctuate badly is that I tend to be chameleonic, in that I pick up other people’s accents and such, and I’m terribly afraid of ending up with their bad spelling. And grammar. And punctuation. Which is why correcting them is therapeutic for me. So, um… anyone need a copy editor?

As expected, it was fun — I think I got a new friend out of this deal. Never hurts to have more friends.

I may or may not edit later with a more detailed description. I didn’t have to sign an NDA, so it wasn’t anything _really_ important. Which is good. I hope I helped. I certainly tried to. Think I managed to be the voice of reason and logic there a couple of times. Maybe.

Leo Notenboom asks: “Where are the ethics?” in a post dated Feb. 14th, 2006. Almost two years later, I’ve stumbled across it, and I have to say I completely agree. The comments are worth a read, too, if you’ve got the time.

I estimate that somewhere between a quarter and a half of all questions asked [of me via email] are attempts to deceive, steal, hack or hide from the repercussions of questionable activity.

Not a day goes by that I don’t get a ton of “please recover my password” requests. Some may be legit I suppose, but many are blatant or poorly-disguised attempts to get me to supply a password into someone else’s account.

Okay, so I’ll admit he’s particularly visible as a tech/security writer, so his audience is self-selecting in that regard (Google can be pretty annoying sometimes; search for “crack hotmail password” and see if the first 10 results aren’t all security sites explaining how annoying and/or illegal that is), but this still seems to match the general “feel” of what non-tech interest in computers is about. At least a quarter of these people really are interested in doing nefarious things!

I think I know why, though. The computer world, to them, isn’t real. It’s all just a video game, on a perhaps subconscious level. They aren’t hurting real people. At least, that’s what most of the wannabe-hackers are probably thinking.

And then there’s the weirdos, the people who think their boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse’s business is *always* their business and “why would they not tell me the password unless they’re hiding something?” — to which I’d say, if you can’t trust them, don’t bother to stay with them anymore. A relationship is built on trust. That is its foundation. If you’ve lost it, you will break up/divorce within the year, so just get a head start and admit they’re not for you.

Sorry, didn’t mean to turn this into a lecture. My actual point in posting this was to show you a man who, at 50 years old (well, 48 at the time of making that podcast), still cares. I hope I still care when I’m 50; I hope I don’t turn into a cynical bastard like this world seems to want me to. ‘Cause I’ll say one thing: the temptation is *definitely* there.