taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Software: sourcefrog: arch rocks: mirroring. This is incredibly cool:

Finally, GNU Arch lets you do this. Anyone can mirror a public archive. In fact, several sites such as sourcecontrol.net have set up to just mirror all the open source software they can find. Others mirror just intermittently, as a backup in case a primary archive is lost.

What’s more, because changesets are strongly GPG-signed, people using the archive can feel sure that they’re getting the changes as the original author wrote them, without any accidental or intentional modifications.

BTW, that ‘archive’ — in Arch-land, an archive is a source-code version control repository. In other words, if you want to track development work on a project, you take a private copy of the repository and sync up to every change as it is made remotely, in essence duplicating the central archive (although changes only go one way, obviously).

Then, if you have the privileges — you can merge any changes you make on that archive back up to the central one.

Very cool. I really need to take some time to get into Arch.

Tags: anyone, arch, archive, fact, gnu, mirroring, repository, software, source, sourcecontrol, sourcefrog

Games: The DEGENATRON Archive and Gaming Page — amazing. The Degenatron is the games console advertised, and occasionally featuring in radio phone-ins as to the violent behaviour of ‘kids these days’ and the like, on the in-game radio stations in GTA:VC. This faked ‘homage’ page is perfect; right down to the animated rainbow horizontal-rule divider.

Be sure to check out the playable emulators! Smash the green dots inside the mysterious red square!

Tags: archive, behaviour, degenatron, divider, games, gaming, gta, homage, page, radio, rainbow

E-Voting: Do not miss this fantastic round-up on the e-voting situation in the US. It contains these amazing quotes from the leaked Diebold memos:

”Over (the past three years) I have become increasingly concerned about the apparent lack of concern over the practice of writing contracts to provide products and services which do not exist and then attempting to build these items on an unreasonable timetable with no written plan, little to no time for testing, and minimal resources. It also seems to be an accepted practice to exaggerate our progress and functionality to our customers and ourselves then make excuses at delivery time when these products and services do not meet expectations.’ (Source: ‘Resignation’, announce.w3archive/200110/msg00001.html, dated 5 October 2001)

‘It does not matter whether we get anything certified or not, if we can’t even get the foundation of Global stable. This company is a mess! We should stop development on all new, and old products and concentrate on making them stable instead of showing vaporware. Selling a new account will only load more crap on an already over burdened entity. … You are taxing the development team beyond what they can handle. … Why is it so hard to get things right! I have never been at any other company that has been so miss managed (sic).’ (Source: ‘Fw: Battery Status & Charging—and too much bull!!’, announce.w3archive/200110/msg00002.html, dated 20 October 2001)’

I’m speechless. At least the NEDAP system planned for Ireland isn’t this bad — or is it? We can’t tell.

Support the calls for a Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail. There’s no other way to continue to have a trustworthy democratic system with widespread use of e-voting in place.

Tags: archive, company, development, e-voting, html, msg, october, practice, source, system, time

BBC to create the BBC Creative Archive. This is insanely cool. Danny O’Brien has written a fantastic overview, so read that for more details. But check out this quote:

I believe that we are about to move into a second phase of the digital revolution, a phase which will be more about public than private value; about free, not pay services; about inclusivity, not exclusion.

In particular, it will be about how public money can be combined with new digital technologies to transform everyone’s lives.

That’s BBC Director General Greg Dyke totally ‘getting it’. So cool.

Tags: archive, bbc, check, creative, overview, phase, public, quote, revolution, value