Continuing Attacks on freenode

Prior to the start of the recently concluded Ubuntu Developer Summit many saw freenode become subject to Denial of Service attacks. I first noticed such on May 11th. There recently has been a blog post made explaining the situation on freenode's administrative side.

As a bit of a contingency I am encouraging members of Ubuntu Ohio to update their Launchpad profiles by editing their listed Jabber (otherwise known as XMPP) IDs so that we have a bit of a roster there. We may end up considering a fall-back XMPP Conference Room if freenode hits heavier pockets of turbulence. For now the implementation of that conundrum is left as something for us as an interesting hypothetical to consider for the moment. Anybody who has ideas about how to implement such an XMPP Conference Room is encouraged to edit https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OhioTeam/XMPP on the Ubuntu Wiki Infrastructure to further collaboration.

Podcast Resumption

The two week suspension of Burning Circle should be wrapping up this week and a new episode is expected to be released on Monday, May 20th.

Ubuntu Developer Summit May 2013

The proceedings of Ubuntu Developer Summit May 2013 have concluded and I urge you to view the resulting YouTube videos created from the various Google Hangouts. One thing that was noted was that having this happen at the same time as Google I/O was a bad thing. The Xubuntu folks held some parallel sessions and published a blog post with summaries and an outline of their work plan for the Saucy Salamander cycle.

If this scheduling pattern continues the next summit should be held in August 2013. That will place it one month before Ohio Linux Fest 2013.

Ohio Linux Fest 2013

I have received a communication from Robert Ball concerning getting a table at Ohio Linux Fest 2013. I would like to deputize someone in our community located outside Ashtabula County to sign the contract for such and to handle that matter. Please contact me directly at skellat@ubuntu.com and we can discuss the matter.

An offer was received from Jorge Castro during a UDS session to bring in some people to assist with presenting an UbuCon. I still encourage members of our community to think of what they would like to present as we will get close to my issuing a call for topics. I do not currently have confirmation that space is available yet for us to do this but will be following up with Ohio Linux Fest organizers.

Ubuntu Ohio Projects For The Saucy Salamander Cycle

As a community we have three or four projects to consider during the Saucy Salamander cycle.

1. Consider the creation of a fall-back XMPP Conference Room
2. Prepare for Ohio Linux Fest 2013
3. The Ubuntu Advocacy Kit
4. Mentoring & Shepherding Community Members To Become Ubuntu Members

The first two items have been dealt with above. Jono Bacon and I engaged in a colloquy during an Ubuntu Developer Summit session about our community perhaps assisting in the development of the Ubuntu Advocacy Kit. Jono discussed further on his blog about the need for help with bringing the kit to version 1.0 and provides some basic instructions on how to get started. If there are community members who are interested in participating please follow the directions and dig in. If we need to spend time going over the mechanics of contributing using Bazaar, please let me know so that I can schedule an educational session.

The last project matter is one that I am taking on which is to help mentor and shepherd members of our community through the process of attaining Ubuntu Membership. Across the planet there are only 784 Ubuntu Members in the relevant Launchpad group at the time this is written. I want to help people grow in the community and become increasingly responsible for its growth and maintenance. This is an important step.

AND FINALLY...

NewsChannel 5 WEWS in Cleveland reports that the State of Ohio's average unemployment rate dropped by one-tenth of one percentage point to seven percent. The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services has a press release posted which provides a break-down of where employment shifted between March 2013 and April 2013. A table showing the changes by industrial group is also posted.

The first thing to remember in an incident like this is that we're not there. While the images feel so close and the emotions are quite real, time and space separate us. Local law enforcement and civil contingency personnel are responding to the situation as fast as they can. In any search for a perpetrator of a heinous act, apprehension is not normally immediate.

It is quite human to seek answers. In the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic event, answers might not necessarily be there to be found. In an increasingly connected world where communications move faster and faster, frustration happens easily when you see senselessness and try to attribute sense to it.

From outside an affected area, the first thing to do is to relieve stresses on communications lines. If you have loved ones, wait to call. Our Plain Ol' Telephone System end of contemporary telecommunications does have capacity limits. If the American Red Cross establishes Health & Welfare check-ins that then provides a rather alternative channel to get back in touch. Cellular telephone networks also have capacity limits and can collapse from overloading. If you get an all-circuits-busy signal, leave it be for a time.

It also has to be remembered outside an affected area that requests for help flow outwards rather than uncoordinated offers of aid flowing inward. The people on the ground closest to the incident know what is wrong and where help is needed most. Second-guessing them and playing arm-chair general from a distance causes harm rather than good. Local first responders are in charge until they are relieved or pass the responsibility on to higher command.

IT IS THEREFORE RECOMMENDED that members of the Ubuntu Ohio Local Community Team take the time to pursue the FEMA Emergency Management Institute's independent study course "A Citizen's Guide to Disaster Assistance" to gain an appreciation of how disaster assistance functions in the United States in general. Other courses are also available from the FEMA Emergency Management Institute to pursue if members are interested.

In the meantime, keep the folks in Boston in your thoughts and prayers. We continue to live in interesting times.

Good afternoon.

As of today the High Council of Ubuntu Ohio is taking a breather by ceasing to operate for the time being. The e-mail address for the High Council also no longer functions. It is time to give thanks to Cheri Francis, Michael Gilbert, Jon Buckley, Jacob Peddicord, and Paul Tagliamonte for their periods of service on that body over the past three years.

At this time I am the designated Point of Contact for our Local Community Team on Launchpad. The length of term for this is open-ended at this time. Ubuntu Ohio encompasses users of all flavors of the common core whether you favor Unity, KDE, Xfce, GNOME 3, or LXDE. I must reiterate that we have a big tent here and are not solely focused on the desktop environment named Unity but rather the unity that comes from the common core in software we all utilize.

Looking ahead, our near-term goal is to prepare for participation in Ohio Linux Fest 2013. In the long term we are going to need to strengthen the core of our community by mentoring members of our community so as to increase the number of Ubuntu Members that we have located here in the Buckeye State. Slowly but surely we will be looking forward to new horizons that will require new and interesting approaches.

Many adventures lay ahead. Let us move forward boldly as we near the end of the Raring Ringtail cycle and prepare for the Virtual Ubuntu Developer Summit in May.

Stephen Michael Kellat

The podcast known as The Burning Circle continues at this time. I've made updates to the relevant Launchpad pages to put the High Council into hibernation as I'm the sole member of it remaining. In due time it will return but we have some work ahead of us in the Buckeye State first.

While Ohio Linux Fest 2013 is five months away, we have some disadvantages. First off is that we do not have as much presence in the state capital as we once did. Our members are widely spread across Ohio and it will take some effort to get people to converge on Columbus. Second, we almost did not have a presence there in 2012. Extra effort will be needed to coordinate to ensure that we might be able to sponsor an UbuCon this year perhaps or at least get some speakers lined up. Third, their website was unreachable this weekend so I will need to invest some time to locate correct contacts. This all results in plenty of action items to cover the next five months.

New adventures await as 2013 continues ever onward...

The day was a big news day. After all, Pope Francis was elected. Various websites were dying under the load as people earnestly sought out information about the new leader of the largest group of Christians on this planet. I could blame that as to why I lost the feed.

The problem is that this happens even when there is not a major planet-wide news event like the election of a Pope happening. If you live outside urban areas like I do in North America, you find that Internet access is often less than optimal while there is little choice as to provider. The data at broadbandmap.gov is often not amusing if you live in what is derisively termed "fly-over America". The results from speedtest.net at home base only show a download speed of 1.57 Mb/s and 0.96 Mb/s up even though we pay for a little bit more than that. Ashtabula County also ranks near the bottom of Ohio counties in terms of speed available for consumer broadband.

Live streams over the Internet are problematic. In many respects, they are attempts at replicating paradigms that already exist in different forms. In doing such replication, though, you find that the Internet really is not as efficient as more traditional methods of broadcasting. The Internet was built for a world structured on store-and-forward communications instead of constant multimedia streams.

Outside relocating my domicile, I am stuck with what I have for Internet access. I remain often surprised I can keep ZNC up and running as much as I do. As for how I update packages let alone download them I move increasingly to the paradigm of downloading all packages for an operation first then undertaking the upgrade or the installation. This means using the "-d" flag when running "apt-get upgrade" increasingly and generating download scripts in Synaptic first instead of just executing installations and upgrades.

The Internet used to be described as the Information Superhighway. Where did those potholes in it come from and why do they seem to be prevalent in my area?

Potholes in the Information Superhighway by Stephen Michael Kellat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

Well, UDS-1303 is now over. It appears that some folks in the community have been overtaken by the number of changes that have been proposed recently. That much is understandable. During sessions I participated in during UDS-1303, I kinda was a broken record talking about the need for change management.

For many this has been a time to speak. Indeed, there was much discussion during the summit. There were also many announcements of community members departing.

It is unfortunate that community members are departing. I hope they find success in their new endeavors. With the state of the technology world as of late, departures need not necessarily be permanent as paths may well cross again in the future. With new synergies erupting in the most unexpected of places it is inevitable that we may perhaps meet again.

The bumper sticker sized key to UDS-1303 is that discussion happened in a format very different from an e-mail list. For the proposals that were initially made by e-mail, this pretty much had to happen as slinging decontextualized text back and forth in that communications paradigm can be limiting. After concerns, proposals, counter-proposals, technical nightmares, fears, anticipations, hopes, and potential excitements more were expressed I look forward to seeing a more fleshed out proposal for rolling releases.

The problem is that at the broadest level it is easy to talk about rolling releases. When you get down to the nuts and bolts of it is when it gets pretty complicated and can at times resemble a Gordian Knot. As evidenced at UDS-1303, there are many possible methodologies and risk is unavoidable.

As initially proposed, I did not favor the proposal due to uncertainties and a lack of nuts & bolts details. After the discussions that have ensued, I'm ready to wait for the full proposal to be released by Rick Spencer that is fleshed out so that I can consider this further. I heard many interesting potential approaches to the nuts & bolts of doing this during UDS-1303 and eagerly await what is settled on as the proposal.

To ease getting into this, I offer a suggestion that may help with implementation of any such proposal. Since I don't have posting permission to ubuntu-devel, a proper developer might pass this along for me. A recurring issue that popped up during UDS-1303 is that systems for automated testing, package management systems, and more will need to be built to accommodate a switch in paradigm. I am not sure we should do that while also working on a release. Dispensing with the 13.10 release and instead using that period to build the infrastructure necessary to make the switch successful may be worthwhile. From the discussions that arose it did seem like that was going to be a major undertaking. Having a firm foundation prior to a paradigm shift seems like a simple safety measure to me regardless of whatever may be decided.

Happy Feature Freeze! Life rolls ever onward...

Where is the Ubuntu realm going? If you have the answer to that, you are among a select few. For the various flavors such as Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and Lubuntu this is perhaps a systemic shock as the main flavor is now making fairly radical changes that may or may not fit with the goals of the flavor projects. The main line of Ubuntu is seeking convergence where it dominates the desktop, the tablet, and the phone. Rolling releases will presumably be needed to keep up with the fast-paced phone realm.

This is a bit of a change. Is the desktop where the future of computing is headed? Is the desktop going away in favor of pocket computers that somewhere inside still have a tiny amount of circuitry that results in them being called "phones"? That much is uncertain. The gamble being made by Canonical as it adds yet another mobile operating system to an already crowded space is that that is where things are headed. As noted by Anna Leach on The Register earlier in February, total planet-wide sales of cellular phones declined 1.7% last year. Half of all cellular phones on the planet sold in 2012 were made by one of the following three manufacturers/design bureaus: Apple, Samsung, Nokia.

Right now there is a bit of a rupture as to where Ubuntu and its flavors are progressing. That is unfortunate. There remains quite a bit of uncertainty in the market and no clear breakthrough leads yet that are truly destroying one segment of the market for another. The desktop is not dead and the cell phone seems mature/stagnant in terms of innovation at the moment.

Between the UDS changes and the rolling releases proposal, we are effectively rolling the dice. As a user of Xubuntu on a BeagleBoard-xM, I have to watch the development of the rolling release proposal very carefully to see if I am not left behind as Personal Package Archives (PPAs) do not build for ARM architecture routinely. My board is already considered unsupported but I would still like some flavor of Ubuntu, preferably Xubuntu, to still be able to boot on it. Indicators currently are not pointing towards that but towards a major drive now to get Ubuntu Phone ready and live as soon as possible.

Let us all hope that this roll of the dice is the right one.

Paradigm Shifting Without A Clutch by Stephen Michael Kellat is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at http://archive.org/details/NoClutch.

The Ohio Local Community Team met for a business meeting on the night of Wednesday, 23 January 2013. No action items were formally adopted at the meeting. The need to bolster the LoCo's online presence was discussed in-depth as well as how the weather currently is impeding the ability to meet together. For example, the community's podcasters in Ashtabula have been coping with multiple days of a "Lake Effect Snow Warning" that has dumped 10 inches of snow on them and has made travel treacherous. Efforts will continue to beef up the team's presence on Identica and Google Plus while research continues into finding an appropriate video-conferencing solution that is not Google-based that the team can use.

The log of the meeting can be found on the Ubuntu Wiki Infrastructure for viewing.

Greetings friends!

Our next business meeting is set for Wednesday, 23 January 2013, at 7:00 PM Eastern (Midnight UTC on Thursday). The agenda is open and the meeting will be led by Cheri Francis and Michael Gilbert of the High Council. A log of the meeting will be posted to the Ubuntu Wiki Infrastructure after the session.

Our inaugural educational meeting, entitled "The Joy of BeagleBoard", will take place on Monday, 28 January 2013, at 10:00 PM Eastern (3:00 AM UTC on Tuesday). A slide deck will be posted ahead of time and announced on the team mailing list as well as five minutes before the start of the session and at the start of the session. There will be no audio or video broadcast for the session and it is intended that the session be archived to the Ubuntu Wiki Infrastructure following the session.

See you there!

Stephen Michael Kellat

]]>