.@bhaven Thanks for the RT Funny, the wiki used in #GCpedia is actually the #freesoftware program #MediaWiki

When are YOU get your copy of this AWSOME FREEsoftware? Check it out at http://bit.ly/5NJCME

RT @flourishconf: ^jh Come to flourish on Friday at 9am at #UIC at 750 South Halsted Street.See http://bit.ly/d3aHC3 for more info. #opensource #freesoftware

^jh Come to flourish on Friday at 9am at #UIC at 750 South Halsted Street.See http://bit.ly/d3aHC3 for more info. #opensource #freesoftware

^jh Come to flourish on Friday at 9am at #UIC at 750 South Halsted Street.See http://bit.ly/d3aHC3 for more info. #opensource #freesoftware

So I’m getting married and when that happens people go to the internet and buy you things they think you need to live your life. As it ends up I got one of these:

As it ends up it’s a coffee thing, but it’s pretty much proprietary. Only certain brewers make “K-cups” and they’re a bit more expensive than normal coffee. The K cup thing is patented, so I am pretty sure a normal person can’t just make K cups without paying someone money.

Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew about this travesty. They’re fricking delicious by the way.

Tagged: coffee

@jonathasrr: Que mané freesoftware, o negócio é goodsoftware.

RT @jonathasrr: #ArgoUML FTW! #freesoftware

#ArgoUML FTW! #freesoftware

This was real last Monday!

Last week I went on a vacation to Iceland. Fantastic country full of fantastic and beautiful people!

In advance I bloged on it and sent a couple of emails to Local Linux User Groups and so I managed to get to three meetings with some enthusiasts. The conclusion is basically this post.

The team has officially been initiated today. I am SO looking forward to them becoming an official team!

Here is a link to the email announcing the creation of the team if you want to read more.

On Monday some of the Ubuntu UK Podcast team got together once more to record an episode. Sadly Laura and Ciemon couldn’t be there, but were represented by a fluffy Tux and Firefox. We asked Ivanka Majic (Canonical Design Team Lead) to come on the show and discuss all matters ‘Design’ with us and she very kindly took time out of her evening to talk to us at length about what she does at Canonical and the changes we are seeing.

We had a set of questions we wanted to ask her, about the new buttons, the proposed design changes in Ubuntu 10.04 more generally what she did for Canonical. We also put out the call to our listeners via Identica and Twitter to get more questions, and we had plenty. With a full set of questions and a very open guest we ended up with a rather longer interview than we usually feature. We are concious that many of our listeners don’t like very lengthy podcasts, so we try to keep the duration at least under an hour. With this one we made an exception and went over 80 minutes, but I think it was wise to do that.

Ivanka talked at length about her background, the team she has at Canonical and the work they are doing. I don’t think any of us on the show realised how significant a workload the Canonical design team have, and how limited the resources are. Whilst many disagree with the approach, the colours, position or other design details, there are of course reasons for these decisions, and Ivanka did her best to detail the process by which those decisions came about. Ivanka was very open and honest in the interview with us, speaking frankly about where there could be improvements in the way the team operates.

For anyone interested in Ubuntu and more especially the thought processes behind some of the work you’re seeing emerging from the design team, I’d recommend having a listen to what Ivanka has to say. You can hear the full interview in “Behind The Screen” – Season 3 Episode 3 of the Ubuntu Podcast made by members of the UK LoCo team.

– MP3 (81MB download)

– OGG (40MB download)

Thanks again to Ivanka for taking the time to talk to us.

                          

RT @rejon I'm turning into WOLFGANG. I'm getting more extreme about FREESOFTWARE, FREEHARDWARE, by the second. #nanonote #qihardware

The human brain has to decode a lot of information and sometimes it just gets things wrong, especially when it comes to language. Songs are a big example, mishearing lyrics is a huge internet meme that’s worth exploring for a good laugh.

What I found amusing was what I keep on hearing in LeAnn Rimes’ “Right Kind of Wrong”:

I should try to run, but I just can’t seem to.
Every time I run, your the one I run to.
Can’t do without… what you do to me…
I don’t care if I’m into Debian!

Of course I think it’s suppose to be “I don’t care if I’m in too deep, yeah!” but the way it’s sung makes it sound like she’s into Debian and doesn’t care. Anything to get FOSS out there into the media I guess.

Alan Pope, Dave Walker, Tony Whitmore and fluffy Tux & Firefox present episode three of season three of the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo Team.

Subscribe:-

Hi-Fi Lo-Fi Ogg Mp3

In this week’s show:-

• What we’ve been doing this week including piloting a canal boat whilst under the influence of wifi, configuring an Ortek remote control and playing with MythTV.
• We review and discuss the Cool-er ebook reader.
• We interview Ivanka Majic about her role as Design Team Lead, her team at Canonical, Z80 assembler, and something about buttons.
• In the News this week:-
  • Magnatune pays Rhythmbox (and Canonical)
  • Amazon pays Microsoft (for Linux [allegedly])
  • get_iplayer dropped by author
  • Novell to be asset-stripped
  • Streetview covering 95% of UK
• We announce some upcoming events:-
  • June 11th, 12th & 13th – South East Linux Fest
  • 1st – 2nd May, Liverpool, UK – OggCamp 10 sponsored by Linux Format (Media Partner), The Open Learning Centre, The Linux Emporium, Viglen, Bitfolk and OpsView,
  • July 19th – 24th – Europython, Birmingham, UK. europython.eu
• Command line love. In Ciemon’s absence Josh Holland contributed the following:-


Bash stores your most recent commands as a command history. Most people are aware of being able to press the up and down arrow keys and Ctrl-R to scan through this history, but there are a couple of other ways to use it too.

You can type !cp and bash will repeat the last command that started with cp. As a special case, you can use !! to repeat the last command and !-n to go back n lines. You can also use ^string1^string2^ to repeat the last command with string1 replaced by string2.

The Ecosphere Bit about Ubuntu has discussion of..

• Jane Silber discusses Ubuntu with The Register
• Dave details how to change button location in Lucid
• A detailed analysis of the new Lucid theme
• Webcam software for Linux
• Phoronix compares desktop footprints

And finally we cover your emails, tweets and dents and voicemail since our last show

Comments and suggestions are welcomed to: podcast@ubuntu-uk.org
Join us on IRC in #ubuntu-uk-podcast on Freenode
Leave a voicemail via phone on +44 (0) 203 298 1600, sip: podcast@sip.ubuntu-uk.org or skype: ubuntuukpodcast
Follow our twitter feed http://twitter.com/uupc
Follow us on Identi.ca http://identi.ca/uupc
Find our Facebook Fan Page
Discuss this episode in the Forums

Alan Pope, Dave Walker, Tony Whitmore and fluffy Tux Firefox present episode three of season three of the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK LoCo Team. Subscribe:- Hi-Fi Lo-Fi Ogg Mp3 In this week's show:- What we've been doing this week including piloting a canal boat whilst under the influence of wifi, configuring an Ortek remote control and playing with MythTV. We review and discuss the Cool-er ebook reader. We interview Ivanka Majic about her role as Design Team Lead, her team at Canonical, Z80 assembler, and something about buttons. In the News this week:- Magnatune pays Rhythmbox (and Canonical) Amazon pays Microsoft (for Linux [allegedly]) get_iplayer dropped by author Novell to be asset-stripped Streetview covering 95% of UK We announce some upcoming events:- June 11th, 12th 13th - South East Linux Fest 1st - 2nd May, Liverpool, UK - OggCamp 10 sponsored by Linux Format (Media Partner), The Open Learning Centre, The Linux Emporium, Viglen, Bitfolk and OpsView, July 19th - 24th - Europython, Birmingham, UK. europython.eu Command line love. In Ciemon's absence Josh Holland contributed the following:- Bash stores your most recent commands as a command history. Most people are aware of being able to press the up and down arrow keys and Ctrl-R to scan through this history, but there are a couple of other ways to use it too. You can type !cp and bash will repeat the last command that started with cp. As a special case, you can use !! to repeat the last command and !-n to go back n lines. You can also use ^string1^string2^ to repeat the last command with string1 replaced by string2. The Ecosphere Bit about Ubuntu has discussion of.. Jane Silber discusses Ubuntu with The Register Dave details how to change button location in Lucid A detailed analysis of the new Lucid theme Webcam software for Linux Phoronix compares desktop footprints And finally we cover your emails, tweets and dents and voicemail since our last show Comments and suggestions are welcomed to: podcast@ubuntu-uk.org Join us on IRC in #ubuntu-uk-podcast on Freenode Leave a voicemail via phone on +44 (0) 203 298 1600, sip: podcast@sip.ubuntu-uk.org or skype: ubuntuukpodcast Follow our twitter feed http://twitter.com/uupc Follow us on Identi.ca http://identi.ca/uupc Find our Facebook Fan Page Discuss this episode in the Forums

RT @rejon I'm turning into WOLFGANG. I'm getting more extreme about FREESOFTWARE, FREEHARDWARE, by the second. #nanonote #qihardware

At Logic class last week we saw how to solve a Sudoku using SAT and for fun I decided to actually try this out using Python. It turned out to be pretty trivial to implement and I thought I’d share the experience.

First of all let’s see how the Sudoku problem was described at class: we have a table with 9 rows and 9 columns;

• 1. Each field [i, j] (where i=1..9 and j=1..9) has at least one value (between 1 and 9).
• 2. Each field [i, j] (where i=1..9 and j=1..9) doesn’t have more than one value.
• 3. There isn’t any repeated value in any row, column or 3×3 group.
• 4. Some of the fields have a predefined value.

Now to implement this in code, first of all I needed a Python module implementing SAT solving. A quick search in Debian’s repositories gave me python-logilab-constraint, which I’ve found to be quite nice to use, even though it could definitely take some speed improvements.

Conditions 1 and 2 aren’t a problem at all, as logilab.constraint can be used quite naturally [0]. We just define a variable for each field (eg., x11 to x99, where the first number is the row and the second number is the column) and the domain in which they operate (integer value from 1 to 9):

values = range(1, 10) # [1..9] variables = ["x%d%d" % (i, j) for j in values for i in values] domains = {} for variable in variables: domains[variable] = fd.FiniteDomain(values)

The 4th rule is also straightforward, we just need to hardcode the values. If we have a bidimensional list sudoku containing the initial numbers and None in all empty fields, we add each of them as a constraint:

constraints = [] for i, row in enumerate(sudoku): for j, field in enumerate(row): if field is None: continue variable = "x%d%d" % (i+1, j+1) constraints.append(fd.make_expression((variable,), "%s == %d" % (variable, field)))

Now only rule 3 remains; here we basically have to set up three more groups of constraints: one for rows, one for columns and one for the 3×3 groups. My initial implementation checked each row/column/group at once; for example, for the first row «x11 != x12 != x13 != … != x19», for the first column «x11 != x21 != … != x91», etc. However, this proved to be extremely slow, and after checking the «Performance considerations» section of Logilab Constraint’s documentation I split up the row and column conditions [1] to lots of smaller conditions, as in: «x11 != x12», «x11 != x13», «x11 != x14», etc. I also moved the constraints for the initial numbers to the top (I had them at the end of the constraints list before), as they are the simplest ones. With those changes resolution time changed from several minutes to some tenths of a second.

And this is it. After all constraints have been added, we just need to run the solver:

repository = Repository(variables, domains, constraints) solutions = Solver().solve(repository)

The complete code is available via Bazaar at lp:~rainct/+junk/sudoku-sat. Being completely new to the logilab.constraints module, or implementing any such stuff at all, it took me around half an hour to write this, which shows how SAT makes such sort of problems really straightforward.

[0] Using logilab.constraint it’s possible to assign arbitrary Python data to variables (here we just give each an integer, but variables could also take tuples or whatever else). When this problem was presented at class using pure propositional logic it was a bit more cumbersome, as we couldn’t just say “there’s a variable x11 with domain [1..9]“. For instance, rule 1 was «(p111 | p112 | p113 | … | p119) and (p121 | … | p129) …», where “p111″ would be True if field [1,1] is supposed to contain a one, “p112″ is True if it’s supposed to contain a two, etc.
[1] I didn’t bother also splitting up he 3×3 group constraints since the other two changes already gave me enough of a speedup; changing that may squeeze a few msecs more out of it.
P.S.: If you’d like a more formal explanation of this, a search on Google found this paper: A SAT-based Sudoku Solver.

Related posts:

1. You no longer have an excuse not to look at Python Snippets!

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© Siegfried-Angel Gevatter Pujals, 2010. | Permalink | License | Post tags: logics, python

guaka: http://chdk.wikia.com/ #awesome #freesoftware for my #canon #ixus http://casarobino.org/node/10395

http://chdk.wikia.com/ #awesome #freesoftware for my #canon #ixus

It is my pleasure to announce a new project to better the Ubuntu.com website experience, specifically for users who prefer a language other than English. The new project, called Website Localization will put a short (4-5 word) message on any www.Ubuntu.com web page directing users to more resources in their preferred language.

This project has two main parts to it. The first part of the Website Localization project is the technical aspect of the project. It is the goal of the project to create a script that will pull out of a users web browser their preferred language. After obtaining this information, the script will cross reference this language against a list of languages that have approved resources offered, and then display a short link to their languages landing page.

The second part of this project is creating landing pages for as many resources as possible. This part of the project will be done by LoCos and the i18n team. The landing pages will be on the wiki, and will be ever changing to direct users to the best information that we can give them.

Currently, the goal is to have the project completed and implemented by the end of May. I would also like to have a working demo of the project by April 19th so that we have plenty of time to fix any problems that arise prior to the final implementation of this project.

I can’t do all of this myself, so I am going to need help from the Ubuntu community. At this point, I need some assistance with the technical side of the project. I need a few people to create the script that will detect the users preferred language, and then show them a link to the landing page in their language. If you have the skills needed to help out with this Website Localization project, please send me an email with your name, launchpad account, a little bit of information about the experience you have and your general ability (time zone, and anything else that may help me out). My goal is to get a group of a few people to work on the technical aspect of this project and have a meeting in the next few weeks to discuss the project in a little more detail, and determine the best way to make this happen.

The first one was great, so we’re bringing it back tomorrow. This time we’ve got Pedro helping us out, and he’s got a nice target list of bugs we’re going to concentrate on. Basically grab a bug, try to resolve it or replicate it, mark it accordingly, and move on. Refer to the triage guide for more info, or feel free to ask on #ubuntu-bugs on freenode.

We could also use people banging on gwibber in general. Feel free to fire up testdrive and bang on it, file bugs, break stuff, post your emo mood on facebook, flame someone on Twitter, or whatever.

Here’s some inspiration from Pantera.