So I made a little post on the Ataraxis forums asking for the Subversion tools to be made available on Luna.

After a few “hell yeahs” from the usual suspects, Sysadmin markg pointed out that..

All system requests must be submitted in triplicate (complete with the new cover sheet) to the fridge in 3105. It should of course be stapled to a six-pack. The better the beer the faster the response…

Twenty-four hours after beer¹, subversion was installed and being tested. Less than forty-eight hours after beer, the official documentation for Requesting a Subversion Repository at the University of Windsor was published.

After exchanging a few emails with Mark, I have a repos tree abusing the Apache SVNParentPath directive, effectively letting me create as many subversion repositories as I want, with no need to further bother our gracious sysadmins. Looks a little something like

<Location /~castonga/svn>
DAV svn
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Subversion repository"
AuthUserFile /global/stu1/castonga/svn-auth-file
###
SVNParentPath /global/stu1/castonga/repos
<LimitExcept GET PROPFIND OPTIONS REPORT>
Require valid-user
</LimitExcept>
</Location>

Create a repos tree with group ownership permitting writes by the Apache process, and using SGID to ensure repositories created within have are likewise writable.

mkdir /global/stu1/castonga/repos
chown -R castonga:www /global/stu1/castonga/repos
chmod u+rwx g+rwxs /global/stu1/castonga/repos

The svnadmin create repo-name command seems to create repositories using a template rather than mkdir calls, so they don’t inherit the group sgid sticky bit & permissions. Instead of changing them all by hand every time I want to create a new repository, or bothering an admin to chown -R the mess, I created a tarball of the repo with proper permissions.

Ah, it’s good to be a geek.

1. I guess our sysadmins like Heineken. ↩

Lo, here be classes.

There’s a Network Architecture class, and one dedicated to Network Security. A lecture on Database Management (and presumably design), and presenting them through the over-hyped World Wide Web Information Systems Development, all done with the abomination that is java server pages and servlets.

I will be working evenings throughout the week and weekends, trying to finance my educational habit. My full schedule for the near future is available.

Specifically, the bill appears to be aimed at the “problem” of various “bad people” preying on innocent school kids who publish information on the internet. So, the obvious solution is to prevent school kids from publishing such information, and what better way than by just banning all places information can be stored?

For starters, it’s got too general a definition of sites that should be banned, says Markham Erickson, general council of the Net Coalition, a Washington lobby representing Internet companies. The Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) defines the restricted areas as those that allow “users to create Web pages or profiles that provide information about themselves and are available to other users” and offer “a mechanism of communication with other users, such as a forum, chat room, e-mail, or instant messenger.” – businessweek

Read that again. I’m at a loss to think of any information on the internet that is not loosely classified as web pages, forum, chat, email, or IM. They appear to have their bases covered.

Seriously folks. While they mention MySpace specifically, people can host “user created webpages” just about anywhere. That comprises the whole web! Even if they leave kids with ftp access to a web-page hosting site, or a personal blog, and just talk about sites that provide easy editing of content like various user-oriented websites.

After you outlaw all personal publishing, only outlaws will publish. And then what’s left? Certainly nothing that kids can call their own.

This sounds disturbingly similar to a media cartel control scheme. I wonder if the original proposal or financial backing for Michael Fitzpatrick came from a large corporation or organization intent on “protecting” the populous from scary alternate information.

At this point, the “educational institution” might as well just pull the plug on the network. They’re obviously not going to be making much use of it.

As a Canadian, I have no sway over Fitzpatrick’s direction. Anyone actually in the US of A who cares about the freedoms of our youth, I beg you to do something about this.

60-256: A- (System Programming, C)
60:265: C+ (Systems Architecture 1: Digital Design)
60-254: A- (Data Structures and Algorithms)
60-120: C (Algebra)

Project is done, exam is done. Now we’re just waiting for the marks. I must say, I dislike being forced, for the sake of examination, to think up fanciful error cases just to demonstrate try-catch.

I was rather concerned about about missing elements of answering on question 2a. The number of marks (10), and the number of bugs (2) that I squished did not line up much. Especially since one of those was a missing semicolon, and I doubted that 5% of the exam was wrapped up in a single character of punctuation. After some 30 minutes of head-scratching and doodling, I noticed that the var.length reference was missing its (parenthesis). With a quick controlled curve of the pen, the disgrace came complete.

Damn, it’s good to be out of there. I need to get back into coding that requires REST applications, embedded-assembly-style DIY memory management, and native ~regexs.

Things I have learned in this class: Java sucks hardcore. It is completely useless for any actual task, regardless of complexity. Exception error handling and automatic garbage collection are for wusses.

So, in summary, I got an 88% on my midterm. Lesson learned? Argue everything.

After handing in the paper, I went home to sleep. I did not, as I should have, visit either the finantial aid office at the U, or the clinic for arm-examination.

On that last point, it should be noted that there is a dull pain in my right shoulder, which began in my lower right hand, and slowly worked its way, ever so painfully, up the arm in question. At present, my hand barely hurts at all, though that may be only relative to the ache in the shoulder. I’ll get to a clinic eventually, I promise.