Set up a public write-access git repository

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If you are in a trusted environment, or you already have an alternative access/authorization mechanism in place, using SSH keys for git is sometimes an annoyance. Turns out you can easily get rid of that, although you should only do that if you are 100% sure what you are doing.

WARNING The following will make your git repository public and anybody will be able to write to it

$ touch .git/git-daemon-export-ok
$ git config daemon.receivepack true

If you receive the following error:

$ git push origin master
Counting objects: 5, done.
Compressing objects: 100% (2/2), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 323 bytes, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
error: unpack failed: unpacker exited with error code
To git://server/git/test.git
! [remote rejected] master -> master (n/a (unpacker error))
error: failed to push some refs to ‘git://server/git/test.git’

Make sure your repository is owned by the user running git-daemon on the server.

In response to “What Sun Should Do”: make selling Sun easy

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This is a response to What Sun Should Do by Tim Bray

What Sun should do is making sell Sun products easy. Maybe in the US it’s easy to buy Sun through the reseller/VAR channel but it’s not in other countries.

For instance, in Spain none of the major wholesalers (Ingram Micro, Techdata and Esprinet) sell Sun products (they are not even in their product catalog!)

When we the VARs want to sell a Sun product to a client, we have to go through very particular wholesalers (it used to be General Electric Access Distribution, now it’s AVNet), with a very very poor service: you need to phone them and ask for a quote, and they may take as long as ONE SOLID MONTH to answer you. This is unacceptable and it’s the reason I have not sold any Sun product in the last 5 years, even though many times they were the best option: they took too long to answer and many times they configuration I was quoted was not the one I asked for. In addition to that, when GEAD was merged into AVNet, we were not contacted at all.

Sorry but with those extremely poor sales tactics, I’m not surprised Sun is doing so bad.

Of course buying directly from Sun works but that’s a very small market here in Spain: 90% of our business are SMBs and

  1. They don’t have qualify for a Sun Sales person, and/or
  2. They won’t phone Sun because they don’t want to deal with the intrincacies of IT: they rely on VARs and IT resellers

So Sun, here is my advice: help us the VARs and resellers sell your stuff and your sales will soar. Start an aggressive (and I mean REALLY aggresive) campaign among wholesalers, VARs and resellers, and clients will start buying Sun hardware, software and support contracts. Help us help you. We really want.

In addition to that, if you supported KDE4 as the default desktop instead of CDE or Gnome, I’m sure you’d sell more workstations among design and graphics departments: a designer who sees a KDE 4.2 desktop with all fancy effects and graphics, is a designer who truly believes that workstation is capable of doing Maya.

Correo perdido/Lost e-mail

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(English version at the end)

A lo largo de los últimos años he tenido alojado este dominio en un proveedor americano que funcionaba relativamente bien. Aunque algunos correos llegaban con retraso y tenía la sospecha de que algún correo se perdía, por falta de tiempo no había cambiado a otro proveedor. La semana pasada cambié a Google Apps for your Domain. Así, a bote pronto, veo que he perdido centenares (posiblemente miles) de correos en los últimos años. Si me has escrito y no te he contestado, no es porque sea un maleducado: simplemente es que tu e-mail no me llegó. Si me escribes de nuevo, prometo contestar.

The last few years I have hosted this domain with a ISP form the USA which worked acceptably. Although some e-mails arrived with some delay and I was suspicious some mails were getting lost, I was too short on time to find and move to another ISP (hopefully, one which would not have those problems). Last week I moved to Google Apps for your Domain. Now it’s confirmed: I have been losing hundreds (maybe thousands) for mails in the last few years. If you wrote me and I did not answer, it’s not that I’m ill-mannered: it’s just your e-mail never arrived. If you write me again, I’ll answer – I promise!.

US Presidential Election 2008 with D’Hondt Method

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On November 4th, the US Presidential Election was held. Once more, we were remembered of the President of the USA is not chosen directly but indirectly by the Electoral College.

I, like most Europeans, think the Electoral College method is extremely unfair. Take for example California: 55 Electoral Votes (that’s 11% of the total Electoral Votes), 17.3 million registered voters. One candidate might win the Election in that State by a single vote and still get the 55 Electoral Votes, which means 50% of the voters are totally ignored.

So, I took the data the USA Today newspaper published in their website and calculated how the Electoral Votes would be distributed if the 2008 Presidential Election would have used the D’Hondt Method. Here are my findings:

OBAMA MCCAIN
ALABAMA 6 3
ALASKA 1 2
ARIZONA 5 5
ARKANSAS 2 4
CALIFORNIA 34 21
COLORADO 5 4
CONNECTICUT 4 3
DELAWARE 2 1
WASHINGTON DC 3 0
FLORIDA 14 13
GEORGIA 7 8
HAWAII 3 1
IDAHO 1 3
ILLINOIS 13 8
INDIANA 6 5
IOWA 4 3
KANSAS 2 4
KENTUCKY 3 5
LOUSIANA 4 5
MAINE 2 2
MARYLAND 6 4
MASSACHUSETTS 8 4
MICHIGAN 10 7
MINNESOTA 6 4
MISSISSIPPI 3 3
MISSOURI 5 6
MONTANA 1 2
NEBRASKA 2 3
NEVADA 3 2
NEW HAMPSHIRE 2 2
NEW JERSEY 9 6
NEW MEXICO 3 2
NEW YORK 20 11
NORTH CAROLINA 8 7
NORTH DAKOTA 1 2
OHIO 10 10
OKLAHOMA 2 5
OREGON 4 3
PENNSYLVANIA 12 9
RHODE ISLAND 3 1
SOUTH CAROLINA 4 4
SOUTH DAKOTA 1 2
TENNESSEE 5 6
TEXAS 15 19
UTAH 2 3
VERMONT 2 1
VIRGINIA 7 6
WASHINGTON 7 4
WEST VIRGINIA 2 3
WISCONSIN 6 4
WYOMING 1 2
TOTAL D’HONDT 291 247
TOTAL ELECTORAL COLLEGE 364 162

Obama still wins, but instead of a 364 vs 162 advantage (202 votes), he only has a 291 vs 247 votes (44 votes). Given that 270 Electoral Votes are needed to be President, the D’Hondt method would make a fundamental difference.

It is interesting to note that even thought the other candidates (Nader, Barr, Baldwin, McKinney and Paul) do not win any Electoral Vote using the D’Hondt method with the current vote count, one can safely assume this is because voters knew very well with the Electoral College method Nader, Barr, etc had no real chance of winning. If the Election method would be changed to the D’Hondt method, or any other proportional method, Nader, Barr, etc would have the chance to win some votes, and more people would have voted for Nader, Barr, etc.