breviary stuff

Rogues and Vagabonds: The 24 orders

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:35:39 +0000

The twenty-four orders of rogues and vagabonds, as detailed in Thomas Harman's pamphlet, Caueat for Commen Cursetors, London 1566. (quoted from Frank Aydelotte, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds, 1913)

Rufflers sturdy vagbonds who begged from the strong and robbed the weak Upright Men vagabonds who were strong enough to be chiefs or magistrates among their fellows Hookers or Anglers thieves who stole clothing and other light articles by pulling them through an open window with a hooked stick Rogues ordinary vagabonds, weaker than the Upright Men Wild Rogues rogues born on the road, of vagabond parents Priggers of Prancers horse thieves Palliards beggars who excited compassion by means of artificial sores made by binding some corrosive to the flesh Fraters sham proctors, who pretended to be begging for hospitals and lazar houses Abraham Men pretended mad men Whip-jacks vagabonds who pretended to be ship-wrecked sailors Counterfeit Cranks beggars pretending the falling sickness Dommerers sham deaf mutes Tinkers and Pedlars who ordinarily used their trades as a cloak for thieving Jarckmen makers of false licences Patricoes hedge-priests Demanders for Glimmer men or women begging for pretended losses by fire Bawdy Baskets female pedlars Autem Morts women who had been married in church Walking Morts unmarried whores Doxies female companions of common rogues Dells young girls not yet broken in by the Upright Men Kynchin Morts female children Kynchin Coes male children
How did Harman and his associates deal with such rogues? Torture and capital punishment were not beneath them, as is shown in the following quote on apprehending a dommerer:
Hauing on a time occasion to ride to Dartforde, to speak with a priest there, who maketh all kinds of conserues very well, and vseth stilling of waters ; And repayringe to his house, I found a Dommerar at his doore, and the priest him selfe perusinge his lycence, vnder the seales and hands of certayne worshypfull men, had thought the same to be good and effectuall. I taking the same writing, and reading it ouer, and noting the seales, found one of the seales like vnto a seale that I had aboute me, which seale I bought besides Charing crosse, that I was out of doubte it was none of those Gentlemens seales that had subcribed. And hauing vnderstanding before of their peuish practices, made me to concaeue that all was forged and nought. I made the more hast home ; for well I wyst that he would and must of force passe through the parysh where I dwelt ; for there was no other waye for hymn. And comminge homewarde, I found them in the towne, accordinge to my expectation, where they were staid ; for there was a Pallyarde associate with the Dommerar and partaker of his gaynes, whyche Pallyarde I sawe not at Dartford. The stayers of them was a Gentlemen called Chayne, and a seruant of my Lord Kéepers, cald Wostestowe, which was the chiefe causer of the staying of them, being a Surgien, and cunning in his science, has séene the lyke practices, and, as he sayde, hadde caused one to speake afore that was dome. It was my chaunce to come at the begynning of the matter. "Syr," (quoth this Surgien) "I am bold here to vtter some part of my cunning. I trust" (quoth he) "you shall see a myracle wrought anon. For I once" (quoth he) "made a dumme man to speake." Quoth I, "you are wel met, and somwhat you haue preuented me ; for I had thought to haue done no lesse or they hadde passed this towne. For I well knowe their writing is fayned, and they depe dissemblers." The Surgien made hym gape, and we could sée but halfe a toung. I required the Surgien to put hys fynger in his mouth, and to pull out his toung, and so he dyd, not withstanding he held strongly a prety whyle ; at the length he pluckt out the same, to the great admiration of many that stode by. Yet when we sawe his tounge, hée would neither speake nor yet could heare. Quoth I to the Surgien, "knit the two of his fyngers to gether, and thrust a stycke betwene them, and rubbe the same vp and downe a lytle whyle, and for my lyfe hée speaketh by and by." "Sir," quoth this Surgien, "I praye you let me practise and other waye." I was well contented to sée the same. He had him into a house, and tyed a halter aboute the wrestes of his handes, and hoysed him vp ouser a beam, and there dyd let him hang a good while : at the length, for very paine he required for Gods sake to let him down. So he that was both deafe and dume coulde in short tyme both heare and speake. Then I took that money I could find in his pursse and distributed the same to the poore people dwelling there, whiche was xv. pence halfepeny, being all that we coulde finde. That done, and this merry myracle madly made, I sent them with my seruaunt to the next Iusticer, where they preached on the Pyllery for want of a Pulpet, and were well whypped, and none did bewayle them.

No Quarter #3

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:54:44 +0000

No Quarter
a zine about radical history
http://anarchistpirates.blogspot.com

Issue 3 of No Quarter has recently been published. This issue contains…

• A reprint of Lost Utopias by Ron Sakolsky, "scholar of music, revolution and radio", from issue 3 of his self-published, anarchist-surrealist zine, Oystercatcher.
• An interview with a member of the Bristol Radical History Group, an independent collective exploring history from below. They have staged some remarkable events, all without any funding from universities, political parties, business or local government.
• The trial statement of nineteenth-century French anarchist Émile Henry (1872 - May 21, 1894). He attempted to dynamite a mining company which was in dispute with its striking workers, only to have the bomb discovered before it was detonated and retrieved to the police office, where it did detonate, killing several policemen present. Later he would mis-throw a bomb into a bourgeois café, slightly injuring a few bourgeois, wounding three persons with gunshot whilst making his escape. He was executed at 22 years old.
• Many reviews of related books and films.

For details on how to obtain a copy of No Quarter #3, see the No Quarter blog.

The Western Rising

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 07:21:46 +0000

Between the years 1626 and 1632 there were massive anti-enclosure riots in western England. Collectively known as The Western Rising, these riots occurred in Gillingham Forest on the Dorset-Wiltshire border, the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, Braydon Forest in Wiltshire, Feckenham Forest in Worcestershire and Leicester Forest. The cause of the uprising was the Crown's policy of disafforestation and enclosure, denying the immemorial, customary rights of common held by all. The main body of the rioters was made up of artisans, landless peasants and wage-earners as, although the Crown had consulted with and offered compensation to the Lords and landowners for their losses, the rights of the majority, who were landless peasants and relying upon the forest and its raw materials for subsistence, were ignored and their rights had no basis in the Crown's laws.

Facing extreme poverty, having access to the land stolen from them, their customary rights denied, and enjoying no rights in law, the pulling down of the enclosures was the only course of action possible. Although many were involved in the riots, (sometimes as many as 3,000 rioters), only few were arrested. This was due to the view of the ruling class that the commoners were incapable of organising themselves, as Buchanan Sharp puts its in In Contempt of All Authority, Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586-1660:

Most of those escaping punishment were persons of the lower orders. The Crown's object was to capture and punish the ringleaders in order to set an example to others and to break the spirit of the rank-and-file. Since Stuart government took it for granted that a ringleader was a person of quality, gentlemen were prime suspects, while artisans and laborers would more easily have escaped notice.
A recurring theme in official opinions on the Western Rising is that the belief that the lower orders were incapable of organizing and directing themselves and, consequently, that persons of quality were behind the riots. This was, of course, only one manifestation of an opinion universally held in the seventeenth century. It is expressed, for example, in that near-limitless storehouse of the period's aphorisms and commonplaces, the essays of Francis Bacon. In "On Sedition" Bacon ascribes the root of sedition to poverty in the common people and discontent among their betters: "If poverty and broken estate in the better sort be joined with a want and necessity in the mean people, the danger is imminent and great: for the rebellions of the belly are the worst." Sedition required the better sort to provide leadership, "for common people are of slow motion, if they will not be excited by the greater sort."

Buchanan Sharp, In Contempt of All Authority, Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586-1660
(University of California Press 1980), 130-131

This was ruling class naïvety, as there were no rogue gentlemen leading the revolt and the commoners, of course, were more than capable of organising themselves.

Here we are about 400 years later and what has changed? The middle class are now doing the dirty work of maintaining inequality, whilst the ruling class hide themselves from public view. The proletariat are viewed as the ignorant masses or chavs, whilst the media encourages them to fight amongst themselves and reinforces their lack of self-belief and self-worth. Their history is largely hidden, their identity fragmented. At some point morning will come and it will be time to wake up.

Sylpheed Apes Claws Mail

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:21:09 +0000

Knowing the history of the relationship between Claws Mail and Sylpheed, it was amusing to read the release announcement for Sylpheed 2.5.0 earlier this week:

    * New features
          o The vertical 3-paned view mode was added.
          o The feature to save SSL peer certificate was added.
          o The option 'Treat HTML only message as attachment' was
            added.
          o The feature to confirm missing attachments was added.
          o The feature to confirm recipients before sending was added.

Why is this amusing? It is amusing because Claws Mail, (née Sylpheed-Claws), started life as the development branch of Sylpheed, where new features could be added, tested and improved before going into the Sylpheed main branch — at least, that was the agreement which was reached and the agreement which instigated the start of the Sylpheed-Claws project — in order to make Sylpheed better rather than to make a better Sylpheed. To cut a long story short, although the movement of code from Claws to Sylpheed was happening early in the project, (Actions, Colour Labels and Templates originated in Claws, for example), this movement slowed and then ground to a halt. We had code and features in Claws that were well-tested and stable and yet the migration to Sylpheed was not happening, and little or no reason was communicated as to why this stagnation was occurring. Eventually it became obvious, without ever being said, that the features/code already written in Claws were not ever going to get into Sylpheed, and that Sylpheed was a one-man-band, a one-party system, as it were. So, naturally, the Claws Mail team decided to fork the project and go in its own direction. We started out with the aim to make Sylpheed better, and ended up with a better Sylpheed.

o The vertical 3-paned view mode was added.: In Claws Mail since version 2.8.0 (February 2007). Claws Mail also has additional 'Wide message', 'Wide message list' and 'Small screen' layouts.
o The feature to save SSL peer certificate was added.: In Claws Mail since version 0.8.5claws (October 2002)
o The option 'Treat HTML only message as attachment' was added.: With Claws Mail's clearer display/layout, an option such as this is unnecessary and irrelevant.
o The feature to confirm missing attachments was added.: Added as a plugin for Claws Mail in November 2006.
o The feature to confirm recipients before sending was added.: This feature is not in Claws Mail, but I wonder who actually needs a feature like this?

Coming up: An exhaustive list of the differences between Claws Mail and Sylpheed. (See what features Sylpheed might have in 5 years!!)

The Hancock Project

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 12:06:43 +0000

the hancock project. A film by Bruce Gilchrist & Jo Joelson (London Fieldworks)
Institvtvm Pataphysicvm Londiniense
Department of Reconstructive Archaeology, dora 4
DVD. For distribution only to members and friends of the Institute. 33 signed copies (I to XXXIII), and 99 copies numbered 1 to 99.

Anthony Hancock, Paintings & Sculpture: A Retrospective Exhibition ran for 14 days in September 2002 at The Foundry, London. It allowed "for a complete re-assessment of Hancock's contribution to the art of his time" as the Department recreated "the entirety of Hancock's known pictorial output, as well as his most important sculpture (the magnificent and imposing Aphrodite at the Waterhole)." Magnus Irvin, gave a practical demonstration — by reconstructing Hancock's only known "action painting" Aphrodite at the Waterhole (on the Horizontal) — on the exhibition's opening night, 7 September 2002 vulg. (in reality New Year's Eve 129 EP by the 'Pataphysical calendar).

Compared to Hancock, Gainsborough comes across as a rank amateur, while Paul Cézanne is frankly contemptible. … Hancock craftily demonstrates that it is more socially valuable for artists to manifest the contradictions of their calling as specialist non-specialists, than to buttress the spectacle without even realising that art is irredeemably reactionary. Hancock intuitively understands that those capitalism condemns to be artists must simultaneously and by necessity join with the proletariat in allowing the real anti-art to begin. Our task is to create a new world, and all of anarchism can be found in the ridiculous idea that bohemians may live groovy lives while the rest of us are oppressed by the tyrannies of exchange.

Stewart Home, Tony Hancock as "The Rebel": Warhol before Warhol, or From The Art of Commerce to the Business of Art, Encomia for Anthony Hancock (Eds. Alastair Brotchie & Magnus Irvin) (London Institute of 'Pataphysics, 2002)

Links
Anthony Hancock, Paintings & Sculpture: A Retrospective Exhibition
The London Institute of 'Pataphysics
Anthony Aloysius St. John Hancock at Wikipedia
The Rebel (1961) at The Internet Movie Database
Magnus Irvin
Stewart Home
Alfred Jarry at Wikipedia
George Melly at Wikipedia
Simon Watson Taylor at Wikipedia
Henry Snowstorm
Collège de ´Pataphysique
London Fieldworks

The Power is Always on the Side of the People, when they Choose to Act

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 07:30:10 +0000

The enclosure movement and the slave trade ushered industrial capitalism into the modern world. By 1832 England was largely closed, its countryside privatized (some even mechanized), in contrast to a century earlier when its fields were largely open—"champion" country, to use the happy technical term—and yeoman, children, women could subsist by commoning. By 1834 slavery had been abolished in the British empire whereas a century earlier, on 11 September 1713, the asiento licensed British slavers to trade African slaves throughout the Americas. Together the expelled commoners and the captured Africans provided the labor power available for exploitation in the factories of the field (tobacco and sugar) and the factories of the towns (woolens and cottons). Whether indentured servant, West African youngster, former milkmaid, or woodsman without his woods, the lords of humankind looked upon them indifferently as laboring bodies to produce surplus value, and so emerged the Atlantic working day, which entirely depended upon a prior discommoning.
The legal cliché is that the American constitution is written, while the English is unwritten. Strictly speaking this is untrue inasmuch as both have stemmed from the Magna Carta of 1215. The important difference between English and American constitutional development is not that one is unwritten and the other is written. The difference is Africa. The maintenance and expansion of unwaged labor on the plantation where slaves produced surplus value was indispensable to American constitutional and revolutionary history, whereas the salient English development was the statutory enclosure of lands and privatization of all attempts at commoning. The Atlantic multitudes were divided by race in the emerging constitution. The Charters of Liberties were contested in this process. The enclosure movement, opposed by English commoners, conveniently ignored the Forest Charter. The movement to abolish slavery used Magna Carta and helped put it back into the English working-class movement.
Peter Linebaugh, The Magna Carta Manifesto, Liberties and Commons for All (University of California Press 2008), 94-95

Unofficial Claws Mail ClamAV™ Plugin v3.4 unleashed!!

Sun, 04 May 2008 09:43:03 +0000

The first official release of an unofficial Claws Mail plugin is now available.

It is available from the Unofficial Claws Mail ClamAV™ Plugin page here on this blog.

This latest release of the plugin will build against the ClamAV™ 0.93 (libclamav 4:1:0) release and all older versions, once it is patched, of course. The necessary patch is also available from that page.

I will continue to maintain this unofficial plugin for at least as long as I am using the plugin.

See the page for more details.

Bullshit companies

Thu, 01 May 2008 08:36:31 +0000

Everyone is familiar with this, no doubt…

I recently switched power supplier, because the previous one's prices were rising steeply. The previous company had overcharged me, my final statement from them told me as much. Two months later they still hadn't paid me back, so I telephoned their 'customer support' line, (not a free call), to get it sorted. A fortnight later my cheque arrived. The accompanying letter began with, "As promised here is a cheque for …" — As promised! As promised? They take my money, keep hold of it, force me to give them more money just to enquire about it, and then present themselves as the good guys! Hey npower, is it so hard to say sorry?

Meanwhile virginmedia announce that they "always try to listen to what our customers tell us and because you didn't think the premium rate call charge for our technical support helpline was right, we decided to do something about it!" — as if it never occurred to them that their charges were high until some customers mentioned it. And in a sickeningly informal manner, "That means that now you can get the help and support you need, totally free, just like you asked." Well, thanks mate! You're a real pal. I hope this won't eat into your vast profits and require Branson to have a lifestyle change.

[suggested soundtrack: Alternative TV - You Bastard - The Image Has Cracked, 1978]

Claws Mail article in Linux Magazine

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:52:23 +0000

Following the awful review of Claws Mail in issue 86 of Linux Magazine — awful because of its inaccuracies — I wrote a critical blog post and informed the editor, Joe Casad, of my post, thoughts and feelings. He quickly responded, apologising and offering further coverage of Claws Mail in the form of a full article, if I would like to write it. What a great response, it couldn't have been any better!

The article is now written and published in issue 90 and can be downloaded in PDF format via this page.

Too bad about the seagull feet, I would have preferred to see The Manticore, a "gigantic red lion with a human face and three rows of teeth [whose] nails are twisted into talons, like drills and […] teeth are cut like those of a saw"^[1], or Humbaba, who "had the paws of a lion and a body covered with horny scales; his feet had the claws of a vulture, and on his head were the horns of a wild bull".^[1]

[1] Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beings

Claws Mail, ClamAV™, GPLv2, GPLv2+, GPLv3+, and the ClamAV™ Plugin

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:02:25 +0000

Since the Claws Mail ClamAV™ plugin was dropped there have been several comments made in several places; Naturally enough, people have been confused over the incompatibilities of GPLv3 and GPLv2 — some thought it would be possible to simply release the ClamAV™ plugin under GPLv2, (it's not), some imagined that we were trying to instigate a holy war, (we're not), some thought it could easily be solved by changing the way and place the plugin is executed, (it can't), some surmised that it would be better if GPLv2 and GPLv3 were compatible, (if they were then GPLv3 would be redundant), some thought we were too hasty in changing Claws Mail to GPLv3+, (that's a matter of opinion), some think anti-virus at the user-level is useless on Linux anyway, (they've got a point), and others criticized us for not discovering that libclamav was GPLv2-only in the run-up to Claws Mail changing to GPLV3+, (hmmm!).

Now, a quick recap on what I'm talking about:

Claws Mail upgraded its license from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv3 or later".
The Claws Mail team were alerted to the licensing problem, (a GPLv3+ app cannot link to a GPLv2-only library), by Debian Bug Report 462963.
The Claws Mail team implemented what they thought was a possible solution: Making the ClamAV™ plugin a standalone plugin instead of it being part of the main Claws Mail package and downgrading the plugin's license to GPLv2+, (at the agreement of all the authors of the new code that has been added since the change to GPLv3+, which was just Colin).
In the meantime the Claws Mail team sought confirmation of their solution from the Software Freedom Law Center and were informed that the proposed solution was not legally distributable.
The Claws Mail team dropped the ClamAV™ plugin.

Some interesting points to note: When the ClamAV™ plugin was first released, libclamav was released under a 'GPLv2 or later' license. The 'or later' clause was first dropped in ClamAV™ version 0.91rc1, (libclamav version 2:4:0), which was released on the 30th May 2007. On the 17th August 2007 it was announced that SourceFire^® had acquired ClamAV™. One can clearly see that there could be a connection here, and imagine that discussions between the ClamAV™ developers and SourceFire^® had been taking place. Then one may recall that Snort^®, the network intrusion detection system, was also acquired by SourceFire^® and it also downgraded its license to GPLv2-only — and not without some controversy; for example, see this post, Snort license changes revisited, on the Inliniac blog.

In my opinion, a license change is an important thing, particularly a downgrade in the licensing of a library, which could impact on several other projects. But, when looking at the NEWS and README files of ClamAV™ version 0.91rc1 there is nothing to be found about the license change, which seems a little strange. Even stranger is that the ChangeLog doesn't mention it either! That's a bizarre oversight by whoever writes those files.

Downgrade Claws Mail? Are you crazy?

A few Claws Mail users, having upgraded without taking the time to read the release notes, and suddenly finding themselves without a ClamAV™ plugin, and panicking, (well, possibly panicking), have asked how to downgrade Claws Mail so that they can get the plugin back.

It is possible to call clamscan, clamd, or clamdscan using Filtering or Actions as an alternative, for example:

Filtering:
Filtering condition: ~test "clamscan --quiet %F"
Action:              move "#mh/Mail/trash"

Action:
Menu Name:    clamscan
Command Line: clamscan -i '%p'

None of these methods are as quick as the plugin however.

The best solution, it seems to me, would be for these users to keep a copy of the ClamAV™ plugin and build it themselves — as long as they do not distribute their copy of the source code they would be within the bounds of the law, as the problem here is only the distribution of source code under incompatible licenses, not in personal use.

Here is a copy of the ClamAV™ plugin source code which has been patched so that it will only build with libclamav version 2:3:0 or earlier, that is, the last version of libclamav to be released with a 'GPLv2 or later' license, making it legal to distribute. There is nothing stopping you from taking this code and patching your own local copy so that the restriction is lifted, the only caveat is that you must not distribute your locally patched copy.

You could use a patch like this and then run ./autogen.sh:

--- configure.ac        2008-02-28 10:19:45.000000000 +0000
+++ configure.ac.orig   2008-02-29 10:41:51.000000000 +0000
@@ -89,7 +89,7 @@
 AC_SUBST(GTK_CFLAGS)
 AC_SUBST(GTK_LIBS)

-PKG_CHECK_MODULES(CLAMAV, libclamav < = 2:3:0)
+PKG_CHECK_MODULES(CLAMAV, libclamav)
 AC_SUBST(CLAMAV_CFLAGS)
 AC_SUBST(CLAMAV_LIBS)

Claws Mail ClamAV™ Plugin version 3.3cvs3: clamav-plugin-3.3cvs3.tar.gz (requires libclamav <= 2:3:0)

Claws Mail drops ClamAv™ Plugin

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 11:18:16 +0000

Due to Licensing Issues™ the Claws Mail ClamAV™ Plugin has been dropped.

It seems that Sourcefire^®, the company who employ the core ClamAV™ developers, wish all the ClamAV™ code to be published under GPLv2 only, and this is Incompatible™ with the GPLv3+ license that Claws Mail has.

You might Think™ that it would make Sense™ for a library to be licensed under 'GPLv2 or any later version', but apparently not. So, Goodbye To ClamAv™. Now the Bogofilter Plugin will have to catch all the Spam™ for me, as, Essentially™, that was what the ClamAV™ plugin was doing for Me™.

hums every morning

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 20:54:45 +0000

From an interview with John Pilger in today's The Guide supplement in The Guardian…

Q: Who wants to be a millionaire?
A: This is the song Tony Blair hums every morning when he rises and tots up his latest windfall — a million for telling business groups in China nothing they didn't know, three or four million for buying JP Morgan influence in whatever corridors of power he imagines still welcome him. That this criminal, awash in a nation's blood, is so enriched and deluded that he believes he should be president of Europe is a shame upon all of us in Britain who deny his prosecution.

That's breviary stuff, that is.

ripperX GTK2 goes official

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:08:59 +0000

Following my ripperX patch, which added a GTK2 interface, internationalisation, and improved the use of the autotools build system, [read about it here], I became a member of the ripperX development team at SourceForge.

Today I committed a modified version of my patch to the ripperX SVN. The modifications involved a few minor fixes. There's still much to do – there are still quite a few deprecated GTK functions, for example, but it's a good start.

You can get the latest SVN code by using the following command:

 svn co https://ripperx.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ripperx/trunk ripperx

Comments and patches are welcome.

ripperX lives!

Henry Snowstorm meets MC Jon Wayne

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 08:55:40 +0000

Four Henry Snowstorm beats have been used on the recently released DannyHouse EP by MC Jon Wayne.

MC Jon Wayne - DannyHouse EP: 1. Read The Script; 2. Sexual Harassment*; 3. Not Bombs*; 4. Lyrical Diabetes*; 5. Interlude; 6. Don't You Think?*; 7. Garbage Rhymes

These beats were originally available on the Henry Snowstorm instrumental album Civil Unrest.

___________________________________

Henry Snowstorm: Civil Unrest album (free download); Homepage: http://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/henrysnowstorm/; MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/henrysnowstorm

MC Jon Wayne: DannyHouse EP (free download); MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/captaincookiejw

Little Nemo in Slumberland

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 17:34:23 +0000

Also see the Winsor McCay - Little Nemo In Slumberland Vol 1 entry in the Reading List category.

Linux Magazine "reviews" Claws Mail

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 12:49:14 +0000

Mirko Albrecht is a lazy reviewer, but I don't believe he is unique in having this quality. I am referring specifically to his article in the January 2008 issue, (No. 86), of Linux Magazine, entitled "YOU’VE GOT MAIL", which can be downloaded in PDF format here. The article claims to 'examine the strengths and weaknesses of four popular mail clients: KMail, Evolution, Thunderbird, and Claws Mail.'

Of course, being a member of the Claws Mail development team, I am particularly, (perhaps only), interested in what he has to say regarding Claws Mail, (or The Mail Claw, as the article puts it, sic), but, in passing, I'll point out the first error that I noticed: In the opening, introductory paragraphs he says, 'Some computer users also like to encrypt messages to provide protection against sniffing or to have a digital signature to validate the sender.' Of course, a digital signature does not validate the sender, what it does is show that the signed content has not be tampered with en route. Not a good start. Then we soon realise that the author's preferred application is KMail, his preferred desktop environment is KDE, and his preferred distro is SuSE. Rather than a fair, unbiased review, we get one very much based upon the reviewer's personal preferences. His opinion is the benchmark.

The author doesn't use Claws Mail, and it seems that he fired it up just for the purposes of the article. Unfortunately, it is obvious that he didn't allow himself the time to really explore it and rushed the whole thing. In my opinion, this is not really desirable behaviour from journalism, not for the magazine itself, who paid him for the article and rely upon their journalists for quality writing, and not for the readers and purchasers of the magazine who should get something better in exchange for their money.

So, what's wrong with the information that is given?

• "When looking for Claws Mail packages, make sure you do not confuse them with Sylpheed packages."
This is like saying, when looking for an application do not confuse it with another application that has a different name. Is that stupid or what??
The article actually does its best to engender this confusion. In the title it says 'Claws Mail', when we reach the section about Claws Mail it gives the heading 'The Mail Claw', then it starts by talking about Sylpheed. Next the Overview box has the title 'Sylpheed Claws Overview'. Mirko seems confused, indeed.

• "For example, SUSE users can turn to Packman for packages. Besides the claws-mail package, you will also need to install claws-mail-extra-plugins."
Or they could use the official repository. You don't need to install the extra-plugins package, there's no literal need for this — it depends upon whether you want the extra functionality that these extra-plugins provide. The main plugins, distributed with the Claws Mail source tarball, are actually part of the Claws Mail SuSE RPM package.

• "Figure 10: Claws Mail provides a lean alternative to the three Linux mail global players."
Nothing wrong with the caption, but the image it accompanies shows that Mirko has used his KMail maildir mailbox for Claws Mail. Because of this, each folder has 'cur', 'new' and 'tmp' subfolders; Also because of this, it shows Claws Mail's standard inbox/sent/drafts/queue/trash folders and also normal folders with the names 'drafts', 'outbox', and 'sent_mail'.

• "Figure 12: Claws Mail has much ground to gain. The current version has only rudimentary functionality."
This caption is completely misleading. It actually accompanies an image of an address book dialogue. I believe that the intention was to refer to the address book as having 'rudimentary functionality' but that is not what it says. If you've used Claws Mail then you will know that it does not have 'only rudimentary functionality'.

• "Claws Mail lacks a usable address book, simple integration of GPG, and a spam filter."
Not true! Claws Mail's address book is not as fully-featured as others, but this does not make it 'unusable', this is just nonsense!
GPG integration is as simple as using the GUI to load the plugins, there's nothing too complicated in that it seems to me. Thunderbird needs an Extension for GPG support, but I don't see the same criticism leveled at Thunderbird in this article.
Lacks a spam filter? Here the author is unaware of what he wrote just before, '…there are plugins for integrating SpamAssassin…', he also neglects to mention the other spam filter, the Bogofilter plugin.

• The Overview boxes
Mailing Lists
KMail gets 5/5, Claws Mail gets 3/5.
Claws Mail has good mailing list support. I believe that, in his rush to finish his article, the author didn't even discover Claws Mail's mailing list support. I believe that Claws Mail's mailing list is at least as powerful as Kmail's and, at the same time, is more flexible.
Filtering
KMail gets 5/5, Thunderbird gets 5/5, Claws Mail gets 4/5
Having written filter conversion scripts, I know that there are things that Claws Mail can do in its filtering that the other two cannot.
Security GPG/ HTML
Claws Mail 2/5
An unreasonably low score. Claws Mail supports PGP/MIME, PGP/Inline, S/MIME; it also has an anti-virus plugin, using Clam AntiVirus; it has anti-phishing support built in; the two HTML viewer plugins do not load remote content by default. What more do you want??
Spam filter
Claws Mail 3/5
Claws Mail offers a choice of either SpamAssassin or Bogofilter to deal with spam. They can use address book whitelisting, can be trained via toolbar buttons or menu items, can deal with 'unsure' mails, the SpamAssassin plugin can use a remotely running SpamAssassin, can be configured in a number of ways. Claws Mail also offers the SpamReport plugin to report spam to central databases.

• "The difference between the Create Filter Rule and Create Processing Rule in the drop-down list is not entirely apparent. Both take you to the same dialog."
Wrong! They take you to similar dialogues, but the not the same dialogue. The difference between Filtering and Processing is well documented, in the manual and FAQ, etc. The reviewer should RTFM!

• "[Claws Mail] also lacks a couple of functions, such as a tray icon (which you can download as a plugin.)"
Evolution also requires a plugin for the trayicon, but this wasn't mentioned.

The author thinks that when functions are provided by plugins this means the app lacks those functions. Would he say, for example, that the audio player Audacious is useless and can't play any audio because those features are provided by plugins?

The author completely fails to mention the powerful Claws Mail Actions feature.

I could continue with this blog post but I feel that I've already spent more time on this than the author did on his article.

Could there be any morals to draw from this post?
Don't believe what you read?
Don't buy Linux Magazine, its articles are poorly researched?

Clearly, I am disappointed by this slack and lazy journalism.

The Generall Complaint…

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:25:19 +0000

Wee (as men) confident of your integrity did chuse you as our Proctors and Atturnies, the King's Majesty with his best councell and we (the poore Commons) entrusted you with all we had but we had no mistrust that you would deceive us of all we had. We trusted you to maintaine our peace, and not to embroile us in an universalle endlesse bloudye war. We trusted you with our estates and you have Rob'd, Plundered and Undon us; we trusted you with our freedomes and you have loaded us with slavery and bondage, we trusted you with our lives and by you we are slaughtered and muther'd every day. . . . Thus we perceive that you pretend to fight for the Protestant religion and all the world may see and say, you have made a delicate dainty Directory, new religion of it. And you have fought for the King but it hath been to catch him and make him no King. You have fought for our liberties and have taken them from us. You have fought for the Gospell and you have spoyl'd the Church, you have fought for our goods and you have em and you have fought to destroye the Kingdom and you have done it. . . .
The Generall Complaint of the Most Oppressed, Distressed Commons of England Complaining to
and Crying Out Upon the Tyranny of the Perpetuall Parliament at Westminster (1645)

a job in the city, that's the life

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:32:42 +0000

I left my provincial small town this morning for a job interview in a city, a reasonably lengthy train journey away. The extremes of poverty and wealth that are seen side by side in a city are sickening, so it was nice to return.

I sat for a while in a square, a row of benches spanning the perimeter. In the centre was a busker with his guitar, singing songs, at one side sat a handful of 'tramps', (for want of a better word), one of whom approached the busker, threw a few coins into his collection and asked him to play 'Sarah'. He asked him not to start until he'd called his girlfriend over, who was selling copies of The Big Issue, (magazine sold on the street by homeless people), a little way further up. They stood there together listening to the song. That was a beautiful moment.

n800 bigger, better, faster

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 14:02:54 +0000

Having recently sorted out a wifi connection at home and bought a couple 2GB SD cards, my n800 has suddenly come to life. But what has really made it sparkle is booting from the internal MMC card. Plenty more space and also almost double the speed. For anyone who hasn't done this to their n800 yet I can very much recommend it.

The procedure is easy and painless and is detailed on this page: HowTo EASILY Boot From MMC card. The only thing that didn't work in the instructions was this command

# insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/current/ext2.ko

I guess it was a typo, at least /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/current/ was completely empty. I used the module in /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.18-omap1/ instead, and everything is fine

# insmod /mnt/initfs/lib/modules/2.6.18-omap1/ext2.ko

Incidentally, I'm using a D-Link DAP-1160 Wireless G Access Point connected to the uplink of my wired router for the wifi network. It uses GPL licensed code and comes with a printed GPL license, which is nice to see.

Listen to French radio on n800

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 13:13:44 +0000

I wanted to listen to the French radio stations France Inter and Europe1 on my n800 internet tablet but found that I could not launch the players available on their web sites using the browsers, (or, more likely, the Flash plugin), on the n800.

Should anyone else want to do the same and face the same problem, this is how I got around it.

1. The following software packages are required:
osso-xterm
becomeroot
MPlayer

2. Create the following 2 wrapper scripts with your favourite text editor.

#!/bin/sh

mplayer mms://vipmms9.yacast.net/encodereurope1

Save it as europe1 in the folder called Documents.

#!/bin/sh

mplayer http://mp3.live.tv-radio.com/franceinter/all/franceinterhautdebit.mp3

Save it as finter in the folder called Documents.

Start xterm and issue the following commands to make the scripts executable and copy them to /usr/bin/

# cd /home/user/MyDocs/.documents/
# chmod +x europe1
# chmod +x finter
# sudo gainroot
# cp europe1 /usr/bin/
# cp finter /usr/bin/

3. Download these 2 images to the folder called Documents.

Then, still in your xterm session, copy them to the correct location.

# cp europe1.png /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/
# cp fr_inter.png /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/

4. Create the following 2 desktop files with your favourite text editor.

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=0.0.1
Name=Europe1
Comment=Listen to Europe1 with mplayer
Exec=osso-xterm -e /usr/bin/europe1
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=europe1
X-Icon-path=/usr/share/icons
X-Window-Icon=europe1
X-HildonDesk-ShowInToolbar=true
X-Osso-Type=application/x-executable

Save it as europe1.desktop in the folder called Documents.

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=0.0.1
Name=France Inter
Comment=Listen to France Inter with mplayer
Exec=osso-xterm -e /usr/bin/finter
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=fr_inter
X-Icon-path=/usr/share/icons
X-Window-Icon=fr_inter
X-HildonDesk-ShowInToolbar=true
X-Osso-Type=application/x-executable

Save it as franceinter.desktop in the folder called Documents.

Then, again still in your xterm session, copy them to the correction locations.

# cp europe1.desktop /etc/others-menu/extra_applications/
# cp europe1.desktop /usr/share/applications/hildon/
# cp franceinter.desktop /etc/others-menu/extra_applications/
# cp franceinter.desktop /usr/share/applications/hildon/

They will then be accessible from the Extras menu. A click will launch xterm which will spawn mplayer and load the stream.

Drop the tent peg or I'll shoot!

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 07:34:56 +0000

It was sadly inevitable. Gordon Brown's government are encouraging the police to use the new 'anti-terror' laws against peaceful protesters in the UK. (That is the Gordon Brown who is the unelected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.)

These are climate change protesters who are against the further expansion of Heathrow airport, exercising the long-held right to peaceful protest in the UK.

This means that peaceful protesters will be subject to being stopped and searched and having their vehicles searched without there being any evidence to suspect them of terrorism. Their homes can also be searched and they can be held by the police for a month without charge.

It has been said since the introduction of the new powers in the S44 Terrorism Act 2000 that these laws would be used to erode the freedom of ordinary UK citizens. This is the first widely reported case of this process in action.

This is the government using its laws to protect the business interests of wealthy companies like BAA at the huge expense of the rest of us. But this shouldn't come as a surprise, there's a long history of laws being created and used to protect and bolster the interests of the wealthy few and destroy the power of the poor majority.

So now, if you hold some concern about the state of the planet and decide to voice that concern, according to the government, you could be a terrorist.

"Put that veggie-burger on the ground and your hands on your head."

The Plane Stupid Campaign Group
The Camp for Climate Action

Survival Techniques

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 05:06:35 +0000

I saw a picture of a balloon suddenly and unexpectedly soaring and some people still holding onto the ropes connected to the balloon were suddenly jerked into the air and most of them didn't have the survival IQ to let go in time. Seconds later they are sixty, a hundred feet off the ground. Those who didn't let go fell off at five hundred or a thousand feet. A basic survival lesson is: Learn to let go.
Put it another way: Never hang on when your Guardian tells you to let go.
Right Now.
Suppose you were holding one of the ropes? Would you have let go in time, which is, of course, at the first upward yank? I'll tell you something interesting. You would have a much better chance to let go in time now that you have read this paragraph than if you hadn't read it. Writing, if it is anything, is a word of warning …
Let Go!

William S. Burroughs, The Western Lands [Viking Penguin 1987]

Claws Mail development on Maemo

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 09:56:32 +0000

Thanks to a very generous donation from Claws Mail user Guido Rudolphi, Colin and I are now owners of the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet. This will enable us to discover just how justified the complaints from the oh-so-demanding n800 users of Claws Mail actually are, and where other improvements can be made.

As the n800 runs GNU/Linux and a modified Debian, using it is fun and easy. I don't have a wi-fi connection, so it's not as much fun as is it might be; I have to download packages on my main PC and then copy them onto the n800 via USB, so it's not quite as easy either. I wanted to upgrade the firmware, as you do when you get a new device such as this, but it was no-go, just forever waiting at "Suitable USB device not found, waiting". I guess that the device-mapping has changed since flasher-3.0 was written, but I'm still not sure. Anyway, this sort of stuff doesn't stand in my way.

Here are a few screenshots (click the image for a larger version)

Claws Mail

XTerm

desktop

Having one of these devices is a big incentive to actually spend a little more time looking at the maemo bug reports and feature requests, and to spend time contributing to Jean-Luc Biord's Maemo port, but not to the detriment of Claws Mail as a desktop app, that will retain the main focus.

Let the hacking commence!

Claws Mail Maemo port: http://www.claws-mail.org/maemo/
Claws Mail at the Maemo Garage: https://garage.maemo.org/projects/claws-mail
Jean-Luc Biord's page at maemopeople.org: http://www.maemopeople.org/index.php/jlbrd/

No Quarter

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 08:29:26 +0000

No Quarter
an anarchist zine about pirates, brigands, and millenarian revolt
http://anarchistpirates.blogspot.com

My article from this breviary stuff, entitled TheaurauJohn : A Name, Not The Thing, is reprinted in the recently published issue 2 of the No Quarter anarchist zine. It also includes an interesting interview with Marcus Rediker, the historian, writer, teacher, and activist; unlike many published historians, he is also a great writer, not simply stuck in the dust of academia thinking that a procession of facts constitutes a book; he also understands 'that general readers are smart and thoughtful and capable of getting interested in complex, well-researched histories', which is a fact that has been evidently missed by many. In my opinion, his work is comparable to that of the late Christopher Hill, whose article Radical Pirates? is also reprinted in this issue of No Quarter. Radical Pirates? 'deals with the period in England after 1640 … [of] those who rejected a state church, supported full religious toleration, and often carried this over to advocacy of democratic, communist, or antinomian ideas – beyond the pale of respectable puritanism.' It deals with the apparent disappearance of radical ideas after 1660.

The memoires of French anarchist, Illegalist and founding member of The Bonnot Gang, (la bande à Bonnot), Octave Garnier, are presented, translated from the French. He was a believer in the theory of la reprise individuelle, the belief that since the bourgeois and the rich obtained their wealth through exploitation of the lower classes, individuals are justified in redistributing wealth on a small scale, (i.e. stealing it back), rather than waiting for a general redistribution of wealth "after the revolution".

No Quarter also contains bibliographies and many, many reviews of books through which readers can further pursue their interests.

The editor says in his introduction that the purpose 'of this zine is not to withdraw from the present, from the world, and to seek comfort in dusty books and libraries … or to escape into fantasy. This zine does not look at history as an escape from the present, but rather to better understand what has happened and is happening now', and that's breviary stuff, that is.

ripperX GTK2

Mon, 21 May 2007 11:10:08 +0000

RipperX is a GTK app that rips CD audio tracks and encodes them to the Ogg, MP3, or FLAC formats. It is also my favourite simple ripping tool, but it still uses the ugly GTK1 interface. That was my motivation to write a patch that ports ripperX to GTK2.

Patch against current SVN: ripperX-2.7-gtk2_i18n-rev2.patch.gz
RipperX source with the patch applied: ripperX-2.7.1-gtk2.tar.bz2

The patch is to be applied against the current code in SVN, but if you don't have all the necessary build tools to build from SVN and want to give it a go I've provided a tarball, made with 'make dist'.

What the patch does:

GTK2
Implements a GTK2 interface, version 2.6.0 or greater is required.
Not all deprecated GTK functions have been replaced. For developer help, I've added the --disable-deprecated configure option, with sets GTK_DISABLE_DEPRECATED. (Since not all are replaced, using that will result in a build failure at present.)

i18n
Implements the i18n (internationalisation) framework. gettext 0.15 or greater is recommended.
The patch includes a British English translation, po/en_GB.po, but this is simply a demonstration, as there's nothing that needs translating into British English.

build system
autoconf >= 2.60 is required.
All the files that will be auto-generated have been removed, such as configure, Makefile.in, etc. There is now no need to have a configure script in each sub directory. I have added autogen.sh, and this should be used to initiate an svn build, configure options can be passed to autogen.sh, as it runs configure. configure.in has been replaced by configure.ac, and configure.ac has all the necessary directives for building. 'make dist' will build both tar.gz and tar.bz2.

UPDATE [14-Jun-2007]
Updated both the patch and the tarball. The changes are in configure.ac: the configure script will now refuse to go any further if libid3 cannot be found.

UPDATE [25-Jan-2008]
A modified version of this patch is now in ripperX SVN, see this post for more information.

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble

Sat, 12 May 2007 11:18:56 +0000

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble : War / Mercury 10" single

This record just arrived in the post, so I slapped it on the turntable and immediately the clouds parted and the sun began to shine, a feeling began to develop inside and a smile appeared on my face. Music rarely gets as good as this!

Here are the cover notes…

THE SONGS ON THIS RECORD ARE A PAIR OF FIGHT SONGS

"War" is pure battle sound from beginning to end; it draws your blood and attunes you to the conflict you face. Any master fighter can tell you the realest war is not the one flashing on your television or the one sparking in these streets; it's the one waged within. We dedicate this song to all our gutter people in the world that they be spiritually uplifted and psychologically prepared for the struggles that surround them.

The tones in "Mercury" are based on an ancient Chinese weather tactic whereby an emperor, having assembled his troops for battle, would call on a priest or shaman to send rainstorms over a rival's army. But while that idea illustrates the scope of military theater, the song's solos represent the ritual of warfare from the perspective of a faceless soldier thousands of years ago; the preparation for battle, the drama of the battle itself and finally, the joy and elation a man feels when he's won the battle and rejoins his family in the village.

Limited to just 500 copies, so rush to it!

http://hypnoticbrass.blogspot.com/
www.myspace.com/hypnoticbusiness

sarkozy wins French election

Mon, 07 May 2007 09:22:14 +0000

French citizens vote for the police state.
President George W Bush has already phoned to say well done.
Thatcher reborn? Let's hope not.

That is not my question…

Wed, 02 May 2007 10:15:08 +0000

Perhaps Jeremy Paxman's only quality is his interview technique, but it's a good one. Here's one such example, from BBC TV's Newsnight, 4th June 2001, which is worthy of recollection. Tony Blair provides the role of the ideal interviewee, stumbling and bumbling through his responses and clumsily confirming New Labour's shift from the traditional Labour egalitarian stance through his tactless avoidance of answering a simple question.
(The full transcript of the interview is available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsnight/1372220.stm.)

This is Tony Blair

PAXMAN: But is it acceptable for the gap between rich and poor to widen?

BLAIR: It is acceptable for those people on lower incomes to have their incomes raised. It is unacceptable that they are not given the chances. To me, the key thing is not whether the gap between those who, between the person who earns the most in the country and the person that earns the least, whether that gap is…

PAXMAN: So it is acceptable for the gap to widen between rich and poor?

BLAIR: It is not acceptable for poor people not to be given the chances they need in life.

PAXMAN: That is not my question.

BLAIR: I know it's not your question but it's the way I choose to answer it. If you end up going after those people who are the most wealthy in society, what you actually end up doing is in fact not even helping those at the bottom end.

PAXMAN: So the answer to the straight question is it acceptable for the gap between rich and poor to get wider, the answer you are saying is yes.

Life-size mannequin of Tony Blair
that stands at the entrance of
the Sedgefield Sainsburys
supermarket

BLAIR: No, it's not what I am saying. What I am saying is that my task is…

PAXMAN: You are not saying no.

BLAIR: But I don't think that is the issue…

PAXMAN: You may not think it is the issue, but it is the question. Is it OK for the gap to get wider?

BLAIR: It may be the question. The way I choose to answer it is to say the job of government is make sure that those at the bottom get the chances.

PAXMAN: With respect, people see you are asked a straightforward question and they see you not answering it.

BLAIR: Because I choose to answer it in the way that I'm answering it.

PAXMAN: But you are not answering it.

BLAIR: I am answering it. What I am saying is the most important thing is to level up, not level down.

PAXMAN: Is it acceptable for the gap between rich and poor to get bigger?

BLAIR: What I am saying is the issue isn't in fact whether the very richest person ends up becoming richer. The issue is whether the poorest person is given the chance that they don't otherwise have.

PAXMAN: I understand what you are saying. The question is about the gap.

BLAIR: Yes, I know what your question is. I am choosing to answer it in my way rather than yours.

PAXMAN: But you're not answering it.

BLAIR: I am.

PAXMAN: You are answering another question.

BLAIR: I am answering actually in the way that I want to answer it. I tell you why I want to answer it in this way. Because if you end up saying no, actually my task is to stop the person earning a lot of money earning a lot of money, you waste all your time and energy, taking money off the people who are very wealthy when in today's world, they probably would move elsewhere and make their money. What you are not asking me about, which would be a more fruitful line of endeavour, is what are you doing for the poorest people to give them a boost.

PAXMAN: Let's talk about tax. You have promised…

BLAIR: Why don't we talk about the poorest of society and what we are doing for them.

PAXMAN: I assume you want to be Prime Minister. I just want to be an interviewer. Can we stick to that arrangement?

BLAIR: Fine.

Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra live recordings

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 12:20:49 +0000

Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra is a Bushwick, Brooklyn based afrobeat band that is modelled after Fela Kuti's Africa 70 band and Eddie Palmieri's Harlem River Drive Orchestra. Although their music is primarily afrobeat, their music incorporates elements of jazz, funk, dub, improvised music, and traditional drumming from Cuba and West Africa. (quoting wikipedia)

The Internet Archive hosts 15 Antibalas live recordings which are all available for free download. So, what are you waiting for? If you wonder which to try first, Live at Culture Room on 2003-04-28 is not a bad place to start.
—
(If you wonder how to convert the different audio formats into something a bit more manageable, I recommend pacpl, the Perl Audio Convertor.)

migrating from Thunderbird to Claws Mail

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 11:40:17 +0000

Moving from Thunderbird to Claws Mail is getting easier. Now, in addition to the mailbox conversion script, (tbird2claws.py), we have added a script that converts Thunderbird filtering rules to Claws Mail filtering rules, thunderbird-filters-convertor.pl. So, in next to no time you can start a leaner, meaner email experience.

Henry Snowstorm - Civil Unrest

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 17:07:38 +0000

Henry Snowstorm has just released his first album, entitled 'Civil Unrest'. It's available as a free download from the Wild Beast, so head on over to www.thewildbeast.co.uk/henrysnowstorm/ and give it a listen.

File it under beats, under hip-hop, under jazz, under funk, under leftfield, file it under whatever you want – it's an entirely instrumental, 27-track album.

… conflict is part of existence and nothing is gained without struggle …

2 WordPress Patches

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 11:47:52 +0000

Component: Sidebar Widgets Plugin, version 1.0.20060711
Patch: SidebarWidgets_no-title-means-no-header_plus_rem-wordpress.com-meta-link.patch
Apply this patch in the /wp-content/plugins/widgets/ directory.
Description: This patch does 2 things:
1. It affects the Text widgets, removing the empty header, (

), that is added to a text widget that has no title. The empty header is an annoyance because it adds an empty space where no space is needed.
2. It affects the Meta widget, removing the link to wordpress.com. The link is unnecessary.

Component: WordPress core, version 2.1
Patch: WordPress-2.1_show_blogroll_descriptions.patch
Apply this patch in the /wp-includes/ directory.
Description: The default behaviour for the blogroll links display in WordPress 2.1, (using the Links widget of Sidebar Widgets Plugin, version 1.0.20060711), is to not show the link descriptions, which is the opposite behaviour of previous versions of WordPress. This patch reverses that, making showing the descriptions the default. It patches the _walk_bookmarks function in the file /wp-includes/bookmark-template.php. (There is no way to change the default behaviour, with or without this patch.)

Claws Mail 2.7.2

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 07:55:40 +0000

Claws Mail 2.7.2 has been unleashed!

[release notes] [download]

Claws Mail FUD on alt.comp.freeware

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:13:22 +0000

Of course, don't believe everything you read, especially if you read it in a newsgroup.

The Claws Mail 2.6.1 thread on alt.comp.freeware is full of it. Susan Bugher writes of Claws Mail/Sylpheed-Claws and Sylpheed, "I've been trying to sort out the current situation with these apps", but apparently didn't think of asking anyone on the Claws Mail development team. "It used to be that both Sylpheed and Sylpheed-Claws could be found at: http://sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net/ …"

The truth is that Sylpheed could never be found at http://sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net; the Sylpheed tarballs were, for a short while, being mirrored on SF, but they were always hidden and couldn't be viewed on the Files Page. This stopped when Claws Mail and Sylpheed went their separate ways.

"The Claws team seems to have taken over at SF", she continues.

More than that, the Claws team didn't recently take over at SF, but started the whole Sylpheed-Claws thing at SF and were in charge from day one.

"Thanks, Susan, for finding this out", says Jeffrey Needle, funnily enough.

Later in the thread Jeffrey Needle says, "I think they're selling short by not supporting Windows, but that's their choice." The use of stocks and shares terminology is an interesting one, since the whole freeware thing is about free as in free beer, and shows their lack of understanding of or lack of respect for free as in freedom. Free beer is great, but in the morning you find that you're still surrounded by the same old shit, and that hangover doesn't make it any better. Besides, we do our bit to help make things easier for the guys over at the gpg4win project.

Pinochet dead, Thatcher saddened

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 08:46:55 +0000

Yes, Margaret Thatcher, the bane of the British people, is reported to be 'greatly saddened' at the news of Pinochet's death, (see the BBC news report).

Some time soon we'll be reading of Thatcher's death - she can't have that many years left in her. But more important and welcome than that will be the death of the Thatcher legacy which is still much in evidence and crippling to the majority of British people.

As they used to say…

Maggie, Maggie, Maggie : OUT! OUT! OUT!