Little Go 0.9.0 has just been released to the App Store. The source code for the new version is available directly from GitHub.

The main feature of the release is that there are three new profile settings that provide much improved control over the computer player's playing strength. The other major focus has been on QA stuff: You can now choose to send a crash report if the app crashes, and you can send a bug report with attached diagnostics information at any time. Last but not least there have also been a number of bugfixes; the most important improvement probably is that the game is now saved after each move instead of only when the app is suspended. A crash should now be merely annoying instead of causing catastrophic data loss.

"Voting is almost never a way to reach consensus. Rather, it acknowledges that consensus has not been reached and side-steps further constructive attempts to reach it."

-- Stefano Zacchiroli, Debian project leader (original post)

This statement is a beautiful summary of one of the big misconceptions about what democracy truly is! Click the "Read more" link if you want to see my personal comments. For once in this post I am not talking about technical stuff...

The Little Go source code repository has moved to GitHub. I will remove the old repository on git.herzbube.ch in the next couple of days.

On Mac OS X, when I mount a TrueCrypt volume from a file container while logged in as user A, I can then switch to another user B and view the mounted volume's content (e.g. in the Finder, or in a Terminal.app session). I believe this is a bug, as the content of the TrueCrypt volume should remain private. I don't know enough about the underlying issues to lay the blame on any one in particular (Mac OS X, TrueCrypt, FUSE?), but what I definitely can say is that I cannot trust my Mac to be left alone while a TrueCrypt volume is still mounted.

This is how my mounted volumes' mount points look like inside a Terminal.app session. As you can see, the TrueCrypt volume PRIVATE is mounted with permissions that make it wide open for any user to snoop around inside.

nargothrond:~ --> ls -l /Volumes/
total 184
drwxr-xr-x   1 patrick  staff   8192 12 Dez  2010 BOOTCAMP
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root     admin      1 29 Aug 21:17 Macintosh HD -> /
drwxrwxrwx   1 patrick  staff  16384 31 Dez  1979 PRIVATE
[...]

I have reported this issue on the TrueCrypt website in September 2009. I never received a reply. Today I double-checked whether the problem is still there with the latest version of TrueCrypt (7.1a): Yes, it is! In case anyone wonders: I am using Mac OS X 10.6.8.

After much fiddling around, I finally worked out how to get the CardDAV plugin to work on my Debian box. The main problem was working out where to place the plugin's source code and configuration files, and where to create symlinks so that the Debian-packaged version of Roundcube finds the plugin and picks up its config file. Here is the full account of how to install and configure Roundcube and the CardDAV plugin on a Debian box that tracks the "testing" distribution.

Attachment	Size
Back of unreadable CD-R, 1	336.14 KB
Back of unreadable CD-R, 2	270.98 KB
Front of unreadable CD-R	393.86 KB
Type of still readable CD-R	40 KB

During the last few months I repeatedly came across CDs in my music collection that were no longer readable. Today I made an effort to go through and check the entire collection. The result: Between 20 and 30 CDs have deteriorated so much that they have become unusable. The CDs in question are all Sunstar CD-R media that I have burned 12-15 years ago. Click the "Read more" link to see some images...

Last week I went to the theatre to see the new Ridley Scott flick Prometheus. On Friday I saw the archive.org version of Plan 9 from Outer Space. Yesterday I watched the 2011 movie Cowboys & Aliens on DVD.

What do these films have in common? It's simple: All of them are of utter trash value! However, when I look at how much I enjoyed watching each of these movies, the fifty+ years old Plan 9 beats the hell out of the other two! Three reasons why, after the break...

Version 0.2.3 of dgsmonX fixes a small but ugly bug introduced in 0.2.2: Instead of "no game waiting" dgsmonX would report "Check failed, no error details". Thanks to Hans for reporting this.

I recently stumbled upon Trello, a cool new service that provides simple task-oriented project organization. As an experiment, I have added a Trello board for Little Go and put most of the roadmap features and TODO ideas up on that board. Have a look and let me know what you think about it.

I just released dgsmonX 0.2.2 (project page). This version should hopefully work again with DGS 1.0.15 (see previous post). If you encounter any issues, please let know by email.

Please note that to ensure responsible use of DGS resources (as requested in the DGS FAQ), I have implemented a minimum monitoring interval of 5 minutes (or 300 seconds). If you have configured a shorter interval, it will be automatically adjusted when you launch this version of dgsmonX for the first time. The minimum interval only applies to automatic checks, manual checks can still be triggered anytime you wish. Thank you for your understanding.