tcpip: (Default)
Diary of a B+ Grade Polymath ([personal profile] tcpip) wrote2008-02-11 05:37 pm

Timor Troubles, Linux News, Ratty Year

East Timor's President José Ramos-Horta was wounded today in a half-baked coup attempt led by criminal fugative Alfredo Reinhado. If memory serves me correctly this is Ramos-Horta's home where the attack occurred early this morning. Whilst on occassion he has been frustrating to me, I do hold the President in high regard, a friend even. I was very happy when last year he adopted a tax policy I had recommended to him some months prior (I also suggested that he get a second opinion - which evidently he did). José is apparently in a stable condition and I wish him the speediest recovery.

In Linux news there's a cool little exploit which has made sysadmins worldwide run around and patch the problem within hours. Which is an example par excellence of the ability of open source operating systems to find and repair problems. In other Linux news I presented an update last Tuesday at Linux Users Victoria, where Sarah Bond (Microsoft) spoke on their OpenXML standard and Damien Miller (Google) spoke on OpenSSH development. I had just purchased some fencing foils and suggested that they engage in a friendly duel for Yahoo! The gathering was quite polite although critical of Microsoft's previous actions and intentions, but it was friendly. In more trivial news I successfully googlwhacked "dispensationalists" and "ununoctium". But check the brilliant article.

Attended the Year of the Rat celebrations in the city on Sunday with [livejournal.com profile] caseopaya, [livejournal.com profile] ser_pounce and [livejournal.com profile] hathhalla, which is very appropriate as Rogue Rat will be celebrating his third birthday in a couple of days (that's 90 in human scale). Like most mass entertainment events, the celebrations were loud, crowded an anonymous which is not to my liking. I managed however to find and secure a perfect spot in front of the Chinese Museum in Cohen Place, where the impressive 50+m dragon and assorted friends ventured from. After that made it to what will be my final ever AD&D1e game, running a necessarily modified version of module Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2008-02-11 01:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Hmmm. El-Jay is being weird on again.

In answer to your question, Ramos-Horta used to say he'd much prefer it if East Timor were in the middle of the south pacific, surrounded by other nations of a similar size. Being the small fish with two big fish on either side (Australia and Indonesia) isn't much fun.

[identity profile] mia76.livejournal.com 2008-02-11 02:32 pm (UTC)(link)
honestly, when they were a part of Indonesia, we didn't really know how to look after them (actually we were mean to them).

the Australians are doing a much better job helping them out (including you). that's just me being unpatriotic and objective. but it's true!

[identity profile] tcpip.livejournal.com 2008-02-11 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
I believe it is one of the terrible tragedies of history is that if East Timor was allowed to go on its own path and Indonesia was democratic at the time, then the two countries would have united willingly after a short period of time.

(One is certainly allowed, indeed required, to be unpatriotic especially when one is being objective.)