a) Use the shelve or the attic extension to temporarily undo local changes to a repo. These basically keep shelved changes stowed away in a patch file so you can reapply them later. AFAIK attic actually uses Hg’s merge-forward logic to reapply to the original ancestor of the shelf, then merges forward to where you really want them applied now. This is more resilient than trying to apply patches with fuzz. I do this too, with two small shell scripts, which I’ll gladly send you if you want them. If you want to get super-sophisticated, check out mq with guarded patches. But before you do any of this, check out suggestion c).

b) Read `man hgignore`. But beware that a file, once in the current manifest, is tracked by hg regardless of what .hgignore says. This is actually a feature.

c) Consider moving non-default configuration to a secondary, untracked file, which earthli should look for but silently skip if missing. This will much better guard you from accidentally committing temporary config changes.

d) Consider using an update hook to automatically update to tip on your servers when something gets pushed (no ssh’ing anymore).

e) Look into the graphlog extension. Shows some ASCII art.

Points taken:

* Since there is `hg merge -f` to force a merge over uncommitted changes, then why is there no way to commit just the effects of the merge? Might be a little tricky, though, as Hg conceptually does whole-tree merges, not single-file ones.

* Why does `hg status` not show resolve status? (I guess it’s because of backwards compat for scripts. Hg should have a dedicated parseable format that is _not_ the default UI output from the start…) Try `hg resolve -l` instead.

And I wonder why you even got a modified robots.txt with uncommitted changes in the working copy. `hg merge` should not have touched robots.txt in this case.

What I don’t see is your gripe about merging from the command line. Aren’t you merging on your dev-box? Don’t you have visual tools for the actual file-merges there? You can even use p4merge. (http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/MergeProgram)

Sadly, TortoiseHg is not yet available for OS X. I use it on Ubuntu and simply love the way it lets me work from the command line and seamlessly switch into GUI mode as needed.

Cheers,
-peo

In Haiti, Words Can Kill by Rebecca Solnit (TomDispatch)

“After years of interviewing survivors of disasters, and reading first-hand accounts and sociological studies from such disasters as the London Blitz and the Mexico City earthquake of 1985, I don’t believe in looting. Two things go on in disasters. The great majority of what happens you could call emergency requisitioning. Someone who could be you, someone in the kind of desperate circumstances I outlined above, takes necessary supplies to sustain human life in the absence of any alternative. Not only would I not call that looting, I wouldn’t even call that theft.

“Necessity is a defense for breaking the law in the United States and other countries, though it’s usually applied more to, say, confiscating the car keys of a drunk driver than feeding hungry children. Taking things you don’t need is theft under any circumstances. It is, says the disaster sociologist Enrico Quarantelli, who has been studying the subject for more than half a century, vanishingly rare in most disasters.

“[…]

“The media are another matter. They tend to arrive obsessed with property (and the headlines that assaults on property can make). Media outlets often call everything looting and thereby incite hostility toward the sufferers as well as a hysterical overreaction on the part of the armed authorities. Or sometimes the journalists on the ground do a good job and the editors back in their safe offices cook up the crazy photo captions and the wrongheaded interpretations and emphases.

“They also deploy the word panic wrongly. Panic among ordinary people in crisis is profoundly uncommon. The media will call a crowd of people running from certain death a panicking mob, even though running is the only sensible thing to do. In Haiti, they continue to report that food is being withheld from distribution for fear of “stampedes.” Do they think Haitians are cattle?

“The belief that people in disaster (particularly poor and nonwhite people) are cattle or animals or just crazy and untrustworthy regularly justifies spending far too much energy and far too many resources on control – the American military calls it “security” – rather than relief. A British-accented voiceover on CNN calls people sprinting to where supplies are being dumped from a helicopter a “stampede” and adds that this delivery “risks sparking chaos.” The chaos already exists, and you can’t blame it on these people desperate for food and water. Or you can, and in doing so help convince your audience that they’re unworthy and untrustworthy.”

Finally read this and it made me bust up several times, loudly, at the office. Thanks for the entertainment and well written piece!

Unfortunately, the heroes of the mainstream media—as documented in this post, In the midst of looting chaos by Anderson Cooper (AC360)—still gleefully represent the apparently tiny minority that aren’t behaving in a noble fashion.

What’s amazing is that, while rioting over food and water when you haven’t seen either in nearly a week is completely understandable, most Haitians are apparently not doing that. That’s an amazing and uplifting story, Anderson Cooper. Report that instead of your staged heroism with a blood-covered boy.

Similarly, the article, Haiti earthquake: police admit gangs have taken over Port-au-Prince by Bruno Waterfield (London Telegraph) also emphasizes the negative, though they start off claiming that all of Port-of-Prince is apparently lost and end by admitting that the recently sprung gang leaders seem to be fighting over one slum.

Brother Jim Boyden from the Jesuit Mission near Port au Prince:

“I wanna get this out because I have not seen a whole lot of … the media … with the picture that I’ve seen … the little things that I’ve seen in the media …they’re covering pictures of the Haitians that are looting and gunfire and burning and crime. I have led medical brigades to the garbage dumps of Guatemala for the last six years. I do many, many, many. And, they’re oftentimes chaotic and people are fighting to see the doctor and they’re pushing each other forward. What I saw yesterday, the Haitians that were here…triaged themselves. There was a person here with a compound fracture … everyone made sure that he saw the doctor first. They were orderly, they were appreciative, they were grateful and they are right now, about the most honorable people that I can possibly imagine. I have never seen patients act as respectful to a doctor and I’ve never seen a crowd of people act as orderly and trying to help out perfect strangers. I’ve never seen that. If you go to an American hospital on a Friday night in the emergency room, people are scrambling to see a doctor and yelling at each other to try to see the doctor first … and these Haitian people are noble.

“[…]

“Let me say one other quick thing: I arrived in the country on November 1st to start working in a school. My first impression when I first came here, I said to my home pastor, I said, ‘I hope at some point I can get to a love for these Haitians that is not based on pity.’ That was in November; for the last three days, when I would think that the Haitians would deserve all the pity they can have, I have no pity for them, I only have respect and admiration and has just completely changed my view. I no longer have pity for the people, I just have respect and admiration and they’re noble. (Emphasis in original.)”

There’s no link because I transcribed the text directly from the podcast.

When asked whether things won’t just get worse in Haiti until troops are on the ground, Bill Clinton said (cited from Haiti police battle to keep streets safe:

“When you think about people who lost everything, except what they’re carrying on their backs, who haven’t not only eaten, probably haven’t slept in four days… and when the sun goes down, it’s totally dark and they spend all night lying, wandering around tripping over bodies living and dead − I think they’ve behaved quite well.”

Couldn’t agree with you more, Bill.

So you finally in a german class now? :) *takes cover*

What if 9-11 was set up by homeland security to generally increase controlling and enabling this new Business? … just an evil tought from me …

*habenwill*

It’s a bit late now, but the article What should Obama say in Copenhagen? by Dean Baker (Politico) serves as a source for the U.S. requirement that the Chinese commit to ¼ of the per-capita CO2-output of the U.S.:

“The current view in the U.S. appears to be that the Chinese should forever commit themselves to emitting greenhouse gases at one-third or one-quarter the per capita rate as people in the United States.”

So, when you kept hearing the President say that the “deal is on the table” and that “countries should step up”, he knew full well that the deal was completely unacceptable to the Chinese. Hillary also made sure to very specifically note that the U.S. would only proceed with their deal if “all other parties” also signed on. Both Obama and his Secretary of State took the opportunity to try to look and sound good because they knew that the Chinese wouldn’t take the bait and force the U.S. to actually have to go through with the deal they’d offered.

The article, We Have a Nobel Peace President Who Won’t Ban Land Mines by Bill Moyers (AlterNet), points out that a major modern-day deployer of land mines is, in fact, South Korea, another major U.S. ally (home to dozens of thousands of U.S. troops and numerous bases).

“But still we refuse to sign, citing security commitments to our friends and allies, such as South Korea, where a million mines fill the demilitarized zone between it and North Korea.”

Given that situation, there is every reason to believe that U.S. commitments to South Korea play an important role in the continued lack of a U.S. signature on the land mine treaty. It’s not as if an objective reading of history would lead anyone to expect principles to have anything to do with U.S. policy.

hey, their belts look like thouse we got in the swiss army but look at the shoes. looks like the ones from my dad or even his dad. is this standard equipment of us-army??

Begging the question by Eric Lippert (Fabulous Adventures In Coding):

“Suppose I asked “why are diamonds very hard but butter is very soft?” and you answered “diamond and butter are both made out of atoms; the atoms of diamonds are hard and the atoms of butter are soft.” You would have begged the question; your answer to my question “why are some things hard and some things soft” is “because some things are made out of stuff that is hard and some things are made out of stuff that is soft” – that is, you’ve avoided answering the question by providing an “explanation” that itself cannot be understood without answering the original question – namely, why is some stuff hard and some stuff soft? This pseudo-explanation has no predictive power; it doesn’t tell us anything new, it just circles back on itself. The explanatory assumption – that some atoms are hard and some atoms are soft – is stronger than the thing we are trying to investigate – the hardness and softness of two substances.”

I am just listening to a phonecall my colleague has with a customer. Seems the customer did not read this blog yet.

Well done.

This one’s from Chris Meadowcroft:

const string EnglishListPrefix = "{";
const string EnglishListSuffix = "}";
const string IntermediateSeparator = ", ";
const string LastSeparator = " and ";
static string BuildStringWithEnglishListSyntax(IEnumerable<string> itemsEnumerable)
{
  StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder(EnglishListPrefix);
  using(IEnumerator<string> items = itemsEnumerable.GetEnumerator())
  {
    if(items.MoveNext())  // make sure it's not an empty list
    {
      bool isFirstString = true;
      bool isLastString = false;
      while(!isLastString)
      {
        string current = items.Current;
        isLastString = !items.MoveNext();
        if(!isFirstString)
        {
          result.Append(isLastString ? LastSeparator : IntermediateSeparator);
        }
        else
        {
          isFirstString = false;
        }
        result.Append(current);
       }
     }
   }
   result.Append(EnglishListSuffix);
   return result.ToString();
}

why dont you have a little icon so i can put this on my facebook page?

The photo attached to the article itself is quite tame. In the ensuing days since publication, these far more devastating ones have appeared:

Destroyed City BlockFlattened to RubbleEnormous Crater in the Street

I know not only a few but a actually a lot of young people here in Switzerland that do not accept these regulations once more from America and therefore say, they will not travel to the US any more and telling me that America is kind of an “unwanted country”. They have the mindset that America is on one’s high horse. So I think as well this will have major drawbacks to the U.S. over the time. The reputation of the U.S. already not the best and getting worst for not only a few people here.

The whole situation in the U.S. with so called “Security Issues” (what clearly solves non of these security issues but sounds like they do something against terrorism; in the world of IT this concept is called “Security by obsurity”) reminds me to some Hollywood movies. Do you remember “Equilibrium” or “Brazil”? Think America is moving fast into this direction…

The article Call Me Ishmael… by Tony Karon (Rootless Cosmopolitan) puts the paltry thoughts outlined above much more eloquently:

“The war on terror is a profound conceptual error, not simply because the problem with making war on a common noun (drugs, poverty, terror) is that a common noun cannot surrender; but also because it treats a small band of extremists with no means of transforming the balance of power as if they represent a genuine strategic threat rather than what John Kerry quite correctly in 2004 labeled a ‘nuisance.’ Kerry told the New York Times, ‘We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.’”

The article, Not My Financial Crisis – I’ve Got Literally Nothing to Lose by Alexander Zaitchik (AlterNet), makes the following point about those who have not really participated in the economic boom, who don’t really do much more than scrape by:

“Scraping by will likely become even harder in the days ahead for people in my income bracket. But it seems to me that a decade of scraping by is good practice for whatever’s coming. And it’s just a fact that this particular era of capitalism hasn’t been very good for those of us at the bottom of the wealth pyramid. If it takes some creative destruction to herald a new, more egalitarian, better regulated economy, then so be it. Millions of us are waiting for the reckoning with belts already tightened. They’ve been tightened for as long as we can remember. (emphasis added)”

It is easy to sympathize with the emphasized statement above; it’s probably true. But, it also indicates that the author isn’t at the bottom of the heap or isn’t aware of the ramifications of a true restructuring of the economy. When economists claim that the system can be saved, they mean that it will be put back the way it was; they don’t mean systemic change, which would benefit the unwashed masses, but not before it starved half of them to death.

Moral-Philosophic Implications for Socialism in One Sector of a Visit from the Bernoulli Fairy by Brad DeLong (Grasping Reality) has some back-of-the-envelope numbers supporting the idea stated above that “[t]he only reason many schemes tend to succeed instead of fail is that people, in general, pay off their debts and work very hard.”. He comes to the conclusion that, when you invest in the market, “you are accepting assets that promise an average return of $125,000, and yet the market is silling to sell them to you for only $55,000”. Unless, of course, you make this investment right before everything goes in the dumper.

How do I post a picture of all suns and in the low to mid 80's for this week? HAHAHA well you’ll get to see for yourself soon! :)

surprised that he really recommend to use com-automation at all. its shaky even für interactive winform-apps. but using com-automation in asp.net app?!?!? … don’t know how they get fogbugz stable at all using these techniques…

One week later and Mr. Last is a good deal more skeptical than the words quoted above would imply. In My Hope for Obama by Jesse Last (3QuarksDaily), he now writes:

“Recently, he seems to have turned up the “change” volume but neglected the “individual contribution” sound, and now his message feels slightly out of tune. When I watch him speak on television, I see the crowd cheer with an incredible fervor. […] I just wish I did not feel as though I were watching a rally bordering on a revival. We need soaring rhetoric in a world of depressed resignation, but such rhetoric should be filled with content. I want to hear more about his proposals.”

Welcome back.

In Who wins if it is McCain v. Hillary? McCain v. Obama? by Mitchell Freedman, says:

“As for Obama, he remains a mirror with flowery rhetoric. People see what they want to see with him, more than many candidates. Yet, when he gets specific on matters such as health care, Obama keeps wanting to show, at least rhetorically, that he is a reliable corporate Democrat a la the Clintons.”

Obama’s health-care plan would cover less than half of the Americans without health insurance and would be voluntary—screwing any chance it has of working because the insurance pool would be out-of-balance as only sick people would volunteer to pay into the program.

Rudy missing in action for Iraq panel by Craig Gordon (NY Newsday) reports that:

“Giuliani left the Iraq Study Group last May after just two months, walking away from a chance to make up for his lack of foreign policy credentials on the top issue in the 2008 race, the Iraq war. … [h]e cited “previous time commitments” in a letter explaining his decision to quit, and a look at his schedule suggests why – the sessions at times conflicted with Giuliani’s lucrative speaking tour that garnered him $11.4 million in 14 months.”

Check the article for more sordid details. However, those who believe that his preference for cash above public involvement will sink his campaign are sorely mistaken. People don’t care about shit like this. If his campaign staff is clever (and they are—they’re the same people Bush used), they’ll spin this as Giuliani, Man of the People, didn’t have time for high falutin’ study groups.

It truly takes a master idiot to get Russia mad at us again. See Bush Flunks Diplomacy 101 by Fred Kaplan (Slate) for a rundown of the history behind Bush’s missiles in Europe.

“What the Russians really fear about this plan is the vast American presence that goes with it. The anti-missile interceptors—the same models as the ones now in Alaska—are gigantic, as big as the old intercontinental ballistic missiles and, like them, buried in substantial blast-hardened silos. To deploy 10 of them, along with a huge X-band radar system, will require an enormous military base, heavily staffed, apportioned with the usual complement of U.S. Air Force infrastructure and American amenities. … In short, the United States would be gaining a substantial foothold deep inside Eastern Europe, closer than ever to the Russian border.”

But, wait! Don’t they realize that we’re the good guys? That we beat them 15 years ago—fair and square—and that we’re all on the same team now?

The appropriately titled, Waaaaaah! by Macalope, takes a columnist at Engadget to town for making a hypothesis, assuming it to be true without a shred of proof, then whining about conclusions drawn from it. When Block asks, “So why not make 99-cent 128-bit AAC tracks DRM free as well?”, the Macalope responds:

“Why not give Ryan Block a pony?! Because he’d only bitch that he wanted a bigger, shinier pony.”