Damien Miller's weblog

I'm sorry for not updating my weblog for so long. Between the demands of work, a very active and playful son and a persistent illness, I just haven't had the time or much that I'd considered to be of wide interest to say.

This changed yesterday as I watched an incredible thing: our government apologising to indigenous Australians who had been forcibly removed from their families, a result of government policy over the course of seven decades. This apology has been a long time in coming; it was stubbornly blocked by the previous conservative government and vigorously used as a token in the sad culture wars that have held this country over the last two decades. That conservative government is no more, and with the departure of its bitterly ideological leader, a good proportion of their resistance disappeared too.

I, probably to my shame, don't have any deep knowledge or interest of what transpired during this chapter of my nation's history and, having been born around the time the practice was concluded, certainly do not feel any personal guilt for what was done. In spite of this, I strongly supported an apology. Other than the most strident right-wing culture warriors, everyone (even the previous Prime Minister) agreed that what was done was wrong - the resistance to apologise was justified with two arguments: that apologising would traduce those who acted with good intentions to (in their view) improve the lives of indigenous children, and that the current generation should not bear guilt for actions carried out by previous generations.

I have always considered these arguments to be trivially flawed. To the first, the apology is for the government's actions and policies. These were clearly shame-worthy, having been motivated by some awful views of race and the desired destiny of indigenous Australians. The actions, motivations and guilt of the people involved in the removal and subsequent care of the affected children are a separate matter, for those individuals' consciences alone.

The second argument fails to convince too: it is not the current generation who are apologising, rather the instrumentality of government itself. The same instrumentality with the same broad constitution, that presided over the offending policies is what continues to exist today and it is appropriate that it apologises for its own past mistakes.

The apology itself was excellent. I can't recall having ever being touched by a speech made in the House of Representatives before, but this one certainly did between its recitation of the personal story of Nanna Fejo's removal, and the brutally confronting quotation of the racist doctrine underpinning the policies that enabled it. Prime Minister Rudd went further than I dared hope, producing an appropriate and great speech for a historic occasion.

Not so the reply. The beginning of Dr. Nelson's reply was also touching and I recall my shock at thinking that he'd actually brought his party to the table and was making a sincere apology. Sadly, it didn't last very long - only ten or so pauses before he started drawing irrelevant and inappropriate equivalences between the settler and indigenous experience.

Dr. Nelson, in one of those excellent opening paragraphs, admonished us to "place ourselves in the shoes of others, imbued with the imaginative capacity to see this issue through their eyes with decency and respect." I don't have to step far; as a father, I could imagine no greater pain than having my son forcibly removed from me. To tacitly suggest that such pain was justified by some aspirational struggle towards nationhood is offensive and not supported by any fact of which I am aware.

His speech could only be described as schiziod. Divided between his clear personal sympathy for the apology, and the need to pander to the atavists in the party who put installed him as their leader (it being widely believed that the other contender for the leadership was rejected because of his support for the apology). The result is that the could delay and slightly mar the occasion, but not stop it - a lesson for social conservatives everywhere.

I only hope that Prime Minister Rudd's gesture of bipartisanship is genuine and not political, and this becomes one of those rare critical points where the circumstances are right for a real change in the lives of our indigenous citizens. It is sorely overdue.

posted at: 22:18 | path: /life | permanent link

Today I learned of the passing of Jun-ichiro "Itojun" Hagino. I had only met Itojun on an handful of occasions in person but had worked with him on the OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects for some years, leading me to become a great admirer of his expertise, intellect and hard work. Most of the impact of his great efforts on IPv6 lie in the future and it is a deep shame that he will not be around to see his life's work used by everyone. So long, Itojun - you will be missed.

posted at: 22:22 | path: /life | permanent link

Simone, Hugo and I are one week into an eight week stay in California (Mountain View) while I start my new job. Hugo tolerated the ~16 hour transit very well, not crying once on the plane. Driving on the wrongright side of the road isn't as difficult as I thought it would be, but being a pedestrian accustomed to left hand driving is decidedly dangerous - cars just seem to leap out from surprising directions at intersections.

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos to post yet as I managed to lose the camera on our second day here. Worse, the camera contained all of our photos from Fathers' day onwards and there is no getting those back. Mum, who has just arrived for a two week visit, has picked up a replacement on the way so I'll have to take more to compensate.

We are about to head up the 101 to San Francisco, so today should be interesting...

posted at: 04:24 | path: /life | permanent link

Baby Hugo is going great so far. He has one terrible "witching hour" in the everning when we requires a lot of attention in the form of rocking, patting, being sung to, being walked, offered visual stimulation and frequent food (I'm told this is very normal). Apart from this he is a very happy and contented child who loves to observe the world around him, and the faces of his extended family.

A collection of Hugo photos is online, covering roughly the first two weeks of his life. More to come :)

posted at: 22:16 | path: /life | permanent link

At 10:56AM on Friday 28th July, our son Hugo Benjamin Miller was born after a long but uncomplicated labor. I was lucky enough to be able to spend the first few nights at the hospital with my wife and Hugo. This was a great pleasure and I think it made things a bit easier for Simone as she recovered from the birth, as she did not have to get in and out of bed to change nappies or settle baby.

Hugo is a wonderful baby (all 4.16kg and 53cm of him) and has so far displayed a very easygoing temperament. He is easy to keep satisfied too, and seems to have only four reasons to cry: nappy, burp, cuddle or food. If I can't figure out which of these is the cause then I can do a brute-force run through the first three and and then hand him over to Simone, confident that the solution is the one that I can't deliver. May it stay this way for a long time!

Some pictures of the little man:

posted at: 17:33 | path: /life | permanent link

We are expecting a baby any hour now (literally), so at last I have an excuse for not updating this thing. I have been a little (sarcasm) busy preparing and moving out of our home ahead of a renovation. Moving out required that I relocate my ADSL connection, and I also took the opportunity to move all of the infrastructure services (email lists, OpenSSH bug tracker, rsync and CVS servers, etc.) from my home server onto a co-located server at Hostcentral. So far this has been very reliable, but I worry about backups now that I no longer have regular physical access to my system.

The scant free time that I have had has been spent trying to figure out how to build CPython modules (notably py-radix, py-editdist and the log reader module in flowd) on Windows XP (gag) with Microsoft's gratis Visual Studio Express compilers to no avail. I have also been trying to navigate the maze of Python Web Application Frameworks (Django, Pylons, TurboGears, etc., ad nauseum). This too has been a failure, largely because of the "improved" Python setuptools packaging format that all these projects seem to have adopted crashing into my bloody-minded need to build OpenBSD ports/packages of software I install on my systems. Python setuptools distribute modules as "eggs" ostensibly to make things easier for the user (à la CPAN), but they make life quite a bit more difficult for packagers. If I had a weekend to bash at it I could probably knock it over, but that is fantasy. Why am I looking at Python WAFs? I'd like to keep my skills sharp by developing a good cooking recipe site for my wife and some of our friends.

I have updated my OpenBSD TODO list. A few things have been done by others while I have been slacking. Darren Tucker has been busy improving OpenSSH over the last month or so (well, more busy than ever). He has implemented a simple but powerful policy system for sshd_config (search for the Match option). With this, it is possible to do things like:

# Don't trust this guy - only let him use sftp
Match user djm
	AllowTcpForwarding no
	X11Forwarding no
	ForceCommand /usr/libexec/sftp-server -l INFO

What has been implemented so far it pretty basic, but is already useful. It will be better once matching on CIDR address ranges and control of pre-authentication options (in particular authentication types) is added.

I just found, and greatly enjoyed Charles Stross' A Colder War (full text online) - a very fun bit of science fiction, where the singularity meets the Dark Alliance and H. P. Lovecraft.

The situation in Lebanon saddens me greatly. Hezbollah's indiscriminate firing of rockets at civilians is wrong and obviously counterproductive. Gandhi showed them the weapons that they should be using against powerful opponents, and demonstrated that they work. On the other hand, Israel's response is immoral and even more ill-considered. Targeting civilian infrastructure (power stations, ports and airports) is pure state terrorism and a brutal demonstration of military force against a defenceless target. This sort of collective punishment of a nation that was taking tentative steps towards becoming an effective democracy and peacefully disarming Hezbollah will just embitter a generation and guarantee an ongoing supply of recruits to Israel-hating terrorist organisations. If you think that I am being unduly harsh on Israel, consider that Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation and so they cannot be expected to behave with any decency, *unlike* a democracy with a functioning constitution with working courts, UN membership, etc. One cannot justify brutality by saying "my brutal enemy struck first".

posted at: 06:41 | path: /life | permanent link