lol they actually have a kangaroo as a pet…

Neighbours is superb…. comments disabled to prevent alternate viewpoints!

Offer to pay 60p for every commemorative 50p (that is, the ones with a different design on the reverse to the standard one) that you are given. Then, when there are none left in circulation, sell them for £1000s each. When you get fed up (and have made back your money), just spend the remainder.

Incidentally, here is a common-sense article about the horrific new currency we’ll all be using from later this year.

According to the US Census population clock, we've hit a remarkable number:

I know I'm going to get asked this, so I'm putting it here for posterity's sake.

The Union is in financial trouble - yet Leeds get half as much money and run with twice as many students. We get more money per head than anyone else, it seems. So, we must be wasting money somewhere - here are *my* recommendations. Feel free to argue, and yes, I realise I'm being big-headed here.

Incidentally, I've asked for a copy of the latest accounts and/or budget but not received anything back from VP Finance yet. We'll see whether my figures add up then.

1. The Exec just got a pay-rise from £220 pw to £250 pw (supposedly backdated to the beginning of the year!) giving them (over 52 weeks) a grand total of £13000 pa. If they only get paid during term time, that's £7500 pa. Or nearly twice as much as a student loan. I would recommend £150-200 pw, with a possible exception for those who work after-hours, who could get minimum wage in addition. I've been told this is "bare minimum funding" yet I believe £13k is about what you expect when you're on Industrial Placement, and they don't get the benefit of having student housing...
   
2. The Exec to be cut down drastically - do we need so many full-time officers? I can understand having President, Finance, Democracy, Education - and Media does bring in additional funds which could require a full time employee, but do we really need a full time Action chair? Environmental and Ethical officer (surely People and Planet would do this for free)? POSTGRAD officer (surely this is a maximum of one-day-a-week!) Community Students Officer, Department Committee Officer? Get rid of those 5 people, and you've paid for the Student Advice centre already. I understand some are not full-time employees, but I presume they still get paid...
   
3. Union rents - if a juice bar can afford to set up within the Union, then obviously the rents are too low. I'd be intrigued to see how much they're paying for prime commercial estate...
4. Support staff - As far as I can remember in my experiences setting up CompSoc, the Clubs and Societies staff never seemed to do a lot to help, and they were a large hindrance in some aspects. While I'm sure they do valuable work - do we really need the amount of staff we have so far? There are other departments with staff I don't quite understand either...
   
5. Media. While I agree Loughborough benefits from it's (mostly unheard) radio and TV stations, was it *really* worth spending the money on that? I hear over £1,000,000 was spent on those facilities, and they aren't that great - I wouldn't even say they're taken full advantage of either...
6. The website sucks - big time. If it was easier to use, a LOT easier on the eye, and actually designed rather than having a mish-mash of different fonts, colours and poor spelling/grammar then maybe some funding could be drawn up through adverts on the site, rather than the measly 4 square inches at the top that no-one sees, let alone clicks on. Get rid of Uniservity, pay a local company like Cuttlefish to do you a site, or give CompSoc £1000 and they'll do one in Drupal that kicks butt. Do *not* just go with a cheap company, get professional advice from someone like... Leeds, Warwick, even Cambridge!
   
7. All nights bar Hey Ewe, FND and EOTP are free. You'll get more people in, and more will be spent on the bar. While Queue Jump may bring in additional revenue, I think this goes against the spirit of the Union.
8. Sponsorship - While I'm dead set against having sponsors on stage telling you about their latest and greatest properties to rent (and I was there when they actually did this) I wouldn't mind banners around the place with sponsors names on. No leafleting though.
9. Label - How much does the magazine cost to produce? If it's making money, keep it, if it's breaking even, cut the circulation (they're all left in Dining Halls anyway) if it's losing money, cut it to internet publication only.
10. Publish your full accounts, and ask the University to do a budget review as part of the Business School's next year syllabus or something - so much cruft must be able to be cut, it's untrue.
    

And that's about it. Everything else is small-fry and I believe it will get cut anyway once students realise that actual services are under threat.

Comments are more than welcome - if you don't know what I'm on about, visit www.lufbra.net and see how poor we present ourselves on a national stage, compared to (bringing back the old example) Leeds Union at http://www.luuonline.com/index who don't do an excellent job, but they're clear, easy to read, and do it on a budget far less than LSU.

Last Thursday I went to see Richard Stallman (RMS) deliver a lecture in room C9 of the Renford Building, North Campus, University of Manchester.

For those who do not know, RMS is the guy who ‘invented’ free software.  His organisation ‘Gnu’ was created in 1983 to create a 100% ‘free’ operating system.  He also proposed the ‘4 freedoms’ which he regards as essential for computer software to be truly ‘free’.

At the talk, RMS went through the four freedoms, and gave a good explanation of what each of them meant, in terms of both technical and social responsibility.  I liked this part of the talk very much.  However, the second half of the talk really got under my skin.  It’s for this reason that I’m disillusioned with RMS’s opinions.

For the second half of the lecture, RMS clearly had an axe to grind re: Linus Torvalds, the ‘overseer’ of the Linux kernel.  Initially releasing his code as Open Source (rather than ‘free software’), Linus believed that the beauty of Open Source software was the ability for so many programmers to contribute and review the code - thus creating more powerful and better written software.  RMS made a point that it wasn’t released as ‘Gnu GPL’ software - until after RMS had convinced Linus that Linux + Gnu would make a good partnership - and fulfil their ‘different, but shared visions.’

RMS is clearly aggrieved at the fact that ‘Linux’ is now really popular, and ‘Gnu’ remains an pretty anonymous entity (as regards a lay-man’s perception).  Those of us who know enough about the OS are comfortable enough to afford Gnu an awful lot of credit for their work.. but seriously - a name like ‘gnu’ was never a marketable brand.  Whilst I understand his desire for proper accreditation - those of us who can appreciate the work do respect gnu.

The other thing that annoyed me about RMS is his tunnel-vision.  One guy in the audience at the lecture said something along the lines of -

“If my Microwave contains embedded software, is it necessary in your eyes for that software to be free.”

This is where I think RMS showed that he’s become so focused on self-promotion, that he’s actually not sat down in a long time and thought clearly about the free software philosophy.  Embedded software, in my opinion, is fast becoming a very grey area - as more and more devices become interconnected.  RMS response was similar to the following:

“It doesn’t matter what software your Microwave is running.  You press the buttons, and the Microwave cooks your food.  Get over it.”

I think the guy deserves a doctorate in narrow-mindedness.

One of the things that really inspires me about Free Software is the ability for both hardware and software to be modified above and beyond their original design.  In a few lines of python I can write a script that when I press a button on my scanner - it can upload the output to a webserver and then present me with a simple form on the screen to fill in some meta-data about that image.  This is not what that button on the CanoScan N6400U was designed for - but through the power of Open Source software - I can do this.

Now, back to the Microwave.  Sure, it could be unhealthy, but say I had 9 meals that I’d cook in a Microwave.  If I was able to see the code and edit the software on the microwave - it would be easy to re-program the microwave for each number to represent one of my 9 meals.  ‘1′ could be reprogrammed to scrambled eggs.. etc.  It’s not possible with a closed-source approach - it is possible using ‘free software.’

I also use gnu/Linux not because it’s necessarily free - but because I think it works better for me than other options available.  As a systems person, the freedom I get with ‘free software’ allows me to create scalable software that I would only have previously been capable of doing as Manager of a large IT project with the buying power to license lots of different pieces of software and stick them all together.  This is the beauty of free software for me.

Pay for it - no!  RMS also said that it’s ok to sell ‘free software.’  I think this is a stupid, stupid, stupid thing to say - and muddies the waters for people who are looking to utilise free software in their environments.  I think it’s ok to charge to modify free software on an ad hoc basis - but selling free software opens the doors for people to resell other’s work without any direct involvement in the creation of that work.  I could set up a business re-selling OO.org - that’s just not ethical in my eyes - however, producing an extension to OO.org - charging for the time to develop the extension and then bundling OO.org with the extension is a far more sensible way of charging.  Charge for service, not products.

The other thing about freedom, is that we should have a choice whether to be free, or un-free - that’s part of freedom.  Although we live in a quasi-democracy whereby we’re all meant to be free and can do our own thing - look at the mini-societies within that democracy.  There’s never been a truly democratic business - as it just doesn’t work.  An Admiral on a ship is a dictator of sorts.  Giving someone freedom is giving them a choice.  I should be able to choose whether to run free/non-free software.  Were there no longer the choice, then the points of freedom would be moot.

When Tim Berners-Lee released the code for the World Wide Web - he didn’t say that any changes made should be shared.  Some were shared and some weren’t.  It didn’t stop the Web from becoming the most pervasive information medium ever - in a unprecedented short timespan.  His ideas of freedom weren’t forcing people to be free - it was to give people a choice to be free.  Perhaps we can learn from that example, rather than by requiring that everyone subscribe to a Texan model of freedom.

I ended up leaving RMS lecture feeling a bit deflated.  This man obviously made a great start, and should be remembered as someone who has made a tremendous contribution to ‘free software’ - but I think his tiresome request for acknowledgement - when he already has that acknowledgement from the people that matter - is something that’s put me off the guy.  I think it would suit him better to sit behind closed doors and work out a ‘free software philosophy’ - rather that simply rely on a ‘cult of personality’ to direct Free Software in the way his gut wants it to go.

I found a bug in cmd, due to extreme procrastination. If you fill the screen with your command

then press down arrow to get the last entered command, the prompt disappears:

OK, back to my essays!

If like me you've not used a paper based phone book in years since a little thing called the Internet has been around, do the following:

Call the UK phone book cancellation number is 0800 833400 then option 5 then option 1.
The Yellow pages number is meant to be 0800 771444, but the number has been disconnected. So good for BT but bad Yellow pages.

My MP, Alan Keen, finally wrote to me after about 6 weeks to say he had signed Early Day Motion 1155 on public photography. fanks mister! \o/

A cynical man may suspect that all labour MPs have been instructed to make nice after their local election hammering, and otherwise ignored communications from constituents have been revisited.

The Union are instituting a policy which would drastically change the Life Membership scheme, which is unchanged (except for formatting) since it's inception in 1988.

The main points of the changes are:

• The £15 fee will now be an annual subscription
• Members get 5 free entries to Stupid Tuesday/Hey Ewe/FND for their own sole use
• Members get queue jump for themselves + 2 guests
• Exec get unlimited free entries for themselves + 1 guest, plus queue jump
• Exec get invites to all Fresher/Grad balls
• Honorary membership will only be awarded for 1 year

It's really quite annoying, and the LSU Computer Society (amongst others) are taking this on personally.

As I'm a Life Member, and unable to attend the meeting on Monday at 5pm (Board Room, LSU, hint hint) to discuss this, I've decided to draft a letter to the Exec responsible. Please feel free to leave comments, and I'll submit it to them on Monday if I feel it would be beneficial. For the trendies amongst you, there has been a Facebook group created by the LSU Secretary, Kirsty Smith, at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=26661743800&ref=ts

Sorry about the crazy formatting, it's copied from a PDF as I left the OpenOffice document at home before I came to the Office.

*****

Dear Sirs,

Document UC-082-paper-07 (Life Memberships Policy) has been brought to my attention. As a
respected member of the LSU Computer Society, I have a number of concerns which I wish to raise
as this document may well affect myself in the future, in addition to the numerous friends and
colleagues I have accrued over the past 5 years at Loughborough University.

The current policy, as you so describe, has been in effect for 20 years. The document does not
address at any stage a suitable reason for the review, and the adage “if it ain't broke, don't fix it”
comes to mind.

In particular, you raise a valid point:

“The working group agreed that one of the reasons for becoming a Life Member is continue to
support Loughborough Students’ Union and the work it undertakes. These are normally students
who have affinity to LSU that will continue into their working life’s and beyond. Life members
play a valuable role by supporting LSU. Life Members by giving support means that LSU can
maintain the range of services and activities that it undertakes to ‘Better Student Life’ and the
Loughborough Experience for it’s membership.”

Those who choose life membership fall into one of two categories:

1. Those who are residing in Loughborough, and have friends around that they wish to continue meeting through clubs and societies, in addition to attending occasional events such as FND etc.
2. Those who have invested a lot of valuable time, effort and funds into a club, society or group that they would like to remain involved with. This is by far the largest proportion of life members in my opinion.

I fall into the latter category (graduated July 2007), having founded and subsequently followed the
Computer Society since it's inception. I was considered for the member of the year award in this
academic year, which goes to show how valuable life members are to clubs and societies –
especially those with strong communities.

I am therefore astonished to read that you are intending to launch a “Life Membership Plus” scheme
that throws away “five free entries to certain nights at the union”. Supposedly, those that are not at
LSU are presumably employed and therefore have more funds available than your average student.

You also appear to have instated a “Queue Jump” scheme, allowing “privileged” guests to jump
past all the queues, and extended this to include the Life Membership Plus scheme. Students should
be given priority over life members and guests to all events, and they should not have to pay
additional fees to skip the queues as this means the student who is tight on cash and can't afford to
buy such a ticket is disadvantaged.

Similarly, the annual report – during my four years at Loughborough, I never even realised that an
Annual Report existed! As Life Members do not have a vote at any event – Union, Club, Society or
otherwise – I see little point in paying for the distribution of these reports. At most, an e-mail would
be of interest.

The £15 annual fee is also a little worrying – every society benefits from the involvement of past
members. These past members are less likely to contribute if they're paying £15 every year, and not
using any of the so-called “benefits” that you propose to include. The idea of Direct Debit also
scares me – the thought of the Union having direct access to withdraw funds from my account
worries me, thinking that should you impose one of these “fines” that seem to have arisen in the
past year, I have no right of challenge before you dip your hand in and withdraw funds! A standing
order would suffice, an e-mail reminder to pay dues would be best – which also means that you'll
receive less complaints as a result of withdrawing funds without prior notice when someone moves/
loses contact with the club/society they have been involved with.

If anything, every committee member of a club or society should receive automatic life membership
to their club (and therefore, the Union) as they generally are the people who are going to help the
most – in my experience, a lot have far greater influence, respect and use to members than many of
the Exec from previous years!

To be told that “The current LSU Clubs and Societies Honorary Membership Policy be amended so
that the free honorary life membership be only granted for one year” smacks of money grabbing and
no real interest in the pursuits of a better community. You are supposed to be honouring the
members that the society has greatest benefited from, yet you once again seem to be demoting them
to a sub-class of membership.

All in all, despite the numerous (and exhaustive) spelling and grammatical errors indicative of
Keystage 3 students, this policy is ill-thought-through and lacks any motivation other than an
attempt to open a new (minor) revenue stream, and would seek to undermine the efforts of past
students who wish to stay in contact with, aid and assist with old friends, clubs and societies.

Since 2003, I have seen the Union deteriorate to the state that many societies are now having to
spend much of their time with needless Union paperwork, rules and regulations that back then were
minimal, unimportant, and for the most part, ignored. It saddens me to say, if I were a finalist now, I
would not consider life membership for an instant, and instead make contact with friends still at
University through alternate means.

Regards,



Matthew Walster BSc(Hons) MBCS ON

Once again proving his editing prowess, Tony has managed to squeeze around 4 hours of wibble into a 40 minute podcast. Nice one.

In this episode:-

• Discussion:
  • An interview with Pete Savage.
    • progbox.vid
  • A chat with Phil Newborough.
    • Random Ubuntu Advocacy
    • Crunchbang Linux
  • We rate our Hardy upgrade experiences.
  • Following up with our CLI vs GUI discussion with Laura Cowen.
• In the news:
  • gNewSense release version 2.
  • Adobe opening up the FLV specs.
  • The UK's Unix User Group has convinced the High Court to carry out a judicial review of the British Standard Institute's decision to vote in favour of Microsoft's controversial Office Open XML (OOXML) specification.
  • 30th birthday of spam
  • Sun in process of certifying Ubuntu.
• Competition results!
  • The winner of the trivia competition is announced. We'll send them a coupon for the Canonical Store to spend on whatever they want! We'll have another competition in Episode 6.

Comments and suggestions are welcomed to: podcast@ubuntu-uk.org
Up to 30 seconds of voicemail can be left at +44 (0) 845 508 1986
Follow our twitter feed http://twitter.com/uupc

Andy asked me what there was to see and do in Edinburgh. Since this is about the 15th time someone has asked me, I’ve made an annotated map using the Google maps builder thing. I’ll return to it when I have a bit more time and add some other stuff to it further out from the centre.

I've just read http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7384788.stm and it gave me an idea.

Some if not all of you know, I have a Private Pilot's Licence. I acheived it in 2004, and kept it current up until a little explosion that happened in 2006 on Tollerton runway, destroying the front half of the plane and nearly blowing me to smithereens. Then, my parents didn't want me to fly... I still have the intention to - but at over £100/hour, it's a little impractical.

The (relatively) new Diesel engines that have come out for aircraft are amazing, you can get the costs down to £80/hour wet hire, which works out to be about £25-35/hour just for the fuel. The PA28 I trained in was between 9 and 10 USG/hour which is about £50/hour, so it makes a difference!

So, imagine if you powered it with electricity... You don't have to have a fast engine - as long as you've got torque you can gear it if you need to, and you wouldn't need a variable pitch propeller as the engine can easily change it's speed without over-stressing. If we talk about a 4 hour duration, like the GT Lightning, you're talking about some seriously expensive batteries to keep the weight down (and hence, the CG). However, a TB10 is about £60k at 20-25 years old and the lovely SR22s are... A hell of a lot more.

Why not make a proper electric plane? Charges in half an hour or so, and has a duration of 4 hours (1.5 hours there, 1.5 hours back, 1 hour reserve) and use that as a commute?

Considering you can get "green" electricity these days, it seems like the best solution. If we put in a decent autopilot, it could even fly the (lower) airways without much problem at say 6000ft. The pilot would be responsible for being seated during takeoff and landing, and that's it - you could have a lateral guidence system using GPS, a vertical guidance using a modified ILS/MLS at airports, and set altitudes and joining lanes for traffic. Even the taxiways could have tracer leads in them to lead the aircraft from the parking to the runway...

But of course there are several problems here:

1. The lower airspace is crowded. You can't have automated vehicles roaming the sky unless you mandate the fitting of every aircraft with at least Mode S transponders, if not a full TCAS - and microlights aren't going to like that.
2. Landings would be a problem - wake turbulence seperation would mean you're having to land one a minute. Not really economical. Take-offs could be one every 15 seconds though, which would be nice.
3. With one engine, you're limited to out-of-town airstrips, pretty much. So you still need to get from the airport into town.
4. If that article shows the first real consumer electric flights, we're 20 years away from it.
5. The CAA will never validate this in a million years, because of what happens if an emergency happens - how do you navigate the aircraft safely to the ground - be it due to engine failure or a nationwide emergency?
6. "I like flying. I want to have control, I ain't listening to some computer, fool." - some reader of Today's Pilot, probably.

So, nice idea, probably won't work in practice - but imagine how nice it would be to commute from Nottingham (Tollerton) to London City Airport in just over an hour. =)

All I'm willing to divulge at the moment is that LSU seem to be acting for themselves, rather than for the students they represent.

They appear to be seeking new revenue streams that will devalue the Union, and hinder rather than help clubs and societies.

At their present rate of development, I'll be recommending an invasion of the next Union General Meeting to voice concerns over the allegations of worrying neglect towards clubs, societies and those that seek to improve student life.

No doubt the Union will respond by increasing funding to Media, the AU or the Exec.

If you're a geek at LSU (or indeed in a similar situation at another Students Union), watch this space - something bigger, better, more democratic and less secretive is coming your way in the next month.

Centrologic have a great site about the Ubuntu Story, http://www.ubuntustory.com/ lots of good flashy graphics with clear simple explanations of the main topics that people searching for Ubuntu might want to know about.

You enter your name and NASA sends it to the moon. Then you get a PDF certificate to prove your name has gone to the Moon! Awesome!

This also got me thinking - how easy would it be to harvest people’s names and email addresses by setting up a webpage offering something people can never check, and how ridiculous a claim could you make without them disbelieving it? Sending your name to the moon is a good one, but believable enough. How about having your name placed in a capsule at the bottom of Challenger Deep?

P.S. I will blog again if the Moon writes back,

Open C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and add the line:

127.0.0.1 rad.msn.com

Duh! Problem solved!

Every now and then I like to see if cedega has many any advancements, since they have a mission statement to bring games to Linux, things seemed fairly positive when I last tried it since the MMORG I no longer play (eve) worked perfectly and steam worked a little better.

However as of writing Steam source games do not work, I've tried lots of combinations and I have fully compliant hardware such as a nice nvidia graphics card.

read more

I recently got hold of an Asus Eee PC 900 - the newer version of the Eee 701. It's a lovely piece of kit, which I'll probably review more fully on the podcast.

After playing with Zattoo on my Ubuntu laptop, I thought I'd give it a go on the Eee 900 which is running the default Xandros Linux distribution (which I actually quite like).

Here's what it looks like once installed:-

Unfortunately the Asus software repositories don't contain the Zattoo package, or the dependency that allows Zattoo to install cleanly. However as Xandros is based on Debian Etch, so it's possible to fix this issue quite easily.

Here's what I did:-

• Download the zatto deb package.
• Download libgtkglext1 from the Debian Etch repository.
• Open a terminal with [CTRL]+[ALT]+t
• Install the two deb packages downloaded using the following command
• dpkg -i *.deb

Then you can run zattoo from the command line.

You can of course zoom in.

Full screen works very nicely.

One thing I have yet to figure out is how to add an icon to the big "telly tubby" menu.

Update Found out that editing /opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc enables me to maintain the graphical the icon for the zattoo_player executable.

One of my best friends that I've known for my entire life is traveling to the UK for the first time. He's perhaps a little worried about not knowing anyone. I'd like to help introduce him to some friends and perhaps even some strangers. He's a really stylish graphic designer, he's a wildly brilliant artist, a solid human on every front and humorous at the right times.

He'll be in London around the 24th of May and he's planning to travel to Scotland sometime during his trip. I believe he'll fly out of London on the 8th of June to return to California.

If anyone reading this has an interest in meeting a great guy, I'd really appreciate it. I'm certain he would too. Drop a note here and I'll give you proper introductions...

And that’s about it. I interviewed Adam in Union Square on Monday morning before they all left for the airport. (We were staying out in the US for a bit of a holiday.) Waiting for the taxi in the hotel lobby, we started disecting what lessons from the US event could transfer to the UK one. This included Aq doing some “blue sky thinking” in the hotel lobby on Monday morning which was cool but potentially landed me with a shed load more work. Nothing unusual there!

The rest of the holiday was not really LUG Radio related, apart from shooting some video of the sights and sounds of San Francisco (cable cars, Golden Gate bridge etc. etc.) I also edited the live show recording whilst in Pacific Grove. It’s not brilliant but not bad for being edited on a laptop’s sound card on the road. I think this is the first LUG Radio episode not mixed for release by Jono.

It was a pleasure to travel with the gents and to hang out for a few days. Usually we meet up and LRL and chat online but the former is frantic and the latter isn’t a fantastic communication medium. Having a couple of days of chatting, coming up with stupid ideas (some of which might even come to fruition) and getting to know everyone a bit better on a personal level was cool, especially Adam and Chris who I got to spend more time with than the others.

Laura and I were invited to visit the Google campus (aka the Googleplex) by Kynan so we dropped in on the Wednesday. It was great to wander round the various buildings, conference areas and see the fantastic range of facilities, especially the food. With the vibrating chairs, sleep pods, swimming pools, a gym and more besides it seemed like a pretty cool place to work.

Plus.net responded to a twitter post of mine calling them expensive. I've used their own figures (and updated them for their latest prices) to show something:

Option 3 (their highest package) allows you 30GB/month at £19.99/month.

We can ignore their "value added features" such as overnight free bandwidth, because that's using the net as it's supposed to be in my opinion - allowing congestion to determine usage. Other features such as Usenet etc - also ignore because the on-the-spot cost to them of these must be <£1/customer/year unless they're doing it wrong.

Take out the "IPStream Home 256kbps/512kbps/1Mbps/2Mbps - £7.63" costs they have to pay (+ VAT) and you're left with £11.02. You can probably add in another £1.50 if I've read the rebate thing correctly. [1]

1Mbit is about 300GB in a month. (28 days is 302.4GB) 1Mbit allegedly costs them £126.86 [1] before transit and routing costs.

I've been informed you pay about £15/Mbit for transit these days from a London supplier, less if you're a big organisation.

So, all in, it's about £140/month for 300GB. Or £14/month for 30GB.

Essentially, if everyone used their entire 30GB quota every month, Plus.net make a loss - but that's where overages and overselling come in.

Not every uses 30GB/month - some may only use 1GB. That's essentially free bandwidth in the bag for them. If you go over your limit, you pay a whopping "75p per GB if you add it upfront or £1 per GB if you just pay for any extra as you use it." [2] which rivals 3G for expensiveness.

Unless you use 30GB/month, Plus.net makes a profit. That's how the business works, and Plus.net is doing nothing wrong by charging these figures - if people don't like it, they'll move.

But wait - there's a big glaring problem here - and I'm not talking about using basic statistical theory to prove in a normal distribution fah lah lah - no. They're paying BT *£126.86* PER MEGABIT to get the traffic from the exchange to their nearest POP (place where Plus.net can distribute the bandwidth to "the internet"). That's INSANE - this is either BT charging a metric fucktonne for their services, or British telecomms infrastructure is decidedly more expensive to operate than most other European countries.

The final word on this is - if you can avoid telephone lines for broadband, do so. Virgin Media offer 20Mbit, and you get it - none of this DSL rate-adaptive crap. There are no limits, and they have fair throttling during peak times for the most part (if you're a crazy downloader, they limit you to about about 20-25% of your supposed speed for a few hours - still faster than my mum gets on DSL!) which keeps their network healthy. If you can't get cable, Plus.net have a fantastic community element - but BeThere are cheaper and SamKnows says [3] that my Mum's exchange only really has Sky, Bulldog and BeThere LLU enabled. And my new place I'm moving into says "BT Wholesale has set an enablement date of 18/02/2009 for their 21CN Wholesale Broadband Connect product at the Sherwood exchange" [4] or "9 months after I move in" and the tracker estimates an ADSL2+ speed of less than 2Mbit. Sorry! I'm sticking with Cable! Shame on you, BT!

[1] http://community.plus.net/blog/2008/02/28/how-uk-isps-are-charged-for-broadband-the-cost-of-ipstream/
[2] http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/quality_broadband/traffic_prioritisation.shtml
[3] http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/EMHUCKN
[4] http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/EMSHRWO

I've been using Parallels on my Macbook Pro since I purchased it, because I still need to do a fair bit of stuff in a Windows environment. I occasionally do some work in Visual Basic, as well as Access - both of which aren't available under OS X. I'd been running the 3170 build for some time, and whilst it was totally stable, there was an irritating bug in it which would cause the fans to run at full whack (around 6kRPM according to iStat Pro) after a few minutes use. The processor and memory usage would rise significantly. Until now, I'd just put up with it.

Obviously, this was an older version. Today I upgraded to Build 5592, available here which certainly seems to have fixed the problem. The look and feel of the container has changed as well, and it just feels, well, nicer. Well worth the upgrade.

I'm sitting on top of the sensor board for 2piR at the Maker Faire in San Mateo. I just finished putting the final touches on the Debian machine that controls everything. We're in the process of hooking up the ignition system and the sensors to the controller board. Soon we'll do a leak test and then we'll burn some fuel off!

If you're in the San Francisco bay area this weekend, I highly suggest you come down to the Maker Faire on Saturday evening (find us in the fire area of the map) to play with our interactive fire project!

I love my ASUS eeePC, it goes everywhere with me, but I think I’m going to have to fight hard not to buy one of HP’s 2133 mini-note PCs.

Sometimes there are moments so great that it can only be accurately described with a euphemism from another century.

"It's the bee's knees"
"The cat's whiskers"
"The cat's pajamas"
"The eel's ankle"
"The elephant's instep"
"The snake's hip"

I've decided that this is the year that I will go to Japan. This is a big deal for me. I've wanted to do this for a very very long time. I have lots of things in my head and I'm sure I won't be able to accomplish all of them.

I will visit with some of my friends who live in Japan. I'm going to see about staying long enough to study Aikido at the first Aikido dojo. I want to try to meet and possibly photograph my very favorite Japanese artists. I also want to start studying Japanese in both written and verbal form far before I even land.

This is the obligatory post stating that this has begun.

If you have advice about Japan, Japanese culture, learning to read and write Japanese (such as things that are useful, schools you'd suggest, etc) or anything Japan or Asian culture related (even specific history books) - Please let me know!

In a last minute change to the schedule, Mark Shuttleworth will now be giving a Q&A session in #ubuntu-classroom on the freenode irc network. Ask questions in #ubuntu-classroom-chat and they will get pasted into #ubuntu-classroom by an operator.

See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek for details.

Well, I'm proud to say (a little bit late I'm afraid) that I completed my first ever half marathon in the time of 2 hours 10 minutes and

It was an amazing experience - and thanks to all who sponsored me.

I've entered two more runs the Bristol Half and the Great South Run which are in September and October this year. I have also entered the London Marathon ballot for 2009!

Given how unfit and overweight I was a couple of years ago I'm pretty amazed that I'm even considering doing these things...

Could someone please tell me why, around 5pm every day for the last couple of weeks, my wireless laser mouse stops working when it’s on the mousemat, but if I take the mousemat away, and use the mouse directly on the desk, it works fine…

I could understand if it just decided it didn’t want to work on the mousemat, or didn’t want to work at certain times, but specifically at a time, and specificaly on the mousemat. It’s confusing, and REALLY annoying.

Hafodunos Hall is up for sale. Again. It looks like they're accepting comedy bids for it. I really, really hope someone takes it on this time that can actually bring it back to what it once was. There's so much that can be done with it.

I gave notice today at Kink. I have two weeks left and hopefully I'll be able to hire someone to replace me.

I have a lot to say about why I left, where I'm going, what I'm doing with my time, about the experiences I've had here and how I feel about leaving.

I imagine that they'll replace me, if anyone is looking for a Senior Unix Administrator position with a focus on security, drop me a line.

We were at the venue for 8 o’clock the following morning. In the UK, this is the busiest time of the event. The whole crew descend on the venue on the Saturday morning and put out chairs, tables, stuff nutsacks, set up video cameras, rig PAs and so on. For the USA event, it was already done. There were a few things to test and set up and the volunteer crew to train on the door procedures, but it was pretty straight forward.

One of my duties for the weekend was as volunteer crew head. I was really pleased to have had half a dozen or so volunteers, which I thought was good for a show without an established community. We even had a couple of people turn on the door and volunteer to help out. Some had helped set up the day before, but I met Bryce, Nicholas, Jordan and Ken that morning. We even had time to do a coffee run! Realistically we could have done with another three or four crew members to make sure everyone got some time off and to cover all the bases, but we did pretty well with the people we had. That was my perception anyway. I didn’t have time to supervise the volunteer crew very much, so I was pleased they were able to get on with what was needed of them.

I was running around most the weekend, although I did find time to have some of the free fruit and chocolates that Google were providing. Google were great hosts and kept the crew fed through the weekend too. Little things like that can make a big difference to how much you can enjoy an event, even when you’re working at it.

I didn’t get to see too many talks from start to finish, although I was recording the talks on the main stage so spent most of the time when I wasn’t interviewing, fixing problems elsewhere or talking to the crew hanging out there. I did get to speak to most of the exhibitors I wanted to though, especially the Trinity Audio Group. I did get to watch the Gong-a-thong because I was operating the sound desk and of course the live show.

The live show. Two hours before I think it’s fair to say we were bricking it. The day had been fairly busy but we thought that everyone might have come for the day-time speakers and clear off home before the live show. If anyone stayed would they get the show’s style and humour? Could Adam resist not swearing in front of the minors in the audience. (No.) We needn’t have worried. Over 100 people packed the main stage seating area, and more lounged around on the beanbags and the surrounding area. (OK, Dice giving out free beer might have encouraged people to stay too.) And they were obviously fans of the show, the ones who wanted to see the pasty Brits shamble their way through an hour of sub-par knob gags. It went down really well and it was cool to be in charge of the audio, playing in the stings and monitoring the recording. I don’t think Jono had quiet believed I could play the stings in on cue though. Of course, there were some things I could have done differently with the audio recording but with the pressure of time I think it’s a reasonable job.

Among my highlights of the two days: Frets on Fire stand, BSD stand and OLPC stand attracting lots of interest for very different reasons. Asking for a Diet Coke and getting a bucket of the stuff. Jono and Adam persuading security to let them take 4 stools from the ground floor for the live show. Emma’s voice on the Sunday, squeaking and doggedly making her point in both the Mass Debate and in small hours of Monday morning. Tyson and Kynan making a “dress” out of… god knows what. Erica barely making it through her lightbulb talk flanked by a skinny man in his taped up pants. And Aaron being a start for doing it. The bizarre irish shanty that won the gong-a-thong. Meeting the SCALE guys on the Saturday night. Having cheap chinese food in the diner opposite the hotel with Adam before heading off to the Saturday night bash. I interviewed Chris somewhere funny and smelly - sorry! The awkward two-way between Jeremy and Miquel which formed the bulk of the Mass Debate and the poor microphone which was pulled between the two of them. (Hey, the AV specification said four mics and that’s what we had. I didn’t know that the two people who seemed keen to share would spend the entire time arguing.) Waiting for Tedddd and his magical mystery ‘mobile in the loading dock with Shona, Tyson, Adam and Eddy and somehow managing to pack more stuff into the car than came out of it. Kynan not slowing down, even at 10pm on the Sunday night, and performing karaoke backup dances to Tyson. In fact, all the geek karaoke performers were so keen and many something of a revelation, I’m going to suggest “Geekeoke” as a brand new geek social event.

The event didn’t feel quite the same as a UK event. But that’s not a bad thing. It was always going to feel a bit different, not least because it’s in a different country. But it shared enough of the same vibe (there I go again, talking about the magic “vibe”) to be a proud and impressive part of LRL event history. One thing that impressed me was how many non-LUG Radio fans were in attendance. From the handful I spoke to, people were so impressed with the speaker line-up that they came for that reason. But all those who did seemed to get the idea and went away promising to download the entire show archive.

Over the course of the weekend I interviewed Jono and Chris for the video. (Aq I interviewed on Friday, Adam followed on Monday.) I’ve never done interviewing quite as formally as that before, so it was a good learning experience. But I felt I got mostly honest answers and sometimes some surprising ones. It helped I was able to take each gent off somewhere quiet for half an hour or so to record; none of them felt they were performing for an audience. At least, I hope not.

Thanks to Shona for some of the photos in this post.

How come I didn't know about Zattoo?!

It's a program (Linux version available here), which lets you watch TV programmes online. Nice. Dead handy for people (like me) who have a good internet connection but no TV aerial at their computer.

They carry the basic channels I need.

BBC1 for example

Now I can watch Carrie and Davids Pop Shop anywhere!

Sweet!

In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works … It’s a little like prayer. Elevator design is rooted in deception—to disguise not only the bare fact of the box hanging by ropes but also the tethering of tenants to a system over which they have no command.

I hate lifts. The last time I used a lift I didn’t have to was in Ottaker’s in Edinburgh. I decided to take the lift up one floor to be deliberately lazy. Twenty minutes later, I found myself exiting in the basement, with several employees looking at me oddly. I wonder whether, by thinking about being trapped in a lift, you are making it more likely to happen?

Just in case you are unaware, a planet in the blogging context is an aggregation of content from a list of individual sources such as blogs, journals, articles etcetera. Some examples of planets in no particular order:

• Planet Debian
• Planet Ubuntu UK
• Planet BitFolk
• Planet SysAdmin

Over the last couple of weeks there have been some heated words on various planets about what is acceptable content for that planet. I don’t run any of those planets so I’m not going to comment on specifics. I’ve also seen people who operate planets asking for people to join them, but only if they will post on a particular topic — in fact I’ve recently seen a request on a mailing list, which itself receives off-topic personal posts from members of its community, for bloggers who will only write on-topic posts on that community’s planet. And I’ve been added to planets which then later ask me to obey posting guidelines.

To me all this is very odd. I personally read various planets because I want to know more about the people who are in those communities and what they are up to. I appreciate the on topic posts they write but often I appreciate the slightly more personal ones even more. I like to see what people are interested in and what their values are, so to then restrict the posts to a particular topic to me seems to be counter-productive.

For the one planet that I do run, when I ask people if I can add them to it I sometimes receive the response, “Do you want me to use a tag?” or, “I’m sorry I don’t have a tag set up for this, you might get a lot of non-technical posts.” Great! If I was going to have expectations over what you are writing about then I would expect to be paying you to be a technical author for me. I don’t want that; I’m interested in what you are about.

Someone else said something like “in this day and age we have the technology to have the aggregator provide custom feeds with some people removed, and this is the way forward in dealing with people you really can’t stand to read”. I’m paraphrasing that, and I don’t remember who said it or where, but I couldn’t agree more. To me the planet is a view in to the community it represents and being a member of that community is usually all that is required to have a feed included. It does not mean that the planet operator endorses everything they say, that the reader should agree with their viewpoints or that the reader will find them an interesting person! We are presumably all grown-ups here and we can decide what to read or not.

If you are a paid blogger or if you want to make a name for yourself writing articles about a given subject then fair enough, I can understand why you might want to mark only certain articles for publication to a certain audience.

I don’t write much of value or anything contentious. I don’t write much at all, except links to strange things. I haven’t ever had a planet operator tell me that something I wrote wasn’t appropriate for their planet, but that’s probably because I’m not syndicated to many of them. But I would definitely ask to be removed before I would agree to tag posts.

Is it ever healthy to run an aggregator of personal blogs and then expect to exert editorial control over that?

I’m getting increasingly disturbed by reports of members of the public being harassed whilst innocently taking photos. I’m going to start keeping a list of links to this sort of thing here.

• 2008-03-24, South Shields, UK

Friday was the prep day. The entire troupe of Britons walked to the venue from the hotel, which was a reasonable walk. Not so far as to be impossible, but far enough not to be much fun with a load of equipment. Fortunately Google were providing breakfast for their staff, the AV contractors and us Brits. This meant a long table and lots of unhealthy food. Fortunately Dan or Eric (sorry gents, can’t remember who the phone belongs to) streamed it up to youtube where any idiot can see it.

The venue not opening until 10am, there followed a short hiatus. The Google people went off on a supplies run, Aq went off to find a printers and I think Adam went back to sleep. Laura, Chris and I wandered round the neighbourhood for a while to see what else was about.

Let me describe the Metreon. It’s pretty big. It covers an entire block, so it’s impossible to see it all at once. It contains a shopping centre (with book shops, coffee shops, book and coffee shops and the usual assortment of bars, a multi-screen cinema including an IMAX screen and the City View exhibition space. We took the lift to the fourth floor of the Metreon, where City View is located. It’s big. It’s easily the biggest space a LUG Radio Live event has ever occupied. Firstly the length of the venue hits you. (After a while you start to realise it’s not all that wide and you panic less.) Then the view hits you. The long side of the venue gives out onto a balcony which was probably the reason the words “sun” and “soaked” were first pushed together. It was unusually hot (record-breaking heat, yadda-yadda) and the balcony provided no shelter whatsoever. But from anywhere in the venue you looked out across a vista (j.p.c) of San Francisco. There was no denying it: LUG Radio had arrived in the U.S. of A.

Most of the “stuff” (a catch all word to describe AV equipment, beanbags, and exhibitors) were due to arrive from 2pm so we absorbed the ambiance for a while. Every so often someone new would turn up to gawp at the space, including Ted, Emma and Eddy. We used the time to fetch nutsack goodies from offices (sadly the sight of Adam, Laura and Ian “Gandalf” McKellar wheeling trolleys of shot glasses through the streets of San Francisco is undocumented) and I went off to buy a USB hard drive on to which to record the live show.

Friday was a day of lots of surprises, most pleasant. The venue crew rigged lights to show the fantastic gobos. Tables and chairs appeared. Google provided lunch too! Being at the back of the goods lift with Jono as Adam, Warren, Kynan, Shona, Emma and others loaded the branded beanbags until I could no longer see the far end of the lift. Then realising that the doors would open behind me and I would be holding back all said beanbags on my own. Jono and Adam being inordinately pleased to be given walkie-talkies and then spending half an hour swearing at each other over them. Having an A/V crew do all the major jobs of providing ‘net access and PAs and projectors. Seeing curtains surround the stages to cut down the ambient light (with mixed results). Watching Adam walking backwards and forwards counting and recounting tables. Interviewing Aq for the forthcoming video. Being shown how to use an 8-way firewire interface and logic to do a multi-track recording of the live show. Shona providing much needed acerbic witticisms. Tedddd arriving in his mad car full of stuff. Adam and I just looking at the car wondering how much AV kit can fit in one vehicle. Poor Chris spent several hours waiting in the loading bay for people to arrive. The rock’n'roll life of a LUG Radio presenter, eh? I bet they didn’t tell him about that when he signed up to join the show. Kynan worked as hard as… well, as hard as I used to before I grew old and cynical. (Long time LRL attendees may remember Kynan from LRL 2005 and 2006. In 2005 he told us all everyone in Neighbours had been killed with a shovel.) Seriously, there wasn’t anything that guy didn’t do: Stuff nutsacks, rig lights, carry boxes, load bean bags into the lift, unload Tedddd’s car and so much more. He was the first port of call if something went wrong too, which says a lot.

Any way, we sweated and taped and shifted things all afternoon and in to the early evening. Things were more ready on a Friday evening than they have been for any previous LRL event. The gents disappeared somewhat earlier to make the evening drinks event, yet we still managed to beat them to it. Rumour has it that Adam was doing his hair, hence the delay. Laura and I sneaked off for a bite to eat and then rejoined it for while before surrendering to the combined exhaustion of jetlag and the day’s labours.

LUG Radio Live USA 2008 was two weekends ago now and I’ve only just got around to posting about it, being kicked into action by Emma’s memories of the same event. It is I suppose appropriate to start at the beginning, which for me was at Heathrow Terminal 3 on the morning of Wednesday 9th. (This account omits the months of stressful preparation, e-mail and conference calls leading up to standing in Heathrow.)

Because I was going out to LRL as videographer (as well as crew head, AV & video liaison guy) I had quite a lot of kit with me. I usually travel as light as possible, but on this occasion we had what was described as a “girls amount” of luggage. We ended up being seated in different parts of the plane, but this was probably a good thing.

Having tucked into a cooked breakfast (how I managed to only put on a couple of pounds over the whole trip, I don’t know) we made our way through security. Well, most of us did. Adam had walked past the big signs and three bins full of the water bottles people had had to dispose of before going through security but must have thought this didn’t apply to the two he had stashed in his bag. Cue a full search of every crevice in Adam’s bag and a chemical swab of his laptop. Mr. O’Bacon, thinking such idiocy a comic moment worth preserving decided to whip out his camera and take a photo of the search in progress. As he pulled his camera from his pocket in one fluid move, the world became like The Matrix. In slow motion we hissed “Don’t take photos in security….” but before we could complete the sentence Jono’s flash had fired across Heathrow. Within five seconds of this, five people descended on our little troupe ensuring the photo was deleted and checking the contents of the camera for anything else nefarious. (I am assured that there is plenty of nefarious content on Jono’s camera, but not of the type in which security services are interested.) It was at this point that being seated away from the liability twins seemed like a good thing.

The flight itself was largely uneventful. Long and dull as these things are, the only highlights were the entertainment system with an impressive array of films but which kept crashing showing that it was running Linux and taking some potential publicity photos of the gents at the rear of the plane. After a minute or so we started to attract some interest from people who thought that a minor rock group was traveling economy. Right.

We checked into our hotel. The hotel. It was clean. That just about summarises the good points. There was one room on each floor which didn’t have wired ethernet. We were in one of them. The wireless didn’t reach the top floors either, and when I tried it from the lobby, it didn’t work. The advice on the key card was to lock and bolt the door when in the room, and not to answer the door to unknown people. But then the hotel was in an area of San Francisco described as a “marginal ‘hood” and referred to as Crack Town (by me at least). There were swan and seabird murals painted above the picture rail in the rooms. In the hallway was another mural painted directly on the wall, with a frame hung around it. I would have taken some photos of it, but I feared that brandishing something with as crack-resale-value in the halls of such a hotel would have been a bad move. (Mum, Dad stop panicking, I exaggerate for comic effect. A bit.)

The First Evening, which earns its capitals by being that significant evening when one tries not to fall asleep to kick one’s body clock into a new time zone as easily as possible, was spent in Biscuits & Blues, a rather nice club where we were outnumbered by a large crowd of basically French people. It was a surreal evening with everyone fighting the urge to fall asleep in their high-priced fishcakes. Much silliness was had.

The second day saw our trip to Alcatraz. What happened on the island is veiled in mystery but we all made if back out again. Some of us caught the sun. We did not get thrown off the island, contrary to rumour. The trip was followed by a very late lunch and rounds of drinks in the Hard Rock Cafe where we came up with some very funny and frankly ridiculous ideas for promoting LUG Radio. I suspect that one or more of these might actually happen, so watch out. We were joined by a couple who had come from Spain to attend the event. We spotted the guy as he was going in to the toilets wearing a Red Hat jacket and sent Adam in to ask if he’d heard about LRL. Adam seemed the natural choice for accosting men in public toilets. Don’t know why. A great, if pricey, afternoon. This was followed by the inevitable crash out as the weather was unseasonably hot (the hottest in 30 years for the time of year, apparently) and the jetlag demanding more sleep. Plus we had to be on fine form for the following day.

I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m becoming more immersed technically in technology, rather than ‘functionally’ as I was previously, but it appears as though issues at the political level are clouding achievements at the technical level.

Zeth has posted before on a Social Networking protocol. That is to say that applications such as facebook, myspace and bebo share alot of similar datafields. Standardising these global fields and setting up a new social networking protocol would allow greater freedom of data-sharing, and enable more powerful “mash-ups” of data.

Tim Berners-Lee’s book, “Weaving the Web” (which I am currently reading) is opening my eyes to just how self-deprecating his work has been. Not only would his work have normally afforded him a very wealthy lifestyle should he have chosen to ‘close’ the development of the project and put restrictions on his work - but he actively encouraged other people to benefit from his work - even when the way in which they were taking his idea was contrary to his own.

Now, nearly twenty years after the ‘World Wide Web’ started to gain momentum into something recognisable as what we use today, we’ve not yet got to a point which has fulfilled Berners-Lee’s vision. He envisaged an open mine of information and collaboration. Wikified browsers were the original intention - where collaboration and editing was a key as browsing.

Another example of a good application that would work better as a protocol is twitter. I think the reason most people don’t get twitter is that in essence its just an RSS feed. Today, paulbradshaw suggested that there be a twitter feed created purely for football scores - not chatter, just results. An RSS feed would have the same functionality - but a different interface.

In the same way that programmers have now begun to separate the content from the design with the advent of Content Management Systems and ‘Blogs - so should things like twitter be more transparent about the platform on which it is built. RSS is expandable and usable - twitter has released an open API to allow integration and collaboration - yet it’s still hindered by having a Central Point of Control. The initial design of the Web implied there was no central point necessary. By manufacturing applications and functions so that a central point is necessary is to lose part of the magic and scalability of the Web.

People keep on asking me my views on things... Normally so they can state theirs. So, I've decided to state as many (brief) policies I like - although not many of them are likely to see the light of day, and some are just unimplementable. But I'm going to state them anyway. Oh, and it might offend some of you - sorry.

• Abolition of income tax, to be replaced by taxation solely through sales taxes. Businesses also pay these taxes on everything (materials et al), but can claim them back as they do in the UK with VAT. Importation of goods will attract the same tax, and the most basic of foodstuffs (bread, milk, butter, flour etc) will attract 0% tax. Other foodstuffs would attract a smaller tax rate, probably 5%.
• In addition to the House of Commons (hey, I think my local MP (until I move to Mapperley, at least) is pretty damn good - there should be more Paddy Tippings!) there should be a publicly elected Government. That means from those MPs, you vote for a Prime Minister, who has selected a cabinet to run with him. I say this because too many people vote for the party, not for the person.
• A closer look at the EU parliamentary system, and whether it is fully democratic. While I don't think the present constitution is a good plan (look to the US, their constitution in its original form is a wonderful document) the treaty of Lisbon is generally perceived to be "a good thing".
• The removal of the patent system, in all forms. Copyright protects your invention, if someone re-implements it using different principles - it was too obvious. The same happens with books... Copyright should last until death, where it will then be passed to the persons mentioned in the will of the deceased. If no last will exists, it by default passes into the public domain - unlike regular property.
• No death duties. At all. All properties etc are to be passed directly to the next of kin, which will follow: As specified in the last will, Spouse, Children (in equal factors), Immediate beneficiaries. It should not be passed (for example) to the 6th cousin twice removed who has never met them.
• A Government-controlled pharmaceutical organisation, with research facilities based within educational establishments such as Universities and teaching hospitals. While nationalisation might be a bit too strong, the current state of medicine is atrocious - if you've ever seen US drug commercials you know what I mean when I say we should not allo our drug trade to become like that.
  
• The legalisation of all drugs - and the police efforts strengthened to tackle drug importation. I will never take Heroin, and I would not like to see any of my friends take it, but it's their choice. The real criminals are the traffickers who exploit the vulnerable and cause real harm to innocents.
• The immediate release of all non-violent offenders from jail, and the imposition of community sentences upon them, typically involving 1 hour of community service per day they were due to be locked up for.
• Abortions to be made illegal - I told you this was controversial. To me, life begins at the zygote level, and if that zygote without interference would grow into a child, it should be left to do so. Abortion under life-threatening conditions to remain legal, under agreement of two independent qualified medical doctors.
• All "secret" documents to be reviewed by independent body every 5 years, to determine whether they can be released to public scrutiny.
• A public networked searchable database of all Government debates (Hansard transcripts would do, if these are not already published freely online) and associated documents such as expense records, records of private interests for members of parliament, and while I approve of MPs having family members work for them, to have these interests investigated at public cost 12 months after every electoral cycle completes.
• To keep our present method of voting - paper in a box. No electronic voting for representatives in parliament.
• To encourage and expand the e-petitions system, and for each petitioner to be identified on the system using a private code.
• No tax breaks to any religion. And no donations to the church either - why should a Jew pay for a Christian church?
• The abolition of Chancel Repair Liability, except where explicitly declared in the PRESENT title deed. The option to have the condition removed for a set fee, regulated by an independent body.
• Less oil, more nuclear (even fission), neutral about coal.
• More electrically driven cars (I like the GT Electric... Charges VERY quickly!)
• An increase in funding to the European Space Agency, but no public funds to be used to support manned space flight.

All I can think of, off the top of my head. Let the war begin.

What!?

Why Episode 4 of the Ubuntu UK Podcast of course! What else would you be thinking of?

Ciemon Dunville, Alan Pope, Dave Walker and Tony Whitmore present the fourth episode of the Ubuntu UK Podcast. In this episode:-

• Discussion:
• Unix/Linux Malware & Security precautions.
• Interview with Ian Ozsvald from Showmedo.
• A short phone call from Mark Shuttleworth.
• In the news:
• Red Hat Skips Consumer Linux Desktop
• MySQL/Sun Add proprietary code to MySQL
• New Feature!
• Trivia competition - we have coupons for the Canonical Store to give away!
Listen to the show, drop an email before the 3rd May 2008 to the competition@ubuntu-uk.org email address with your answer to the question we ask. We'll ask Mark Shuttleworth to pick a winner at random from the correct entries and then email the coupon code over to the winner.

Comments and suggestions are welcomed to: podcast@ubuntu-uk.org
Up to 30 seconds of voicemail can be left at +44 (0) 845 508 1986

The anticipated fourth episode (yes, really, apparently) of the Ubuntu UK Podcast is out now. In this episode:

• Unix/Linux Malware & Security precautions,
• Interview with Ian Ozsvald from Showmedo,
• A short phone call from Mark Shuttleworth,
• Plus the sarcastic news,
• And a competition to get money off Ubuntu schwag.

Download it from:

http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/2008/04/23/s01e04-such-an-easy-question/

This episode started recording within two hours of touching down at Heathrow from San Francisco, so I was pretty jetlagged during the recording. Yet again I’ve tried something new with the sound, but unfortunately the raw recording was distorted in places. I’m blaming that on the jetlag. It was also our first phone interview, which I think went pretty well thanks to Daviey’s SIP phone. People who have moaned about the levels should be happier with this episode, but there’s still more to do to get things sounding even better of course.

.. in the #ubuntu-release-party irc channel on freenode.

1. "Are we there yet?"
2. "When is Hardy out?"
3. "How many hours until it's out?"
4. "What's the _exact_ time of the release?"
5. "Has anything changed between the RC and release?"
6. "Where is the best place to find out exactly when it's released!?"
7. "Give me the link!"
8. "Canonical is in the Isle of Man, what timezone are they on!?"
9. "Is the release time in GMT, UTC or BST!?"
10. "The countdown thing says it's out, but I can't find it!"
11. "(url) of mirror - they have it!"
12. "Will KDE4 be in the release?"
13. "But in my timezone, it will be Friday 25th!"
14. "Why isn't Mark Shuttleworth here?"
15. "Is the version on the mirror, the real version?"
16. "Can I upgrade to Intrepid Ibex now?"
17. "C'mon guys, I've been waiting here all day to start the download!"
18. "How long until Zany Zebra?"
19. "Ubuntu sucks!"

Did I miss any?

Update: Seems I did:-

12:42:59  Amaranth> Last minute update guys: We've delayed the release 6 weeks
12:43:11  Amaranth> Please come back in 6 weeks for Ubuntu 8.06 LTS

For those that don't know, there is a new release of Ubuntu out on the 24th April. The #ubuntu-release-party is a virtual place to hang out and chat in the lead up to that event.

A bit of a tongue in cheek response to Google's latest software announcement as coming hot off the press to for a second create a small bit of panic within those who work on similar projects.

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# Enterprise class names! It has come to our attention that some people
# think the names of the Beautiful Soup parser classes are too silly
# and "unprofessional" for use in enterprise screen-scraping. We feel
# your pain! For such-minded folk, the Beautiful Soup Consortium And
# All-Night Kosher Bakery recommends renaming this file to
# "RobustParser.py" (or, in cases of extreme enterprisiness,
# "RobustParserBeanInterface.class") and using the following
# enterprise-friendly class aliases:

class RobustXMLParser(BeautifulStoneSoup):
    pass
class RobustHTMLParser(BeautifulSoup):
    pass
class RobustWackAssHTMLParser(ICantBelieveItsBeautifulSoup):
    pass
class RobustInsanelyWackAssHTMLParser(MinimalSoup):
    pass
class SimplifyingSOAPParser(BeautifulSOAP):
    pass

[Whitespace added for clarity]

A parcel arrived today. In it was the Ubuntu laptop bag I ordered from the Canonical store. It's lovely! See..

(click for more pics)

..and if you want to get one at a substantial discount, listen to episode 4 of the Ubuntu UK Podcast (out soon)

• Mad hair thing (via Why, That’s Delightful!)
• “Luckily, the butter knife that became lodged in his head did not pierce skull”

I'm kinda sick and at ToorCon Seattle. I love the weather here. ToorCon is great.

With some effort, and due to a quirk of how the human eye is constructed (unintelligent design?) you can see polarised light with the naked eye. I know, it sounds stupid, but apparently it’s true. Haven’t tried yet.

Read about this in a journal article in Fortean Studies, volume 1, which suggests Haidinger’s Brushes plus a lot of unconscious imagination are responsible for people seeing ‘aliens’. Don’t know if I’m convinced but it is interesting.

While I feel slightly guilty for not saying anything here for quite a few weeks now, it’s not the first time this has happened and well, I’ve spent all of my time working on preparations for LRL USA for probably the last 3 months, so, y’know, not much time to spare.

Well I guess I ought to be telling everyone how great the event was, how all the hard work was worth it and so on, but sadly I started to come down with a nasty cold during the flight home and it really hit on the evening I got home, so I’ve barely done anything since getting back except sleep and lie in bed reading a book. Seriously, I slept for 19 hours when I first got home.

So, yeah, LRL USA 2008 was great fun, very exhausting with the jet lag and so on, I’ve never been the best at handling sleep related issues so I began crashing by 3pm and was humourless by 6pm most days, however it was great fun either side. I met some truly fascinating, inspiring and welcoming people. I met some nut cases too, but I genuinely didn’t meet a single person I didn’t like and that’s pretty rare anywhere, so thank you to all the people who made it, particularly the exhibitors as I had most dealings with them, I wish I could have met you when I was a little more together

Anyway, back to my pit of sickness and despair

I've got a Cisco router here in front of me, the router is "reconditioned", but was received with a console password on it. Now, this is interesting for two reasons. As it's reconditioned (apparently) it shouldn't have a config on it anyway, and even so, whoever had it beforehand should really have cleared the config off.

More interestingly, the router is identifying itself with the name of a medical company. Interesting. So, rommon the box, get into it and do a sh start and see what we've got.

Username and password for the VPN service that said company uses, further identifying information for the company, firewall rules, SNMP server information, and, of course, the console password (in type 7, so easily breakable) for the router. What says that the same password is used on a number of bits of their kit?

It's not difficult - really. This is basic network security stuff. Just clear any configs off before the router gets taken away.

Harlem and Peter from Fresh Ubuntu Podcast interviewed me last night, and released it today. Go and listen and subscribe to their podcast.

It was great to talk to the guys, and despite my reservations about using Skype, and us being split over 3 timezones, the audio came out really well. Well done guys, and thanks for having me on!

Is open source recession proof? by ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes — So, how might a recession affect open source software?

Interesting discussion tonight on whether a cat can survive falling out of a plane.

Seriously.

Not one for boring discussions, this was initially proposed by me and -a first- seconded by another friend.  With two people objecting to the idea that a cat could survive, and lively debate ensued.  For survival TEAM A (indented). versus  “PETA’s not going to be happy” (TEAM B).

The first bone of contention was the terminal velocity.  TEAM B reckoned that the cat would hit the ground so fast it’s die for definate on impact.  TEAM A came up with the following:

The cat has a terminal velocity of 60mph, compared to a human’s T.V. of 120mph.

Ok, so we’ve got our first ‘fact’ agreed upon.  However, 60mph is still reckoned to be too fast for a cat to survive.

When the cat reaches it’s terminal velocity, it no longer sense that there are forces acting upon it and so relaxes.  We then end up with a ’spread eagled cat.’  This increases air resistance, so the cat does in fact slow down.

In what was probably a fair comment, TEAM B reckoned that even at 60mph a spread-eagled cat would have horrific internal injuries and still die.  Especially a spread-eagled cat whose stomach would hit the floor first.

TEAM A suggested that a spread eagled cat would infact be in a very good position to absorb alot of the impact.  The assumption by TEAM B that the spread eagled cat’s stomach would hit the ground first we hypothesised to be incorrect.  As the cat would not be able to put it’s legs perpendicular to the angle of descent (i.e. horizontal) they would provide the first point of contact, and absorb energy (unfortunately, likely breaking bones/tendons/muscle tissue) in the process.

TEAM B pounced at this point and suggested that a broken bone could quite easily be severe enough to cut an artery and kill the cat.

TEAM A responded saying that if the cat’s leg muscles were to absorb 20mph of velocity on impact (and not break), then there would be only a 30-40mph impact on the cat as a whole. Which spread out over the surface area of the cat should be enough to leave it stunned but not dead.

The night ended in a stalemate, with neither team wanting to concede defeat.  None of the debaters were prepared to test the hypothesis empirically, as none of us are interesting in cruelty to animals.  This debate was purely about the physical ability of a cat’s muscular and skeletal structure.  Something which is pretty amazing.

Please feel free to add your voice to the debate in the comment box below:

I did, however, find this rather shocking video.. I guess only the russians could get away with this.

Cat Jumps off a Plane and Lands on it’s legs

I was having a discussion with a few mates in the pub this evening about my blogging ‘antics.’ They’ve berated me for blogging before, but as it̵