Last month, I looked at running a Fon Access Point. I've not done anything more because of debconf and work, and I've since discovered how to access another firmware upload interface on my F5D7630uk4A (double-click the reset button). I see that some Fon users are moving their routers into lakes in protest at the 15-minute anonymous access offers from Fon. Fon know their sales figures better than I do, but it seems like bad business to introduce that 15 minute free access. 3-euro for 24-hours was already far cheaper than competitors like The Cloud. Message board posters already noticed the loss of sales as people exploit the anonymous access. There's over 300 in the protest lake today. I can't blame them - if your network gets abused for bad things like kiddie porn, the possible problems are terrible. I've seen innocent people punished for running insecure systems in the past. One of the most disappointing things is that the Fon workers seem to be near-silent on this. A few sympathetic posts to the boards, but no official statement yet, as far as I can see. So, I'll not be getting a Fon access point while this problem continues and it worries me for the future, but do you know of any alternatives?

ASK 3D has launched. It looks pretty, but I don't see much improvement on the actual searching. If I search for something in the UK, it switches back to World without asking (I suspect some undisclosed cookie-fu). If I search for certain company names, it auto-corrects the spelling and returns a page of irrelevant results. The results pages seem to have too much space occupied by adverts. And the list goes on. I'm ready to switch search engines, but it won't be to this version of Ask 3D.

Bristol is my nearest big city. Its council is told by government to cooperate with ours, but I'm not sure that's a good idea for cycle facilities. They build some good on-road stuff, but some of their other stuff seems just plain insane. Now rider md451, who brought us a video of a ride along the Coronation Road shared-use farcility, has posted a picture of Bristol's "densest white paint in one cycleway" award-winner. Incredible.

Now that my Samsung YP-U2 was destroyed, I'm left with the Oracom ORC-200M USB Audio Player that I was given a while ago. It seems that this doesn't work with recent 2.6 kernels. Tales of brokenness abound on livejournal, in ubuntu forums, and in Gentoo forums. Its USB ID (in lsusb or /proc/bus/usb/devices) is 0f19:0103 and there is a patch available for 0f19:0101, which is the similar ORC-100 and DION-MX player. Simply changing the ID and using that patch didn't work for me. I could see the device appear in /proc/scsi/usb-storage (which was new), but still nothing in /proc/scsi/scsi, so I updated the patch slightly. The new patch for linux-2.6.21.5 is:

--- linux/drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h.orig       2007-07-03 18:44:59.000000000 +0100
+++ linux/drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h    2007-07-03 19:01:47.000000000 +0100
@@ -1317,6 +1317,16 @@
                US_SC_DEVICE, US_PR_DEVICE, NULL,
                US_FL_IGNORE_RESIDUE   US_FL_GO_SLOW   US_FL_MAX_SECTORS_64),
+/* Patch by Leonid Petrov mail at lpetrov.net
+ * http://www.qbik.ch/usb/devices/showdev.php?id=1705
+ * Updated to 103 device by MJ Ray mjr at phonecoop.coop
+ */
+UNUSUAL_DEV(  0x0f19, 0x0103, 0x0100, 0x0100,
+               "Oracom Co., Ltd",
+               "ORC-200M",
+                US_SC_DEVICE, US_PR_DEVICE, NULL,
+                US_FL_IGNORE_RESIDUE   US_FL_FIX_INQUIRY),
+
 /* David Kuehling <dvdkhlng@gmx.de>:
  * for MP3-Player AVOX WSX-300ER (bought in Japan).  Reports lots of SCSI
  * errors when trying to write.

Hope that helps someone else. Leave a comment if you have any improvements, please. I don't really know what I'm doing with USB and I didn't find descriptions of the usb-storage flags (US_FL_ right?). I just experimented until it worked.

I asked for any other free-to-air satellite coverage of the Tour de France and Bernie S commented:

"RAI 3 on Hotbird"

and there's an online schedule on the RAI 3 site. Neville Emerson wrote:

"Can't wait. Cycling is the best and coverage is getting better and better every year."

Yes, at long last. There's now a full itv coverage listing on the CTC site but I still don't understand why itv are so late at launching their tdf site! Speckled Hen asks:

"Anyone know if there's any live coverage online? Can't see anything on either Eurosport or ITV web sites. I know the Beeb usually do it with rugby internationals."

I heard of some recorded items from ASO (Amury Sport Organisation, the tour's managers) on YouTube, but nothing about live video feeds yet. I've had audio in the past from both Radio France and Eurosport but I've not even found those details for this year yet (I'm slow at reading French and the new Yahoo Eurosport site is terribly hard to navigate). Keep watching Cycling Fans and TdFBlog (who kindly linked this item in their coverage summary ) for news of video coverage. Unless anyone would like to leave me details of live online coverage in a comment on my site, please?

Richard Bensley is running a Blender tutorial 13:00-18:00 for the 14th of July at the UEA in Norwich. More details on ALUG Main with transport details.

Regular readers may remember that I'm a vocal critic of some search engines and the unreliability of their fast-changing algorithms. One day you're top ten and the next you're gone. If you're building your business on search engine referrals, you're building your castle on shifting sands. SEOBook: Website Sustainability: What Percent of Your Traffic Comes From Search Engines? has good advice:-

"one of the best moves you can make for the sustainability of that site is to lower the percentage of traffic that comes from search"

That's one reason why I'm glad to see the suggestion of etbe: Advertising Free Software Projects - nearly every free software project would be better off improving their web sites, adding cross-links and building more sustainable traffic, instead of wasting resources competing in the Google-ad Games. Unless you've got the thousands of pounds a year that successful AdWords marketers spend, your Google-ad success will probably be short-lived, as people with more money will outbid you for keywords that work. It's even less sustainable than search result traffic, because it's consuming your financial resources as well as your vounteer time. Meanwhile, most free software project webmasters I know are over-stretched, but many wannabe-contributors seem to want to nuke the entire site to rebuild it with their pet tool. Those offers are really about their ego more than helping the project, in my opinion. They want to Get Themslves Noticed, but I've seen far too many unfinished site rebuilds to like those offers. In fact, I don't think any good webmaster would offer a rebuild without the site owner asking for it - even in the rare cases where I really strongly want to restart a site, I explain why and ask permission first, not just wade in with an offer to nuke-and-rebuild. If the site owner says no, I move on: there's no shortage of work here, after all and very few free software projects pay their webmasters. So, if you want to help a free software project, ask their webmasters for suggestions and access to the site source code.

On 13 June, Koha was presented to the Fourteenth International Conference: Crimea 2007: Libraries and Information Resources in the Modern World of Science, Culture, Education and Business by Sergey Dubik, V. Stefanik Lvov Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Lvov, Ukraine. The presentation PDF is online (tip from the author to koha list). It's in Cyrillic alphabet - which language is it in?

Alex Hudson commented:

"Similar comments about another W3C WG: http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1181118077&order=-1&count=1 W3C should be about authoring material for the web. It seems at the moment, they're more concerned with the stuff that happens after authoring - e.g., how stuff relates in "the semantic web". IMHO we still don't have any powerful tools for authoring either, so the idea that authoring tools will automate many of the "bolt on accessibility" tasks is pretty naive."

After implementing pingback, I have some respect for hixie. It's disappointing but not surprising to read those comments. Not sure what is meant by powerful authoring tools there. My tools are powerful, but I know they're not easy for new users. As I'm getting old and cynical, I'm not sure whether power tools can ever be correct and truly easy - just look at the pigswill spewing out of some Web 2.0 sites. niq sent me a link to the WCAG Samurai Errata and commented:

"The problem with WCAG 2, as with WCAG 1, is precisely that it's a Work of Committee, and seeks to represent too many irreconcilable viewpoints and egos. In some cases, even the ideas behind it are inconsistent. Many (myself included) regard accessibility as being about ensuring a reader with a physical disability can make use of a site (think Steven Hawking). That's also what HTML is designed to support. Others are concerned with the mentally impaired, also a worthy cause, but one that becomes counterproductive when its advocates fail to distinguish between a site that's inherently inaccessible because it presents a complex and challenging subject, and one that's unnecessarily difficult due to poor presentation. Add the two together, blend in some stupidity, and you get "accessible" sites full of classic "friendly" little illustrations like a "helpful" government booklet, and a horribly intrusive "alt" to explain each pointless "ethnic mummy and child" picture."

I think a Work of Committee could be useful, as long as you have the right committee. Thinking about that, I found the group membership list and I'm not sure that's the right committee. For example, I think the ex-Adobe Google-worker must surely have an irreconcilable conflict of interest (inappropriate use of Adobe's Flash and PDF formats and Google's Web Apps have done more than many to harm accessibility in the past IMO), yet is a leading light of WCAG 2.0 - maybe that's why it's gone so dark? Update: Thijs Kinkhorst comments:

"As I read in the draft, suggestions are still possible until the 29th, not the 27th of June."

I'm sure that's different to the email which started me writing this, but please go comment and see if we can make WCAG-2.0 useful.

Problems reported on ingdirect.es:

"I get a message in Firefox to the effect that the web page is NOT a secure site, even though the address bar shows the URL as https...??? THIS is the URL on the pop up. THIS is the URL of the bank's opening page. Access de clientes is the link to log in."

I didn't see the cause at a glance... anyone? Does this work with GNU/Linux or not? Also spotted a D+Cglug subscriber reporting problems on UK HSBCnet - anyone willing to confirm or reject that? Comment form at the bottom of the list.

I wrote this yesterday:

"Dear BBC Money Programme, I'm really surprised that BBC Two's Money Programme "How Green is Your High Street?" correctly mentions that the recent greenwashing of public listed companies is motivated by shareholder returns rather than ethics, yet doesn't mention that cooperative businesses are motivated by ethics. Nor does it mention that the UK's largest cooperative retailer, the Cooperative Group, has been at the forefront of moving its stores to renewable energy and developing friendlier food packaging across its whole range, from biodegradable onion nets to thin-but-tough whisky bottles. I think it's also the first high street retailer to commit to only selling A-rated electrical appliances in its stores. It does this because it is motivated by ethics as well as dividends. As a result, the Co-operative Group food stores are outperforming competitors in the IGD reports and winning awards such as the Queens Award for Enterprise in Sustainable Development. Why do you ignore this success of green and ethical principles in your report?"

and this morning Sam notes he's seen the Daily Mirror report that the co-operative food came top in the original research so will there be a nice present on the end of the TV show?

Despite their TV trailers and it being only 10 days away, there's still nothing on the itv sport site about the Tour de France coverage, but I can see the early stage details on tvtv now. The bulk of the coverage is on itv4 with some highlights repeated around midnight on itv1 and itv4. Unusually, the first stage is also on itv1, so terrestial analogue viewers can see what the fuss is really about, instead of the ceremonial final stage. Eurosport International is being good and covering everything live and in highlights, as ever. (Eurosport Analogue is free-to-air in English and German; Eurosport Digital is FTA in German.) The British Eurosport schedule seems something between the International and itv schedules described below. Strangely, it seems that the weekend afternoon live coverage is also on itv4, which doesn't usually start transmission until 18:00. I guess itv play or citv may be closing down early to make space. In detail: Presentation of the teams - Friday 6 July, live on itv4 from 18:30 (preceded by Liege-Bastogne-Liege highlights at 18:00), repeated on itv1 00:00, on itv4 00:30. Eurosport show it recorded 10:45-11:15 Saturday morning. Prologue - Saturday 7 July, live on itv4 14:45-19:00, live on Eurosport 15:00-18:30, highlights on itv4 00:30 Stage 1 - Sunday 8 July, live on itv4 from 10:30-16:10, live on itv1 10:50-11:50 and 15:15-16:00, live on Eurosport 10:00-16:00, highlights on itv4 19:00, repeated on itv4 00:30 As far as I can see so far, weekday stages look likely to be live on Eurosport from 13:00-16:30 (covering the start live at whatever time and maybe with highlights between that and the main live coverage) with highlights on itv4 19:00, repeated on itv4 after 23:30, highlights on Eurosport after 21:00. I expect most weekends to be a similar coverage pattern to the Prologue and the final stage to be covered like Stage 1, similar to last year's final stage. Also, France 2/3, ARD/ZDF (listings) and maybe RTBFSat will cover the race live too. Any other free-to-air satellite coverage?

As a result of commenting on some problems in CUBA's Jam Busting June site I was made aware of the Working Draft of WCAG 2.0 or the Not-Working Draft, as I think it could be called. If you want to comment on it yourself, you had until the end of 27 June 2007 (US EDT, I assume). Put simply, it's too confusing for both web developers and site managers. Even the Quick Reference is rather long for practical use. It's very indirect - it's not even clear whether xhtml over HTTP is preferred. I submitted a comment about that - also rather disappointing to find that W3C appear to fail to use stripslashes() when needed. I submitted another comment about the backwards step of allowing Javascript-required sites to be called accessible. Javascript is dangerous for accessibility and bad for power consumption. What the blue blazes is an AJAX-only webmail doing as one of the accessibility examples? I see that notable sites have already criticised WCAG 2.0. While I don't necessarily agree with everything they say, this is a very disappointing situation. Will WCAG 2 be rescued? Are accessible-friendly webmasters screwed if WCAG 1.0 is replaced by 2.0 in our national standards? It lets all the Flash-only cowboys claim WCAG-conformance as long as they note their site relies upon Flash. (Question: is a site still WCAG-2.0-accessible if it requires Flash to view the note that says it requires Flash?) Should we start looking towards MACCAWS, WHATWG, expanding IETF to cover the web, or starting another democratic/meritocratic standards body?

Heard after someone debugged a host that kernel panicked on boot several times: "turns out doing an amd64 install on a i386 box is a bad idea"

Finally, Gordon Brown has eventually become the eleventh Prime Minister of Queen Elizabeth II, as expected for most of his ten years as finance minister. The opening of his first speech was drowned out on the BBC by helicopters, but it continued with

"This will be a new government with new priorities. [...] meeting the concerns and aspirations of our whole country. [...] I want the best of chances for everyone. That is my mission. If we can fulfil the potential and realise the talents of all our people then I am absolutely sure that Britain can be the great global success story of this century. [...] I will try to do my utmost" (full text from ePolitix)

but there are lots of questions left open about what his utmost will be. From whether we'll see more co-operative ministers, through environmental and free-software-related policies, to just how the "clunking fist" will deal with the "trojan tory" David Cameron leader of the opposition, it's all unknown just now. I think he's the first PM who could use a Stranglers track as his theme.

Chris Lale writes to fsfe-uk:

"Microsoft is currently submitting its Office Open XML (OOXML) format for endorsement as an ISO international standard using the "fast-track" procedure. BSI British Standards is accepting comments on the draft submission by 30th June There are arguments and a petition on the <NO>OOXML website "

Go sign and comment!

Anne Betty commented:

"From your report, OCO = Our Customer Offer I work on labelling of The Co-operative brand products, and it is our policy to always include the origin of the main characterising ingredient(s) of the product. It's not required by law though!"

Thanks for the clarification on OCO - I understand that means the aim is for those stores to promote the co-op's distinctive features more clearly. Sometimes us simple new members get bamboozled by the Co-op Group jargon. I think the law on labelling should be changed. It's almost as important to know where our food has come from as to know what it contains, else we cannot make an informed choice. I'm glad the Co-op takes a lead on this.

Stephen Touset commented:

"The worst offender in my experience is the "Verified by VISA" program. They restrict you to a subset of characters (alphanumeric, if I recall correctly) and even restrict the maximum length! You know what the worst part of it is, though? If they were using a widely-published, widely-analyzed, and widely-reviewed secure hash standard like SHA-1, Whirlpool, or any number of alternatives, these restrictions wouldn't be in place. This tells me that they're likely not using a well-reviewed standard, and instead have probably come up with their own bastardized password "encryption"."

I'm a bit worried by this, but I'm moving my customers to Verfied by VISA and Mastercard 3DSecure because of the carrot-and-stick used by the payment gateways. Am I sleepwalking off the cliff here?

In reply to my comment about "things that reduce carbon footprint but aren't very green (nuclear power, for example)", Felipe Sateler asked:

"Why is it that nuclear power isn't green? If residues are disposed of securely, then there should be no problem with it."

It's not green mainly because we cannot yet dispose of nuclear waste. All we do is reprocess it, bury it in high concentrations and pray that the containers don't leak or get vandalised while it's being transported through our major cities, within arm's length of the public on train platforms or after burial, until it has decomposed enough to be "mostly harmless". There are also the problems of the amount of energy used in constructing and operating the power plants with all their security measures; and energy security for England, because current nuclear fuels are relatively rare and imported, and nuclear power stations are often built in flood-risk areas. Our nuclear power system seems very fragile. Read more from Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace UK about why nuclear is not green.

Partly because of a lack of funding for debconf, partly because of bad organisation (long story, may be told later) and partly to get back to work (got a new contract on Thursday, so it was worth it), I left debconf on Wednesday, the day of the day trip. Those of you who were there may have noticed it rained pretty damn hard. After I checked out, I sat in the lobby and lined all my luggage with plastic, to make really sure it was waterproof. I left a few things which didn't matter, like bottles, in the side pockets, outside the plastic. I headed out with the intention of visiting Teviot one last time, to pick up things from the Front Desk which arrived after I did, but as I waded uphill, I changed my plan and headed straight for Waverley station. There I sat, snacking and drip-drying until my train left. I watched the day trippers leave, but I don't think they looked up to the bridge where I sat. There was a very strange sign fragment on the ground on the far side of the train tracks at Waverley platform 7: it said

"How many assassins does it take to kill one man?"

How debconf-coincidence is that? I tried to get a picture, but my camera wasn't happy about the light levels. Anyone else see it? Is it still there? I met some very nice people on the train to Manchester. Sat at the same table as me were a young web designer and someone who was stationed in London (during World War 2, IIRC). Both had interesting stories and both had connections to France. A fourth person got on in Lancashire and just sat quietly, reading the University of Lancaster Travel Plan 2004. Manchester city centre was fascinating. I travelled through it quite a few times more than 10 years ago, but it has poshed up since then. Most buildings seem relentlessly gothic, like someone took London St Pancras as the inspiration for an entire city, but there's the occasional classical and modernist building punctuating things. I'll put the photos up soon. After a quick walk around, I felt it was about to rain again and I didn't fancy a second soaking in one day, so I headed into a pretty good cafe called "Java" by Oxford Road station and waited for my train. The rest of the journey back was pretty uneventful, as far as I can recall. Unfortunately, once I got home, I discovered that some of my hardware was outside the plastic lining and was soaked by the first rainstorm... these posts have been delayed while I got some of it working again, but it seems that the infernal Samsung YP-U2 audio player is totally dead.