hair transplant commented:

"to blog in different languages, we need and on line translator, I think"

in reply to my old question about multilingual blogging. Like many multilanguage speakers I know, I don't hold out much hope of machine translation becoming useful any time soon. Systems like systrans can be useful for getting the basics of a message when you're totally stuck, but babelfishisms are a well-known danger (or comedy source, depending on what you're doing with it). So we're left with the question of how to blog in multiple languages without annoying the hell out of everyone. Do aggregators support content-negotiation? Should we use bertilow-style consecutive translation? Or simply run multiple blogs? I'm still only blogging in English. I probably should experiment. What's the state of this art now?

Added: Banco R o, ING Bank l ski, mBank, Sparkasse I notice that Jonathan's earth.li presence: Planned bank outages notes Cahoot's good approach and asks about others. I've sometimes seen announcements on the web pages of NPBS and Co-operative Bank, but no email unless it appears in their routine email newsletters. How about others? (I've posted this comment here because the presence is a login-to-comment site.)

I took some days off-line so the iBook story hasn’t progressed very much. On the other hand I’ve spent some time with my family and finaly finished Neil Stephenson’s Quicksilver. Sound Had some problems with the internal soundcard. I’m not quite sure what the porblem was, but the right module is snd_powermac and not anything like snd_aoa. Probaly did something else wrong along the way too. The fun part would be playing music throug AirTunes. raop-play claims to solve this problem. They got debian packages for i386 and a nice debian/ in the source tar-ball. The build-deps is missing fluid and libglib2.0-dev but other than that it builds nicely — but no sound… Nearly giving up I looked at the alsapcm module not part of the debian package, just to see how it worked in theory. And suddenly I could play music with mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=1.0 music.ogg. Problem is that raop-play isn’t endian safe, but the alsapcm module forces use of little endian somewhere before the real raop-play. Afterward I’ve tested raop-play on amd64 where it works nicely. Java Java seems to be a problem. None of the packages of ibm-jre packages I’m seem to be able to find is supported by java-package. My Bank uses java, so that is kind of a show stopper, but I havn’t really looked into it yet. Flash, Youtube and the like Flash isn’t really a showstopper, but it would be nice to be able to see all the funny video clips people are refering to. None of the free flash plugins seems to work (swfdec, libfalsh-mozplugin), but youtube-dl and mplayer do the job. Futher work… Java is a major show stopper. I can’t switch for real without java support in my browser. The other problems is something I can live with. I migth even prefer to use AirTunes from my amd64 server instead of my laptop so I will probally ITP raop-play soon. Some people have asked why I want to switch away from wonderfull OS X. I’ll try to wirte something up one of the days - and no it’s is not anything personal against mac fans.

A little remembered fact is that the Debian Jr. project had a directory in the subversion repository of the CDD project at Alioth. Aside from Andreas Tille’s experimental conversion of Debian Jr. to use cdd-dev¹, there was nothing else there until today. While I was in the process of populating this directory with the junior-* metapackages and adding an external reference to the live CD config, it seemed to me that it would be better to move the whole thing to our own repository at Alioth, which I promptly did. So now you can check it out:

$ svn co svn://svn.debian.org/debianjr

As well, I registered Debian Jr. at http://cia.vc/ and configured svn so that the CIA bot will report on the #debian-jr channel at irc.debian.org for every commit. And finally, I applied for the creation of a debian-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org list. As soon as the list is created, I will hook it up to the repository so you can subscribe to commit emails.

¹ Although this seemed like a good idea at the time, for various reasons I ended up sticking with the single metapackage per category model Debian Jr. uses to this day. But I have retained this experiment in the repository under svn://svn.debian.org/debianjr/branches/EXP-cdd-dev in case we ever reverse that decision.

Added: List of Sweden Banks; BBVA Bancomer, Bendigo Bank, HSBC Canada, Rabobank, San Paolo IMI, Santander, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken Updated: Nordea Thanks again for the updates, especially the new country list.

I've started getting advertising enquiries, so this page explains my policy on advertising on my site, as far as I've worked it out so far. If you don't mind, please read the conditions and leave me a comment if you think I've missed something. [Yes, this is one of my now-rare folded posts.]

Totally unoriginal, but I thought it was amusing. I also get some strange search phrases: "My gas meter is making a clicking noise" - then stop using the computer and call your gas company! (In England, the contact number should be on a label on the meter, or in most phone books under "Gas".) "My computer is making loud ticking noise" - that's better. Open the case and listen to the fans and hard disks. One is probably broken. "How many cars are there on the roads today" - too damn many? "How to send an email so that everyone doesn t see the addresses" - put yourself in the To line and everyone else in the Bcc (blind carbon copy). See my email guide for other handy tips. "How do i say in an email that there is an attachment" - How about "There is an attachment"? "Samsung yp-u2 linux" - it works as long as you don't want to upgrade the firmware. More... "How to satellite aiming motor europa" - point it at the sky, not at europa. I'll add more instructions to my satellite page as I rebuild my system. "MJ bad" - at least there are 4 times as many "good" searches. "How do I get the software for the samsung ml-4500" and "Samsung ml-4500 xp drivers" - I have a Ghostscript driver patch. Does Ghostscript work as a printer driver on XP? "Cycle tracks near sandringham" - there's part of NCN1 alongside the A149, but most of the other cycle routes near Sandringham are along quiet roads (which is fine). "What does wag stand for regarding football?" - Wives And Girlfriends. BTW it's a stupid TLA IMO. "Wretton planning", "Wretton parish council", "business properties for sale in Wretton" and "properties for sale in field lane Wretton" - I've not been to Wretton in some time, let alone mentioned its planning or set up an estate agent there! "How to grow grapevine in a conservatory?" - damned if I know. I would think the temperature change each time you open a door would hurt it too much. "Hanging washing out over night" - it's a bad idea if it's going to freeze. "Why some people take so long to reply to emails" - we're busy trying to thaw the washing out. "Satellite frequency for ulster tv for sky plus box" - 10906MHz Vertical polarisation 22Msym/s, but can you record "other channels" on Sky Plus or should you buy a real DVR? "Where can i find a picture of st james swimming pool in kings lynn?" - try Norlink's Picture Norfolk section. "What happened to opensource.org?" - It was transferred from SPI to OSI. Strangely, the next search phrase listed was "simple example of unethical behaviour"... "What to do about death?" - be very still and start to rot? "bf uk cbhf" - I give up. Did 8 of you headbutt the keyboard? "I hate belkin" - Me too. "Interesting questions to ask someone" - no, not on this site. "Bar" - best idea yet. Cheers!

Added: Handelsbanken, Vermont State Employees Credit Union, ING Direct US, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Banca Sella Updated: HSBC, 1822direkt Thanks again everyone. Anyone want to keep a list for their own country? Please?

Added: Cr dit Coop ratif, link to French compilation, Skandiabanken, postbank, 1822direkt, Deutsche Kreditbank AG, ing-diba Question from Carsten Aulbert: some banks "offer HBCI with cards, but so far I haven't tried it. Do you happen to know a good link, which cardreaders are supported under Linux?"

Added: Clydesdale, Record Bank, TD Canada Trust, Wachovia Thanks for the updates. Anyone able to confirm whether HSBC (UK) business banking works?

A lot of people seem to post their votes onto planet these days. More so than 2 or 3 years ago. I'm still not going to post the full details, but here's my usual summary, based on the debate and the platforms.

Above None Of The Above

• Sam Hocevar - I share his view of the problems, although I don't agree with all the suggested actions. A bit quirky, but seems nice enough.
• Aigars Mahinovs - I think he could be an accountable and fair DPL. Has ideas - not all good ideas and I don't like the aim of releasing less often - but I can't see him driving on if he's getting flamed to a well-done crisp. A leader more than a ruler.
• Gustavo Franco - nice guy, but maybe I just think that because I've had more direct contact with him than other candidates recently. I agree with most of his views of the problems, except Ubuntu and the tattoo. Maybe too inexperienced for this time.
• Raphael Hertzog - I think the team model is a good idea for the size of the project now and it learns from past attempts.

Borderline

• Wouter Verhelst - I'd be voting mainly based on what I've seen of him. I don't want to vote for someone standing with a low-detail platform, as that's just scary. Even when people break promises, it's hard enough to remove them. The debate did give a bit more detail. I fear the adoption of ESR-style "authority follows responsibility" - that's just impractical for parts of the debian infrastructure.
• Simon Richter - Generally OK, but I'm worried by the cutting it fine with the platform, not posting any rebuttals and being late for the debate because one battery went flat.

Below NOTA

• Steve McIntyre - This won't surprise anyone: it's because of the manner in which the Debian UK Society retail business was started; but also the trial misadvertised as mediation of the d-i conflict. I shudder to think what social conformance tests he wants in NM.
• Anthony Towns - last year I didn't vote for this politician (while correct in one way, most DDs have never even seen me in a mediation situation and he didn't have the courage to cc me on that email) because I thought that email suggested he'd be a terrible DPL. This year, he's demonstrated how terrible and the platform and debate suggests he hasn't even noticed: he thinks he's been a successful leader, despite the recall vote. One or two interesting ideas, but not enough to overcome that. His rebuttal seems to utterly miss Sam Hocevar's point about how being not-evil (Corporate Social Responsibility, as seen in the private sector) is different from actively being good (Concern for Community, as seen in the third sector): is that being dense or devious?

So, how wrong am I this year? Is there more trouble ahead?

A relatively recent addition to the Google range is Google Docs. I'll be testing it shortly, but I see it has already suffered google's usual security/privacy bugs Apart from encouraging the larger Atom feed format, dropping RDF support and unreliable alternatives to its eyetests, Blogger is one of Google's best services. The basic service seems to work in a half-decent manner. Of course, it still has bugs and that let someone post a hoax Google news release Google's search results are still unstable: here's a consultant spotting lots of turbulance in the results. If Google's actions were unfair and harmed your performance, you can't touch them, as kinderstart discovered (but that ruling might be an interesting reference for other ratings sites, so there's a silver lining). The site complains constantly that I don't let it rampage through my browser and I haven't downloaded the latest from Adobe. It's a bit less annoying now that ytplay is available, but it shows that Google doesn't care much for free software support. An interesting twist has been Viacom suing Google for a billion dollars and calling them all sorts of names. (Beware bias in the BBC reporting on this, as BBC just signed up for Google-YouTube [BBC] - is there a monopoly that the BBC won't befriend?) Adwords and adsense looks like some of Google's top mass-market money-makers. I have mixed reports about them, including some of my customers that are happy to use them, and others that get results like this commenter at Problogger which suggests that adsense referrals maybe don't always report accurately. There is also a privacy/trust problem with having one company seeing so much of the world's searches. This was the basis for a recent Ask.com ad campaign (nice idea, shame about the microsite's poor accessibility and various other things - it gave one Google-worker a good laugh and got better commentary from Susan Hallam Communications). Privacy bodies backed Google's step towards allowing user privacy [BBC] but there's more that should be done. That's enough for now. I've got some more positive news which I'll post along with the Docs review.

Thanks again to all the updaters. Please, start lists for banks in other countries and tell me about them. If a list already exists for your country, consider sending updates there first. Added: Banca Popolare Etica, Caisses Populaires Desjardins, Caja Madrid, Caja de Segovia, Fortis Bank Belgium, KBC, netbank.de, Osuuspankki, PC Financial Master Card, Soci t G n rale, Sparebank 1-Gruppen, Storebrand Bank Updated: NatWest Andrew Donnellan suggested:

"Perhaps it would be useful to start a list of banks that *don't* work with Free Software as well so we can a) petition them, and b) boycott them until they make it work."

I'd prefer to keep this to a positive list for various reasons (including lawyer-fear, search engine rankings, rewarding the good and saying nothing if I've nothing nice to say). If a listed bank goes bad, it will show up as Removed. If you want to rant about how a bank screwed you, please use your own site. If I see it and like it, it will appear in one of my linkposts.

Today's featured spam is from Digital Parts, Rowan House, Bricklehampton Lane, Pershore, Worcestershire, WR10 3JT sent via ukcompanydeals.com and reroute-all.com. They get a special mention for including the fully buzzword-compliant footer

"Marketing communications are delivered in accordance with EU Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications. [...] All communications are targeted to business users only."

and then sending their weasel words to one of my personal org.uk addresses, clearly marked as "UK non-trading individual" at Nominet. No real contact details included, so if you get the same spam, please link this to help them find themselves on search engines.

And so this breaks the record and becomes the longest-running item on my blog. Thanks for all the updates. Are there really no up-to-date lists for banks in other countries? Added: S st pankki Updated: National Australia Bank, ING Bank, ING Direct

2007-03-21: (the "so use a news search service that works instead of Google, then" update): Spain's wind energy reaches new high

CompWizrd commented:

"You can also get water faucets that are limited in the maximum temperature they'll put out.. it mixes in cold water as needed to keep the temperature down Far as I remember, they're required nowadays anyways.. Or maybe it was the pressure regulated ones.. those keep the temperature at a set level. Even if someone flushes the toilet, it will reduce the hot water coming in, to keep the temperature regulated."

I read somewhere that there's a maximum of 49C for new fittings in the USA, but I'm not sure there's a limit here in England yet.

One more day of comments to this and I think it will become the longest-running item on my blog. Thanks to everyone who's helped so far. Added: BW-Bank, Etrade, ING Direct, Nordea, RBC Banque Royale, Swedbank Updated: Cooperative Bank (business) Linked to other lists: Australia and New Zealand, Denmark, Germany, Worldwide