Replaced satmania with satscan on my TV guides page.

I wouldn't usually link an article from the Metro free paper but this is beyond belief:

"The fast-food chain has applied for a patent relating to the 'method and apparatus' used to prepare the snack."

They claim their novel and inventive step is 'simultaneous toasting of a bread component'. You know, like the bun toaster on top of my electric grill.

The main reason that the CC 3.0 draft licences don't seem to follow the Debian Free Software Guidelines is that they single out TPM as an unacceptable field of endeavour. However, Dare to DReaM? [copyrighteous] suggests that what some CC fans are supporting as a TPM ban may not be a TPM ban after all. Mako's Parallel Distribution is a brilliant summary of the flaws in the most frequently-used arguments for CC simply banning TPM/DRM in the crude manner of the CC 3.0 drafts.

Are they a type of program or an artwork and does it matter? Yes, yes and not really. One recent cause for concern is the increasing number of fonts under the so-called "Open Font License", including ttf-gentium and various others. The last released version of OFL does not follow the Debian Free Software Guidelines, partly because it uses copyright restrictions to enforce a sort of "super-trademark" for the font name in ways which, frankly, are a pain for making ready-to-eat font packages from OFL'd fonts. This is similar to some problems in old LaTeX licences which have been resolved in recent years. For further explanations, see this debian-legal thread from January. OFL's lead developer still claims it follows DFSG, despite various debian developers explaining how it does not. There's a new draft of the OFL out, which I've yet to review (it's nuts here just now). Hopefully, the new version of the OFL will make it clear that you can mention the Reserved Font Name for compatibility and configuration, as long as one does not claim that a modified font is that named font.

After registering children and alcohol drinkers, now they're going to fingerprint drivers at roadside checks, according to Motorists to give fingerprints [BBC News]. The report says

"Officers promise prints will not be kept on file"

but as Mark Wallace of civil liberties group the Freedom Association told them:

"I don't think we should be reassured by the fact that at the moment it's voluntary and at the moment they won't be recorded. Both of those things are actually only happening in the trial because the laws haven't been passed to do this on a national basis compulsorily and with recording."

ken lewis commented:

"My response to being asked for my fingerprints will be to say no and ask to prove my identity at the police station. That's non-violent resistance to this liberty-threatening move." "And that reminds me -- as a lurker on Planet Debian, I'm struck by the references to mailing-list flamewars. Why are people so keen on freedom able to discuss so violently that freedom?"

At the start of this week, one of the mailservers I run came heavily under attack. As well as the continuing surge in the sheer volume of spam - which has been reported widely in articles like Spam up by 59 per cent [Spannerworks Search Marketing News] - there were dozens of clients opening connections and then just sitting there idle. Very strange. To bring things back under control, I added a mixture of new anti-spam methods, but some things will always be attractive enough for bad people to attack manually and defeat whatever anti-spam you put in place. The only anti-spam which can't be defeated is one that will defeat all real people - and that helps spammers to pollute the network, IMO, making everyone else waste yet more time as a result of their spamming. My main anti-spam at the moment is a mix of:

• throttling and limit simultaneous connections - make them speak slowly and clearly;
• greylisting but be careful not to put the block time too high, else yahoo's mail relay farms will give up;
• tarpitting triggered by a DNSBL match - this is often enough to make spammers give up (too expensive) or violate the SMTP protocol;
• moderate list mails by Content-Type - most lists prefer text/plain;
• moderate by content string matching - rather fiddly to do this.

I always argue against doing a hard reject for a dnsbl match. In general, dnsbls are way too trigger-happy and too prone to false positives, especially for things like new mailservers coming online. Just this month, one of my ISP mailservers ended up in sbl-xbl and I couldn't find out why. Once I had added the extra anti-spam, the spam volume dropped significantly. Total message volume reduced by about 20%. I can't tell reliably how many of the 20% (or the remaining 80%) are spam, of course. But then the network connection failed, which may have been the cause of the idle connections that turned this into a crisis in the first place.

Debian Jr. development revived Recently there has been some lively discussion on the Debian Jr. list about how to arrange an account for a child of 1 to 3 years of age. Suggestions included using set-top box software like Freevo, tailoring DEs with panels and large buttons, using simpler WMs like fvwm, or using an “activity centre” app like Gcompris. Now, I respect those parents who hold that a child this young should interact more with the “real world”. While I wouldn’t go so far as to outright prohibit my young ones from computer use, I can see the wisdom in keeping it to a minimum. But, for better or worse, our family is one of several who have some experience helping our youngest members use our Debian systems. We would like to share what we’ve learned through the Debian Jr. project. Getting started with live.debian.net To that end, last week I was inspired to follow the Debian Live ISO Howto to produce my first rough draft of a Debian Jr. live CD built from scratch on Etch. For the final product, we’ll want to use a local partial Debian archive mirror, as it not only optimizes fetching packages for several build iterations, but also can be kept stable, which is important as we near release. But for this draft, I ran into trouble building the complete package list to populate the partial mirror, as cdebootstrap, which make-live uses, has no handy --print-debs switch like debootstrap does. So for now, I rely on approx to cache packages for optimization only. A straightforward process to create a working live CD The rest of the process was straightforward: using live-package, I created a package list¹ containing Gnome and the Debian Jr. metapackages, I configured /etc/make-live.conf to point at my proxy, and then I ran the make-live script on the package list. The end result was ./debian-live/binary.iso, which successfully booted under qemu. At this stage, there is not much to show. To be truly useful, the live CD needs to be set up so that children and their guides can immediately find and use the material intended for them. We will need not only one live CD user, but four, varying in age range and role. (More about this in a future article.) However, it is an encouraging start, and shows that we may be able to produce something usable by the time Etch releases.

¹ For this exercise, I simply combined /usr/share/make-live/lists/gnome with the junior-* metapackages in Etch, and added mozilla-firefox-gnome-support to satisfy Gnome’s web browser dependency and cut down on redundancy, resulting in the following list.

junior-art
junior-doc
junior-games-card
junior-games-gl
junior-games-net
junior-games-sim
junior-games-text
junior-gnome
junior-internet
junior-kde
junior-math
junior-programming
junior-puzzle
junior-sound
junior-system
junior-toys
junior-typing
junior-writing
mozilla-firefox-gnome-support
eject sudo
console-common locales
gdm gdm-themes gnome-desktop-environment gnome-cups-manager gnome-screensaver
gnome-themes-extras
rhythmbox synaptic
x-window-system-core

Universal are one of my least favourite companies because of their work on bad laws like TPM and the French DADVSI. Universal Music Group: iPod/MP3 device owners are thieves [drake.org.uk] describes the creation of a Microsoft-Universal axis of evil as far as free culture is concerned. These protectionists are stealing free culture with lobbying for term extensions and other cunning plans, yet they dare call the population thieves. Culture belongs to the people, not Universal. However, there is a falling out among the band of culture thieves, with Universal taking on Murdoch in MySpace sued by Universal Music [BBC NEWS]

And now, just when you thought the ID State couldn't get any dafter, it turns out the ePassport chips are an identity thief's friend. The UK is adopting ePassports when even the United States of Paranoia concluded its Radio-Frequency ID (RFID) technology:

"increases risks to personal privacy and security, with no commensurate benefit for performance or national security."

More from NO2ID:

"With a standard RFID reader bought over the internet for just 95.73, the campaign was able to prove that the same "contactless" microchips that are also to be incorporated into ID cards will "dramatically decrease [citizens'] security and privacy, and increase risk of identity theft" [FIDIS Press Release] ."

Time to get a RFID-proof wallet, like Benjamin Mako Hill and Andreas Metzler Mick commented:

"The more I hear about the UK in recent years the less I want to vist:

• Fingerprints for beer.
• Fingerprints to hire a car.
• Biometric data on passports that are easily compromised.
• Video Cameras on every corner.
• Mandatory IDs in a few years.
• British children claimed to be worst-behaved in Europe."

"The UK is starting to sound like The Clockwork Orange." "And then the plonkers claim "if you've nothing to hide what's the problem"?"

As if the underhand registration of children wasn't bad enough, this NO2ID newsletter describes another way to encourage people to submit to scanning:

"The scheme which is backed by the Home Office was first trialled in Yeovil but plans are afoot to expand the system to Coventry, Hull, Sheffield, Leeds, Gwent, Nottingham, Taunton and possibly Swindon. Drinkers must have their thumbprints scanned and supply their name, address and date of birth to enrol onto the system before they are allowed to enter licensed premises taking part in the scheme." "If you are in any of the towns affected, especially Yeovil, and are willing to do something then send an e-mail to phil@no2id.net (please put "pub fingerprinting" in the Subject).Don't get depressed, don't give in and get a home-brew kit - get angry and do something!" "PS. If anyone knows a pub that would like to take NO2ID beer mats, Newcastle NO2ID has created some with our logo on the front and key counter-arguments on the back, ideal for starting the discussions of the scheme that we need."

Not even our beer is safe from the ID State!

In the past, I have suggested that it was a mistake to make a state-based fsfe-uk mailing list instead of a language-based fsfe-en list. The discussion resulting from a call for Welsh and Irish help is a pretty sad example of some reasons why.

Debian, Free Software and licences: Affero GPL added.

Ian Rawlings wrote in an article in uk.comp.os.linux that:

"There was a legal precedent set in the UK a little less than a year ago, in which the company's name and contact details in an email signature were taken as sufficient identification of the company for the contents of the email to be acceptable as a contract [...]"

and then helpfully provided some references about it. The headline on Disclaimers could make emails into contracts [The Register] seems a bit off. Even the article ends:

"The end result of this could be that people who include a signature and disclaimer at the bottom of their emails might actually be making themselves more liable than people who just send one line emails."

Note the might there. It's quite a leap, isn't it? Mehta v J Pereira Fernandes SA [2006] EWHC 813 (Ch) (07 April 2006) appears to have ruled that headers were not a sufficient signature, rather than that a plain text signature block (sig) is sufficient. Have I missed a key point here? AFAICS, the ruling contains the following key general points:

"28. I have no doubt that if a party creates and sends an electronically created document then he will be treated as having signed it to the same extent that he would in law be treated as having signed a hard copy of the same document. [...]"

"30. [...] if a party or a party's agent sending an e mail types his or her or his or her principal's name to the extent required or permitted by existing case law in the body of an e mail, then in my view that would be a sufficient signature for the purposes of Section 4. [...]"

I doubt that a sig is quite the same as a hand signature, as it doesn't necessarily 'serve as a method of authentication' as required by the Digital Signature Directive ( 1999/93/EC, Electronic Signatures Regulations 2002), but there are times when it could bind one to things. Essentially, using a sig is like using headed paper, not like hand-signing. Parts of the ruling (para.19) seem to argue that automatic insertions make things carry less weight AFAICT - does that hint at how futile those forced stupid disclaimers would be if relied upon in court? Does the same automatic-or-decision point also mean that using a electronic signature tool (gpg or whatever) selectively helps it carry more weight than signing everything automatically? I don't agree it ... signs death warrant for Digital Signatures [Financial Cryptography] Interesting questions. Anyone know if the answers are decided yet?

iCommons's code of conduct states: "iCommoners employ open and transparent governance and processes" The iCommons mailing list replies: "You are not allowed to post to this mailing list, and your message has been automatically rejected." iCommons are good with words, but not so good with deeds. See more examples from Creative Commons in How to not run a consultation and iSummit. At least iCommons lists aren't doing the silent rejection trick from notconsult. A small step forwards...

Another example of similar problems with Wikipedia's randomly-biased editing was given in Toto, I Don't Think We're in Wikipedia Anymore [Adam Rosi-Kessel's Fair and Balanced Weblog]. I didn't try editing Wikipedia back in 2001, so I can't comment on whether this is a recent problem, as suggested, but it is a problem.

I've seen the Parcel Delivery Services email hoax twice in the last few weeks. Premium telephone services regulator ICSTIS issued a press release debunking it on 1 November 2006:

"This is in fact an urban myth. It is not possible for a GBP 15 charge to be made on connection."

I added a new tip about telephone number warnings to my email page.

Free Software Foundation Europe Launching Freedom Task Force, Co-operating with gpl-violations.org. FTF to educate programmers and corporations on how to avoid licensing problems, as well as enforce Free Software licences.

Sun announced the GPL release of Java, but don't get too happy yet. Sun's FAQ says "We expect to release a fully buildable JDK based almost completely on open-sourced code in the first half of 2007." Almost, in 2007. Close, but no cigar yet.

One of the benefits of following the various web standards and guidelines is that most browsers will show something on the screen before the page has finished loading. Avoiding unnecessary rubbish in your html and optimising graphic files can make it look like your site loads faster. This may be getting more important as networks get busier and more sites place more demands on computers. Web users may be finally getting fed up. Today's news reports: "Shoppers are likely to abandon a website if it takes longer than four seconds to load, a survey suggests" (from Websites face four-second cut-off [BBC], Akamai/Jupiter Research full report).

Forum on Civic Information No. 2 (UCLondon 2006-11-28 18:45) "will focus on open 'civic' information. Civic information is material produced by government or other groups which is relevant to political activity by citizens." I had some experience tracking this down through the Walks Action Group and I really should write up my notes on the Freedom of Information Act (FoIA or fire) and the Access to Environmental Information Regulations (AEIR, or air) before I forget it all.