If you use a firefox-based browser, bookmark http://mid.gmane.org/%s then right-click it in your bookmarks menu, pick Properties and enter "message-id:" in the Keywords field. Then you can paste Message-Id lines from email headers (or some debian list posts) into your browser window and it will search gmane for it. Handy. (2007-10-31: 1 comment)

My daughters are perhaps among the first who will grow up seeing much more YouTube than POTV (my newly coined acronym, “Plain Old TV.”) Esther, now 2 , has still never seen anything on a television (recorded, broadcast, or cable). (Havi, a week old today, may not have seen anything at all at this point.) In addition to frequently watching videos from her own blog, Esther loves YouTube. Her most requested videos are embedded below, thanks to the excellent recently-installed Viper’s Video Quicktags. Thus Esther may never know anything but on-demand and user-generated culture. At least those will be her basic assumptions about how it’s supposed to work. It’s possible that this next generation will spell the end of network-scheduled and traditional advertising-interrupted media. I can never understand why anyone would bother to arrange their schedule to watch a show on TV and sit through commercials when they can rent it from Netflix or buy it from Amazon or iTunes and watch it when and how they want — and I grew up, to some extent, with the old TV model. Esther can barely wait for whichever video she wants now. I can’t see her putting up with content on someone else’s schedule as she grows up. Now the videos, as promised (both strong indicators that Esther adheres to the Long Tail theory): Actually, it turns out I didn’t coin POTV. It’s already defined here. Technorati Tags: Culture, Kids, YouTube, UGC

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Norbert, I'm not entirely confident you'd be able to reliably restore a database from such a backup, unless the database had a QUIESCE command that would be called before the snapshot is taken.

The ProTour may be over, but there’s coverage of the category 1.1 race from Firenza-Pistoia on RAI Tre from 16:55-17:25 CET (free-to-air 13e), repeated
RAI Sport Sat (free-to-air 13e) from 21:15-21:45 CET today.

RAI Sport Sat (free-to-air 13e) have highlights of the second cyclocross World Cup event in Tabor, Czech Republic at 23:00 CET today. More introduction to cycling’s winter cousin on cyclingfans.com.

Both Sky and Setanta have had complaints upheld against their adverts by ASA this week. Sky for misleading criticism of Virgin Media's new-customer offers (Sky runs new-customers offers too) and Setanta for misleading advertising of their Premiership football package (or formally, Sky's "ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness), 15.1 (Prices) and 18.1 (Comparisons)" and Setanta's "ad breached CAP Code clause 7.1 (Truthfulness)" ). But it's more interesting to look at who made the complaints:-

"Sky TV believed the [Setanta] ad was misleading"

but

"one complainant who was already a Sky customer"

and

"an existing customer"

were among the five complaints about Sky's ad. Sky's biggest critics seem to be their own customers. That's gotta hurt.

Once again there is a discussion whether uClibc based systems should get their own architecture, or whether it would be more like Ubuntu -- they, too, have a different C library (with stack-protector support; this simplifies the gcc bootstrap sequence a bit). Thinking further, why not have generic support for keeping different configurations for various derived distributions in a single source tree, so the same source package could be used on Debian, Ubuntu, emdebian and all the others which all build different binaries? The gcc package does this, to some extent, but it looks at the build system to find out which configuration to use -- a standard mechanism, for example a DEB_BUILD_VARIANT environment variable would be nice.

Belatedly, as promised, here are the questions from the floor at last week's half-year meeting of the Co-operative Group Kennet and Avon area. All errors and omissions are mine, of course.

How do we defend against demutualisation and private equity attacks?

Our rules are now written so that demutualisation would require assets to be transferred to other co-operatives. Please comment on other ways to the current constitutional review consultation.

How can ordinary members get informed and involved in running the group?

Get items into network, call the regional office.

The consitutional review should give more power to meetings and make it easier for motions and binding promises.

will forward this to the review.

Why did the group secretary suddenly leave?

The job had changed post-merger, with different responsibilities.

How can we stop the payments to voluntarily-retiring directors?

The area has made its point. The chief executive of CooperativesUK will look into this and there was a congress motion to look into this issue.

There's been no mortgage advisor in one local bank branch for months. Is this indicative of the bank's attitude to mortgages?

No, it's disappointing. Please send details to the area secretary.

Please can we use geographic numbers instead of the expensive 0845 for the membership enquiries?

Will forward and ask for a geographic number.

Is the constitutional review being rushed?

It's streamlined because the merger gives a pressing need, but we want member input.

Can we or do we promote credit unions in-store?

Yes, we can and do promote them to members already. Can set aside some space in-store if needed.

Does the co-operative travel insurance discriminate against over 75s?

will forward the answer when we have it.

The top management post-merger are all from United: is this a take-over?

no, 2 executives had clear intentions to retire already and the lower levels are more mixed.

Which? gave the co-operative food a D for organic produce: why and what will we do about it?

Report from today's Guardian not yet seen. Expect to respond in next few days. The report may have compared convenience stores with larger stores.

Will ex-United travel agents become the co-operative travel stores?

Yes. There's a big big change coming, to be more of a community travel agent, restructured, with more phone and internet options.

Is the energy-saving policy to include refrigeration, lighting and IT?

This is a top goal, to improve refrigeration and lighting control. It saves the earth and saves money. Nearly all electricity is already "greener" electricity.

Do we own the freehold on the land previously occupied by a store at Shirehampton?

Yes. Only a non-food retailer will be allowed in.

Why do elected representatives have to retire at 70 if still capable?

Please submit comments on it to the constitutional review?

Why was there no transport from Weston-super-Mare?

Will check the office records for requests.

Anyone see these themes appear at other meetings? Any comments on these themes?

You cannot store a CComPtr inside an STL list. You can, however, wrap it in a struct, and store that in the list. Careful study of the error message led to the conclusion that apparently some STL implementations frown upon classes that provide an unary operator&.

Damiano Cunego won yesterday’s Tour of Lombardy but it doesn’t affect the overall: Cadel Evans still tops the 2007 ProTour. RAI Sport Sat (free-to-air 13e) have coverage of the first cyclocross World Cup event of the season from 14:55-16:00 CET today. More introduction to cycling’s winter cousin on cyclingfans.com.

Coverage of the last ProTour cycle race of the year is live on Eurosport (free-to-air on 19e) 15.15-17.00 CET and on RaiTre (13e) 15:50-17.00 CET. Strangely, I can’t find a French station for this one. There’s also an introduction to digital satellite TV and digital TV in general at the start of BBC’s current Click show: show times on BBC World and on BBC News24 or the video is available in some formats online. Do you have questions about free-to-air digital satellite TV? Leave me a comment - I’ll have plenty of time to reply now the ProTour season is finished.

Since I now have a business licence so I can actually charge people if they ask me questions about computers, I need to occasionally send a letter to the tax office. This means that I finally need a printer. Since I expect to be using it for about 50 pages a year, I don't really see the point in spending too much money on it, but I expect it to work those few times I actually need it. The ability to print documents that remain readable for ten years is important, so it's probably laser or thermal transfer; colour printing isn't important to me. I've had a pretty bad experience with a Lexmark Optra E (squeaky noise, crumpled envelopes, feed not working, collecting dust in the mechanics due to being top-fed). So, I'm interested in printer stories.

Recently, a lot of people have suggested that I cut my hair short in order to look like a human being. I'm not entirely convinced, and in fact think that my own taste should be what matters; I can somehow see that looking more "conservative" might help in certain things (on the other hand, I already have a job). This is a lot like the "self-censorship" thing I wrote about earlier -- the difference being that I'm already conservative about what I write (while others happily post all their party photos to social networking sites, and that doesn't do much harm to them either). I probably should post pictures.

Gofernet.net 466395 (or is it gofernet.co.uk? They seemed confused about that - maybe it's Jekyll and Hyde, one spammy, one not?) of Sutton Coldfield spammed an associate on 5 Oct 2007. The spam claimed it was sent to their client list. That associate is not and has never been a client of gofernet. The spam claimed to be "in full compliance with the Privacy and Electronic Commerce Statutory Instrument 2003, No 2426". I think they mean the the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, which usually forbids

"unsolicited communications for the purposes of direct marketing by means of electronic mail unless the recipient of the electronic mail has previously notified the sender that he consents for the time being to such communications being sent by, or at the instigation of, the sender."

Gofernet don't have consent and none of the exceptions apply AFAICS. So it's spam, even by their standards.

Added: Sainsbury's Bank's Online Saver, SEB Vilniaus Bankas (LT), Snoras (LT) Noted problems with Alliance and Leicester commercial banking.

Stumbled across the Moonbeam Films's show "The Listening Post" on Al Jazeera English (bad javascript-heavy site) just now. They closed the show with the Loneliest Icelander (youtube) which was pretty damn funny, even if the accents were noticeably off. (Anyone seen a schedule for AJE anywhere else? They don't put show times on-screen and don't have a free EPG or teletext.)

I attended my first half-yearly meeting as a member of the co-operative group yesterday evening at 7pm. The event for the strangely-named Kennet and Avon area was held at Jury's Hotel near Queen Square, which is a part of Bristol I've not visited for a while, so I got there a bit early to find it. I found it easily, which gave me a few minutes spare to visit the co-operative food store on the Centre (pictured), which is the first rebranded one I've seen. It looks light and airy and the staff were friendly. I didn't find everything I was looking for, but after exiting, I noticed I'd not seen around the corner of the L-shaped store! Anyway, the meeting itself was chaired by Peter Begley and was attended by six elected reps, three regional officers, four trading managers (all food?) and about 50 members by my reckoning. There was a comment later in the meeting about the low turnout from Bath - it seems that a meeting for each city had been requested and refused. There was also a comment about lack of transport from Weston-super-Mare, about which I'm not sure: trains between WsM and Bristol are at least hourly. Maybe there should be a shuttle between station and meeting for people who can't walk, but it seems nuts to run a bus from here when trains are faster and have space. Officer Chris Griffiths gave a presentation (with loud music!) about our community support, including windfarms on the co-operative farms, Farm to Fork, the Woodcraft Folk, the Queens Award for Sustainable Development, community chef visits to Ilfracombe and Bath, community challenge, Mukti Mitchell's Low Carbon Lifestyle Tour, Fairtrade fashion shows, Holyland Handicrafts Co-operative at Bath Christmas Market, BAND (D is for Daycare, but I missed the rest), Toy Box Library Bath, Avonmouth Community Centre Association and Oldfield Park Juniors. Frank Jones presented the business interim report, noting that the group has a 2.2% increase of revenue before reinsurance premiums, but the bad weather has hit the insurance arm, reducing the overall profit. Nevertheless, we still paid a total of 38 million pounds to and on behalf of members. The closure of WsM Dolphin Square and the gain of the co-operative pharmacy in Milton were mentioned in passing. There was a short presentation about the constitutional review. The first members' consultation ends on 26 October, so send in your comments soon. There was particular concern about some multi-thousand-pound payments to elected representatives who stand down. Then came member questions, which I'll describe in another post, approval of past minutes, reports of the local co-operative party (success in Bath+NES, 8 councillors in Bristol, loss of 2 councillors in N.Somerset) and presentations to Frank Jones and Simon Crew of 10-year elected service awards. The meeting closed at 9pm.

I get too much spam and some of it isn't obvious from the subject line, particularly if it's a blog comment, so I use the following script to read the suspicious emails and pause at the bottom of each mail. It takes two optional parameters, explained in the comments below. Please comment on any obvious improvements to this quick hack.

#!/usr/bin/mzscheme -qr
(let ((c (or (and (> (vector-length argv) 0)
                  (string->number (vector-ref argv 0)))
             1)) ; first arg is how long to pause in seconds, default 1
      (re (or (and (> (vector-length argv) 1)
                   (regexp (vector-ref argv 1)))
              (regexp "^From [^ ]*@"))) ; second arg is regexp to pause at
      (i #f))
  (let loop ((l (read-line)))
    (if (regexp-match re l) (if i (sleep c) (set! i #t)))
    (write-string l) (newline)
    (if (not (eof-object? (peek-char))) (loop (read-line)))))
(exit)
;
#!/usr/bin/perl
# An earlier version in perl
$c = ($ARGV[0] 1); # How long to pause, in seconds
$re = ($ARGV[1] '^From [^ ]*@'); # What to pause on
$i = 0;
while (<STDIN>)  
  if (/$re/)   if ($i)   sleep ($c)   $i=1;  
  print $_;