ALISS have posted papers from their conference on electronic copyright, IPR and access issues in the emerging electronic landscape. PDFs are:- Librarians against plagiarism: how Imperial College London is using PRS and active learning to combat the cut and paste generation. Ruth Harrison and Julia Garthwaite. The practicalities of copyright in the online age. Helen Bartlett Copyright Manager, HERON. Copyright and data licensing, does electronic differ from print?' Richard Ebdon, Copyright Officer, The British Library. Rights and responsibilities: Copyright and digital images. Grant Young, Technical Research Officer, TASI - Technical Advisory Service for Images IPR and multimedia in institutional repositories: lessons from the MIDESS project (Management of Images in a Distributed Environment with Shared Services) Lesley Pitman Librarian and Director of Information Services, UCL SSEES Library. Irish Studies Online - a digital library of core resources for Irish studies. QUB. Norma Menabney, Queen University, Belfast. I've not finished reading them myself yet.

The first version, 0.0.1, doesn't do too much yet -- all it can do is transform its own xcontrol file to a control file that doesn't contain cross compilation hints. If you want to take a look and don't have NEW queue access, check it out in my Debian home dir/dump. The next step is probably going to be template package handling, as that is the next thing I need for mISDN. So it is feature request season now. What control fields would you like to see added?

Sorry, but I can't see how to make this post anything but a bit negative: Along with a few million others, I own some food shops. I usually try to shop there. I go away for a few weeks and the picture shows what's happened to my nearest food shop... It's closed! Well, that's one less store for the rebranding project, [Cambridge Co-operator] but it's a bit of a pain in the backside. There's no sign on the closed shop and I saw no sign when I last visited it. There's nothing on the membership web news and there was nothing in the last magazines. I've called the regional office to find out what's happening and left a voicemail. I might email one of our committee too, as I think they decide on closures. I'm a bit unhappy about this. Now we're down to two medium/small food shops that have really bizarre stock policies (for example, they sell filter coffee, but no coffee filters) and are unable to order key ethical products. (2007-08-17: 1 comment)

Eurosport are broadcasting the Vuelta a Burgos at 19 east until Saturday. This can be an interesting race for seeing how well the ProTour teams are recovering from the Tour de France, ready for the Vuelta a Espa a. Barloworld's TdF revelation Juan Mauricio Soler has a 17-second lead into tomorrow's individual time trial. The 69th Volta a Portugal finished yesterday with an ~50-minute individual time trial that saw the lead change hands and Xavier Tondo of LA/MSS take the General Classification by a little under a minute. RTP's coverage was strangely subdued. It seemed like they only had cameras around the finish line, not on motorbikes following the riders. The bad weather may have caused that, though. Meanwhile, the Deutschland-Tour 2007 is broadcast to Europe until Saturday on ARD at 19 east and 13 east. Gerald Ciolek of T-Mobile won his second stage in a row today, while CSC's ever-popular Jens Voigt remains in yellow. Individual time trial there too tomorrow. ARD's coverage has been very swish so far this year. Widescreen with informative graphics, although the commentary is still a bit subdued for my taste. Overall, it's a shame there's not more airtime given to it.

Protx, a payment service, installed a major update on 1 August. They'd warned us about this in newsletters and we were prepared. We paid a bit towards another company's development of the protx_form module for OSCommerce to meet the updates and generally clean it up. This went slightly wrong in three ways. Firstly, protx went down for longer than expected, ultimately generating an apology from the MD. Not much we could do about that. Secondly, protx started rejecting commas in amounts. GB uses commas in between thousands, so this meant none of our British-localised shops could process orders over 1000. Ow. The Protx VSP Form docs still shows commas in the Amount examples, so I suspect that change was unintented. I've sent Protx Support an email to ask. I was offline, but Paul installed a fix before I got back. Finally, the mainline protx_form module has updated to v1.17 to include these changes and more (see Payment Modules forum threads), but our developer hasn't uploaded their work yet, so we're stuck up a branch and someone needs to merge. I hope it won't be us, as I can already see conflicting changes. What should I have done differently? Is it time to find a new payment provider? Should I insist that we publish paid developments ourselves as soon as possible? (2007-08-16: 1 comment)

Now that I've installed my multi-satellite dish again, I've discovered that Yahoo have totally changed their listings pages and (for some reason) viewing it in Firefox thrashes my CPU. Does anyone know a good television guide for German TV? As usual, I prefer non-javascript and so on, so I can add it to my daily frames page. (2007-08-16: 9 comments)

I've just put 2 and 2 together and maybe I got 5. What do you think of this hypothesis? The effect is lots of spam with From-lines starting akst... Is the cause Alex King's Share This? It seems Time for Blogging asked "A Losing Battle with Blog Comment Spam? Is Share This Plugin at Fault?" but I see nothing relevant on WordPress: Support: Plugins and Hacks: Alex King's Share-This about exploits. I can't see how to exploit the current version to send mail, but I think I can see an exploit for an older version. Also, if you'd got a redirect script into someone's comments, you could use Share This to collect marks.

Here's what I wrote on other people's sites last week:

Drake.org.uk: Welcome back..

MartynD reboots his blog yet again. This time with added eyetests.

Two Questions for All Serious Free Software Contributors

I answered, as did many others.

ProBlogger Redesign - Bedding Down for the Night

Much easier-to-read, but I still had an enhancement suggestion.

Blowing bubbles niq's soapbox

Comment on house-building and house-owning in England today.

gravityboy: This Is My Good Free Software Experience

I think the GPL is useful for things other than programs and CC is confusing about DRM for everything.

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho I am going to rank MJ Ray low from now on

Commented more on my blog, but also directly. The criticism might be fairer if the SPI ballot were secret, but it isn't.

WEBlog -- Wouter's Eclectic Blog - Voting tactics

Is this about SPI? How is IRV broken?

Constitutional amendment: reduce the length of DPL election process

Amending the amendment proposal - got enough seconds to reach the ballot, for a change.

Amendment to: reduce the length of DPL election process

This one doesn't look like it will get onto the ballot. Informative subthread on combination of amendments.

Here's some of what I read last week:

talks with Linus Torvalds

He's much ruder than I am, but can get away with it because he's done more.

The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Richard Stallman - Edward O'Connor

He's much ruder than I am, but doesn't get away with it because he's done more.

Mayor wants London to copy Paris bike rentals News This is London

I saw those bikes in Paris. Seemed like a good idea.

Parisian-style hire bicycles to beat London traffic jams - Independent Online Edition > Transport

Slightly inaccurate report.

Hacking gadflies: Open Document Format

It's almost September again.

dgh: Bike power

Interesting idea.

apenwarr's log

quite a funny letter to google

Bristol Climate Protesters En-Route to Camp

My legs hurt after cycling only 6 miles yesterday. Not sure what I did wrong.

The Weston Mercury - Call to 'have a say' on the future of Britain

Pensioners to save country. Or not.

BBC NEWS Technology UN's website breached by hackers

Can't be bothered to check netcraft.

Little's Log: North Norfolk Councillor defects to UKIP

Little's still raging against the media.

The Deutschland-Tour 2007 is broadcast to Europe until next Saturday on ARD at 19 east and 13 east. After a wet start, Gerolsteiner's Robert F rster is leading them into today's team time trial, but it's only the second stage. The 69th Volta a Portugal is broadcast worldwide until next Wednesday on RTP Internacional and RTP Africa at all sorts of satellite positions. Candido Barbosa of Liberty Seguros (yet another cooperative cycling sponsor ) leads, but the advantage is small.

Matt Lee commented:

"MJ, I'm disappointed that you'd think the FSF would use Skype. Further, to post it, without a retraction that I can see, helps neither the FSF nor yourself. A clarification above the post would be nice. I just found this post via a search for something else, and so it has now reached the search engines. Hope you're well, matt"

Thanks for the comment. Hope you're well, too. Just to be clear, right at the top, I didn't think FSF would use Skype. That's why I was so bloody surprised when the radio interview made it sound like they did! I almost spluttered breakfast across the room... It was worth posting on the web, because it got the interview clarified, which wouldn't have happened otherwise. I found out later that FSF's systems apparently deleted my email unread, without delivering it to Peter Brown, or anyone else who could answer the questions. The FSF guest's reply and my apology are on the same page as my original here along with a call for help summarising the need for free-software-friendly VoIP. I've also changed the "preface" post to try to make it absolutely clear. If anyone is mirroring my page and hasn't copied the retraction, please let them know. By the way, I was called over Skype today, for the first time that I'm aware of. The caller told me they used Skype and the VoIP artefacts were pretty noticeable. Is that usual? I guess that could be how Peter Brown knew it was an interview over a Skype call.

Today was a strange day. We are preparing our holiday trip to Sicily but had a full day at home, meant for packing and the like. Indeed, packing was done in a few hours this morning and I ended up....hacking on D-I. For whatever reason, I came back on the plans we have, among the D-I team, to switch to console-setup for console handling. Something already done in Ubuntu and which brings, for instance and if I'm correct, the benefit of having the same keyboard maps for X and the console. So, first, I summarized the floating ideas in a wiki page. Then I worked on a few possible modifications to "localechooser", the D-I component that allows users to choose their language/country/locale and which needs modifications for console-setup. That lead me to produce an experimental image of D-I netboot for i386 and asked translators for some testing. MJ Ray noticed the call for testing and asked Esperanto translators for some testing, which Serge Leblanc did...and reported a nasty bug, later confirmed by Damyan Ivanov, then investigated by Anton Zinoviev, then digged a little more by me again, then advised by Rapha l Hertzog and Julien Cristau on #debian-devel-fr...and lead to an RC bug reported against....perl base. All this, of course, was completely unplanned as of this morning. This is probably one of the reasons that make me enjoy free software development.

Yesterday sucked. I thought I'd try cheering myself up by doing some work for/with someone I've enjoyed collaborating with before. So this morning, I translated Christian Perrier's call for Esperanto D-I testing and Serge Leblanc had tested it before lunch. What a star! I think it's easy to see the problems and overlook good things like this. I know which I prefer, but people tend to focus on bad news more than good, don't they? Pick any debian news service and good news seems like a small fraction. Want to change that?

Automatically-generated links in email newsletters are usually ugly because they contain tracking data, to measure response to each individual copy of the newsletter. If your links are ugly, I think it is stupid not to override them when you launch a link-shortening service. The FON MOVIMIENTO Newsletter: August 2007 contained:

"With FON GET SIMPLE you can convert all of those long, impossible-to-remember URLs into short, easy-to-remember URLs that make your Internet travels simple. https://fon-en.custhelp.com/rd?1=AvcE~wolDv8SWivzGhIe~yL~Jvkq~_3~&2=118 "

Oops.

Steve McIntyre responded on his own blog to claim I

"blatantly missed the point, presumably to cause offence"

so I've updated the original to try to be more accurate. I didn't post to cause offence. I posted mainly because Evan simply unlinked, rather than leaving a "I've gone" post, so many readers wouldn't have realised what had happened. While I was posting, I wanted to express my disappointment at this sorry situation. That "presumably to cause offence" is typical of the public online mud-slinging I've come to expect from a few particular developers. That is trolling. It's far smarter, more subtle spin than anything I can write. I feel you'd only presume that if you already wanted to think ill of me, as it's untrue. (If you know me, I doubt you'd presume it.) If a post is "troll-like", it's probably an error. (I was taught writing by tabloid news... seriously. I try my best to overcome, but I don't always succeed when writing in a hurry, reacting to news.) Please, if anyone feels one of my posts went a bit awry, please take it up with me, either directly (email, IRC, jabber, telephone) or in the forum where it went bad. It's stupid to start criticising with a public notice in a different forum, unless you're trying to turn a mistake into a multi-modal flamewar. Myself, I had already replied in the original forum to the debian-project thread about why I disliked the unlinking suggestions. It didn't look much like a discussion: Steve McIntyre only posted once, then took no further part, and Planet Debian had already lost one valuable author. (For those who don't know, any debian developer can alter PD settings at present, but I think you'd need a brass neck to go against a stated position of debian's second-in-charge like that.) It looked like we were talking about bumping people off the planet again, without involving our users (one of our priorities?) in the discussion. So I posted.

It seems that MJ Ray can't help but wantonly misinterpret other people's words. He posted about my question to debian-project (which is fair enough), but in his own inimitable style blatantly missed the point, presumably to cause offence. I'm not suggesting banning non-Debian posts from Planet Debian at all; what I'm suggesting is removing feeds that have zero content relevant to Debian, and I started a discussion to ask for other people's opinions. Spot the difference? Mark, this kind of snide, troll-like posting is exactly the reason why people "inexplicably dislike" you. If you can't understand that, well...

Once again, someone suggests banning feeds with low debian-specific content from Planet Debian. (lists.d.o) This time, it's led by Steve McIntyre, whose blog comments about his work, friends, family trips and pub challenges, among other things. This purge saw Evan Prodromou unlink his journal (which comments about his work, friends, family trips and wikipeda, among other things) in reaction to hate, commenting:

"I've heard from people who really like reading my blog posts on Planet Debian, and people who really hate them. The people who like my blog can add it to their feed readers directly. I believe I've followed the rules for PD, but there's no point antagonizing people who don't want to read it"

I'm sad to see one of the more interesting "off-topic" authors disappear from the site like this. Hatred wins again? Updated: Evan's back. Yippee! (2007-08-09: 1 comment)

etbe: Two Questions for All Serious Free Software Contributors asks:

"What do you think is the most important single-sentence of advice that you can offer to someone who wants to contribute to the free software community?"

He who does wins, so don't let the bastards grind you down.

"If you had the opportunity to say one sentence to someone who knows about computers and free software (EG they have used both Linux and Windows and done a small amount of programming) to convince them that they should join the free software team, what would it be?"

Imagine every bug you found could be fixed by you if you want, or a friend, or an enemy, or someone you hire, or the original developer, or whoever and that it's your choice who you ask to do it, with no veto from the copyright holder: that's free software. The second sentence is a bit long, but I found it hard to encapsulate the power of that freedom in one. I use the bug example rather than costs or anything, because I think that's what will be most attractive to someone who has done a bit of programming: the right answer to "why can't I fix this trivial bug?"

Well, yesterday I asked

"WTF? There seem to be some 30 or 40 voters who really dislike me, but didn't tell me that straight, preferring to be silent then vote me down. Are you cowards, or what?"

Not the most polite of questions(!), but it's what I was wondering at the time. I had some good replies in the comments and a reply by Pingback that I didn't like, but it turned out to be a very educational reply in the end. A comment from Filipus Klutiero included:

"Sometimes, it's not really possible to explain a bad opinion of someone, because we forget the reasons for that opinion. However, if you think that voting based on reputation is a bad idea, you probably can't understand these "cowards"."

I've mentioned before that I don't seem to fit the debian developers stereotype, so I guess it's not surprising if I don't understand them sometimes. If reputation is always going to be such a big factor, one problem I need to overcome in debian and SPI is that some other participants do make crap up about me. You can usually spot it by phrases like "seems to think" (there are not that many mind-readers out there), but eventually, mud sticks. How to overcome this? Patiently post corrections, or is that futile? Here are posts from Andrew Pollock and Matt Palmer which I think are wrong on several points:- First off, I haven't decided to call anyone cowards - it was a question, albeit a bit "nasty, british and short". The underlying sentiment was continued disappointment and puzzlement at why voters behave like that in a non-secret vote, not rage. It was not really an "outburst," coming a week after the results. I'm not unhappy with the results - I've congratulated the winners by several methods, including the last post, although I mentioned my mixed feelings. Isn't that usual? I think very few non-elected candidates express unbridled joy about the experience. After all, it's not an easy decision to stand, but I did it for two main reasons: shortage of other candidates I really liked, at the time I chose to stand (as I mentioned in my platform); and for practical experience of how Condorcet behaves. I'm not rabid - I've even written against the Rabid Right recently - and I'm not rabidly anti-Google. I had polite chats with various people from Sun, Microsoft and Google at debconf - I don't like those companies, but I don't feel a need to tell their workers that at every point. I think reasons to like and dislike Sun and Microsoft are old and well-known, but a few years ago, I got so bored of explaining why I don't agree that Google is God's Gift to our communities that I posted a FAQ-ish page about it, which I update as I look at its new developments. Let's politely disagree, until Google fix the bugs which brought me to that view. Andrew Pollock's point about debian-legal is vague and maybe fair comment. It's not often a fun or popular thing. But "precious ego"? Ha! Yes, a guy who humiliates himself with cheap stunts for environmental protests is clearly very precious about his ego(!) (Sorry if that's rude, but I find it hilarious.) I don't mind people having different opinions, but it would be nice if their opinions about me were mostly based on reality, instead of misunderstandings. One fair point from Matt Palmer's post and also, I discovered eventually, from Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho's site, is that SPI's elections apparently are meant to be secret, as far as I can tell from the starts of Article Five and Article Seven of the SPI by-laws. I tend to value practice more than theory and the current voting practice is merely confidential, not secret. I think that's part of why I didn't understand the approach taken by some voters - they were treating it as a secret ballot. That's fine and now that I realise it's meant to be secret, I've suggested making it a secret ballot. (2007-08-08: 1 comment)

So Mark doesn't like the SPI board election results and has decided to call the largish whack of people who didn't vote for him and tell him ahead of time or something "cowards". Personally, I'm of the school of thought that if you haven't got anything nice to say about someone, don't say anything at all, but, well, here we are... I forgot whether I put him last, but he was certainly ranked towards the back of the pack. Why? I don't like rabid people. Rabidly anything shows a lack of balance to me. Mark's rabidly anti-Google (amongst other things) (sure, I work for them, but I liked them before I went to work there, otherwise I wouldn't have gone to work there) and frankly, it irritates me. Almost as much as someone else I know being rabidly anti-Microsoft/pro-Linux irritates me sometimes. Balance is good, and I'd rather have people on the board that I know, and I know in a positive light, over people that I don't know, or known I don't like. So I ranked my ballot in reverse order of people I knew I didn't like, then people I didn't know, then people I knew, then people I knew I liked. Simple as that. Oh, and I'm not a big fan of debian-legal, or anyone who purports to be an armchair lawyer on that list. Sorry if that damages your precious ego, Mark. Now get back to bashing my employer, Debian UK, and pontificating about what's allowed to be in Debian. (Oh, and I don't object to you having your own opinion, I object to you restating it over and over and over again. But it's your blog, and you're free to portray yourself to others however you please, just bear that in mind when you go standing in elections.)

Since MJ Ray seems to think that anyone who doesn't vote for him but doesn't tell him why is a coward, I'm going to be up-front about it so I can't be accused of cowardice. Elections are all about everyone making their own decision, for their own reasons, in the hope that the aggregate of those decisions will produce a useful and workable result. (Whether that happens in reality is a whole other issue). The individual's decision is a statement of their opinion, nothing more. Adding confidentiality to the voting process is meant to remove any pressure from the voter to make a decision on any basis other than their own opinion. Complaints about it like this from a candidate is pretty weak:

There seem to be some 30 or 40 voters who really dislike me, but didn't tell me that straight, preferring to be silent then vote me down. Are you cowards, or what?

Given this outburst, I'm hardly surprised that people weren't keen on telling Mark upfront that they weren't going to vote for him. (As a disclaimer, I didn't vote in the SPI election, because I don't have a specific opinion on any of the candidiates' suitability for office on the SPI board.)