Michal iha asks about a mobile phone usable in Japan. When I went to Japan this spring, I've researched some options. Renting such a phone in The Netherlands was about 50/day (!). However, when you rent it upon arrival in Japan, it was only 500/day, ~ 3. It worked perfectly and is very affordable for shorter trips. See NTT DoCoMo for details. Apropos phones, I've got a new mobile phone: the Nokia 6300 to replace my previous 6310i. Transferring the data on it worked great with the help of gnokii. The only question was how to get rid of my old phone responsibly. Stiching AAP, a sanctuary for monkeys, offers the possibility to send the phone to them for free. It will be recycled and AAP gets a bit of money for it. A real "win-win" situation.

Erich Schubert reports about a Serendipity issue he found. Thanks Erich for researching that and thanks upstream fox quickly fixing it. I'm glad to report that I've just uploaded the fixed version to unstable, and that Sarge and Etch are not vulnerable.

Today I tried to cancel my phone line from KPN, the national phone company. First, their website has this text:

Misschien ben je teleurgesteld of vind je een dienst te duur. Dat vindt KPN erg jammer, maar vooral vervelend voor jouw.

Apart from the blatant spelling error, it says that "KPN regrets this, but especially feels sorry for you." The pretense that their services are so great, they need to feel sorry for me canceling... Next up I call the mentioned number. After selecting the right option, the voice tells me: "An error has occurred." (in English!) and the connection is terminated. This is a reproducible problem. As a telephone company, they cannot make their own voice response system work. I'm not sure who they should be feeling sorry for...

I voted for further discussion rather than accepting the Debian Maintainers proposal. My opposition is that it's a new procedure while I think the existing structures should be able to handle the people that want to contribute to Debian. The proponents intend to solve the following problems.

NM takes too long

Agreed that it takes too long (useless waiting is a waste of time) but creating a new procedure does not fix it. Apparently there's a group of people that want to develop software for maintaining a keyring group-wise, and want to do the work actually maintaining such a keyring. Great. My suggestion would be to apply their technology and time to the existing DAM position so the work can be shared and we can reduce the waiting time.

Some people do not want to go through NM

NM is not as complicated as it is sometimes regarded, and a large part of it can consist of actually contributing to Debian rather than answering boring questions. I do not see it as a bad thing that uploading on your own requires some commitment.
There has been talk about people only interested in a small set of packages. There are already many specialised teams which those people would be welcome to join. I've also yet to see a significant number of people having trouble to find a sponsor. Sponsoring is a bit less convenient, sure, but not unbearable. Extra checking also has added value for Debian.

Some people do not want to associate themselves with Debian

Fine with me, but I don't think we need to facilitate an entire procedure for the less than a handful of people that chose to resign as DD but still want to upload. Sponsoring works for them.

I support sponsoring, and I think Rapha l Hertzog was right to introduce it. It works. With sponsoring on the one hand and being a DD on the other, we have two avenues of contribution that complement each other quite nicely.

Today we've released DOMjudge 2.0 after nine months of hard work. We've named it 2.0 because we think this is a major jump in the development of DOMjudge. There are many smaller changes, but the most notable improvements are the vastly enhanced jury interface, much more and better documentation and a dropped requirement on a shared filesystem between judgehosts. DOMjudge is a programming contest jury system for use in contests such as the ACM ICPC. We are using it for the upcoming Northwestern European Programming contest, and it has been used at several other universities aswell. It's nice to hear that someone is also using it as a base for their Google Summer of Code project to develop an automated assignment grading system.

For part of Stage 11, I watched the new Tour live coverage on Sat.1 who bought the German rights. When Sat.1 is busy, Pro7 will cover it. The two stations are owned by the same company, along with Kabel1, N24 and 9Live. The coverage was OK - the same French pictures as everyone else, but fewer extra features than ARD/ZDF. Commentary was a bit pedestrian, but that's like ZDF. I like Eurosport's commentary much more. International Herald Tribune reports that Eurosport's ratings tripled for stage 10 which is unsurprising. Eurosport and Sat.1 both seem to be on the same ~30% of German DVB-T as well as DVB-S. In comments on my last post about this, Thomas asked:

"You don't read German papers, do you?"

No. I've not even tried to buy one since moving to this village.

"I do, and I'm neither outraged nor surprised. It is a fairly logical step in light of the debate and the public reception of the tour, cycling pros, and Team T-Mobile in particular."

Is it public reception? Around 50% of those polled by ZDF disagreed with the decision (according to the IHT link above). Given all the ZDF spin on this, that's shockingly low. Is this driven by the silly debate of Bundestag members, rather than public opinion? (I've still not forgiven them for booting Eurosport off of ZDFvision. CDU seem to like messing ARD/ZDF about.) Are German papers in a feeding frenzy? In some days, they'll move onto football or boxing or something else. Get this in context: it's not like the old scandals where we had pro teams or wives being caught with car boots full of drug kits.

"I'd also bet that T-Mobile will quit as a sponsor."

It didn't seem like that from TV interviews, but I guess they wouldn't say yet. I think if they were going to jump ship, they would have done it after last year's worse problems. AIUI, their contract expires 2010 anyway and I wonder whether all the good publicity from their tour outing in England will help them stay until then.

"Some things belong in pharmacology textbooks and not on TV screens."

Does this mean drugs or incomplete drug tests? ;-)

"If I paid German TV fees, I'd be outraged that this comes that late. But then, I know better and don't have a TV in the first place."

Oh, well! Then I guess nothing would convince you to watch the tour! Philipp Kern commented:

"they did not threaten for a year actually. After the big doping scandal some months ago they explicitly announced that they will drop the Tour de France if a new doping case pops up. Granted, the person in question did dope before the Tour."

We don't know that yet - only one sample has been tested so far and even then, this test is controversial and has been successfully appealed against before. It's only a case. Also, maybe it wasn't the TdF, but here's a comment about ARD in 2006 threatening to drop cycling (scroll to 25.10.).

"The argumentation is that the Tour should not be a contest of the best doping substances like it could have been the last years. But I am probably biased because I don't watch the Tour, or sports in general."

No more biased than ARD/ZDF's producers, it seems. In an interview on itv4, a ZDF producer said they would drop any sporting event with a doping problem like cycling. So, if ZDF have dropped cycling for 1 in 189 participants being accused of doping, then if any footballer is accused of drugs offences, they cannot show any matches involving them. If you want to take football off ZDF, you know what to do... Thijs Kinkhorst reports in "Too much testosterone" that NOS also continues coverage, like our itv. Good on them. Let's applaud any drug cheats getting caught and punished, after we're reasonably sure.

Metro, the free newspaper distributed at train stations, has published an article about the Korenslag television show last Thursday. To my great surprise, they used two photo's to illustrate the article - photo's taken directly from my web site. This without any contact, or without any credit. I've sent them an email expressing my dissent with this and I've asked them to come up with a solution for this situation. If they'd asked beforehand I'm certain that they would have gotten my permission if they'd put a photocredit as they do with nearly every other photo in their newspaper. I'm curious what their response is going to be. Here's a scan of the article, the original photos are here: 1, 2.

Patrick Sinkewitz has tested positive for testosterone, and German public broadcasters ARD and ZDF have instantly canceled reporting on the tour except for more doping "news". The Germans broadcasters are going out of their mind in their witchhunt. Luckily the rest of the world seems more sensible. A.S.O. asks whether they're supposed to stop doing tests if apparently one positive is enough for ARD and ZDF to cancel everything. Manager Luuc Eisenga of the T-Mobile team asserts that newspapers will keep on reporting about business news even if one company is accused of fraud. Dutch public broadcaster NOS says: "We're here to report on what happens in the tour, not to exercise moral judgement over it." I'm happy that I can just continue to watch the tour even if one cyclist crosses the line.

It cost me a small fortune in text messages, but Dekoor are the winners! (what's this?)

Dekoor, a student choir which includes our friend Jense, from Utrecht participates in a television show Korenslag, a pop-idol like contest for choirs. As we've been devoted fans of Jense from the "Miracle Man" up to now, we attended the semi finals of this program. Being in the audience of this show that is broadcast live on national television is an experience in itself. An "applause master" instructed us when to be silent, when to applaud, and when to go absolutely crazy. To which we faithfully complied. During the show Dekoor did very well in our unbiased ears, although the others did okay too. Although we SMS'ed a fortune to vote for Dekoor, the choir "Re-Flax" got the popular vote. Quite to my suprise because they were the least original and dynamic of the four, in my opinion. Luckily the professional jury was again impressed and decided that Dekoor must go to the finals together with "Re-Flax". Unfortunately the finals are decided by popular vote (eur 0,60 per vote) which might work against them. So remember, next Thursday, 20.30 Nederland 1: the finals. Vote Dekoor! P.S. I made some pictures aswell.

Yesterday the first concert of 24 Leeways at Cees' Place. Nice work guys.

I spent a good part of this morning trying to find out with several people why oh why the networking of a Dell Poweredge 2950 with Broadcom NetXtreme II NIC wouldn't work using Debian Etch. Tried several drivers, compiled non free drivers but no luck. Only to find out that the bnx2 driver that comes with the stock Etch kernel maps Gb1 to eth1 and Gb2 to eth0 (inverted). Simply plugging the network cable over made the network run! It's even documented at the Dell website.

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.

Leiden Lammenschans
Tiel Passewaaij
Capelle Schollevaar
Hoorn Kersenboogerd
Houten Castellum

The new Dutch word list created by the OpenTaal project is now available from Debian unstable and testing in variants for ispell (idutch), aspell (aspell-nl) and OpenOffice/Mozilla (myspell-nl). It's also available in backports.org for those running stable/etch. Happy spellchecking!

Good news: the OpenTaal Dutch word list (and spell checker) has gotten official approval from the TaalUnie, official authority on the Dutch language, which means that it's considered to be "just as correct" as the Green Booklet. The list is released under the LGPL licence. I've only contributed a bit to the project so far, but the next step will of course be to get it into Debian. The project originated to create a free update of the exising 1996 word list, according to the new spelling rules. Now that this is "finished", next projects are a grammar checker and thesaurus.

On our recent visit to Paris, we also went to La grande picerie de Paris (Rue de S vres), a supermarket-style store selling only very good food products. Highly recommended. On the cheese department, a cheese was on sale called Mimolette Hollandaise, in an Edam-style spherical shape and with a strange orange colour. I was quite surprised since I didn't expect to have to go abroad to discover a new kind of Dutch cheese. Of course I bought a piece. At home the cheese encyclopedia brought more clarity. In the 17th century, Colbert forbade the import of foreign diary products into France. The French who loved the Dutch Edam, simply started to produce their own copy, intended to be identical to the Dutch variety. It took until 1935 to officialise the Mimolette through a treaty between the Dutch and French. And the taste? It tastes good, it indeed resembles old Edam very well, albeit a bit more salty.

Miriam is worried that getting packages sponsored is a burden on DD's and that she's asking them a favour. I can understand where that comes from, but at least for me personally, that's definitely not the case. When I spend time to review and upload a package prepared by someone else, I don't do that just to help a friend, I do it because I've got a genuine desire to improve Debian. One way to do that is to work on my own packages, another is to help get the work done by others incorporated into Debian proper. I see that not as a burden or something they should be thankful for. Rather, I make it a habit to explicitly thank the sponsoree for their work after I've uploaded it. Just like I would thank someone that has provided a patch for my personal project. It's great that so many people are willing to contribute to Debian, and this needs to be encouraged wherever we can.

Hi. Recently, on planet.debian.org, there were quite a few posts relating to blood donations. I must say that I really only live thanks to people donating blood. As many might know, I had a freaking motorcycle accident about 9 years ago. Well, apart from loosing my right leg in the weeks following the accident (irreparable damages to tissues led to amputation), I also lost a lot of blood after the accident. In the six hours following the accident, I got no less than 65 blood infusions (approximately 24-30 litres or 6-8 US gallons). As you can imagine, this is about 3-4 times as much blood as my body normally carries around. At least I can say that I didn’t receive blood without giving some before, though certainly I wasn’t able to give that much blood (I donated about 10 times, approx. 0.45 litres each time). However, due to the medication I now need, I can’t donate blood anymore. Anyhow, I strongly suggest to anyone who is capable of donating blood to do so. And regarding Thijs comment about the frequency of donation and payment: This is highly depending on the area you live in and the organisation who manages the donations. For example, while I donated blood in Dortmund, Germany, I had two options to donate blood: German Red Cross, who would accept a donation every 6 weeks, with free sandwiches, drinks and chocolate but without payment and the city-owned hospital’s blood bank, which allowed a donation every 3 month, with free drinks and a 50DEM (approx. 25EUR/30USD) payment. This sounds as if the city-owned blood bank could attract homeless and junkies who were in for the money, but from my experience, the blood bank did far stricter pre-donation tests (I can’t tell what they did after donation for either organisation) than the red cross. And knowing how much money can be earned with the blood donated, I certainly think that payment is fair, though not strictly necessary. And the blood bank people did a much better job when applying the needle than the red cross people did, which might be because they were used to taking blood from people with bad veins (mostly patients donating blood for themselves for use in a later, planned surgery). But to be fair: I know from other people who had very good experiences with the red cross staff in this respect. Once again: Please donate blood if you can. If you are uncomfortable with the choice you made on your first donation, check out other options for donations. For example, if you almost collapsed when donating blood, try out the plasma donation if it is offered. They usually take the plasma, but give back an equal volume of a substitution, so your circulation isn’t disturbed as much as by taking approx. 0.5 litres from it within an hour. If you feel that the person who applied the needle did a bad job, ask for someone else next time or try a different organisation altogether. cu,
Sven

Euro Disney S.C.A. owner of Euro Disney Associ s S.N.C. operator of Parc Walt Disney Studios are opening two new attractions and myself as a shareholder of the first has been invited for a preview of those. At first my attempt to R.S.V.P. was rejected by their broken website, but as it turns out I'm still welcome to the park this Saturday. I'm not really a fan of the mouse with the big ears and his zany adventures, but these attractions are inspired by Disney/Pixar films. Crush's Coaster is a spinning indoor coaster based on Finding Nemo, and Cars Race Rally is a teacups-style ride based on, indeed, Cars. Curious as to what they've created, and as a good excuse to add a few days in the real Paris, I've booked two Thalys tickets.