Results of Which Social Bookmarking?

2008-12-23 by mjr

I asked Which Social Bookmarking? almost a month ago. I was looking for a service which:-

  1. is run on free software
  2. provides RSS feeds of new additions (pref. RSS-1, but any RSS is OK)
  3. provides all my bookmarks for download/backup in some easy format (even an HTML page would be fine)
  4. at least lets me view without javascript, so I can use my bookmarks from my smartphone easily

And the winner is… Rubric, which was recommended by Mark A Hershberger. For the moment, I’ve put my bookmarks on GotNoBlog.com.

Honourable mention to… Magnolia, which is probably the best major hosted service. An anonymous comment linked me to ma.gnolia.org for the source code and I’ll believe them, although I couldn’t see the source code myself.

I was very cross with… Connotea, which is Nature’s one – I’d heard about this before but forgotten it and didn’t find it on my search. GNU GPL, OpenID login… it looked really good, but then, after I’d saved a few bookmarks on it, it sent me one of those flaming eyetests.

There were many other suggestions, which you can find in the comments on the previous post. I didn’t test everything, so I’d still welcome feedback on other bookmarking tools.

Posted in Web Development | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Debian, Lenny GR and the Secretary

2008-12-19 by mjr

Two policy issues have been brewing in debian and I’ve been mostly quiet about them because I’ve been busy with TTLLP work.

One is the Lenny release GR which I’m still trying to make sense of. I mean: yikes! I’ve been reading debian-legal and -vote for years and this ballot confuses me. I think I’ll vote 5324671 but I’m really not sure what that means.

The other big issue is that Manoj has resigned as secretary. I think this is a good thing, if for no other reason than he’s been secretary for 7 years and I feel it’s not healthy for one person to hold that post too long in a thousand-strong group. I’ve disagreed with Manoj about some tasks, but I didn’t see any point in making this difficult job even less fun, so I stopped criticising him a while ago. Since then, my comments on the secretary’s work have usually been limited to small review comments on ballots (which are then apparently ignored anyway, but at least I offer help).

I’m apprehensive about who will replace Manoj. In the short term, Bdale Garbee acts as secretary, but surely Bdale is busy enough already? Given his increased vote-taking activity, Neil McGovern seems a likely choice, but the work left undone after his term as SPI secretary may count against him.

More generally, I think there’s a problem with Debian’s secretary, so anyone who would be a good secretary would probably refuse to do it as currently defined. There’s an email about bundled votes and the secretary by Steve Langasek which touches on this major problem:

“the secretary is the *only* line of defense against gaming of the GR process by a small group of developers who propose an uncontroversial but orthogonal amendment that will always win over the alternatives, in the process preventing the will of the project from being formally enacted”

In other words, in Debian, the secretary is both secretary (usually an appointed or consensual post in most organisations, in my experience) and chairman (usually an elected post) – both doing the hard administrative leg-work and actually ruling on contentious issues, rather than just giving an opinion to the chairman. Manoj commented that he “would be happy if the constitution was changed, to clarify the issue, or to explicitly add another entity to handle intepretations”. Is it time to split the secretary’s role?

Posted in GNU/Linux | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

SPI December 2008

2008-12-17 by mjr

The monthly board meeting of SPI will take place on irc.oftc.net #spi tonight (Wed 17 Dec) at 20:00 UTC. As it says in the meeting announcement, none of the officers have prepared their reports in advance and there are no proposed actions, so I guess it’ll be a very short meeting. Disappointing.

Watch the comments below this article for a link to the summary when posted.

Posted in SPI | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

British Residential ISP Censorship News

2008-12-15 by mjr

Last week I reported that 95% of British Residential ISPs Censor – but I think I’m OK, so I’d like to quickly update on what I’ve seen happen since then:-

  • My question to the Phone Coop’s election candidates has gone unanswered – not sure why
  • I asked 3 how to switch off IWF filtering on Tuesday – first call-back on Wednesday couldn’t do anything except escalate it. I’m still waiting for further reply at the time of writing.
  • Cockspiracy reports no good news from Virgin Media – you can have porn on your cable TV but not on your cable internet, OK?
  • Digital-Scurf Ramblings shows Daniel Silverstone accusing Virgin Media of being unfit for purpose, as I understand it
  • EFF: Internet Censors Must Be Accountable For The Things They Break
  • Looks like a positive result with the Aussie plan to censor Web in shreds
  • I read the preface to Animal Farm: “The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. … because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact.” George Orwell, 1945. Still current in 2008?
Posted in ThePhoneCoop | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Global 300 and chances to invest in a fuel co-op or meet Cooperatives-SW

2008-12-12 by mjr

The new Global 300 list has been released this week:-

“the 300 top co-operatives are responsible for an aggregate turnover of 1.1 trillion USD which makes it the size of the 10th economy of the world nearly the size of the Spanish economy. The list also shows that co-operatives are growing in terms of turnover 14%”

Also, the Good Fuel Co-operative (a consortium established early in 2008 by five UK biodiesel cooperatives: Goldenfuels, Sundance Renewables, Magpie Recycling, Bolton Alternative Fuels Co-operative and Biofuels.org.uk) has launched a share issue to raise £420,000 to fuel the growth of the biodiesel market.

Finally, Cooperatives-SW board will meet in Exeter in January and the AGM will be in Plymouth in April – so if you’d like me to let you know the dates when they’re announced (for meeting up or otherwise), please leave a comment on this post and tick the “Notify me of followup comments” box. Thanks!

Posted in Cooperatives | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Smart Tricks with ssh

2008-12-11 by mjr
  1. Host *
    ControlPath ~/.ssh/sock/%r@%h:%p
    ControlMaster auto
    from Nijel’s weblog: Speed up SSH logins – is there any disadvantage to this? Also, “completition” is a great typo along the lines of my frequent “abou tit” one.
  2. ServerAliveInterval 3600 for reasons explained in the comments here.
  3. Anything you like on the Standalone Sysadmin SSH series (ok, I cheated to get a list of three…)
Posted in GNU/Linux | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Environmental Policies and Computing

2008-12-10 by mjr

I’ve not written about this for a while, but I’ve just started seeing Apple’s Greenwash adverts, so I went and found the latest Greenpeace electronics report which says:

“Apple’s score increases slightly to 4.3 points, but the company drops to 14th position. Apple scores well for putting products on the market whose key components are free of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and PVC vinyl plastic […] All Apple products should be free of these substances by the end of 2008, which will challenge other PC makers to follow their lead. […] Apple scores poorly on most e-waste criteria, except for reporting a recycling rate in 2006 of 18% as a percentage of sales 7 years ago. It does slightly better on energy criteria for disclosing the carbon footprint of every model of product – although not exactly what is being evaluated in the criterion.”

I feel that it’s hard to push the large electronics companies by direct action and purchasing decisions (although I will continue to try). Regulations must be introduced too and now the EC has issued a Code of Conduct on Data Centres Energy Efficiency [TreeHugger report]. TTLLP has been slowly getting out of data centres for the last few years – between the toxic e-waste in servers and rising energy costs, with most of our competitors ignoring both of them, it was too hard to do the right thing and be profitable. I think the market is ready for a step-change to green data centres and we can’t do that alone. Expect a new TTLLP-branded venture early next year…

Finally, tomorrow, on 11 December, our governments will decide Europe’s response to climate change for the next 12 years. Take 2 minutes to tell them to keep global warming below 2°C.

Posted in ThePhoneCoop | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Farewell Oliver Postgate: Chairman Bagpuss, I almost knew you

2008-12-09 by mjr

There have been glowing tributes in the news today following the death of Oliver Postgate, creator of Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine and Noggin the Nog and co-creator of the Clangers.

But it’s surprised me how few of the mainstream news sites have linked to Oliver Postgate’s personal website. I knew where it was because it’s hosted by an ISP that TTLLP have worked for. So far, I’ve seen one link to it from the Guardian, buried in a sidebar alongside one of the commentators waffling about him.

Are British TV and newspapers scared of Chairman Bagpuss’s “orthodox Miaoist” views?

The site’s not that up-to-date (understandably), but it has given me a bit of amusement and warmth today after this sad news. It’s also serendipitious after yesterday’s wikipedia filtering caused a surge in interest in “Wind of Change” band Scorpions that Oliver Postgate’s final homepage was called “The Law of Unintended Consequences” – if you enjoyed the narrative style of Bagpuss, Ivor and the Clangers, go enjoy reading it:-

“Because not being intended, unintended consequences are not on the list of what was expected to happen, so if one does happen, nobody has to notice it or connect it with whatever was intended. Or, if they do notice it they just write it off as part of the ‘law of unintended consequences’, and of course as [God’s] laws are immutable, eternal and that, they know they can’t do anything about it even if they wanted to, which half the time they don’t.”

Posted in Web Development | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

95% of British Residential ISPs Censor – but I think I’m OK

2008-12-08 by mjr

The Internet Watch Foundation has objected to the cover of a 1976 Scorpions album (which is, as far as I know, still legally on sale here, with that cover) and their collaborator ISPs have blocked access to Wikipedia. They claim that it covers 95% of British Residential ISPs but I could get through. Can you?

Read more formal reports from AP via Google (claims 95% of users, which I think might be an error), BBC, Wikimedia Foundation News Release or The Guardian report (which chickens out of showing the whole cover image).

Inspired by a short message from the owner of Cockspiracy, I’ve asked the Phone Coop election candidates for their views on it (note: I expect the question URL to change soon, so beware if you link to it), comparing it to our phorm promise.

Did this affect you? Do you care? Have IWF just scuttled their ship?

Posted in ThePhoneCoop | Tagged , , , , , | 17 Comments

Do Your Shop Photos Leak?

2008-12-04 by mjr

If you’ve set up an online shop, are your product photos saying more about you than you intended?

“there’s a huge amount of potentially privacy-sensitive metadata in your typical JPEG as generated by your camera (including camera type, settings, date/time, maybe even GPS coordinates of your location, etc).”

Source: jhead – List and modify EXIF fields in JPEG photos [Uwe Hermann’s blog]

Even worse, if you’ve been using images from your suppliers or the manufacturers without permission, the metadata can be a dead giveaway. You really shouldn’t be using them without permission anyway, though.

If you’re using your own photos, want to remove the camera data and you’re not comfortable using the command line, most graphics editors like GIMP allow you to edit or remove that extra information too (I think it’s on Save As… OK… Advanced Options and untick “Save EXIF data” in GIMP). It’s just a bit slower to convert lots of images with a GUI. (I’d usually do that sort of thing from the command line for TTLLP customers.)

One fringe benefit is that removing the thumbnails and EXIF makes the images a bit smaller, so they’re quicker to download!

Posted in OSCommerce | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments