I have to confess to being something of a novice with mobile comms.  I have steadfastly refused to have a mobile phone on the grounds that I don't want people phoning me up!  The various acronyms associated with mobile comms still confuse me a bit, and I have never sent a text message! However, I find myself travelling quite a bit, and within the UK, it seems  to me that in British hotels internet access is often just another way to extract cash from the guests.  (This is is contrast to my experiences in the USA and Japan).  One criterion I had for selecting a system was that some support for Linux should be available.  Browsing various fora, I decided to have a go with the Vodafone system.

Vodafone have a quite a large website covering development of drivers etc for their mobile devices including the USB modems.  The associated Betavone Forge site has a forum which was very helpful in getting the system working on Linux (Ubuntu 8.04).

Lest readers feel I (and others) overstate the dangers of the deep packet inspection that is about to be perpetrated on BT Internet customers, here is a quote from Kent Ertegrul, CEO of Phorm, Inc.:

The information at the BT Webwise page seems to me to avoid discussing BT's real motives in proposing to employ this system.  The quoted blocks below come from BT's Webwise page.

BT Webwise increases your protection against online fraud and makes ads that appear on participating websites more relevant to your interests. It's completely free for BT Total Broadband customers and you don't have to download or install any software for it to work.

This is rather disingenuous.  Most modern browsers offer protection against phishing sites.  I strongly suspect that most broadband users would prefer to minimise all advertising: certainly this is one reason I use Firefox with its adblock add-on.  Of course it's free, BT will be selling our browsing history

I just read on The Register that British Telecom will begin their third trial of the despicable Phorm data pimping service.  For reasons why this is so appalling, visit the nodpi and badphorm websites.

Alex Hanff over at nodpi reckons that the opt in/out system it seems that the BT data pimps will use still falls foul of legal requirements.  For my part, I believe that the whole system is vile, immoral and underhand.  There are a variety of aspects to the antics that the BT Data Pimps have conducted over the last few year that leave a particularly sour taste.

Cyclingnews.com reports that Floyd Landis, who tested positive for testosterone and was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title only days after finishing in Paris, has launched an appeal against the final CAS decision to uphold their verdict of his guilt.  Oh, and the $100k bill he got stuck with.  The bases for this action are two-fold - firstly that the three arbitrators on the panel (including the one chosen by Landis and his team) had conflicts of interest, and that the decision on dumping the costs on Landis was made in a way that prevented any right for his team to respond.

What's less certain is whether the appeal can actually go anywhere - it is an appeal to a US Federal court, while the CAS arbitration was decided at their HQ in Switzerland.  Landis is due to return to racing in 2009, having served his ban.  There seems to be a curious pattern with high profile sports doping cases involving American athletes, with defence often hinging on perceived (and often minor) procedural defects.  Rarely are the athletes really able to challenge the laboratory tests themselves.  I recently wrote about an opinion piece in the journal Nature, which seemed to me to be rather cautious on the statistics of positive dope tests, particularly during lengthy sports events such as the Grand Tours.

I just received the Glasvegas album (cover to left).  I came across this (believe it or not) from listening to the BBC World Service very early one morning.  I was taken by the strange Glaswegian wall of sound.  To be honest they do remind me at times of Win, particularly in the vocals, but that's no bad thing, particularly combined with an appealing sort of indie version of a wall of sound!

A still, clear, and quite chilly morning, with a few wisps of mist greeted the riders who turned out for the North Bucks Hill Climb Championship for 2008.  As usual, held on F5z/H (for the uninitiated, the climb from Bow Brickhill to the golf course on top of the hill).  There were loads of mountain bikers hanging around and starting their ride in the woods, but none could be persuaded to take part.

I have to say at this point that I hate hill climbs.  I like cycling up big long hills, but sprinting up short steep hills seems foolhardy to day the least.  Anyway, my effort in the 2008 championship came to a quick end, as I got stopped on the steepest part of the climb by some twerp in a 4X4 who decided to stop to hold a conversation with someone.  That kind of buggered up my ride, and I lost enthusiasm after that.  Oh well.  

Slide:ology

The art and science of creating great presentations

Cyclingnews.com reports that there is evidence that Frank Schleck was a client of Dr Eufemiano Fuentes, the notorious Spanish sports doctor that offered blood doping services to a seemingly large swathe of the pro peleton (and a bunch of other sports - but that seems to have been swept neatly under the carpet).  Frank Schleck is implicated as "Amigo di Birillo", Birillo being the code name for Ivan Basso.  Basso of course denied involvement until sufficient evidence piled up, then accepted a ban.

The Fuentes case seems to have gone a bit cold, but the bags of blood - each labeled with a puerile codename - are still being held.  It's about time these cheats got identified for once and all by DNA testing.

I came across a link to Excrementum Can. (canine faeces) in a comment left at the excellent quackometer site.  Helios Homeopathy do indeed sell Excrementum Can. at a variety of extreme dilutions (can't be much fun doing those preparations, at least for the early dilutions).  Dilutions offered are 6C - 10M, but while I know that 6C is six 100 fold dilutions, what's 10M?  Is that ten 1000 fold dilutions? [Edit: at this site, it is revealed that 1M = 1000C.  This reaches the heights of absurdity.  10M must therefore be 10000C, or 10000 successive 100-fold dilutions! I am losing track of this level of dilution - perhaps someone less mathmatically challenged that I am first thing in the morning can calculate this...do they really mean 10^-20000?]

More about this quack stuff at provings.info, but it's not terribly obvious what it's supposed to do.  The onward link is in German, with registration required, so I didn't go there.