Free? Free to read what some bloke tells you you can damn well read!

www.internetblackout.com.au

The Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers to censor the Internet for all Australians. This plan will waste millions of dollars and won’t make anyone safer.

It won’t protect children: The filter isn’t a “cyber safety” measure to stop kids seeing inappropriate content such as R and X rated websites. It is not even designed to prevent the spread of illegal material where it is most often found (chat rooms, peer-to-peer file sharing).

We will all pay for this ineffective solution: Under this policy, ISPs will be forced to charge more for consumer and business broadband. Several hundred thousand dollars has already been spent to test the filter – without considering high-speed services such as the National Broadband Network!

A dangerous precedent: We stand to join a small club of countries which impose centralised Internet censorship such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The secret blacklist may be limited to “Refused Classification” content for now, but what might a future Australian Government choose to block?

"The British government has brought down its long-awaited Digital Economy Bill, and it's perfectly useless and terrible. It consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry (including the "three-strikes" rule that allows your entire family to be cut off from the net if anyone who lives in your house is accused of copyright infringement, without proof or evidence or trial), as well as a plan to beat the hell out of the video-game industry with a new, even dumber rating system (why is it acceptable for the government to declare that some forms of artwork have to be mandatorily labelled as to their suitability for kids? And why is it only some media? Why not paintings? Why not novels? Why not modern dance or ballet or opera?).
So it's bad. £50,000 fines if someone in your house is accused of filesharing. A duty on ISPs to spy on all their customers in case they find something that would help the record or film industry sue them (ISPs who refuse to cooperate can be fined £250,000).

But that's just for starters. The real meat is in the story we broke yesterday: Peter Mandelson, the unelected Business Secretary, would have to power to make up as many new penalties and enforcement systems as he likes. And he says he's planning to appoint private militias financed by rightsholder groups who will have the power to kick you off the internet, spy on your use of the network, demand the removal of files or the blocking of websites, and Mandelson will have the power to invent any penalty, including jail time, for any transgression he deems you are guilty of. And of course, Mandelson's successor in the next government would also have this power.

What isn't in there? Anything about stimulating the actual digital economy. Nothing about ensuring that broadband is cheap, fast and neutral. Nothing about getting Britain's poorest connected to the net. Nothing about ensuring that copyright rules get out of the way of entrepreneurship and the freedom to create new things. Nothing to ensure that schoolkids get the best tools in the world to create with, and can freely use the publicly funded media -- BBC, Channel 4, BFI, Arts Council grantees -- to make new media and so grow up to turn Britain into a powerhouse of tech-savvy creators.

Lobby organisation The Open Rights Group is urging people to contact their MP to oppose the plans.
"This plan won't stop copyright infringement and with a simple accusation could see you and your family disconnected from the internet - unable to engage in everyday activities like shopping and socialising," it said.

The government will also introduce age ratings on all boxed video games aimed at children aged 12 or over.

There is, however, little detail in the bill on how the government will stimulate broadband infrastructure."

from: www.boingboing.net - Britain's new Internet law -- as bad as everyone's been saying, and worse. Much, much worse.

news.bbc.co.uk - government lays out digital plans

This assumes you are running II5 firmware and know what adb is.

- Download 'signed-google_ion-ota-14721.zip' (51.5MB) from developer.htc.com.
- Extract 'libhgl.so' from the /system/lib folder in the zip file.
- In a command prompt, run adb remount
- In a command prompt, run adb push [location of file] /system/lib/libhgl.so

Originally: www.android-hilfe.de

This is the process I went through to upgrade my phone from II5 to the Galaxo ROM. This is for my information only. If you follow this and turn your phone into a paperweight, I don't care.

Thanks to kam187 on androidforums.com for the bulk of the knowledge and the guys at hdblog.it for the ROM.

Before doing any of this, you need to upgrade your phone's firmware to II5 first.

You need to have the sdk tools on your computer:
- Extract the android-sdk-windows-1.5_r3.rar files to a folder on your computer.
- Copy recovery.img from the 0.42 Recovery Image over the existing recovery.img in the tools - Copy folder.

You probably need to install the adb usb driver at this point, if you haven't done this before, otherwise the phone won't respond to command line actions:
- Turn on USB Debugging on the phone: Settings > Applications > Development > USB Debugging and wait for a prompt to install a driver.
- Install the correct adb driver from the usb_driver folder.
- For more information on the adb usb driver, see this post.

From kam187, the key things are:
- Never boot II5 after a wipe and BEFORE applying update.zip
- Never boot after update.zip without G.Apps restored

Copy the 0.42 Recovery Image and Galaxo ROM and the II5.tar to the phone:
- Connect the phone to the PC (use the factory cable, Rastaman-FB had issues with a non-Samsung cable) and mount the internal storage using the USB Connected button that appears in the Notification Bar, then Mount.
- Copy rectools.tar.gz (from the 0.42 Recovery Image) to the root of the internal storage.
- Copy the update.zip (from the Galaxo ROM) to the root of the internal storage.
- Find the II5 firmware I7500XXII5-PDA-CL64494-REV5(VIA).tar and rename it to II5.tar and copy this to the root of the internal storage (this is how the Google Apps are restored later). Your internal phone storage should look a bit like this..



- Switch off the phone.
- Boot into fastboot mode by holding the Call button (bottom left) whilst powering on the phone with the Power button (bottom right). The phone should appear to be waiting..
- In Windows, go Start > Run and type cmd then press OK to open the DOS command prompt.
- Navigate into the Android SDK tools folder where adb.exe and fastboot.exe are located (On my machine it is: C:\Android\android-sdk-windows-1.5_r3\tools - Copy since I was using kam187's repacked 1.5 SDK). Basically you need to type something like cd\android\android-sdk-windows-1.5_r3\tools to get to the directory beneath where you have extracted android-sdk-windows-1.5_r3.rar or android-sdk-windows-1.6_r1.zip.
- Now, in this folder type: fastboot flash recovery recovery.img
- Once this is complete, pull out the phone's battery and reinsert it to leave fastboot mode.

Now we boot into the 0.42 Recovery image:
- Reboot the phone in Recovery Mode by holding the Volume Down and Call buttons whilst pressing Power to power up the phone.
- You should see a green 0.42 Recovery Console screen like this



- Choose Nandroid backup to make a complete backup of your system.
- Choose Wipe data/factory reset to clear your phone and reboot into Recovery automatically.
- Choose Apply sdcard:update.zip to apply the Galaxo ROM and reboot into Recovery automatically.
- Choose Restore G.Apps to restore the Google Apps that were automatically backed up (you must have copied the II5.tar file to your phone).
- Reboot into a lovely new ROM!

If your phone hangs (like mine did) at the loading screen - did you remember to restore the Google Apps?

Galaxo ROM: http://forum.hdblog.it/showthread.php?t=4842
0.42 Recovery Image: http://forum.hdblog.it/showthread.php?t=3995
ROM Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a-swBMfys8

Firmware I7500XXII8 is appearing in some countries now (Sweden and Finland).

I've just done this and I like the HTC keyboard. It seems faster and a bit better at predictive typing.

These are kam187's instructions.
Original post here androidforums.com - htc keyboard on samsung!

- Download this zip file: Tastiera T9 Samsung Galaxy.zip

- Copy the two .apk files to the memory of you Galaxy (you can mount your SD card to your PC and copy the files - plug in the cable, pull down the notification bar and click 'USB connected', then mount the sdcard. It'll show up as a new drive on your computer).

- Install Astro File Manager from the Android market.

- Open Astro File Manager find and click HTC_IME, click Open App Manager and then click the Install button.

- Open Astro File Manager find and click Clicker, click Open App Manager and then click the Install button.

Note: The installation of applications not sourced from the Android Market is blocked by default, so you will need to allow this.

- Go to Locale & Text in the settings menu and select Touch Input and Exit

- Go back into Locale & Text and in the Touch Input options choose the alphanumeric Keypad and exit.

- Now create a new text message and click and hold the text box and select Input method, and select Touch Input

(If you use adb you can just install the apk by typing adb install HTC-IME.apk and adb install Clicker.apk)

Here's another set of instructions with some more details if you need them..
androinica.com - how to install the HTC Android soft keyboard without rooting your phone. No, that's not the Australian version of 'rooting'.

I'd done a lot of reading about flashing the i7500 and wasn't convinced of the benefits. Bored and annoyed that Samsung UK have thus far not released upgrades that other countries have (VIA Germany for example) I decided 'what the hell' and did it anyway. Using the information in these two links it was exceptionally easy to move to II5 baseband. Thanks guys.

androidforums.com - flashing and rooting overview - cougar

dejancencelj.blogspot.com - flash rom samsung i7500 galaxy for dummies

It looks like new firmware is out. It's only shipping with the latest batch of O2 Galaxy phones. My phone, ordered Sep 9th shipped with I7500XXIH6. I7500XXIH8 is available but not yet being pushed to the phones (I think Odin is required or some messing about with Samsung's PC Suite). I7500XXII4 is reportedly shipping with the latest store-bought Samsung's..
androidforums.com - Samsung Galaxy i7500 I7500XXII4 Firmware

My new toy arrived yesterday..



It's got the build quality of a Samsung without the hideous Samsung UI. Google Android is awesome. A bit of whinging was heard from the iClone lovers about the lack of multi-touch (all that pinching to zoom stuff) but as I've not been sucked into Apple's realm of darkness.. no problemo! I believe they can be hacked to do the multi-touch stuff anyway but it just doesn't seem necessary. Now to work out what else it can do..

Oh, Mal and I are trying to buy a house here so I've not been doing much else but working, drinking and form filling.

www.i7500world.com

androidforums.com

layar.com

www.android.com

phandroid.com

androidandme.com - Android 1.6 SDK

blog.taragana.com

Looks like the Bezzera BZ35 I have is actually a Bezzera BZ99. Since joining TMC I've learned that the BZ35 is a larger (2l boiler compared to 1.5l), plumbed-in commercial machine whereas the BZ99 is a domestic tank-filled version. Apparently some BZ35s have vibe pumps and some have rotary pumps but the bigger boiler and required plumbing is the give away.

www.barazi.com.au - bezzera bz99 single group

Bezzera BZ35 espresso machine gallery

www.bezzera.it - bz35

worldcoffeeservices.com

www.londonespresso.co.uk

I've put a deposit down with Daisy from World Coffee Services for a used Bezzera BZ35. It's working (I had a coffee from it) and it's half the size of the Gaggia TS1 I was looking at buying (and £130 cheaper at £220). It's missing one of its feet but that should be easy to replace. It could do with a clean but it was serviced by World Coffee Services in March this year. It should make for an interesting comparison to the Gaggia. I'll hopefully be picking it up Monday night.

I bought a Rancilio Silvia steaming wand from Happy Donkey and fitted it to my Gaggia Classic this morning.

Here's another coffee geek's Gaggia steam wand modding in pictures: forums.overclockers.co.uk - gaggia classic rancilio silvia steam wand upgrade

This new steam wand really screams compared to the turbo frother that comes standard with most Gaggia domestic machines. It's a single hole nozzle and will take a bit of getting used to but the signs are promising.. "microfoam should pour" blah blah. How to get microfoam. www.espressovivace.com - milk texturing basics.

More info on the Garmin Etrex Vista HCx

Arrived today. It works. It has lots of features. I will learn all about them. I will get lost in style from now on.

epictetrismusic.ytmnd.com
Taken from a cool Tetris battle scene in Pure Pwnage - Ep. 12

My other new toy.. Yes, this retro-grouch managed to upgrade two pieces of technology in the same month!

£1621 for 17 inches of LCD pleasure, 2.16GHz Pentium M, 1Gb RAM, 100GB HDD and lots of other go-faster computery goodies.. It's only slightly slower than the "googleplex".

Manufacturer: www.hp.com - nx9420
Reseller: www.dabs.com - nx9420

I'm feeling left out of the Bloglines loop because I don't have an RSS feed from my blog..

Well, it turns out I do have an RSS feed and, in fact, I have had it since this blog went live!

If you want to add my fevered rantings to bloglines click this button:



If not using bloglines, you might want to try one of these:

RSD 1.00
RSS 0.91
RSS 2.00

www.sonyericsson.com - W810i

Yep, Mei-Ling, you finally get your Moto back! :)

www.4815162342.com

www.wired.com - open source beer

Thanks for the link cfsmtb.