One week on, and I've got to grips a bit more with the iPod Touch. 

• I don't like iTunes!  (but perhaps I will ge used to it)  It doesn't seem terribly intuitive to me.
• My digital music files live on a Linux box upstairs, and I stream them to the hifi via a Logitech Squeezebox.  As I reported in the last iPod post, I was able to access these files for use with iTunes using Firefly, but this wouldn't let my sync them to the iPod.  Samba wasn't a bundle of use either.
• Disk space being limited due to the small partition used for Windows XP on the only machine available for iTunes, I resorted to making copies to a portable hard drive, this worked pretty well.
• Why can't Apple make a Linux version of iTunes?
• iTunes could only identify cover art for a very small proportion of my mp3s.  This is probably more a reflection of my musical taste, however!
• To be honest, I don't find browing the album covers an efficient way of locating an album when thereis over 29Gb of music files on the device!
• Having access to the MS Exchange mail/calendar is very useful
• My grown up sized finger tips are a bit on the large size for accurate tapping on the screen keyboard!
  

Perhaps I should look into jailbreaking this iPod so I can just use the Linux box for transferring files...

Some recent developments regarding the obnoxious Phorm:

The Telco 2.0 conference feature discussions from the CEO of a web marketing company.   Because the meeting was held under Chatham House rules, individuals and companies could not be named.  However, it's a reasonable assumption this was someone from Phorm.  The Register reports.

Here in the UK, there has been a pretty large storm about BT's trials (and  proposed implementation) of the obnoxious Phorm system in which all users' web browsing sessions are intercepted and data extracted in order to deliver targeted advertising.  A No 10 petition has collected a large number of signatories, and several websites have been set up to explain the problems associated with Phorm and to campaign against it.  See isphormlegal for example.

Over in the USA, a company called NebuAd have been playing the same game.  Working with several ISPs, they have been playing fast and loose with customer rights.  Now it seems the chickens may be coming home to roost. Ars Technica reports that a class action has been launched against NebuAd and its ISP collaborators. As Ars Technica reports:

Reports broke yesterday on fora (such as nodpi) and The Register that a PlusNet customer had received an invitation to join BT Webwise.  Plusnet is an ISP acquired by BT in 2006, but run as a separate business.  The current trials of the vile Phorm system of data snooping began on BT customers 30th September and were supposed to last for 30 days.  There had been much speculation that these trials either had not started, that they were late starting, and that BT were having trouble finding the desired naive users to sign up.

So, what's a PlusNet customer doing receiving an invitation to BT Webwise?  What kind of botched system is in place here, and can we actually trust BT to manage the hardware and software that Phorm have placed in their system?

Ars Technica reports that objections to the Australian Government's internet filtering plans are growing, with ISPs joining the clamour.  Discontent is fuelled by the lack of appropriate opt-out (as I posted previously).  Apparently they have begun testing the system in Tasmania.  presumably they think Tasmania is sufficiently backwater that objections will be ignored (a bit like the Tories treated Scotland when plotting the now discredited poll tax bac in the 1980s).

One of the anti-Phorm gang has set up a concise web page outlining the objections many have to the BT-Phorm data snooping system. What's particularly useful is that every assertion has a citation supporting it.  Read it and weep over what has become of British Telecom. [update: apologies, I botched the link, now corrected]

Yesterday I succumbed to temptation and bought a 32Gb iPod Touch to replace my venerable 2Gb iPod Nano. I realised before this purchase that my limited Windows resource would be a challenge: my library of music files is held on a fileserver running Ubuntu 8.10, and my sole XP machine is a small partition on an IBM laptop (I had decided I'd rather not fanny around jailbreaking the iPod, unless absoutely necessary).  Still, there was enough disk space to get iTunes installed and to sync some music to the iPod.

The iPod is everything I'd expected, a terrific UI, effective touch screen, easy to set up wireless comms.  But oh dear, it does show the fingerprints!

A scary reminder of the 1958 movie The Fly, here's writer-illustrator Zina Saunders' (no relation) picture of the ghastly Palin. Check out her website for a some acute political art, and click on this thumbnail for the bigger image.

I think that's me in the lab coat.

 Wolbachia pipientis is a rather peculiar bacterium.  It's an intracellular organism, and is found in a wide variety of tax, including nematodes, crustacea, and arachnids.  About 20% of insect species are thought to have Wolbachia.  Wolbachia has evolved a number of mechanisms to ensure transmission, which is generally maternal.  There are a number of consequences of infection with these intracellular bacteria observed in different species - including reproductive isolation between infected and uninfected strains of the mosquito Culex pipiens.  I also recall seeing a old paper (though I've long-since lost the citation) which claimes a growth advantage of infected Drosophila larvae in crowded culture, though I think this must have predated the identification of Wolbachia.

So some laboratory Drosophila strains are infected with Wolbachia, while some are not.  This can lead to artefacts in many experiments.  For example, in my own lab, we had some perplexing results concerning the effects of particular transgene on viability of some combinations - the involvement of Wolbachia became clear firstly when we noticed the effects depended on which which strain was paternal and which maternal in the cross, and finally the observation that  this effect vanished after treating the transgenic stocks with antibiotic.  These kind of artefacts are particularly important to consider when working with complex characteristics such as lifespan (as we do in my lab).

The Register reports latest developments in the Australian Government's ambitions to censor all internet traffic.  Originating as some misguided initiative to "protect the children" (whatever happened to parental responsibility?), it now appears that Australian internet users are likely to face a situation where they must choose from one of two censored streams.  Opting out of the "child-friendly" stream (which blocks a wide range of supposedly harmful content), merely subjects the user to an adult filter that blocks material deemed by the government to be inappropriate for adults.

Is this patronising and paternalistic system the future of the internet?  Or has it the potential to lead to unreasonable censorship?