I missed this story on Cyclingnews.com the other day (CAS Confirms Valverde's Italian Ban | Cyclingnews.com), but it would seem that CONI's ban on Alejandro Valverde's in Italy (which includes races passing through Italy) has been upheld by CAS.  Valverde was banned in May 2009 after it was found the blood stored as part of the "Fuentes affair" contained his DNA. The Cyclingnews.com report goes a little further, saying:

According to analysis performed in a Barcelona laboratory as part ofthe initial Spanish investigation, the bag of blood contained EPO andso the CONI banned Valverde for two years.

It's also reported that the UCI plans to take action aimed at extending Valverde's ban worldwide.  In my view there's a wider issue - how can one of the biggest doping scandals have failed to result in more action being taken against offending riders?  Is it fair on the few riders who have been penalised that others involved have not been challenged? 

[The cyclingnews.com page linked above has a useful timeline of the Operacion Puerto case as it relates to Alejandro Valverde]

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Back in the 1970s, when I nearly took up competitive cycling as a teenager, I was a failrly regular reader of Cycling, then the weekly cycle sport magazine in the UK (known colloquially as The Comic).  Of course, I went off to University and discovered a variety of youthful interests that put paid to any serious involvement in cycling as a sport.  My memory of Cycling at that time was of a black and white newspaper like magazine, printed on pulpy paper, but full of stories about the great time triallists of the era.

Fast forward about 15 years.  I had just spent the last four years of the 1980s working in a lab in London, when the whole lab moved to Scotland, lock stock and barrel.  I decided to get a bit more exercise as a largely sedentary lifestyle had filled me out somewhat, and what better way than to take up cycling again, and explore the Scottish countryside.  I bought a bike, and started buying Cycling Weekly (as it was known by then) again.  Having plucked up the courage to join a local cycling club, I finally started racing club then open time trials.

A bright but very cold and frosty morning greeted us as we loaded up the car to drive over to Resolven to ride in the 2010 Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up '25'. In fact we were both apprehensive - about the weather, yes, but also the uncertainty of what form our winter training had led to. In my case, I was reasonably confident, but I was aware of being rather overweight and lacking in mileage - most of my winter training had been in the form of relatively brief turbo sessions in the garage. On the other hand, my team mate Gerry had left resumption of training until late December, and had then been afflicted with a lengthy cold (possibly the same thing that got me during most of December). So he was pretty sure he was going to be riding sub-par.

We got to Resolven and signed on. The race HQ seemed to be colder than the car park, which by the time we arrived was nicely bathed in sunshine, raising the temperature to slightly above freezing. After setting the bikes up and getting sorted, we briefly warmed up. I tweaked the Polar computer so that it would work from the GPS sensor, and we rolled up to take out place behind the fourth team (we were fifth off in a nearly full field). Our time came, and off we went, out on to the DC and done the valley, with a glorious tail wind. We were riding pretty smoothly together, and we took care that any speed discrepancy didn't pull us apart. I don't think it would be indiscreet to observe that Gerry was indeed below par, but still, we gradually reeled in the teams that has started before us.

The Floyd Landis doping saga has reached new and bizarre levels. Soon after winning the 2006 Tour de France, Landis was stripped of his title after it emerged that he'd tested positive for testosterone.  Of course, and as is the case with just about every case of sports doping, Landis has never admitted guilt, and mounted a spirited defence with a high-powered legal team.  This defence used copies of material obtained from the testing lab, and wa sultimately unsuccessful.

Now, however, it would appear that the case has reached quite unusual levels - Cyclingnews.com reports that a French arrest warrant has been issued - for computer hacking (Arrest Warrant Issued For Landis In France | Cyclingnews.com).  The article claims:

In November 2006, the [Chatanay Malabry] lab reported that its computer systems hadbeen infected with a "Trojan Horse" virus, which was used by someone toaccess the lab's confidential documents. The lab said that data hadbeen removed or changed, allegedly in an attempt to discredit the workof the organisation.

An email carrying the virus was alleged to have been sent from acomputer with the same IP address as that of Landis' coach Arnie Baker.Both Landis and Baker denied any involvement in the hacking, butauthorities maintain that the pair made use of pilfered documents inLandis' defense argument.

"Landis used the hacked files for his defense, that's how wediscovered the whole scheme," Bordry said to the Associated Press. "Hewanted to show that the lab made mistakes in the handling of thetests."

I posted the other day about the new BTCare customer support forums ( BT and the heavy hand of censorship).  In the intervening few days, the leaden effects of BT censorship have become ever more evident, not least because of the actions of moderators, which has caused a number of the long-standing and helpful/knowledgable members.  Check these threads out:

How do I send a P.M., how private is it & are there any restrictions?

Cyclingnews. com reports that Riccardo Riccò, whose partner and fellow cyclist Vania Rossi recently tested positive for the CERA derivative of EPO, has now separated from her (Riccò Splits With Girlfriend Rossi Over CERA Positive | Cyclingnews.com).  Nice timing, Riccardo.

I'm fairly sceptical that the two were ignorant of each other's apparent doping practices.  And Riccò has always come across (to me at least) in magazine interviews as rather unrepentant over his doping past.  Cyclingnews quotes Riccò as saying

"I am disappointed with my girlfriend and there can be no reconciliation until Vania is shown to be innocent of the allegations that were raised," said Riccò, according to Italian website Tuttobiciweb.com.

I have a Google Mail account, principally because it was the easiest way to set up an account with Google (for things like Google Maps APIs and a few webmaster tools).  I noticed a bit of a buzz on the interweb, but hadn't really looked into it (I normally use Evolution to access my gmail account via IMAP).

I was more than a little surprised to find that I'd been signed up for Buzz by default.  Fortunately I only had two contacts, because I rarely use gmail except as a mail drop for subscriptions, and I hadn't set up a public profile, so there was rather little impact.  I've now turned it off (via the little letters at the bottom of the gmail screen).  For others however, their contacts have been spread around as followers, and their mailboxes receive additional and frequently unwanted input.

 

The xkcd web comic has been particularly good lately (a standout was the Mars rover comic), but I found the quirkiness of this one just tickled my funny bone:

British Telecom's customer help forums appear to have moved from beta to a final version.  During the great Phorm Phiasco, when BT were planning to use the vile Phorm DPI system to illegally pry into their customers' internet usage, there was great censorship in the beta forums (BT Total Censorship).  I bailed out when I got my final warning from the mods for using the word "it" - to refer to matters that were forbidden, in this case Phorm/Webwise.  All very amusing.  So how do the new forums shape up? Not well.

We have threads being locked, and repressive conditions.  The whole edifice seems to be a kind of BT newthink where dissent is curtailed, and where moderators' responses differ as a discussion proceeds.  It's notable from the conditions, which explicitly state (and these are drawn from a banning email sent to one of the nodpi.org forum members who had posted there):

[..] Terms of Use, section 6.3 (g) which states: You must not upload, post, or otherwise transmit any content (including but not limited to text, links, communications, software, images, sounds, data, or other information) that includes any of the following inappropriate content: (g) Repetitive or continuous complaints about BT policy including allegations of abuse of privacy, use of third party suppliers or any other policy for any purpose. If you contravene these terms, this will be grounds for your access to the community to be suspended or revoked.

Ho hum business as usual, I think.  There's been a very interesting thread on new firmware that according to the OP allows BT access to the HomeHub, and is actually quite insecure.  Now, I'm not technically experienced enough to comment on the basis of the OP's complaint, but just read how the moderator's story changes as the thread proceeds, ending with an abrupt brush-off and locking the thread.

Finally, the BTCare home page has a twitter feed from @btcare.  A comparison of that twitter feed with the messages on btcare is very interesting.  Are they filtering out critical tweets?

Last week, I took delivery of the first new desktop PC I've bought in several years. One of the driving motivations was the form factor of the computer: I wanted a bigger screen than commonly available with a laptop, but also to keep the main box's footprint as small as possible. A decent keyboard & mouse also appreciated.  Just before Xmas, a flier from Dell plopped out of a magazine, and the Inspiron Zino caught my eye. This has a wireless keyboard and mouse, with a pretty small case. The monitor was extra. With Windows 7 upgraded from Home to Professional, the whole package was well under £500.

This is my first exposure to Windows 7 (other than looking at other peoples' laptops). I did have Vista on the Sony notebook that currently runs Ubuntu 9.10, but the notebook's specification was woefully underpowered for Vista, which made for a pretty vile experience. Plus 95% of my computer usage is with Linux these days (mostly Ubuntu). Windows was selected because the household uses both Windows and Linux.

Since receiving the PC, I've installed Ubuntu 9.10 on a partition, and have been setting up various bits of hardware and software (an on-going process). I think the comparison between the two systems is interesting from several perspectives.

For users moving from WinXP to Win7, I reckon there'll be a bit of a learning curve (there certainly has been for me). Everything's there, but arranged in slightly different ways. Icons are rather over-elaborate, making their function a little hard to discern at times. The start menu is vile (as it was in Vista), and makes it a bit of a pain to find programmes. It's possible this can be addressed in some setting tweak however (hints and tips most welcome via the commenting!). There's a nice Mac-style floating tool bar thing that's easily configurable to auto-hide off the edge of the screen. Not sure if that's a default feature of Win7 or if it's just themed by Dell.

The PC is blessed by an almost complete lack of crapware (Thank you Dell, thank you!). On the other hand, the default install doesn't really come with much in the way of serious software. There is a 60 day trial of Office 2007, and a default installation of Works. It came with McAfee antivirus/security software, which rather annoyingly set itself up without giving me the opportunity to say no - as my work network requires that we use Sophos, this was irritating. I set up VPN very easily. The PC sees the home network reasonably effectively, though I find the default layout of the Windows 7 file manager rather confused.
Overall, I find Windows 7 to be pretty good as far as it goes - rather a snappy boot time, but not much to do with it once it's booted. I downloaded GIMP. I downloaded Firefox 3.6 and a bunch of my favourite add-ons. The default browser with 7 is of course Internet Explorer, complete with a single search engine. Bing. With the IE shortcuts consigned to oblivion and replaced with the curly fox, I set about exploring. First up, to get the backup system working (this had been trivial with the Ubuntu partition). I had to identify and download a cygwin installation with rsync and ssh. After a few false starts, I got that done. I set up folders to share and got the rsnapshot.config syntax set up OK. Did a test run, no dice, appeared to be a firewall issue (confirmed by turning the firewall off for a brief period). No problemmo, just open a port. OK, how? I have to identify a programme, then point the firewall interface to the exe file to open a port (no indication what the port number is). Yep, works.

I installed iTunes (not my most favourite programme in the world, but I use it for the iPod Touch) - looks as though migrating my iTunes library may be a bit complex. Decide to postpone this. I go to install a driver for my printer (HP 2575). No joy, it's not listed. I wander off to the HP website, where a 378Mb download is available. Blimey! 378Mb! I decline. I notice an search for drivers option on the original Win 7 dialogue box. Click it. After a significant wait, lo and behold! a driver is available, which I download and install. I've no idea what it is, how big it is, or where it's from, but it can't be the monstrous HP file, since it sets itself up pretty quickly. And it works.

In contrast, the Ubuntu installation came with just about anything needed, with everything else (just about) available on demand via Synaptic. And it wasn't until jumping in and out of both OSs for a couple of evenings that I realised just what it was that I was finding difficult with Win7 (which to be honest, I don't actually dislike particularly).  This was a sense of constraint. I felt constrained by having only one desktop, by not really being able to change the desktop theme beyond basic colour and image options. Constrained by not knowing exactly what was in the various updates the system has been downloading. Constrained by software availability. And constrained by all the tweaks I'm able to implement on Linux but not on Win 7 (top must be a showdown between the guake terminal and being able to set double-clicking the window titlebar to roll up the window).

Postscript: Amid the myriad of small booklets that arrived in the box was a brief guide to the Ubuntu desktop! From the look of it, aimed at first time users of the Netbook version of Ubuntu...

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