I picked the news that Better Advertising Acquires Ghostery via the No DPI forum.  Ghostery is a very popular plugin that identifies tracking scripts on webpages, and offers the option of blocking said scripts.   I'm not sure how significant this will prove to be, but I note from the Better Advertising web page that

We created Better Advertising because we knew there had to be a better way to conduct online behavioral advertising. Our goal is simple: provide solutions that help deliver the best ads and provide the best privacy, bringing transparency and trust to the online advertising ecosystem.

We do this by helping advertisers, advertising agencies, advertising networks, publishers, consumers, and industry associations to be accountable to each other and to make it clear, simple, and easy to understand how online behavioral advertising is occurring. We think improving the way data is collected, used and disclosed – and doing so in a transparent manner – will raise the quality of the entire online advertising industry. Most importantly, Better Advertising understands the importance of privacy to consumers.

Better Advertising’s technology helps online advertisers, agencies and networks continue to self-regulate. Working closely with our design partners, Better Advertising is at the vanguard of online advertising. The Better Advertising platform will enable advertisers to maximize their use of innovative digital strategies, including behavioral targeting, while meeting anticipated demand for enhanced transparency and consumer privacy.

I'm not sure that the acquisition of Ghostery by this lot is a good thing, and it's probably worth keeping an eye on the situation.  The NoDPI forum also points out a bug in the current Ghostery plugin which causes Firefox to take ages to close down.  This is something I've noticed lately, but not pinned down.

According to a report at the Cyclingnews website today (Valverde Offers To Submit DNA Sample | Cyclingnews.com), Alejandro Valverde has offered to provide a sample for DNA testing to establish for once and for all whether the blood in the blood bags (i.e. the bag or bags labelled Valv.(Piti)) is indeed taken from him. It astonishes me that such a test has no been conducted thus far, as it would provide indisputable proof as to whether or not the blood was his.  Now, of course, that is only important if the transfusions service was aimed at supplementing an athlete with his own blood (autologous transfusion).  If the practice was using another athlete's blood (homologous transfusion - use of blood from a donor that has been checked for compatibility*), the bag might contain blood from someone else. While the UCI and WADA are happy to take him up on this, CONI isn't - Cyclingnews reports:

In an effort to "show the irregularities in CONI's procedure," according to a press statement by the rider, Valverde would be willing to supply his DNA if it was tested in an independent lab outside of Italy.

Alejandro Valverde has his appeal (against the ban imposed by CONI) currently being heard by CAS Mixed Fortunes For Valverde In CAS Appeal | Cyclingnews.com.

Valverde, who is currently in Australia preparing for the Tour Down Under, is challenging the ban imposed by the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) on the basis of DNA evidence collected by them in the wake of the 2006 Operacion Puerto blood doping investigation. The UCI and World Anti-Doping Agency have supported CONI's stance and asked for the ban to be extended across the world.

The good news for Valverde is that the CAS appeal's only dealing with CONI's ban: additional sanctions by the UCI and WADA won't be heard at this hearing.  On the other hand, one of the CONU prosecutors is quoted as saying:

Since I overhauled this website a couple of years ago, the main focus on the site has been through the Joomla! blogging extension MyBlog. This is a commercial extension from Azrul, and I have to say I've been very pleased with it.

Unfortunately I'm less enthusiastic about Azrul's commenting extension, JomComment, designed for use with MyBlog. It has a caching activity, which seems to generate huge numbers of files which are supposed to be deleted each time a comment is posted. Well, maybe I suffer from a paucity of readers willing to comment, but the cache just grows and grows indefinitely. I have tried commenting, but no decline in the sheer volume of the JomComment cache.

There's a report in Cyclingnews.com today that, if the rider's assertions are proven, makes me a little concerned (Bani Says Team Doped Him Without His Knowledge | Cyclingnews.com)

Eugenio Bani has said that his former team Ambra Cavallini Vangi “forced” him to take medications and that he did not know what they were. The 18-year-old, who tested positive for the pregnancy hormone HcG (Human chorionic gonadotrophin), has signed for this year with Amore & Vita despite a 21-month ban within Italy.

So here we have a rider who's barely more than a kid being doped with bioactive human hormones.  Who knows what long-term damage can be caused by modern hormonal doping?  And I include here "more conventional" steroids, growth hormones and EPO in its mutifarious forms.

It's long seemed to me that professional teams escape serious scrutiny in the war against doping - it takes considerable negative publicity to dent a team, and even then it seems as though the team only folds if the sponsor takes the view that the negative publicity has reached excessive levels.

Bani goes on to describe how he was regularly injected with liquids that were pre-loaded in syringes - liquids that were only described as "tonics" or "vitamins".  A cycling team with riders as young as this owe a considerable duty of care, and should not only behave with utmost propriety but should be seeking to protect their riders from getting involved with doping.

A new site promoting a rational attitude to homeopathy has gone live (Homeopathy: There's nothing in it | The 10:23 Campaign | #ten23). The focus appears to be

The 10:23 campaign aims to raise awareness of the reality of homeopathy - how it can be proven not to work, how it can be shown to be impossible, and why it's important to give patients the right information to allow them to make an informed decision on their healthcare.

The site features an open letter to Boots (probably the biggest UK high street pharmacist), who persist in selling homeopathic "remedies" despite knowing these "remedies" contain no active ingredients (I'm not even taking into consideration whether or not the starting ingredient has any activity).  This was clearly stated at a recent Commons Science and Technology Committee enquiry (see Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog, for example).

I imagine the site's name reflects Avogadro's Number (now known as the Avogadro constant) - 6.022 x 10²³ mol^-1.  What's less clear to me is why there appears to be a countdown timer on the site's front page!  See also the
In unrelated news (other than the general topic of homeopathy) David Colquhoun has reported on the content of the University of Central Lancashire's now discontinued Homoepathy course at his blog (What actually gets taught on a homeopathy course: part 1).

As I mentioned the other day (Christmas project 2009: installation of a NAS...), I was spending some time over the Xmas break configuring a new NAS device.  This was set up as a two drive RAID1 array of 2x1Tb.  However, once I'd set up the rsnapshot backup system (which seems to be pretty efficient in terms of disk space and ease of setup), I turned my eye to the other uses of the device.  I've installed the following via the QPKG system or by activating the firmware options (during all this, I upgraded the firmware to the latest stable version):

MySQL - to enable this, I needed to upgrade the firmware.  Or at least that was what the system said, and who am I to object?  Administering MySQL databases is easiest using a GUI such as PhpMyAdmin, so I installed...

A bright but very cold morning greeted the five intrepid (or possibly foolhardy) riders who turned out for the 2010 edition of the North Bucks Road Club's annual New Year 10 mile time trial.  As last year, the event was run on the F5d/10.  I suspect it was actually colder this year than it was last year, but bathed in sunshine instead of the clammy atmosphere of last year, it almost seemed balmy. 

This was the first competitive outing for my new time trial bike, so I was bound to be a bit cautious as I made my way over to the club room.  I'll probably write some more detailed notes on the bike later, but two points for now - the steering seemed alarmingly twitchy as slow speed, but once down on the tribars and at racing speed, everything seemed very good; this was my first proper ride on Speedplay pedals, and I'm most impressed.  I had decided to try out the GPS receiver for the Polar bike computer, but I couldn't get it to work, so rode the event solely on heart rate.

The Conservatives, fired by the controversial arrest of their immigration spokeman within the House of Commons earlier this year appear to be somewhat exercised by the issue DNA sample retention by the police (Police policy on deletion of DNA records is shambles, say Conservatives | Politics | The Guardian).  The dear old UK Government appears to be fighting a rearguard action to evade the judgment from Europe that the retention of DNA samples and associated data on individuals who end up either not being charged or not being found guilty infringes human rights.

Freedom of information requests to police forces in England and Wales by the shadow immigration spokesman, Damian Green, reveal a huge disparity in the way records are treated. "The force most likely to remove your DNA profile is South Yorkshire, with 83% of requests granted," said Green. "However, of the total requests to 26
different forces, less than half were granted. Some forces, including Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire and Nottingham, refused to remove any profiles."

What's even more astonishing is the Government's belief that an individual arrested but not found guilty of a minor offence is in some way more innocent than an individual arrested but not found guilty of a serious offence.  As the Guardian reports:

One would have to be a spectacularly unaware competitive cyclist to remain ignorant of the spread of power meters in the ranks of bike racers.  In the past I've not moved in this direction, for a number of reasons, some practical (e.g. typical power meters would be a faff to move from bike to bike, unlike the typical HRM), some more theoretical ( e.g. isn't it best to assess the physiological demands of a training session).

At the end of the 2009 season I bought a Polar CS600X bike computer with power metering capability.  I've written the first part of a review on the usage of power meter data (framed by a book review) over at the Team Grumpy website.