Thanks to the efforts of Master Revell my O’Reilly article has been linked to Newsforge. You know, it has been interesting seeing the responses to this piece on the article itself and here. I am genuinely interested in peoples thoughts on this subject. 🙂

I am just listening to Brutality Radio and there is some awesome music on here. Some of the metal on here is so extreme it sounds like a machine. Great stuff. I also found out today that my band Seraphidian is going to be made Total Rock band of the week in a few weeks. Cool.

I saw today that Aq is building a new system that is a little different. I know he is well into the whole Rox OS malarkey and I am going to keep an eye on how he gets on with it. Rox OS does genuinely seem like a great project. Aq does indeed rave like a blighta’ about it and I hope they pull it off. I might install it here sometime soon. I could do with reinstalling my laptop too.

OK, so it is difficult to do an impression of Blaze Bayley singing on Iron Maiden’s Virtual XI with the title of this entry. Note to self: try harder next time. 🙂

The reason for the title of this blog entry is that I have written an article for the O’Reilly Network entitled Art, licenses and freedom. Feel free to cast your collective glass eye over it and let me know your thoughts. 🙂

You know, I was going to try and get an early night tonight. Just look at that timestamp. Way too late. Tomorrow (or rather today) is a busy day filled with writing and the second recording of LUGRadio. Should be fun.

You know, there are times when you do something that you feel really proud of. This often occurs when you create something that satisfies you completely. Well my good friends, I am very proud of my new song that I recorded last night with my good pal Emelye Penfold. It is called Fragile and is a soft, mellow, positive tune. It was recorded in my studio last night and Emelye contributed her cello and backing vocals to the mix. Go and give it a listen here.

It won’t win any awards for production, but I am really pleased with it. 🙂

I just got off the phone to Tim Weber, the Business Editor of BBC News Online. I had a long and interesting discussion about all of the issues involved with this complaint. He was fully professional and we discussed each of the issues in turn. Although we disagreed on the key parts of the complaint, Mr Weber did identify the difference in opinion that is generated from an article such as this. I requested that the Analysis pieces on BBC News Online are at least clarified. This should help the pieces be clearer that they are opinion writings.

We record the second LUGRadio on Wednesday, and we are getting some great comments mailed to us and written in the LUGRadio Forums. We have cool ideas formulating and the shows should get more and more interesting. 🙂
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Guess what, the BBC have finally got around to giving me a response regarding the complaint I have made. I got the letter through this morning and it says this:

Dear Mr Bacon

Perry Hurcombe
BBC Information

So, it seems that the official word is that it was an opinion piece and therefore I should not be overly concerned. Mr Hurcombe also mentions that other important people such as virus experts have made a similar claim. So all this is OK then is it?

Well, I for one don’t buy it. Evans’ article was not clearly marked up as an opinion piece in my view. This was an article that appeared on the BBC News Site, and from what I can gather (point me out if I am wrong here), the article was not clearly marked in a special opinion section or something along the same lines. This is point number one – the BBC need to make these opinion features clear in that they may not represent true facts, but are the opinion of the writer.

The other point is that the piece makes unsubstantiated claims, and it matters not whether this is a factual, opinion, hypothesis or other piece, the grounding of good journalism is to get your facts straight before you make an accusation. I am sure if Evans had made an accusation of a more political nature the situation would be very different.

I have an opinion on many issues like the rest of you folks. I also have the pleasure of writing these opinions in my Linux Format and O’Reilly Network columns. Although these are quite clearly opinion columns, it does not excuse them as soapboxes for incorrect assumptions. The whole point of an organisation such as the BBC is that they should ensure that their journalists get the facts straight and write a hypothesis on these facts. I have no issue with Evans writing his view, but I do have an issue with him writing a view based upon no factual proof and not making this lack of evidence clear.

Incidentally, I have been in touch with Bruce Perens, Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond about this. Bruce and Richard have replied but I think Eric is away at the moment. Richard is going to be getting in touch with a contact in the UK to look into this issue further.

Anyway, onto other stuff. LUGRadio is continuing to do very well and it is great to see a discusting amount of bandwidth being eaten by our show downloads. The feedback has been great with yet more nice emails coming in. I have also set up a LUGRadio forum at https://forums.lugradio.org/. Come along and get involved! While we are talking LUGRadio by the way, thanks for the kind offer of a mirror Kevin, I will mail you. 🙂

Tonight we went to see Soilwork in Milton Keynes. Great band and amazing performance. I also saw an incredible band called The Forsaken. Bought their long sleeve t-shirt. 🙂

It seems that LUGRadio is doing really well. We have shifted over 6GB of data now and we are on the lookout for mirrors. I don’t think any of us expected this kind of reaction. We also want to thank all the people who have mailed fantastic comments to us. 🙂

I am pleased this has worked out so far. We are all excited about making LUGRadio a regular thing, and as time goes on the quality of the show is likely to increase – particularly when I manage to mix the thing properly. 🙂

Anyone who is reading this who wants to contribute mirror space (particularly in countries other than the UK) should get in touch with me or use the LUGRadio email address.

It seems that LUGRadio is getting a heck of a lot of downloads so far, and it has only really been announced on our blogs and on The Inquirer and Newsforge. It has been submitted to Slashdot by Matt, so if there is no LUGRadio site when you try to access it, that might be why. 😉

The sum it up, in the five or six ours that it has been live, it has shifted over 4GB of traffic. Wow. The feedback has been pretty good so far and we are chuffed that people seem to be enjoying the show. We are all looking forward to doing the next one. We are also looking for mirrors too – so let us know if you can help. 🙂

The legendary Trig (aka. Carl Pickering) has joined up on Forge. Trig works at iTS-LiNUX and is a good mate and good coder. It is great to see him doing a lot of the good work he is doing. He also joined the LUG today too. 🙂

Yes folks, we have done it, LUGRadio is reality. We have actually managed to pull off a LUG project. For those who are interested in hearing four blokes ramble on about Linux and crack jokes at each other, go and check out https://www.lugradio.org/. Be warned though, there is strong language.

Let us know what you think. 🙂
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LUG meet last niht and we had a bunch of guys come down from South Birmingham LUG to do a Python talk. It was good to meet these guys and meet Tim again from SBLug. I was also talked into doing a KDE presentation at one of their meetings.

The night continued in the usual manner, and I have woken up today feeling a little, how shall we say, tender. I suppose that is what happens when you drink a carrier bag full of Carling and eat a bucket of curry. 🙂

I am gonna finish a few articles today and get them sent off before I get the Mac repartitioned and get Yellow Dog installed. I want to get most of this ready before Karate.

Well I called the BBC again today. Again I spoke to a polite and helpful person on the phone, and again I explained my complaint. I was then put on hold for quite some time as I demanded to speak to a supervisor. A few minutes passed and went and eventually I spoke to a supervisor.

I was on the phone for a while discussing the issue with the supervisor and he assured me that the complaint is being handled by the Editorial Investigations department. He also directed me to the publically available Producers Guidelines that are available here.

I took a look through the guidelines, and it seems the first document of interest is the Values, Standards and Principles guide. Of interest here is Section 2. As I suspected the guidelines ensure that journalists base their pieces on legitimate information and from established viable sources. A few choice quotes here include The agreement specifies that news should be presented with due accuracy and impartiality and Reporting should be dispassionate, wide-ranging and well-informed – I think accuracy is the issue with this complaint. The piece was simply not accurate in the way Evans expressed his views. Another key quote that shows how this piece is not following the guidelines is News programmes should offer viewers and listeners an intelligent and informed account of issues that enables them to form their own views.

The next set of guidelines is specific to the BBCi website but they largely refer to online content such as service, webcams, email etc. The document seems to be a large disclaimer about what the BBC is responsible for.

I was informed by the supervisor that online content is guaged by the same guidelines as any other content that the BBC creates. As such the quotes shown above apply to all BBC news content.

We will have to see what happens. I am still waiting to have someone to get in touch with me. I want the BBC to accept that they have breached their own editorial guidelines with this piece. If you consider the key quote The agreement specifies that news should be presented with due accuracy and impartiality and then you read one of the lines in the news story in question where Evans states If anyone’s anger has no measure, it is the wrath of internet zealots who believe that code should be free to all (open source). Not only is this disparaging to the Open Source community that we are all angry zealots (another inaccuracy – this cannot be proven, this is pure prejudice) but he quite clearly states that the Open Source community are behind MyDoom. Just to make sure he has stuck the boot firmly in, he qualifies this with So, it seems likely that the perpetrators of the MyDoom virus and its variants are internet vandals with a specific grudge. That is really quite accurate and a fair balanced view of the situation – I think not. Let us also bear in mind that the article does mention the questionable litigation with SCO and the security issues in Microsoft products that make virii even possible.

I will keep you all posted.