Sharing Broadband with BT FON

I've just signed up with BT FON, a decidedly sharey, huggy approach to broadband from BT and .  Your wifi box reprograms itself to appear as two devices: your regular home device, and an open BT Openzone router as well.  FON users (that's Foneros, ay caramba) from around the world can connect to this as an ad-hoc Openzone network point. 

The router restricts FON connections to a 512k portion of your line, plenty for that ad-hoc connection but not so much as to hurt your regular usage or make it fun to camp on your router.  There's a hotspot finder that I've been playing with, wandering the streets with my weblet.  You use the same credentials for FON as for regular BT Openzone sites, and the finder will show both.

It's not something I'd expect to use much -- maybe when my router explodes -- but it's nice to share and nice to have more options.  Somewhere a few years in the future there's a ubiquitous multi-standard network cloud, a commodity we'll look back on like electricity and water as a basic component of civilization, and FON seems a smart step in that direction.

Splodey Exeter: Redux

Nicky Reilly, the wannabe Exeter Bomber, has got life for trying to blow up a restaurant in the centre.  I'm rather surprised that the "mice and men" defence didn't work, as he's a chap with learning difficulties and the narrative seemed to be that he was groomed by villainous, moustache-twirling bombers.  But without their testimony, and with him leaving notes saying "I'm not mad, I know what I'm doing", it was going to be a tough defence.

Can't say I'm sad that somebody this broken is out of commission.  After all, it is possible to be mad and bad.  But I'd rather see the real villains of the piece in the dock than our yokel bomber.