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::EDIT:: As mentioned in some comments below, these devices are now supported out of the box on newer versions of Ubuntu.

After much buggering about, I finally got this &amp;#$# Huawei e169 working. This method requires no mucking around in the kernel, just the usb_modeswitch utility and wvdial. For reference, this was a unit supplied from Optus in Australia for their Optus Wireless Broadband service. It's set up on an old laptop running Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron. There's no good guide out there for the e169 at the time of writing.First, grab usb_modeswitch from http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/There's nothing to install, you just need the compiled executable. There's a config file, but I found it far simpler to just use command line arguments. The commands for the e169 need to be executed in order, and they're as follows:> ./usb_modeswitch -v 0x12d1 -p 0x1001 -d 1./usb_modeswitch -v 0x12d1 -p 0x1001 -H 1Once that's done, the device should be recognised and /dev/ttyUSB0 should be created. Yay!Now, you need to spend a second setting up /etc/wvdial.conf The below should be pretty universal:> [Dialer Defaults]Phone = 99#Username = Password = New PPPD = yes<strike>wvdial looks for a device at /dev/modem, but ours is at /dev/ttyUSB0. My somewhat hacky solution was</strike>> <strike>sudo ln /dev/ttyUSB0 /dev/modem</strike>Jerome in the comments has suggested adding this section to the conf file instead of creating a link as above. It's untested by me, but looks like it should work fine. It's a much cleaner solution than the crossed out one above, too. Add it right at the beginning of the file.[Modem0]Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0If you use this solution (which you should) remove the "sudo ln…" lines from connect.sh.Now, just executing wvdial in a terminal should get you connected. It takes a little while, about 30 seconds I guess, but the important thing is that it works, and it's pretty simple.Since this connection is on a laptop intended for my grandfather, who is a fairly new computer user, I wanted to make the connection automatic in order to simplify things. I put this script in /etc/init.d/ which worked a treat. http://dbe.cc/pub/connect.shDon't forget to run sudo update-rc.d connect.sh defaultsThe script will need to be tweaked to include the location of the usb_modeswitch executable on your system. Unless your username happens to be brian and it's in a directory called .huawei under your home folder. That'd be a pretty crazy coincidence though. If people are actually finding this post and using the script I'll update it to be more user friendly. Naturally, if you don't want it executing on boot, you can just save the script as an executable and run it (as root) when you please.Also:Because this connection doesn't run through network-manager, it confuses firefox a little. All it means is that firefox starts itself in offline mode. You can just untick "Work offline" in the File menu. I solved it more permanently with instructions from here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=767045It's late, so if there's anything I've missed or anything that's unclear, please let me know in the comments. I'll do my best to help out.

It's really, really paining me to watch the beating that the openmoko project is currently taking. I've been majorly into this idea for some time now, about half way through '07. FOSS is a brilliant thing, and it's only a matter of time before the telecommunications industry wakes up to that. After all, Linux sprouted from Unix which sprouted from a telco.

Sadly, it looks like the openmoko team has set the effort back a fair ways. It's been released before it was ready and Dave Fayram has pointed that out. I thought Dave gave a reasonably fair assesment. He doesn't seem to have spent much time with the manual, but most users don't. His review has unfortunately been leapt upon by every Apple fanboy out there and it'sgaining a life of it's own.

I'm a rank outsider, no involvement in the project whatsoever aside from voraciously reading news about it for the past 12 months. Frankly, it seems that it's been mismanaged by FIC. There has been a fair amount of disgruntlement coming from the developers working for the company. The fact that they switched from the original GTK platoform to the qtopia stack at the eleventh hour smacked of desperation.

This wouldn't really bother me if it wasn't for the fact that openmoko had gained so much media attention. So often you hear outlets talking about the triumverate of iPhone, Android and openmoko. Up until this week I've been really proud to see such a rabidly open source project be given that much airtime. It's frustrating to now find out that they weren't deserving of it.

I think those of us looking for an open source phone now need to turn towards the slightly-open-source-but-not-really Android, and hope like hell that something great comes out of Nokia's plans for opening up Symbian.

Trent Reznor recently released the latest Nine Inch Nails album in a really, really interesting way. The confluence of marketing-geekery and copyleft-geekery that it represents tickled my fancy.

While his decision to release several SKUs at various price-points is the best new-wave digital distribution technique I've seen to date, it's his choice to license the work under a version of the Creative Commons license that I think is really interesting, and has been overlooked by a lot of the comment I've read.

Basically, you can do whatever you please with Ghosts I - IV provided you don't sell it to anyone, provided you don't pretend that you or someone other than the original artists created it, and provided that you keep the license intact if you remix it.

So, I could take the FLAC copy I just paid Trent for and stick it on The Pirate Bay perfectly legally.

I see this as a watershed moment for Creative Commons. This is the first mainstream use of the license that I'm aware of. If Trent makes money despite the fact that people can legally give the album to everyone they know, it will say a lot of profound things about the emerging marketplaces for creative works.

First and foremost, it will make the RIAA's ceaseless lawsuits look a bit silly. They're telling us that the entire reason the music industry's profits are declining are because of sharing. And yet here's an artist that has essentially given his work away for free, and yet by all reports he's made $750k within a few days. Granted, he had to apply some novel thinking to do it. He had to be a little bit gasp creative!

Maybe the mainstream record labels could do the same. I'm not saying they should adopt Trent's model completely (although they could do worse) but just to inject some bold, fresh, risky thinking into their own models.