Shallow Thoughts : : May

Creating packages for a Launchpad PPA

In a previous article I wrote about how to use stdeb to turn a Python script into source and binary Debian/Ubuntu packages.

You can distribute a .deb file that people can download and install; but it's a lot easier for people to install if you set up a repository, so they can get automatic updates from you. If you're targeting Ubuntu, the best way to do that is to set up a Launchpad Personal Package Archive, or PPA.

Create your PPA

First, create your PPA. If you don't have a Launchpad account yet, create one, add a GPG key, and sign the Code of Conduct. Then log in to your account and click on Create a new PPA.

You'll have to pick a name and a display name for your PPA. The default is "ppa", and many people leave personal PPAs as that. You might want to give it a display name of yourname-ppa or something similar if it's for a collection of stuff; or you're only going to use it for software related to one program or package, name it accordingly.

Ubuntu requires nonstandard paths

When you're creating your package with stdeb, if you're ultimately targeting a PPA, you'll only need the souce dsc package, not the binary deb. But as you'll see, you'll need to rebuild it to make Launchpad happy.

If you're intending to go through the Developer.ubuntu.com process, there are specific requirements for version numbering and tarball naming -- see "Packaging" in the App Review Board Guidelines. Your app will also need to install unusual locations -- in particular, any files it installs, including the script itself, need to be in /opt/extras.ubuntu.com/<packagename> instead of a more standard location.

How the user is supposed to run these apps (run a script to add each of /opt/extras.ubuntu.com/* to your path?) is not clear to me; I'm not sure this app review thing has been fully thought out. In any case, you may need to massage your setup.py accordingly, and keep a separate version around for when you're creating the Ubuntu version of your app.

There are also apparently some problems loading translation files for an app in /opt/extras.ubuntu.com which may require some changes to your Python code.

Prepare and sign your package

Okay, now comes the silly part. You know that source .dsc package you just made? Now you have to unpack it and "build" it before you can upload it. That's partly because you have to sign it with your GPG key -- stdeb apparently can't do the signing step.

Normally, you'd sign a package with debsign deb_dist/packagename_version.changes (then type your GPG passphrase when prompted). Unfortunately, that sort of signing doesn't work here. If you used stdeb's bdist_deb to generate both binary and source packages, the .changes file it generates will contain both source and binary and Launchpad will reject it. If you used sdist_dsc to generate only the source package, then you don't have a .changes file to sign and submit to Launchpad. So here's how you can make a signed, source-only .changes file Launchpad will accept.

Since this will extract all your files again, I suggest doing this in a temporary directory to make it easier to clean up afterward:

$ mkdir tmp
$ cd tmp
$ dpkg-source -x ../deb_dist/packagename_version.dsc
$ cd packagename_version

Now is a good time to take a look at the deb_dist/packagename_version/debian/changelog that stdeb created, and make sure it got the right version and OS codename for the Ubuntu release you're targeting -- oneiric, precise, quantal or whatever. stdeb's default is "unstable" (Debian) so you'll probably need to change it. You can cross-check this information in the deb_dist/packagename_version.changes file, which is the file you'll actually be uploading to the PPA.

Finally, build and sign your source package:

$ debuild -S -sa
  [type your GPG passphrase when prompted, twice]
$ dput ppa:yourppa ../packagename_version_source.changes

Upload the package

Finally, it's time to upload the package:

$ dput ppa:your-ppa-name deb_dist/packagename_version.changes

This will give you some output and eventually probably tell you Successfully uploaded packages. It's lying -- it may have failed. Watch your inbox for messages. If Launchpad rejects your changes, you should get an email fairly quickly.

If Launchpad accepts the changes, you'll get an Accepted email. Great! But don't celebrate quite yet. Launchpad still has to build your package before it can be installed. If you try to add your PPA now, you'll get a 404.

Wait for Launchpad to build

You might as well add your repository now so you can install from it once it's ready:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:your-ppa-name

But don't apt-get update yet! if you try that too soon, you'll get a 404, or an Ign meaning that the repository exists but there are no packages in it for your architecture. It might be as long as a few hours before Launchpad builds your package.

To keep track of this, go to your Launchpad PPA page (something like https://launchpad.net/~yourname/+archive/ppa) and look under PPA Statistics for something like "1 package waiting to build". Click on that link, then in the page that comes up, click on the link like i386 build of pkgname version in ubuntu precise RELEASE. That should give you a time estimate.

Wondering why it's being built for i386 when Python should be arch independent? Worry not -- that's just the architecture that's doing the building. Once it's built, your package should install anywhere.

Once the Launchpad build page finally says the package is built, it's finally safe to run the usual apt-get update.

Add your key

But when you apt-get update you may get an error like this:

The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 16126D3A3E5C1192

Obviously you have your own public key, so what's up? You have to import the key from Ubuntu's keyserver, and then export it into apt-key, before apt can use it -- even if it's your own key.

For this, you need the last 8 digits given in the NO PUBKEY message. Take those 8 digits and run these two commands:

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 3E5C1192
gpg --export --armor 3E5C1192 | sudo apt-key add -

I'm told that apt-add-repository is supposed to add the key automatically, but it didn't for me. Maybe it will if you wait until after your package is built before calling apt-add-repository.

Now if you apt-get update, you should see no errors. Finally, you can apt-get install pkgname. Congratulations! You have a working PPA package.

Tags: ubuntu, linux, programming
[ 13:34 May 30, 2012    More programming | permalink to this entry | ]

Use stdeb to make Debian packages for a Python package

I write a lot of little Python scripts. And I use Ubuntu and Debian. So why aren't any of my scripts packaged for those distros?

Because Debian packaging is absurdly hard, and there's very little documentation on how to do it. In particular, there's no help on how to take something small, like a Python script, and turn it into a package someone else could install on a Debian system. It's pretty crazy, since RPM packaging of Python scripts is so easy.

Recently at the Ubuntu Developers' Summit, Asheesh of OpenHatch pointed me toward a Python package called stdeb that simplifies a lot of the steps and makes Python packaging fairly straightforward.

You'll need a setup.py file to describe your Python script, and you'll probably want a .desktop file and an icon. If you haven't done that before, see my article on Packaging Python for MeeGo for some hints.

Then install python-stdeb. The package has some requirements that aren't listed as dependencies, so you'll need to install:

apt-get install python-stdeb fakeroot python-all

(I have no idea why it needs python-all, which installs only a directory /usr/share/doc/python-all with some policy documentation files, but if you don't install it, stdeb will fail later.)

Now create a config file for stdeb to tell it what Debian/Ubuntu version you're going to be targeting, if it's anything other than Debian unstable (stdeb's default). Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to pass this on the command line rather than in a config file. So if you want to make packages for several distros, you'll have to edit the config file for every distro you want to support. Here's what I'm using for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin:

[DEFAULT]
Suite: precise

Now you're ready to run stdeb. I know of two ways to run it. You can generate both source and binary packages, like this:

python setup.py --command-packages=stdeb.command bdist_deb

Or you can generate source packages only, like this:

python setup.py --command-packages=stdeb.command sdist_dsc

Either syntax creates a directory called deb_dist. It contains a lot of files including a source .dsc, several tarballs, a copy of your source directory, and (if you used bdist_deb) a binary .deb package.

If you used the bdist_deb form, don't be put off that it concludes with a message:

dpkg-buildpackage: binary only upload (no source included)

It's fibbing: the source .dsc is there as well as the binary .deb. I presume it prints the warning because it creates them as separate steps, and the binary is the last step.

Now you can use dpkg -i to install your binary deb, or you can use the source dsc for various purposes, like creating a repository or a Launchpad PPA. But those involve a lot more steps -- so I'll cover that in a separate article about creating PPAs.

Update: you can find that article here: Creating packages for a Launchpad PPA.

Tags: debian, ubuntu, linux, programming, python
[ 11:44 May 26, 2012    More programming | permalink to this entry | ]

Saw the "Ring of Fire" 2012 annular eclipse

I've just seen the annular eclipse, and what a lovely sight it was!

This was only my second significant solar eclipse, the first being a partial when I was a teenager. So I was pretty excited about an annular so nearby -- the centerline was only about a 4-hour drive from home.

We'd made arrangements to join the Shasta astronomy club's eclipse party at Whiskeytown Lake, up in the Trinity Alps. Sounded like a lovely spot, and we'd be able to trade views with the members of the local astronomy club as well as showing off the eclipse to the public. As astronomers bringing telescopes, we'd get reserved parking and didn't even have to pay the park fee. Sounded good!

Not knowing whether we might hit traffic, we left home first thing in the morning, hours earlier than we figured was really necessary. A good thing, as it turned out. Not because we hit any traffic -- but because when we got to the site, it was a zoo. There were cars idling everywhere, milling up and down every road looking for parking spots. We waited in the queue at the formal site, and finally got to the front of the line, where we told the ranger we were bringing telescopes for the event. He said well, um, we could drive in and unload, but there was no parking so we'd just have to drive out after unloading, hope to find a parking spot on the road somewhere, and walk back.

What a fiasco!

After taking a long look at the constant stream of cars inching along in both directions and the chaotic crowd at the site, we decided the better part of valor was to leave this vale of tears and high-tail it back to our motel in Red Bluff, only little farther south of the centerline and still well within the path of annularity. Fortunately we'd left plenty of extra time, so we made it back with time to spare.

The Annular Eclipse itself

One striking thing about watching the eclipse through a telescope was how fast the moon moves. The sun was well decorated with several excellent large sunspot groups, so we were able to watch the moon swallow them bit by bit.

Some of the darker sunspot umbras even showed something like a black drop effect as they disappeared behind the moon. We couldn't see the same effect on the smaller sunspot groups, or on the penumbras. There was also a pronounced black drop effect at the onset and end of annularity.

The seeing was surprisingly good, as solar observing goes. Not only could we see good detail on the sunspot groups and solar faculae, but we could easily see irregularities in the shape of the moon's surface -- in particular one small sharp mountain peak on the leading edge, and what looked like a raised crater wall farther south on that leading edge. We never did get a satisfactory identification on either feature.

After writing and speaking about eclipse viewing, I felt honor bound to try viewing with pinholes of several sizes. I found that during early stages of the eclipse, the pinholes had to be both small (under about 5 mm) and fairly round to show much. Later in the eclipse, nearly anything worked to show the crescent or the annular ring, including interlaced fingers or the shadow of a pine tree on the wall. I wish I'd remembered to take an actual hole punch, which would have been just about perfect.

I also tried projection through binoculars, and convinced myself that it would probably work as a means of viewing next month's Venus transit -- but only with the binoculars on a tripod. Hand-holding them is fiddly and difficult. (Of course, never look through binoculars at the sun without a solar filter.) Look for an upcoming article with more details on binocular projection.

The cast of characters

For us, the motel parking lot worked out great. We were staying at the Crystal Motel in Red Bluff, an unassuming little motel that proved to be clean and quiet, with friendly, helpful staff and the fastest motel wi-fi connection I've ever seen. Maybe not the most scenic of locations, but that was balanced by the convenience of having the car and room so close by.

And we were able to show the eclipse to locals and motel guests who wouldn't have been able to see it otherwise. Many of these people, living right in the eclipse path, didn't even know there was an eclipse happening, so poor had the media coverage been. (That was true in the bay area too -- most people I talked to last week didn't know there was an eclipse coming up, let alone how or where to view it.)

We showed the eclipse to quite a cast of characters --

• The mother with medical problems, obviously feeling quite poorly but still bringing her husband and son out for repeated views.
• the woman who said she didn't want to be in the sun because she'd been drinking too much by the pool.
• The family where Dad kept looking through paper glasses the kids insisted was a "3-D viewer". Alarmed, we took a look, and found it was a perfectly reasonable eclipse viewer marked SAFE FOR SOLAR VIEWING. Whew!
• The teen girl who kept looking directly at the sun despite everyone telling her not to ... I hope she didn't damage her vision.
• The kid who wanted to borrow my binocular to look at some birds circling in the distance. I wanted to let him, but with all the attention on the sun I was too nervous, so instead I changed the subject and showed him how to identify turkey vultures (wings in a V, tipping from side to side) even without binoculars).
• The man who sat in a parking space near us reading a catalog, telling us repeatedly he was just reading his catalog. When Dave insisted he come and take a look, he looked in the eyepiece for about ten seconds, then looked Dave in the eye and informed him solemnly that he was just reading his catalog.
• The family who'd been instructed by their grandmother, in the hospital awaiting an operation, to watch the eclipse and bring back pictures for her. I hope they got some decent ones!

In between visitors, we had plenty of time to fiddle with equipment, take photos, and take breaks sitting in the shade to cool down. (Annularity was pleasantly cool, but the rest of the eclipse stayed hot on an over 90 degree central valley day.)

There's a lot to be said for sidewalk astronomy! Overall, I'm glad we ended up where we did rather than in that Whiskeytown chaos.

Here's my collection of Images from the "Ring of Fire" Annular Eclipse, May 2012, from Red Bluff, CA.

Tags: astronomy, science, eclipse, travel
[ 11:42 May 22, 2012    More science/astro | permalink to this entry | ]

Ring of Fire: 2012 annular eclipse

This Sunday, May 20th, the western half of the US will be treated to an annular solar eclipse.

Annular means that the moon is a bit farther away than usual, so it won't completely cover the sun even if you travel to the eclipse centerline. Why? Well, the moon's orbit around the earth isn't perfectly circular, so sometimes it's farther away, sometimes nearer. Remember all the hype two weeks ago about the "supermoon", where it was unusually close at full moon? The other side of that is that during this eclipse, at new moon, the moon is unusually far away, and therefore a little smaller, not quite big enough to cover the sun.

Since the sun will never be totally covered, make sure you have a safe solar filter for this one -- don't look with your naked eyes! You want a solar filter anyway, if you have any kind of telescope or even binoculars, because of next month's once-in-a-lifetime Venus transit (I'll write about that separately). But if you don't have a solar filter and absolutely can't get one in time, read on -- I'll have some suggestions later even for people without any sort of optical aid.

But first, the path of the eclipse. Here in the bay area, we're just a bit south of the southern limit of the annular path, which passes just south of the town of Redway, through Covelo, just south of Willows, then just misses Yuba City and Auburn. If you want to be closer to the centerline, go camping at Lassen National Park or Lake Shasta, or head to Reno or Tahoe If you're inclined to travel, NASA has a great interactive 2012 eclipse map you can use to check out possible locations.

Even back in the bay area, we still get a darn good dinner show. The partial eclipse starts at 5:17 pm PDT, with maximum eclipse at 6:33. The sun will be 18 degrees above the horizon at that point, and 89% eclipsed. Compare that with 97% for a site right on the centerline -- remember, since this is an annular eclipse, no place sees 100% coverage. The partial eclipse ends at 7:40 -- still well before sunset, which isn't until 8:11.

Photographers, if you want a shot of an annular eclipse as the sun sets, you'll need to head east, to Albuquerque, NM or Lubbock, TX. A little before sunset, the centerline also crosses near a lot of great vacation spots like Bryce, Zion and Canyon de Chelly.

I mentioned that even without a solar filter, there are ways of watching the eclipse. The simplest is with a pinhole. You don't need to use an actual pin -- the size and shape of the hole isn't critical, as you can see in this image of the sun through the leaves of a tree during a 2005 eclipse in Malta. If you don't have a leafy tree handy, you can even lace your fingers together and look at the shadow of your hands. This eclipse will be very low in the sky, continuing through sunset, so you may need to project its shadow onto a wall rather than the ground.

If you have some time to prepare, take a piece of cardboard and punch a few holes through it. Try different sizes -- an actual pinhole, a BBQ skewer, a 3-hole punch, maybe even bigger holes up to the size of a penny. You might also try using aluminum foil -- you can get very clean circular holes that way, which might give a crisper image. Here's a good page on eclipse pinhole projection. What works best? I don't remember! It's been a very long time since the last eclipse here! Do the experiment! I know I will be.

If you do have a telescope or binoculars but couldn't get a solar filter in time, don't despair. Instead of looking through the eyepiece, you can project the sun's image onto a white screen or even the ground or a wall. Use a cheap, low-power eyepiece -- any eyepiece you use for solar projection will get very hot, and you don't want to risk ruining a fancy one.

Point the telescope at the sun -- it's easy to tell when it's lined up by watching the shadow of the telescope -- and rotate the eyepiece so that it's aimed at your screen, which can be as simple as a sheet of paper. Be careful where that eyepiece is aimed -- make sure no one can walk through the path or put their hand in the way, and if you have a finderscope, make sure it's covered. This solar projection method works with binoculars too, but you'll want to mount them on a tripod so you don't have to hold them the whole time.

Of course, another great way to watch the eclipse is with your local astronomy club. I expect every club in the bay area -- and there are a lot of them -- will have telescopes out to share the eclipse with the public. So check with your local club -- San Jose Astronomical Association, Peninsula Astronomical Society, San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers, San Francisco Amateur Astronomers, or any of the others on the AANC's list of Amateur Astronomy Clubs in Northern California or the SF Chronicle's list of astronomy clubs.

This eclipse should be pretty cool -- and a great chance to test out your solar equipment before next month's Venus transit.

When I went to put the event on my wall calendar last month, I discovered the calendar already had an entry for May 20: it's the start of Bear Awareness Week. So if you head up to Lassen or Shasta to watch the eclipse, be sure to be aware of the bears! (Also, maybe I should get a calendar that's a little more in tune with the sky.)

Tags: astronomy, science, eclipse
[ 21:12 May 16, 2012    More science/astro | permalink to this entry | ]

Downloading Adobe-protected books to a Nook using Linux

University of Chicago Press has a Carl Zimmer book, A Planet of Viruses, as their free monthly e-book.

I know Zimmer is a good writer. but the ebook, despite being free, is encumbered with Adobe's version of DRM, which unlocks via a Windows or Mac program. I use Linux, and wanted to read the book on a Nook. Was I out of luck?

Happily, the instruction page they sent when I signed up for the book helpfully included a section for Linux users. Hooray, U. Chicago! It said Adobe Digital Editions will run under Wine, the Windows emulator. I'd been meaning to try that anyway, and a Carl Zimmer book seemed like the perfect excuse.

And overall, it worked pretty well, with only a few snags. Here are the steps I had to follow:

Authorizing a book using Adobe Digital Editions in Linux on Wine

Install wine (on Ubuntu, I used apt-get install wine).

Download the Adobe Digital Editions setup.exe

Run: wine setup.exe (this should install ADE inside your .wine directory)

Copy the file, e.g. URLLink.acsm, into .wine/drive_c/My\ Documents/ Don't bother trying to open it with ADE -- the program won't open anything except PDF and epub. Curiously, the only ways to open the file from ADE are to drag the file onto the ADE window or to pass it as a commandline argument:
wine start .wine/drive_c/My\ Documents/URLLink.acsm

Now ADE should download your book and display it. You can read it there, if you want. But you won't want to -- it's not a good reading interface.

Authorizing a device with Adobe Digital Editions under Wine

Now how do you get it into your ebook reader? ADE running under Wine doesn't recognize devices such as ebook readers. so nothing will be copied automatically. But you can copy it manually.

• Plug in your ebook reader.
• Mount the device wherever you like -- /media/nook, /nook or whatever.
• With ADE not running (quit it if it's running), map a drive letter to the mount point:
  • Run winecfg
  • Click the Drives tab
  • Click Add...
  • Choose a drive letter (I chose D:)
  • Under Path: type in the mount point, like /nook
  • Click Show Advanced
  • Set the Type: to Floppy disk
  • Click OK to save it
• Now the drive is mapped. Re-run ADE:
  wine .wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Adobe/Adobe\ Digital\ Editions/digitaleditions.exe
  ADE should now see the device and ask you if you want to authorize it.
• In ADE, drag the chosen book onto the left sidebar entry for the device.
• umount the reader ... and now your new book should show up in the library.

In theory, the drive letter should stay mapped, so you should be able to use it for opening future books. Just remember to mount your device to the same location before running ADE under wine.

Tags: ebook, DRM, tablet, nook
[ 11:03 May 12, 2012    More linux | permalink to this entry | ]

Playing an MP3 file from an Android app

I've mostly been enormously happy with my upgrade from my old Archos 5 to the Samsung Galaxy Player 5.0. The Galaxy does everything I always wanted the Archos to do, all those things the Archos should have done but couldn't because of its buggy and unsupported Android 1.6.

That is, I've been happy with everything except one thing: my birdsong app no longer worked.

I have a little HTML app based on my "tweet" python script which lets you choose from a list of birdsong MP3 files. (The actual MP3 files are ripped from the excellent 4-CD Stokes Field Guide to Western Bird Songs set.) The HTML app matches bird names as you type in characters. (If you're curious, an earlier test version is at tweet.html.)

On the Archos, I ran that under my WebClient Android app (I had to modify the HTML to add a keyboard, since in Android 1.6 the soft keyboard doesn't work in WebView text fields). I chose a bird, and WebView passed off the MP3 file to the Archos' built-in audio player. Worked great.

On the Samsung Galaxy, no such luck. Apparently Samsung's built-in media player can only play files it has indexed itself. If you try to use it to play an arbitrary file, say, "Song_Sparrow.mp3", it will say: unknown file type. No matter that the file ends in .mp3 ... and no matter that I've called intent.setDataAndType(Uri.parse(url), "audio/mpeg"); ... and no matter that the file is sitting on the SD cad and has in fact been indexed already by the media player. You didn't navigate to it via the media player's UI, so it refuses to play it.

I haven't been able to come up with an answer to how to make Samsung's media player more flexible, and I was just starting a search for alternate Android MP3 player apps, when I ran across Play mp3 in SD Card, using Android's MediaPlayer and Error creating MediaPlayer with Uri or file in assets which gave me the solution. Instead of using an intent and letting WebView call up a music application, you can use an Android MediaPlayer to play your file directly.

Here's what the code looks like, inside setWebViewClient() which is itself inside onCreate():

            @Override
            public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) {
                if (url.endsWith(".mp3")) {
                    MediaPlayer mediaPlayer = new MediaPlayer();
                    try {
                        mediaPlayer.setDataSource(getApplicationContext(), Uri.parse(url));
                        mediaPlayer.prepare();
                        mediaPlayer.start();
                    }
                    catch (IllegalArgumentException e) { showMessage("Illegal argument exception on " + url); }
                    catch (IllegalStateException e) { showMessage("Illegal State exception on " + url); }
                    catch (IOException e) { showMessage("I/O exception on " + url); }
                }
            }

showMessage() is my little wrapper that pops up an error message dialog. Of course, you can handle other types, not just files ending in .mp3.

And now I can take the Galaxy out on a birdwalk and use it to help me identify bird songs.

Tags: android, programming, nature, birds
[ 14:28 May 06, 2012    More programming | permalink to this entry | ]

Extremely strange seatbelt warning sticker

I bought a Miata yesterday! My new baby. It's a 2000, in a lovely color Mazda calls "twilight blue mica". (You can see Miata pictures here, if you're so inclined.)

I'd forgotten how much nicer sports cars are to drive. I retired my last X1/9 more than a year ago, and have been driving mushy street vehicles since then. The Miata surprises me every time I get into it with its immediacy -- throttle, brake, steering, everything happens now.

It does have some used-car glitches that I need to sort out (some of them maybe even severe), but in general it's a great car: in stock trim it handles a lot like the street-prepared X1/9, even on crappy Kumho tires. Of course, that could be new owner infatuation talking. Ask me again in a few months. :-)

But really what I wanted to write about was the extremely strange warning sticker that came plastered to the driver's side window. I didn't really look at the sticker until the second day after I drove the car home, and then did a double-take. It says:

While use of all seat belts reduce the chance of ejection, failure to install and use shoulder harnesses with lap belts can result in serious or fatal injuries in some crashes. Lap-only belts increase the chance of head and neck injury by allowing the upper torso to move unrestrained in a crash and increase the chance of spinal column and abdominal injuries by concentrating excessive force on the lower torso. Because children carry a disproportionate amount of body weight above the waist, they are more likely to sustain those injuries. Shoulder harnesses may be available that can be retrofitted in this vehicle. For more information call the Auto Safety Hotline at 1-800-424-9393.

If you look at the photo I took of the sticker, note the shoulder belt anchor at the right edge of the frame. It's a normal stock shoulder belt, just like you'll find in any car -- this is a 2000 model, for crying out loud, not a 1970.

A web search on the error message led me to Section 27314.5 of the California Vehicle Code, which states that

27314.5. (a) (1) Subject to paragraph (3), no dealer shall sell or offer for sale any used passenger vehicle of a model year of 1972 to 1990, inclusive, unless there is affixed to the window of the left front door or, if there is no window, to another suitable location so that it may be seen and read by a person standing outside the vehicle at that location, a notice, printed in 14-point type, which reads as follows:

... followed by the text on my sticker. It goes on:

(2) The notice shall remain affixed to the vehicle pursuant to paragraph (1) at all times that the vehicle is for sale.

So the dealer must have put this sticker on. But why? Reading on:

(3) The notice is not required to be affixed to any vehicle equipped with both a lap belt and a shoulder harness for the driver and one passenger in the front seat of the vehicle and for at least two passengers in the rear seat of the vehicle.

The dealer must not have read as far as paragraph (3).

I also found that, despite the fact that the DMV's website still links to the page I linked above, that statute was in the process of being repealed by CA Assembly Bill 2679. Except that if you click on "Read latest draft", apparently they changed their minds again in the latest version of AB 2679 and are now going to keep the warning in.

Maybe instead of leaving it unchanged or striking it, they should change it to make it clearer that it only applies to cars without shoulder harnesses installed ... if there are any such cars. Haven't shoulder harnesses been mandatory in US cars since the early 1970s? Wikipedia says they've been mandatory in the front seat since 1968 ... but the citation they give for that goes to a page that no longer exists, so that may be off by a few years.

In any case, anyone buying a car so old it doesn't have a shoulder harness and only "may" be able to have one retrofitted to it probably understands there may be some safety issues in a 40-year-old car, and doesn't need a warning sticker.

Tags: cars, miata, warning, humor
[ 21:05 May 02, 2012    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]