Author: Mike

At last some good news, Jackie Smith is to step down as Home Secretary. I really hope that at the next general election this very dangerous women is also ousted as an MP.

She has single-handedly reduced more of our Freedoms than any other recent politician and the soon she is gone the better.

Another two months of reasonable connection speed for my broadband, with only one glitch in April and little bit of speed difference between the months.

But still way below what is still commonly sold as being ‘up to’ 8MB connection!

Yet more money is being spent on Jackie Smith driven Labour projects to spy on us.

In recent weeks contracts have been awarded to various UK and USA contractors for the new Mastering The Internet programme, as part of the Governments massive £12 billion Interception Modernisation Programme to be run from GCHQ in Cheltenham.

The Register, has a very good article about the whole program as does the Times Online.

It seems that despite all our other problems, this Labour government won’t give up on trying to track every detailed aspect of all of our lives.

Barcodes on our neck from birth is just around the corner?

I was in London today to visit the London Book Fair and after a very busy visit, decided to go over to Westminster to get some fresh air and test out my new camera.

Imagine my surprise to find that the Tamil demonstration was still going on at Parliament Square. Seemed to be a huge number in attendance, some on the green and some on the road around the square closing them to traffic.

Incidentally, there did not seem to be many police around that I could see  and the ones that I did seemed to be fairly laid back – and had all their identification markings showing, perhaps they have learnt their lessons from the G20 demo incidents last week.

Whilst I was there a number of the Tamil demonstrators came up to me and told about their protest and why they were doing this, they seemed to be very apologetic for the problems that they were causing, but felt it was the only way to get their point over to the British Government and of course the people.

Lets hope that they get their point over and something is done about their plight.

As more and more TV companies launch their own download players/services – BBCi Player, ITV Player, 4 oD etc. more and more people are downloading their favourite programmes to watch.

However, a lot of people don’t realise that all these services use peer-to-peer networking for their operation and in doing so, allow the download programs to use multiple PC’s to assist in the distribution of the various TV programmes.

So what is the problem? If you’re on a low cost Internet Service Provider (ISP) contract and have a maximum amount of download allocation per month, you could find that this is now being eaten up by the peer-to-peer networking operations even when you’re not downloading or watching programmes that you’ve downloaded! In some cases ISP’s are now starting to charge additional fees for users that go over their download limits.

Two software programs that I recently came across should help anyone monitor more accurately what is being downloaded (and uploaded) to their PC and with one of the programs, shut off the peer-to-peer downloading operation when you don’t need it.

NetLimiter 2 Monitor is as its name implies is a network monitor, that allows you to accurately monitor and build up a set of statistics for all network activity associated with your PC, including local network traffic. If you are using any of the popular TV players, run this program for a few days to see what the network activity on your PC.

TV On-Demand Monitor when loaded, checks what ‘background’ peer-to-peer programs are running on your PC and allows you to switch them on and off as and when required.

Hope this helps a few people.

I received a very nice present in the form of a new compact digital camera for my recent big six-o birthday. I had been looking at a new camera for some time as I was getting a big fed up with the small view screen on my IXUS 400. Don’t get me wrong, the IXUS 400 has been a fantastic camera which I have have had fr0m the first year that Canon brought it out. This was my first digital camera, being bought as much for it’s style appeal as for its photographic ability.

Before that I had been a user of a Canon ELPH which used the Advanced Photo System (APS), or Advantix film format, which was then being promoted (from 1996) as the next film compact camera, with automatic film loading, 3 sizes of images and 40 shots available instead of the traditional 36 on standard 35mm film – more info here. I think it was a good move as again the camera (and its lens) along with having a great style, took some great photos and some fantastic panoramics!

Sad to say, but within 7 years, the writing was on the wall for this new innovation. A combination of not catching the attention of the professionals and with new digital compact cameras falling from the sky at prices that had never been seen before, it was the beginning of the end for the Advantix range of films and cameras. In fact today, it is now easier to get a  traditional 35mm film developed than an Advantix one!

My new camera? A Canon IXUS 870IS. What a brilliant camera and another classic in the long line of Canon cameras that I have owned over the years. I’m still working my way through all of the options that the camera has, in particular its digital macro ability. It is an excellent example of how Canon cameras, particularly compact cameras have developed over the years.

I’m looking forward to learning a lot more about this camera as I take  more  and more pictures.

Do I think I still need a digital SLR?

I’ll have think long and hard on the one.

Quite a bit has been written about the Conficker Virus infection. Here’s a test that Joe Stewart from SecureWorks has put together as an effective “eye chart” that sources its graphics from sites that Conficker would block.

If you can’t see one or more of the images, you’re either infected, or image loading in your browser has been disabled.

Check it out here as it will prove one way of the other if you have it on your own computer.

It’s not often that I write up technical info here, but I thought that this was a good one to share.

Got a little behind in posting these figures. All seems to be very steady with my connection.

I’m still using four broadband speed checking sites and taking an average to get my recorded speed indication, just to make sure that the individual sites I use don’t throw up any anomalies. I think I am getting reasonably good value from my BT Broadband Option 3 for what I actually pay for it.

The the sites I use for testing are:-

Namesco Broadband Max ADSL Broadband Bandwidth Speed Test

Here we go again, yet another government database project has hit problems.

Suffering a number of basic security flaws with database records being expose to the the ‘public’, Contact Point the UK governments £224m kids’ database is off-line and undergoing urgent repairs.

Full story here at Silicon.Com.

At last, MP Tony McNulty is to be investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards for his allowance claims of  some £60,000!

What grates my teeth about this whole affair is the seemingly indifference to public opinion that McNulty has shown about it. If I never hear the quote “I’ve not broken any rules” again it won’t be too soon!

He may well not have broken any rules as they stand today – changing the rules is another discussion – but is he taking the mickey? I think so and he damn well knows it very well.

Will he or any of the other MP’s (from all Party’s) that are also taking the mickey suffer any real sanctions? I doubt it! Westminster is a closed club with its own rules and many secret deals.

It’s a shame that the offenders don’t seem to understand the harm that they are doing to all MP’s and particularly to the standing of politicians in general as viewed in everyone’s minds eye!

It won’t be too long (if this is not already happening) before we look at them through the same glasses that we use to view bankers and their recent appalling antics.

What can we do? Any suggestions?