Author: Mike

Caught up with a pile of newspaper reading over the weekend and came across Fifteen painless ways to save the World, full for once with practical information on how to lessen ‘your’ impact on the planet.

I agree with most the fifteen points, though I would still like to find out why organic food has to be so much more expensive that normal food and why plastic carrier bags have still no been banned from our supermarkets!

One thing missing from the list though. Why is industry/business allowed to waste so much energy through the lights they leave on at night. If there is no one working, then what is the reason for the lights being on!

If Gordon Brown is as keen as he seems in wanting to tax everything, then perhaps a £1.00 per lamp left on at night would be a good start, I can’t think it would be a difficult tax to collect, you can see the potential tax every night!

I don’t mind being told that we have to save energy, in fact I agree that we need to cut back on our energy consumption, but come on industry/business allowed to waste so much?

Here a list of the information that may be stored about YOU if the ID Card sytsem that this government wants to implement goes ahead. You thought that you had to give a lot of information to fly to the USA, well you’d better get to used to never having control of your life again!

Here a list of what might be stored about you in Government databases that will be used as part of your national identity.

1. Name
2. Other previous names or aliases;
3. Date and place of birth and, if the person has died, the date of death;
4. Address
5. Previous addresses in the United Kingdom and elsewhere;
6. Times of residency at different places in the United Kingdom or elsewhere;
7. Current residential status;
8. Residential statuses previously held;
9. Information about numbers allocated to the applicant for identification purposes and about the documents to which they relate;
10. Information about occasions on which recorded information in the Register has been provided to any person;
11. Information recorded in the Register on request.
12. Photograph
13. Fingerprints
14. “Other” biometrics (iris recognition);
15. Signature
16. Nationality;
17. Entitlement to remain in the United Kingdom; and
18. Where entitlement derives from a grant of leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, the terms and conditions of that leave.
19. National Identity Registration Number;
20. The number of any ID card that has been issued;
21. National Insurance number;
22. The number of any relevant immigration document;
23. The number of any United Kingdom passport (within the meaning of the Immigration Act 1971 (c. 77)) that has been issued;
24. The number of any passport issued by or on behalf of the authorities of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom or by or on behalf of an international organisation;
25. The number of any document that can be used (in some or all circumstances) instead of a passport;
26. The number of any identity card issued by the authorities of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom;
27. Any reference number allocated by the Secretary of State in connection with an application made for permission to enter or to remain in the United Kingdom;
28. The number of any work permit (within the meaning of the Immigration Act 1971);
29. Any driver number connected to a driving licence;
30. The number of any designated document which is held by the applicant that is a document the number of which does not fall within any of the preceding sub-paragraphs;
31. The date of expiry or period of validity of a document the number of which is recorded by virtue of this paragraph.
32. The date of every application for registration;
33. The date of every application for a modification of the contents of his entry;
34. The date of every application confirming the contents of his entry (with or without changes);
35. The reason for any omission from the information recorded in his entry;
36. Particulars (in addition to its number) of every ID card issued;
37. Whether each such card is in force and, if not, why not;
38. Particulars of every person who has countersigned an application for an ID card or a designated document;
39. Particulars of every notification given by the applicant for the purposes of regulations under section 13(1) (lost, stolen and damaged ID cards etc.);
40. Particulars of every requirement by the Secretary of State for the individual to surrender an ID card issued to the applicant.
41. The information provided in connection with every application to be entered in the Register, for a modification of the contents of entry in the Register or for the issue of an ID card;
42. Information provided in connection with every application confirming entry in the Register (with or without change;
43. Particulars of the steps taken, in connection with an application mentioned in paragraph (a) or (b) or otherwise, for identifying the applicant or for verifying the information provided in connection with the application;
44. Particulars of any other steps taken or information obtained (otherwise than in connection with an application mentioned in paragraph (a) or (b)) for ensuring that there is a complete, up-to-date and accurate entry about that individual in the Register;
45. Particulars of every notification given by that individual for the purposes of section 12.
46. A personal identification number to be used for facilitating the making of applications for information recorded in his entry, and for facilitating the provision of the information;
47. A password or other code to be used for that purpose or particulars of a method of generating such a password or code;
48. Questions and answers to be used for identifying a person seeking to make such an application or to apply for or to make a modification of that entry.
49. Particulars of every occasion on which information contained in the individual’s entry has been provided to a person;
50. Particulars of every person to whom such information has been provided on such an occasion;
51. Other particulars, in relation to each such occasion, of the provision of the information.

Uncomfortable! Take a look at more info on the No2id’s web site, if you don’t know about this alreadt, then be prepared to have your eyes opened!

50 years old and still going strong. The typeface Helvetica was created by Max Miedinger under a commission by the Haas type foundry director Eduard Hoffmann. Over the years it has become one of the most recognised and used typefaces, used by companies such as BMW, Nestle, Saab and many others.

Many similar typefaces have been designed over the years such as Arial, but Helvetica still remains very much in use today.

And now there is a movie about the typeface! Well not just about the typeface, more about typography and graphic design with the fount taking center stage. Helvetica the Movie was premiered last week at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas and will soon begin making a global tour.

As yet no there are no published dates for the UK screening. Zürich (understandably), Prague, Istanbul, Turkey, Berlin, Braunschweig, Saarbruecken, Germany, Paris, Oslo and Thessaloniki (you can find their screening dates here) all get a screening before the UK!

I suppose we are dependant on a minority film distributor picking it up. Maybe Channels Four or Five might pick it up.

If I hear about any dates, I’ll be sure to post them here.

This is the title of an article posted by John Simpson on the BBC web site yesterday. The article covers yet again how Intelligence was used by Tony Blair to justify the UK participation in the invasion of Iraq!

The article discusses how (as we now understand) the use of the intelligence was oversold to convince the doubters that something had to be done! It goes on to talk about the Butler report and how when the main press conference was given, none of the main stream journalists present asked any ‘killer questions’!

According to John Simpson’s article…

A member of the Butler committee, the Conservative MP Sir Michael Mates, said he was surprised that no one asked what he called “the killing questions” at the press conference when the committee’s report was published. “The media didn’t home in on that. Once we hadn’t provided them with a scalp, they more or less lost interest.”

What I find interesting about this article is that it really shows up how shallow the main stream media journalists have become in their investigative work.

Many of them now seem to have recast themselves as Presenters, more concerned about how they are perceived by the public than in hunting down a serious story. Had they paid a bit more attention to the situation at the time, perhaps ‘we’ could have called the governemt to account and we might not have the situation we have today.

Who wrote the first blog? That is is the question. Seems that there could be a number of claims to that question! It depends on what you can call a blog, is it a personal bulletin board?, Is it an online personal diary?

Here is the article from CNET News.com that asks the question.

I can certainly remember reading early technical diaries by a number of early ‘online’ journalists, pushing out very interesting articles about the changing technologies, like Jerry Pournelle for the now sadly defunct BYTE magazine (who still writes a good blog), plus of course may others.

It will be interesting to see who gets the final accolade, will it be Tim Berners-Lee? Will it be Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, I remember reading their notes after I had installed my first copy of the original NCSA Mosaic browser on a UNIX computer pretty soon it was released back in 1993!  We will see!

Saw her name mentioned on a recent episode of The Sopranos. Not heard of Sue Grafton before, maybe she is worth a read. Any comments?

In a move that will be seen as vindictive revenge by Tony Blair, Sir Alistair steps down from his chairmanship of the Committee on Standards in Public Life when his contract ends next month.

Perhaps Sir Alistair was doing too good a job which is why Blair feels threatened and has made sure that there is no chance of Sir Alistair staying on till a successor is found. Read the full story here.

While I was away this week, I saw a news report that reported that many children in the South-West of the UK are living in temporary accommodation with their parents for one reason or another because there is not enough permanent housing for them.

This is due to many reasons, but a main one being that there is not enough council housing left to house these needy families.

Why, I wonder as the UK government has moved to the vote for a £75 billion replacement for the Trident nuclear missile system, are they not spending the money on something more valuable – human need – than on yet another missile system that serves no real immediate purpose. 

I’ve just watched a BBC 24 Click Online broadcast about DRM, what is Richard Gooch from the International Federation of Phonographic Industry on about? Stating that everyone he knows only want to use an IPOD! What rubbish. I, for one will never buy an IPOD.

Why? I have a Sony Ericsson P910i mobile phone (a little old now), it syncs with my Outlook – I don’t need to carry my laptop as often, it has Internet access – I don’t need to carry my laptop as often, and it plays MP3’s – I don’t need to carry my laptop as often (for CDs)!!

I may still be in a minority by purchasing CDs and playing them on my CD player (yes, I have downloaded some music which I can also on my ‘MP3’ player), PC and ‘mobile phone/MP3 player’. But having everything on one portable device has got to be better than strangling yourself with yet another pair of ‘white’ earphones.

And to the argument, ‘isn’t it risky having everything on one device in case it gets lost or stolen! Make sure you have a backup (you already have the CDs back at ‘base’) and to the argument of what about space – buy yourself a 2Gbyte memory card!

I’m all for DRM – I work in the publishing industry, so this is something that I fully endorse for all media and its use, but don’t tell me that I can only play my music – that I have purchased – when someone else tells me; when, where and on what device.

Just a short post to say good bye to what I had thought was a good product (albeit with some small issues) that seems to have gone the way of many software products through lack of support and lack of response to user questions.

Since Blogger.com moved from its ‘beta’ state, many people have had problems with getting their blogs to work they way they used to. My main problem has been that Qumana just seemed to stop working – it wouldn’t post anything – with the new Blogger. Despite a number of emails to support, scouring the various forums for answers, I got no where.

So what to do, first I sorted out as few issues that were squarely Blogger.Com issues – how can an organisation make such a hash of an ‘upgrade’! Then I had a look around for replacement off-line blogging editing software, after some research and testing I’ve have ended up using Windows Live Writer (Beta). Yes it has a few foibles, but what software hasn’t? It’s early days with its use, but it does post without any errors.

So it’s Bye Bye to Qumana, sorry you didn’t want to fix my issue.