Category: Uncategorized

Further to my last post I had a further look around another of their sites, TheyWorkForYou.Com.

Although still in beta, it seems that this site has moved on a quite a bit since I last looked at it. For example…

• The Home page now contains links to ‘yesterdays’ events in the House of Commons, House of Lords, and a number of other areas of government.

• The Hansard page now contains links to verbatim sessions for the House of Commons, House of Lords, Northern Ireland Assembly and the Scottish Parliament. One interesting feature of  the verbatim debates sub page where you are able to leave a comment about what the relevant MP/Lord has said. I’m not sure what happens to these comments – are they forwarded to the relevant speaker?

• The Your MP page allows you find your own local MP by Postcode and once that has happened, the page then displays everything that you need to about your own MP including their voting record on a range of issues – this section will make you sit up! Also as it’s topical; there’s a section your own MP’s expenses.

• The All MP’s page lists all of MP’s with link to their own MySociety.org page, this is where the Your MP page gets it information. You can also see on the All MP’s page which government department/committee that each MP is part of.

• The All Lords page is basically the same as the All MP’s page.

• The All MLA’s page again is basically the same as the All MP’s and All Lords page except this one covers Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

It’s a very interesting site and I am sure will have much more added to it as time goes on. Take a good browse around.

Have you ever wanted to ask a local or central government agency or department a Freedom of Information question and weren’t sure how to do it?

Well those clever people at My Society have come up with an easy to use web site that helps you send the message in a correct format to the right department all by the magic of email.

What do they know although still under development, this new site allows you search for the relevant local or central government department then ask the questions you want and finally review, spell check and send it off.

You can also review past requests and responses that were obtained.

Arthur C. Clarke is dead! Not as big a shock as Anthony Minghella’s untimely death also yesterday, but still a shock.

Having read and re-read all of his books and many of his other stories and article over the years, I can safely say that we have lost a great person who managed to fulfil many roles; storyteller, futurist and inventor to name a few.

His collaboration with the cinematic icon Stanley Kubrick (his films), produced one of the most inspiring science fiction films – 2001: A Space Odyssey – of all time, images of which are still reused today – the latest one being the closing shot of the BBC’s last episode of  Last Enemy.

He will be sorely missed by many.

I watched the last episode of the BBC’s Last Enemy last night. The ending really caught me unawares as it was not how I thought it would end, good drama.

The serial seems to have drawn quite a number of negative comments on various blogs, one I read seemed to be more critical of the display of the IPv4 address on the TIA login window and the quality of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) on the TLA system!!! Yes in an ideal world it would be nice to have everything right, but I think these blog writers were somewhat missing the point of the whole series.

For me, the fundamental thread was about one possible end result of the ongoing surveillance society that this government is creating through its various security legislation.

Tag loaded vaccinations; genetically and ethically based tagging; RFID tags smaller than a pin-head just around corner! I thought the content of the programme touched on many areas that I believe are already possible.

The final scene where the main character – Stephen Ezard –  was told what he could (and could not) do over the next few years all controlled by his own unique implanted tag sent a series of shivers down my back, I wonder how many others felt the same?

Somehow we have to find a way of pulling back from this brink of a total surveillance society. Perhaps this blog will be picked up by various Internet scanner (or even Echelon) to show that there is a negative comment in it. I’ve already written to my MP – John Redwood – voicing my concerns, I would encourage everyone else to do the same.

Some of this is already happening…

“ID cards will link your basic personal information to something uniquely yours – like the pattern of your iris, your face shape or your fingerprint.  It will protect your identity from people fraudulently claiming to be you and make it easier for you to prove your identity when you need to – like opening a bank account, moving house, applying for benefits or starting a job.”
Identity & Passport Service

British citizens will be quizzed on up to 200 different pieces of personal information in a 30 minute grilling if they want a passport… Those who fail to convince the bureaucrats they are who they say will be denied a travel document or face a full investigation by anti-fraud experts.  There is no formal appeal process.
Daily Mail, 21 March 2007

Millions of children as young as 11 are to have their fingerprints taken and stored on a Government database, according to leaked Whitehall plans. The Home Office wants to include children in its biometric passport scheme in three years’ time, and automatically transfer their details and fingerprints to the controversial new national identity database when they turn 16.
This is London, 4 March 2007

More on this to follow in other posts.

With the recent news that all MP’s expenses will be released for public scrutiny, it will be interesting to make comparisons with previous records that I covered in a previous post.

I wonder who will top the charts this time?

MP’s previous years expenses…

• MP’s Expenses – March 2006 – March 2007
• MP’s Expenses – March 2005 – March 2006
• MP’s Expenses – March 2004 – March 2005

Makes for some interesting reading.

Yes today is Pi day!

So for all of us who can only remember a few of the above decimal points here’s some links I found on the subject today.

• Pi – the movie
• The Joy of pi!
• A history of Pi
• What Wikipedia says
• The Big ‘Dick’
• The pi Song!
• Some more interesting facts about Pi.

The UK government is to launch yet another review into the UK’s Broadband infrastructure. The report to be chaired by ex-head of Cable & Wireless Francisco Caio is due to report to the Alistair Darling in the autumn.

Another review! Another Report! Another delay in getting the UK’s broadband service into the 21st century.

When will the talking stop and the work commence?

According to the latest report from Ofcom, broadband take up has increased last year by over 20 percent with a total of over 12 million connections now online.

Maybe this is where all of the bandwidth is going from my connection?

Amongst that huge various amounts of spam that circulate on the Internet are some pretty sophisticated Phishing emails.

Buried in a pile of to unread emails was one from a colleague who had received a very interesting email last week. Ever aware of the increased use of these type of emails he was careful not to click anywhere on the email before he saved the image to send to me.

If like him, you bank with NatWest, best beware of this one. It’s very convincing!

Phishing Email Image	Real Web Site

Overall February was not a good month for broadband connection up-time. All seemed to be fine till around the middle of the month, just after I renewed my contract with BT (now why did I do that?). Then I had a number of days of really low connection speeds.

However, after only two calls to the BT broadband support line and despite my assurances that that there was no technical issue with my local equipment as per my many previous telephone calls, I had a booked visit from one of the BT Openreach broadband engineers.

He duly arrived on the 22nd February and made some local tests and found (as I suspected) no fault with my equipment. However he did find via some diagnostics that he carried that the Line Profile (also known as the B-RAS setting)  at the local exchange (Reading South) was incorrectly set.

The B-RAS setting is used to determine the download speed of the circuit and will adjust itself if the line is affected by noise which I had noticed (and the engineer also heard) a few days before I first called in the fault. Why had I not noticed the noise problem earlier – I have two lines, one of which is only used for broadband.

As always with technology, you learn new things, 1) about the B-RAS setting, 2) via the engineers diagnostics that my router is exactly 3.8 km from the exchange as the wire goes (as opposed to as the Crow flies) and 3) there are an average of 16 connections (the roadside BT boxes – green ones where I live) between a home phone /router and an exchange!

Anyway the resetting of the B-RAS level seemed to bring the speed back up to near what I have been experiencing at the beginning of February and apart from a couple of  ‘normal’ blips seems to have stabilised back around the 4.2Mb level. Of course, nowhere near the impossible 8MB still being offered by all the ISP’s – when will Ofcom step in and end this mis-selling?

Lets see what happens in March!