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I had to make a car trip last Friday to pick up my 93yr old Aunt from near Ashbourne in Derbyshire who is going to stay with me for a few weeks. I made a stop at the M40 Warwick services to get a coffee to go.

As I was leaving the services area to get back on to the M40, I saw a sign saying “Thank your visiting Warwick Services, your registration number has been recorded”. with a ‘Warwick Police‘ symbol on the sign. Unfortunately I did not have my digital camera with me so could not take a picture of the sign, but it looked fairly official.

Now, I understand that petrol stations have introduced number plate recording cameras at the petrol stations due to the high number of ‘drive-offs” as they call them, however as all I needed was a coffee why do I have to have my registration number recorded.

This raises a bigger question of where is my stored and for how long and is the date and time of my visit being used to track what I am doing? All bigger questions which I think should be answered. I will be writing to the Warwick police to find about some background information on this.

The UK population are already one of the most recorded [2] [3] nations in the world and while I understand that we need to do some of  this for safety/crime/anti-terrorist reasons, it begins to worry me when I get tracked just for buying a coffee! More on this in another post I am sure.

Tags: Police, CCTV, Data Protection, Privacy

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I caught the news yesterday that the USA Security Exchanges Commission (SEC) has had the go ahead from the UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) that they can go ahead and takeover the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

Yet another piece of the UK transferring into overseas control, German based RWE now owns Thames Water, USA investment bank Goldman Sachs may soon own Associated British Ports portfolio of some of the UK’s important sea ports, while the British Airports Authority (BAA) will end up being part of Spain’s Grupo Ferrovial empire, which incidentally has netted some of the London based finance houses, £315m from the deal!

Going back to the LSE takeover, I wonder how many UK based companies will now have to comply with all of the strict SEC company reporting regulations despite the FSA’s chairman, Sir Callum McCarthy‘s denials. We’ve all heard of mission creep; well stand by for regulation creep as the USA will surely exercise its control via the SEC/LSE tie-up to become the controller of what any UK listed company can or cannot do.

Yes, we have to put in place tight regulations that stops another Enron or other such examples, but surely the UK can do this without the help of another over zealous USA control freak organisiation, in the form of the SEC, quite apart from the costs that will be incurred by the those UK listed companies, which of course will mean a lot of money for the other ‘gents’ in the city! Maybe that really was the plan all along!

Tags: SEC, LSE, BAA, Mission Creep, Enron

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Saw this article in a link that my sister sent me, seems that THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS is becoming a hot seller, if not already and seems to bring back some of the things we Dad’s used to ‘share’ with our boys when they were much younger.

I liked another title I saw relating to a review of the book, Conkers or Consoles? I think that sums up how the world has changed since my two boys, were well, boys!

I’ll have to get a copy to see what I can still teach them!

You can buy the book here…

http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?t=wwwseniorukor-21&o=2&p=8&l=as1&asins=0007232748&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr

Tags: Books, Conkers, Consoles

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A friend of mine was recently on Jury duty, the case (not a very big one was about fraud) and during the trial he found himself having to understand a number of technical issues to do with personal computer (PC) operations (spreadsheets, emails and general accounting software) as well as the various operations of accounting itself.

It turned out that none of the jurors know anything about PC’s or for that matter accounting and found the whole thing very confusing, though the court room staff had set out the case for and against  in as simple a way a possible, but as there was little knowledge of the technologies within the jurors, this took an enormous amount of time. The case was eventually dismissed for various legal reasons, but my friend asked me why they had been chosen for such a technical case in the first place.

Of course the current trial jury system is based on total random selection of people and you have no knowledge of what case you may be involved. My friends case lasted three days, but some fraud cases can last many weeks or even months and I am sure can get very much more complicated.

Just after the above conversation took place, I came across an article in the UK IT magazine Computing.co.uk (and subsequently here on the British Computer Society (BCS) site) that I receive that discusses the need for technically aware juries so that technically complicated trials can progress at a faster speed and of course have a real chance of convicting criminals that perhaps may have previously got off due to the technical ignorance of juries through not fault of their own.

This is not the first time that this subject has raised its head, instances of non-technical juries having problems with technical fraud trial information were reported in 2005, and not all sources think that professional technical trained juries are the total answer as per this article.

However, knowing what I have learn in 35+ years in IT, there needs to be better training for Jurors so that they can better understand technology when it is used in a criminal act.

Tags: Criminal Justice System, BCS

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I’ve been catching up on recent events including the unbelievable announcement by US Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris that the recent suicides by detainees at the US Guantanamo detection camp were acts of war!

I’ve seen a lot written about this subject over the past few days and can only add my disbelief at someone who I assume to be a person of average intelligence not being able to use it and comes to this warped conclusion.

I found an excellent piece by Charles Stross on this subject which I think must sum up what the average normal person must think this sorry state of affairs.

I would suggest that  Rear Admiral Harry Harris doesn’t apply for any kind of PR job when he retires from the US Navy, but there again I expect he is already lined for one!

This link will take you to the Blogger search results for this subject.

Tags: Guantanamo, US Navy

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Following on from my previous post about music, I mentioned how I had copied some of my vinyl based music on to CD’s so that I could listen to the music (especially film soundtracks) in my car. This led me to remember a story I saw recently about digital data degradation, or rather the degradation of the media (CD, DVD, Tape, hard drive) used to store image and music data.

One of the major benefits of vinyl, is that providing that you look after them, use a good stylus (needle), don’t put them near any heat source, the vinyl record will ‘hold’ its data, in its original format forever (I have some very old original 78 vinyl that play as well today (probably better) than they did when the first came out), the same cannot be said for other forms of media. How many of us have had a unique cassette tape ‘chewed’ up, never being able to smooth out those crease again! Remember the Betamax/VHS battle, I expect we will see the same ‘issue’ with the forthcoming DVD battle between ‘Blue-Ray’ and the HD-DVD formats.

What does this mean for the ordinary ‘consumer’? Well certainly to date CD’s/DVD’s have proved to be a pretty ‘safe’ medium for storage of digital data, probably safer than tape due to its higher venerability to damage. Laser Discs once a media hailed as ‘the’ medium for long term storage has lost its leadership. In fact according to reports, the BBC’s own 1986 Doomsday Project ran into problems with its laser disc storage of the project as the ‘state-of-the-art’ storage ‘system’ became obsolete, luckily the project was transferred onto the Internet for future use.

The moral of this post I suppose is that you should not rely too heavily on your data storage media always being the one that will survive all others. As technology changes and technology companies try to lure us into new ‘standards’ for media storage, make sure that a) what you have stored on your media can still be read by your current reader and b) always make sure that you have at least two backups of your data, just in case one of them fails. If you don’t have a backup of your digital image or music data, then when you’ve finished reading this post, then go and make one.

By the way, you may think that big organisations have this all sewn up, the 1975 Viking Lander run by NASA has no original mission data in digital form, all that they now have to is paper printouts, the storage tapes that held this data ended up blank!

Tags: NASA, Digital Preservation Coalition, Betamax

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Much has been written about the current state of the music industry and how it continues to struggle with the pirating plague, which without a doubt is costing both music companies and artists huge amounts of money.

However, as we have seen from the recent Sony root kit debacle many music companies overstep the mark when they try and tell ‘us’ how and when we can listen to the music that we buy. Why should I have to purchase more than one version of the same song just so I can listen to it on my home stereo, my PC or my mobile phone (why buy a separate mp3 player!) and if I don’t be turned into a ‘criminal’ by the music industry.

Well, finally someone has seen some sense and had the courage to disagree with the ‘mega-music’ companies by stating that you should be legally allowed to copy your own music for your own use on different formats. Peter Jamieson, chairman of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has said the legal focus should fully fall on the professional  pirating operations, not the individual music buyer who just wants to listen to their own purchased music as and when they want to. That said, I would also fully support a serious crack down on ‘social’ copying, where I think many of the music tracks on the Internet sharing sites have come from.

Over the years, I have built up a pretty good music collection, including 600+ vinyl records (many of which I have converted to CD to save the record surfaces), 300+ cassettes, again many converted to CD and over 750 original (and legally purchased) music CD’s. With that amount of money invested in ‘music’ I think I do have the right to listen to any track, any where, any time without being ‘branded’ a criminal by the music industry.

So well done the BPI for at last standing up for the ordinary music consumer.

Tags: Sony, Music Pirating, BPI, LP to CD

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I saw an excellent letter on Andrews ‘This Wheels On Fire‘ blog yesterday, (but could not post as ‘Blogger’ was not accepting new posts – more on that in another post).

As I said in a comment to his post, It always amazes me that the politicians that shout the loudest about freedom, democracy and rights are always the first ones to try and curtail there own peoples’ rights and freedom.

I thought that ‘we’ were the ones that criticised other countries like Zimbabwe, Burma and China that curtailed freedom of speech, perhaps I am mistaken!

Also found a map that shows just how big the central London Freedom of Speech exclusion zone is. I wonder if I marched down Whitehall waving the Labour Party red flag and the Stars & Stripes if I would get arrested?

Tags: John Battle, Freedom of Speech, Zimbabwe, Burma, China

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Google recently released their latest Zeitgeist List of what people are searching for, using their search engine technology. The lists are broken down by region and by subject matter, you can imagine of course that Pamela Anderson still figures quite high on the various lists, topping the UK list is eBay!!

For those that want to research what has been used for in the past, you can review further lists at the Zeitgeist Home page.

On the darker side, anyone that uses Google for searching should realise that unless you’re very clever at hiding your presence on the Internet any searches that you make are recorded somewhere on Google’s server, this will include the words you entered in the search window, the search results, and the pages that you went to from the search results page.

All this information is nicely collated on the Google servers ready to be reviewed by….. well that the question isn’t it who controls the ‘collective’? We already know that the USA government has demanded (and in some instances received) customer data from various USA corporations in its supposed fight against terrorism. We would of course agree in the tracking and reporting of Pedophiles and real terrorists.

Here’s a tale about one persons experience, first reported in January 2006, it makes interesting reading.

So, you may empty your IE cache, you might delete all your cookies every day, you may run various disc washer programs, but if you use a search engine, its more than likely there a nice information trail leading right up to your PC that you won’t have any chance whatsoever of clearing away. Apart for that, enjoy your searching!

Tags: Google, USA, Pamela Anderson, Zeitgeist

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Okay it stands for World-Wide Gas prices!!!

Catching up on various clippings that I collected while on holiday and could not post then. I found this very interesting graphic from the New York Times relating to the previous post on the subject of world wide petrol (or gas) prices.

Although the prices have changed since the table in the pervious post was created, the graphic gives a good visual indication of how different the WWG are.

Tags: New York Times, Petrol, Gas

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