Planet TermiSoc

According to the Grauniad, the Queen lacks the funds “to properly maintain some royal residences”.

Surely this means that the royalist claim that the Queen earns for the country more than she costs is on somewhat shakier ground?

If nothing else, I find it very hard to muster up any sympathy for the fact that she can’t maintain all of her various residences; most people manage on much less than £41.5m a year, partly by only having the one house to live in.

(Incidentally, I heard recently a response to the argument that the monarchy earns plenty of money through tourism: France has been a republic for most of the last two centuries, yet people still come to visit Versailles and many other French palaces and so on.)

So today we’ve had leaflets from the Tories and Labour. In fact, we’ve had quite a lot from the Tories; they sent one to each voter registered at this address (that’s four). Obviously they realised that we’d each want to have one to ourselves, rather than having to share. They also sent them by post, rather than just sticking them through the letter box; does the Conservative Party have nobody willing to volunteer to spend some time delivering leaflets for them?

My first complaint is about David Cameron’s statement in it. Not particularly with anything he says in it (well, okay, that too) but just the lack of any demonstrated writing ability. I hope he got someone else to write it for him, and I hope he fired that person. Somebody with a First from Oxford should know, for example, that sentences can’t start with conjunctions, and a politician should know that “Euro-MPs” are actually called MEPs.

Next is that in the section of the leaflet quoting newspaper headlines that make Labour look bad, they couldn’t find any more reputable than the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Daily Express, and the News of the World. (Well, one from the Daily Telegraph. One out of eight’s not bad, right?)

On to actual policies, rather than just the Conservative Party’s embarrassing attempts at telling people about them.

“Voting to keep the UK’s opt-out from the EU Working Time Directive, allowing people to choose how much overtime they work.”

Now, for anyone who doesn’t know, the WTD limits working hours to 48 hours a week, averaged over 17 weeks, and mandates a rest period of 11 hours in each 24 hours. That’s nearly seven hours a day, every day of the week (6 hours 51 minutes) — seven hours doesn’t sound like much, but I must say I’d quite like to have a weekend, and to have just one day off a week pushes that up to 8 hours a day. Now, I realise this is about overtime, not ordinary hours — but if I was having to work from nine in the morning until gone nine in the evening from Monday until Friday (9.6 hours over five days, plus mandatory 0.5 hours lunch break) then I don’t expect I’d be going out of my way to try to do some more.

The WTD is not intended to screw people over who want to do some overtime occasionally; it’s intended to stop people working such long hours as to be dangerous. If you’re working a 50-hour week every week for four months, then you don’t need to opt out of the maximum — you need a better manager.

They go on to say that the WTD “could cause massive problems for our NHS and emergency services”. “Could cause”? It’s been around for 15 years, don’t you think that if it was going to it would’ve done so? Aside from that, if doctors and nurses not being allowed to work 50-hour weeks is a problem for the NHS, we don’t need to let them work more — we need more doctors.

“Local Conservatives have spoken of their “shock and disgust” at the continuing scandal of our fishermen being forced to throw away millions of tons of fish into the sea every year. Our fish stocks are in a perilous state and people are shocked at the amount of fish wasted each year due to a system that is immoral and environmentally wrong.”

Well, firstly, I’m not sure that you can say that something is “environmentally wrong”. Bad for the environment, certainly. However, the Tories don’t seem to explain what the issue is — merely that something is bad. I’m going to assume that what they want is for the fishing quotas to be raised, so that the fish don’t go to waste — since that’s what they’ve asked for in the past. I’m not sure how that is better for the environment, though: whether the fish are eaten or thrown away, they’re still dead. The real solution is not to catch so many in the first place; I realise this might make some people unhappy, but they’ll be a damn sight more unhappy if they don’t and cod are hunted to extinction.

I’m also amused by their claim to be “tackling climate change”. As I mentioned earlier, we received four copies of this leaflet — obviously the Conservative Party would like to make sure that everybody knows how seriously environmental issues are taken. Four leaflets when one would’ve done is frankly ridiculous — in fact, we’d’ve been happy with none, but that would mean I’d have nothing to mock this evening.

A final, unrelated point, found in Hansard when I was researching this article. Iain Duncan-Smith described Turkey as a “secular, democratic Muslim nation” — just how is it possible to be secular and Muslim at the same time?

I have recently moved to a new virtual server hosting provider, Linode have hosting centres in 4 locations in the US and allow you to pick which centre you would like your server in. They have a great web user interface and are cheaper than my previous provider, Slicehost. So now I am paying about half what I was for hosting. I have also got away with using a lot less memory for my virtual server, by implementing some different ways of getting around spam.

Realtime DNS Block Lists (DBL)

DBL’s store a list of known IP addresses which should not be trusted when receving mail, either they are IP’s assigned to home machines (DSL/Cable clients) or known spammers caught out by traps. There are a few DBL’s, but until now I have only been using one - Spamhaus, but sadly this doesn’t catch most spammers. I have now been through my configuration and included a few more DBL’s which are listed below. The advantage of this is that looking up an IP in a DBL is not processor or RAM intensive and does not require an external program - like Spamassasin. I have also implemented a few features in postfix which allow the looking up of hosts who try to exchange mail with my server, if the hostname they are giving doesn’t match their actual hostname or they have no A record or MX record for the domain they are using, postfix will end the connection.

smtpd_recipient_restrictions =
permit_mynetworks,
permit_sasl_authenticated,
reject_unauth_destination,
reject_invalid_hostname,
reject_non_fqdn_hostname,
reject_unauth_pipelining,
reject_non_fqdn_sender,
reject_non_fqdn_recipient,
reject_unknown_sender_domain,
reject_unknown_recipient_domain,
reject_rbl_client dnsbl.sorbs.net,
reject_rbl_client zen.spamhaus.org,
reject_rbl_client b.barracudacentral.org,
#reject_rbl_client t1.dnsbl.net.au,
reject_rbl_client dnsbl.njabl.org,
reject_rbl_client dnsbl.ahbl.org,
permit_mx_backup

It is very important that “permit_mx_backup” goes at the end, because I am finding that spammers will take advantage of backup MX servers to get their spam accepted in some way, which then causes a lot of dead return to sender messages in your queue later.

With the “reject_rbl_client” lines I have in this config, I don’t have to use Spamassasin or other spam anaylsis programs at presnt, the few spams I am getting are minimal and may have been things I accidentially signed up to in the past! t1.dnsbl.net.au was blocking Google Mail last night, which is why I have blocked it. barracudacentral.org requires that you sign up to use their service first.

Moving MySQL

I have to admit that I am no programmer; Systems Administration, Network Administration and troubleshooting come fairly easily to me, but programming has always passed me by. I have often just blindly copied something someone else has done to get by and I remember when I was young spending hours typing in source code from magazines to see try out programs and stuff!

So when it comes to SQL people say “well its not that hard, its mostly english!” but you have to remember the order things go in and weather a line needs a ; at the end, etc… I have tried to get into PHP and stuff, but I just get really bored and give up. I have a load of programming books on C and PHP if anyone is interested!

I use some SQL on my server - Wordpress, which makes this blog work uses MySQL… but to keep it going I had to move it from my old server to my new one.

I followed the usual instructions, to backup your databases use:

mysqldump -u root -p --all-databases > database_backup.sql

And then to restore:

mysql -u root -p < database_backup.sql

Then presto and everything is back, but is it working? Well it might be a good idea to try:

/etc/init.d/mysql restart

Because when you import your old databases, you overwrite the passwords for the users that are stored in them. In the file /etc/mysql/debian.cnf there are settings for a user called debian-sys-maint which is setup when you install MySQL. A password is generated for this user and then stored in the file, when you import all databases you overwrite the users database which then overwites this password, causing debian-sys-maint to be unable to access the database and a failure when you try to start MySQL, although the daemon is running.

phpMyAdmin is your friend here, because you need no knowledge of SQL commands to go in and change the password for a user, therefore fixing this nasty problem! Once you’ve done that you can then use this command to stop MySQL (as /etc/init.d/mysql stop won’t work):

kill | cat `/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid`

Then go ahead and start MySQL as normal:

/etc/init.d/mysql start

Uninterruptible Power Supplies and their lack of Uninterruptible-ness

An Uninterruptible Power Supply or UPS is a big battery that will keep your computer running if the power goes off, it will also protect it from surges and incidents when the power dips to what it should be. They are very useful for when you need to move things around or if you have electricity that you have to pay for in advanced (and will therefore be switched off automatically if you have no credit).

I have had small UPS’s for a few years which are about enough to keep an average desktop PC going for about 10 mins if the power fails. However, I have recently had to start dealing with them at work, since we have moved away from Co-located hosting to hosting our servers at our office. When you are running UPS’s commerically, the need for power cannot be overstated - you need things to be as overkill as possible! Most UPS’s (anything designed for keeping more than just one PC going) will have overload detection and if the UPS detects an overload, it will start to shut itself down - because if the power were to be lost, the batteries could not take the load and the servers connected would not be able to shutdown gracefully.

However this means that mains power is lost to these connected servers and hence zap - no power… Well, in our case it means a 50% reduction in power as the servers have 2 PSU’s each which are redunant. However, it is not so easy to build redundancy into a network, and taking out the UPS that the network switches are connected to will take down the servers as they can’t talk to the outside world… resulting in my mobile phone ringing and someone giving me grief that they can’t do any work!

Teamed Network Cards are network cards that can run in pairs (or more) providing greater throughput or redundancy if they are connected to different switches (in different UPS’s!) however my employer apparently has little interest int he redundancy aspect of this and uses teaming only for throughput… why have 1Gb/s when you can have 2Gb/s?!

After this happening twice today, I had to bypass the UPS’s entirely as they were getting less reliable than the service from the electricity provider!

Whilst I like my job, I hate the fact that my employer prefers to buy his parts on eBay and expects great performance from a limited budget!

Well, I think that is all for tonight… until next time (in the imortal words of Sara Cox) - “rave safe kids, rave safe!”

So the EU Parliament elections are approaching (4th of June). I was a little concerned by the number of right-wing anti-EU parties standing in the south-west region; at the very least, there are five (BNP, English Democrats, No2EU, Libertas, UKIP). That’s not counting the Tories, an independent whose policies I don’t know, various other obscure parties whose policies I’m not sure on, and ‘the Christian Party “Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship”’, (and yes, the quote is part of the name, just like Libertas are apparently officially “Pro Democracy: Libertas.eu”, meaning they obviously have a very different idea of what “democracy” means).

The wingnuts aren’t really a concern, though, since there’s only so many right-wing loonies who can vote for them; all it’s going to do is split the vote. What I’d like to know is why are there so many different small parties all with the same goal? Do they not realise they’re shooting themselves in the foot, competing with people who have ostensibly the same goals? Are right-wing loonies particularly prone to disagreeing with other right-wing loonies to the extent that they go and form their own political party, with hookers and blackjack? Certainly there don’t seem to be any redundant parties other than the right-wing anti-EU types.

There are a couple of other parties that caught my attention. Firstly, “WAI D”, who say that ‘The name “Wai D” stands for Your Decision. (YD)’. They appear to be trying to introduce direct democracy single-handedly, by setting up “an internet site where citizens will have the chance to express, at any moment, during the entire legislative process, their own opinions”. They also claim that the entire party is run “money-free”, apparently appearing to believe that it is some heinous crime for a government to actually spend money.

The “Fair Pay Fair Trade” party are also interesting; they appear to mean well, but they have some truly hilarious policies, like establishing a single world currency, free passenger rail transport throughout Europe, abolishing “most” prisons, and phasing out private vehicles and lorries. Not that I don’t think there should be more and cheaper rail transport, less road traffic, more cycle traffic, and so on, but I doubt it’s as simple as they seem to think. Their policy on water shortages, especially, concerns me: “The EU will ban the vast bulk of imported fruit and vegetables from countries with water shortages.” — thus bringing about the economic collapse of every one of those countries, as a major source of their income disappears? Maybe not, but I really don’t think it’s as simple as they appear to believe.

I got bored before looking up most of the rest. Mebyon Kernow I already know about, but I don’t believe their specific goals are more useful than, say, the Green Party’s (they appear to be basically a watered-down version of the Greens or Lib Dems, vaguely liberal/leftish leaning, with the specific additional goal of greater self-determination for Cornwall). The Jury Team and Pensioners’ Party I just couldn’t be bothered with. The Socialist Labour Party, again, I already knew of, and likewise (obviously) Labour, the Lib Dems, and the Tory scum.

Finally, the Green Party, whom I’m planning to vote for, since they have pretty sensible policies all-round, including things like abolishing the constitutional role of the monarchy and replacing the House of Lords with an elected body, and nationalising the rail network.

Update: the People's Republic of South Devon linked to this post.

I'm assuming everybody (everybody who cares, that is) has heard about the attack against SHA-1. Part of what this means is that 1024-bit DSA GnuPG keys are vulnerable; accordingly, I'm replacing mine.

The new key is as follows:

pub   4096R/166891C7 2009-05-07 [expires: 2010-05-07]
      Key fingerprint = B62D 05AE 65F4 DAFD DE2E  10E2 ABAE 113A 1668 91C7
uid                  Benjamin M. A'Lee <bma@subvert.org.uk>

My old key will expire in 90 days (or I'll revoke it, one or the other). I'll see about getting the new key signed (and resigning other people's keys) at some point.

One of the Javascript libraries we use at work includes a method called getLayersByName(). It has a parameter, name, described as follows:

{String | Object} A layer name. The name can also be a regular expression
literal or object. In addition, it can be any object with a method named
test. For reqular expressions or other, if name.test(layer.name) evaluates
to true, the layer will be included in the list of layers returned. If no
layers are found, an empty array is returned.

So, if you want to test using a function that returns true or false, similar to filter() in functional languages, you can't just do this:

var name = function(n) { var r = doSomeTest(n); return r; };

Instead, you have to do something like the following:

var name = {
    test: function(n) {
        var r = doSomeTest(n); return r;
    }
};

(Actually, there are several functions that work in a similar way, but this is the simplest one to use as an example.)

Why not check the type of the parameter and, if it's a function, call it directly rather than looking for a property? I have no idea. I'm assuming that originally the function was intended to take a regexp object, and the fact that it supports any object with a test() method is more by accident than design.

I know I don’t blog often enough, but I have been fairly busy for the last 6 months having gotten a job, moved to Preston, etc… Anyway, so I have recently joined the Preston freecycle list - it was to get rid of 2 TV’s, an ink jet Printer and some other stuff I didn’t need any more. However I hadn’t reckoned on what people might offer on there, although most of it is clothes and furniture, one guy advertised a large colour laser printer - a QMS Magicolor 2 Desk Laser…

If you think this will fit on your desk, you’d be mistaken, it is huge and probably about 10 years old. Getting it home proved to be a problem when we realised it wasn’t in Preston, but in Garstang (half way to Lancaster), but Garstang has a PR3 postcode!

Tuesday evening I started to play with it, I plugged it in and immediately it told me there was some kind of jam, then it told me that something else was wrong, when I finally got it to the point where I thought everything was OK, it said “Call Service F5 Charge HV”, I figured that HV is High Voltage and that this had something to do with the fuser - the bit of a laser printer that heats up the dust like toner to make it stick to the page. But the fuser doesn’t seem to be a part you can take out easily. I undid one screw then another, pretty soon it was just a massive collection of plastic, metal and circuit boards on my floor….

It went from this:

(Admittedly I stole this photo from the Interwebs because I forgot to take a before shot!)

To this:

At which point I decided I couldn’t be arsed if I could get it to work or not, I probably couldn’t get it back to being one piece again!

When I was a kid my Aunt brought me this book called “Miles and the Screwdriver”, Miles got a screwdriver for his birthday and then started to undo all the screws he could find… until he nearly undid the world… at this point “God” was angry with him… yeah, so that is quite believable, right?! But I guess I am kinda like Miles, I just can’t stop undoing those screws; It could be a metaphor for my life really!

I think my Jawa days are behind me, either that or stuff just isn’t as fixable as it once was!

I have put this back on line; what i am going to do with it remains to be seen; as Twitter is much easer to use

For most of the last 9 months, I've been working on a project called InterRisk; specifically, developing a web portal for viewing scientific data overlaid on a map. (The scientific data is marine-related, in our case mostly to do with algae levels around the UK and Irish coast). Anyway, most of the coding has been in Javascript; there was some PHP, but I'm trying to avoid it, and any new server-side code will probably be in Python because it's awesome.

Before I started, I'd done very little javascript, just a few toy programs and whatnot. Mostly my experience of it was through bloody annoying websites that use it unnecessarily.

What I've learned, though, is that it's actually a reasonably decent language --- yes, it has some misfeatures, and some things don't behave as I think they should (for (i in object), for example, which sets i to the index of the member, not the member itself like in python or sh). They're fairly minor, though, in my opinion, compared to some of the good features, like functions being first-class objects that you can pass around, for example as event handlers. (I know that quite a few languages can do this, but it was a surprise to learn that Javascript could).

The real spoiler, though, is browsers. If I could write an application that only had to support one browser, I'd be reasonably happy. At least, if the browser in question wasn't Internet Explorer. The variability in javascript support in the various browsers, though, is a serious issue; there are so many features that just can't be used because Internet Explorer 6 still needs to be supported (or even IE7, which as far as I know has almost identical javascript support to IE6). I don't know if IE8 will be an improvement, but it's hardly important --- it'll be years before IE6/7 are sufficiently rare to make using newer features safe in a portable application (mostly because there are organisations still using IE6, after more than two years --- I understand the arguments for not rolling out new software immediately, especially in large corporate environments, but two years? What the hell are you doing?).

(There is a bright side --- as I have no access to any IE6 machine at work, I have an excellent excuse not to support it. As mentioned, I don't think it makes a difference where javascript is concerned, but it's one less thing to worry about.)

Even discounting Internet Explorer for the moment, things aren't perfect; I've run into problems because, for example, Firefox allows things that Opera doesn't, when Opera's behaviour is actually the correct behaviour (but of course, I can't code to Opera's strict standards-compliance, because discounting Internet Explorer was only wishful thinking, and IE7 doesn't support the correct way of doing things that Opera mandates).

Not supporting large chunks of the DOM (DOM level 2 or 3, if I remember correctly) is okay, though, because I can just extend the Node object to provide wrappers --- if getElementByTagNameNS isn't defined, fake it using getElementByTagName instead. But oh, wait, Internet Explorer doesn't let you extend the built-in DOM objects. Why? No idea, but it means that I have to write a wrapper function for every browser to use, even if it supports the necessary methods natively. So much for that plan.

Then, when something goes wrong --- and it will --- you're sort of stuffed. While Firefox has Firebug, which isn't perfect but does the job well enough, and Opera has Dragonfly which was great while it worked but seems to have broken for me, Internet Explorer has...nothing. As far as I know. Extensive Googling has, at least, turned up nothing. IE7 seems to have only about two or three javascript error messages anyway (which at least is more than ed, which makes do with one --- ? --- but they aren't much more helpful), so it's back to alert() and popping up the value of variables at a dozen different points throughout the application. (I assume Microsoft expect people to fork out for Visual Studio or something to get access to a debugger. Sod that, all I want is useful error messages and a DOM inspector)

Anyway, this has turned into more of an Internet Explorer rant than a Javascript rant. As I mentioned, no browser is perfect, but some are less perfect than others, and as Internet Explorer is still ⅔ of the browser market, it's proportionately more of an issue than Opera or Safari, or even Firefox, would be if their javascript implementation was as poor.

So, this weekend I've had four and a half days off (Thursday lunchtime onwards) and, given my usual lack of planning, didn't have anything in particular lined up when I got home from work on Thursday. Well, other than fix my bike, which had been sitting in the yard for two weeks (the first waiting for me to get around to getting new tyres, the second waiting for me to find the well-hidden puncture). Incidentally, I did that, so that probably makes this a successful weekend.

Anyway. Friday was a waste. Saturday morning Dan texted and suggested a Dartmoor trip, so Gem drove us and Gareth (plus her sister and sister's dog) up near Sheepstor. We wandered around a bit, but failed to find any letterboxes, then drove out past Princetown to have a barbecue. Then it started hailing. Seriously. So we went back to Plymouth, where it was actually quite nice, and had the barbecue in the back yard, then watched some Red Dwarf.

On Sunday, Gem, Dan, and I went up to Bodmin Moor --- walked from Minions up around Cheesewring for a couple of hours, and this time I actually remembered my camera. Haven't actually looked at the pictures yet, though, so I don't know if any turned out particularly well.

Today I did bugger-all again; the nice (apart from the hail) weather apparently has given up, so going out wasn't really tempting. Back to work tomorrow; at least it won't take half an hour to get there or back now.

To anybody writing a web form that asks for my country — or, for that matter, anybody else referring to it in any way:

I am a citizen of, and resident in, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is perfectly acceptable, and even encouraged, to abbreviate this to "United Kingdom". (Historical note: before 1927, it was officially the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; in practice, the Irish Free State was independent from 1922.)

I am not a citizen of Great Britain. There is no such country, and has not been since 1801.

I am not a citizen of England. There is no such country, and has not been since 1707.

Of course, Great Britain still exists within the UK, and England within Great Britain. They are not countries, though. Americans, especially, should take note that referring to the UK as "Britain" has been wrong for almost 208 years.

No part of Ireland has ever been in Great Britain. Referring to Northern Ireland as part of Great Britain is always wrong, both geographically and politically. It’s not likely to win you any friends, either.

No part of Scotland or Wales have ever been in England, with the exception of minor border changes. Referring to them as such is (almost) always wrong, and also unlikely to win you any friends.

Finally, there hasn’t been a king or queen of England since 1604, when James I/VI changed the title to "…of Great Britain". Technically, after that point both England and Scotland were ruled by the King (or Queen) of Great Britain, though they remained seperate countries until 1707 (in personal union).

Not difficult, is it?

This is up there with the “Why the hell didnt I use this earlyer!”

jQuery, So what is it? A very handly small javascript libary that makes writing javascript so very easy.

win!

I have only been playing with it for the last few days, but so far I am very impressed so much so that we will be intergrating jQuery into fusionticket to start doing some really cool stuff

What can it do? Very quick ajax calls, css formatting, validation, all your normal javascript stuff but quicker, text transformation, box animation, calander plugins… the list goes on, really the sky is the limit, a bit of JS and server side scripting can create very cool web apps!

But of course you need JS enabled in your browser, What i love about jQuery though is the cross-browser and scalability, beacuse it does all the work when its enabled, if JS is off your website works just as it would normaly but without the JS functionality as JS does all the work after the page has its html.

Truly anyone that wants to use more JS start looking at jQuery and some other lib’s.

Came across a tricky bug a few weeks ago whilst working on some extremely fragile code.

This was the code:

settings.php

$mail_settings = array(
    'server' => 'mail.example.com',
    'port' => 25
);

index.php

function send_email($recipient, $message)
{
    include_once('settings.php');
    $foo = new MailSender($mail_settings);
    $foo->send($message, $recipient); //this was line number in the error message
}
 
send_email('admin@example.com', 'Admin message');
send_email('user@example.com', 'User message');

The tricky part was debugging it, it threw an error on the second call of the send_email function. That’s odd it ran fine the first time and the only thing I could see that had changed was the input to the function, surely that must be the problem? I commented out the second function call error went away, commented it back in and the error was back. This fitted with my hypothesis that the input on the second one was causing the error. But after looking inside the MailSender class I couldn’t see any reason why the function would error there.

I called Kev to give the problem a fresh set of eyes because sometimes when you are working on things like this you end up not being able to see the thing you’re looking for if you stare at the code for too long.

We took apart the function. We created a new file and replaced each function call with the code which was inside the function and were surprised when it worked perfectly. We were confused as to how the exact same code when placed inside a function would have any different effect.

After looking in the wrong places for a while we finally decided to re-examine our assumptions about what the commenting out was telling us. It wasn’t telling us that the problem is in how we were calling the function the second time around, it was the fact that we were calling the function twice.

After realising that it was obvious what was causing the error.

• Mailsender needs $mail_settings to work
• variables from settings.php were included with an include once
• include once will not include a file that has already been included
• the second function call will not have access to variables from settings.php since they are a) out of scope from first function call b) won’t be included again due to the include once

After changing the include_once to an include the function worked as expected.

This made me think of some questions. How would I unit test this? Should I create a unit test that runs each function n times? How could I ensure that the test wouldn’t fail at n+1 times? How can I be sure my test will be accurate without running the function an infinite amount of times?

Of course the real solution would be to remove the hidden dependencies caused by creating variables in an included file but to do that to this particular inherited project would require a complete rewrite.

I am covering exsisting ground, battering on about the same point over and over. But I can allways keep finding stats about broadband to tell people who to avoid and who to go for.

People dont belive me when i say Virgin Media is rubbish.

Apart from samknows.com fantastic review of the broadband sector. speedtest.net can give you some very intresting stats about ISP’s.

I’m with BeUnlimited and I jumped on them as soon as they came into plymouth. You wonder why…? Well have a little look at this. I couldnt ask a better example than that could I? So all of Virgin Media’s “fiber optic” network gives them NO edge… sure they can push TV and phone down it but thats not the way media is going…(On a little note, VM Fiber Network barely extends BT’s, only a few places in london actualy have fiber down the road. 99% of virgins lastmile connections are copper just like everyone else. differnce being its just newer.)

Lets start simple. You connect to your ISP. All data goes through your ISP. So if your isp is based in london/madienhead then your traffic has to go halfway accross the country first, then to the destination then back through the isp to you.

Now thats fairly simple… so whats the problem. We think about this… You have 2.5Million subcribers (Virgin Last time i checked) Every single bit of data has to go through them first. AAARG… So for virgin to actualy provide the bandwidth they say. they would have to have bandwidth which exceeds 25Tbps. Now thats very exspensive. to offer everyone 10Mbps broadband for £16 a month is allmost impossible.

Thats not to say BT or anyone else is perfect.. just think twice about who you jump in bed with before you tie that 12 month contract.

But broadband quality is very linked to cost. Why is orange free BB rubbish? well because its free. Why is virgin slow? because is cheap. Why is BeBroadband/O2 or Aquiss,Titan actualy work and fast? becuase you pay for what you get.

Admitidly if all you do is check emails once a day and browse a few website then. Orange Free BB will be fine. If you acctualy want to use your internet connection then look for something else…

Hope you may be a little more informed please feel to ask any more questions.

Fantastic

Fantastic, There album of 2008 is amazing, probably one of the best albums i’ve listened to in a long while, up there with the some Dream Theater stuff. Go and look for ‘The Dream’ by ‘In This Moment’ I’m pretty confident you won’t be dissapointed. 

I know people are bitching and moaning about the new G n’R album, but personal its very good. And technicaly from a music point of veiw it is. I listen to bands and music for two reasons, if its good and technicaly sound or enjoyable. Now if your still need to moan about somthing thats been delayed go jump on the duke nukem guys there just as bad! Ok finished!

Anyway got alot more work todo so i’ll post back after I’ve finished it all.

Yesterday I bought myself the latest instalment of the Tomb Raider series for the Wii.

I spent a while playing it then I came across got stuck in the Level Puppet No Longer in the last room with the ceiling ring where I couldn’t progress in the game because the switch to open the door had vanished (see forum posts here and here).

I restarted the game and treked back to that point. This time the switch was there and I was able to complete the level.

Later on in the Mexico level I came across another similar bug. One of the switches needed to operate the giant cogs in the floor was missing, instead only a yellow cuboid floated in mid air where it should have been. Fortunately I had a save at the beginning of the level and when I reloaded and got to that point again the switch was there.

Also later there was a bit by where you stop the Archimedes screw from moving the blue glowing liquid into the pool in the main chamber. The column that you’re supposed to shoot down, initially it did not allow me to shoot it, I could aim and fire at it but it had no effect and I couldn’t get the red crosshairs on it as is normally the case with shootable objects.

In conclusion BUGGIEST. TOMB RAIDER. EVAR. I hope I don’t run into any more.

Some people may know, alot won’t. But I am currently working weekly on something called a butler bot.

Whats that? The name is pretty self explanitory, basicaly its a robot that can serve drinks, the idea being it will wonder around some guests at a party and people will take drinks off its tray. When it senses that there are no drinks left, it will work its way back to the kitchen or to a alocated place to fill up again. Its got a way to go yet but progress is finaly being made.

Dunno you might find it at a fancy dinner party in the future for all you know…

*Shudder* Yes, It is a creepy game, I’ve completed it once… even when you back to play it again, it still scares the bejebus out of me, I’m not the only one it puts doom to shame for sure. little bit more in depth than doom 3 too as you have slight puzzles which make the game more than just survival. I won’t release to much info apart from that your a engineer called Isac sent to fix a planet cracker vessel when communication was lost with it. yes you guessed right when you wonder why they lost comms with it, something very creepy and alien like has happened.

I would seriosly recommend it! But don’t expect to complete it in one sitting! and for god sake make sure you have a decent heart as I nearly had a few heart attacks at points.

So a few weeks back I emailed some loony Christian organisation in the US as part of a protest, basically to tell them to stop being such total wankers (they were advocating a boycott of Hallmark because Hallmark, horror of horrors, were selling cards that acknowledged that not everybody is heterosexual, or something).

Their revenge, apparently, was to sign me up for their newsletter. Curses!

(Except not, ‘cause I had the sense to add "nospampleasefundiewankers" to the address, so I can filter it no problem…)

So a few weeks back I emailed some loony Christian organisation in the US as part of a protest, basically to tell them to stop being such total wankers (they were advocating a boycott of Hallmark because Hallmark, horror of horrors, were selling cards that acknowledged that not everybody is heterosexual, or something).

Their revenge, apparently, was to sign me up for their newsletter. Curses!

(Except not, ‘cause I had the sense to add "nospampleasefundiewankers" to the address, so I can filter it no problem…)

Last night was the first lesson of the German course I enrolled on. I now know four ways to ask somebody their name (two formal, two informal) and two ways to reply. Need to work on differentiating s, ß, and z, though.

Today I learned that, when on a vector converging with a wall at medium to high speed, the correct course of action is to brake, or alter course. Not to put a hand out and repeatedly try to shove yourself away from it. Ouch.

Two weeks ago I bought a bike (well, slightly more, but it arrived two weeks ago yesterday). Previously, I’d only cycled successfully once – around a carpark. Gem and I cycled up the Plym Valley path on the Saturday; we got up to the car park at Plymbridge, then turned around and came back (the hard way, admittedly). That Sunday we went cycling again, but nowhere much of interest, just around Plymouth a bit.

I didn’t cycle much for a week and a half, firstly because I was away and then because I didn’t really want to cycle to work; I didn’t feel particularly confident in traffic. Lisa suggested (indirectly) that I should just go for it, so I did, and cycled into work on Wednesday. That was pretty tiring, and the way back nearly killed me; mostly due to my poor choice of route (I avoided going up hills for as long as I could, which eventually took me to the bottom of a massive hill with home at the top). Thursday was better, and Friday better still.

Today, Gem, Dan, Ed (who’s back in Plymouth for graduation, and cycled from Bristol) and I cycled up the same route; this time we got as far as the railway tunnel near Bickleigh before coming back. We could probably have gone further, but it was quite late, and got dark very quickly (the path runs through the woods, which doesn’t help; only Gem had lights, and not very good ones, so Ed went ahead holding a torch so we could see where he was and thus where the path was).

I was still pretty knackered by the end of it, but less knackered than the shorter journey two weeks ago. An improvement, at least. I don’t expect to be able to cycle up the hill home any time soon, though.

Something that I wasn’t expecting when I decided to do a placement, or right the way through until after I started working at PML, was that I’d have the opportunity to do any travelling for work.

Most of the work I’ve done at PML so far has been part of InterRisk, an EU project to develop software for "environmental risk management in marine and coastal areas"; basically, there’s lots of data that can be used to detect things like oil slicks, algal blooms, etc.; there are also lots of people who are interested in such things, for various reasons – either for research, or because it’s their job to deal with them, or whatever. InterRisk is meant to make it easier for these people to get at that data. There’s various groups involved in it – as well as PML, there are organisations in Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Norway, and every six months representatives of each organisation meet up to discuss progress; this time around I got to go along, with the head of the Remote Sensing Group and another of the programmers working on it.

The meeting was at the Institute of Oceanology in Sopot, Poland (just north of Gdańsk). Tuesday morning, two of us took the train up to Birmingham from Plymouth and met the boss there at the airport. The flight went without incident, though I did manage to get searched again – and once again, it was because I had change in my pocket (which I actually realised before I stepped through the metal detector, and was holding it up as I did so in an attempt to point out that my stepping through would be pretty pointless…). Oh, and screaming kids. We arrived at Gdańsk Lech Walesa Airport (not, for some reason, Lech Wałȩsa airport) and promptly got ripped off by a taxi driver.

Gdańsk, Sopot, and Gdynia form one big conurbation. Gdańsk is a big port and formerly part of the Hanseatic League, and has lots of old buildings and so on (though apparently most of them were rebuilt after WW2 – they were very cool anyway) and the largest brick church in the world (St. Mary’s; got some good pictures from the top of the tower). We visited a few museums, including one on Solidarity (though I didn’t have a chance to get myself a Solidarność t-shirt). Sopot seemed to be mostly bars and restaurants, with little to do during the daytime; it reminded me of the Barbican in Plymouth, but without the interesting old stuff. Gdynia seems to be mostly industrial/commercial; it was relatively unnotable until the Treaty of Versailles gave Poland access to the Baltic but made Gdańsk independent, leaving it without a major port – Gdynia was expanded to fill that need. We went to the aquarium on Saturday, and were pleased to see that their display on oceanography, with various sensors and instruments attached to model boats, also had a model plane and satellite for the remote sensing side of things.

The first evening we looked around for a bit then got pizza; the first full day there we spent in Gdańsk, then met up with a few of the other InterRiskers for dinner at an overly-complicated fish restaurant (where my order of "fish and potatoes" was interpreted as "fish and more fish"; luckily one of the Polish representatives was around to translate). Thursday was the first day of the actual meeting, most of which was pretty boring (lots of talk about deliverables and user requirements and so on), though the technical side of things was quite interesting – it gave me a much better feel for what the project was about and what the code I’m writing is actually for (which always helps, you know). That evening was the conference dinner; we went back into Gdańsk and were given a guided tour (the opposite way around to our previous visit) then went to some reasonably fancy restaurant place. Friday was much the same, but we spent the evening in Sopot instead, and went to a bar that played weird (but reasonably good) remixes of classic rock.

Saturday was the last day in Poland, but since our flight wasn’t until 21:00 we had plenty of time beforehand. We were assured by our representative from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute that the weather would be sunny (with some cloud) all day, that their forecasts were completely trustworthy and that there’d definitely be no rain. To be fair, it never actually rained, but there was no actual sun, either, and it was bloody cold. We suspect that met.no’s definition of "lovely weather" is "no snow on the ground". We went into Gdynia, visited the aquarium, had some very expensive coffee, then went back to Gdańsk to see the Solidarity museum.

The flight home was again uneventful. My laptop bag got searched, as far as I can tell because the metal nibs of my pens looked suspicious and threatening; on the other hand, I remembered to take the change out of my pocket this time. A small child screamed for almost the entire journey; unfortunately, nobody seemed willing to put it out of its misery. Stayed at a Travelodge in Birmingham overnight, then drove back on Sunday, stopping off somewhere in the middle of Somerset to visit some canal thing that was open for National Heritage Weekend. We didn’t find the canal, but we did find a very nice pub for lunch (the Martlet Inn, near Wellington, if you’re ever in the area). Then off down the M4 listening to obscure (but, admittedly, rather good) music, provided by the boss again (the least obscure parts were the Dune and Blade Runner soundtracks; the best parts I don’t actually know how to spell).

Now I just need to work out how to fill in this expenses claim.

[[!meta title="Thoughts on Google Chrome"]] [[!meta date="2008-09-02 19:26 BST"]]

Google are due to release a new browser, called Chrome, tomorrow. So, here are my initial (i.e., pre-release) thoughts on it, based solely on what they’ve said about it so far.

• Initial release will Windows-only; Mac OS X and GNU/Linux versions coming Real Soon Now. Nice to see that even Google, with their thousands and thousands of GNU/Linux machines, treat anybody not using Windows as second-class citizens. Hardly unexpected by now, but still irritating.
• I’m glad to see that they’ll be releasing it as free software; hopefully, they’ve the sense to use the GPL or something, rather than a new licence of their own design.
• I’m not convinced by the tabs-as-separate-processes thing; is there really an advantage over tabs-as-separate threads, that outweighs the additional overhead of separate processes? I admit that I don’t know enough about memory management to seriously evaluate this one, though.
• They make a big deal about webapps, but say nothing of the client side; will there be anything along the lines of Firefox’s extensions API? Gem suggests supporting Firefox extensions directly, which may be difficult without XUL support; an equivalent API is a must, though.

Beyond that: we’ll see?

Update: um, today, apparently. About to try it out under WINE.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7593106.stm:

"The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online," he said in a statement.

—Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Ah, good old Microsoft: never one to let reality get in their way; of all the browsers that those statements could apply, MSIE would be the least likely.

We recently received our annual spamming by Plymouth On Course, who apparently are some sort of umbrella group for the various places in the city that do adult learning courses. Last year I considered signing up for one, but didn't have the money; this year, I have the time and the money (at least, compared to next year), so I've just requested a place on a Beginner's German course. (I considered French, as they have courses all the way up to A-level, but German seems more interesting, and they may have more advanced courses by the time I'm ready to do them anyway).

It starts at the end of September, every Tuesday evening until May.

From an ad in Computing magazine: "BT and the NHS are teaming up to improve the quality of London's community healthcare blah blah blah."

What for? Since when does London have a lack of adequate healthcare? The NHS site for Cornwall lists three hospitals with A&E departments --- two of which aren't even in Cornwall (Barnstaple and Plymouth). The only one actually in Cornwall is the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro. Devon's not much better: apart from Barnstaple and Plymouth, there's Exeter and Torquay --- and another listed which is in Taunton. I didn't check Somerset, but I doubt they're much better off.

There's plenty of places in Devon and Cornwall that are thirty or forty miles from an A&E department, yet London needs better healthcare. Hmm...

Yes the new Oasis album of 2008!

Pretty poor in my opinion, first few songs are ok, but after that it just gets samey. Just feels like they really didn’t try. I loved the “Whats the story morning glory” album, but from there seems something went wrong. Shame was expecting this album to be grand!

On another note, When listening to the lyrics im pretty certain I can hear the words  ”the rapture” every other line, Amusing… Yes, Creative… No

I’m not saying don’t listen to it, but not worth buying the album.

Thought i would change the theme, Tis a bit nicer!

I am still looking for someone to create me a banner and avatar. Would be nice if it was anime stylie portrait of me.

Not much this week, I will add some of my happenings with the Wiimote and Java. Yes as dirty as that may seem it is possible!

As for now caio!

I know its not new new, but coldplay’s new album of 2008 has probably been there best for at least a long time. Its a bit more experimental but very enjoyable, If you listen to the intro and don’t like, don’t listen to the rest.

If you find you love the intro then the rest of the album delivers and I hope you enjoy it!

My Two favourite songs have to be Lovers In Japan and Viva La Vida go out and have a listen you wont be disappointed!

I was watching Zero no Tsukaima the other day, and like most times I watch anime it allways gives me this massive urge to draw. Not sure if its natural but hey I enjoy it so here you go:

Now if your not one for the anime don’t worry I wont be offended.

But some more info for those who are. This is Louise Zero from Zero no Tsukaima. It is probably one of the best series I have watched in a while, I am yet to catch up on Ergo Proxy another fantastic series for those intrested.

But I finished watching Zero no Tsukaima and was left with the desire to draw, so I hope you like it? Its been over a year since I last drew and to be honest I have missed it, funnly enough though this is probably one of my better drawings considering I havent been drawing in so long. I think its allright.. like usual the eyes need work probably one of the hardest things to draw and if you dont belive me go ahead and try This was alldone with a single HP mechanical pencil, yes it makes it harder but it proves that you dont really need special tools to draw. So I think i will be drawing more over the coming year where time allows. And I hope to improve and I hope you enjoy them, I allso wish to add colour too. But I’ll probably keep with the drawing intill im pretty confident with that.

Welcome to my new blog, I wasn’t really one with the blogging scene but I thought I might give it ago

I hope to give an insight into the going on’s of a Computing Student and someone that is trying to set up there own business.

Its not that I don’t like working for people but I really enjoy working for my self and being in charge of what I do. So you may ask what do I intend to do? Well the simple answer is a little… You start of small and build up Microsoft/Intel/HP/IBM didn’t become where they are overnight. It may sound optimistic that I want to take on these people and it is, I don’t but I do what to put every other educational software supplier to shame for selling shoddy school software… a popular school software is an access based database system designed for a private schools… that’s just an accident waiting to happen.

The problem with the system is, that the schools don’t know what they need or can get! Like alot of public sector there misinformed. I can give you a very real world example of this.

I am one of those students who is dyslexic (spell check!) so from the DSA (disabled students allowance) I get a free laptop as part of my degree. That’s all swell don’t me wrong but; The laptop given to me was from a company called “Micro link” (avoid by the way). The laptop invoiced to the LEA (Learning Education Authority) cost them £900+ ex Vat + 4 Year warranty at £400. So you may be thinking, that’s OK? Yes it would be OK if the laptop was worth anywhere near that. I could of picked up the same laptop for £600 retail inc Vat!
Now a little bit of maths would tell you that well they have charged nearly £500 markup not to shabby eh?

This problem doesn’t lie with the company (although they are thieving bastards and they know they can get away with it), but more the LEA, Universities, Schools, they are so misinformed that is ’seems’ the norm and they have no desire to question that. Good for companies Bad for the tax payer and the education system!

I am set out to change that and I will if you want to support me I would greatly appreciate it. you have to let your local governors and authorities know that they need to consider do more consulting!

Anyway a shorter post next time

Something more interesting too.

For those of you who remember what the Internet looked like in 1997, you will know the following. Hotmail was not owned by Microsoft, Yahoo was the only real search engine, BackRub Google had not yet been launched; Myspace, and Facebook were not on the Internet. forums were few and far between.

There was Bolt.com an American web site that didn’t suck (in the beginning) and it was really the only place to hang out.

over time it started sucking, and some time a few years back they brought out a Bolt2.com that sucked lots, and in an attempt to move the Regs from Bolt to Bolt2 they killed Bolt. oh and then they got sued out of existence; (read more on wikipedia)

Today i receved the following message via email

Bolt.com is Back! And it’s packed with new Features and Upgrades!!!
Hey Skippy,
We just wanted to let you know that Bolt is back! Come see your old profile and friends.  And check out Tagbooks and all the new features just launched!!
Looking forward to seeing you around the site,

Now unfortunately it is not bolt that they brought back, they revived Boltfolio a site that well.. Sucks.

So Close yet so Far; they failed to get the revival right.

Rest in Peace Bolt

Omeds of the Wiccan board Regs

I managed to find this in a Children’s play area in East London (

).

My Friend Meg found her own before me :’( her’s is on her blog here.

Can I recommend that people who design things for children’s areas keep up to date with those things that are well known on the web.

If you are not aware of what a goatse is; Can I recommend that you do not go in the direction of http://goatse.cz to find out;

So its been a while since I posted anything, but I thought I’d keep people updated as to what has happened in my life lately.

At the beginning of August I had to sell my car and declare myself bankrupt. I was at the point of owing £15,000 and at my current level of income that would have taken me about 10 years to pay back, plus I would have been fairly povety stricken for that duration. Given my record of finding and keeping jobs(!) I doubt that I will find myself in some great earning IT job anytime soon, despite the fact I could pretty easily do the work.

The bankruptcy is going well so far, thanks to the Co-operative Bank I have a current account with a Visa Electron debit card and a fair bit more money available to me from my benefits given that I am not having to pay back what I owed to the banks and credit card companies.

Interestingly enough the Halifax, whom I owed approximately £6,000 to, has recently been taken over by Lloyds TSB (whom I owed £1,500), apparently because the Halifax had itself become insolvent. I’d like to say that I brought down one of the biggest banking groups in Britian, but sadly I think my debt is just a drop in the ocean to them! This is just the latest in a series of banking failures here in the UK, mostly brought on by the US ’sub prime’ loan problem and the general ‘credit crunch’. Notice that no-one will use the word recession, and according to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, “this is not boom and bust”; who is he kidding!

My personal feeling, although this is extremely controversial, is that now is the time to wipe out all debt - after all, it is really just numbers on computers. Once we have done this, we should quit lending money to people with the soul exception of mortgages. No more credit cards or unsecured loans, because I believe this is what has caused all the problems: Consumer greed, and I think we are all guilty to some extent. But who is more guilty, the people forced into borrowing money for a better lifestyle (or sometimes just an existance) or the banks who spend all their time convincing us that we should take out loans and credit cards, sometimes to the point where we can’t ignore them.

Also during August I helped with a number of Autism research studies at University College London, but missed out on a MRI scanning experiment because of a small piece of metal left in me after my Gall Bladder was removed in 2001. It seems that I will never be able to find out the full details of the clip (make, model, etc) for the paranoid radiographers who control these experiments, because the hospital where the surgery took place have ‘misplaced’ the notes relating to it.

I also took part in research for my friend Kalen at the University of Manchester, who tells me that even if she can’t use my data - my reaction times suck and I definately have ADHD! Most people who meet me for just a few minutes know that I just can’t keep still, unless I am unconcious!

Whilst I was in the North West I was asked by a friend of mine to help at his workplace with some IT stuff. This taught me a few things: that my Windows Server skills are out of date and that eToken is more complicated than you’d think! eToken is basically a authentication system similar to smart cards, but uses a device that looks very much like a USB pen drive. It can also work over networks and this was the purpose, to secure servers at a remote site.

I have decided that I am going to use some of my time over the next few months to study for the MCSA exams or Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator. This is, I know a bit of a diversion from my Linux work over the past few years, but I don’t think I have the nessecary programming experience to be a proper Linux sys-admin. I last studied for these Microsoft exams back in 2000 when I passed the “Network Essentials” exam, but the failed “Windows NT Workstation”, sadly there was no credit for Network Essentials, it was just something you had to pass at the same time. So given that, my skills on the server aspects at least of Microsoft’s operating systems is about 8 years out of date. Maybe if I can improve my skills (and I’ll have bits of paper to prove it), then I’ll have more chance of getting a job… but can I keep it?

Spending about a week working 9-5 really made me realise how little I use the time in the day, since I have been back it has been a struggle to find things to do and not to spend money fleetingly. The lack of structure has if anything made me more depressed.

Last weekend I went to the NAS International Conference in London, it was a fairly good conference and a good chance to catch up with friends that I hadn’t seen for some time. I also got to meet some fairly big names: Alex Thompson from Channel 4 News (who has an Autistic son), Jane Asher (President of the NAS and all round good cake maker) and some of the producers and writers of Holby City and the film Snow Cake. I managed to ask some good questions as well!

Next wek I will be trying to spend my time wisely by doing some work, helping with binding for a printing company in Saltash. Its a bit of a long way to go, but its only for 5 days. So hopefully I manage to work out those 5 days! I’m also signed up to help chase up and collect in the voter registration forms for Plymouth City Council, that kinda pays on a piecemeal basis apparently, £1.50 for each form collected of which I will have 300 to chase!

Until next time… rave safe kids, rave safe!

As you may have spotted I have moved my blog. I am now hosted on Subvert.org.uk With thanks to Ben A’Lee. At the moment I haven’t moved all that much across; but it is my hope that over the next few days that should all change; and hopefully in time I will be able to move all the content that was hosted on TermiSoc’s servers.

Some of my other domains will be served from Subvert as well:

• Caple.eu
• Loupie.co.uk
• McGaw.eu
• Skippy.org.uk

Others will be let go; and hopefully others will be back soon.

And in other news:-

• If you have an Apple iPod Touch, or an Apple iPhone, there is a Plug-in on this blog that makes viewing it on a mobile device much nicer; so give that a go
• Hopefully my blog will be updated more often thanks to both the iPod/iPhone Blog tool, and Windows Live writer (Does any one know of one that will work on a Mac?).

Dan’s off cycling around the countryside, so instead it’s just Ben A’Lee, Gemma Peter and Rich Jeffery ranting about IP laws and people’s attitudes towards it.

The topics in question:

• Are software patents a good idea for developers and producers to secure their code?
• With online piracy and the failings of DRM dominating the media, what’s the next step for content providers?
• With all the new exceptions and rules being added to the GNU Public License each revision, is it becoming too restrictive for developers?
• Will physical media ever die, or is it all media hype?

All this and tea, lovings and hatings, cake, faux microphone stands and much more in this week’s LOGin!

Download now!

Yet more topical discussion from the gang at TermiSoc. This episode’s topic: The Internet.

Featuring discussion on:

• The potential downfall of ‘netiquette’ and the prevalence of ‘trash-talking’ online;
• Domain squatting and ‘ad-sites’;
• Content providers, ISPs and the ‘two-tier web’; and
• Household appliances that should be networkable.

…plus “Loving & Hating”, Tea drinking and now: ‘Today’s Microphone Stand’!

Download now!

Yes, we’re back - and now with less news and more topical discussion!

This episode’s topic: Security

Featuring discussion on:

• Should lockpicking be made illegal?
• Should programmers be responsible for bugs in their code?
• Should computer owners be responsible for bot-net attacks? and…
• Should there be a program security rating based on how quickly Bruce Schneier can crack it?

Plus! Loving & Hating and Tea Of The Day/Week/Fortnight/Month! (delete as appropriate)

Download now!