Hannent.blog

What would you do?

2011-10-11T09:16:00.001+01:00

What would you do?

Baby mix-up case grips Russians

Two families in Russia sue their local maternity hospital for giving them the wrong babies 12 years ago, in a terrible mix-up.

Taking a picture of your child makes you a terrorist suspect?

2011-10-10T13:37:00.001+01:00

Taking a picture of your child makes you a terrorist suspect? What an awesome society we live in...

Why does each successive government make things worse and not correct the mistakes of the previous government?

You are more likely to die from anything other than a terrorist attack, you have more chance of winning the lottery. That's before the anti-terrorism laws came in.

http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=0472

Row over photo in shopping centreA Facebook campaign calls for people to boycott a shopping centre after claims a man was questioned by police for taking photographs of his daughter.

Quantitive easing solved one problem...

2011-10-08T07:44:00.000+01:00

Quantitive easing solved one problem, it helped the banks shore up their balance sheets and stopped them going to the wall (plus it allowed them to keep paying fat bonuses). Now there is a threat to the UK banks from a Greek default the governor of the Bank of England has injected 75billion into the banks again.

What is getting me angry, is that he keeps saying that this will help GDP and the economy. That is just an optimistic side effect of helping the banks, if it happens at all. The banks are under no obligation to help the economy, they are getting money with no strings attached.

A direct cash gift to tax payers would have been better, the majority wouldn't have spent it on flat screen tv's like they would have done 2008, we've come a long way since then.

Don't forget on Sunday it will be...

2011-10-06T09:51:00.000+01:00

Don't forget on Sunday it will be:

12:34:56.78 9/10/11

For all us British calendar users.

Destroying homes

2011-10-03T14:28:00.000+01:00

I just read a blog post about the tax and small businesses. A lot of it made sense, especially when talking about how politicians never talk about making it easier for businesses to start up and run their books.

However buried in the article (point 4) was also a point about how to lift the economy by bulldozing houses. In the USA I understand that a lot of home have been repossessed and are now owned by the government. These houses are creating a situation of over-supply and are keeping house prices low.

The authors solution to the problem is that the government destroy them for the good of the economy...

I am not sure what to make of that, I can see his point but it feels wrong to destroy an asset...

Thoughts on Our Federal Government, Taxes and Small Business and More « blog maveri

The minimum wage...

2011-10-02T15:58:00.001+01:00

It dawned on me this morning that the minimum wage isn't just about fairness to low paid workers.

It's also about making sure income tax is paid.

Before bosses could pay £2 an hour on the books and then slip you £50 from petty cash. With the minimum wage the boss has to pay a set minimum and you'll end up paying income tax.

Sneaky, sneaky. I came to that conclusion after the Labour government introduced the law and conservatives (usually more capitalist) are continuing it.The National Minimum Wage rates : Directgov - EmploymentInformation on the National Minimum Wage (NMW) rates, guidance in foreign languages and advice on what to do if you have any problems with being paid the NMW.

The time-out proposal: A fix for the London riots

2011-08-13T11:44:00.000+01:00

A solution to the lack understanding of consequences

Give parents the right to have their children taken away by the police for a short period of time, from an hour to over-night. A time-out as the Americans would say. Repeat offenders could even have to attend boot camps to teach respect and morals.

These time-outs would help police and parents build a relationship, it would show children what happens if you have a lack of morals.

It is not going to fix the current entitlement complex that the under-class have, but it will help the next generation.

Its workable in the sense that you can even get the PCSO to do a lot of the work.

Copyright and Patents

2011-08-04T09:21:00.000+01:00

In the computer industry there is a problem with software patents at the moment. Software patents are used to block competition and stifle innovation.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-patents-attack-android.html

Trivial ideas are allowed to be patented and something like a phone can have over 200 patents covering it. When people ask me what programming is, the simplest way I can describe it is that its just Maths. 1's and 0's, the closest people usually come to this is algebra in secondary schools. Maths cannot be patented but somehow software is.

The problem with this is that patents generally last for 20 years. Which in computing terms is disproportionate. The main supporters of patents and copyright (which is not the same as patents) is that these things create wealth and protect ideas. Which is true but only in a small part. Dysons idea for a new type of vacuum cleaner is great and a great example of how a patent should allow him be rewarded for that effort.

The problem is that now his idea goes from being rewarding him to allowing him to have a monopoly, which as Microsoft has shown, you don't need 20 years to do.

Copyright law is just the same, take films for example, there is a 70 year copyright on those from when the director dies:
http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law

In our modern "almost" capitalistic world, directors and producers will make back their money within a year. Its excessive to think that a work of art would be locked up for 70 + the remaining life of its creator.

I do not think we should get rid of either copyright or patents. However certainly we should reduce their duration, software patents should be banned, then 5 for normal patents and 20 year from the date of creation for copyright. This will help by not creating monopolies, by making those that create and innovate to continue to do so.

When governments talk about reviews to the system, they only seem to talk about locking things up further for the good of the economy, which makes me sad: https://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipresponse

I want to go Solar PV

2011-07-29T12:53:00.000+01:00

Every couple of months I look at the cost of solar PV panels.

The current scheme in the UK is that you get a payment from the electric company for electricity you export to them, that rate is disproportionate to help the adoption of carbon neutral technology.

http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/apps4/pvest.php

The above site indicates that a 3.8kWp system should create me 3350kWp per year.

The current FIT (Feed In Tariff) tariff for a system under 4kW is 43.3pence.

That means that the system (if I exported it all) would generate: 3350 x 0.433 = £1450.55

http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generate-your-own-energy/Cashback-Calculator

The energy saving trust paints an even better picture of the situation but allow depends on how much is shines outside. Now £1450.55 would pay for a home improvement loan over 10 years after which I get it all. My problem is that I cannot tell if the 3350kWp is realistic. Plus there is variables like the reliability and cost of inverters, the conversion rate of the panels (new ones are meant to be 17% efficient and the top site I left at 14%).

I need more data.

DVCS - Monotone to Git

2011-07-29T10:12:00.000+01:00

I have been moving all my projects away from using the monotone version control software over to Git. Largely because monotones development has stagnated and there are lots more tools that integrate with Git than do with monotone.

For a while I have kept a cheat sheet of commands I used in monotone and their Git equivalent. I am moving a lot of my non-important documents to Google Docs and realised that this particular spreadsheet probably could do with being widely accessible.

So here it is:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtD6Xu8ZpvMgdDJ4UGtGMG95LXBLd3Jfc1ZITlBzNXc&hl=en_GB

Feel free to share, its probably of limited use as there were never many monotone users. I'll be looking to add a column for Mercurial soon as it would be nice to have it all in one place.

Innovate Britain

2011-07-14T12:15:00.000+01:00

Certainly for the last 2-3 years I have seen the spiralling cost of foods in England. With the Americans arguing about the best way not to default (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14142621) on their debt, it got me thinking what next for us?

Devaluing the pound or more Quantitative Easing would just boost the private banks margins again. Which I think did do a job of making sure the house of cards didn't fall down. However it was clearly another tax payer subsidy with no possibility of getting our money back.

Devaluing would improve exports and tourism whilst making imports more expensive and reducing the likelihood of us travelling abroad. Problem there is that the UK is not geared up for exports any more, that train has sailed (if you like to mess up your metaphors).

http://theageofstupidity.blogspot.com/2009/09/british-pound-devaluation-delusions.html

What really needs to happen is government needs to be as small as possible and the population be entrepreneurial.

I have always thought that capitalism isn't great, but its better than anything else. The reasons I see against capitalism are usually the reasons where capitalism is not being correctly used. Quantitative Easing is such an abuse, the market should have collapsed and reset itself. Like ripping off a plaster you either do it fast or slow, we took the slow route.

What should happen now, is the UK should have the strong pound and we live with that. However we then innovate our way out of the problem (Japan and German did it in the 70's and 80's). Create new ideas, products and ways of doing things that means other countries have to pay us a lot for. We need to stop looking for central banks to solve the problem. We should be asking our government to slim down its spending and red tape.

Chris

2011-06-03T13:33:00.000+01:00

Hi,

You'll have to email me, as I have no means to contact you back.

Use my name combined with my domain name hannent.co.uk

Thanks
Phil

Why wind power is the worst energy production method

2011-06-03T13:32:00.001+01:00

The use of wind turbines is a half solution.

People may talk about the price per unit of different energy production, however one very fundamental aspect of wind and to a lesser extent of solar is that its very random. People talk of average loads or peak loads but on a practical getting power to where its needed it fails

Wind blows when it wants to, we require power when we want it. Currently there is no means to store electricity to even out demand. Coal, gas, hydro and nuclear methods of production are great at offering predictable power outputs which nations need.

If you could create a battery to store the wind energy that was generated to use in the morning when everybody is having their showers that cost would need to be attributed to the cost of wind power.

To me the solution is deep geothermal. You pump water down to 2-6 miles under the earth and steam comes back up (via pipes of course). You use that to power a turbine, it can run 24/7, heat is everywhere, its incredibly low on emissions, you can even vary the power output by pumping more or less water down.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Geothermal_energy#Resources

Sound as a pound

2011-02-09T09:25:00.002Z

There's a phrase we cannot use any more...

(Thanks to quantitative easing)

World of Warcraft Crowd Control Options

2011-02-07T15:31:00.000Z

I am a big fan of World Of Warcraft, been playing it for over 3 years now.

One of the recent changes within the game is that the game is less about just attacking creatures but more about which spell or action to take. One of the actions is to crowd control monsters, which means to incapacitate them for a short time whilst you take down their friends. Which means you take less damage and the group as a whole can get the job done quicker.

For a quick reference of what is the best way to crowd control I have created a spreadsheet to help new people look up:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?hl=en_GB&key=tNBOd2st2ruIjl2ECpngsEw&hl=en_GB#gid=0

Enjoy

Love and insecurity

2011-01-27T09:26:00.000Z

If you were in a relationship and you were insecure about it you might contact that person regularly to see what they are up to. If you were secure in your relationship you would wait until you saw them next.

If you love someone they are on your mind and you should let them know, if you are not in love then you don't contact them very much.

Is it me, is there a contradiction there or am going crazy?

Twitter numbers

2011-01-14T15:11:00.000Z

My brother is following 79 with an average of 4 tweets per day == 316 tweets each day to read.

Each tweet max length is 140 characters, so say an average of 10 words per tweet.

That 3160 words per day, 22120 words per week, 94800 per month (30 days), 1,153,400 words per year.

Wikipedia says the average length of a novel is 50,000 words:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Length_of_a_novel

Bob you'll be reading 23 novels worth of tweets this year!

And people say that reading is dead.

123-reg customer service

2011-01-14T12:16:00.000Z

OMFG!

I have been having an ongoing battle with www.123-reg.co.uk my previous domain registrar for the last 8 days.

All I get is stock emails and no answers to my questions, I get different support representatives each time with nobody taking an interest in my problem.

My problem is that the DNS servers which hold my names haven't been updated with what I put into their control panel.

The final straw was that they just closed a ticket because nothing had been posted for 3 days. I was waiting for them!

A registrars job is the simplest on the planet. However they failed. Also there is no means for me to complain to a higher authority (Thanks to the web interface and lack of information on the contact us page) so since my domains are up for renewal I'll vote with my wallet elsewhere.

I just don't get twitter...

2011-01-12T11:11:00.000Z

So both my brothers are on twitter Paul and Bob. I followed them because I wanted to believe there was something good about the site. To be honest I have yet to see a tweet that has added to my life. My latest from my older brother leaves me wondering:

1, I guess is meant to be a joke, however those that actually know about fitness (which oddly my brother does) know that its actually protein that people need, not saturated fats which most people eat to get fat.

2, When Paul talks about his building stuff its clearly him talking to an audience, which is not me, this is the signal to noise ratio. That post is just noise to me as it means nothing but I still read it. Everybody wants less noise and more signal in their lives, it make life more worth while.

3, A re-tweet... God these annoy me like chain letters. Its also very primary school maths. Also consider my son that was born in 2001 and will be 10 this year. So his answer is 11 which fails this "Crazy" maths.

4, Wondering about a Masters! Really! Given the above brain dump you gave the world I think there are more important things to work on.

One of the things I read about when starting blogging is that you should have a theme and that will attract an audience. If you stray from that theme such as you writing about computing and then post a couple of posts about running then your audience will leave because they came for the computers and not the running. If you want to post about a different topic, you should create a new blog and link to it.

Paul apologies to you, I am only highlighting what's wrong with the digital age, not personally picking on you. Before the Internet an editor would vet anything that was published. Now anybody can publish anything and they often do. What twitter lacks and blogs have is tags, as an editor I can tag a post as a particular topic and a reader can follow just those topics.

Footnote: I am no longer following Paul, his tweets are too random. Bob I still do, however the jury is still out on the whole point of twitter.

American TV remakes

2011-01-06T10:23:00.001Z

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Shameless_%28U.S._TV_series%29

Sigh...

First The Office has to be remade now this. Its not like its in a different language. We can get other peoples cultures, so why can't the Americans?

iPad part 3

2011-01-01T10:52:00.000Z

Ok, surfing for 3 hours without issue this morning.

Two things are apparent:

1, I am running g only on the wireless router.

2, Next doors wifi is off.

iPad network problems part 2

2010-12-31T18:46:00.001Z

So, my problems with the iPad are not resolved. DNS settings appear just to reset the network. Apple are aware of the problems:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3304

Interestingly turning the brightness down is one of the solutions.

Current plan is to change my router from mixed b & g wireless to just g.

I checked, my neighbor has a wifi network on channel 11 and I am on 3.

iPhone sim copy method

2010-12-29T11:09:00.000Z

I could not find a concise list of how to copy contacts from an old phone with a standard micro sim to the iPhones new mini sim, so I thought I should post it here.

1, Do not put a sim in your iPhone.
2, Copy all your contacts to your phone from your current SIM card.
3, Either call or go to your mobile operators website and request the number be ported to the new sim.
4, The new mini sim has an outer layer that allows it to fit into a micro sim slot. Use this, when the phone number is ported, in the old phone.
5, Copy the contacts from the mobile to the new sim
6, Use the tool you get in the iPhone packaging to open the side of the iPhone and insert the mini sim.
7, Connect the phone to iTunes and update the phone.
8, Once its completed that (it can take an hour or so), go to the Setting, Mail and Contacts section.
9, Scroll down until you get to the contacts section and select "Import from SIM".

Job done.

Important thing is not to do what instinct tells you and turn on the iPhone as soon as you get it.

iPad and the hanging youtube playback

2010-12-29T10:57:00.000Z

I am an iPad owner now. On the surface its cool technology, second impression is "How do I use a tablet in my lifestyle?", third impression is that my PC and laptop are now used about 20% of the time and the instant on and portability of the iPad is far better. I can now make bread whilst reading/watching the news for example (I hate traditional news broadcasts because its linear and I cannot pick the subject matter.

So I was getting ticked off with youtube on the iPad. It would randomly hang as if the buffer had run out then 1-5mins later resume playing. Odd.

Googling suggested that I needed to change the DNS setting:

http://appletoolbox.com/2010/05/ipad-slow-youtube-fixes/

This sounded very odd, I also didn't like the idea of putting in a number into my computer without knowing more about it.

Turns out that OpenDNS is a company selling DNS services. If you take their free package they inject adverts into your browsing. I assume they are redirecting people that mistype to their advert pages.

If the solution was to not use the local routers DNS server, the next best fix would be to use my ISP's DNS servers, because they are nearer to me.

Sure enough, it worked, getting the ISP's DNS servers from my router removed the pauses.

But why?

My best guess is IPv6. Linux had a problem a few years back where IPv6 was enabled by default and the first priority. However it would cause a delay because it was waiting for IPv6 to fail before trying IPv4, and doing that on each new connection. By setting the DNS to outside my network the iPad has no choice but to use IPv4 from the get go. Of course without running a packet trace I am not going to find out for sure. If I did prove the theory I cannot fix it because the iPad is closed source, bummer.

Precognition and long term memory

2010-12-20T22:30:00.000Z

Many people over the years have sought answers to the meaning to dreams and can we see the future.

On some level for all my life I have had dreams, that become a reality. The dreams by definition are short segments of time 10 - 30 seconds at most. The precognitions occur 6 to 18 months later. They are always scenes that seem impossible given my present life ciircumstances. On the whole not overly useful...

Time is a human invention. We perceive an order of events, however sciene tells use that time can flow in any and all directions. Time can be changed, such as at a blackhole or with a theoretical wormhole.

Based on that, the simplest explanation for what happens in these dreams, is that my perception of time is relaxed for a moment and my brain processes that instead.

Two factors stand out:

Firstly it's always in my long term memory, no déjà vu.

Secondly going to sleep drunk or over tired seems to make it happen more often.

The frequency is probably twice a year these dreams give me something to remember.

I am not sure how to proceed...

Daylight savings time

2010-12-06T15:00:00.000Z

In my inbox was again my local MP. This time he was promoting he virtues of removing daylight savings time.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11913582

Right now there is a bill before parliament that if passed will allow for an in depth study and trial of moving the time and getting rid of daylights savings.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2010-12-03a.1083.2&s=speaker%3A24777

My problem with this is that its a waste of money, we'll spend millions on consultations, get a trial running. When everybody asks why, the government will then spend millions more on explaining why it thinks its a good idea to people that are more concerned about bankers bonuses and the NHS.

The tabloids will have a field day that MPs are trying to destroy the "Great British" international time standard that is GMT or British Summer Time.

A beautiful quote from the BBC "Supporters say lighter evenings would reduce traffic fatalities and boost exercise" so why is the bill about getting funding for an in depth study if this is already known. Its all opinion at the moment and doing this at a time when momey is tight is ridiculous.

Holidays paid for by me

2010-11-20T08:52:00.000Z

I am raging at the moment (probably not a great time to write something) but my brother sent me an excellent documentary about our national debt being 4.8 trillion pounds.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/britains-trillion-pound-horror-story

Which is £77,000 debt for every man, woman and child in the UK. The other great point that it made was that MPs have no money. So when they say we should spend this or do that they are actually talking about our tax money.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11800847

This MP thinks that the poor should have holiday's paid for by the state!

That means more taxes to pay for those not willing to get up and earn money for themselves. Entrepreneurial activity is at an all time low and the government seems determined to remove any reason. Not only are they going to have to tax more but also if you cannot be bothered to do anything you'll get more.

I rage more because I pay a lot of tax and have only had 1 short break in 9 years. My girlfriend is at university studying to be a nurse and we have to manage on one income. How on earth is it right that someone who isn't able to get off their backside and do more gets more!

Technically right now, I would be better off financially if I got myself laid off for stress related problems and my girlfriend quit her course and I moved out for 4 days a week. The only thing stopping me is some stupid invisible morals thing (which will not give me reward at the end of my life).

Offended

2010-10-12T08:40:00.000+01:00

Sigh,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-11507505

I am kind of offended that the date 10th of October 2010 got so much news. A three of a kind is easily beaten by a straight 12:34.567 8th September 2010

There was something truly unique.

Political correctness

2010-08-12T09:26:00.000+01:00

https://poelcat.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/youre-doing-it-wrong/

The above link is something I wish I had written. Its biting back at all that we are told we should do.

Often we know what we should do and we choose or do not care. Badgering people can often have the opposite reaction. Human beings need to reach their own conclusions.

The more we hear about global warming or eating correctly the bigger the backlash will be.

Less taxes, more price increases

2010-07-19T12:45:00.000+01:00

Last year there was a proposal of a new tax to pay for rural broadband, they wanted to charge every landline £6 per year (regardless of if it was in the countryside or even used for broadband).

With the new government coming into power that got killed off.

However the company which would have received the money to invest has simply done what it should have done in the first place and increased line rental by 50 pence per month:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/19/bt_rise/

Of course we see that BT are now the bad guy as opposed to the government, which is probably how it should be. However BT are now going to pay tax on that extra 50 pence so the government got two things for abandoning one.

F in maths rant

2010-07-06T09:13:00.001+01:00

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6128/The-Ultimate-List-100-Facebook-Statistics-Infographics.aspx

My brother shared with me a link about Facebook. Which is an incredibly bad use of statistics and the reason why modern science is dumbing down. One of the diagrams is showing more single men than single women, this tells us nothing. Basic set theory would ask "How much are the two sets overlapping?", people do not join as a couple so why would you expect both halfs of relationship to be Facebook.

Does the information not point to single men using Facebook as a dating site? Rather than the implied men claim they are not single. Again I am making something up, like they do, its all meaningless.

Statistics are so badly abused these days, there should be a law that means you have to link to the actual data so someone else can verify a claim (80% of the population agree with me). The BBC news seems really bad at offering a percentage with only half an explanation.

I am trying to teach my children that advertising on television is a lie. You will not get whiter than white clothes, your teeth will not magically stop being sensitive, cars are not better for the environment because of a 2% reduction in emissions, cash for gold is a rip off, cash for phones will not get you £150 and you never save £250 on car, home or pet insurance.

I am now going to have to write a lecture on how people make up statistics for when they get to secondary school.

Sigh, where did all the cynics go?

P.S. To add the 2% that is bad for the environment is based on the fact that the manufacturing process produces a colossal amount of pollution.

P.S.S. The £250 saving on car insurance is impossible since my insurance is less than that and I suspect only twenty year olds would see reductions like that but that would be because of natural market forces not because of a better company.

Which word would you get rid of from the English language?

2010-06-15T11:49:00.000+01:00

I would like to get rid of the word New. It is so annoying, its relative to a time, however when its used it is nearly never correctly expressed with a context.

Also if its written down it is even less useful. Advertising abuses the word and people creating documents to share are just as bad.

Microsoft DOCX format Epic fail

2010-05-14T16:16:00.001+01:00

In case you want to know why DOCX is crap:

This is a sample of what I have to deal with:

<span style="color: #595959;"></span><span style="color: grey; font-family: 'swis721 md bt'; font-size: 44pt;"> </span>

That's right, Microsoft thinks that you need colour on nothing, then you need font and colour on spaces. Now actually I am smart enough to know that in truth you want spaces to have a font so that if you wrote a sentence, then wanted to add a word and put in spaces for space you would need the spaces to preserve the font details. HOWEVER in this case that information is page wide, no need for the document to be littered with crap.

You could argue that its only ever read by computers so why does it matter, it matters because its not only read by computers, XML is a human readable format. If we didn't need that would would have just stuck the EDI Interchange documents (binary formats).

The EU Tax Office

2010-05-14T13:39:00.000+01:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/05/what_volcker_thinks.html

What is interesting here is that in point 12 he talks about the eurozone coordinating on tax and spending.

This is the first time I have heard about this without it being immediately followed by "Never going to happen".

With Greece being bailed out by the other Euro members, it might seem fair to those bailing out the country that they help manage the payback. I could actually image France and Germany agreeing to a European Tax Office to collect taxes from all people in the Euro zone.

People seem to be forgetting that vampires are evil

2010-04-09T14:59:00.000+01:00

Goodbye Guy Kewney

2010-04-08T13:29:00.000+01:00

His articles in PCW each month were a religion for me growing up:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/08/goodbye_guy/

Why there are terrorists

2010-04-06T13:43:00.000+01:00

Back after the September the 11th 2001 bombing I decided to look into the history of why anybody would crash a plane into a tower block.

The truth is no sane person would and that for someone to be driven to extremes they have to have been through extremes.

The western governments have fought by proxy for decades and now that has come back to haunt them. Governments would give training and weapons to foreign people to help fight oppression and communism. Then promise to help rebuild the country once they had one.

We are not at war currently, we won (according to George W Bush). So its quite shocking to see a gunship killing a group of people on the ground because the suspect one of them is holding a heavy weapon.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/06/wikileaks_gunfire_video/

Now I know that its important to police the population, you do not want them walking around with RPG's (rocket propelled grenades). However, this was not policing. It was murder, there was clearly not enough evidence as it was a camera that was being carried. If there is ambiguity it should be cleared up. 1 person was suspected of carrying a banned weapon but they all had to die by the looks of it.

I approve of gunships being used to support troops on the ground but not as the only means of policing.

This video is an example of why the western world is fighting a war on terror, because of our mistakes.

(on a technical note as I have worked on defence system, there is technology out there to recognise the type of tank or plane based on its silhouette or outline. A clever computer program could also do the same with a large weapon like an RPG, clearly the camera needs to be better but shape recognition is possible)

Earth hour

2010-03-27T19:44:00.002Z

Somebody I work for had a new footer to his email this a few weeks back, promoting Earth Hour which is the plan that everybody at 8:30pm turn off their lights for one hour to show their commitment to climate change.

Now in the past I might have thought OK cool, someone is doing something. However to me this is epic fail (lower case for empasis), the fuel strikes back in 2001 were the same, the purpose was to not fill up or prevent those that could. However shortly afterwards the balance just returned to normal. It was a blip on history of time.

Also what about Live Aid back in 2005, what a waste of time. People had a great time going to a concert and feeling good that they might be helping something, however did people really change? No, there is still suffering in Africa. 5 years and the majority of the people that supported that effort are doing very little to help now.

Earth hour is the same sort of short term plan that within a week nobody will be talking about. PLUS on the website it asks you to video, take picture and Twitter about it. Excuse me but all that hardware is taking up more power than the low energy bulbs I am turning off. Don't just think about your computer and camera, how about the servers that are running 24/7, the Internet routers all that is creating carbon emissions.

The problem is not awareness, everybody knows there is a problem (some deny we are the cause but that's different).

The problem is the lack of clean abundant energy.

There was a program on television a few years back. A business man set a challenge that he could make anybody a millionaire within 2 years. There was 2 stages to his plan which for the most part people fell at the second.

The first was to reduce outgoings, many people spend hundreds on takeaways or ready meals, leaving televisions on, throwing away things they no longer needed. Practically all the people in the show were thousands better off over the course of the first 6 months by watching where their money was actually going.

The second part was to do something with the money saved, hire someone to be an employee in a new business venture.

The businessman's premise was that you could only go so far with reducing. To truly move forward you needed to invest. Earth Hour should be about asking everybody in the developed countries to hand over $100

A Jedi you are not

2010-03-17T12:34:00.000Z

Just been crying with laughter at a clear moron:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/16/jobcentre_jedi/

I also consider the manager of the JobCentre a moron for apologising the man in question.

Basically he got kicked out of a JobCentre for not taking off his hoodie which he claimed that he was a Jedi and wearing a hood is part of his religion.

There are so many things wrong with that here are a few:

1, I know Jedi has been recognised as a religion (which I guess is ok) however the religion does not mandate the wearing of hoodies like in the case of Muslim women.

2, The guy was in a JobCentre, a place were people are trying to help you. Do you really want to get on the wrong side of the people that are trying to help you? That just proves his attitude stinks.

3, Jedi's are meant to be respectful and peace loving, his attitude is neither.

4, At the bottom of the article the reporter suggests that in future if any other Jedi's are ejected perhaps just a wave of their hand and the words "This is not the hoodie your looking for" would be enough.

Speculation in the media

2010-03-04T13:09:00.000Z

I just stumbled across a talk my Michael Crichon (The famous author)

http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-whyspeculate.html

Its excellent. Read it. Not all the way as he does rant, you get the idea after about 10mins.

Bank shares for everybody

2010-02-22T13:27:00.000Z

What a brilliant idea.

So good in fact I cannot see it happening.

The sum of it is that UK tax payers own 70 billion of shares in the rescued banks. That's tax money that would have gone on other things like health, education and social security. Since its an investment and not just money thrown down a hole it is plausible to get the money back.

When and how you get it back is another question. I have hated the idea that ministers would decide how and when because you cannot trust that an individual or small group would put the interest of the country ahead of their own desires.

One idea is that every tax payer be given shares in the state owned banks. It would be like a tax refund in a sense without the government having to give out hard cash. That way individually we would each make a decision as to when to cash in our investment and the return on it.

Whilst I personally would like this option I am not sure how it would work out for many. Some would cash in their shares for a new flat screen TV before the value had a chance to go up. Others might be pressured into selling for ultra low value.

The sale of The Port of Dover

2010-02-11T12:04:00.000Z

The sale of the Port of Dover is a sure thing. Sometimes you just cannot hold back the tide. The chief executive officer of the Port of Dover has a dream that he be in charge of a multi-million pound business and the bonuses that come with such a position, I guess.

Right now the Port of Dover is a trust, which is a not for profit business that means any profit gets put back into the business. The idea is that it helps with stability with steady investment.

Modern business practice does not work in such a fashion. These days the motto is "Invest big, win big". So the port needs to be a limited company to get a massive mortgage to expand. A trust cannot get a big mortgage because the lenders are worried that they cannot claim the company if it defaults on its debt.

Our local MP (Labour) is opposed to such a move as are the majority of the population in the area. The prospective Conservative candidate (elections in a few months) made a bold claim that labour were going to sell the port to the French. The Daily Mail while not a paper I endorse put it in typical tabloid fashion:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249194/Dover-symbol-British-sovereignty-sold-French-help-reduce-debt.html

Our Labour MP clearly needed to do something to show that is not his intent so he asked his Prime Minister if Labour will sell the port:
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2010-02-10a.902.10&s=speaker%3A10491#g910.4

Which is excellent, to quote the PM: "There will be no forced privatisation under Labour"

So he managed to say the word no but actually meant yes. Of course the conversation in the House of Commons moved swiftly on from there. The agreement to convert the port into a company is expected to be rubber stamped and will probably come into effect at the start of the next governments 4 year term.

Personally I think the port needs new ideas rather than new building. Whilst credit is cheap right now I do not think it wise for the port to get into massive debt. Recent history has proved that running up huge debt saddles you with a burden from which you cannot move when you need to adapt to the future.

Carbon Capture and Storage (is a bad idea)

2010-01-08T14:16:00.000Z

For a few years now I have been hearing about Carbon Capture and Storage. I always thought I should read up on it to see what its all about. I figured (incorrectly) that it was about planting lots of trees.

Carbon capture is about fitting a device to a power station and extracting the carbon and then pumping that carbon into the empty spaces left by mining the gas and oil.

As illistrated. Now clearly there are a few issues there:

Firstly its not the trees I was expecting,

Secondly it only on power stations that have been converted,

Thirdly the medium term cost (when the station is decommissioned the equipment is useless),

My MP asked what I would consider to be a stupid question:

"What assessment has my right hon. Friend made of the overall job creation potential of CCS over the next five to 10 years? What will he do to ensure that such jobs are created right across the regions, and not just in the areas local to the plants?"

How can a scheme to fit a filter to a power station create jobs across a county? There are no power stations in his area so in part he is fishing for some more jobs for his voters. However if jobs were created for CCS in a region where a power station did not exist surely that would lead to more carbon from travelling to the power station?

This form of carbon capture is like the tobacco companies putting filters on cigarettes, it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling that its not all that bad. However cars, planes or domestic heating is not covered by this form of capture.

Of course a utility bill will go up because a percent of the energy produced then has to go to power the filter and then pump it out to sea and back underground. Then there is the capital cost of building the equipment and the off sure platform to pump it. Oh an in case you were wondering about the existing platforms, they only have a short life and need constant maintenance.

All in lets say 300million could be spent on converting a power station, probably either through taxes or higher bills, then spread that over 10-15 years.

For that same money you could get 6,000 homes completely off grid and producing no carbon for heating or electric. That would also have a net effect of:

1, Making solar equipment cheaper,

2, Producing no toxins during use (ignore initial manufacture at the moment as that is covered by other laws)

3, Flexible power (cars, heating and devices can use it)

4, Local, as in less dependent on a national grid

5, Protection from foreign price rises

Carbon capture via trees I think would also be great, however it would need to be a global scheme as we could plant load and the USA none and the trees would soak up their CO2.

Preauthentication and email

2010-01-08T09:45:00.000Z

Ok, a significant part of the Internet is devoted to spam/junk emails. Never has a day gone by in the last 10 years where I have not had a single spam email and that is with the best filtering you can get.

My brother reported to me yesterday that my dads business deals with 20,000 spam attempts per day. Perhaps 3 to 5 get though. Which statistically is fine but for a user its annoying in the first place.

At the beginning of the decade their was a flirtation with pre authenticating people with whitelists of known people. This died out as people hated having to email to say yes this is valid and it broke mailing lists.

Now I prefer instant messages because of that pre-authentication is built into the protocol.

For email to survive it needs to evolve. Claims that changes that break existing functionality need to be pushed down. You cannot make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

Email servers need to store whitelists, they need to get the whitelists from their users. The same system that instant message clients use is absolutely fine. More and more I am using instant messaging for business, given another 10 years and I would expect it to be the majority of the time.

Defaulting on your mortgage

2010-01-04T12:44:00.000Z

The greedy goblin (which is a blog mainly about World of Warcraft) also gives out economics advice. Today's was indeed special:

http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2010/01/walk-away.html

Basically if you owe more than your house is worth, stop paying the mortgage and walk away.

Which on the surface looks socially irresponsible because it would lead to wider poverty and we are told as a species we need to work together...

However after reading the whole thing it lead me to think that those that did act irresponsible were the bankers and they are the ones that are living the high life...hummmmm

The article makes a point that if you were in negative equity of 100k and you pay that off, you are feeding the bankers. If you walk away you save yourself the cost of 100k loan.

I personally am not in negative equity so cannot pull this trick off but it did get me thinking about moral obligations and is our sense of duty wrong?

Copenhagen Summit

2009-12-08T12:25:00.000Z

The Copenhagen summit it taking place this week:

http://en.cop15.dk/

Its basically the worlds politicians getting together and agreeing what is to be done about the climate change.

This morning whilst watching bloomberg they had the CEO of Ryanair saying "Don't be stupid trees need C02" in response the the question of the growing levels of pollution which the aviation industry is responsible for.

From a statement like that clearly shows how uneducated or selfish the man is. Clearly trees do need CO2 to grow, but if there are not the trees to take that CO2 where does it go? His comment also utilised the word "Stupid" which clearly shows that rather than debate the issue he just wants to bully his audience.

It is a shame that the head of a large company clearly would only reduce pollution if he was forced to do so. At the heart of it there is a capitalist which is denying rational thought because money is at stake.

Whilst many businesses are asking for a reprieve from climate issues, I think its the wrong time. A recession (we are not in a depression) is a time for a spring clean, people loose job and new industries take effect. Those that are most scared of change are the larger more set in their ways businesses.

Should the government veto the bonus bankers get?

2009-12-04T12:43:00.000Z

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2009/dec/04/rbs-bank-bonus-hester

It appears that I am at odds with the vast majority of the poll. I am part of 6% that believe RBS should not have its bonus payment fund limited.

Most people are still angry about what has happened and think that the bankers have screwed us over. We that maybe but we are way past that now. The British government OWN that bank.

Now if I owned a business I would want the best and brightest working for me. I would not want those that could not get a job working anywhere else, because my business would sink like the titanic.

If the government limits the bonuses given by RBS to its staff, the top 10 to 20% will leave for Barclay's or any of the 100 other banks that will pay the going rate. The business will suffer and the 56 billion pound investment will be lost. In 5 years time the money we put into the bank could be worth 66 billion or it could be worth 46 billion.

By removing the top 10% to 20% of staff which way will OUR investment in the bank go?

If people want to punish fat cats then do that via a tax, if you want to prevent the same thing happening again read history (this is a natural cycle).

When I heard that we were bailing out the banks and taking ownership of them I was not worried because it was an investment, in the future that asset would be worth something. However now we see that the papers and politicians are going to destroy that asset because of an emotional response to someone driving a better car than them.

Break dns to end scam emails

2009-12-01T10:32:00.000Z

The internet domain name system allows for almost unlimited naming convention, with the exception of the top level (which will soon be anything anybody wants).

Scammers exploit this by sending emails with the following server names:

http://www.mybank.alliance-leicester.co.uk.iksadd.org.im/

On the surface you get the Alliance and Leicester name so if you are not savy you think your at your bank. No 99% of legitimate use will not have more than the 3 parts:

www ==> server name
alliance-leicester ==> domain
co.uk ==> Top level domain

The scammers here have 4 sub-domains ( mybank.alliance-leicester.co.uk. ) added to help them pull off their fraud. Surely browsers and email clients could warn when we have even 1 sub-domain?

Theres a clever idea

2009-11-02T08:54:00.000Z

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/01/demos_music_survey/

So getting to page two they note that the survey results suggest rather than cutting people off for file sharing you should charge them a £30 fine each month.

Brilliant.

The media industry just got customers for no infrastructure cost and a regular stream of income. Cutting people off or suing a few for £200,000 has done nothing, they surely never see that money.

There will always be hardcore pirates but the few that are borderline will be converted into monthly paying customers.

Recession as a good thing

2009-10-16T10:06:00.000+01:00

Reading a news article earlier this morning made me realise that recession is actually a good thing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/14/bear-stearns-pair-fraud-case

In a sense the fraud that bankers perform is caught out by the recession. A recession is like a detox, we look at all that is wrong and fix it. Then we go on another binge, its a natural cycle. One of our Prime Ministers phrases whilst he was in-charge of the economy was that he had ended boom to bust. Which is an outrageous claim for one man to make even before the recession.

Time are hard but that is sometimes needed to make you appreciate the good times.

Ban websites

2009-09-25T09:59:00.000+01:00

A new feature I would like added to my web browser is the ability to ban a website from my search listings.

Just recently I have been looking something up and I visit a site which imediately does not show me what I clicked on but a full screen message asking me to become a member.

http://www.daniweb.com/
(No link as I do not want to promote them)

This just enrages me, I close the pop-up, and hit back without even reading the site. Why be an indexable site if your just going to annoy people with prompts like that. It failed to provide me with what I expected to see and in a sense tried to sell me something. How would you feel if you switched on your television and before you could watch anything you either had to click no or enter your personal details.

Grrrrrrr.

I know natural selection will allow these sites to die, putting barriers to entry is a sure fire way of killing a site. Friends reunited did exactly what facebook does now. But friends reunited tried to charge, fail.

I will be interested to see what happens when news organisations start charging for access (as Rupert Murdoc has said he would), the reporters need paying but I can only see the blog-o-sphere being the new uncensored media. Which is good and bad at the same time...

Executive pay, sigh...

2009-09-14T13:06:00.000+01:00

People are looking at executive pay in the news right now and asking people about what they think:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/poll/2009/sep/14/executive-pay-bonuses

Problem with that is that its very narrow options and Bias:

Should pay be capped at 100x the average salary?
Should pay be capped at 10x the average salary?
Should pay be capped at £5,000,000 per year?
Should there be no restrictions on pay?

Clearly the last option is framed in a negative way. Personally I would choose none of the above (however that was not an option, oddly). I think a hard limit like these is unnatural. I would not like a system that penalises winners and puts them on the same level as mediocre executives.

Which might make you think that having a pay as a factor of the average would be good...WRONG... think about it in a global context. China could have a director earning £10,000,000 per year and paying an average employee salary of £1,000 per year. Where would you rather work if you were a director and good at your job? Which would leave England with mediocrity...look forward to that.

At the end of the day democracy is built into businesses via shareholders, the government need not get involved. Shareholders (you and me if we care enough) should decide the compensation to executives and just make it so that shareholders decide AFTER directors have done well, not before as the system is setup now. Shareholders have Annual General Meetings (AMG) in which these things could be voted on.

Job done, no need for newspapers, politicians or anybody else. I should run for Prime Minister!

BBC reporting dumbing down

2009-08-22T09:12:00.003+01:00

I still read the BBC news, I am a UK tax payer and television licence holder. But I think I am going to have to stop, I just read an article about an athlete that has been accused of being a man.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8215112.stm

Questioning somebody's identity like that is very personal and humiliating. The story gripped me with questions about what that would be like and how is sport addressing the issue. Then right at the end it says:

"Groups supporting her have been formed on social networking site Facebook."

WTF! Clearly the reported just wanted an excuse to log on to facebook and add more friends. Advertising facebook is not the remit of the BBC.

Update: I just submitted a complaint to the BBC and asked for a reply.

Hybrid cars

2009-08-13T13:38:00.003+01:00

There is a little bit of controversy about how to measure miles per gallon of hybrid cars.

The current claim is that you charge up, drive 40 miles on electric and then with the gallon of fuel onboard you can drive a further 190 miles. So they add that up and get 230 miles per gallon which beats my 55MPG car by quite a way.

Personally I think those figures are nonsense, a quantum leap in technology like that is most surprising as it stands. However my main beef is that I use a MPG as a marker of how much it will cost to run my car. With this new method the cost of charging the car up overnight and whilst at work (how many work places are actually going to do this) is not factored into the equation.

Petrol is an excellent form of energy because of lack of loss of energy during transport (compared with electricity over copper). What is needed is a super capacitor that can store the same amounts of energy as a fuel tank. Hook that up the a nuclear power-station and then you have the problem solved.

Just shifting the CO2 problem from the car to the coal/gas power-station does not work.

And for those that are on green energy tariffs, you need to read your fine print as only a percentage of your energy is actually green. Same goes for organic foods in supermarkets.

Payouts

2009-08-10T13:49:00.002+01:00

When quantitative easing was first announced I thought it was a bold move that will do something for the economy, however now looking at its effects I can see that by nature the banks are having to hold the extra money they are getting from the process. They have no incentive to pass that on the savers and businesses.

I think a wholesale cash payment like the Americans and Australians might have been a better way. People are going to do one of three things:

1, Pay off debt
2, Invest
3, Spend it

All three have a direct benefit to the wide economy and banks. However quantitative easing just benefits the banks. The downside of giving money of course is that some people will spend it on goods that are imported, however this would be a 1 in 3 chance of that and then a 50% chance that its an imported goods.

For the 30 million tax payers the 150billion QE program could have been spend giving each of them £5,000!

That would have taken a bite out of my mortgage.

Gnome desktop design

2009-08-05T07:05:00.001+01:00

Ok so I stumbled across a blog post saying that they were going to reduce the number of icons in the Gnome Desktop to give it a cleaner feel. I had this to say:

I personally hate that some actions have icons and others do not. However I wish you had gone the other way and removed the text instead.

Humans are far better a picking shapes and colours rather than reading text plus you get the added bonus of not having to translate that into 200+ languages (except for tooltips perhaps).

The post mentions that people can speed read but you need to reduce the amount of skill people need to work with a computer.

User interfaces should be measured in terms of eye movement, how many times I have to move your eye to get to where it needs to be. Reading lines of text (menus in this case) will not help in my opinion.

An all image path is very much harder but once you are there it will be a better place.

A better browser

2009-07-28T13:14:00.002+01:00

Rather than burn more CO2 to create flashy effects how about context browsing?

Like the "Private browsing" mode but you could have many of them, one for Intranet tabs, one for work based research, one for Lunch time browsing, one for "Private browsing".

Also what about bringing:

Google glears functionality to the native browser: SQL Engine for offline work
Local network shared caching (especially for stream data aka YouTube)
Plugin audio and video codecs for native playback (HTML5)
Quality of Service tagging for smoother browsing
Telephony and IM integration via gateways/API's

Beat me to it brother

2009-07-22T13:00:00.003+01:00

Thank you Bob.

The Terrorism Act is now the defacto call of the Police it seems:

"Waylett and his long-term friend John Innis, 20, were stopped under the Terrorism Act in Lodge Road, St John's Wood, west London, after the actor took a photograph of a police patrol as they drove past."

Why was a suspected drug user and actor stopped under Anti-Terror laws?

What most governments and news agents fail to report is that we lost the war on terror. Think about it... do people live with more fear or less fear?

Retail banking

2009-07-17T13:07:00.003+01:00

Bank errors can be funny at times.

However you have to notice how retail banking is not human any more. All decisions are down the the computer and even marketing to customers is as well.

If you are close to into your overdraft the bank will send you pamphlets on loans, if you are in credit they will send you details on savings and investments. If you swing between being in credit and into debt you get both.

It is a computer program that is deciding what to do, no human assessment. I asked not to be sent any letters by my bank (paper free banking as its called) however that does not apply to their marketing department who know I own a house, have a mortgage and need insurance.

Also go into your branch and the chances of getting help are determined by how well the adviser can operate the computer in front of them.

Do you twitter?

2009-07-16T12:10:00.002+01:00

Err, what is the point of twitter?

The few times I have been there its filled with dribble. Nothing on the site has affected me to make me think of anything other than why am I on this website.

It just seems to be the infinite monkeys theorem.

People talk about the site as if there was some value to it. Facebook I can understand appeals to peoples vanity and laziness but twitter is just a mystery to me.

Step too far

2009-07-07T12:23:00.003+01:00

I just read about a couple of new devices:

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=2009-07-06a.692.2

Which clearly need banning.

The mosquito is an ultra-sonic device which emits sounds which only younger people can hear and will therefore not want to be around.

The second is acne lights which target vain teenagers by highlighting skin blemishes.

Now youth offenders are a problem however this clearly is not the solution, it is discriminatory against an age group regardless of their actions or attitude. Would an anti old person device be acceptable?

This is somebody trying to cure the symptoms and not the disease.

Invest in the NASDAQ

2009-07-07T07:50:00.003+01:00

Just a little silliness this morning. However can you spot the problem on the screen shot?

And no I do not mean the newspaper anti-labour bias:

Software innovation

2009-07-02T21:57:00.003+01:00

Just finished reading an article on if the Linux desktop is innovating to much:
http://lwn.net/Articles/338103/

The short answer is no.

The long answer is that computers or computer human interaction is a long way from where it needs to be. The latest generation of phones are showing the way. They are less about showing you ALL you can do and more about showing you what you want to do.

Right now we are moving from the Model T Ford to a Lincoln Mark II, this is early days of computing still and to get stuck with wanting icons in the same place or functions to do the same thing is only going to hold us back. I want a computer system that does everything I need when I need it. To get there we need to innovate, which is going to cause pain to those that do not like change.

But as the old family motto goes: "Good times, Bad times, all times change."

National bankers pay

2009-06-23T12:49:00.004+01:00

This was an argument waiting to happen:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article6552400.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=1185799

People are outraged at the pay that the top executives get. Once we brought into these banks all tax payers expect banker pay to drop to £100,000 per year.

Its not going to happen nor should it. Compare it to a top footballer, David Beckham is not really worth £100 million as a footballer, however he was a guarantee that a club would be in the top 3.

Now what I want is not that bankers pay be reduced but that my £8billion invested in RBS be doubled in 2 years time. Saving myself £9 million now to put a higher risk on £8 billion in 2 years time is just stupid.

As I have said before, in the short term nothing much needs changing, bankers are under pressure from debt markets and do not need more rules and reduced pay. Mid to long term sure think up some rules about people get nothing if they mess up in a big way.

Right now we, as tax payers need to think about all these billions we have invested at the lowest point in the stock market. In 5 to 10 years that share price should be 3-5 times what it is now. We should be more worried that some MP is going to sell those shares at a discount to some city friends of his!

Banking rules

2009-06-18T12:55:00.004+01:00

Today there is talk about how to reform the banking industry.

Whilst I am not keen on the current governments monetary policy for the last 10+ years (borrow more, sell assets) I have to say I am with the current chancellor with his idea of not changing the rules.

When in the midst of a storm you do not start fixing your boat as you might get washed overboard. The worst has happened and we just have to ride it out.

Wait a year or two then decide, we have the time.

Also whilst the Bank of England wants more powers let us not forget that for the last two years they did nothing to stem the cheap debt. In fact by lowering interest rates they encouraged it.

Prudent people, myself included, saw the start of this almost exactly two years ago. It was reported on and ignored by those making the money.

New Government

2009-06-17T12:45:00.004+01:00

I think the system of government is not quite right. Something has bugged me for years since reading Plato's republic. In it he said the leaders should be philosophers. Clearly you could read this as his bit to be Prime Minister.

But essentially he is right. The people that are making laws are those voted in via a popularity contest. It dawned on me the other day that I knew nothing about what Gordon Brown did before becoming an MP and I was surprised at what I found...

What makes a PhD History student turned TV presenter a good person to decide laws and govern over the whole of the British economy?

If it was a CV would you invite him in for an interview?

So surely that leads to the next question, if you were to run the UK like a business how would it be structured?

Well you would have a chief executive officer and correctly qualified people doing the day to day and long term planning. Behind them you would have shareholders that would vote on the board of directors.

Now that clearly looks like what we have with the exception of the qualified bit. What you could do is abstract away one level like schools or charities. You could have smart people running things and a board of governors that intervene when things go wrong or when someone new needs to be picked.

The MP's could be governors of the UK but employees would create laws, smart people, people trained to do so. Pay bonuses when they simplify laws or create a return on investment, right now there is no incentive for an MP to get better at what they do.

Taking it that one step further you could then out source Parliment. Why not?

A little knowledge

2009-05-02T12:59:00.003+01:00

So I removed a USB stick while it was still writing changes to the stick, it ended up breaking the FAT table. When I re added the stick it was read only (ro) :-(

Of course I tried a fsck which showed up the errors on the stick but would not fix it because it was Read Only...

So on my ubuntu 9.04 I installed GParted, right clicked on the drive and selected "Check", it ran the check after telling me it was going to unmount it for me. Next time I removed and added the drive it was working perfectly again.

While I knew a little it would have been nicer if the linux mount software (I think its Udev) had realised there was a problem an offered to fix it for me... It knew enough to log the problem.

Remote linux support

2009-04-06T21:57:00.003+01:00

Hello,

http://code.google.com/p/gitso/

On ubuntu 8.10 you will need to type the following to install Gitso:

sudo apt-get -f install x11vnc vncviewer libvncserver0 python-wxgtk2.8

sudo apt-get -f install python-wxtools python-wxversion libwxbase2.8-0 libwxgtk2.8-0
(This one is all on one line)

wget http://gitso.googlecode.com/files/gitso_0.5_all.deb

sudo dpkg -i gitso_0.5_all.deb

To run the application you will need to go to the "Application" menu, then
"Internet" and click on "Gitso"

Enter the address of the person giving you support and press "Start" and Bobs your uncle.  Or in my case my brother.

Pidgin: Jingle file transfer

2009-03-24T13:29:00.002Z

In an effort to make file transfers more robust a crazy patch writer of Pidgin created a patch with adds another file transfer method.

You can download a copy from:
http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin-2.6.0devel-debug.exe

If you know me, install the application and send me a file to test.

The popular press

2009-03-18T09:40:00.003Z

Not a lot impresses me about the popular press, too much emphasis is placed on celebrity and not enough on the world at large. Reporters are comfy with chasing down a celebrity in Covent garden [3] rather than going out to places like Africa where real tragedy happens on a daily basis.

Two events this weekend highlight that. Firstly Red Nose Day [1] is a fund raising event for those that need it most in England and Africa. It was great and raised the most it has ever done. However now that its all over the paper and magazines have quickly resumed their hour by hour cover of Jade Goody's death [2].

While Mrs Goody's illness is tragic, I would say that the reporting of it has sickened me. Not because they shouldn't but because most of the press only report on tragedy if its a celebrity.

As if to say that life is only meaningful if you are famous...

[1] http://www.rednoseday.com/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Goody
[3] http://www.coventgardenlife.com/info/covent_garden.htm

Bankers pay

2009-03-17T16:35:00.002Z

Way to many people are worried about the past [1] and not enough about the future, when I see complaints about how much bankers are paid or even directors of big companies never see anybody saying "Why don't we create a law to prevent this in future".

I am not saying outlaw bonuses, but do have a law that mandates that bonuses be just and in the public interest. Bonuses are an important incentive to some cases and owners of a company should get a larger share than others.

However in the recent banking crisis, clearly there has been payments which are not in the public interest since the public have saved the banks and businesses from collapse. That way a director of a company cannot pump up the value of the business and then let it go bust and taking a golden parachute with them.

Being cynical I would say such a law would never happen, a lot of long standing MP's end up as non-executive directors and such a law would ruin their retirement plans.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2009/03/goodwins_tax_break.html

Pidgin XMPP testing

2008-09-24T11:48:00.002+01:00

Back to the cutting edge, custom emoticons for XMPP got merged yesterday, Yay. I have moved the xmpp-daily to the inbound bytestream branch.

IBB is a complex way of getting passed firewalls, it will help XMPP when you are behind a router or firewall that does not have UPnP. If you do not understand any of that give it a try anyway.

Ticket being tested:
http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/6183

Download from:
http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/daily-xmpp/

Buildbot and pidgin

2008-09-17T13:19:00.003+01:00

I finished setting up buildbot for Pidgin. Its creating daily builds for windows and building for ubuntu (but I have yet to package it). However I also added a daily build for the xmpp custom emoticon branch, this saves me the hassle of compiling it by hand.

I plan on using Buildbot for testing builds at work. Plus testing patches which might be useful.

I would like to add the video and voice branch to test against, however the real challenge will be getting a propagated branch built.

http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/daily/
or
http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/daily-xmpp/

Custom emoticons working with Jabbim

2008-09-12T09:41:00.002+01:00

My latest build includes Malu's recent patches plus a propagation from the head branch.

http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080912/

Sending emoticons just go easier

Anti-terror laws

2008-09-10T12:59:00.000+01:00

C.S. Lewis said -

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Pidgin with xmpp (Jabber/Gtalk) custom emoticons

2008-09-09T09:16:00.004+01:00

The standard is still being fleshed out, but a branch of Pidgin now supports sending and receiving custom emoticons. The client at the other end also needs to support it else they will just see the shortcut.

Get it while its hot. This is Pidgin 2.5.2devel with custom emoticons on XMPP for windows:
http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080909/

Report feedback here:

http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/5627

Googles new chrome

2008-09-03T09:12:00.003+01:00

Well there is a lot of buzz on the net about Googles new browser:
While I like the effort that is going into the browser I have my reservations. On the plus side they are going to fix the issues of single threaded application. It has been a pain since the first browsers that when it is working on something it cannot do anything else.

What I think might not work is use cases which most programmers in an office might not realise:
1, Disconnected use, when I just turn on my PC and the wifi is just out of range or trying to hook up what will happen to this new flashy home page?
2, Pay as you go broadband, many people are on pay as you go with just 1GB of usage cap, this browser is doing most of its smart stuff by talking a lot to Google, that is going to eat bandwidth.
3, Shared browser, at home I do not have different profiles for everybody that uses the laptop. It would be a pain. However I do not want to see my top sites mixed with my partners or my sons but Google will do that. I noticed it with Amazons suggested products feature years ago, I would buy Christmas presents and then get suggestions that I would want to by a thomas the tank engine bottle warmer!
4, Security, googles claim of safer browsing is limited, they are just having high and low security rather than 3 levels that all other browsers provide. They have plugins which is flash and other object which at the end of the day will just be another hole like ActiveX was.

Gender in World of Warcraft

2008-08-16T09:04:00.001+01:00

So I have been many different characters within WoW and it has always been my preference when playing to play as a female. It's really because if I am going to be spending an hour looking at something I would rather it be the female form rather than the male (which is reflected in magazines the world over with womens magazines showing pictures of women and mens magazine also picturing women).

The one thing I do enjoy most is that as a female character I always get more. Today someone gave me a stack of money and a run through a dungeon to collect loads of good gear for my character. As a male character I have NEVER had that happen and I do play on males about 40% of the time.

Why is there such inequality within online worlds?

Warcraft levelling

2008-08-15T08:04:00.001+01:00

So I have been playing World of Warcraft for about a year and a half (it was a birthday present). I started as a Night Elf Rogue. I loved the idea of going invisible and sneaking up on someone and back stabing them. It was letting my dark side out to play.

I recently decided to re-roll, which means create a new character on a different server, but this time I chose a Troll Hunter. I had read that it was quicker to level a hunter and easier. You have a pet which effectively does the fighting for you while you fire arrows at the current target.

With my rogue it was all about cooldowns, waiting to get energy to execute the next devastating move and parrying while watching your back for other mobs that might be heading your way. With the hunter last night I set my pet to attack, fired auto-shoot and went to get a beer. Came back and carried on the fight...... all to easy.

Windows Vista verses Ubuntu Linux

2008-08-14T07:32:00.003+01:00

Ok,

So about two weeks ago I was thinking it might be an idea to boot into my Vista partition on my laptop to run the updates as I had not booted it up in about a year and a half. However laziness got the better of me and I figured what was the point in wasting an hour.

The amount of time I do not spend on antivirus, antiphishing and system updates since switching to ubuntu full-time is about an hour a week I would estimate. On ubuntu all my software is kept up to date via the auto update applet (an addition I would like them to add is a checkbox to tell it to shutdown when its complete) and I do not have to visit one website for each application I want to use, just to check and download any updates. The time has been better served by me reading the news, playing warcraft and doing compiles of software I am interested in testing.

Anyway, my partner is taking the ECDL as part of her nurses training, however it requires windows as it uses ActiveX for its courseware and it did not run correctly on the IE4linux that I have installed on ubuntu. So she booted into windows, worked away for a while. Then a message popped up and she clicked on it hoping it would go away. Next thing she knows its installing service pack 1 for Vista! OK.

Well lucky I have a second laptop and she could switch to that, I took over babysitting the installation of the service pack while I watched a movie. However after 15 minutes of 100% it informed me that the update had failed and that it was rolling back. OK. However after another half an hour it decided to reboot and inform me that my version of windows was not genuine! Errrrrr what! It locked me out of my desktop completely!

I tired to activate online but Vista had lost the key completely. I had to shutdown and try and locate the CD in the morning. To cut a longer story short, it still is not up and running. Something is broken and the rapair also failed. A complete reinstall is most likely, however my ubuntu is stable and making sure the laptop is not a paperwieght.

I am loving the lack of a licencing service on ubuntu, windows has wasted more of my time in one day than I have spend on ubuntu in a year.

Anti-phishing

2008-08-06T13:11:00.003+01:00

Ok, just read a rant about how to prevent people spoofing website:
http://www.advogato.org/person/ssp/diary.html?start=11

Clearly what needs to happen is not putting up giant big warnings but simply changing how the address bar is displayed. The address bar can contain so many different elements that you can trick someone into thinking they are at their own banks website. If the URL display was simplified you could remove this problem.

The address bar should only display the root domain ( .com, .co.uk) and the domain name (google). When you click on it you should get the full URL. Do people care that there is a query string? Do people care that the site is www?

Your only problem then would be people that cannot read phishing domains that are miss-typed, i.e. gooogle.com

Also doing the right thing and reversing the order of the domain would help a lot. Having http://com.google/ would make you realise that its the com part that is most significant. Problem is that we are too far into a mindset that nobody would dare change that.

Minor Pidgin update

2008-08-01T16:55:00.001+01:00

Hello,

Well some small fixes for MSN, OSCAR (AIM) and Jabber came through so I thought I should update my build.

They also updated Perl from version 5.8 to 5.10 so you'll probably want to head over to ActiveState if you run into problems.

http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080801/

Security flaws

2008-07-29T13:07:00.002+01:00

This is a bit of a laugh.

Security is a big problem, this site makes a bit of a joke out of the fact there are large flaws in browsers:
http://www.mikeonads.com/2008/07/13/using-your-browser-url-history-estimate-gender/

It will read your browsing history and tell you what your sex is. Very cleverly done. It got 100% male for me.

Head branch with MSNP15 fix

2008-07-18T21:30:00.003+01:00

As a user asked me to test a patch in Trac I thought I would give an update.

http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080718/

This build is of the HEAD branch, it is a work in progress and I am sure the Pidgin developers would be very unhappy if you submitted bugs about it. Please don't.

The patch applied to head was from this ticket:
http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/6370

Thanks go to Bob Baggins for letting me know of the problem and patch. This is untested by me as my eyes are already red. Reports of success or failure are appreciated.

Thick and fast

2008-06-12T13:05:00.002+01:00

Richard Laager propagated branches for me yesterday and I have recompiled the changes.

http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080612/

This contains the msnp14 and 9 versions.

Emoticon xmpp pidgin

2008-06-11T12:45:00.001+01:00

Update,

Malu did another patch last night so I figured I should build and test, all is good so far so here it is for general consumption:

http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080611/

Please report issues with it at:
http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/5627

monotone + Qt + Eclipse

2008-06-10T14:46:00.003+01:00

We have recently taken on a project that requires Qt, Eclipse and a good version control system. I chose monotone as its the most stable distributed version control system for windows (the company platform).

So far monotone has been a learning curve over normal VCS, however the learning is paying dividends in the merging and pace of development.

I have a buildbot machine running ubuntu linux that once complete will hopefully create the binary for Linux, Mac OSX and windows! A grand plan to be sure. I have material to read how to do this. Windows built on Linux needs Mingw copied to Linux, and Mac also has something similar, however I think that not many people are trying this right now.

A list of things you will need if you are going to try this is:
monotone for windows,
Mingw,
cygwin,
Qt built by you (if your doing it for comercial reasons)
Eclipse (CDT version)

You need to ensure that the environment variables are setup, in the PATH there should be (in this order) the windows monotone (cygwin has one so watch out), Mingw, cygwin and Qt.

C:\Program files\monotone\;c:\Mingw\bin\;c:\Cygwin\bin;C:\Qt\4.4.0\bin;

Other variables you will need are:
MTN_MERGE set to diffutils
(Diffutils comes from cygwin)

With diffutils I had to set my command promot window to be 140 charaters wide to display the diff nicely.

Within the checkout folder I have added a .mtn-ignore file. This has allowed me to exclude the files that Qt is generating when doing a qmake. So far I have:
\./exe/
/makefile/
/Makefile/
/object_script/
/Thumbs.db/
\\/bin/\\
\//bin/\/
\./rc/
/moc_/

The last one is debatable. More soon.

Optimists

2008-05-30T13:52:00.002+01:00

Why as an optimist do I get rained on? I think its not going to rain but it does.

BTW another build with XMPP emoticons, saving of emoticons and bug fixes. This is trunk now:
http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20050530/pidgin-2.5.0devel-no-gtk.exe

I should learn how to package debs, that would be helpful.

Jabber custom emoticons

2008-05-22T13:39:00.002+01:00

Hello,

We after MSN got custom emoticons I noticed that someone had created a patch to add support to the XMPP (Jabber/GTalk) protocol.
http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/5627

The added bonus is that the same guy created a patch so that you can save a smiley that you are sent by right clicking on it.
http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/5855

For your testing needs:
http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080522/pidgin-2.5.0devel-no-gtk.exe

http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080522/pidgin-2.5.0devel-debug.exe

Merged at last

2008-05-13T11:43:00.003+01:00

Hi,

It turns out that 1187 has been merged at last. I compiled the next.minor branch.

http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080513/pidgin-2.5.0devel-debug.exe

or

http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080513/pidgin-2.5.0devel-no-gtk.exe

Enjoy.

A race with Tw@in28

2008-05-12T13:17:00.004+01:00

Twain challenged me to a race to build this, while I did not come first I can say I got the MSNP9 and MSNP15 builds.

http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080512/pidgin-2.4.2devel-msnp9.exe
(This compile is with the MSN protocol 9)

If you want to be more cutting edge this one is MSN protocol 15
http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080512/pidgin-2.4.2devel.exe

As always please report bug or improvements to:
http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/1187

Latest Pidgin with custom emoticon support

2008-04-28T10:10:00.002+01:00

A recent update the the emoticon branch has called for me to recompile it for testing.

If others are interested you can download the windows binary from here:
http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080428/pidgin-2.4.2devel.exe
(This compile is with the MSN protocol 9)

If you want to be more cutting edge this one is MSN protocol 15
http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080428/pidgin-2.4.2devel-msnp15.exe

As always please report bug or improvements to:
http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/1187

Hardy Heron

2008-04-27T08:39:00.003+01:00

Wow, just finished updating this laptop to the current ubuntu release.

Its been smooth sailing, rather than upgrade I decided to reinstall. After a couple of hours work it is fully up and running the 64bit version and from an interactivity point of view it is much more responsive.

The coming weeks will tell if there are any bugs in the system but at the moment I am over the moon the suspend to RAM is working perfectly without any tweaking.

Home networking

2008-03-26T12:38:00.001Z

http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/New-Products/Ethernet-Over-PowerLine-Built-into-Power-Socket.html

Its really cool to have an Ethernet network in your home with little effort. There are two issues right off the bat with this one:

How do you reboot it? (Hopefully you do not have to)
Where does the heat go? (The probably consume about 10 Watts which is not a lot but still the heat will be there 24/7)

This networking going in cycles again, we had a single network cable with coax, these days all offices have switched 100MB networks and now at home we are going back to a single wire for the network!

Personal privacy (and Facebook owned)

2008-03-26T08:31:00.000Z

Yesterdays post was a real rant, today's post is proof that I am right:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/25/facebook_exposes_private_pics/

I am not one for gloating but today I will indulge myself as it lets me feel good for a little bit.

Privacy and security are things people are only just starting to become aware of. In the UK some government agency lost the bank details of some 25million people. Something which those 25million people could do nothing about (my partner included).

Some basic things people could do are:

Use an instant messenger which isn't tied to a single company (pidgin)
Use encryption when sending messages (Pidgin encrytpion, Enigmail)
Clean your hard drive on a regular basis, scheduled tasks are great for this (Eraser)
Do not upload pictures to sites that you do not have security control over, if you don't know then ask somebody who does. (Dreamhost web hosting with 1-click install gallery software)
Store passwords in a secure database (Password Safe - this one will create passwords for you)

Some more advanced things you can do is switch operating systems. Basic virology tells us that infections affect the largest population first and the quickest (due to the availability of hosts to infect). Switching to Ubuntu Linux or an Apple Mac will cut down the time you spend running security software. I am not saying these are more secure (they might be) but I am saying I haven't needed windows for over a year now and I know my family is safe on-line.

Facebook is evil

2008-03-25T12:32:00.002Z

http://www.orbit.me.uk/Blogs/Wandering-round-in-fields-of-idiots/Definition-of-a-Friend.html

Computers ask black and white questions and only accept black and white answers.

When you reject someone as a friend have you now lost an opportunity to build a friendship in the future due to somebody taking offence at virtual rejection?

Clearly you cannot allow everybody you meet to be a friend, friendship is a gradient of trust. Do you really want everybody to know you just left the Russell Brand fan club? Is your friendship stronger because you have been bitten by a werewolf?

Facebook is successful because it makes it easy for people to share and reminds people that their old friends are still alive and doing things. Its the next progression from friends reunited which was hugely popular before Facebook. The next Facebook will intergrate other features that will help us share our lives this will be via mobile phone picture messaging, email and calendar intergration. The theme is really taking existing technology and making it work better with what we want to do.

I am interested to know the long term effects on this, it creates a social grouping that is looking backwards at relationships that no longer have physical associations. Humans by nature need physical contact to keep their sanity, its part of the way our brains have evolved. Will peoples perception of the past alter or will it be set in pixels as websites keep an archive of individual history?

Pidgin sending custom emoticons - MSNP9

2008-03-18T12:33:00.002Z

I just finished uploading the latest compile of im.pidgin.pidgin.custom_smiley

This one is MSNP9, my previous claim was false as the sending was not working.

All can be downloaded from here:
http://www.hannent.eu/pidgin/20080318/

Its working great for me.

Pidgin sending custom emoticons -> beaten to it

2008-03-17T09:00:00.000Z

Looks like Twain beat me to it, well done, he has the latest windows compile. This is for MSNP14 (or MSNP15, I forget which is in head currently):
http://twain28.freeweb7.com/blog/blog.php?id=50

I thought I had applied the MSNP9 patch but I have not managed that yet. I will have a try later.

T-SQL Round Up function Revisited

2008-03-13T10:43:00.001Z

In October Last year I posted a function to round up a number. I have had to adapt that function to cater for varied decimal places. Please email me any suggestions or alterations.

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[udfRoundUp]
(
@Num1 FLOAT,
@NumberOfDecimalPlaces INT = 0
)
RETURNS FLOAT
AS
BEGIN
DECLARE @Temp FLOAT
SET @Temp = 0

IF @Num1 - CAST(ROUND(@Num1, @NumberOfDecimalPlaces) AS FLOAT) > 0
BEGIN
/* When rounding we cannot just add 1 */
/* Calculate the round up value */
SET @Temp = POWER(10, (@NumberOfDecimalPlaces * -1))

END

RETURN ROUND(@Num1, @NumberOfDecimalPlaces) + @Temp

END

Custom emoticons on MSN revisited

2008-03-11T09:54:00.004Z

Yesterday I recompiled from the monotone branch for pidgins custom emoticons. I have completed the upload of the debug and no gtk exe files.

Its using msnp9 and works for me.

pidgin-2.4.1devel-no-gtk.exe

pidgin-2.4.1devel-debug.exe

Enjoy