Openness.

This is another work-in-progress note.

The various governments of the so called Western world waffle on about  openness.

Some more than others but the general diatribe goes something like "One of the government's objectives is openness so that the people know what is going on and how we arrive at any given subject.". This means that what a given country's government do that directly or indirectly impact on the people they are supposedly representing will be done is a way that the people can see and what is happening regarding whatever it is that the governemt is concerned with or about. Now, I am very big on openness and open standards so I tend to try and keep up with such matters within my own  government and I urge you to do the same within your own as the definition of the word 'openness' is not what you think is it. This is especially true when defined by our governments.

A perfect example of this is with Internet blocklists. Blocklists are URL's that the are blocked by ISP's. In England this list is edited and held by a none government organisation called the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). Anyone can send these none official people a URL that they find objectionable. This  request is then scrutinised and if found to hit some hidden definition it is then added to the blocklist which is then picked up by the various ISP's operating within the U.K. Not such a bad thing you may think and it would not be except for two things.

One) The IWF is not a government department. It consists of ordinary people who supposedly make decisions on what is and what is not a naughty URL based on both  what they have on their web site and also the personal tastes of the individual which cannot be avoided.

Two)  The blocklist created, edited and  held by the IWF cannot be seen by anyone outside of the ISP's administrators and those within the IWF itself. It is a hidden list of URL's that holds who knows what.

The first thing mentioned is not so bad until one thinks about it.

Debris in space.

When reading this arstechnica article it came as no surprise to learn of the inherent dangers of space  debris. Caused by mainly low orbital satellites, both some still in use and some no longer in use, but both types just floating free around our fragile Earth. NASA probably knows but your average Joe, of which I am one, probably does not, but the questions remain such as, what unknown damage is this space flotsam and jetsam creating for our Earth orbital spin and axis?

It is bad enough to know that the Earths low orbital space area is littered with objects, not just functional and defunct satellites, created after some 50 years since Man first transversed the problems of getting objects to fly outside of Earths atmosphere without having to wonder what problems these things can, and possibly will, cause for us in years to come. What, for example, would be the result of a collision in this area of several satellites at the same time? Would such a thing simply create yet more space debris making life evermore difficult for future space travelers or is it beyond the realms of possibilities that such a thing could cause the Earth to tilt on its axis one way or the other thereby possibly wiping out everything on Earth?

Other questions that should be asked is why after all the years of space travel have we not found a way to enter this area in space and simply hover up all the space junk? I am aware of the inherant dangers of grabbing such fast flying objects can create not to mention the docking of such items but we can do it with the space station so why not for a space refuse collector? I get the feeling that even though we humans have a space station of sorts out in space but we cannot seem to build a simple (yes, I know it is not as simple as just saying it but given what NASA and other space entities such as Russia's version of NASA and even China's flavour know about such things it cannot be that difficult for them) craft that can enter this cluttered area and effectively clean it up of all, if not all then most, space debris. This could then be expanded to cover areas beyond this particularly cluttered area.

Over the years since Man first ventured into space all manner of satellites have been dispatched and it would appear very little thought was given to the problems we have now in this area. Or maybe there was but the warnings were suppressed or simply ignored, whatever the reasons for being in the situation we now find ourselves the current situation is only going to get worse if the worlds space  efforts do not combine to create a better solution than the one touted in the above article. And who knows what dangers lay ahead not just for satellites, defunct or otherwise, but for the Earth itself as the more dense the debris gets the less light we will take in and the less light we take in the more living things will die.

Time for the world's space agencies to find a better solution than one that mimics air traffic control systems.

Next working day?

How often do you see "Next working day" when waiting for a parcel to be delivered? Let us consider those 3 words for a minute then let us consider what they mean in the modern 7 days a week commercial world.

Back in the old days they meant exactly what they say. This being your parcel would arrive on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday but never on a Saturday or a Sunday because those latter two were considered none-working days and, for those who can remember, Sunday was a day when almost no shops where open, save for little corner shops that usually opened for an hour or two.

Over time, big and not so big, shops started opening on a Saturday but Saturday never became part of the working day when taking deliveries into account, unless one paid a much higher price on that delivery.

Move into more recent memory and big, and not so big, shops started opening on a Sunday but still, for deliveries, Saturdays and Sundays are not considered Working days when our 3 words are under consideration. The same rules for a Saturday delivered parcel remains in force but Sunday does not get a look in.

So, we now live and work in a week consisting of the full 7 days, but, if you pay for a  "Standard delivery" option on a Friday you will still need to wait until the following Monday for that parcel to arrive. However, Saturday has been a standard working day for so many for so long it should now be considered a Standard working day and therefore be covered by our 3 little words.

Then again, if this was ever done the bosses  will almost blow a fuse and demand that because Saturday is now considered as part of the standard working week then they should not have to pay their workforce   time and a half, or third as some are still paid. But even there there is a work around. Saturday should only be considered as part of a  standard working week when taking parcel deliveries in to consideration and should not impact on the wages, payment details, of those who are forced to work on a Saturday.

Of course, there will be some winners and some losers in the above but I, and many others no doubt, would like to see Saturday as part of the Next working day delivery option for no other reason than in this 7 days a week world we now live in demands it be so.

i cannot understand.

The mentality behind such people as this jerk in a BBC report. The guy is 20p short of a pound if he thinks for one second that what he waffles on about is anything close to reality. Sure, there will be some in middle England that would go along with it but those on the various Council owned estates dotted around our cities won't give a hoot.

Take this gem as an example of his bilge.

"And to my mind the really shining example of how far the public have
come in accepting laws to help protect us from self-harm is the huge
support for smoke-free public spaces and workplaces throughout the UK."

Here is another.

"We've been largely successful with the tobacco industry, and now it's time to shift the focus onto alcohol and junk-food."

And one more.

"What next? I would like to see a ban on smoking in cars with a child on
board and a ban on displays of cigarettes in shops. I would like to see
a real hike in tax on alcohol and a ban on deep price-cuts for booze."

That would be the tobacco industry that they are killing. There are so many holes in his spurious comments that it really is not worth poiting them out.

The vast majority of people of this country take no notice whatsoever of what some berk says about being healthy. As i said earlier there will be some who do, mostly from the middle classes but the working class simply will not care and the younger that working class people is the less they care. It is people like that guy who provides us with the laughs that keep us going. He is so high up on his high horse he can't even see what is really happening. Here is a free clue for him.

Just because you say it is so does not make it so. Fool.

In living memory eh?

In this BBC article we have the lib-dem leader saying "Today's school leavers could be the first generation in living memory "to end up worse off than their parents". No doubt it has been reported elsewhere but as the BBC is one of the most respected web site for news at all levels that is where I read it first.

Now, being as I am 48 years old at this time in my short stay on this planet I can well remember the problems of getting a job during the late 1970's. i left school during 1976 when jobs for young people where very hard to come by. Sure, things improved during the 1980's but it is that time during 1976 to 1980 i am referring to. A time when if you did manage to find a job you was lucky yo stay in it for more than a few months.

I myself had many such jobs during that time. Not all good jobs either but being from a family that viewed unemployment as something nasty not having one was not an option for me. So, I went from job to job always hoping the next one would last but they never did until in 1978 my Granddad got me a job at a local tannery which lasted some 21 years until my disability get the better of me and I took voluntary redundancy.

But for the leader of a political party to claim the current crop of school leavers as being the first generation in living memory to be worse off than their parents shows either he is too young to remember the late 1970's or he lacks the knowledge about that time. As one who lived through those times I can tell him this current crop is most certainly not the first to suffer through lack of jobs. Not in living memory and not ever.

Will they ever learn?

With reports going around that the MOD's navy  ships  computers have been infected with a virus (or two or three) will these people ever learn? Our Royal Navy ships computers run Microsoft Windows. What flavour I do not know but in all probability it is either Windows XP or Windows Vista. Yes, I could research and find out but all we need to know is two words, Microsoft and Windows. Whether XP or Vista really makes no difference. Both are easily infected.

As the latest virus  calamity strolls around the Internet infecting any and all Microsoft Windows machines it finds it should speak loud and clear to anyone using one of those operating systems that the design of Microsoft Windows is flawed at its very core. And yet, we continue to read about some large and small companies being forced offline because their machines have been infected with whatever is the latest in a long and boring line of viri designed to flush out the flaws and very well they do it too as this reports shows.

So, our Navy runs a known broken operating system that has a track record of being blown wide open on so called none critical systems. Tell those poor sailors that their email is not critical! Seriously though, critical or not that fact that it is well documented is all they should need to have known and know they surely did which makes it all the more surprising that they took Microsoft's word (and probably back handers) on security is frightening.

Microsoft and its operating systems are a busted flush. If, and I doubt they ever will mange to do it, they can clean up their broken operating systems they may still be around in years to come. However, if they continue to follow the same path they have always followed and people see more and more of these virus riddled systems of some high profile company or government department stories circulate then I cannot see a world in years to come where Microsoft still dominates.

More and more countries the world over and leaving Microsoft behind it is about time our country does the same.

The open world of yesterday.

It is often said that todays world is a global one. From business to the internet it is all global in nature. Or rather that is the nature of the beast. So, when we read about all the various countries with all their various border controls where exactly does this global world fit in?

We have seen many times where those from so called 'problematic' countries are denied access to some other country. This also makes a mockery of the global world in which we supposedly live.

Our financial systems, banks etc, are  global companies and look at what has happened to them. Part, if not all, of the worlds financial meltdown can be attributed to how the  financial sector played in the global world. There are other examples of companies that played in the global world who are now suffering because of it.

So, we live, as our own Prime Minister is want to say, in a global world and yet that global world for many people is a closed door.

A few years ago one could move between the various borders of various countries just as easily as one could walk the streets of ones own city or town. What exactly happened to close the global world door no-one really knows. We can surmise however that the U.S.A. being finally dragged screaming into the terrorist malee (we here in the U.K. had to suffer the U.S.A. funded IRA attrocities a long time before any real terrorist activity landed at the door of the U.S.A. but I digress..) was the catalist for the global world to be unattainable by some. And of course where the U.S.A. goes many other countries follow which closes more and more doors of the global world for some.

The world of today is only global because of the rise of the Internet. For all other aspects the world is no more global now than it ever was and for some never will be.

Child protection.

No right minded thinking adult would ever consider hurting a child, much less their own child.

With seemingly the front line people, who have an undertaking to first and foremost protect the nations children from harm, not only from those outside the family circle but also the child's own parents, being in total disarray following some high profile,and not so high profile, cases where said front line people have neglected to do their duty, is it not time for a total and complete rethink on how we consider these things?

As a parent of five children myself I abhor any acts of real violence directed at children who cannot protect themselves and even though as a parent i can understand the why i cannot understand the how they can do it to them, much less their own child. With each new case that is highlighted in the press there are probably thousands of cases that go unreported. And that is a scary thought that all decently and right minded parents should never lose sight of.

As a nation we are seen as a set of compassionate people. But, it would seem, we love our pets more than we love our children. One of the major problems under the current  child protection scheme is not the scheme itself nor the rules and guidance which manipulate those scheme but is, as seen from my own eyes, a lack of people on the front line who are parents themselves. Many, many times I have seen social workers who are barely old enough to have children let alone actually have children of their own who have been on cases. This surely cannot be right.

There are many complex reasons underpinning why a child is in danger. Some of those reasons are never immediately clear. Some parents on the 'hit list' of suspected child abuse, at any level, go to great lengths to hide whatever it is that is a danger to their children and it is only one who is a parent themselves that will see through the smokescreen as they know what parenting is all about. It is hard to see how someone who has never had children themselves could ever see through these smokescreens but within the service itself there are many such people.

It is impossible, not to mention irresponsible, for any one to say they can fix what is so obviously broken in an easy and effortless way, though fixing it is what is needed as currently it is so obvious broken. There is much to moan about and not a lot that can be immediately fixed, but our legislators must endeavor to that aim. One thing that can be and should be fixed within the system designed to protect our children from harm from their own parents is to immediately and without question remove those from any position of first person contact without any parenting experience from within the system. While this by itself will not fix  the obviously broken system it will give  the system a boost in the eyes and minds of all  right minded parents around the country. It will also help to shore up the back feeling directed at such services.

Another thing that should be immediately remedied is the current thinking of try at all costs to keep families together even though the child within the family is known to be in some danger from its own parents. Instead any parent suspected, and more importantly properly and correctly investigated, should have their child or children moved out of harms way. While that is open to abuse it will ensure any child or children deemed to be in harms way will not be harmed. I am not for one second saying they should be moved into that other broken system  children's homes. No. They  should be moved into another family circle where children are known to flourish.

Two very simple ideas that should go a long way to fixing this problem area.

Privacy.

Yours in particular.

Have you noticed how much Government interference there is in your everyday life? They have cameras everywhere watching your every move. They are planning a huge database of every possible communication you can do. Email, telephone, mobile phones, web interaction all being stored so they know everything you do in your daily life. Combine the two together and you will get a very good map of what each and every individual does. It is  scary. Think about it for a second or two. Doesn't it scare you too? It should.

We are walking directly into a surfailence society where the government can and will track each and every individual.

on another level of interference by our government, who  are supposed to be serving us not watching us, we have various things happening. Take this BBC report as one such example. While no-one can say we  do not have an obesity problem it is not and never will be as wide spread as the government claims it will be but onward they go towards yet more meddling in peoples private lives.

The current government has done more to break down the privacy barriers of people than any other government in our history. Some they claim is to combat some hidden boggymen but mess with your mind they do and there is little you can do about it. Wake up now and rise up otherwise before you know what has hit you you will have absolutely no privacy from government level interference at all.

It not hard to imagine them putting cameras in your home so they can keep an ever watchful eye on what you get up to. It is but a short step for them to take and if you don't do something now it will happen before too long.

There has been many Laws squashed, passed or rehashed that take way another strip. And nobody appears to listen to those who are shouting against  them.

I fear for the future of my children in this country more now than I have every done.

4 men rule the world.

I have said it before and I will say it again and again. It has never been more clear that a very very small section of men rule the world. Financially as well as every other possible way. These 4 men pull the strings of governments the world over and it is these 4 men that have orchestrated the mess the world is in right now. It has never been more clear. Never.

Take a look at the worlds financial markets and you will see for yourself. Take a look at the worlds business markets and again the same pattern emerges. As scary as it sounds that is how it is. Whether these 4 men be Jews or some other denomination matters not at all. The fact that they are pulling not only government strings but yours too is what matters.

They have ruled the world for centuries. Telling governments what they should do and what they should not do. For century after century it is they who have ruled. Ask yourself a few questions such as why have governments the world over propped up the banks. The very same banks that caused the world financial markets to collapse. Ask yourself why your wages have gone up and up and yet buys less and less. Ask yourself why capitalism as we know it is dieing. Ask yourself these questions and they answers should be obvious.

The Western world is entering a new capitalism world where these 4 men can better control you. They will ensure that your money buys even less. They will tell governments that they should input as much money into the system as they can print  with scant regard for what this will do to the common man's  monitory value.

As your government officals meet in offices  around the world these 4 men will be present telling them what they can and cannot do. It has never been more clear if you will only open your eyes to what  is happening and also open your mind so that you can see what is happening and if you are very keen eyed you will see these 4 men standing in the background behind whatever leader they control.

4 men rule the world in every conceivable  way.

Social Services.

What a mess they have created for themselves. In several high profile cases they have failed time and time again to put a child in danger before their own self interests. Of course, as always, there are some good people doing excellent work within a rotton to the core framework and sadly, again as always, these good ones get tarred with the same brush as the bad ones which thankfully are in the few catagory while the good ones are in the majority. But, it is the framework that they all try to work within that is rotten and because of that it needs a thorough and  complete overhaul from the ground up.

It is rarely those on the front-line who do badly. it is always management level that is rotten. Social Services is a misnomer in every possible way. I doubt anyone needs proof of that but if you do then read this report and have your eyes opened by the sheer  scale of ineptitude the whole thing shows. Not on the part of the poor mother who has been on the run with her son for too long, so long in fact she has decided enough is enough and is going to fight for the right to keep her son under her obvious love and  affection. i dare you to read that story and not feel compassion for her and her sons plight.

As a loving father myself I would be filled with dread if Social Services in its present form were to intrude into our family life. Not because we are a disjointed family, far from it, we are a loving family who affords our children a voice in family affairs. i am disabled so i am the one who stays at home doing what a househusband should be doing to the best of my abilities. My wifes is the  bread winner as well as being the one who does what my disability will not allow me to do. All 3 of our children are happy souls. the two elder ones are doing well at their respective schools and our little one is advanced for his just under 2 years of age. So, there is no reason whatsoever for us as a family to be in the spotlight of such an organisation but who really knows who they are watching? Would you feel comfortable knowing they are watching you for any minor sign of whatever it is they class as violence in the home?

Back when I lived with my first wife there was an incident such as that article describes  where a young couple had had a child that was immmediately taken into care. No reason was ever given to the couple who eventually, after some 18 months, got their child back and who is now a director of some multi-national organisation. To this day that couple still have never been told on what grounds they had taken their child away from them nor why after 18 months they suddenly changed their minds and handed the child back to their mother and father who 18 months prior was deemed to be some level of unsuitable. It really does boggle the mind at the sheer power these people yield over everyday people who may fall into their sights. Once they get their hooks into you then may whatever deity you pray to help you because you will have no recourse in the Law of this land whatesover. It is quite simply legal kidnapping. Similar situations happen daily up and down the country but it is only the high profile failures that ever get reported and in print.

Instead of being the moral crusaders they were,  presumably, set up to be they are irreproachable, reprehensible and see themselves as being above the Law. As I said not every one of them are bad. It is the system they have to work within that is.

Home Secretary.

Our own Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is so out of touch with the public she is supposed to be serving she should be removed immediately.

She comes across as a self serving individual who is so intent on getting her name in the history books that she has lost sight of what the public wants and worse still what the public needs and that is a free and open society. Not one that preys on public fears whether or not that fear is justified.

Take her stance on the DNA database as just one example of many. The E.U., no less, has determined that those who have committed no crime, especially children under 18 years of age, should not be on the database and yet she is  squirming and  squiggling as she tries  desperately to undermine what the E.U. decided.

She is widely regarded as the worse Home Secretary this little country has ever known. How she keeps her position one can only guess. Instead of following what the E.U. decided she is going to add even more names to the database. Of children she says that those under 10, with the usual proviso's, will be only kept on the DNA database until they are 18. Not as the E.U. decided which was that no children should have their DNA stored.

Trying to get ones DNA removed from the database is not an easy task and in the case of two innocent individuals necessitated court action. Even if one was never charged  with an offense, however minor that offence may be, ones DNA was stored for posterity.

This whole DNA database saga will surely come back to haunt her in years to come as the single point of abject failure during her reign as Home Secretary. If it is not already.

School punishment.

School punishment which may include a cane, a belt, a leather strip or a sandshoe (a common footwear in the U.K. not completely unlike a trainer which where worn mainly while doing indoor sports), is in the news again via this report on the Daily Telegraph web site.

I must admit I do not read that web site very often due in part to the fact it is a newspaper similar in style and reporting as many of the Sunday newspapers. This means it is full of incredulous, at best, stories about nothing much but do incur on the side of sensationalism.

That said, the fact that they report that Gordon Brown, the U.K.'s P.M., and his predecessor to that same title Mr Tony Blair, where both given cooperate punishment while at school. Anyone whose school years where previous to 1980 or so will know that such punishments for schoolchildren were the norm. Well, the norm for those who suffered such a thing. Some many times.

The point I am trying to make here is that due to the two aforementioned peoples disciplinary status while at school and their  subsequent rise in their chosen working life to the very pinnacle it goes against the oft held idea that such punishments only create a bad child  who later in life during his or her adult phase will commit crimes. Perhaps a politician can be said to have committed many crimes during their tenure at the House of Commons but that is something I care not to comment on.

If such punishments that have been claimed to create heinous thinking adults then why are some of todays schoolchildren, who have never had the threat of such punishments hanging over their collective heads, the most unruly bunch ever to grace our school system? Surely, given the benefit of hinesight that all people of the future have on what is happening now or that the people alive now have over events that preceded their lifes, it can clearly be seen that corperate punishment works in s much as when compared to unruly schoolchildren of today against those who where schoolchildren in the years before such punishments where deemed nasty.

I do not care about any rights for children not when the adults of those children are legally held accountable for whatever the child gets up to. This seems a lopsided arrangement to me and because of that children, while I do not and cannot advocate beating them, should have no rights at all. Parents should have total and absolute control over their childrens upbringing and the child should have no say in how those adults go about the business of bring up their own child. If that means allowing adults the option to allow their child to be admonished in whatever way the school sees fit, which may include corporal punishment, then so be it.

I well remember getting home one day and telling my mother I had had the cane for beating up another child and my mothers response was to use her slipper to meter out more punishment because I had been given the cane at school. A few days later a letter from my school arrived and after reading it she gave me yet more punishment "for the shame you have inflicted on me". That is how it should be.

More bilge on obesity.

Mostly Government led but also medically led. It is very hard to take all this guff about obesity when they rely on a flawed metric like the BMI to determine what classification is given to each person. The BMI takes no account of muscle tone and that alone is vital in determining if someone is really in any way whatsoever overweight.

I read this BBC article with my now usual distrust of anything related to weight that has some governmental quangos attached to it. In this instance it is the Department of Health. How they can simplify how and what people eat, espcially where children are concerned, is something only government can do. Apart from the stigma attached to anyone they claim of being obese there is the not so small problem of how as a country we differ in what we eat as much as we differ in dialects used.

As an example, I hail from Hull on the East coast of England. My wife hails from Nottingham, roughly, central england. Her father is from Scotland and is married to a woman who hails from Devon. We are quite a scattered lot and if we take from each area what is classed as that areas main dish we find substantial differences in what each dish gives by way of nutrients, energy, fat etc etc.

Devonshire, like a lot of the surrounding shires, people tend to have a much sweeter tooth than anywhere else in the U.K. This is reflected somewhat by the people who on average have a larger girth, especially the women.

Nottingham and surrounding areas has a much higher intake of none English people than other areas of comparable size and this is reflected in what they eat. This in turn means that they have a good mix right across the definitions of weight versus height (but not the flawed BMI scale).

Hull, while this is changing due to the fish trade being killed off by goverment of the time meddling, we used to be a city of fish eating people. Now, like everywhere else, we have seen the rise of fast-food places, frozen foods etc and with it a rise is body fat levels. So, you will see the core of the 40+ age group in a different light to those under it.

Everywhere in this country though has seen a drop in children who play, and/or are allowed to play, running about street games that us fast approaching 50 year old and older took for granted when we were kids. Added to this was the 1980's abandonement of P.E. (Physical Education sometimes known as Physical Training (P.T.)) and games (which included football, rugby, athletics etc) which led to a whole generation of adults that did none of those. Those traits where in all probabilty passed onto their children. This added together with a poor diet means we are now seeing the rise in unhealthy kids.

But back to the point. That article demonstrates perfectly everything that is wrong with such labling and catagorisation. It is impossible to do in anything approaching a satisfactory  way. There are simply too many variables at play.

It seems to me that just like the flawed BMI scales the whole thing is based around that what they want to do is to force every one to eat according to their slots in their database. It would after all make life easy for them in their fight for removal of perceived fat in peoples, especially childrens, bodies. Like everything else on a personal level the government of the day gets involved in it will all end in abject failure.

We, as a nation of people, are not on the whole naturally, nor gentically, slim people. The  further south one goes the more heavy  the people are. The further north one goes the less one sees  heavy girthed folk. So it has always been and so it will always be.
 

Really?

According to this BBC article Jacqui Smith who has never ever been in sync with what the English rank and file people want has declared that the  people  "can't wait for ID cards". While her comment is not the first bullshit to come via government sources at any level it sure ranks right up there as the biggest lie to be uttered.

I don't know every member of the English population obviously but of those I do know and/or have contact with there is not one amongst them that want an ID card. These people come from every walk of life. From the lowest to the highest and yet here we have the home secretary telling the masses that people "can't wait  for ID cards" like she  even knows what the public wants. She is, and always has been, so out of touch with the general feeling amongst the general public is it unreal.

From her lofty promiment position of home secretary you would think she actually knew what the public wanted but no. Not ever has she shown that to be true. This latest lie, in a long line of lies, comes across as if she knows. She is undoubtably the most unpopular home secretary this country has ever known and comments like this will only serve to reenforce that unpopularity.

Say no to ID cards but remember the governemt, especially the current one, knows more about what you want than you do as is seen by the home secretarys comments.

This current government, more than any other previous government, has dome more to remove your control over your own life. That comment only serves to re-enforce that. There is not one iota of evidence to back up her claim and yet she will force it on to a public that simply does not want it. This government has done that at every level so it should not be a surprise to anyone.

Government Databases.

I surely am not alone in being scared of our government, be they Labour, Conservative or any other political party, being ever more willing and in some cases already doing, huge one point databases am I?

They either plan or have implemented all encompassing databases which will include every man, woman and child resident in this country, whether they be nationals (defined as born here irregardless of creed, race or faith) or tourists (business or otherwise). Another database will contain every child and so on.

The number of 'lost' names in recent times is scary enough but a single point database (which means only one entry for access to) containing who knows what of every individual just fills me with dread. I don't know how hackers (defined as those who break into such databases).

We already have the police database, the passport database, the drivers database (think DVLA), a doctor's database and hospital databases, registered with banks and so on. We are first on the goverment radar after being registered at birth and from that time to death, which is also registered) we voluntarily sign up for most, if not all of the services mentioned above. We leave information at various shops where we purchased something. That signals to the bank that at that moment in time where we were, what we  bought and what we spent. All that sort of thing while not voluntary is just part and parcel of everyday life. Having all that information stored in one place and accessed  via one single means is just plain scary. It is bad enough that the number of databases holding all manner of information on individuals exist and some link up so verifications can be made. The fact that this huge database is government run (for now until they decide to sell the information as will surely happen within 25 years of it starting) and owned make it all the more scary.

Our government, or put another way our elected officials, has an appalling track record regarding such things and it is widely and well known that the government, at any level from Westminster to local councils, are useless at governing  any IT project be it small or large. This huge database comes under the banner of the latter.

During the last year various government departments 'lost' private and confidential information. They 'lost' laptops and notebooks with monotonousness regularity usually containing unencrypted data. Their track record is appalling.

I,  for one, find these huge government mandated databases scary.

BBC.co.uk does it again.

In this article on the bbc.co.uk web site we see once again the underlaying knowledge is sorely lacking. They lable the, by now ancient, Anarchists' Cookbook  a 'terrorist manual'.

At a risk of being tagged by the all seeing police state which Great Britain has become as a terrorist myself I put Anarchist Cookbook into google and once passed the obligatory adverts the first hit returned was on Wikipedia. It says there that it first appeared  circa 1971. And just to show how easy it is, even now, to download the Cookbook, at the end of the Wikipedia link it leads you to here.

Not exactly hard to find is it. Though as the FAQ on that web site says the original Cookbook cannot be downloaded anymore there are several other similar Cookbooks available some of which can be downloaded from there.

Anyone who has traveled since 1971 through Fidonet, the early none WWW based Internet through to its modern WWW equivalent, the all singing all dancing Web2.0 based Internet, knows that that 'Cookbook' has been around for years. I do not know when it first surfaced nor if it is still being added to or updated in any way as I have not seen a copy of it for at least 10 or more years. It has probably been around for 30 years or so.

I cannot remember when I first came upon it, suffice it to say it was uploaded to my BBS (old style BBS not its modern meaning) which I ran from 1977 until 1997 or so. Having taken a quick look at it, as all good SysOps did when something had been uploaded to their BBS, it became clear very quickly that while the information held within was aimed at doing things considered illegal there was not much aside from  homemade bomb making, that would lead to anyone getting hurt. Sure, telephone companies would (more on that later) but as everyone considered them money grabbing thieves they were considered fair game.

If you never lived through the days before the Internet existed or the days before Broadband access then it is hard to think of such things as 'phreaking'. Phreaking allowed one to play a tune, usually using a penny whistle (also known as a tin whistle), which fooled the telephone exchange which then allowed one to make a free telephone call. If you get it right you could fool the exchange to allow a free call to be made and also to 'dial' the number for you. All considered clever stuff back in those days Modern telephony systems are no longer prone to being fooled in such a manner. There are, or perhaps were, many such olde worlde things in the Anarchists' Cookbook that the BBC author called a 'terrorists manual', that bare no use in the modern technologically laden world. Whether this has changed and such things within it removed i have no idea as i have not seen a copy of the Cookbook for years.


This basic lack of in-depth writing is proliferating all across the
news reporting media. Be they an on-line  place or part of the dying
dead tree newspaper brigade. One can see it everywhere one reads the
news. It is as alarming as it is appalling.

Do the BBC consider everyone who reads their articles to be under 10 years old? On reading some articles the answer would appear to be a resounding yes. It is this appalling lack of both quality and knowledge that has infiltrated the BBC in the last couple of years that makes reading such a joy and irritant at the same time. The BBC of course will say that it was the police who made such comments and all they were doing was reporting the news. But that in and of itself is no excuse.

Perhaps because those who write such articles are a new breed they do not know such things have been available for 30 or more years but surely in that case it would make perfect sense, as well as add some credibility to the author, to seek out some information on it? Is that really asking too much of a modern reporter that they do some very basic sleuthing so that they do not appear amateurish?

Huge monetary figures.

I have long been amused when I read articles such as this one where they tout  figures of $2 trillion and $5 trillion. If, like me, such figures make you gasp in amazement as much as the induce a thought of incredulity then they will also invoke thoughts of utter disbelief.

It appears to me that people such as scientists, be they scientist of nature or scientists of medicine, in fact irellevant of doctrine, use such huge and ultimately useless  numbers as a way of backing up their often outlandish claims. Look closely at that referenced article and then try to understand the underlaying ideology behind it. Do you reach the same  conclusion as I do?

My conclusion of it is that to claim such outlandish figures against something that is not ultimately measurable makes the effort used to collate and process such data utterly futile. The commonman, and woman, cannot comprehend such huge numbers. This has been, err, scientifically and mathematically, proven so why do these people persist in producing such huge figures? They do it because their ultimate goal is to garner ever more money from Governments the world over. They are not aimed at Joe and Jane in the streets. So one has to wonder why the BBC produces such articles.

I suppose the BBC's aim to to educate and inform (yes, yes, I know they often do not get the mix right but let us forget that for now) and by producing such articles they are doing exactly that. But, that does not help Joe and Jane comprehend such numbers. So, ultimately the article is wasted material on the intended target audience. Wasted because as ones brain struggles to comprehend such huge numbers what follows is not stored in ones brain.

We are seeing such figures on a daily basis now with the banking mess that is hitting the world's countries but that does not help the common person to comprehend such numbers. Instead the common person who walks and works in the everyday street simply ignores the numbers and tries to carry on as they always have carried on never caring about such numbers.

Madness. It is all unadulterated, unmitigated madness.

ISP speeds (a rant by any other name).

Whether actual speeds or publicity speeds are getting ever faster. Except here in Hull where ADSL2+ is a mess of slow sync and throughput speeds for the vast majority of customers. Our incumbent ISP claims, but never gives out actual provable figures, that their home customers are happy with ADSL2+. They will not provide any figures to back up that claim though not even to us, us being those of us who were supposedly on a monthly scheduled meetings with them.

Virgin Media have announced plans for a 50Mbit/sec service. How many of their customers will acheive anywhere close to that remains to be seen, but the fact they are publically declaring such speeds is admirable. Our ISP touts  service improvements then fails miserably on the  actual  giving part of that service, ADSL2+ is one such example. Okay, Virgin Media are a cable company probably using DOSIS3 9or whatever it is called) but the simple fact they talk to their customers via various news outlets is in stark contrast to how our ISP operates.

Many times our ISP  replies to  questions with the boilerplate reply of "That is being tested." which actually means "We have no idea what you are talking about.". Our ISP's technical people are a joke beyond the pale. Anything that goes outside of their abilities is immediately debunked as "not being worth the effort".

There are many people who offer up free advice to our ISP's technical people and those people offering up that advice known that of which they speak but, without fail you can bet your last penny that our ISP's technical people will not have the  abilities  nor brain power to do what it is that was asked of them.

Whether this is due to the limitations of the software used or is because those technical people have never dared to venture beyond the absolute basics or even if they are simply stuck in their ways not wanting to try and find out what sort of power the software they use provides is all open to debate. My own feelings and thoughts on the matter is that it is a mix of the first two.

To give an example. We asked them about offering their users, home users, multiple IP's as standard on their top tier service but what came back from that  request was both astounding and mystifying. The reply said "We cannot offeer multiple IP's because it would create too much work." Imagine that! Technical people   saying so and so would be too much work to implement.

There is a whole list of such replies that  seriously impacts peoples thoughts on their technical prowess.

Not that long ago I set up an ISP. The basic setup took under an hour to do. Over all the time taken from start to a fully fledged ISP setup was 52 hours. And here we have our incumbent ISP claiming something was too much work to setup. Simply amazing!

But back to speeds. With just about every ISP offering   40Mbit/sec plus it seems we users in this city with our incumbent ISP as the    provider will be stuck with slow speeds for years to come. It seriously impacts the beiief of their customers in the ISP ability to do anything beyond the absolute basics to provide a connection. They are stale. They are old hat. They are simply rubbish at every level possible.

Due to how they have handled us in recent weeks, the ignoring of emails, it is my remit now to make life for as many people within the company as uncomfortable as possible. I have instigated an E.U. investigation into their Hull operations. Particularly in what they charge other ISP's, be they  one already out there or new startups, with realtion to LLU or sharing of cabinets. I have contacted OFcom, the relevant E.U. departments (!2 in all) and am in the process of using the contacts I have within the newspaper industry to get the word out.

We are suffering here from a crap service. A service that is fixable but whether they have the ability within is open to debate. I have had to do this sort of thing before and I have no qualms in doing it again.

Countries and banks.

With ever more countries around the world,from the U.S.A. to little Denmark underwriting or buying out banks thereby nationalising them the world is heading for a socialist government.

Previous to this banking nightmare the Western World was a free world. The U.S.A. was a free(ish) country. And yet, today we have many of the worlds biggest banks being bankrolled by various governments. This is the world slowly but surely moving in a socialist fashion to a true socialist world.

In the years previous to this happening governments around the Western World including the U.S.A. slowly eroded whatever freedoms their people had. Some, closed or severely limited their borders to stop illegal and some legal foreigners from entering. They systematically installed cameras to watch over their people. All in the name of security of course but watch over their people they did.

Further, they gave their police forces unprecedented powers to stop and search their citizens. Again, all in the name of security.

But, what all this means is that the various governments of the Western World have curtailed whatever freedoms their citizens had and now we find those same governments that eroded their citizens freedoms are now placing those citizens in years of debt to save a few already rich people who are owners of the various banks.

The few get richer and richer while the rest of us suffer possibly years of hardship.

A true socialist world we now live in.