May 2009
8 posts
1 tag
The Scottish Labour Party
Yesterday, I received a leaflet from the Scottish Labour Party. On the front, it quotes “Alan and Helen, from Bishopbriggs, with their daughter Eilidh”. It quotes them saying: Gordon Brown has demonstrated real leadership in seeing us through tough times. Labour is working hard for Scottish people nationally and in Europe, to ensure no one is left behind. They’re the only party on...
May 19th
1 tag
Things which should have been made excinct last...
Java download manager applets (an irregular series).
May 19th
1 tag
Rule #1
If you offer a large enough financial incentive, people will do what they can to achieve that. “do what they can” doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it does.
May 19th
5 tags
A simple online framework for restricting content...
The TV Licensing Agency (a business unit of the BBC, operated by Capita), creates a web service which accepts web service requests over an SSL connection, with the client offering a certificate signed by a specific authority. The certification authority in question shall be Ofcom, which will sign CSRs from licensed broadcasters (the BBC, ITV, Five, C4, Sky, etc.) The web service will accept a...
May 14th
5 tags
Protecting the Public in a Changing Communications...
This is a formal response to the Home Office consultation entitled “Protecting the Public in a Changing Communications Environment”. It may be reproduced in whole or part provided attribution is given. On the basis of this evidence and subject to current safeguards and oversight arrangements, do you agree that communications data is vital for law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies...
May 14th
7 notes
4 tags
Thoughts
Content owners are probably going to start doing deals with ISPs to get them on-side. In the old days, we’d call this “bribery”. Those with keen eyes on the net neutrality debates should pay attention to this one as it unfolds. MPs may well be paid less than “equivalent” jobs in industry, but most people don’t think much of the board members of large companies either. We don’t...
May 12th
1 tag
#protip Attn: content distributors
If sustaining your business model involves consumers paying more than once to access the same content on different media, you are going to suffer a failure of epic proportions. It’s not people are inherently “bad”, just that most folks have an objection for paying for something that they’ve already paid for. Just sayin’.
May 5th
2 tags
These things seem like a long time ago
…they weren’t. Writing a script for your SLIP dialler to automatically navigate your ISP’s dial-in menu. Migrating the script to PPP when the ISP dropped SLIP support. Using Windows 2 (or Windows/386). I don’t mean installed it for the sake of nostalgia. Actually used it. Using OS/2 2.x. And Win-OS/2. The transition from 68k to PowerPC Macs. NCSA Mosaic. Forwarded to...
May 1st