November 2011
57 posts
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Met police Tasered man carrying toy gun on train →
If this account is accurate, it is incredibly disturbing.
“The police shouted: ‘Sit down.’ So I sat down patiently. They said: ‘Open your briefcase,’ which I did. They saw the toy gun. Then a male police officer opened fire with a gun which jammed.
“So then they jumped at me and used the Taser four times at my chest. That did not have any effect, I felt no...
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An absolutely minimal introduction to certificates
So, what is a certificate anyway?
(Note to reader: I might mean an X.509 certificate, or I might mean a PGP certificate, or I might mean some other kind of certificate which adheres to the same principles; take your pick).
A certificate consists of three things:
A public key, belonging to the holder of the certificate
Some arbitrary information about the holder of the certificate
* A...
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Charities should not exploit young people through... →
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We had no evidence for DEAct, UK government... →
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High Court: TVCatchup reproduces copyrighted films... →
This would appear at first glance to be a case of bending the law to fit a particular desired outcome, rather than simply applying it. The technical requirements of HTTP-based chunked streaming (such as HLS) to require a certain amount of buffering should, to my mind, constitute “transient or incidental” caching of the content. But what do I know?
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eon: We've pressed the reset button on our... →
Energy is one of life’s essentials – not a luxury. That’s why it’s so important that people can trust those who supply a product they depend on totally. We have colleagues who work hard day in, day out to provide electricity and gas for our customers, and to help them with their energy needs.
However, as an energy company, we need to recognise that we’ve allowed a situation of mistrust to...
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Facebook is gas lighting the web. We can fix it. →
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Judge to examine Goldman Sachs tax deal →
Colour me “cautiously optimistic”.
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Nominet: More SOCA games →
You may remember that around this time last year, Nominet announced a misguided proposal for a cosy relationship with law enforcement agencies.
I’ve got a proper post about this in the pipeline, but the gist is this: rather than looking to improve any difficulties which might exist in the process of obtaining a court order to suspend the registration of .uk registrations by overseas...
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Young jobseekers told to work without pay or lose... →
This is insane:
The work experience programme, which is separate from a multitude of other programmes designed to get people back into work, was advertised in January as voluntary after the time spent volunteering was increased from two to eight weeks.
However, the DWP has clarified that there is a clause which allows jobcentre case workers around the country to force the unemployed into...
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Oxford taxi conversations to be recorded, council... →
The council said the cameras would run continuously, but only view footage relating to police matters would be reviewed.
An ICO spokeswoman said the plans were “highly intrusive and unlikely to be justified”.
This is utterly insane.
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Nominet: More SOCA games →
This isn’t really getting much better.
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Jim'll Fix It to be revived →
Shane Ritchie’s name is not “Jim”
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Avoiding the Faddish Side of Gamification →
Yahoo researcher Judd Antin says that encouraging users and employees to pursue points and virtual badges may not achieve the desired results.
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Oliver Letwin's binning of sensitive papers... →
Other top stories today: Pope rumoured to be “flirting” with Catholicism, unconfirmed reports of bear defection in wooded areas, and sources say that water “may be wet”.
Gay clergy row threatens mass resignations from... →
Grow up.
Doctor Who 'to be made into Hollywood feature... →
I don’t have a warm and fuzzy feeling about this.
Jobless 'may lose council homes', warns Wandsworth →
“This isn’t about punishing people who are made redundant or cannot find a job.
Yes it is.
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The Blog That Pete Wrote: Remembrance Sunday and... →
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National Geographic Photo Contest 2011 →
Absolutely stunning.
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Ed Miliband and Tessa Jowell Invited Circle Into... →
Interesting tidbit from Guido.
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Nokia is showing off a supremely crazy phone... →
(via @PygmyLoris)
Nokia is showing off a supremely crazy phone concept called HumanForm. Shaped like a teardrop, this is a touch-activated and completely flexible phone that looks like it’s straight out of a sci-fi movie.
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Duncan Smith plans new crackdown on lazy benefit... →
He said he wanted a “debate” on how the new system should work.
Incredibly badly.
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Care may suffer, admits private company taking... →
Circle Health is already feeling a strain on resources due to its aggressive business strategy, the document reveals, and the firm’s ambition to further expand into the NHS “could affect its ability to provide a consistent level of service to its patients”, it says.
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The Collective Teardrop – shit or shit? →
I caught this earlier on in the week, thanks to @stuartshape and @lingmops.
Internationally acclaimed pop-star he may be, but Gary Barlow has the shittest taste in music.
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TIME: Court rules government can get your personal... →
According to O’Grady’s ruling, the accused “vountarily chose to use Internet technology to communicate with Twitter and thereby consented to whatever disclosures would be necessary to complete their communications.”
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the reason people consider “the Internet” to be a Wild West lawless frontier is because the judiciary are ruling it to be so. This...
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Comment on MCF Using XML Submission →
A historical nugget for you, via danbri.
An important requirement on the metadata framework is that parsers must be able to produce a parse tree of the metadata without the assistance of an auxiliary format description.
The birth of RDF.
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England riots: top adviser warns against... →
Karyn McCluskey, who helped tackle youth violence in Glasgow, says disturbances were about greed not anger
Me, who hasn’t tackled any youth violence anywhere, still reckons sweeping generalisations are perilous.
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Outrage as Tesco backs gay festival... but drops... →
Warning: Daily Mail link.
Tesco has triggered outrage by ending its support for the Cancer Research ‘Race for Life’ while deciding to sponsor Britain’s largest gay festival.
Outrage.
Yes, what actually happened was that Philip Clarke sashayed over to a bunch of cancer victims, and then, taking each in turn, wrapped a feather boa around their necks and punched them in their faces.
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Police arrest EDL supporters 'to prevent breach of... →
As much as I find the EDL to be abhorrent thugs, I’m really uncomfortable with pre-emptive arrests like this.
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VIDEO BLOG: Cameron wants the NHS “to be a... →
Speaks volumes.
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EDF fined €1.5m for spying on Greenpeace →
(via @williamheath)
Nice.
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Advertiser settles charges for use of Adobe Flash... →
The joy of browser plugins is that when they provide functionality, it’s rarely integrated with the browser’s usual mechanisms of control and management.
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Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-083 - Critical →
In case you haven’t seen it:
This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an attacker sends a continuous flow of specially crafted UDP packets to a closed port on a target system.
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This punishing welfare plan may be a bridge too... →
(via @lesmondine)
This is completely insane.
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Louise Mensch's school run looked like... →
I’m not sure what kind of person thought writing this article was a good idea, let alone publishing it. Most ridiculous thing I’ve read all week.
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[Scottish] Tories in turmoil as new leader snubbed →
(via @gimpyblog)
Utter shambles.
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Circle 'in deal' to run Hinchingbrooke NHS... →
A groundbreaking deal for a private firm to run a struggling NHS hospital is expected to be confirmed later.
Tell me… what happens when if runs out of money and either (a) has to make a choice between bankruptcy and cutting critical services, or (b) goes bankrupt anyway?
Hospitals are “too important to fail”: thus, the taxpayer is always the ultimate guarantor. Any notion of a private company...
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brand management #paste
Update: Dave Lee, a journalist, colleague and… well, I’m going to leave it at that, actually… but, he’s been talking to Shippams. They say:
“There’s no harm done, really, and I know people will miss Ben.”
But also, Dave tweeted:
“They want to talk to @edjeff about the future of Ben.”
Watch this space. Or that one. That one’s probably better.
Original post follows:
...
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midata
Last week, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills launched the midata initiative. Well, I say “launched”: it actually launched the vision. The snappily-titled Better Choices: Better Deals — Consumers Powering Growth (PDF) gives the background to the initiative.
Reading the press reports on midata, it’s not especially clear what it is. It could be any of:—
a “data liberation” scheme...
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Social media and work redux
So, it would appear that — in the view of an employment tribunal, at least — my hunch about Human Rights legislation butting up against all-encompassing social media policies was wide of the mark.
Despite having “private” Facebook settings, the tribunal decided that there was nothing to prevent friends from copying and passing on Crisp’s comments, so he was unable to rely on the...
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Tsar Turn
Tim Kelsey is the Government’s “Transparency Tsar”—or, to give him his proper title, “senior advisor on Transparency and Open Data, leading on the development of national public data policy”. Sounds like a pretty decent thing to me: transparency in government and public service is a Good Thing™, by all accounts.
So, let’s have some transparency, shall we?
Ironically enough, the post of...
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UK backs bid to overturn ban on cluster bombs →
(via @DaveHughesRFPB)
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Why are men such cocks on the internet? →
currybet:
Here is a miserable set of reading if you: Like the internet. Are a man. Would prefer it if you lived in a society where it wouldn’t be acceptable for someone to threaten your mother, sister or…
Quite.
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Murdoch gave loyal lieutenant Rebekah Brooks £1.7m... →
Didn’t you know? He was outraged by the phone hacking.
