Posts (page 2)

Oh dear, having a clue about "Technical Stuff" in Political, and especially parliamentary, circles is marginally rarer than hen's teeth.

Vince Cable has said that Patents should be enforced by the police (link to el reg) and infringement made a criminal offense because he was "blinded by science" by Trevor 'OneGoodIdea' Bayliss.

Needless to say, there is a huge difference between somebody nicking your car stereo and independantly discovering the same solution to a problem as you (which is what 99.999% of patent infringement is), also when people nick your car stereo you no longer have a car stereo - that's why it's called theft!

You can't "steal" an idea, and most idea's aren't worth copying, of the many idea's Bayliss has had, only 1 was turned into something useful and that was after the hard bit that patents protect - i.e. turning an idea into a working solution.

It's pretty clear that Vince doesn't understand "Intellectual Property" if he thinks patent infringement should be brought into line with copyright infringmenet (it's not theft either), when any logic would dictate the reverse - counterfeiting is already covered by criminal laws, copyright infringement is a civil matter - the clue is in the name - "copy rights" : rights to license, distribute, etc your intellectual/creative works as you see fit, and it's a civil matter determined by how you give that license to others.

*sigh*

I've said countless times that our party lacks any technical clue at a high level, and this demonstrates why we need a working group, rather than ill-informed MPs making judgements on things they neither understand nor appreciate.

Now for the other problem - yet another uk government website hacked due to being utterly insecure on many levels - from users like a "Senior Web Producer" using "spiderman" as their password, to other user's passwords being their username, to php errors on the pages, to .. and this is the worst : sql injections in the URI - probably the stupidist, most idiotic newbie mistake imaginable - utterly negligent and inexcusable. Looks like London's trendy Reading Room web agency were involved, I wouldn't be surprised as I was unimpressed when I came accross them a decade ago - although this would be a major slide downhill even for them. 

From a recent party mailing :

Monday 21st September (morning) - Crime Policy: Panel including Chris Huhne MP (Shadow Home Secretary), Jan Berry (Independent Reducing Bureaucracy Advocate), Juliet Lyon (Director, Prison Reform Trust) and Professor Larry Sherman (Wolfson Professor of Criminology, University of Cambridge)

Apparently I can ask a question even if I'm not present, so I thought why spend time working on a good question on our drug policy and have it be ignored, if I can get some other names and craft a better set of questions backed by a group of like-minded members?

I'd basically like to point out that despite the soundbites about 'wake up calls' from party leaders and spokespeople each time a report comes out, none of them have spoken out or even bothered to mention existing party policy from nearly half a decade ago, let alone revisit it - so surely the time has come to put together a working group to update our drug policy with the new information available now, from Transform's reports, to the successes and problems of decriminalisation in Portugal.

It's really time for the 3rd party to stand out from Labour and Conservatives and bite the bullet on an issue that the westminster bubble finds taboo, and be.. well.. Liberal.

So it seems that a large chunk of people on the newly formed mailing list for lib dem bloggers don't understand such complex things as what a "thread" is, how to filter emails so they don't all just pile up in your inbox, or how to follow simple instructions on how to unsubscribe from a list in under 2 days.

How very 21st century.. not.

With so many technophobes, it's no surprise that our party is so weak on any technical issues, which are regarded by some as no more important than paperclips and pencils.

When will the party realise that IT and Communications matter a lot, to the tune of billions of pounds of whitehall spending, and millions more in local government, the armed and emergancy services, and everywhere else.

For example : Issues like software patents can cripple and already threaten the entire UK software and IT services industry, and Nominet who control the UK TLD has been hijacked by domain spammers, and used by crooks to base .co.uk websites in china because they don't even bother to apply the simple rule that justifies their existence. These are issues that matter, not just some wiring and stationary that isn't important.

Can anybody remember the last time we had a meeting of the ICT working group in the party.. no it's basically a dead parrot nailed to it's perch, pining for the fjords.

[updated]
I'm not having a go at average members here, the problem is that nobody takes IT or IT literacy at all seriously at all in the party - hence Nick Clegg won't ever reply to an email (even when he campaigned for leadership), ministers don't aren't adequately briefed, local councils fail to project manage projects like airports, and mailing list users don't know basic email functionality beyond hitting reply, paste and send.

It's natural for a party, particularly a democratic one like the lib dems to reflect the membership, but it should make an effort to improve it's weaknesses - and it's not just the small budget, it's the almost complete lack of interest in something that is critical to whitehall, parliament and all infrastructure - IT and Comminications Technology is almost as important as our road and rail systems, possibly more so in some cases, yet it has no minister, no working group, no policies, no spokesperson and the general technophobia and sidelining of anything that smells of 'scary technical stuff' is sidelined, ignored and patronised.

And then the likes of Jennie Rigg and Jonathon Calder call me a 'patronising arse' for suggesting somebody google for a tutorial on how to do something simple. right, because Jennie made such an effort to read my last blog post on this subject and wasn't at all condescending and hostile in her response.

p.s. Thanks to Andrew Hickey who charmingly called me functionally illiterate: I've made the penultimate paragraph a bit clearer, but it's not an article for the guardian so I won't be hiring a sub-editor for my facebook updates any day soon.

.. that's a gain from the Liberal Democrats.

Rastus Odinga Odinga has taken Wolverhampton Southwest, that's Enoch Powell's old constituency -- an important gain there for Darkie Power.

Arthur Negus has held Bristols -- that's not a result, that's just a piece of gossip.

Sir Alec Douglas Home has taken Oldham for the Stone Dead party.

... And so it's beginning to look like a Silly landslide, and with the prospect of five more years' Silly government facing us.

n.b. When somebody said about the pink pussycat on irc.. I believed it.. d'oh.. posted here in the hope that somebody else might fall for it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/speaker/speakers/irene/ - I just watched her final speach, it was astonishing, even more astonishing is that I can't think of a UK politician in recent memory ever delivering something so good. Clegg and Cameron could learn a thing or two from her.

The BBC Breakfast editorial team seem to really have an agenda on cannabis, once agin this morning they wheeled out a reformed cannabis abuser and his mum to say how it's horrible really and you shouldn't touch the stuff.

It's infuriating that anecdotes seem to trump science, they didn't even bother attempting balance - throwing softball or scripted questions, no doctor, no scientist, nothing.

We never get anything about prescription drugs, or alcohol, yes they continue to demonize cannabis.

God forbid that anyboy be allowed to use anything naughty in moderation - it's ok for the presenters to have a couple of glasses of wine a night, but drugs are *bad* and "even trying them will run your life".

.. Looks like this is tied in with the new homeoffice "talk to frank" campaign on soft drugs - the "impartial" service that's part of the home office and follows their bizarre logic on drugs - playing down the dangers of alcohol and playing up the dangers of anything the home office feels it needs to "send a message" on.

Have you ever seen any "talk to frank" ads about the dangers of underage drinking? No, of course not.

f**ktards.

It looks to me that the Lib Dems are being left behind by the Tories and Labour when it comes to new technology.

As far as I can see, nobody at Cowley Street or the Shadow Cabinet. even a junior minister has any knowledge, remit or portfolio for Information and Communication, while even labour has Lord Carter of Barnes, as the Communications Minister.

Lynne Featherstone now has a job championing e-campaigning, but nobody is doing an iota about technology policy - try getting a policy from any MP on any loosely technical subject and with the honorable exception of John Pugh MP, few of them will know anything about the Internet beyond that 'facebook is popular, and I click the little blue icon to get the internet'.

Something is very wrong indeed when how to use technology to win some council seats or discuss speed limits in some village in somerset, has a load of priority and publicity, but how to turn around public sector waste and failure on IT projects and spending, or how we should handle the problems of governance of nominet and the UK TLD, or how we should be shaping the future of communications and technology through groups like BSI, ICANN and ITU or the UN are unmentioned, unheard of and those in charge of the party and policy are utterly clueless about them.

This week both the Tories and Labour have come out with Policies and Reports, The Lib Dems have done zip, nada, zilch in the last decade in this area and our new president with all her talk of reform and modernity hasn't made a sound on the subject.

Colour me very unimpressed.

I get mailshots asking me to write software for free to help campaigners - I don't see many other professions providing pretty expensive services for free, and certainly not when they have absolutely zero representation or input in policy!

I already commit enough time writing open source software that I'll actually use, I'd even consider writing code for worthwhile projects like MySociety, but Cowley Street is happy to shell out a fortune for expensive marketing experts and people to cold call and ask for yet more cash again for a bunch of faceless councillors I never hear from... *sigh*

curtis poe posted an interesting entry on his blog this morning, I think it sums up much of what I think when I hear hardline libertarians like Charlotte or Tristan or hardline lefties like um.. no I can't think of any hardline lefties I find worth reading ;)

The Software of Economics and "Logic Smells"

That's pretty shocking

Money collection is pretty heavily regulated, particularly when it comes to actual enforcement with bailiffs, having dealt with debt collectors and bailiffs, I certainly wouldn't want them to have more power than they already do.

My experience is that Bailiffs and debt collectors will be sent to the wrong address, be requested to enforce disputed payments or even fraudulent invoices as well as various errors.

I've never had a dealing with a bailiff or debt collector regarding a debt that I actually owed :
* for somebody elses business that I ran the website for (which was also disputed, and being the guy who ran the website I helped to deal with the dispute, and was livid that Citylink were trying to bill for a package sent by another of their customers from a totally different address and it was clearly a fault in their system).
* for a gas bill unpaid by a previous tennant
* for rental arrears by Felicity J Lord on a property they forgot to update on their automated billing system, which nobody spotted until threatening letters arrived in the post

I've heard of friends receiving fraudulent threats by both criminals and legitmate businesses.

That's why we need to ensure debt collection and recovery / enforcement is tighly regulated - it's the most vulnerable people who are on the receiving end, and it's used carelessly, badly or fraudulently - the last thing we need to do is allow the use of force.

Yes, I've seen it. Yes, I have a working link, no I won't provide it.

The BNP blog comments are fill of "The Reds will firebomb my pub" and "now I'll get grief from every coon who comes into the shop"... so no paranoia or prejudice there then..

A quick look at the (badly formatted, what's wrong with XML or csv that you can fire a perl script at to look at fun statistics like how many members aren't renewing, or are in active service) data is a huge long list of addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses and rather than likely to result in "terrorism" that the panicing muppets are concerned about are a gift to id fraudsters - maiden names, previous addresses, ages, telephone numbers, family members - about 30 mins and you should be able to extract the choiciest details and start stealing identities.