Solar Power

We installed a solar powered hot water system just over a year ago now. I was tracking and getting alarmed at the increase in our spending on gas and electricity. So after a year we have seen some quite dramatic change in the bills.

Yearly Gas and Electricity bills

Some of the reduction we be because of changes in the household. Jen has been working this year so there is normally nobody at home during workdays.
But we have seen dramatic increases in gas prices, though these have come down recently.

Arrivals crash at Gatwick airport

Airport displays run windows, and crash like windows

Coming through Gatwick airport north terminal on Monday night I saw this wonderful demonstration of reliability. Why choose Windows for a task like this.

Boycott Novell » Former Microsoft Shill Openly Confesses, Alleges Microsoft Still Does This

All I can say is why has it taken so long to come out.

This is worth keeping in mind — especially amongst victims of Microsoft’s ill practices — in case a lawsuit is filed against the company in the future. People should not just avoid the company for behaving in this way; entire countries should sue Microsoft or impose an embargo already.

This is not competition. It’s unhealthy market distortion, it’s corruption. Real people are hurt and Microsoft’s competitors who cater for their families lose their jobs so that Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates can hoard billions and funnel these into governments so that they will blindly procure Microsoft. It’s the kickbacks routine, which perverted procurement is a part of. It has mischief and manipulation written all over it and there are heaps of hard evidence.

via Boycott Novell » Former Microsoft Shill Openly Confesses, Alleges Microsoft Still Does This.

Happy Christmas

Want to wish you all seasons greetings. As usual we have created a letter.

Movember

As you are probably aware this is the start of the month of Movember formally known as November. I am therefore growing a Mo for charity. I plan to chart the progress of my upper lip on the Movember site. I would really appreciate it if you felt able to leave a donation.

LXF Meetup

I was among a few readers of Linux Format Magazine met up with Graham Morrison and Mike Saunders. The aim to do a piece on what the readers thought of the magazine, the state of Linux and anything else that come up in the conversation.

It was quite inspiring to see the range of people there, from a lad just out of school, core hackers, and has been tinkerers like me. It is refreshing that there is such wide appeal for Linux and the issues of software freedom.

I look forward to next months issue.

Radio Times changeing xmltv ids

Just found the the radio times have changed the xmltv ids of 3 BBC channels, three, four, and News-24. These are now:

choice.bbc.co.uk -> bbcthree.bbc.co.uk
knowledge.bbc.co.uk -> bbcfour.bbc.co.uk
news-24.bbc.co.uk -> news.bbc.co.uk

So if you have mythtv you will need to update you channels file.

iPM Interview

I’ve just had an interesting conversation with Chris Vallance of the BBC iPM program. We were talking about my blog post on the changes to the interception of communications. He was very thorough in going through all the aspects of the proposals. I had to make lots of “no comment” on his questions, but hopefully there is enough that he can use to make an item for the show. I’ll keep you posted.

When everything is Interlectual Property

Ok so at the moment we are haveing fun a games trying to bend ancient Copyright rules to match the digital age. But what happens when 3D printers are really commonplace. Neil Stephenson touched on this in his book The Diamond Age. where the invention of molecular assemblers allowed anyone to make anything.

If this comes about then the value of things becomes almost zero, and all the value is in the design or in the instructions to your printer to make something.

What worries me is that if we don’t sort out the current legal mess with copyright on music and video we will still be fighting these battles when this sort of technology is invented. With the impact on society many time that it is now.

Surveillance Society

We are steadily moving towards the surveillance society. Where our every action is recorded, and analysed and may be used against us. Just as George Orwell predicted.

In the UK level of surveillance is about to vastly increase by the removal of small but key parts of the processes. The Home Office is proposing having a central database, fed by probes located in the comms networks to replace the current system of requesting Communications Data from the ISP / Telco.

At the moment this informations is available to the police and a long list of other agencies but they need to request it from the operators. The operators in turn have a responsibility to ensure that the requests are fair and reasonable, and that the information provided is accurate. At the moment a request has to be for the communications activity of an individually identified person. That can be identified by a name, an IP address, a Phone number etc.

They cannot make non targeted requests. Of course they can make multiple requests in a single investigation. Who did this person call, then in turn the traffic of all of those in turn etc. Then there is the requirement under RIPA that the communications providers make sure that the requests are properly authorised and reasonable. So there is someone looking at these requests who is not employed by the government who can refer to the Interception Commissioner if they feel the requests are unreasonable.

Despite huge deployments of CCTV there is little evidence that they help deter crime. The Home Office’s own reports say the street lighting is more effective in reducing crime that CCTV.

Bill Thompson commented on this in his blog on the BBC technology pages.

The spaces within which we can live unobserved are constantly diminishing, as both public and private sector agencies link their databases together or co-operate to ensure that nothing we do goes unremarked.

We need a space for experimentation, where we can test the limits of old laws and explore how they might be altered in future, but once ISPs decide that they are no longer neutral carriers of bits and choose to ally themselves with the content industry then we lose another sliver of freedom.

I am concerned with the society we are building, where parents monitor their children’s, internet activity, track them to and from school. Where employers do the same to their staff, and where the government monitors its citizens in the name of preventing terrorism, but in fact use the systems to detect benefit fraud.