07.23.09
Posted in Burning Hatred, Technology, The Future at 10:38 by Tom Reynolds
A school has installed CCTV cameras in classrooms in a bid to avoid disputes between teachers and pupils and to tackle theft, the deputy head has said.
Mr Rush said that the reaction from staff, children and parents had been entirely supportive.
“The children are very happy here because they know they are on a school site where they are safe.
And this is the problem, that children ‘feel safe’ because they are under the watchful eye of a CCTV camera. They are being trained to believe that.
Likewise they are being trained that it is only right that your fingerprints can be taken so that you can borrow books from a library, that carrying ID cards is the norm and that you should feel safe now that you are put on a database as soon as you are born.
State control of your data is increasing and they people concerned have realised that ‘getting them while they are young’ seems to be the easiest way to slip these databases and surveillance systems in to place.
Seriously, look at the responses to the library fingerprints link – shouldn’t we be concerned that we are creating children who will accept anything for the sake of ’safety’?
The question therefore is what can we do to educate children about the flaws in such systems?
My immediate thought is to make Orwell’s ‘1984′ and Doctorow’s ‘Little Brother‘ compulsory English texts. But what else? Perhaps ORG/FIPR/No2ID should start setting out their stalls at school fetes, and town shows, or start making child friendly websites?
But what else can we do?
I’m open for suggestions.
(And the first person to say that ‘if you’ve nothing to hide then you’ve nothing to fear’ will have their net curtains removed, their walls replaced with glass and be made to sign a declaration stating that they trust this, and all other future governments, as well as every soul that works for the civil service, the NHS, social services, transport your local council etc…)
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04.27.09
Posted in Medical, Things That Make Me Laugh, Whoring myself at 0:18 by Tom Reynolds
Available for pre-order from Amazon right now.
Just thought that I’d let people know and that if you buy it from the linked picture above then I get even more money from my Amazon associate deal. If you buy more than one copy then I get double the money.
It also makes a wonderful gift for all the family, your neighbours and workmates and strangers in the street.
More on this once my brain reforms itself from doing an impression of a puddle on the floor.
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03.25.09
Posted in Computers, Social Networking, The Future at 9:22 by Tom Reynolds
“Social networking sites like Facebook could be monitored by the UK government under proposals to make them keep details of users’ contacts.
The Home Office said it was needed to tackle crime gangs and terrorists who might use the sites, but said it would not keep the content of conversations.
Civil liberties campaigners have called the proposal a “snoopers’ charter”.”
I’m normally the first person to moan about the government taking liberties with our privacy, but in this case I see no problem. After all social network sites only have the data that you wish to place on them. If you don’t want people looking in your living room you put up net curtains, if you don’t want people looking at your personal data you don’t join a social network site.
The government is attacking our civil liberties in much more insidious manners than just looking at data which we choose to provide to a website.
For example, there is a certain expectation of privacy when you send an email but the government want to snoop on them, just like we don’t expect our paper based mail to be opened and read.
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12.23.08
Posted in The Future at 14:46 by Tom Reynolds
This blog will be on hiatus until the new year while I consider my future and the future direction of this blog.
It should be interesting…
Happy holidays.
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11.20.08
Posted in Probably A Picture at 9:47 by Tom Reynolds
See, Monty Python ‘get it’.
Give stuff away and people will buy the physical product.
Another example would be Freakangels, give away the episodes and people will buy the bound book.
Technorati Tags: ORG, freestuff, montypython, commonsenseapproachtosellingthings
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11.09.08
Posted in Things That Make Me Laugh at 16:18 by Tom Reynolds
…But I do.
Monks, the epitome of peaceful contemplation, love and harmony having a right old ding-dong just like the drunks that I find fighting outside pubs every night.
Technorati Tags: religioushypocrisy, monks, mighttheybedrunkonthecommunionwine
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11.05.08
Posted in Musing at 12:13 by Tom Reynolds
As today is national ‘Burn A Catholic Day‘ brought about by a failed plot to blow up parliament, might I suggest that in the spirit of inclusion we also have a ‘Burn a Christian‘ day and ‘Burn a Muslim day‘?
Only seems fair in this more tolerant time of equal opportunities…
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10.03.08
Posted in Medical, Technology at 13:47 by Tom Reynolds
I’ve spoken before on the ‘Connecting for Health’ IT project, its something that frankly gives me the willies; a huge database of all your medical details that has shockingly bad security measures.
(I’ve spoken to people working on the system, and trust me, it’s horrendously insecure).
They are having a consultation process on the use of your medical information, which you can take part in on-line.
NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CFH) is conducting a consultation with the public and healthcare professionals on the use of patient information for purposes such as health research and managing and planning care.
The health and well-being of the population can be improved by activities such as medical research, disease surveillance, screening, needs assessment and preventative activities.
NHS CFH is keen to obtain the views of the general public, patients and other interested parties on how patient information held by the NHS should be used for additional purposes such as research.
I suggest that everyone in the UK has a look at it.
From the Open Rights Group mailing list I’m part of, someone has made the following point.
Note that the survey more than once claims that patients have no legal right to control information they have given the NHS about themselves once it has been anonymised.
As a matter of law this is nonsense.
Information given in confidence may not be used or disclosed except for the purpose for which it was supplied unless the supplier consents, and this is not changed by removing the supplier’s name. So I hope responders will challenge this (and perhaps also the blithe claim that
anonymisation only fails in the case of people with very rare diseases, which greatly understates the risk that an aggregation of conditions,
dates and places will identify someone just as plainly as a name and address).
This is just exactly the sort of function creep that I mentioned in the previous post, please go and have your own say about your data being used in this fashion.
Oh, and you folks do me proud. If anyone else wants to join up (I do recommend it, I’m a proud supporter, and you can see the sorts of bright people we have involved) you can find out more here. These folks do good work that you can help support for less than the price of two pints of lager.
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09.28.08
Posted in Computers, Media, Technology, The Future at 16:59 by Tom Reynolds
I do so love my Sony e-reader, it’s small, it’s tough and the text display is very much like paper. With it I can sling it in my bag and have a large chunk of my library with me at any one time.
For a while it was only available in America which is where I bought mine. I then waited what seemed like an eternity for it to be released over here in the UK.
In America there is a lovely big library of books you can download electronically and until Waterstones fired up their version of the e-book library over here in the UK the only books I could (legally) read on my reader were those either in the Public Domain, or licensed under the Creative Commons license.
So I was hoping for big things from the Waterstones launch.
The Waterstones website is not as slick or intuitive as the Sony’s American ebook library. To search for specific e-books as opposed to paperback or hardback formats, you need to hit the ‘advanced search’ button. The ebook minisite’s search bar will, by default, search the whole of the site.
For an example, if you go to the Waterstones ebook site and search for ‘Devil May Care’, the first four results are in non-ebook formats.
But here is the main problem. I really like the works of Neal Stephenson and I’ve been looking forward to reading his new book ‘Anathem’. I’m making an effort to buy as many new books in e-book format because they take up less space in my flat, are more portable and with the Sony e-reader, there is little difference between that screen and the printed page.
Also, downloading an ebook really does tickle the part of the monkey brain that desires instant gratification. Now waiting for the postman to drop an Amazon package through my letterbox and no need to go hunting for a copy (that may not be in stock) in physical bookshops.
But of course, ‘Anathem‘ is not in the Waterstones e-book store.
If I were an American I could buy it from the Sony library with no problems, but because of what I assume is licensing concerns it’s not available in the UK. Actually there is very little in the Waterstones library that I am interested in reading, it has quite a limited selection and as mentioned earlier the search mechanism discourages browsing.
At least I assume that it’s the licensing that is the problem – It is possible that Waterstones could be purposefully limiting the number of ebooks that they ’stock’ in order to determine demand. Or perhaps, for some reason, they want the e-reader to fail.
So they have a lost sale. If I weren’t such a rabid fan of Stephenson’s books I wouldn’t now go and buy the physical object, I’d just not bother.
I quite fancied reading ‘Apache‘, but it’s not available as an e-book and I don’t desire to read it enough to buy it in hardback.
One lost sale right there.
Electronic bits after all do not respect boundaries – It’s how I’ve seen, loved and evangelised ‘Burn Notice‘ before it’s show on UK TV. It’s why I make my book (and forthcoming sequel) available for download. Everyone who enjoys a book gets to appreciate the author and so will be more likely to buy other books by them.
By limiting the amount of readable material you are cutting your market. Can someone tell me how that makes sense?
It’s no wonder the torrent sites are doing a fine business, to take traffic away from them the legitimate companies need to concentrate on making the user experience of getting the content as easy and painless as possible. It’s the reason why I download my music from iTunes rather than bittorrent it, pure convenience and the satisfaction that comes from doing the right thing
Anyway, I’ve sent Waterstones an email, so I’ll be interested in their reply.
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