CSS is brilliant in concept. So why is it almost impossible to apply in any rational fashion?

Antiquated html table tags might be a pain to create, but once you had drawn a table, you know where things would turn up. CSS positioning can be an umitigated nightmare.

And given that CSS is supposed to be cross-browser- why does the toughest bit to code in one browser  – the positioning – turn out to be the one bit that’s not?

See the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4714578.stm the gist of which is that, once gain, the government have overturned the Lords on an issue of civil liberties. To quote the BBC:

MPs reverse a Lords defeat for the government and insist there should be a new ban on “glorifying” terrorism.

Now a law against glorifying terrorism is so bizarre that I wonder how the courts can ever interpret it. The first problem is the old “terrorist” or “freedom fighter” arguement, with the terrorist defined by the winning side. Then there is glorifying – does this mean claiming that terrorist acts are glorious? You would think it would be easy to get round this one, even for the most enthusiastic terrorist, through clever use of language.

This sort of thing is definitely an own goal of the stupidest kind. Western society’s prime value is in its tradition of dissent and debate and the capacity to say unpopular things. This has allowed the development of science and technology, as people feel free to innovate and challenge. It is meant to have produced mature political systemswher we can tolerate other people’s opinions and challenge them. So how is it we can’t trust our own free speech traditions any more.

There are adequate laws in existence already against actual actions and against inciting people to commit violent crimes. So why do we need a meaningless new law that just shows weakness and further alienates those of us who believed that rationalitya nd freedom were worth defending.

They were great arguments against ID cards. However, rational arguments cut no ice in this discussion. Is there a  minister with friend(s) on the board of the company that will get the contract?

Any serious criminal or terrorist will get as much apparently legit ID as they need. Probably with our names on…. The average person will get more and more accepting of measures that do nothing to improve their security but add endless potential disasters to the pre-existing pool of potential disasters.

The Franklin quote was most fitting. Are we really so pathetic in the 21st century that we can throw away centuries of basic freedom without even seeing that we are doing it. Cameras everywhere – has the crime rate dropped to zero. “Anti-social behaviour” a new substitute for actually finding people guilty of breaking specific laws, how much of a rant has this become??

(To steal a good phrase from Trevor Phillips)

The hopes that the common sense of the lords might get some sanity restored to the mad rush towards making 1984 look like Brave New World are dashed again I see

I see that Compuskills has extended its special offer until April. http://www.compuskills.co.uk/

I see on Steve Wozniak’s site that there are a few quick-time movies of him riding a Segway.  It looks like a lawn-mower. Is it some abstract joke or is he really showing off  a lawn-mower scooter combo?

Does anybody else think that killing off birds because of “bird flu” is going to be the next supposedly environmentally friendly thing to happen?

There are already much less pigeons in this city than there were. No one is supposed to like pigeons or care what happens to them because they crap on public buildings. The fact that we only have so many pigeons in the cities because we needed them to carry messages doesn’t seem to make any difference. They are supposed to be disease-ridden and, therefore, the enemy.

Now everyone is getting terrified of bird flu, what odds would you give for the survival of  bird species? Agencies that are supposed to protect the environment will have reasons that seem good to them to “cull” – kill off – even more of the few wild creatures that still share our environment.  What an incredibly dumb species we are.

http://fantomaster.com/fantomNews/archives/2005/05/04/google-the-coming-out-of-a-datascraper-spook/ has a piece that suggests that Google’s accelerator is going well over the top in the information it collects.

According to fantom, the Web Accelerator is “arguably the most audacious and blatant piece of spyware ever visited upon the global Web.”  Setting aside the point that “arguably” anything can be considered anything, it’s worth a read.

No surprises there. It’s already amazing how many organisations can make free with our telecoms. Also, how open they are to intrusions by anyone.

I woke up yesterday to find that MSN messenger had been receiving and sending messages to other people on my contact list without me having any input into it at all. Nor at least one of the other people on my contact list. Receiving is bad enough, but to see that I had apparently written MSN messages when my mouse wasn’t even in the USB port………

Does this mean that people can spoof MSN Messenger accounts now?

I did some investigating on two of the PCS involved and, using SpyBot Search and Destroy (very useful tool), I found a hidden redirect on one of them. I would post the redirect IP here except I suspect the owner of that PC has no more relation to the process than I have.I will investigate and post results on sci-tech, to follow on from what I wrote as a Newb’s guide to malware. http://www.sci-tech.co.uk/mtv1.php

 

Impressed that another admin managed to phone in a post (putting me in mind of the phrase about half-hearted actors phoning in a performance).

And even add a picture.

After constantly boring everyone (i.e. people who haven’t got the obscure Sky channel that the Wire is on in England) about how great the Wire is, I was gratified to see the Guardian’s TV guide item “Call the Cops” by Jim Shelley (4 Feb 2006).

Shelley describes the Wire as “the greatest show in the history of television.” This might seem a bit excessive but I cannot think of any tv series, let alone a tv cop series, that has ever come close to it. As far as I am concerned, the point cannot be disputed.

Shelley talks about the way that the series swings wildly from one focus to another, killing off major characters, demolishing the central location, and so on. He says “It’s a sign of the Wire’s genius that all of this has only made it better. For a start you have no idea what’s going to happen next. The characters are always adapting, developing. Mostly though, the Wire’s greatest attributes are the characterisation, the acting and the dialogue.”

In his Wire eulogies, Jim Shelley always prints snatches of the dialogue. This sometimes looks a bit lame out of context and sometimes I’d quarrel with his choices, but, the Wire has so much in it, at so many levels, that anyone can find something that seems totally brilliant to them.

Advice for watching The Wire:

1. don’t start in the middle of a series. You have to watch from the beginning of Series One to watch the situations and characters develop so that you are aware when characters and plot suddenly overturn your expectations.
2. try to get a whole series at once – dvd – so you can follow a few episodes at a time rather than watching in bits
3. resist the temptation to repeat dialogue and storylines to everybody you know. They aren’t interested. Form a support group and share with your fellow devotees instead.

Congratulate Jack Booth on his footballing success – as shown in Liverpool Echo website and in the Echo on an ongoing basis it seems. (See http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0200sport/0250amateurfooty/tm_objectid=16595390&method=full&siteid=50061-name_page.html for latest triumph- Derby Double for Brilliant Booth)

And it’s got good pictures of him in the double page spread of the print Echo.

Jack has also got a contract with Preston for when he’s old enough to leave school, but he’s got an injury at the moment, which we hope is sorted for his next match.

Some suggestions that could be coded into search algorithms:

• put some categories for the type of information you want – e.g. news, sport, academic, media, hobbies, tech, shopping, and so on. Put a dropdown list by the criteria box to choose the type of sites to search.
• provide results that actually fit into the type of search request. Don’t make me go into detail
• If it’s an academic text, why not miss out all the links that are just book adverts or that tell you you can access the information if you have access to blah university’s intranet.
• miss out all the refs that are just code in someone’s database

OK I think Google et al do a fantastic job, given their limitations. However, more human input might make search results make more sense. If this would be too expensive to implement, why not have every site mark the areas that they wanted people to be able to find – not just keywords or descriptions and so on, all too easy to manipulate by experts – but some addition to the w3 standards that say just search the real content bits. If sites mess about by manipulating this, that would probably have to be by having content…..

There is so much competition for what is the spawn of the devil. Search engines probably are among the top candidates. It’s easy to test this thesis. Look for something that you know exists on a useful web page – but which isn’t something MSN or similar will have good links on and that you didn’t get the links from google in the first place – there is a much more than even chance you will never find it.  You will find obscure pages that used one of your search words in 2001. If you are lucky.

Surprisingly (note heavy use of sarcasm,  in case you don’t recognise it), according to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4659228.stm the Parliamentary commission to review ID cards says they wouldn’t be any use against terrorism.

That being more or less a given, why would the UK government pursue the crackpot idea any further? Sadly, it looks like they’ll make another stab at it.