Monthly Archives: July 2004

Baptism of Fire

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I had a good time last night, working in the Bridewell Theatre off Fleet Street. I was called in as a last minute Lighting Operator (well, called on Monday for a Wednesday performance is pretty last minute, but not as short notice as Upbeat music was a few weeks ago!). The role of LX Operator also included being the Sound Operator. Oh, and Stage Manager too. And if I’d been more girly, I’d have been doing the actress’ hair during the interval too, but thankfully I was spared that.

The play for which I was one-man-teching was Brimstone and Treacle, put on by 1066 Productions. It’s the first time that I’ve worked for a professional theatre company, and I’m glad to say that none of them twigged that I was an amateur techie until I enlightened them in the bar afterwards! Obviously I’m a well trained DramSoc techie ;-) . It’s a great play, but if you go and see it, it’ll both lighten your wallet (hey, this isn’t a DramSoc production) and leave you feeling slightly disturbed.

Most importantly, I managed to be a “parachute techie”, and I didn’t screw it up. Nice.

Magnificent Tunes

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I spent quite a few years feeling a bit uneasy about music and computers, aware (yet not really caring) that my huge music collection was, ummm, yeah. But I was so irritated by the music industry with their bogus “copy protected” CDs and their insane drivel about how much piracy was costing them (as if I would ever have been able to afford a 4000-song music collection by paying 15 quid for a CD when I’m only wanting one track from it) and all that kind of nonsense, so I was on the lookout for another option. Slightly over a year ago, I discovered an unusual music website, called Magnatune. It’s got a few great features, which are great for a variety of reasons. Continue reading →

Slowly Catching On

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I only occaisionally read articles about computer viruses (and trojans and so on), since in my experience avoiding viruses is a solved problem. Yet it’s nice to see general awarness about viruses increasing – especially in mainstream news.

Once again, another virus (it doesn’t really matter which) has used security flaws in Microsoft Programs and Operating Systems to do some damage. Whilst the BBC has always taken care to mention the word “Microsoft” when describing which systems are affected, today is the first time that I have seen them mentioning the alternatives –

The worms affect Windows systems but not Linux or Apple Mac computers.

– albeit as the last paragraph of their article. It’s a start, but when such a disclaimer comes as the second or third sentence (preferably with “As usual”, “Once again”, or “We’re not surprised to note that” in front, I’ll be happy.

Folks, computers aren’t vulnerable to computer viruses. Email programs aren’t vulnerable to Email viruses. However, Microsoft Windows (of all varieties) is vulnerable to Windows viruses, Microsoft Internet Explorer is vulnerable to Internet Explorer exploits, and Microsoft Outlook is vulnerable to Outlook viruses (propagated via email). Linux, Mozilla and any email client you can name (that’s not Outlook) are not vulnerable to any of the above viruses.

Sure, other alternatives might be vulnerable to viruses written specifically to target them. But until that starts happening on a large scales, that possibility is only used to try and divert attention from Microsoft’s failings.

Intro to Creative Commons

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Following on from the last post, what is this Creative Commons malarky? At its heart, CC is a collection of well-presented licenses. These allow the copyright owners to decide whether to allow derivatives of the creative work, whether to let people use it commercially, and whether to require attribution when things get reused. (Well, nobody ever used the no-attribution licenses, so they were removed recently).

If you want to find out more about the licenses, you can have a look at the CC cartoons and animations, or even just fiddle with the license chooser.

The main thing that has made Creative Commons work where other attempts have quite made it are the “Human Readable” pages that copyright holders can link to – like this one. All legal documents are pretty turgid (lawyers have a vested interest in making sure nobody else can understand them), so these potted summary pages have inspired lots of people to use them. And I reckon that these, more than anything else, have made the whole thing work. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Anyway, too much focus on the licenses, and I’ll miss out on talking about the best bits – what people have been using the licenses for. I’ve been meaning to talk about these things for a while, but felt that I needed a bit of introduction to the topic first. And a new catagory, that I’m calling, for want of a better phrase, “Open Culture”. Until tomorrow (or maybe the next day), then…

Intro to Copyrights and the Public Domain

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Well, I’ve harped on about open standards and free software for years now, but I’ve realised that I don’t write very much about something just as important to me. I guess it’s because I’m so used to it, that I forget that some people won’t have even heard of it, never mind know its full worth.

First, an introduction. Boringly, it revolves around copyright.

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Roll Cameras

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Just as well that I wasn’t wanting a travelcard this morning – my local newsagent was “closed for filming”. And the street outside (Uxbridge Road) was adorned with a black-out tab, film crews, an awning with a production crew having coffee (and talking with American accents), and lots of cables running everywhere. The side street had three not-really-OB-but-similar trucks parked up it, with all the cables snaking along the gutter between the newsagents and the trucks.

I wonder what made them choose that particular newsagents to film in? This didn’t look like a low-budget film (but not quite a Hollywood blockbuster either), and Uxbridge Road wouldn’t be the first place I’d think of for a film set. (Well, it would, but that’s because I live there!)

Good Idea, Wrong Solution

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Here’s a letter I quickly wrote and sent to the Home Office about the proposed identity card scheme. It’s not a comprehensive list of problems with the scheme, but I still think it’s important to take an active part in the process. Have a look at Samizdata for more details, and email identitycards (at) homeoffice.gsi (dot) gov.uk with your response.

Hi there,

I remain to be convinced that the government should carry out its proposed identity card scheme, and therefore I feel I must register my opposition to the scheme.

Unlike many objectors, I have no problem carrying a national idetity card, and I think such a scheme is both useful and desirable. However, there is absolutely *NO* need for a centralised database of personal information – a much better solution (and in my opinion, the only acceptable one) is to have the personal information stored only on the cards themselves, and a ‘checksum’ of the information stored centrally. This would allow my identity to be checked, but without having such an attractive and easily abused/misused central server. Hey, if SO19 can leave sniper position information in a petrol station, what makes the proposed database foolproof, both technically and socially?

Additionally, and quite importantly, I do not feel that the Home Office is responding appropriately to legitimate concerns about the system being raised by vast numbers of people. It is not enough to dismiss any opposing points of view put forward by civil liberty activists, purely through a difference in ideology. Where the concerns are raised the Home Office *must* respond to them. As has been so often stated, personal identity is a large and very important issue, and therefore any proposed solution should be subjected to, and pass, direct and detailed critiques.

Finally, the civil service and other branches of government (notably the Passport service, Inland Revenue and the NHS) have a dispicable record of wasting vast amounts of taxpayer money on ill-concieved IT projects. I see nothing to suggest that this will be anything other than the most recent one.

Thank you for your time.

Yours,
Andrew JR Allan

So there.

Oystercards

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It’s amazing how cheap bus travel in central London has become – for me, at least – and it’s mostly thanks to the new Oystercard system. But I’m not sure that my experience is what Transport for London were intending…

When I left London a year ago, bus journeys outside Zone 1 cost 70p, and it was £1 if any part of the journey included the central zone. Since the Oystercard doesn’t know when you get off the bus, the fare basis was changed to just have one zone, and the cash prices were raised to a flat £1 wherever, whenever. To encourage everyone to use Oystercards, it’s only 70p with one – quite a large 30% discount, and so it’s what I use.

Unfortunately, lots of the oystercard readers on buses don’t work properly. Hang on, it’s not actually a misfortune, since whenever they aren’t working, I get a free bus ride. Which is about twice a week – so I reckon my average journey price must be pushing around 65p. That’s quite a contrast to Michael Jennings experience with the ticket machines in the heart of Zone 1. But given the large oystercard discounts I’m surprised that anyone still considers using cash, instead of adding a pre-pay, unregistered Oystercard to a wallet full of ‘loyalty’ cards.

Yesterday I encountered a new twist, when it comes to loading a bus at Shepherds Bush Green. A number of large bus routes start at the Green, and it’s a busy bus interchange, so quite often an entire double-decker-bus-load of people are trying to get on at once. In the past, everyone would file in in two columns, with those in the one away from the driver holding passes up for the driver to check. But now that most have Oystercards, it has turned into a single queue of people swiping past the only reader – slowing the whole process. So this particular driver was just waving everyone past, saying “just keep going, don’t worry about it”, and so I took his advice, and had a free trip.

Interestingly, Oystercards are supposed to speed up loading a bus, by removing the need for bus drivers to deal with cash (and TfL are aiming for cashless busses by next year). Someone didn’t do their research properly though – most people, especially during busy commuting times, rarely paid cash fares, and introducing Oystercards has slowed the verification of pass-holders. Perhaps the busses could have additional readers installed on the right-hand side of the entrance, and we can go back to the two-column loading routine.

FireFox Marketing Campaign

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I doubt that many of you out there will have heard about it, but some of the folks at Mozilla have realised that as well as making the best browser around, they need to get people to use it. So Asa Dotzler (one of the chief bigwigs at Mozilla started a campaign to get FireFox reviewed on download.com, confident that most of the reviews would be good ones. I share his confidence, and more importantly, I’ve added my (brief) review. Just over a day ago they were aiming for a whopping 1000 reviews – but they were already at 654 when I posted mine – wow.

So for those of you who use FireFox, congratulations on your choice of browser – maybe you want to help the campaign, and submit your review.

If you haven’t tried FireFox, then you’re missing out – pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, extensions, standards compliance, faster page display, more secure than the other leading browser (guess which one?)… and more. Most importantly, it’s open-source, and works on both Windows and Linux (and MacOSX), and it’s free, and it’s only a few megabytes in download size, so there’s nothing stopping you from giving it a go. You can get it from download.com, or have a look at the FireFox homepage.

Now here’s an idea for the folks at Mozilla – when it comes to version 1.0 later in the summer, they could try releasing it to a few employees, and then offer invites for other people to download it… – heh! :-P

(If you review it – post a comment here and let me know. A review and a mention on your weblog (if you have one) might earn you a pint from me – now there’s an offer!)