In 1987 MI5's former Assistant Director, Peter Wright, released his autobiography. Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer. It was immediately banned by the British Government. Although the Internet wasn't around to facilitate its distribution, it was trivial to obtain copies imported from Australia. As a boy, I remember seeing the publicity about it on the…
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Imagine, just for a moment, you suspect that a friend of yours is a criminal. Perhaps they are running an illegal proxy, or hosting a search engine, or maybe criticising a dangerous cult, or even taking suspicious photographs. These are all - apparently - within the remit of The City Of London Police. Better report such heinous crimes to them. As a high-tech policing unit, they encourage you…
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These are mostly notes to myself. These all comply with the UK's new copyright laws. Check your local laws, kiddies! DVD-Audio (called DVD-A or DVDA) never really took off. It's hard to find the discs and compatible hardware. Nevertheless, I want to listen to these high-resolution audio tracks under Linux. In these examples, I'm using Ubuntu - but any modern system should cope. Ripping…
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Running a website is hard. Let me clarify - setting up a website is dead simple - keeping it running and updated is tricky. Now, for some of us, it doesn't really matter whether our sites live or die. But for big companies like McAfee it's not simple to switch off a site - especially when they've promised to keep it running in perpetuity. For some reason, the world's largest computer security …
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I was playing one of those stupid "Which X Are You?!?!?!?" quizzes which seem to be the rage these day. I'm weak willed, I know. One of the questions had a particularly interesting UI issue. It's not a particularly subtle problem. The image on the left related to the button on the right, and vice versa. We know, from countless studies, that people don't read websites. They scan and they…
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Did you know that the LEDs on the front of your Internet router fire out WiFi beams? That's why you should never cover their incessant blinking with duct tape. In the 1980s, the Thatcher Government decided that treating mentally ill people in specialised institutions wasn't an effective use of money. Instead, they rationalised, sell off the hospitals and treat people in their own homes. Thus …
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Well, it's not often I get to completely influence the UK Government's approach to open standard. GOV.UK is adopting .ODF as their official document standard! All documentation will be also made available in HTML & PDF. Sweet! Yeah, yeah, so I only played a small part in the (no doubt) hideously complicated process - but I'm happy to take full credit :-) Last year, the UK Government opened…
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I got a SmartWatch the other day. One of our interns had bored of it, so I swapped my long-disused BlackBerry PlayBook for it. I configured it, paired it with my Android phone, then set about trying to use it. This, very roughly, was my experience with it. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentMy first full day with a Sony SmartWatch!I forgot to wear it, & it spent all day by my bed.... Other than…
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So Google Ventures is swinging in to London Town, dragging one hundred meeeeeellion dollars with it. Wow! What a way to reinvigorate the European tech scene. All that cash is sure to filter its way down into the economy. Viva la trickle-down economics! Or, not so much. Earlier last week, I was asked if I would mentor teams in a start-up hackathon - partly backed by Google. That, in itself, …
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I love the TV Show True Blood. I really only watch it for the insightful social commentary and tasteful depictions of interspecies erotica. And the User Interface mistakes, obviously. During the recent episode "I Found You", the Jessica (the Vampire) places a phone call to Sookie (a sort of telepathic fairy... it doesn't really matter...) Sadly, Sookie has dropped her phone. Notice the…
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One of the greatest cultural achievements of the last Labour Government was making museum entry free for everyone. Whether you're rich, poor, British, foreign, young, old - you can enjoy the treasures of our museums and galleries. Of course, while museums are funded by the state, they still rely on generating some external revenue - hence the ubiquitous gift shop and major corporate donations. …
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I got into an argument with a friend a few weeks ago. I was complaining that I really didn't like the spam that Facebook shoves into my newsfeed. His argument was - and I paraphrase... I don't mind the occasional advert - between the Farmville notifications and "inspirational" quotes, I barely notice them. For me, this was quite the shocker. I don't see game invitations. I rarely see…
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