August 2005

Best spam ever

August 22, 2005

Couldn't help but open this one. Here's a snippet, with names removed to protect the quite probably guilty. Request you denounce and prevent the XYZ Company impudently forcibly occupy intellectual property of Mr. ABC! impudent XYZ CO.! impudent Mr CEO of XYZ! impudent! impudent!! exceeding impudence!!! XYZ and CEO are transnational scoundre! Does XYZ dare […]

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BBC Radio Five (not quite so live)

August 21, 2005

Have to pop over to BBC TV Centre tomorrow to record an interview about this digital rights group that I'm helping set up, and data retention. The interview will be aired overnight, during the Blog and Podcast Hour. When I get more details, I'll let you know, but I'm guessing it'll be easier to listen […]

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New improved Plan

August 20, 2005

Includes place to live. Wasn't going to blog this, because I didn't want to count my chickens before they are hatched, but I have found somewhere to live. Come the end of September, all things going well, I shall cease my nomadic wanderings and will settle into a really nice room in a flat in […]

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Bitty Browser

August 18, 2005

Just installed a Bitty Browser in my right-hand sidebar there, picking up all Furled items tagged with 'digital rights'. Scott Matthews showed me Bitty Browser a while back, and I meant to blog it then, but now he's tidied it up a bit and added some extra features and that makes it even more bloggable. […]

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Stuff

August 18, 2005

Maybe it's just the egotist in me, but it's interesting to watch how my own blog ebbs and flows, the way that certain topics cycle, coming to prominence one month and then fading away into the background noise again. I spent a while posting some quite personal stuff, then after a whole didn't feel like […]

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Data retention in 15 words

August 16, 2005

40,000 terabytes of useless, illegal communications traffic surveillance data, paid for by you, the surveilled. digital rights, data retention, europe

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Data Retention in the EU – Your Digital Rights at Risk

August 16, 2005

OK, so here's the data retention story, which I'm going to try to write without recourse to (too much of) the EU jargon that seems to choke these sorts of things. Some is inevitable, and I apologise for that in advance. This is the deal. The UK, France, Ireland and Sweden are trying to push […]

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The fog! The fog!

August 15, 2005

San Franciscan – nay, Californian – fog is not like normal fog. Normal fog, British fog, hangs still in the air, thick and heavy and suffocating. It sidles in, threatening, like a lippy vandal just waiting for you to turn your back so he can key your car. It promises shipwrecks, slow, painful shipwreck that […]

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Today's Observer

August 14, 2005

I totally forgot that I was interviewed for today's Observer – a bit about blogging and public sector workers. They didn't actually have one in the corner shop, so I ended up with a Times. Actually, I must have remembered on some level that I wanted an Observer because I normally never buy papers anyway. […]

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Grokking data retention

August 14, 2005

I can't quite believe that it's 1.30am and I'm sitting here reading up on data retention and the new directive/framework being proposed by the UK for Europe. It's really ugly stuff, and I'll blog more on it once I've got my head round it. What amazes me – in a way, although also not – […]

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Neologisms in the ODE

August 10, 2005

It's always amusing to see which words the Oxford Dictionary of English has chosen to include in its tome each year. This year, though, it's even cooler than usual, because not only have they decided that the word 'podcast' is widely used enough to warrant inclusion, but I also know the person who coined it. […]

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The glass jewellery I made

August 10, 2005

Kate and I have finally taken some photos of the jewellery I made (with her assistance) on the weekend. They don't really do the glass justice, so when I get back to Dorset I might well have a stab at doing some more. Kate's jewellery really is gorgeous – if you want to buy some […]

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You know your taste in men is b0rked when

August 10, 2005

You find yourself saying “Yeah, but he looks really hot in armour”. Ok. So. Armour. Or skirts. That narrows down the field a bit.

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Man stuck in bush for two days

August 10, 2005

I don't know how you get yourself stuck in a gorse bush for two days, but apparently it requires a helicopter to get you out.

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Big Brother is tracking you

August 10, 2005

Wired reports on a Department for Transport pilot scheme to test RFID chipped car numberplates here in the UK, with battery powered chips that can broadcast their identity up to 300ft. Considering that we don't have that many toll bridges or roads here, and the congestion charge is limited to London, I wonder what the […]

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