Ravenstoke, Alaska is a town where the men currently outnumber the women ten to one. In order to rectify the situation it adopts a bold new strategy to attract women to their town.

It works out rather well for them.

Bizarre email I received today which was sent to the email address I use for correspondence on National IDF cards.

Perhaps you already know, we help companies "Go Public." The President of our company is a securities and corporate lawyer.

Please visit our site to receive information regarding how any company can go public. We have several research reports available on this subject.

If you are aware of a company that may be suitable for this please let us know. We are happy for you to be amply rewarded for your help.

The Benefits of being a public company are many. It is a valuable and powerful tool in achieving your goals.

If you would like to learn more about "Going Public" please visit our site. You can also email us at info@tcigp.com for the quickest response as opposed to pressing reply.

Sincerely,

Shaun Anthony
http://www.tcigp.com

It seems like Spam or perhaps a phishing attack but having visited their site it isn't I think either of those. Quite odd indeed.

One of the greatest reasons for my opposition to the National ID card, aside from the fact that I think it technically flawed and incapable of fulfilling any of it's major objectives, is not the card but the National Identity Register.

The BBC News has the list of the 49 different pieces of data that will be stored. The most worrying being the final three.

Records of provision of information

* particulars of every occasion on which information contained in the individual's entry has been provided to a person

* particulars of every person to whom such information has been provided on such an occasion

* other particulars, in relation to each such occasion, of the provision of the information.

That is for every time your identity is verified against the data in the register a record will be made of when and where and any other pertinant information of that process.

With the increasing likelihood of people being requested for proof of ID by many organisations and companies this record will soon become a trail of your life. Where and when you rent videos or borrow a book from a library, when you go to the doctor or dentist, when you leave the country to go on holiday.

The cinema has just taken delivery of what is sure to be this summer's blockbuster movie Party in Fresno. I'm hoping that it will be as big a hit as the movie Blue Harvest.

You gotta be fricking kidding me.

Yahoo News: America Names Ronald Reagan Their Greatest American

America has chosen Ronald Reagan as its greatest American. Throughout Discovery Channel's GREATEST AMERICAN campaign, more than three million votes were cast via aol.com/greatestamerican, text and toll-free numbers to name the person who America thinks most influenced the way we think, work and live.

When voting closed at 9:10 (ET) during the series' live finale, Ronald Reagan was named the winner with Abraham Lincoln running a close second.

His son, Ron Jr, hinted that his father's recent death may have helped swing the vote, I think that's probably correct. Whatever you personal views about Reagan he did have a considerable effect on the US and the world but was his contribution to America greater than that of Lincoln or Washington.

I think this BBC survey from a couple of years ago is much more to my taste.

The confounding nature of Hapland has been reborn in Hapland 2.

This one seems to be an even trickier bastard than the first.

A report in today's issue of the Independent on Sunday by Francis Elliott, Andy McSmith and Sophie Goodchild reveals that Ministers plan to sell your ID card details to raise cash

Personal details of all 44 million adults living in Britain could be sold to private companies as part of government attempts to arrest spiralling costs for the new national identity card scheme, set to get the go-ahead this week.

The Independent on Sunday can today reveal that ministers have opened talks with private firms to pass on personal details of UK citizens for an initial cost of £750 each.

This seems to be a desperate move by the Government to ensure that they regain the public support for the scheme as the expected cost has continued to rise the support has decreased.

In seeking to offset the cost by selling off information they hope to gain the public's support again. Of course if they follow through with this proposal they not only will have rescinded on their pledge that "unlike electoral registers, the National Identity Register will not be open for any general access or inspection" but will compromise the security of the National Identity Register.

The greater the access to the Register there is the more likely that the information will make it into the hands of criminals or terrorists therefore increasing the likelihood of identity theft that the Identity Card scheme is designed to prevent.

The National Identity card bill will be going before parliament yet again this coming Tuesday. Government whips are confident of winning Tuesday's vote, but opponents are predicting that the process can be killed off before implementation due to the ever-rising costs and the now apparent risks of database breach or failure.

EDIT: Thanks to Murky.org I've discovered some additional links of possible interest.

ID cards: a child’s view, even a child can see how flawed the scheme is.

In today's Sunday Times we discover that costs may force ID cards to be cheap ‘chip and pin’, thus doing away with the biometric system that although imperfect and flawed in many ways would be a much more secure system for verifying that the card was held by the true cardholder. Ironically one of the primary motives for the proposed card in the first place was that the US was insisting on taking biometric data on all visitors to their country.

It really does seem that the government wishes to install an ID card system by any means possible even if those means totally undermine the security of the system and make the ID card utterly unable to fulfil any of the objectives it's introduction is meant to.


Edit: 28/06/2005

The Home Office has denied a report the personal details of millions of Britons could be sold to help pay for the introduction of identity cards in this BBC report ID card database 'not for sale'.

Labels: ID Cards, Security

In these times of increased Werewolf activity it is a good thing that the dying art of forging silver bullets has been given life again.

Actually, not many people ever made silver bullets. It’s a difficult process, and their efficacy against werewolves has never been scientifically proven.

Scientifically proven or not I believe that the growing threat of Werewolves must be addressed somehow and I'm putting my trust in silver bullets. [via]

Please not that the above post is not a thinly veiled allegory where the threat of Werewolves can be be replaced with the threat of Copyright infringement and the term silver bullet can be replaced by DRM. I believe that DRM technologies have even less efficacy against copyright infringement than silver bullets do against Werewolves.

More of those damn OAPs blighting my life. :D

One old lady who was slowly making her way past the cinema on her Zimmerframe saw me standing by the door and told me that she didn't like modern films and hadn't been to the cinema since Rudolph Valentino.

Lying so-and-so. I suppose it's possible as she was a very old lady but as he died in 1926 I think it is highly unlikely.

Perhaps it was his untimely death that caused her to stop going to the cinema as he was mourned by a great deal of people. Over 80 000 mourners turned out for his funeral and Hollywood legend relates the story that thousands of women lined the streets, causing riots. Several of his fans were even said to have committed suicide.

The Sun newspaper published an article today by undercover reporter Oliver Hardy concerning the sale of the details of Britons' bank accounts by Indian call centre workers.

Your life for sale

Cash for a villain ... crooked Kkaran Bahree with Sun undercover reporter Oliver Harvey in Delhi

Crooked call centre workers in India are flogging details of Britons’ bank accounts, a Sun probe has found.

Our undercover reporter was sold the top secret information on a thousand accounts, and numbers of passports and credit cards.

But what happens once those details have been stolen? For answers we look to the following New York Times article. Black Market in Stolen Credit Card Data Thrives on Internet

But surely the introduction of a National ID card will stop this blight of identity theft. Well actually no it won't, it could even make it easier for criminals to steal your identity and the consequences will be far worse.

Labels: ID Cards

A customer asked me today.

What is War of the Worlds?

What the fuck planet you been living on lady? Have you never heard of the book let alone managed to miss the media blitz that has happened about the new movie starring Tom Cruise.

Of course I didn't say that but I am constantly astounded that I have to explain what the big summer blockbusting movies are. I'd understand if it was some obscure European movie and I'm quite happy to describe what they are about, but when it is a movie that is advertised many times a day on television, is on magazine covers and is being indirectly promoted by articles about Tom Cruise and his recently announced engagement to Katie Holmes I'm almost literally struck dumb.

See also:
The official movie website.
I'm really looking forward to seeing this movie as it is a favourite book of mine and although Spielberg does tend towards schmaltz he is a very able director.

Dark Horse The War of the Worlds comic adapted and abridged by Ian Edginton with art by D'Israeli. This looks damn good as well, D'Israeli's art is beautiful.

There has been a slew of War of the Worlds adaptations in recent years, there has been another movie this unlike Spielberg's set in the original period and there was the Alan Moore comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume 2, which was an intersting twist on the original.

I caught a programme on BBC Two last night about punctuation, specifically bad punctuation and the poor placement of apostrophes.

It really is a hornets' nest as can be seen from the comments about it at the BBC website.

How's your punctuation? Test yourself, find out here.
Amazingly I scored 83%

David Rowan writes in today's Times Copyright wrongs: we can't let the music industry suits stifle creativity

The essayist and historian Thomas Babington Macaulay understood the perils when a similar battle to extend copyright was being waged in 1841. Amid calls to stretch the protection to 60 years after death, Macaulay saw no public benefit from a monopoly lasting longer than 42 years or life. "Are we free to legislate for the public good, or are we not?" he asked in the House of Commons. "Is this a question of expediency, or is it a question of right? An advantage that is to be enjoyed more than half a century after we are dead, by somebody utterly unconnected with us, is really no motive at all to action." Many valuable works, he argued, would be suppressed — and publishers treated with such contempt that the reading public would happily turn to "piratical booksellers".

A 20-year patent limit forces other industries to innovate, so why should the innately risk-averse record labels need any more than a 50-year monopoly? If Mr Purnell truly wants to foster creativity, he ought to broaden his musical tastes.

It is in my opinion a well argued case that Mr. Rowan makes for not extending copyright if the goal is to foster further creativity.

Not only is Charles Stross a kick-ass sci-fi writer, whose new book Accelerando is now available for download (under a CC-license of course), but he also shares my views on the National ID card.

Go download Accelerando then wait til the book is published in print form and buy it, or check out his other books. Particularly Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise, both of which I really enjoyed.

I was going to write yet another rambling post about the government's transport scheme but Charles has written a much better piece in his blog which pretty much says what I would have written anyway. He seems to have buggered up his permalinks on his blog though so I'll just link to the frontpage and ask you to scroll down until you find Stupid, stupid on Tuesday 14 Jun 2005.

It's all very well pledging to refuse to register for an ID card but how should someone do it in practice.

This thread at the NO2ID forum has a few suggestions.

In addition Unity of the No2ID forum has posted the following at their blog, Tests of Integrity and Intent. Which goes in to greater depth of what they see as the second line of defence

As I see it we have three clear lines of defence...
1. Kill the Bill
2. Change the Bill to include much tighter constraints on Government, etc.
3. Resist using Civil Disobedience.

Oustanding quote of the day is from Clive Thompson at his Collision Detection blog writing about the flotation on the London stock exchange of PartyGaming as reported in this Guardian article.

The company was founded by a woman who'd made her fortune in online porn, who hired a 25-year-old kid fresh out of an Indian comp-sci program to write her software. That's surreal enough, but my favorite detail about the company.

PartyGaming's head office is in Gibraltar; its computer servers run from there and from Kahnawake, a Mohawk Indian reserve within Canada; its marketing office is in London but most of its 1,000 staff work in a call centre and software development site in Hyderabad, southern India

Man alive. Porn, call-service-centers, Canadian Indian reserves -- it's like the wireframe model for a sci-fi novel cowritten by Cory Doctorow and Thomas Friedman.

Matt Locke's report on the keynote speech at Institute for Public Policy Research given by James Purnell, the creative industries minister.[via]

The speech announced the successor to Chris Smith's 'creative industries task force' - a new policy initiative to support the creative industries in the UK. Most of the speech was quite routine, but he did announce a new project to deliver the Government's manifesto pledge to review the copyright/IP laws for a digital world.

It would be a shame if the DCMS assumed that a monolithic protectionist approach was the best model for the creative industries, whilst 'older' industries were moving towards models that maximised the return on IP through more flexible approaches. Creative Commons, Backstage and the BBC's Creative Archive License are breaking new ground in this area, and the DCMS should be encouraging more experiments like this, not discouraging them.

Given this statement at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport website.

DCMS sponsors the music industry acting as its advocate within Government. The Department works closely with leading players and trade associations to identify what the Government and industry can do to improve its economic performance.

It appears to me that the Department sees only the monolithic protectionist approach as a model for the music industry. It would be good if the other side of the argument could be effectively given to the minister, that perhaps British culture is not best served by ever increasing terms of copyright protection. That creative works that pass into the public domain do not enter a black hole but are liberated to be reinvigorated and reinterpreted by other artists.

There's nothing I like better in sporting terms* than seeing England's cricket team giving the Aussies a stuffing. Yesterday's match where we beat them by 100 runs in the Twenty20 version of the game was an excellent example of that and sets up an interesting Ashes tour.

Lawrence Booth of The Guardian thinks there are many reasons to be cheerful and I agree.



*Possibly beating Germany at football in an important match would surpass this.

Our screening of the movie "What the Bleep do we know?" for the Silver Screen (our special show for Senior Citizens) elicited more comments than usual in our comments book.

"What the Bleep....." great film I love this cinema. Thank you. Fxxx

Dear Manageress
thanks for being capable and cute, and do enjoy what the Bleep XX

June 14th Silver Screen
'What the Bleep do we know'
I cannot believe that this film would be chosen for the Silver Screen, it is without doubt the worst thing it has been my misfortune to view. No plot, no dialogue that is understandable Absolutely Awful!!! Where on earth did the producers get the money from to make this? when a lovely little English Film could have been shown. At 75 I want to be entertained.

June 14th What the Bleep...
Great! Inspiring! Just what we old folk need in Bath.
Good to see a film that gives science a look-in on the emotional/spiritual side of existence. It was serious, stimulating, educative, entertaining, provocative... but not trivial, so it won't please everybody.

It appears from the second comment that one of the old folks is trying to flirt with my female colleague.

I agree with the third commenter this movie is absolutely awful. It's pure New Age Cargo Cult science, they go through recognizable motions of science without understanding the true principles. There's seems to be a lot of that going on at the moment.

I would urge UK citizens to go to Pledgebank and sign up to the following pledge.

"I will refuse to register for an ID card but only if 3,000,000 people will sign up."

Join me for a bit of civil disobedience in 18 months time. :D

More vociferous opponents of the ID card may wish to sign this pledge also

"I will refuse to register for an ID card and will donate £10 to a legal defence fund but only if 10,000 other people will also make this same pledge."

According to this Sunday Times article, which I found via Max Barry, the UK government intends to extend the current copyright term for sound recordings from 50 years to 100 years.

James Purnell, the new minister for creative industries, believes the change will allow record companies to generate extra revenue to look for new talent and nurture it. Purnell, who will outline his plans in a speech next week, said: "The music industry is a risky business and finding talent and artists is expensive. There is a view that long-term earners are needed so that the record companies can plough money back into unearthing new talent.

"Bands like Coldplay will make enough money for their company to help them discover around 50 or 100 bands."

I believe that if this change will actually have completely the opposite effect to that which Mr. Purnell believes, in fact record companies will cease to have an incentive to find new talent if they can continue to generate revenue from their back catalogue.

I think in light of Chris Martin's comment "I don't really care about EMI. I think shareholders are the great evil of this modern world." it is ironic that Coldplay should be used as an example for the extension of copyright, the primary effect of which would be to increase the fortunes of future EMI shareholders.

If the government wishes to foster innovation and creativity in the music industry this is not the way to do it. Economically it makes sense for companies to lobby governments to change laws in their favour so that they can continue to profit from their back catalogue which they know to be profitable rather than gamble on new talent that hasn't proven itself to be profitable.

In comparison the current term of protection for patents in the UK is 20 years, this forces technology companies to continually innovate, make new discoveries and invent new technologies in order to remain profitable.

The public benefits from music entering the public domain as it allows other companies to now sell the music and the competition in the industry drives down prices from their artificially high levels. The sound recordings of many artists from the fifties such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Nat 'King' Cole have now entered the public domain and as such are available on CD at very reasonable prices. These artist's music is still being sold by their original record companies and I'm sure even though the copyright has expired that they continue to generate much revenue.

I believe that the current 50 year term is a reasonable balance between the interests of the record companies and those of the public.

There is further discussion of this article in the follow Slashdot thread: Extending Pop Music Copyrights

If you have any views on this issue you can write to your MP here or write to James Purnell directly via his website here

For further information you may be interested in James Purnell's TheyWorkForYou.com profile

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith: The Abridged Script

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON enters IAN MCDIARMID'S CHAMBER.

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Ian, you're under arrest for being a manipulative motherfucker.

IAN MCDIARMID
I got a threshold, Jedi. I got a threshold for the abuse I'll take. And right now I'm a race car and you got me in the red. I'm just saying that it's fuckin' dangerous to have a racecar in the fuckin' red. It could blow.

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Oh, you're gettin' ready to blow?

IAN MCDIARMID
I could blow.

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Well I'm a mushroom-cloud-layin' motherfucker, motherfucker! Every time my fingers touch my lightsaber I'm Superfly TNT. I'm the Guns of Navarone.

Suddenly, IAN pulls out his LIGHTSABER. He moves toward the JEDI, pulls his arm back, aims at a Jedi, kills him, pulls his blade out, moves toward another, and slowly kills him
too, all while SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON twirls his lightsaber around pointlessly behind them. Once only SAMUEL is left, they DUEL. IAN makes silly faces and is eventually beaten. HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN arrives.

SAMUEL L. MOTHERFUCKING JACKSON
Let me read to you from the book of Ezekiel for a--

Suddenly, IAN unleashes some force lightning on SAMUEL,
which he absorbs into his lightsaber and somehow pushes back
onto IAN, which causes him to grow old, apprently.

I love this parody so much it freaks the hell obnoxiously!

For the past week I have been receiving calls from the following number 0161 2141200 to my mobile mostly before 9 in the morning so they've either been waking me up or phoning whilst I'm in the bath and I keep missing them.

I don't recognize the number and don't know anyone who lives in Manchester so their identity is a mystery. I answered it once when I was half asleep but they didn't speak so I hung up on them. But still they persist in calling me.

They called twice this morning at 8:48 and 8:45.

The best reason for buying a Gamecube has appeared.

Dipped in "noir-shaded" graphics of stark contrast, Killer 7 at first seems like a stylish first-person shooter, but that's only a half-truth. While the majority of the actual action takes place in first-person, the rest of the game is unlike anything we've ever seen, for better or worse.

With a cast of seven split-personalities emanating from the mind of principal protagonist Harmon Smith, each of the splintered fragments of his persona come with their own powers and abilities. Like some dark psycho-thriller a la Se7en or Memento, Killer 7's heroes aren't cut from typical hero cloth.

Killer 7 often surprises us much in the way Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction "surprised" us. Which is to say it's consistently disturbing and more powerful for it. First of all, you're introduced to nearly every game mechanic and plot twist by Harmon's gimp-like virtual assistant, who hangs from the ceiling wearing a red leather bondage outfit, typically proclaiming "Master, we're in a tight spot!" From there, it just gets weirder. When you're not talking to a sexy nurse about saving your game, you're switching channels on a television set to pick your personality for the mission at hand. Occasionally, you'll be harassed by a dude named Travis, whom Harmon killed a long time ago, but who inexplicably turns up to bother you now and then.

I noticed yesterday that I own five different videogame devices, not to mention the ones that I have owned and have discarded. Could Killer 7 be the cause of me purchasing yet another because I love the description of it.

Labels: Games

Article at Information Today, Inc. about the possibilities of library users being able to borrow items anonymously through the use of electronic cash cards.[via]

You've seen anonymous cash cards already; you may even have received them before. They're better known as gift cards. Using the same principle, libraries can issue a borrower card that uses cash, rather than personal ID information, as collateral. Here's an example: If a privacy-minded user deposits $20 to get an anonymous library card, she can check out The Terror State without identifying herself. Her account balance is temporarily reduced by $15, and when the library checks the CD back in (in good condition), her balance is restored to its original value.

Of course, she can still use an identity-based library card as much as she wants. Because the library knows how to contact the owner of a card associated with a photo ID, it is willing to loan hundreds of dollars worth of material. If the user doesn't promptly return the material in good condition, the library can involve a collection agency or alert the police.

With an anonymous library card, the library is willing to loan materials to anyone because it knows it can't really lose anything. Since the library would never loan more than it could re-coup from a cash deposit, it would be able to loan controversial items without storing personally sen-sitive information. If the user doesn't return the material promptly, the fines would be deducted when it's finally checked in (or once the accrued fines reach the price of the material).

With this system in place, libraries could also welcome tourists who want to borrow books about the local community, travelers who want to watch DVDs on their laptops in their hotels, and (where reciprocal borrowing agreements don't exist) library users from neighboring areas. I once drove to the next county over to borrow an obscure film on DVD only to realize there was no reciprocal borrowing agreement in place. I went home sad and empty-handed because a cash-based card was not an option.

Simply put, anonymous lending opens the door to new kinds of users, protects the library from loss of materials, protects the borrower from loss of privacy, and protects both from the repercussions of a privacy breach. And law enforcement could still investigate suspects in a criminal case: Having searched the suspect's belongings with a legitimate warrant, police officers could ask the library for information about the use of the anonymous library card they seized. Random snooping, though, becomes completely fruitless. Law enforcement would have to begin with a suspect and work backward, instead of starting with a controversial title and fishing for borrowers.

Labels: ID Cards

Just had an odd encounter at the cinema with a customer.

"Could I have a ticket to this film you have advertised here." he asked slyly.

"Which?" I asked as we have several showing.

He seemed reluctant to say and whispered "Sin City"

He raised an eyebrow when I told him the price.

"It's always good for sales. I've seen videos, but not usually at the cinema."

It then occured to me that he had somehow got the idea that Sin City was some kind of pornographic movie. I suppose it is in a way but I suspect he will be sorely disappointed.

Poom! is yet another example of a brilliantly simple game to understand but bloody frustrating to master. [via]

High score so far is 22 bounces.

Labels: Games

Having just checked the ebay listing again it seems the letter that magician James Randi claimed had been stolen from him has been withdrawn from sale. There is a very interesting bit of information there as well about the identity of the seller.

Questions from other buyers for this listing

Q: You may have already received this, but on the off chance you haven't I'm reproducing it here. This is a note from James Randi concerning this item> "Item #6535581498 now being offered for sale on eBay is a letter written and sent to me by Doug Henning in 1983. At that time, I lived in Rumson, New Jersey. Until I saw it on eBay a few days ago, I thought it was still in my Henning file, but it apparently was stolen from me sometime after 1995, when I last referred to it. If any of you have heard scuttlebutt about this item, I'd like to hear from you. I cannot discover who offered it for sale, but I assure you I treasured it highly. James Randi. " Thought you should know about this. ASll the best, Doc Doc-Jaksons-Place

A: Yes, thank you, Mr. Randi's public posting about the letter has made its way to many hundreds (or thousands) of his followers. As we stated to Mr. Randi early on, we would not bow to extortion or pressures or threats as we are not even the owner of this letter, we are a bonded, licensed Trading Assistant selling it under written contract for the ex-wife of Mr. Randi's foster son and former assistant. Our understanding is that the letter came to be in this person's possession much longer ago than Mr. Randi states, the client says she believes it came to her ex-husband in the 1980s. Regardless, Mr. Randi's claim that the letter was stolen is contradicted by our client's written statement and contract. His attempts to extort the item from us using public embarassment were completely inappropriate and not appreciated. Mr. Randi was informed that a proper police report would start the ball rolling towards resolution but that report just arrived yesterday May 31st.

Leerooooooooooooooooooy

I'm not sure which MMORPG this is, but a mission to collect eggs turns rotten.

Meanwhile I've noticed a lot of speculation about the last few episodes and The Big Bad Wolf. I like Tom Coates theory which I've reprinted here.

Needless to say possibly spoilerific.

A reader of BoingBoing is on the James Randi mailing list and recived the following message from the magician.

Item #6535581498 now being offered for sale on eBay is a letter written and sent to me by Doug Henning in 1983. At that time, I lived in Rumson, New Jersey. Until I saw it on eBay a few days ago, I thought it was still in my Henning file, but it apparently was stolen from me sometime after 1995, when I last referred to it.

If any of you have heard scuttlebutt about this item, I'd like to hear from you. I cannot discover who offered it for sale, but I assure you I treasured it highly.

James Randi.

I find his statement that he cannot discover who offered it for sale puzzling. The letter is being offered for sale by a company that specializes in listing items on eBay for their clients. It seems like a reputable business from what I can gather from the information listed at eBay and their contact details are clearly listed. Has Mr. Randi tried to contact them? Would they not be concerned that they could be handling stolen goods.