Doing the 3 Ps…

Personal, Professional and Politic.

One of the great things about being brought up in a middle-class English family is that you’re taught manners.

For example, “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, then don’t say anything.” 

Or “Don’t tell lies about someone if you can’t prove them.”

And “If someone gives you a present or does you a favour, you should return a present or favour.”

We then grow up a bit, go to university, have new experiences, for better or worse, but those fundemental social rules remain with us.

Throughout the course of our lives, things change. We take jobs, we get upset by people at those jobs, and sometimes we even leave jobs because of it.

And as we grow older, we recognise higher social structures, and rules that come with them.  For example, if you join a professional organisation, such as the IET or IEEE, part of the membership criteria is abiding by their codes of practice.

Of course, joining such an organisation shows you to be someone who is prepared to further that organisation’s cause, and in doing so, you are prepared to follow the by-laws. And as a professional, you stick by them.

Naturally, there are some companies that suffer from a moral malnutrition…   These are companies that like to use the current recession as an excuse to get rid of staff who they couldn’t remove in a more favourable economic climate.  It doesn’t just apply to the technology industry, either; I know of plenty of people with excellent track records who have been forced out from their jobs without their employers following correct procedures.

As one of those people, I’ll just say this: Stay professional, stay focussed, and stay supportive of colleagues in the same situation.

And I’d just like to mention to a certain storage technology company near Oxford, that there’s no need to continually place barbed comments in your job adverts… 

It does you no favours, and just makes you look stupid.

Hey you, get off of my cloud

In the software business,we’ve stolen a lot of words from nature.

We’ve nicked your trees, branches and leaf nodes.

We’ve had viruses and paths.

 So it perhaps won’t be a shock to know that we’ve just carried out a hit-and-run with another one – The Cloud.

 Since the public got onto the internet in the mid to late 1990s, companies joined them in trying to find ways to make money. And up until the last couple of years, this was easy – you were either a bricks-and-mortar retailer with a new outlet, like Argos, or you started the same thing, but without the physical presence of a bricks-and-mortar store, like Amazon.

The infrastructure was always yours; you had your own servers, they held your data, and you scaled up the hardware and software accordingly.

 It was the breakthroughs in semiconductors that made it all possible – you may remember someone saying “A computer on every desktop”. It was a revolution designed to put power into the hands of every user, and it was a promise that the major vendors were happy to sell to us.

 Up until now.

If you’re old enough to remember back to the late 1970s, and indeed the early 1980s, if you wanted time on a computer, you booked time on a machine, typically a mainframe, and all of your code and data resided there. You accessed it on a dumb terminal, in my case a DEC VT220, did your kung-fu, and then got a message 5 days later that your program had failed to compile because you’d missed a colon at line 355. And then the mid/late 1970s hit.

Suddenly, we could all have machines to OURSELVES, we could write whatever we wanted, put whatever we wanted on the machines, and they were OURS. IBM was incensed, but at the same time, grateful, because even though the likes of Apple had attracted the hobbyists, they also had a machine that could provide you with your own computer system – and because it had the IBM badge, your boss would sign off of the purchase request. The mainframe model was broken, it was power to the people, and things would never be the same again.

Or would they…?

 Let’s spin on 35 years.

Living in 2009, most people simply can’t imagine what the computer world was like 30 years ago.

But they’re about to get it again. I

t’s called Cloud Computing, and like the name it stole, it looks nice and fluffy, but is full of potential rain and thunderstorms.

Breaking The Law

Almost everyone who uses computers today has heard of Moore’s Law, even if they don’t understand it. There are people who describe it far better than me, but it basically says that the number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on a device, doubles every two years.

What Dr Moore actually wrote in April 1965 was:

 “The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year … Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer.”

 OK, so what does that mean?

Well, it gives you a desktop machine with some 820 million transistors.

 Holy heat dissipation, Batman!!!

Apart from setting fire to your office, with that kind of power available to me on my desktop, why do I need anyone else to help me with my computing?

Well, like every field, state-of-the-art is expensive.

But it soon drops in price if you just buy enough of it. And with the number of businesses using sites like Google and Amazon each day, the cost for them becomes cheap – and when you run the kind of numbers these companies talk about, it really does become cheap.

Relax… we’ve got your data…

So, as a business, you’ve now got a situation where you can place your business running on the latest hardware, load-balanced, and centrally managed. What’s not to like?

Well, you can place your business there, but so can world+dog. When was the last time you handed over your personal data, and didn’t find it comprised or leaked with the subsequent 6 months? Thought so… Do you really want to hand over all of your company data to someone running in “The Cloud”? If you’ve ever posted any message, photo, or personal data to a social networking site, and had it escape beyond the limits you expected, have you ever managed to reign it in? Once the data is out there, it takes on a life of its own. If you place corporate data in the cloud, who owns it? And when (not IF) it’s leaked, what protection and mitigation policies do you have in place? And if you come into a contractual dispute with your cloud service provider, and they close off your access, where will your data come from to ensure your business continuity?

 But on a more daily-basis consideration – you need to have a 100% full-bandwidth link with a 0% SLA agreement to make Cloud Computing work. And whilst you’re CC hosting company may be prepared to sign up for that, will your infrastructure provider…?

It’s My Party And I’ll Cry If I Want To…

 And I DO want to cry… Aren’t we reverting to the 1970s model of computing?

At least with the 1970s model, your data and its processing stayed within your company. My advice would to be keep your data processing inside. Send it outside when you need to – and YOU control it – YOU take control of encryption and deal with the levels of privacy that your customers expect. There are several companies that can help you.

Obviously, I recommend Trusted Technologies

McKinnon vs UK.gov Spot the party with the mental health issues…

So, another week passes, and the seemingly inevitable extradition of Gary McKinnon moves ever closer.

For those who have been following the case, you have to believe that this is nothing to do with hacking US military networks, and everything to do with being a showcase trial.

Over the past 7 years, McKinnon has consistently admitted the unauthorised entry into US government and military networks to search for evidence of alien technology that could solve the energy crisis.

Hardly the work of a hardcore spy. In fact, more like something that might be done by a 40 year old sysadmin with Aspergers Syndrome, an over-active imagination and a fan of the X-Files. All of which, funnily enough, describe McKinnon perfectly.

Let’s be perfectly clear here. This is described by the US authorities as “the biggest military hack of all time.” Well if that really IS the case, if I were in a position of securing the US IT military infrastructure, I’d be bloody terrified, to put it mildly. Are you seriously suggesting that a single 40 year old man in a bedroom in the UK (the US closest ally), armed with a couple of Perl scripts could steal the keys to the kingdom? So what about the Chinese?

To give you an example of the kind of dangerous misunderstanding that pervades politicians minds, let’s not forget about the huge DoS attack that took place about a month or so ago, which took out large parts of South Korea’s systems. Most readers of this blog will know that DDoS attacks simply cannot be put down to a single point of origin – that’s why they’re called “distributed”. Unfortunately, a combination of ignorance and over-excitability led one US Congressman to the conclusion that because the attack was directed against South Korea, it MUST have originated in North Korea, and that the US should immediately take steps to defend themselves, because they could well be the next target and have vital infrastructure disabled.

It’s this kind of dangerous, woolly-thinking ignorance that simply HAS to be behind McKinnon’s predicament. How else can there be any other justification for extradition to the US?

Let’s also make one other thing clear – the cost of this attack. The US are claiming that $800,000 (£487,000)worth of damage was done. I’m sorry, but I simply can’t see how this can possibly be true. Sure, there’s the cost of auditing what was compromised and fixing it, but if you’d spent  that money in the first place and didn’t have such shoddy security arrangements, the whole sorry tale could have easily been avoided. Equally, I fail to understand how simply reading some files from a network can cause the levels of damage that the US are claiming.

I’m sorry if I sound like I’m condoning what McKinnon did; I’m not. As a computer security professional, it’s my job to stop attacks like this happening. It is quite clear that what McKinnon did, breached acceptable computer usage laws, both here in the UK and in the US. McKinnon himself freely admits as much.  In a recent survey for computer security firm Sophos, 71% of IT professionals believe that the treatment of McKinnon is way out of proportion to what he did. And these are the very same people tasked with keeping people like McKinnon out of the systems they are responsible for.

I don’t want to get into a political debate about the current credit crisis, but I notice no charges have been brought against reckless actions by banks ,nor against individual traders. Even the Natwest Three, when extradited to the US, were granted bail to return to the UK. McKinnon faces a potential 70 years in a US jail – condemning him to the rest of his life behind bars.

I’m worried, but not shocked, that the UK government has decided to press ahead with this. Despite the support of nearly the entire UK IT industry, high profile celebrities such as Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, and even the Daily Mail, the Home Office are clearly determined to press ahead with this case.  After all, nearly a million people protested against the war in Iraq – in person – for all the good it did them.

The UK government does itself no favours in this case. It is quite willing to hand over a UK citizen with a diagnosed mental illness to the US authorities, but refuses to deport the convicted murderer of the headmaster Philip Lawrence back to Italy.  Can you imagine the US authorities hanging its own citizens out to dry like that?

The UK Home Secretary who started the whole sorry affair, David Blunkett, now says he wishes he hadn’t started it. And his successor, “Wacky” Jacqui Smith, who continued to allow the extradition procedure, recently said she felt she was out of her depth in the job.

And yet, despite all of the public anger over the proposed UK ID card scheme, the present holder of the post of Home Secretary, Alan Johnson,  yesterday described the actions carried out by himself and his two predecessors as a “No brainer.”

And for the first time ever, I completely agree with them.

Yes, yes, yes. I’m back. Yes, I’m annoyed. Yes, I’m tired. And no, I haven’t mellowed, so you’ll undoubtedly be pleased to learn that I’m about to have another rant.

One topic that’s quite close to my heart, but one I’ve kept clear of discussing is that of Project Management. Or mis-management; unless you’ve been in orbit around the second moon of Jupiter.

I first went to the Farnborough Airshow in 1988, and saw a wonderful pile of bolts called the EAP. It was the prototype of the Eurofighter Typhoon, and impressed us all with its ability to loop, roll and deafen anyone within 30 miles – qualities which I sure terrified the Russians…

So there we have it; a fully working aircraft on display to the public.

What’s to do? Well, quite a lot, apparently.

Ten years later, I found myself at a desk working on the flight controls for the same plane – an aircraft so unstable, it needs to be controlled by about a dozen Commodore Amigas… Which brings me neatly to the actual topic-in-hand – Project-Management. With a team running into thousands, across 4 countries, how can it be possible to take so long to produce a single fighter?

At the SAME company, I also worked on the Boeing 777 PFC – and yet that entered service within a couple of years from project launch to service.

Software design is a strange beast; an unholy-alliance of science and art, each resultant product is unique. I’ll accept that many products are derivatives of what went before, but each involves building the unknown.

Let’s take a moment to think about the term “Project Management”. The two words that can make or break an enterprise.

Consider it. There’s a task that needs to be done by a certain time. You have a set of resources. Let’s build a house. You’ve got some brickies, a chippie, a roofer, an electrician and a plasterer. Logic suggests you build the thing using the brickie and chippie. At the end, you tile the roof, run the cables through the place, then call in the plasterer the hide the mess. That’s fairly obvious, but what happens if snow falls? You have to delay the builders, the electricians get pushed out, and the plasterers are sitting around getting plastered. And that’s just scheduling individual tasks. If you have multiple houses at different stages of construction, you may be able to get the roofer involved on those units that are unaffected by the snow. And then you put them back on their first units, while you use the electricians and plasterers on the unit that has just been worked on.

What have we learnt? That resources should not be statically allocated, and you should be prepared to re-assign them due to external factors.

So, project-management is a damn sight more than putting dots on a Gantt chart and connecting the lines. I should at this point, admit that I’ve been forced into project planning – with the results you’d expect. I’d have been better off standing in for the principal-violinist for the London Symphony Orchestra, or maybe deputising for Wayne Rooney.

What a Project-Manager does NOT do is simply take estimates from their staff, and then punish them for failing to meet them – particularly if they’ve been advised of potential issues by those staff.

By now, you’re waiting for the punchline. Well, there isn’t one. But what I can do is to offer some observations about what a Project-Manager should do:

1) When you start a project, use the estimates from your staff as a “Dot-On-The-Chart” to give you a feel as to the confidence of your staff.

2) Use metrics. I know I’ve said each project is unique, but draw on your staffs’ expertise. If you’ve never attempted a particular product in your company, draw on the experience of those that have.

3) Be PROACTIVE – monitor the checkins. A large number of trivial checkins should indicate that a developer is under pressure, and feels a need to show progress.

4) CHANGE THE PLAN. I know this sounds simple, but you’d be amazed how few managers do it; The Plan is what MUST be met at any cost. Sadly, this is the trap that most managers fall into; you have a set of resources – shuffle them about. If someone has expertise in a particular area, then allocate them to the area of concern, even if temporarily.

5) It’s ironic that I’ve left this until almost last, as it’s probably the most important of all. Have something MEASURABLE! Its YOUR plan – you live and die by it, so support your people by making it known what they need to deliver. Simply saying “Add Power Reduction” is not enough. How much power reduction, how do you control it, what is the impact on other parts of the system? A comprehensive Requirements Specification will help you immensely.

6) Be aware of other parties. You may be managing a development team in one location, but if you are working in a multi-site environment, consider that other parties may have a vested-interest in your new feature; don’t inform them through the code changes – get them involved at the start.

And that’s it. Six, just SIX (6) simple rules for effective project management.

So, have I solved the “Software Crisis?” Well, no actually – because people seem to have an inability to do what they’re told. The above rules have been formulated over many years and at many companies, but all 6 rules apply to anyone developing a multi-party software product.

I Love You, Nurse!

 

I don’t know about you, but I’m typing this in the midst of the worst winter weather Britain has seen for the past 18 years (apparently).

 

Normally, I’m pretty cautious about venturing outside, and definitely try to stay indoors if the words “shovel” and “snow” get equal billing in a sentence. However, given the recent storms, there was no way the family could be without a car; I walked into the village with my son on Monday, and on the way back thought it would be prudent to put my AA membership card in the front of my wallet, so that the rescue team could find me…

 

Having made it back, and made soup with the spoils of my marching victory, I decided that clearing the cars would be a good move. And it’s here that the story starts…

 

Whilst clearing the cars, I made the mistake of trying to save energy by not moving my feet, but by swivelling around. And it was great – until Sir Isaac Newton got roundly pissed-off with me and demanded more rispek. At which point I went over and decided to show my love of Rover/MG cars by submitting my chest on one.

 

Flash forward to the next day, where my wife was keen to point out that “Your ribs don’t look equal – I think you should call the doctor.”

 

In the midst of intense snowfall, doctors aren’t particularly keen to hear from idiots who have been over-exerting themselves in the snow, so the instruction was to get myself to the nearest A&E.

 

And if you’ve been reading and waiting for the story, I apologise. Because there isn’t one.

 

I got down to Frimley Park Hospital, did some stunts in the car park, and promptly ventured into the wrong department, where I was given instructions to go to the correct department. Despite the best efforts of the signs, I got there OK – although the resulting detours were a real eye-opener in what hospital staff do every day.

 

Once there, I was sent through a series of nurses, doctors and consultants, who I can only describe as EXCELLENT. 

 

Much of what is said about the NHS always comes back to one group – Government. And I’ll agree with that.

 

The government are endlessly tinkering with management organisations, league tables, “Consumer Satisfaction Surveys”, but I’ve yet to see one that gives me a chance to give proper feedback to the people in the hospitals.

 

Well – this is my chance. To ALL of you at Frimley Park – from the receptionist on the desk when I first walked in, the receptionist in the Fracture Clinic who told me I was in the wrong place, the nurses and porters who guided me to A&E, the admission staff in A&E, to the triage nurse (yes, that’s YOU, AJ), to the consultant and the X-ray specialist – here’s where I say “THANK YOU”.

 

I doubt anyone involved in my whole scenario will read any of it, but I’d just like you to think that the next time someone comes on the TV and bitches about the NHS, just remember that they’re doing a great job; please think about aiming your anger at the right people…

 

(This post is dedicated to ALL to hard-working and caring people at Frimley Park Hospital, Surrey).

Where’s the party?

Well I’m sorry I haven’t written for a while, but I’ve been working for a living, trying to keep my job and support my family. As a consequence of this, I’ve been working some rather long hours and, more importantly, paying my taxes and making my own way in the world. With the number of job losses in the worldwide economy and the fall of the financial markets, I come home and turn on the TV to be told of more turmoil, and how we’re heading for global meltdown. But in all of this upheaval, I’m curious that we haven’t heard anything from two groups of people that should be celebrating their ultimate win…

Where are the Greenies and the Anti-Capitalists/Anti-Globalisationists?

We’ve been told by the Greenies of the world that owning cars is the ultimate sinful purchase and will undoubtedly turn our once beautiful blue and green planet into a ravaging sandstorm that may soon overtake Venus in the inter-planetary wasteland league, so the news that the major car companies are laying off people, closing plants and stopping production of 4×4s should surely be great news to their ears. But I haven’t heard one ecomentalist on the news saying how great this is, or cracking out the elderflower bubbly. Surely this is what you’ve been campaigning for all these years? So where’s the celebration? Can’t we all climb some trees with you and enjoy a bowl of tofu and spinach? And before you say “Hey, well they’ve been given £2.3 billion”, let’s just consider a couple of things. The money has gone to the UK car industry. Oh really? What car industry would that be? Name me three car manufacturers that are British owned. The last one was MG/Rover – bailed out to the tune of £6 million, just before a general election. £100 million would have provided them with the funds to produce a new series of models based on the stunning IP they held. Because of UK.gov ignorance, that expertise was sold at a discount to a foreign company. And so the money that I’m paying as a British taxpayer, is going to prop-up overseas companies – despite the fact that the UK is listed as the country that will be hit hardest. No wonder people are going on strike when overseas contractors are brought in to perform a service that could be performed by currently unemployed UK workers.

While you’re thinking about this, let’s look at the same people who like a good riot and vandalising shops and offices – the Anti-Capitalists. We’re currently looking at some 51 million jobs being lost in this global recession. That means families on the breadline, families being evicted from their homes, families losing everything they’ve got. But it’s OK, because the Evil Of Capitalism is being hurt.

So where are the celebrations going on? Once again, the protesters are getting what they want; major corporations and banks failing. What these people don’t seem to appreciate is the fact that their win is a very cruel loss for the people once employed by these organisations. But hey, you’ve got your financial losses, and that’s what you wanted. Of course, the protesters have gone quiet for one simple reason – they like their money, too. Have you ever seen one of these protesters that looks like they have a day job? Or are they just claiming support payments while “Fighting against the evil of capitalism”…?

I’d like to remind you people that WE are paying for you to lounge around, smoke dope, get pissed, drop acid and THEN attack they places we work. The same places we work to get paid and then pay taxes on so that it can be given to you to fund your sad, misguided anarchic protests. I’ve never heard of employed people book holiday days to go out and smash the windows of their nearest McDonalds.

Having said that, we’re in a unique position in the world right now – the biggest, richest companies begging for help from governments that they’ve tried to defy over the years, and yet getting handouts. This is Socialism For The Rich – something I never learnt in my history lessons – maybe I bunked off for that lecture. I don’t know how it will all end. What I can tell you is that 2009 is 30 years later than 1979. I was 6 at the time, and my son is nearly five. There are a lot of similarities between the two. And hopefully the same change will come soon and bring the same benefits that happened to me at that age…

Ssshhh… This is “For your eyes only”

We live in a dangerous world; there are terrorists, eco-nuts, liberals and Wacky Jacqui Smith looking to take away your personal freedoms and/or attack you at any time. I’ve often wondered about who is keeping Britain secure, and have even been having nightmares recently about the thought of Sarah Palin with her finger on the nuclear trigger. 

I’ve also been wondering how I can help to secure Great Britain, but drawn a blank. Obviously, I have some technical ability and a strong sense of pride in my country, but how can I possibly make a difference?

Well, thankfully, the answer arrived in an email a couple of days ago – and unfortunately got sent straight in my spam bin…

 

MI6/SIS Advert

 

It seems that Oxford and Cambridge are lacking in potential recruits for the security services. Now with the number of people attending university these days, you’d have thought that finding graduates with the requisite moustache wouldn’t be difficult, but it turns out that foreigners studying chemistry and middle-eastern politics doesn’t seem to sit well with the security services’ recruitment department.

So they turn to the likes of me. Now, I (used to) love my country dearly. As readers of this blog will know, I’ve contributed to parliamentary enquires, supported open government, and been a great campaigner for the use of technology to promote open government. And oddly enough, I seem to fit the advertised profile perfectly.

I have to admit, it would be nice to actually spy on someone else, rather than be spied on by your own country. In the early and mid-1990s, I worked on a number of defence projects that were marked UK/US Eyes, and yet over 10 years later, I’m under more surveillance by my own government than I ever was from the Russians.

Even given the above, it’s an alluring prospect; flash a “James Bond” ID card at the police, vodka martinis on expenses, and the chance of sleeping with Yiavonna Succabich…

Sadly, I’m actually a professional engineer, and so don’t qualify for entry into the rarefied strata of the security services. Professional engineers understand good security practices, and so I’ll present some questions that better reflect the current “State Of The Art” within the service…

 

Have YOU:

• Left any TOP SECRET papers on a train recently?
• Flogged a digital camera on eBay (complete with classified images)?

 

Can YOU:

• Leak like a sieve?

 

If so, MI6 could be just the place for you!!

 

I admit I’ve been very scathing of the UK security services in this post, so as a way of making amends and doing my bit for the defence of my nation, I’d like to offer some free words of advice to the security services (as this post goes through GCHQ); next time you let your operatives out of the office with a CD-ROM to leave somewhere in public, make sure it’s an ADA compiler. Hopefully someone from a hostile power will pick it up; It’ll set ‘em back at least 30 years…

Speeding through the common-sense barrier…

Both regular readers of this blog will know that I’ve recently received a letter informing me that attempt to break the world landspeed record on the A322 was kindly noted by the authorities, and I ought to be prepared to be financially spanked for my misdemenours.

Well, I coughed to it. As described in my previous post, I thought they were missing a trick by fining people instead of putting in proper speed-corrective measures. After all, it doesn’t matter if there’s a speed camera in place when I run over a child because I’m doing 95mpg in a 30mph zone. All it ensures is that I’ll incur a fine. Putting in some chicanes and speed bumps will slow EVERYONE down – but would of course mean that that revenue stream would dry up.

And I thought that my comments would be enough to get it off my chest. But for a moment I forgot about the current government…

Having admitted to my offence, I thought I was resigned to taking the 3 points, paying the £60 fine, saying I’m sorry and promising to vote Labour at the next election.

But soft. What letter through yonder letterbox falls? It is a secretary for the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police. (A person who clearly feels unable to put their own name on a letter…)

And what good tidings, pray, does this communication hold? That I shall be spared from the tower?

Well no, actually.

I’d always had a suspicion that the whole speeding-fine thing was nothing more than an attempt to screw more money from motorists. The positioning of the speed camera that caught me reinforced this belief, but now I have some evidence to support this.

You see, the letter I received contains these lines:

“Normally for this offence you would receive a letter offering you the chance to pay a fixed penalty. This gives you the opportunity to accept a £60 fixed penalty and 3 penalty points on your driving licence, provided you do not have more than 8 penalty points.

However, Thames Valley Police seeks to educate and not prosecute and irrespective of the number of penalty points you may currently have, I am of the opinion that your attendance at a Speed Awareness Scheme Workshop would be beneficial and am prepared to offer this as an alternative to the fixed penalty on the occasion. On satisfactory completion of the Speed Workshop, the Notice of Intended Prosecution will be withdrawn.”

Yikes! I’ve dodged a bullet! They realise that my transgression was a momentary lapse of concentration, and a simple course will remind me of the dangers of exceeding arbitrary speed limits. Phew! I’m glad we have such a benevolent government.

Oh – hang on, wait a minute – what’s this? Ah, yes, the “Bend over and here’s the red-hot poker clause..”

“The workshop must be completed within four and a half months of the date of the offence, will cost £79.50 and your license will NOT be endorsed.”

Ah, and eventually we cut to the chase; namely that you can buy your way out of an offence. I can either pay £60 and take the 3 points, or I can pay an extra 33%, suffer 4 hours bleating from a consultant telling me how dangerous speed is, and then see some photos of weeping mothers shrouded behind Kleenex, whose kids were killed on council estate roads – probably by the drivers of stolen cars, being persued by the police.

And this will somehow make our streets safer. I’m not totally convinced by this argument. So who is my extra £20 going to?

I’ve blogged before that a friend of mine can’t attend a course he wants to, student debt is at a record high, and physics funding is being cut at every avenue.

And yet the course I’ve been offered, is run by an independent third-party. So, you fine people in work, you charge students,  and yet somehow you expect the very same people in the private sector to continue to support you when you use their work against them…

The UK Government pumped billions of pounds into CERN in the 1980s, and got the World Wide Web from Sir Berners-Lee as a result. And they now use it as a global surveillance mechanism.

So I can’t wait to see what they think they’ll produce by fining us road users…

 

Maybe I’m finally going to get my bloody flying-car…

Tickling your Fun-Technicals…

The title of this blog is “Coding… and then some”, but as I’m having a quick look this evening, most of it seems political. I make no apology for this; I learnt a lot of my technology skills in the early/mid 1980s, where this stuff was still for geeks. However, now it’s gotten into the mainstream infrastructure of society, it seems only fair for me to comment on technologies I’ve helped to build – particularly when governments and self-interest groups try to hijack the work of myself and several good friends, for their own purposes. Having contributed to several government committees on technical issues, it both angers and disappoints me that the whole exercise seems to have been a stage-show for the popular press.

But putting the above aside, I thought it might be fun to recall some of the amusing moments in my career. 

 

Blowing an EPROM (and your mind, too…)

During the middle year of my HND studies, I was employed by GEC-Marconi Avionics (now BAE-Systems) as a Trainee Software Engineer. I was rescued from a certain-death in anti-submarine warfare to a team producing digital maps for fighter aircraft. Because of my background with the BBC Micro, touching hardware held no fear, and so one of my duties was reprogramming the target development environment. 

Now back in these dim and distant days, this wasn’t a matter of simply re-flashing the firmware; it meant blowing your code into a set of EPROMs on a programmer and then replacing the socketed devices on a board.

Anyway, one Friday afternoon, I returned from lunch, to hear that a Senior Software Engineer who had recently joined the team, couldn’t afford to wait, and had gone into the lab to replace the chips himself. Before I had even had the chance to exclaim “WTF!??!”, he strolled back into the office with a bemused expression on his face, and asked “Do EPROMs light up?”

After the howls of laughter had died down, I went into the lab with him, and went through exactly what he had done. Turns out he hadn’t even programmed the devices he put in the board – placing EPROMs under UV light doesn’t exactly program them…

(For non-technical readers, exposure to UV light erases EPROMs)

 

Being Too Technical…

There are many fascinating stories to tell from a rather large broadcasting corporation in the UK that I worked at, but a couple will always stick in my mind…

 

Double-sided paper

While working the hell-desk, I once had a call from someone in the call-centre complaining that they had send a report to the printer and asked for double-sided printing, but that only one side was being printed on. My “witty” reply of “Yes – you’re printing to the LaserJet 5M downstairs – that doesn’t have double-sided paper in it” was immediately greeted with a response of “Oh – of course – I’ll go get some from stores”.  Some 6 minutes later, my phone rang again, with a less than pleasant greeting – “You bastard!!!”

Seemed odd that I got blamed for their own stupidity…

 

Ignoring the obvious…

This is partly my fault, because I should have been more thorough. But by this time, I was learning that it was quicker to walk downstairs to the call-centre than to spend time on the phone.

“I can’t login!” said a panicked operator.

“OK, OK – calm down. Is the light on your monitor on?”

“No – the screen’s black, but there’s a green light at the bottom.”

“Is your mouse working?”

“Yes, just like it always does, but I can’t see anything…”

Intruiged, I went downstairs to investigate. The monitor was turned on, but the actual PC unit wasn’t. And as for the “normal mouse working”? She could still move it around on the desk – therefore it was working…

 

The button of POWER…

On yet another morning, I took a call from a disaster area – namely the postroom…

“The cleaners have been through…”

“Yes…” – waiting to get the news that Hurricane Idiot had swept through behind them…

“Well, they turned off our printer, and we can’t turn it back on…”

“Well, the power switch is at the back, bottom right – it’s just like a light switch – you just turn it on”

(Pass your own comments on cleaning staff being more technically savvy than postroom staff…)

Time passed while I seriously contemplated the differences between custodial sentences for murder and manslaughter…

And then the response…

“Well, we’re not very good with these technical things. Could you come down and do it for us?”

 

An aside to the story…

Long after I left the company described above, there was a suspected anthrax attack. It was apparently started when an envelope covered in white powder arrived in the aforementioned postroom. 

Needless to say, instead of calling the relevant authorities, they called all their colleagues round, and then opened it, sparking a major alert. (Which turned out to be pointless)

Pity though – I’d have enjoyed being there and seeing Ruth in the de-contamination showers…

And if you ever travel into London and get “mildly upset” over-running and non-functional IT systems, like your Oyster card, the IT director of that company is now a project manager for TFL…  

The prosecution rests…

 

With stories like this, I’m often amazed that my ex-colleagues could have dressed themselves before making it into the office…

The Need For Speed…

Question:

What’s the difference between going down on a girl and being caught by a mobile speed trap?

Answer:

When you’re going down on a girl, you can see the cun*t behind the bush in front of you.

 

Yeah, yeah, OK, OK – I’ve been caught by a mobile speed camera. OK, we’ve all done it – and I should get some kind of award (other than 3 points) for doing it in a Rover 45 diesel; Jeremy would be proud.

I was caught doing 46mph in a 40mph zone. On September 11th of this year. Quite frankly, given the amount of US-based hi-tech industry in the Thames Valley, you’d have thought they’d have been out looking for something more serious, but apparently Al-Queda doesn’t pay fines for killing Western civilians, and as I’m white, middle-class and middle-aged, I’m their next best target for money.

I’ve already discussed speed and its irrelevance to road accidents before, so let’s have a look at some of the other points…

I was caught on a 4 lane-wide, dual-carriageway stretch of the A322. The A322 is National Speed limit throughout, from Bracknell to the M3 – apart from one half mile stretch by Bracknell Leisure Centre. It’s also non-residential; there’s a KFC DRIVE THROUGH (my emphasis), a Shell PETROL STATION (as previous), and a TYRE/EXHAUST CENTRE  (yada, yada). All of which suggests there are motor vehicles potentially operating in the immediate vicinity. I say “potentially”, because while they are operating in the morning in Bracknell (i.e. they have their engines on), they sure as hell aren’t going anywhere.

So, are people crossing the road then? Now look. How often have you seen a Zebra Crossing across 4 lanes of an A road? Yes, me too. Which is why there’s a pedestrian walkway under the road by the leisure centre. Yes, you can even fit a bike through it (providing it hasn’t been stolen while you were inside).

So, we’re left with the question: Why is this stretch of road, which is filled with vehicle-centric businesses, has a glacial pace of traffic flow, and already accomodates pedestrians, subject to such pathetic speed restrictions?

Safety cameras. Of course, safety is the aim. Safety of who, exactly? The pedestrians who should be using the under-road tunnel, or drivers, who either can’t move, or have to spend so much time watching their dashboards, that when they finally get over 5mph, they’ll pile into the Volvo S70 in front?

So what is safety? Is it to stop pedestrians being hurt? Covered that one. Is it to stop excessive speed and cars rear-ending each other at 90mph? Covered that one, too. So I’m left wondering what possible other “safety” aspect could there possibly be?

Now you’ll note that I was caught by a MOBILE speed camera. Yes – someone took a special effort to go out and set one up that morning. BUT the EXACT same stretch of road has FIXED speed cameras, and has done for the past 15 years. But they’ve never worked. So, wait until the traffic eases, at say 11.30am, place a mobile camera, and then catch some people 6mph over the limit. It sounds a bit like lulling drivers into a false sense of security to me…  

If you’re really concerned about the speed of traffic and preventing accidents, why not put some chicanes in and/or speedbumps? That way, everyone slows down – even when you aren’t there with with radar hair-dryers. Of course, you wouldn’t catch anyone speeding, either. You can claim that you’re making the roads safer, or you can claim that you’re just raising revenue. You can’t have it both ways…

As a final comment, the accompanying note mentions “Mitigating circumstances” – namely, there aren’t any, and that all statistics regarding the site of the speed trap are exempt from The Freedom Of Information Act. You might like to compare and contrast this standpoint to the authorities’ point of view on breaking RIPA and PECR2003 by Phorm and BT. The City of London police have decided not to investigate BT and Phorm’s crimes breaking both of those laws, as there “was no criminal intent.” Well, I didn’t have any criminal intent either – I just wanted to go to work to build more large storage devices so you lot could store more surveillance data on the general public. But still, I’m not an ex-minister sitting on the board of BT, so there you go…

Growing up under a Conservative government during my childhood, I had no idea what it was like to be persecuted for trying to live like a regular white, middle-aged, middle-class citizen. But since 1997, I’ve been finding out pretty quickly…