news

A geeky rant that non-geeks really should read

Nice to see that this is finally getting some press...

Tesco web security 'flaw' probed by UK data watchdog, BBC News
Tesco face enquiry over 'lousy' website security, Telegraph

So what's happened? Basically, Troy Hunt, a software architect, discovered a flaw or two in Tesco Online's security a few weeks back. Geeks can read the whole thing here but for the non-technical, if you use Tesco's website your password is being stored on their server in a decryptable way. This is actually provable - go to any website you have to log into, and use the password recovery function. If the function resets your password to something random or allows you to change it to something you can remember, that's good. If it emails you your password, then that's a broken system. Tesco does the latter. If a website stores passwords on a server (which Tesco must do, in order to email it to you) then all it takes is one hacker to get in and all the passwords are compromised. The story has been picked up by numerous IT professionals - including the CTO of Sophos, Graham Cluley - all of whom criticise Tesco's security.

So all Tesco have to do is start encrypting their passwords server-side, and this whole problem will go away. Instead they came out with this tweet:"Passwords are stored in a secure way. They’re only copied into plain text when pasted automatically into a password reminder mail."

This might calm the layman but everyone with even the basic knowledge of computer security will read that sentence and scream at the insanity of it. It's physically impossible to copy a password to plain text if it's actually stored securely. Secure password storage means one-way irreversable encryption (known as 'hashing').

If that didn't annoy me enough, this tweet was the nail in the coffin..."We know how important internet security is to customers and the measures we have are robust." Which is basically the Twitter equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and going "la la la I'm not listening."

OK, so Tesco hasn't been hacked. But that doesn't matter - the world now knows that their security is crap, so 10 to 1 there are already malicious hackers targeting them. And when they get in, because Tesco don't hash their passwords, your security as a customer is at stake, and Tesco will only have themselves to blame for sticking their heads in the sand. Letting a massive security flaw like this lie is like not locking your front door when you go out. Sure, you may not get robbed for years but the one day that the burglars do come, they'll get away with everything with very little effort.

There is no such thing as too much security... and no amount of security is ever enough. Especially when you're trusted with the details of thousands of innocent customers.

Aaaaaaaghecho!

Dad collapses after bite by UK's most venomous spider, the fake widow

Why don't the Echo bother to even get the basic facts before writing an article? The only actual facts in this one are that a bloke was bitten by a spider, several times, and then later fainted in Toys R' Us.

The article states that "Mr Galton said hospital staff identified the trapped spider, whose body was bigger than a 5p coin, as a fake widow" Or, to put it another way, a man who isn't a vet said that some people who also aren't vets said the spider was a fake widow. Its body was bigger than a 5p. Hate to be a nit-picker, but lots of spiders are bigger than a 5p, 5ps aren't really all that big. Also, there's no such thing as a fake widow. There is a phrase "false widow", but it's not actually an arachnid species, it's a phrase used to describe one of a variety of species commonly mistaken for a black widow. The article admits later on that the spider itself has yet to be formally identified, so in conclusion, nobody yet knows what type of spider it was, or indeed if it was even the spider's venom that caused the man to faint. Which makes the headline "UK's most venomous spider" a bit of a stab in the dark really.

The second piece of fiction: "It delivers enough poison to cause severe pain and inflammation.". Well as we've already established that any so-called facts about the spider in the article are now null and void because nobody even knows what type of spider it was, I should really have stopped criticising by now. But once again I must be pedantic, because spiders aren't poisonous, they're venomous. Poison is generally inhaled or ingested leading to unpleasant chemical reactions, but venom is injected directly into the blood, causing pain in smaller doses and impairment of essential bodily functions in higher doses. Although the symptoms described are typical of a good dose of spider venom, this guy was apparently bitten 10 times by this spider before he fainted, so in fairness, it probably wasn't a very venomous spider if it took that many bites just to cause him to lose conciousness.

By the way - I'm not claiming to be a spider expert. There are many things I don't know about spiders. But I can confidently say that everything in this blog post is the product of either my own knowledge or a small amount of research into the subject. Unlike Mr. Echo reporter who has clearly written an article off the top of his head, without so much as a google search. Annoyingly, he's being paid and I'm not. But the real reason I'm going on about this is that it pisses me off when spiders get a bad reputation, especially when almost all of them (especially in the UK) are completely harmless. All spiders are venomous, but most spiders only bite as an absolute last resort, and when they do, they rarely bite hard enough to puncture human skin. Yes, it's possible that this spider is a special case - maybe it's an exotic spider that escaped from somewhere - but don't believe everything you read about spiders, especially badly researched and factually inaccurate pieces of garbage like this article.

Amateur

Some of you will remember the work of art I made in my parents' back garden last year.

Someone else has gone one better [clevescene.com]. Not only is the cock 7 feet tall, dwarfing my pathetic 3-foot effort, it's in a front garden in full view of the roadside. Now the neighbours are complaining. Which is odd, because when my mum showed the woman across the road my artwork her comment was along the lines of "I wish I could find one that big".

Beware of Link Previews

Hilarity ensued on Twitter this week - an image went round showing a story on the Guardian website with a rather unexpected headline. Thing is, the article didn't actually say that, and although it could have been a clever photoshop, most people seem to think that some clever techie at the Guardian's website modified the page's meta-tags in order to make social media links to the article say something sweary while the actual article is clean as a whistle.

pic.twitter.com/3BgucCVqTl

Whatever the reason, there is a very good point here that lots of people have missed, and that's that it's a piece of cake to fake links on Facebook or Twitter. Even if we ignore the incredibly dangerous practice of link-shortening that Twitter kinda forces you to use in order to keep within the character limit, it appears that modern link-sharing sites try to be clever by showing the user a preview of what they're going to see if they click the link.

But this is really, really easy to abuse. When a web server responds to a web request (eg you, clicking on a link) it will normally respond with the page requested, but it doesn't have to. It can send what it likes. In this case it's really easy to program a web server to respond to Facebook with one thing and everyone else with something else. A while back I did a proof-of-concept of this in action on this very site...

http://www.madhousebeyond.com/cuteandfluffy

It works by sending Facebook the cute and fluffy picture promised, but everyone else gets the scary picture of the bear and the skeleton from Look Around You. The upshot is that if you share any of the links on that page on Facebook, the auto-generated preview will show that the page contains something completely different to what you'd actually see if you clicked the link. Feel free to fool your friends!

Obviously this is just harmless fun and I'm not an actual scammer, but this is actually the method a lot of scams use in order to work. A recent scam on Facebook shows up in your news feed as a link to a 'shocking' video of an horrific rollercoaster accident (which didn't actually happen). The preview makes it look like a link to an actual news site, but clicking on the link takes you to the permissions page for a malicious Facebook app with the same name as a popular news site, attempting to con you into granting access to your account to the scammers. This scam almost certainly works the same way, as there's clearly no photo of a rollercoaster or news story on the page linked to, yet we're so used to seeing 'previews' of links that we don't really notice.

To summarise: beware of Facebook and Twitter links. If you click a link and get something you didn't expect, there's a very real risk that someone's trying to screw with you, you should restart your web browser and return to the page you were originally looking at.

Declining standards

I've just watched BBC Lunchtime news and they had a 'feature' (I can't really refer to it as a report) on the country's financial situation. It began with the shock news that the Dixons group have made a loss. It then moved to Plymouth where it took a straw poll of passers by, asking them whether they thought they would be better or worse off this time next year. Unsurprisingly, most people said 'worse off'.

OK, even ignoring the fact that the poll was taken in a shopping centre in the middle of a weekday, when most employed people are at work, how is this even remotely credible? They're asking random passers by whether they think they'll be better off in a year's time and drawing a conclusion from that. They may as well conduct a straw poll of five year olds, asking them what they want to be when they grow up, and then conclude that there's going to be a surge in the number of astronauts in the next 15-20 years. Secondly, the reason for the article in the first place, the Dixons group. They've made many losses over the last few years, even before the credit crunch... it's nothing to do with the economy, it's more likely to be a combination of their high prices, piss-poor customer service and the fact that more people are buying online these days.

Come on, BBC, I know that the government are shafting you up the arse after getting into bed with Rupert Murdoch, but that's really no reason to start producing tripe worthy of Sky News or the Sun.

Do unto others

This [BBC] is brilliant. The council of Shoreditch are trying to close some of the town's many strip clubs but they've met with some opposition... from the local vicar no less. He doesn't comment on his own opinion of strip clubs, but he does point out that closing them will do more harm than good because as long as there's a demand, supply will simply go underground. According to the report, he's even accused the council of "wrongly trying to impose a moral code on local people". In these troubled times when racial tensions are as high as they are, I for one am greatful for confirmation that it is possible to believe in a religion without being a bigot.

Drugs are bad, mm'kay

OK, so while I obviously applaud Labour MP Bob Ainsworth's recent argument [BBC] for drugs reform, I can't help but be slightly annoyed that he's left it until now to say anything about it. It's a bit rich to start coming up with radical and controversial schemes when you're the only major party who doesn't make up part of the government.

Eurovision

Oh my fucking christ... Ireland have only gone and entered Jedward for Eurovision [BBC].

Extreme Farming

Firefighters battle 100 tonnes of horse manure after tractor explodes [swns.com]. It doesn't get much more rock and roll than that.

Faking it on TV

Seems like my blog's becoming more and more like the telly these days - full of repeats. I will remind you of this post from 2007 which illustrates my complete inability to give a shit that what we see on telly isn't 100% factually accurate.

Now there's this little incident. For those who don't follow things like this, there was a segment in one episode of the recent documentary series Frozen Planet in which a scene of a polar bear in the wild cut to a scene showing some cubs being born, before cutting to a scene of some cubs leaving the nest for the first time. The BBC was very clear on their website that the scene of the cubs being born was filmed in a zoo, and gave good reasons for doing so - it would be impossible to get such a shot in the wild because the polar bears don't build their dens, they simply lay in a snowstorm and let nature do the work for them. Any attempt to put a camera in the den after it's formed will prompt the polar bear to eat either the cubs or the cameraman. So basically the BBC made the decision, rather than to omit a large chunk of video, to show a short scene of some cubs being born in captivity. Many of the non-BBC media evidently consider this cheating.

It's worth noting that these things happen all the time in nature documentaries. Just looking at Frozen Planet, there are scenes early on in the series that show ice melting, filmed as time lapses. You could argue that this is 'fake' because it's not showing the ice melting at the speed it really does. But ask yourself - would you really want to watch hours of video of ice melting? No, didn't think so. The point is that it doesn't matter if the shots are edited, it's damn good telly.

It's also worth mentioning David Attenborough's previous series, Life. There was a whole episode about plants and the best shot of the entire series, in my opinion, was completely 'faked'. There's a wonderful 30-second scene of a woodland 'coming to life' as plants grow in speeded-up motion. Obviously they couldn't do a time lapse in a genuine wild wood, so they painstakingly recreated the wood in a studio and filmed the scene twice - once in real time on location and then again over the course of an entire year in a studio against a green screen. They then later blended the two shots together to get the finished scene. In the behind-the-scenes footage it shows how they had to ensure that the path of the camera was identical in both instances, how they had to time the plants to grow at just the right times while the camera was on them, and how they had to make sure that the studio scene was identical to the location shot to the centimetre. The shot lasted 30 seconds and took two entire years to plan, set up and film. The end result was a completely 'fake' scene which looked absolutely beautiful and was far harder to produce than any genuine footage could ever be. Is this also 'cheating'? Or would you prefer to see just a 30-second real-time shot of a wood sitting there and doing not very much?

The fact is that TV isn't supposed to be real, it's supposed to entertain. And, my views on polar bears being kept in captivity aside, I personally was very entertained by seeing a little baby polar bear cub in a den with its mother. The experience would have been lessened if the shot had been missed out, or if they'd flashed up a warning on screen to say "by the way, this shot is filmed in a zoo".

So why is this series getting so much stick in the first place, I wonder? Could it be something to do with the fact that the final episode of the series is the first bullshit-free documentary on the effects of climate change that I've ever seen, and that certain people want to discredit it? Hmm.

Fox News Foreign Policy

Despite international coverage in the New York Times and CNN, the Murdoch-owned Fox News has so far ignored the News International phone scandal apart from to confuse it with the Anonymous/Lulzsec-style hacks and therefore implying that the News of the World is actually the victim of a data theft attack rather than the perpetrator.

According to the Guardian, they have now broken silence courtesy of everyone's favourite shouty man Bill O'Reilly.

You know look, people are exploiting this situation. It is a bad situation, anyone who broke the law should be held responsible. Everybody knows that. Journalists are citizens too. We break the law, we should be held responsible for it. But here in the United States there isn't any intrusion of this story thus far on News Corp properties, none! Yet you have the New York Times absolutely running wild with the story, front page, front page, front page, column, column, column, vicious stuff and ah it's all ideological! Is it now?

Ah, good old Fox News. Only reporting stuff from the US and countries it's at war with :)

Going Backwards

Those who weren't familiar with the Blackberry Messenger service (BBM) before the recent civil unrest are probably familiar with it now. It's basically a text message service exclusively for Blackberry phones, but it's free to use. Which, I guess, is a plan that's working for RIM, the company behind the Blackberry brand, because I'm seeing people swapping BBM numbers on Facebook just as much, if not more than their mobile numbers these days.

A less successful 'brand exclusive' communication medium is Apple's Facetime. It's a method of making video calls between iPhone 4 devices. It's not quite as popular as BBM, firstly because of the restrictions (you need an iPhone 4, the other person needs and iPhone 4, and you both need to be in range of a wifi access point because it refuses to work over 3G) but also because people don't like video calls. Proof of this is in the fact that every halfways decent phone for the last five years (except the iPhone) has had video calling functionality, and people simply don't use it - even though the functionality of the universal service works between different makes of handset and also over cellular.

But Facetime and BBM both do something which I consider quite dangerous... they replace a universally accessible service with an alternative that's restricted to one make of handset. Facetime replaces video calling with a system only available to iPhone users, and BBM replaces universal text messages with a system only available to Blackberry users. It doesn't stop there... Facebook have announced an application for mobile messaging, and there are rumours flying around that Google are about to release their own closed messaging system to tie in with Google Plus.

Now, make no mistake, I strongly dislike text messages. People's attitudes towards them are wrong - if you send a message via SMS and get no reply it's far more likely that the message hasn't got to its destination yet, but many assume it's the recipient being rude. Also the cost is outrageous. It's around 10p for a single message, 140 bytes, depending on your network. That works out at £714.29 per megabyte, and to the phone company that's almost pure profit. I get 500MB per month for a tenner on my current data plan, and the phone network are making a profit out of that. The same amount of data would cost me over £357,000 to send via SMS. If you have a contract with 500 text messages, that's only actually 70K of data, so compared to your data allowance the text messages should be pretty much free. Personally I'd love to see a world in which everyone drops text messaging and starts using mobile email instead - it's cheaper by far, even if you're on a flat rate contract, it's easier to filter for spam and unwanted communications, and people know not to expect an immediate reply.

But all that said, I'd rather have text messages as they are today than go back to the bad old days. Remember when text messaging was a new thing? You could only send messages to people on the same network as you, so you had to make sure you bought a phone on the network most of your friends were on, even if that network wasn't exactly what you wanted... it was a pain in the arse. By segregating messaging systems by OS, by handset manufacturer or by social network, we're basically going back to the way things were in the bad old days of mobile messaging. And that's not a good thing.

Google are evil, but everyone else is OK

So here it begins... the Wall Street Journal report that Google are bypassing security settings on certain versions of Safari, specifically the iPhone version. Cue the shitstorm as hundreds of "privacy advocates" start bleating about how Google are 'evil'. Well I'm not going to make excuses, nor am I going to claim two wrongs make a right, but there are a few points that need to be addressed and nobody seems to be doing so.

Firstly, an analysis of what Google are actually doing. In order to make their 'Google Plus' code work, they need to be able to drop what's known as third party cookies on peoples' web browsers. You don't need to know what these are or how they work, but the default security model on lots of browsers these days is to disallow this, as it's a common method that advertising sites use to track you round the web. Maybe Google are doing this, maybe they aren't. Truth be told, they probably are, seeing as how advertising is how they make all their money. But the fact is that Google used this exploit to drop cookies on versions of Safari for which they had been disabled. You'll notice that the exploit was is over a year old, and since then it's become common in Facebook applications, which also rely on passing cookies between IFRAME elements.

So my first point: are Google really doing anything wrong? It's not hacking, it's computer science. They hit a problem, they solve it. The problem in this case is that they can't drop cookies on some browsers. They learn that it's possible to do so using a clever form hack as described in the previous link, and implement it. Problem sorted, they can now drop the cookie they needed, let's move on to the next problem without even batting an eyelid. By the same logic, Google Maps is 'evil' as it uses clever hacks to generate dynamic scrolling maps in an otherwise static web page.

My second point: even if the practice is slightly shady, why is everyone having a go at Google when the exploit has clearly been working on Facebook for over a year? If it really is such a problem, why have Apple not patched the hole? They've had a year to do it. Even if you do consider this frankly quite clever workaround to a programming problem to be wrong, let's bash Facebook as much as Google, and certainly let's bash Apple for not patching a one-year-old vulnarability in their web browser. It's certainly a genuine shame to see Google getting so much stick rather when openly privacy-apathetic organisations like Facebook and companies with a piss-poor reputation for fixing security vulnerabilities like Apple seem to be able to get away with anything these days.

Heir Hunters

So this is interesting...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/features/heirhunters/emails.shtml

According to the BBC, scam artists are now posing as researchers from BBC's "Heir Hunters" TV show in an attempt to pull of what basically amounts to advance fee fraud (aka a '419 scam'). I've been meaning to moan about Heir Hunters for a while, so this kinda gives me the perfect opportunity.

Heir Hunters, for those who don't know, is a reality TV show that follows various teams of lawyers and geneologists who make their living by finding the relatives of people who have died without leaving a will and assisting them in claiming their inheritance in return for a percentage of the payout. They point out various times throughout the show that if claims to a recently deceased person's estate aren't made within a certain amount of time the full value becomes the property of the treasury.

My first point: personally, had I never seen Heir Hunters and I got an email or other form of communication informing me that someone I'd never heard of has died and I'm in for a payout, I'd have simply ignored it, assuming it's a scam. It's odd to think that this is a genuine business practice in today's relatively security-concious world. But the thing that annoys me most about Heir Hunters is my second point: like the ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyers who frequently advertise on daytime TV, Heir Hunters are basically encouraging selfish people to screw over the majority.

Don't get me wrong - if a parent dies and leaves his or her children a fortune I have no problem with that. Direct descendents and relatives are generally very close and although nothing can replace a lost parent, the inheritance will always be welcome. But this doesn't need a team of researchers to accomplish, it's an open and shut case that if a parent dies without leaving a will it goes to the spouse or children. The people on Heir Hunters are basically looking for people who are so loosely related to the deceased as to have never heard of them. Why do these people deserve any kind of payout? Call me a communist if you like, but I'd much rather that money goes to the treasury than to some one lucky individual. That's what the lottery is for. In a time when the government is claiming (dubiously, but that's another argument) that there's not enough cash in the kitty to fund essential services like hospitals and schools, surely any extra cash the treasury gets is a good thing?

So basically, what I'm saying is: if I get any communication from someone claiming to be an heir hunter, I will always ignore them. If they're lying, I'll end up being scammed. If they're genuine, I'll end up shafting the country's economy. I'd rather neither of those things happen thank you very much.

Help, help, a rodent bit my penis

It gets no better [BBC].

I don't remember that bit in the original

Historic flight re-enactment ends up in the poo [ABC Australia].

A pilot recently attempted to recreate the world's first controlled, powered flight, which was made way back in 1910. After a number of technical difficulties, the plane landed in a 20-tonne pile of chicken shit that just happened to be along the edge of the runway. You can't make this stuff up.

In Related News

Here's an unexpected cameo by the queen in a Telegraph story about spanish prostitutes.

(Here's a link to a local screenshot in case they take it down)

In which I defend the BBC

More BBC-bashing in the press, I notice. I'm not really surprised - first an episode of Newsnight that was supposed to investigate allegations of Jimmy Saville being a child molester was dropped over fears that there wasn't enough evidence, which caused people to assume the reason was actually some kind of BBC cover-up (Saville was employed long-term by the BBC). Then, when Newsnight was given allegations that a high profile Thatcher-era Tory MP may also be part of the same paedophile ring, they ran another episode, stopping short of actually naming the MP in question... and they were still criticised when it turned out that the allegations may not be true. Basically, the BBC are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

Frankly, I think they did the right thing with the Saville incident. Being accused of being a child molester is a career-destroying event, even if it's not true. No media outlet, particularly a publically funded one, should do this unless they are 100% certain that their allegations are true, and can back it up with hard evidence. So dropping the Saville allegations at a time when nobody was completely sure if they were true was correct. The subsequent episode about the Tory MP (which later turned out to be former Tory treasurer Lord McAlpine) was maybe a little hasty - OK, had he been guilty then the BBC would have had a scoop, and the Newsnight program was intended to encourage other victims to come forward. Happily, it now looks like the allegations against Lord McAlpine are false, but even though the BBC didn't actually name him, they're still getting it in the neck for starting the witch hunt. Which is sort of fair - the superinjunctions scandal of last year pretty much proved that you can't hide information with the likes of Twitter out there. So I do agree that in the Lord McAlpine case the BBC did perhaps make a bit of a boo-boo, even though their intentions were clearly good.

Let's remind ourselves of a chap called Chris Jeffries. He was a landlord in Bristol and he owned the flat in which a young student named Jo Yeates was living. Yeates was murdered by her neighbour, Vincent Tabak, but one of the suspects in the early days of the case was Jeffries himself. He was never actually charged with any offence, but this didn't stop many news outlets from participating in a character assassination of him the very second it emerged that he was being questioned as a suspect. Every piece of dirt possible on Jeffries was published in the national press. When he was released from police custody, Jeffries rightly sued eight major news organisations for libel, which was settled out-of-court for an enormous sum of money, and the Mirror and News International were both found guilty of contempt of court. The BBC were not one of the organisations involved.

Earlier this year, we had the Leveson inquiry. This was an investigation into the ethics of the news industry, particularly the practice of illegally accessing the voicemails of public figures in order to steal private information. Many high-profile journalists and figures in the newspaper industry have been accused not only of wrongdoing but also criminal acts. These people represent News International and the Mail... but not the BBC.

Even more recently it came to light that the Sun had been a key player in covering up the true facts of the Hillsborough Disaster, a catatrophic event in 1989 in which incompetant police measures indirectly caused the death of 96 people at a football match due to overcrowding. The Sun had reported at the time that it was an unruly crowd, and not the police, who were at fault for the fatalities, and it was only this year that a proper inquiry was carried out, and found the police to be the ones at fault. The Sun, to their credit, apologised. The BBC were not involved.

So the point that I'm making is that there are many news and media organisations that are guilty of serious miscarriages of justice. The BBC is actually relatively squeaky-clean compared to some other organisations out there. But the other organisations don't get nearly as much stick as the BBC.

Why is this? There are several reasons. Firstly, the BBC is publically funded rather than being a private business. They have a core requirement to be impartial, and lots of people know this. So any time the BBC says something someone doesn't agree with, they get criticised, and have to act accordingly. This is why Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were sacked for making one slightly offensive radio show, and people like Richard Littlejohn and Jon Gaunt can continue writing as many offensive comments as they damn well like, provided it sells newspapers. It's also why the BBC can't show anything too controversial while Channel 4 thrives on controversy. Secondly - and most importantly - the BBC is in the enviable position of not having to rely on external funding, and other media organisations are jealous. The Mail, the Sun, even ITV are always complaining about the BBC and referring to the license fee as a tax (it isn't). As I've said before, the BBC don't have to worry about pandering to advertisers or coming up with novel funding mechanisms involving premium rate phone-ins, and just get on with producing good telly... and frankly that's an incredibly envious position to be in. Over time, the BBC have produced masses of really good stuff in an incredibly efficient way. The license fee is currently £12.13 a month - if anyone can find me a newspaper or paid TV subscription for less than that I'll be very surprised. Your license fee pays for the BBC's TV, research and development, iPlayer, Radio, the website, plus more. The BBC runs Sport Relief, Comic Relief and Children in Need. And it does all this without having to bombard you with adverts. I personally can forgive the occasional cock-up.

Basically, this whole thing is a witch-hunt. It's every media outlet against the BBC, and the BBC isn't very good at sticking up for itself. It can't be - to do so would be to compromise its impartiality. Which is why we, the people of Britain, need to stick up for it. As Mitch Benn says in his fantastic song 'Proud of the BBC', "even if you don't always choose it, you'll know what you had if you lose it." Let's stop following the media witch hunt and use our brains for a change. You really wouldn't want the whole british media run by Rupert Murdoch.

Lies, damn lies

OK, this is starting to piss me off now.

There are various stories in the local rag (The Echo) about how things are better/worse than last year, most of which completely ignore relevant factors such as weather and the economy, but this one annoys me the most...

Festive drink drive figures up - despite crackdown

Basically, the number of people arrested for drink-driving this christmas is higher than last year. The article goes on about how the police are disappointed that the figure is so high, despite a 'crackdown', whatever that means. Not once in the article does it mention that last christmas most of Hampshire was under about a foot of snow.

Yes, that's right - only those with very short memories would be surprised that the number of drink-drive arrests are up this year compared to last... last year there were considerably fewer cars on the roads due to harsh weather conditions, and probably fewer police cars around too, for the same reason. I bet if they were to report the number of arrests as a percentage of the total cars on the road, rather than an absolute figure, it'd be pretty constant year on year.

Life Imitating Art

Today it's been announced [BBC] that police could soon get the power to issue on-the-spot fines for people who drive like cocks, rather than being limited to fining a small subset of law-breakers, such as those who speed or drive drunk.

I'd like to take the opportunity to mention that I thought of this nearly four years ago.

Life imitating slapstick

Man viciously beaten over poo-in-handbag

More Echo Journalism

The Echo has run a story about how Southampton is the worst area in the south east for fly tipping, topping a list of 67 councils.

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/9859261.City_worst_for_fly_tipping/

Shocking, eh? Well it would be if you didn't have a look at the source data from DEFRA, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs...

http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/environment/waste/flytipping-in-england-annual-statistics/

Ignoring the obvious bias always associated with absolute figures - any statistician will tell you that the main figure should really be incidents per square mile or per 1000 people, rather than just total incidents - I can't help but notice that the data is in fact data for 2010-2011 and was released back in December. Obviously this is bad journalism on the Echo's part for reporting these figures as if they were current rather than eight months out of date. But there is another major factor that has been overlooked here - in the summer of 2011 Southampton's batshit-insane council decided to screw over half the public sector, leading to months of strikes throughout the city. Specifically, where I live we had our bins emptied twice over a period of about four months because the refuse collectors were on strike. It's not really surprising that there was an increase in fly-tipping in the Southampton area during this period.

I've said it before and I've said it again - don't believe anything you read in the paper (particularly the Echo) until you've seen the raw data.

Pimp my Tat

Man tattoos giant penis onto mate's back [metro.co.uk]. Awesome.

Product Placement

This is interesting [out-law.com]. It seems that although UK TV channels will be allowed to show programs containing product placement from the end of this month, they must be preceeded with a big 'P' logo to allow the viewers to know they're being brainwashed... er... watching such a show.

What I don't get though is why, and if it will affect all the shows on UK TV that already contain product placement... mainly the US shows that we get on syndication. OK, so if you're watching a UK TV show you can be sure it wasn't funded by advertisers unless it has the 'P' logo, but what about other stuff? Will we get a big 'P' before any of the recent Bond movies are shown? And will it matter, considering the product placement in those films is so blatently obvious? It's just like when you go into a shop and it's always obvious when the salespeople are paid on commission just from their sales technique. That said, the OFCOM guidelines clearly state "Placed products and services cannot" ... "be featured in an unduly prominent way within programmes". So yeah, I guess that means no more Bond movies at all then. Or the Transformers movie.

Likewise, why does it matter that the company in question has paid for the exposure when many shows, intentionally or otherwise, already give exposure to certain brands over others (example: every laptop or smartphone you ever see on a BBC technology show seems to be made by Apple)? Are we going to see an entire breakdown of the TV company's finances? What makes the advertising budget so special?

I say, just let it go. Allow the product placement if you must, but if it gets too annoying most smart people will just switch off. I rarely watch any non-BBC channel purely because I get pissed off with adverts.

Serial Moaning

This is awesome:

Paris woman trapped for 20 days in bathroom [BBC].

This poor old dear of 69 got stuck in her bathroom when the lock jammed. With no phone or any other way of alerting anyone, she began banging on the pipes in the hope that the sound would travel to neighbours.

Travel it did. And the neighbours' response? Complain about the noise. Yes, that's right, their first instinct when confronted with an unusual tapping noise on the pipes in the dead of night is to start a petition get it stopped, rather than to actually go and find out what the problem was in the first place. I'd make some joke about the french complaining about everything, but I know full well the same thing would have happened in this country. Thankfully, they soon realised they'd not seen her for days and called the authorities who sent in a crew to rescue her... in what seems to be the nick of time, as she'd been living on nothing but water for over two weeks.

Shirley you can't be serious

I am serious, and don't call me Shirley. Leslie Nielsen, undisputed king of deadpan humour, has died [BBC] at the ripe old age of 84. And I think he took a little piece of me with him :(

Slow News Day at the Echo

This story is wonderful in so many ways. The shock news? That there was a mobile speed camera on the A31 this morning.

As if the whole concept of a story about a speed camera wasn't funny enough, it describes in great detail how drivers are being "forced to break suddenly" [sic] and how it's causing tailbacks during rush hour.

EDIT: The spelling error has now been corrected.

Funnily enough, there was no mention of any 'tailbacks' on the BBC travel news beyond the usual rush hour traffic.

Someone find me a memory tube

Previously...

Now, of course, it's all happening again [wired.com]

That band that has the same name as a band I quite like

Guns N' Roses suing Guitar Hero game over Slash [BBC]

Oh, Axl, Axl, Axl, when will you wake up and realise that the whole world thinks you're a cock? So you're worried that Guitar Hero is "emphasizing and reinforcing an association between Slash and Guns N' Roses and the band's song Welcome to the Jungle". Because, you know, co-writing a song, playing lead on the original recording and then playing it live at every gig for the next ten years doesn't associate a guitarist with a song anywhere near as much as appearing alongside it in a computer game does. Twat.

That word again

In the news recently, this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/10/uk-uncut-hacks-vodafone-website

Basically, Vodafone held a competition called 'World of Difference' for people from charities, the winners of which got their charity work funded for [x] amount of time, plus a blog published on Vodafone's website. At least two, probably more of these charitable people are a little miffed at Vodafone's tax avoidance, as detailed in Private Eye, which is currently estimated at £6 billion, massively overshadowing the amount Vodafone have donated to charity. So they gave their account passwords to the protest group UK Uncut, who promptly began posting messages detailing Vodafone's alleged account figures all over Vodafone's website. Obviously, this was immensely funny.

What annoys me is that all the major news outlets are once again using the term 'hacked' inappropriately, as they did/still are doing during the News of the World voicemail scandal. The accounts were not hacked, they were accessed using the correct passwords with the account owners' consent, although admittedly not with the consent of Vodafone. If I unlock my front door and tell you to go inside, nobody would say that you broke in, even if my landlord doesn't like you. Why do the press seem to like using the word 'hack' so much, is hacking becoming sexy or something?

Rant over.

The Brigadier

Nicholas Courtney dies aged 81 [BBC]

Well that puts a bit of a dampener on any rumours of the Brigadier appearing in any future episodes of Doctor Who then : (

The Echo - reporting the news before it happens

I've made fun of the Echo and its obsession with reporting every tiny little incident on the road network as if it's the end of the world before. They seem particularly intent on reporting every time one of their reporters passes a speed camera on the road. Now they're at it again, and pre-emptively this time! Basically, there's going to be some essential bridge work on the most westerly part of the M27 over the winter, and obviously there's going to be some road closures and restrictions, just like there has been for the past few months a bit further up at junction 5-7. I personally have no problem with it - anything that stops a bridge from collapsing is a good thing. But this time it warrants a big ranty news story, because, as the headline seems keen to point out, they're putting in temporary speed cameras.

www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/9384560.Speed_limit_in_force_for_M27_bridge_repair_work/

The article has a washed-out photo, presumably taken from the Romsey Road bridge over the M27, of a yellow pole on the side of the motorway. The pole doesn't have a speed camera on it yet of course, but that's not stopping the article from pressing ahead. The text of the article itself opens with the doom-predicting sentence "Motorists face three months of misery on one of the region's busiest motorways."

First of all, there are two motorways in the region, the M27 and the M3. Both are regularly referred to in the Echo as "one of the region's busiest motorways". You may as well say "my mum's one of the two best parents I've ever had". Even if you count the mini-motorways - the M271, the M275 and the A3M - that's still only five, and you could happily refer to any one of them as "one of the region's busiest motorways". Motorways are generally built because a lot of traffic all wants to go in the same direction, they're supposed to be busy. Stop using this frankly redundant statement.

Secondly, three months of misery? How do you know? Who's writing this shit... Jeremy Clarkson or Mystic Meg? The M27 and M3 always have some kind of road works going on, particularly at night. We're used to it. They're not going to be closing any lanes during the day and most of the work on the bridges will be done at night, so the only thing most people will notice on the motorway is that because of the temporary 50mph speed limit it'll take 18 minutes to drive from Cadnam to Rownhams rather than 12. And don't forget, it's during the winter so if we have snow like last year anyone with an ounce of sense will be driving a bit slower anyway. Any genuine justification for assuming there's going to be three months of misery as a direct result of this essential road maintenance, or was it just a wild guess?

Basically, the entire article could be replaced with two sentences: "Over the winter, it'll take you an extra five or six minutes to drive from junction 1 to junction 3, assuming normal weather and traffic conditions. In return for this minor inconvenience, they're fixing some bridges so the motorway won't collapse with you on it."

The Echo - where headlines don't have to match the story

I moan about the Echo but still read it. Maybe this makes me a hypocrite.

"Town centre closed off as police hunt robber"

The article begins with "Part of a Hampshire town centre is closed off today as police hunt a robber", and goes on to explain that the town in question is Fareham. Fareham's pretty big, and it's amazing to think they'd close off even part of the town centre to catch a robber who stole money from a cash machine.

If you read right to the end, you get "as part of their investigation police say that part of West Street will be closed off for some of this morning."

So basically, they've closed off a small area of west street (probably just the cash machine in question, for some forensic analysis) and the Echo headline implies that the entire town centre is closed.

In tomorrow's issue: "Woman in speeding vehicle causes carnage", a chilling story about a granny on a mobility scooter who accidentally bumped into a kerb, causing a dog walker to wait for her to reorient herself before passing.

The Echo Does It Again

I love how the Echo always manages to make a mountain out of a molehill.

M27 motorway to be closed eastbound for three days, screams the headline. The article begins: "The eastbound carriageway of the M27 will be completely closed for three days, it has been revealed". Yet the very next sentence clarifies somewhat: "The motorway will be closed between junctions four and five on March 9, 10 and 11." So in one sentence, we've gone from the entire eastbound carriageway being closed to one junction being closed eastbound. Still - three days, what are they thinking?

Ah, hold on... let's check the actual source of the news, namely the Highways Agency website. "The work will be carried out during a 32 hour closure of the carriageway, from 9pm on Saturday 9 to 5.30am on Monday 11 March. Fully signed diversion routes will be in place," say the HA. So basically the road will only be closed for one full day plus a bit of night work, and the full day will be a sunday, when most of the traffic on the eastbound M27 gets off at junction 4 anyway.

This doesn't actually annoy me - the Echo, like most tabloids, should be taken with an extremely large helping of salt. What annoys me is that I've already had an email at work (sent to the entire department) from some hysterical loon "warning" people who drive to work about the traffic, making it very clear that they've only read the headline and not the article, and certainly haven't bothered to check the information source. Is it any wonder that urban myths circulate so easily when people actions are based on such inaccurate and incomplete information?

The Hazards of URL Shorteners

Anyone who uses Twitter or writes articles with a character limit will love the many URL shorteners on the net. If you have a URL such as 'http://www.somehost.com/path/path/more/wibble/filename.html?blah.blah=blah' or similar you can poke it into something like bit.ly and get a much shorter version. The shortener service simply handles the URL and redirects to the real site.

Obviously the main concern is that you don't know what you're clicking on. A link to bit.ly/12345 could lead to anything from hardcore porn to the official Dora the Explorer website, you just have to trust whoever sent you the link. But it's not always trusting the link creator to not be an arsehole, you also have to trust their spelling, as this story [infoworld.com] shows.

In a nutshell, California politician and ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman, or one of her staff, recently posted a shortened link on her official Twitter feed to a news article about local police support for her campaign. What tweeters got when they clicked the link was a YouTube video of a tall, long-haired oriental gentleman in a pink tutu playing the bass guitar. I'm not entirely sure what moral can be drawn from this, other than to be careful when using URL shorteners. That and the fact that anything, no matter how surreal, that you can possibly think of (as well as some stuff you couldn't) exists somewhere on the net.

The Kinect really is awesome

...and not just as a game platform. This article (hat tip to Nik for pointing me to it) describes viSparsh, a system for assisting blind people which is made from a modified Kinect. The Kinect's depth awareness allows the device to determine how far the wearer is from an object and feeds back a series of vibrations, a bit like a car's reverse sensor. Over time the wearer learns to judge distance using the vibrations, allowing them to walk around much more confidently.

The use of a Kinect for good reminds me of the robot built by researchers from the University of Warwick, which uses a Kinect's 3D imaging capabilities to locate trapped survivors in the aftermath of an earthquake.

There are two things to learn from these stories. Firstly, the Kinect is wasted on video games. It's genuinely groundbreaking technology. Secondly, both these stories are examples of the good that can be done when a tech company opens up their hardware to homebrew developers and hobby hackers. Microsoft have very publically announced [eff.org] that they encourage people to use the Kinect in whichever way they see fit, a very different attitude from Sony, Nintendo and even one-time proponents of freedom Apple, who all frown upon the use of their kit for anything other than its intended purpose, and go to great lengths to ensure it doesn't happen.

Tom and Jerry

Tom and Jerry are doing OK for themselves. Their first show was in the early 1940s, yet they're still stirring up controversy all these years later. The latest piece of newsworthy babble about history's longest cat-and-mouse chase is that Amazon's on demand system has a pretty blunt warning about the content before you view the cartoons.

Tom and Jerry Cartoons Carry Racism Warning - BBC News

Now, this isn't a rant about whether or not Tom and Jerry contains racial stereotypes... of course it bloody does. It's not a rant about whether or not this is OK... of course it bloody isn't. And it's not a rant about how what is socially acceptable is changed over time. If you don't think Tom and Jerry contains racial stereotypes, dig out a copy of the ultra-rare cartoon "His Mouse Friday" and, unless you happen to vote for the BNP or read the Daily Mail, prepare for your jaw to hit the floor.

So what am I complaining about? The warning? No, I'm completely supporting it, because the alternative is censorship. I've always had a problem with cuts to cartoons, and as Tom and Jerry are my favourite cartoons from my childhood I obviously feel a certain sense of annoyance when people try to change them, in much the same way Star Wars fans hate the 1997 'enhanced' versions and subsequent DVD releases. But removing parts because they're racist? In my opinion that's basically on a par with holocaust denial. You can't stop racism by pretending it never happened.

The weird thing is that this isn't the first time this has happened. The Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD Volume 3 contains an introduction by Whoopie Goldberg. In her speech she defends the studio by saying that although the racial stereotypes "were wrong then and are wrong today", they were a product of their time and removing them would be to pretend they never existed. She goes on to say that the general attitude towards ethnic minorities is a part of history that can not and should not be ignored. I could not agree more with every word she says.

OK, so MGM don't have the accolade of hiring the first black animator, as Warner Bros did, but I think the same attitude should apply. The presence of the racism warning is acknowledgement that times have got better and racist jokes are rightly unacceptable nowadays. It's not an apology, but as many of the people who worked on Tom and Jerry have since passed away, an apology on their behalf would probably seem quite patronising. I think the warning is probably the best thing that could happen. It's better than not having a warning there in the first place, and it's certainly better than hiding the racist bits, which in some cases is arguably more racist than simply showing them uncut. Yes, in some edited versions of Tom and Jerry they actually replace black characters and actors with white ones - effectively stopping the racism by getting rid of the ethnic minorities!

If you want to experience Tom and Jerry at their hilarious best, I strongly recommend the original versions of Love That Pup, Touche Pussy Cat, Mice Follies, Solid Serenade and Jerry and Jumbo. All of which are excellent, and none of which contain any racial stereotypes. Enjoy!

Trolls

This has been annoying me for some time but it's about time I said something about it.

There's been an increase in the traditional media just recently of stories about 'trolls'. Trolls, as anyone who's been on the internet for more than 20 minutes will tell you, are people who engage in the act of trolling; posting comments on online bulletin boards and similar services with the intention of provoking an outraged response. Call it a form of online baiting if you will. Skilled trolls will post seemingly genuine and innocent comments on posts on typically emotionally charged subjects such as religion or politics, and see who bites. The troll never directly instigates any hostility, merely encourages others to do so. I've done it many times, it's actually quite good fun if you like winding up easily aggitated people with not enough things to worry about... Mac users, for example ; ) Trolls normally target entire communities rather than individuals - a good example would be the 4chan users who turned up to launch parties for the final Harry Potter book armed with leaked copies of the book and then proceeded to spoil the ending of the book to everyone in the queue. It's a matter of opinion as to whether this is funny or not, but it doesn't actually hurt anyone, and certainly doesn't target an individual or a small group of people.

Compare this with stories in the press and you'll see no similarity whatsoever. Examples the BBC give of trolls are the guy who sent abusive emails to Louise Mensch, and a guy posting abusive messages on the Facebook page of a dead girl. Neither of which are trolls by the correct definition of the word, they're simply online bullies.

Let's get this straight before the word 'troll' becomes as misunderstood as the word 'hacker' currently is - trolls are harmless. They're just out to have wind people up and have a good laugh at the reaction. They merely post or do things likely to provoke a strong response. Bullies are quite different - their aim is to abuse, hurt and emotionally scar people. They say very hurtful things, often aimed at vulnerable individuals. These people are not trolls. It's unfair to dismiss online bullies with such a tame word as 'troll' and it's certainly unfair to most trolls to tar them with the same brush as these hateful, spiteful bullies. Please, BBC, Guardian, and many other news sources I otherwise respect, please stop using words you clearly don't understand. Confusing bullies with trolls is like confusing Wolfgang Priklopil with Jeremy Beadle.

Two greats in one day

And now Irwin Kirshner has also died today! [Digital Spy] It's clearly a bad day to be an eightysomething movie legend.

What

Shallow diver breaks world record for paddling pool jump [BBC].

He looks so happy. As would I be. I think.

Who stole all the pies

There was a raid at the weekend [BBC] in one of the garden centres along Allington Lane. The items stolen: 48 pies, 18 pieces of cod and a box of jumbo sausages. Either someone wants to open their own chip shop, or some poor stoner's got a lethal case of the munchies.

Why a tax on fizzy drinks would be a stealth attack on the NHS

There have been lots of proposals in the past to tax unhealthy food, particularly fizzy drinks. Just recently the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has called for quite a lot of things that sound quite sensible to me. A ban on adverts for unhealthy food before the watershed is probably a good thing, and extra government money for weight loss surgery is a proactive thing to do in a supposedly increasingly tubby society. But there are a few things I'm not so sure on. Firstly, a ban on fast food outlets in hospitals sounds sensible at first, but I imagine the hospital in question rents its space out to McDonalds and Burger King at quite a high rate, so unless there's something else with which to fill the space, this might not be as clever as it sounds, financially speaking. But the biggest problem I have is with any suggestion to tax unhealthy food or drink.

To be honest, I have a real problem with anyone who moans at obese people for health reasons. You see shows all the time on Channel 4 showing the effects of over-eating, and they all contain the same claim: that over-eating is costing the NHS millions per year. That may be true, but if you use this argument to tax unhealthy food, surely there needs to be a tax on every football sold! After all, playing football increases your risk of pulled muscles, twisted ankles and even broken bones, which must cost the NHS quite a bit every year too. If you victimise fat people for costing the NHS money you must also victimise sportspeople, and people who work in high-risk jobs such as firefighters. Arguing that any one portion of the population is costing the NHS more money than another is completely missing the point of the NHS in the first place. Sure, we could charge people based on how high a risk they are according to their lifestyle, but if we were to do that we may as well scrap the NHS and everyone can sort out their own private medical insurance.

Of course I'd never suggest such a thing - I'm not fond of nationalism, but I do confess to having a certain amount of pride when I tell people that I live in a country where anyone, rich or poor, can see a doctor and get fixed if they need to. Health is something that simply cannot be left to the private sector, as their priority is to make money rather than making people better. If the NHS were to disappear there are large numbers of people, almost certainly some of whom you know and love, who would suddenly not have access to healthcare, either because they can't afford it, or because they have pre-existing conditions that make private medical insurers wary of covering them. I cannot stress this enough: we need the NHS. It is the single greatest thing about the UK.

National Insurance is a tax. It is paid by all who can afford to do so. In return for this tiny contribution, we get the NHS. If we start taxing people more likely to end up in hospital at a higher rate (and this includes taxing things that are considered unhealthy) then we're undermining the integrity of the NHS. Any one of us could end up needing urgent medical treatment tomorrow, and yes, many hospital visits could probably have been prevented if the circumstances were different. You may not have needed that stomach pump if you hadn't got drunk. You may not have needed that heart surgery if you'd have kept your weight down. You wouldn't have broken your leg had you not been playing football. The beauty of the NHS is that it doesn't care about blame, it just makes people better. That's a beautiful thing, let's not lose it.

Why hacking games consoles is a good thing

I often rant on this blog about how console manufacturers should just allow hackers to do what the hell they want with the hardware they themselves have purchased. Sony and Nintendo are both renowned for producing hardware to keep homebrew programmers out and any time someone does find a way in, the company in question immediately push an 'update' via the online connection that breaks any homebrew code. Microsoft recently became the first company to buck the trend by explicitly encouraging the use of their 'Kinect' hardware for Xbox 360 by hackers and other home hobbyists. Every time I rant about not being able to hack my games consoles a lot of non-geeks ask me why I care and why I don't just use my games consoles the way they were intended, to play games? I never really had a good, non-political answer to that question... until now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12559231

Step in, a team of mechanical engineers from the University of Warwick. They've built a robot (that looks very much like Johnny Five) whose purpose is to search for earthquake survivors in rubble too hazardous for a live human to enter. Except rather than use the usual expensive laser scanning technology employed by similar robots, their creation's vision is powered by a Kinect, which is available for £100 at your local toy shop. This thing is cheap and can save lives, and is generally ten shades of awesome. And it's only possible because Microsoft don't care if homebrew developers want to write code for their hardware.