Independence is not on offer

Independence is not on offer

Yesterday, Betfair announced that they were paying out to the “No”  bets on their sportsbook, and the exchange is offering odds implying a 75% probability that the “No” vote will win. Many people seem to be ready to offer the voters in Scotland their advice, so I thought I’d join in, although in my case it’s all a bit late, it would seem. More so if you consider the views of Mona Chalabi at 538 Blog who points out that many postal ballots have already been cast and at the time they were cast, the No vote had a lead in the polls. …

Keep your vote

Keep your vote

At the beginning of the summer, I got a letter saying that I was to be kept on the electoral register, and yet over the weekend I received a letter addressed to the occupier, demanding to know, who lived there so they could write and ask all residents to register to vote. Previously, registration was done once for the whole household, now it must be done each and every voter on their own behalf. If the letter is not returned or if filled in untruthfully the residents are threatened with a £1,000 – £5,000 fine. If we fill in the form, or it is filled in on pur behalf we will be invited to fill in another form, or use an online form. The online form, asks all sorts of impertinent questions including and this is a new one, my NI number. (I thought we’d voted not to have a national ID card.) You should note, it’s a central government site, and while it uses https, to stop others seeing what you’re doing, it means that the Government now has a list of all people who apply to vote online. That’s also new. …

Daten Kraken

Daten Kraken

The EU’s anti-monopoly probe into Google is explored in an article in the Guardian. The Commission have decided to re-open it. The enquiry has been focused on search, but been given greater relevance by the consumer move to phones. Unlike Microsoft in the last century, Google have engaged with the Commission while defending their business model, which is to build queries that users want. The allegation is that they prefer their own property to that of others. The Commission was about to publish a settlement but Google’s competitors, including Microsoft and the French & German governments objected.  …

And FACT goes in again

And FACT goes in again

Torrent freak reports that FACT are taking out another private prosecution. Again, like the Vickerman prosecution, it’s for a fraud charge. Is this to avoid a jury? Anyway it’s reported that the defendants have been arrested. Who by? I don’t think FACT have powers of arrest yet? Also the torrent freak article implies that a more normal process would be for the police to prosecute. In fact prosecution is the role of the Crown Prosecution Service, not the police, as any fan of Law and Order UK will tell you. …

Who do PIPCU serve?

Who do PIPCU serve?

Torrentfreak are following the activities of the City of London’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit; they reported one intervention in a story called “UK Police Accuse Domain Name Registrar of Facilitating Criminal Activity”. An extraordinary story in which a police force threaten domain registrars with action if they don’t take action on alleged infringing sites using their services. If you read the story, you’ll see the accusations and language used by the police seem to have forgotten the British legal principle of innocent until proved guilty. Many of the comments were the normal pro-piracy comments although there’s one or two more thoughtful. It provokes me to write the following, although I should shorten it if I choose to publish these views as a comment there. …

Not so open, a Bioware take on open source

This article represents some thoughts on how copy-left and permissive licences create value. It uses the story of Bioware and it’s use of the D&D™ and Forgotten Realms™ games & mythos as an example. There are two recent news items that make this current: that the community repository for Neverwinter Nights has just shut, and that Wizards of the Coast have just released Dungeons & Dragons V5 rules as a free to use .pdf, a small but significant step to a freemium business model. The story shows how an initially traditional author-publisher business model, leveraged a pre-made community, grew it and latterly enabled it. The point of this story is the way in which community and value grew, becoming significant author contributors and the way in which Bioware responded and learnt although some might say not as quickly or as generously as they might.  …

Stop killing civilians in Gaza

Stop killing civilians in Gaza

This blog has been a personal polemic over most of the last three years, maybe longer. Previously and at times, it’s been more of a diary. The London blogger, Diamondgezeer in this blog about blogrolls and the blogging community reminds me that sometimes I deserve or need to be a bit more introspective and more of a diarist. I need to record on the blog, how I feel about the latest development on the Middle East.  Over the last three weeks the Middle East has exploded, over the last two years on could say the same, and you could ask why I haven’t commented on the events in Syria or the Ukraine,  …

What’s in a word

What’s in a word

I was looking at the book “Playing Politics”, and specifically the game “Agenda” which looks at committee behaviour. In the game, a standard playing card pack is used and the suits are considered to represent spending priorities. I originally read the book in the seventies and the priorities were called Social Security (Hearts), Industry (Diamonds), Public Works (Spades) and Defence (Clubs, of course). Today, with the country’s shift to the right we would use the term Welfare instead of Social Security, and since Industry was designated by Diamonds, we might today. in this celebrity obsessed world consider the diamonds to be Culture Media and Sport, since BIS (the Department of Trade and Industry as was) now spends so little. There’s no room for DECC nor DEFRA. The predecessor to DECC was only created in 1974 and there is a private member’s bill to abolish it being considered in the next parliament. It interested me on how both public policy priorities and the language has changed over 40 years; the language is both a simple lens and the final arbiter. …