• AOL tools up IM for business

    Yum… a whole lotta NSA-Interception spooky goodness, plus third-party information protection requirements… As an aside, I’ll stick with open standards and OTR; I need tighter security and management than traditionally available in enterprise products. news.com.com.com.com The days of companies using unsecure consumer technology for instant messaging are numbered, according to AOL and online conferencing company

    (more…)

  • memo to self

    spend the day in bed. g’wan, it’s allowed; plus it’ll give all the bruised bits a chance to heal.

    (more…)

  • No-Cooking Required Dinner

    Warm split pitta-breads stuffed with two kinds of lettuce, and Waitrose’s “Supreme” Taramosalata. Nice stuff, but I think it needed a touch of extra lemon. Home-grown plum tomatoes, too. It’s nice to be back to a normal diet.

    (more…)

  • Consultation with my Knee Specialist, pt2

    Well, I’m back from the Hampshire Clinic, and my long chat with Dr Rossiter – a very nice man if you ever need a knee person, I recommend him highly. We went through the results of the CT scan, which have been measured “very carefully”, and then were reviewed by Dr Rossiter and all the

    (more…)

  • The British Way of Death ?

    Not that this is anything to do with 9/11 or anything, but I’m increasingly astonished at how the British public’s approach to dealing with mourning has changed over the past three decades: From my youth I’ve no memory of roadside floral displays lasting more than a couple of weeks where someone’s been knocked over on

    (more…)

  • Google are the Pall-bearers of Technology

    I had a stupendous piece of spam this morning, guaranteed to wind-up several of my colleagues in SunLabs:: SEMANTIC WEB VERSION II: Google is coming up with Semantic web. Are you ranking well with this latest algorithm of search engines and will you continue to rank well? Is you website LSI compliant? Search Engines like

    (more…)

  • Baby Steps

    DaveW came to visit today, and helped with the gardening; the side footpath was heavily overgrown so we attacked it with loppers and secateurs, and he barrowed-away the debris. I then fitted him up with the Stihl leaf-blower, and the path is now clear, too. On the back of all this, I made some progress

    (more…)

  • Shell shock: is this the end for France’s oyster farmers?

    The secret cost of Oyster testing: Mouse mortality… Independent For the third time in a year, Arcachon’s world-renowned oyster farms have been shut down – following the deaths of two people who had consumed the local produce. Furious at the threat to their livelihood, the farmers insist a good bivalve never hurt anyone. The Bay

    (more…)

  • Sheep Poo Paper

    Creative Paper Wales As every craftsperson will tell you, it all begins by using only the very finest materials. We take great care to collect super-fresh sheep poo from the beautiful (and rainy) mountains of rural Wales and take it back to the mill, situated in southern Snowdonia. We don’t just make Sheep Poo Paper(tm)

    (more…)

  • Enigma replica ‘homage to heroes’

    BBC It has taken 10 years and about 60 volunteers, among them retired computer experts and telecommunications engineers, to rebuild piece-by-piece a replica of the Turing Bombe – the vital machine which cracked the Nazis’ Enigma Code. Against impossible odds the electro-mechanical device enabled cryptographers to decode more than 3,000 German messages in a day,

    (more…)

  • Wales: Abandoned mountain village found

    BBC The ruins of an extensive mountain village have been found on the slopes of the Sugar Loaf, near Abergavenny. Scouts working with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers have spent a week hacking back brambles to reveal the 25-house village. It is thought the Y Graig settlement in Glangrwyne, Powys, was abandoned in the

    (more…)

  • Computer Forensics Experts for a Commodore c64 ?

    Guardian The investigation into the kidnapping of Natascha Kampusch has been complicated by the discovery of an obsolete computer in the house where she was held, Austrian police said today. Officers have been surprised to find that the kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, a communications technician, appeared to have relied exclusively on a Commodore 64. The beige-coloured

    (more…)