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Death. Police. Rewards.

2010-07-24T01:56:00Z

Ian Tomlinson, a man walking home was bitten by a police dog, struck with a baton and then pushed very strongly in the back by a police officer, and fell. Members of the public helped him. He died. This time, the violent actions of a police officer and the inaction of his colleagues were filmed, not just by CCTV, but also by a passer-by and published for the whole world to witness.

The Crown Prosecution Service has decided not to prosecute the police officer. The reason: 'irreconcilable conflict' between the three post-mortems. The first one found the death 'consistent with natural causes', the two others found the death was 'the result of abdominal haemorrhage from blunt force trauma to the abdomen, in association with alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver'.

The pathologist conducting the fist post-mortem has been suspended from the Home Office register of forensic pathologists while he is being investigated by the General Medical Council for 'allegations that, whilst working as a Consultant Forensic Pathologist Dr Mohmed Patel's conduct in carrying our four post mortems was irresponsible and not of the standard expected of a competent Home Office registered forensic pathologist and that in one case his conduct was liable to bring the profession into disrepute.'

No prosecution gives a very wrong signal to violent police officers. That this happened as a consequence of choosing as the initial pathologist someone who has allegations against him, further rewards wrong behaviour. A police officer was last convicted for assault charges following a death in custody in 1971.

Further information:

Eyes of the world look on with incredulity as family brand decision of DPP not to prosecute officer who struck Ian Tomlinson a joke (Inquest)
Don't give up, Mrs Tomlinson (Patricia da Silva Armani, The Guardian)
Community voice sympathy for Tomlinson family as G20 riot cop escapes death charges (Black Mental Health)
Ian Tomlinson ruling: can we trust officers to police protests fairly now? (Marc Vallee, The Guardian)
Ian Tomlinson death: lawyers challenge CPS over decision not to prosecute (Natalie Hanman, The Guardian)
The death of Ian Tomlinson - decision on prosecution (Crown Prosecution Service)
Statement from MPS on death of Ian Tomlinson (Metropolitan Police Service)
IPCC statement in response to CPS decision in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson (Independent Police Complaints Commission)
MPA Statement: CPS decision not to bring charges against police officers in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson (Metropolitan Police Authority)

The Ian Tomlinson Family Campaign has launched a Campaign Fighting Fund to help the Tomlinson family in its fight for justice.

Man faces jail for videotaping gun-waving cop

2010-08-02T05:33:45Z

Police officer Joseph Uhler was caught on film charging out of his unmarked car and waving his gun at a unarmed motorcyclist pulled over for speeding. When the footage was uploaded to YouTube, authorities raided Anthony Graber's home, seized his computers, arrested him, and charged him with "wiretapping" offenses that could land him in jail for 16 years. Glyn writes in:

The ACLU of Maryland is defending Anthony Graber, who potentially faces 16 years in prison if found guilty of violating state wiretap laws because he recorded video of an officer drawing a gun during a traffic stop. The ACLU attorney handling the case says, "To charge Graber with violating the law, you would have to conclude that a police officer on a public road, wearing a badge and a uniform, performing his official duty, pulling someone over, somehow has a right to privacy when it comes to the conversation he has with the motorist."

Indeed, Maryland contends that Uhler had a reasonable expectation of privacy while waving his gun around in public and yelling at a motorist with a giant video camera mounted on the top of his helmet. Remarkably, the state Attorney General has already opined that when police record in public, that is not a private conversation subject to the same laws. In other words, in any public interaction between a police officer and a member of the public in Maryland, it is private for one of them but not the other. "We have looked, and have not been able to find a single court anywhere in the country that has found an expectation of privacy for an officer in such circumstances," writes the ACLU. Sixteen Years in Prison for Videotaping the Police? [MCLU via Submitterator]

Data at Rest vs. Data in Motion

2010-06-30T17:53:10Z

For a while now, I've pointed out that cryptography is singularly ill-suited to solve the major network security problems of today: denial-of-service attacks, website defacement, theft of credit card numbers, identity theft, viruses and worms, DNS attacks, network penetration, and so on.

Cryptography was invented to protect communications: data in motion. This is how cryptography was used throughout most of history, and this is how the militaries of the world developed the science. Alice was the sender, Bob the receiver, and Eve the eavesdropper. Even when cryptography was used to protect stored data -- data at rest -- it was viewed as a form of communication. In "Applied Cryptography," I described encrypting stored data in this way: "a stored message is a way for someone to communicate with himself through time." Data storage was just a subset of data communication.

In modern networks, the difference is much more profound. Communications are immediate and instantaneous. Encryption keys can be ephemeral, and systems like the STU-III telephone can be designed such that encryption keys are created at the beginning of a call and destroyed as soon as the call is completed. Data storage, on the other hand, occurs over time. Any encryption keys must exist as long as the encrypted data exists. And storing those keys becomes as important as storing the unencrypted data was. In a way, encryption doesn't reduce the number of secrets that must be stored securely; it just makes them much smaller.

Historically, the reason key management worked for stored data was that the key could be stored in a secure location: the human brain. People would remember keys and, barring physical and emotional attacks on the people themselves, would not divulge them. In a sense, the keys were stored in a "computer" that was not attached to any network. And there they were safe.

This whole model falls apart on the Internet. Much of the data stored on the Internet is only peripherally intended for use by people; it's primarily intended for use by other computers. And therein lies the problem. Keys can no longer be stored in people's brains. They need to be stored on the same computer, or at least the network, that the data resides on. And that is much riskier.

Let's take a concrete example: credit card databases associated with websites. Those databases are not encrypted because it doesn't make any sense. The whole point of storing credit card numbers on a website is so it's accessible -- so each time I buy something, I don't have to type it in again. The website needs to dynamically query the database and retrieve the numbers, millions of times a day. If the database were encrypted, the website would need the key. But if the key were on the same network as the data, what would be the point of encrypting it? Access to the website equals access to the database in either case. Security is achieved by good access control on the website and database, not by encrypting the data.

The same reasoning holds true elsewhere on the Internet as well. Much of the Internet's infrastructure happens automatically, without human intervention. This means that any encryption keys need to reside in software on the network, making them vulnerable to attack. In many cases, the databases are queried so often that they are simply left in plaintext, because doing otherwise would cause significant performance degradation. Real security in these contexts comes from traditional computer security techniques, not from cryptography.

Cryptography has inherent mathematical properties that greatly favor the defender. Adding a single bit to the length of a key adds only a slight amount of work for the defender, but doubles the amount of work the attacker has to do. Doubling the key length doubles the amount of work the defender has to do (if that -- I'm being approximate here), but increases the attacker's workload exponentially. For many years, we have exploited that mathematical imbalance.

Computer security is much more balanced. There'll be a new attack, and a new defense, and a new attack, and a new defense. It's an arms race between attacker and defender. And it's a very fast arms race. New vulnerabilities are discovered all the time. The balance can tip from defender to attacker overnight, and back again the night after. Computer security defenses are inherently very fragile.

Unfortunately, this is the model we're stuck with. No matter how good the cryptography is, there is some other way to break into the system. Recall how the FBI read the PGP-encrypted email of a suspected Mafia boss several years ago. They didn't try to break PGP; they simply installed a keyboard sniffer on the target's computer. Notice that SSL- and TLS-encrypted web communications are increasingly irrelevant in protecting credit card numbers; criminals prefer to steal them by the hundreds of thousands from back-end databases.

On the Internet, communications security is much less important than the security of the endpoints. And increasingly, we can't rely on cryptography to solve our security problems.

This essay originally appeared on DarkReading. I wrote it in 2006, but lost it on my computer for four years. I hate it when that happens.

London ⇋ SF

2010-07-16T17:26:35Z

From Dependable Letterpress for clients Turner Duckworth. There's no specific URL and it doesn't look like you can buy them but ... I want these so hard ... and then turned the other way up

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Scene: Spain Wins the World Cup

2010-07-11T22:39:00Z

Photo by Ryan North.

WHERE: College and Bathurst.

WHEN: 5:30 p.m.

WHAT: Spain supporters hop on top a streetcar after their team won the World Cup. [UPDATE, JULY 12, 12:48 P.M.: More photos from Toronto during the game, and of the celebrations after it, are here.]

BY: Ryan North.

Inbev At It Again

2010-07-08T09:22:00Z

It gets a bit irksome doesn't it?

"Contains Only Four Ingredients: Hops, Malted Barley, Maize, Water."

As beer geeks, we're clued up about our favourite beverage. We know that no decent beer ever "contains" maize (or corn syrup as it probably manifests itself.) It annoys us that Inbev UK Ltd have the bloody cheek to rely on the average customer's ignorance to make a selling point of a cheap adjunct.

It's also annoying that they choose to ignore the humble unsung-hero of brewing: lovely miracle-worker yeast.

This campaign first appeared a couple of years. It appears to have been revived. There are umpteen hoardings carrying the advert across Newcastle. I presume they have reappeared elsewhere too.

So rather than getting annoyed and bitching to each other about AB Inbev's attitude, why don't we do something about it?

As the "four ingredients" statement is untruthful in neglecting yeast, this advertising probably breaches advertising regulations. We should complain. In fact, I've done it already. It's easy; here's the link to the Advertising Standards Authority online form: http://www.asa.org.uk/Complaints-and-ASA-action/How-to-complain/Online-Form.aspx I'm not sure that multiple complaints on individual subjects adds any weight, but it can't do any harm can it?

[Please make sure you complain about Inbev UK Ltd]

[You can see the results about other previous complaints about Stella advertising here]

****************************************************

UPDATE!

Here's the rather predictable response fro the advertising standards people:

"Dear Mr Pickthall

INBEV UK LTD/ STELLA ARTOIS

Thank you for contacting the Advertising Standards Authority. I’m sorry to hear that this ad has caused you concern.

You may be interested to know that we’ve previously received a few complaints about this ad. Complaints included concerns that the ad didn’t list yeast and carbon dioxide as ingredients.

We reviewed the ad and sought the advertisers’ response to these complaints. I should state from the outset that we will not be taking further action in respect of these complaints. I realise you feel strongly about this ad, but please let me explain how and why we reached this view.

The advertisers explained that the claim relates to the liquid produced at the end of the brewing process. Both the advertisers and we accept that yeast is used in the brewing process to start the fermentation. However, the yeast is removed after the fermentation process, using a combination of three methods, which ensures the yeast doesn’t appear in the end product.

We consider that most consumers are likely to know that yeast is needed for the brewing process, and that carbon dioxide is a by-product of that process. In our view, the ad is unlikely to mislead consumers to their detriment as to the nature of the product or how it is produced. Given this, we will not be pursuing these complaints further.

Although we’ve been unable to uphold these complaints, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to contact us with your concerns.

Best regards,

Emily Henwood | Complaints Executive"

That response hasn't exactly come as a surprise. As Beernut was quick to point out, Inbev's defence would be that Stella doesn't contain yeast as it's filtered ~~to death~~ out.

Fair enough. We could all see it coming.

I'm still not satisfied with the advert. OK, I'll put my hand up to the accusation of pedantry, but their use of the word "contains" bothers me. I'd be happy with "brewed from" but as far as I can see Stella does not "contain"malted barley, maize or hops. I'm not a brewer, I don't really know how to word it in a properly technical way but Stella must rather contain proteins derived from malt and maize, and a smattering of acids from the hops. And good old alcohol and CO2 of course.

As you can see from the response email "The advertisers explained that the claim relates to the liquid produced at the end of the brewing process." Well, Mr In-Fucking-Bev, the liquid DOES NOT "contain" malted barley, maize or hops – I could bloody well see them if they were there and they would get stuck in my teeth if I were ever to lower my standards enough to consume the stuff.

I may well make another pedantry-inspired complaint.

Rant over.

Do this lot really count as German, asks the Mail

2010-06-25T09:00:00Z

Next Left has followed in detail Paul Dacre's apparent ambivalence about whether the British-born children and grandchildren of immigrants should count as British.

Today, the Daily Mail looks at how that argument has been lost in Germany too, since the 1999 citizenship reforms.

Despite the Are you Poland - or Turkey, Ghana, Bosnia and Brazil - in disguise? headline on its graphic, the Mail's report suggests that the story of Germany's "new citizens" is in large part a positive story about integration.

Under strict citizenship laws dating back to 1913 and the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II, only children born in Germany to parents who were both Germans themselves could be considered German

At the time Germany was in a frenzy of nationalism as it armed in preparation for the First World War.

They were not repealed until 1999 as Germany - mindful of having the most dramatically declining birthrate in the world - finally made it easier to become a citizen of the Fatherland.

The new-look German side is collectively known as 'Generation M' for 'multi-cultural'.

Observers say it the change has led to an influx of exciting new players for the German team.

By contrast, the England side has been regularly benefiting from players of immigrant backgrounds since the 1970s, and eight of the current squad are black or mixed-race.

(So the Mail - which was itself very pro-Dreadnought at the time - sounds glad to see the end of the legacy of that "frenzy of nationalism" under the Kaiser. Which is not, by the way, a Franz Beckenbauer reference for once!).

After all, Mesut Ozil is usually seen as the face of what Germans call the "multi-culti" team, being of Turkish ethnic origin. His grandparents were immigrants, while both he and his parents were German-born.

So called "third-generation immigrants" are not, in fact, immigrants at all - a point we were able to find consensus with the Daily Mail on. Many of this German team have come up through German youth football and the under-21 national side.

The Mail would not of course countenance the weakening of the England squad either.

Happily, we all on the same side as Mr Dacre this time.

PS: Those who do worry about even high-skilled immigration and emigration may be pleased to see that, with Italy out, Germany and England are the only two teams remaining where all of their players play football in their home domestic league - the Bundesliga and the Premiership respectively.

***

The Guardian recently looked at how the German Football Association focused on the challenge of integration, in terms of securing players eligible to play for Germany and other countries, through parentage or grandparents.

The German government oversaw a liberalisation of its eligibility laws in 1999, which made it easier for foreigners and the children of immigrants to gain citizenship. The stand-out case in Löw's squad is the striker Cacau, who came on as a substitute against Australia to score the fourth goal. The 29-year-old was born and raised in Brazil and came to Germany, initially, to play lower-league football. But as he has worked his way to the top, so he has passed the requisite tests to become a German national. One of his examination questions concerned the names of former German chancellors; Cacau has consequently earned the nickname of "Helmut" from his team‑mates.

The challenge that faced the German Football Association (DFB), though, was to make sure the likes of Khedira, Ozil and Boateng did not declare for the other countries for which that they were eligible. Boateng's brother, Kevin-Prince, the Portsmouth forward, has pledged himself to Ghana – in a quirk of fate, Germany face Ghana in the final group game, pitting the brothers against one and other.

Driven perhaps by their lack of young talent, the DFB made a conscious effort to court and groom players from the immigrant community, even employing a dedicated integration officer. They can now enjoy the fruits of those labours.

"We are aware that it's something new to have German national players with Turkish, Ghanaian, Nigerian or Tunisian roots but for our generation, it's very normal," said Khedira, who is the DFB's poster boy for the liberation generation. "We have some players called Khedira and some called Müller. We don't know any differently."

Drinks by the Dram

2010-06-06T15:11:19Z

I don’t really buy whisky online. Generally I like to talk at people, so buying a bottle is normally an excuse to go and annoy the folk at one of the whisky shops in London, with me asking questions, making shakily backed up pronouncements and being corrected in pronunciation of distillery names and general misapprehensions about whisky and the world in general. However, being someone who wants to try every whisky that there is (no matter what – I have a miniature of Famous Grouse above my monitor waiting for an opportune moment), my wallet and I were rather pleased to find that Masters of Malt are now selling 30ml samples of whisky and other spirits as Drinks by the Dram.

They’re very pretty

There’s a bunch of stuff on there, cheaper by the oversized shot than you’ll get in a bar and also including vodka, rum and brandy. So, my initial foray (comments on which will appear on here in time) included: Greenore 15 (an older version of my favourite at the Cooley tasting at Whisky Lounge), Nikka Pure Malt Red (to go with my Black and the White that I intend to buy, having had it recommended a bunch), Mackmyra First Edition (Swedish whisky), Zuidam Rye (dutch whisky), Port Durant tempranillo cask aged Guyanian rum (no comment needed), a 19 year old Mortlach (because Mortlach is lovely and normally more than I want to spend on a bottle) and some Bruichladdich Octomore (the world’s peatiest whisky, with this one being finished in Petrus casks…mad).

There are a bunch of other companies doing the same thing but these guys are based down the road in Tunbridge Wells, so for my carbon footprint, food mile aware brain (ignoring the Guyanian imports and everything else that I do) it makes sense. As does the overnight delivery…

Drinks by the Dram
Whisk(e)y, vodka, rum and brandy in individual 30ml servings from Master of Malt
From £1.75 (Cabin Hill bourbon) to £41.95 (1954 Glenfarclas) at the time of writing, with things appearing and disappearing all the time.

Hardknott comes to the Rake

2010-06-22T11:26:00Z

We used to call him Woolpack Dave, because he ran a pub called the Woolpack, and wrote a thoughtful blog on life as a publican, which earned him the runner-up spot to Young Dredge in Best Use of New Media at last year's Guild of Beer Writers Awards.

Yeah, he looks friendly. And he is. Most of the time.

But Dave also brewed in his cellar, and soon realised that making rather than selling the stuff was where his true vocation lay. It is a statistical fact 79% of all brewers north of Birmingham are in fact called Dave, so Dave fit right in.

Now, just because he no longer runs a pub called the Woolpack and instead runs a the Hardknott Brewery, he expects us to call him Hardknott Dave instead of Woolpack Dave. Well, I suppose it'll catch on, but he'll always be Woolpack Dave to his longtime followers.

Anyway, Dave his bringing his beers to London next week, with his long-suffering partner Woolpack/Hardknott Ann (Following them both on Twitter is like eavesdropping on an online George and Mildred style marriage sitcom. Sitting across from them in the pub while Ann rolls her eyes at some of Dave's observations and they bicker over the remains of the packed lunches Ann lovingly prepared for their day out is like being front row in a really funny Alan Bennett play).

Come and meet them at the Rake next week and you'll see what I mean. They'll be there from 4pm onwards next Monday, 28th June, talking about the beers on offer.

These consist of three ales on hand pump:

Fusion - a 4% ginger beer that has had chilli added to the mix.
Dark Energy - a 4.9% 'sort of a stout perhaps, dark and fruity dry hops' in Dave's words
Continuum - their 4% 'standard' beer, dry hopped in the cask

From the cellar there'll also be Infra-Red, a 6.2% IPA (apparently 'hoppier than a bucket of frogs')

And in bottle there's Granite (Barley Wine style) and Aether Blaec (Islay whisky barrel-aged stout).

Then only one of these beers I've tasted so far is the Aether Blaec, but it's one of the finest whisky-aged beers I've had - packed full of flavour, but incredibly smooth and welcoming. Dave's an independently-minded bloke, and I suspect all the above beers will carry a personal streak, something that could possibly become a bit of a Hardknott trademark.

See you there.

Toot

2010-06-23T00:00:00Z

Firefox add-on does 'HTTPS Everywhere'

2010-06-18T17:40:58Z

Well, everywhere possible

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Tor Project have teamed up to offer a Firefox add-on that beefs up https on several major websites, including Google.com, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, and PayPal.…

Birmingham stops camera surveillance in Muslim areas | UK news | guardian.co.uk

2010-06-18T02:33:11Z

Paul Lewis
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 June 2010 11.51 BST
Article history

An automatic numberplate recognition camera to the right of a conventional CCTV camera in the mainly Asian area of Sparkbrook in Birmingham. Photograph: Andrew Fox

A project to spy on two Muslim areas in Birmingham using more than 200 CCTV cameras has been dramatically halted after an investigation by the Guardian revealed it was a counterterrorism initiative.

Bags are being placed over the cameras, recently installed in the neighbourhoods of Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook, to reassure the community their movements are not being monitored while a "full and in-depth consultation" takes place.

In a joint statement last night, West Midlands police and Birmingham city council announced the cameras would not be turned on. They apologised for not being "more explicit" about the funding arrangements of the project, which stipulated they should be used to combat terrorism, a mistake they conceded may have "undermined public confidence".

But officials insisted the £3m project would go ahead following a retrospective public consultation, arguing the cameras would help reduce crime.

Under the initiative, Project Champion, two suburbs were to be monitored by a network of 169 automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras – three times more than in the entire city centre. The cameras, which include covert cameras secretly installed in the street, form "rings of steel", meaning residents cannot enter or leave the areas without their cars being tracked. Data was to be stored for two years.

There was no formal consultation over the scheme, which includes an additional 49 CCTV cameras. The few local councillors who were briefed about the cameras appearing in their constituencies said they were "misled" into believing they were designed to tackle antisocial behaviour, drug dealing and vehicle crime.

There were angry public meetings in the city last week, after the Guardian disclosed the cameras were paid for by the Terrorism and Allied Matters (Tam) fund, administered by the Association of Chief Police Officers. Its grants are for projects that "deter or prevent terrorism or help to prosecute those responsible".

Senior officials involved in the Safer Birmingham Partnership (SBP), a partnership between the police and council tasked with overseeing the project, were unaware of the counterterrorism link until just two months ago.

The partnership said in a statement: "We completely accept that earlier consultation with councillors from Sparkbrook and Washwood Heath – the main focus of the project – should also have included elected representatives from all other areas affected.

"We also accept that we should have been more explicit about the role of the counterterrorism unit in the initial project management of Champion.

"Although the counterterrorism unit was responsible for identifying and securing central government funds, and have overseen the technical aspects of the installation, the camera sites were chosen on the basis of general crime data – not just counterterrorism intelligence.

"Day to day management of the network was always intended to become the responsibility of local police. We apologise for these mistakes, which regrettably may have undermined public confidence in the police and the council."

Testing of cameras had already begun, and officials had planned to go live in early August.

However, the plans were placed in jeopardy after a public outcry over the scheme. Human rights lawyers have pledged to seek a judicial review of the scheme.

Parliament has been asked to denounce Project Champion as a "grave infringement of civil liberties" in an early day motion tabled this week by the Labour MP for Birmingham's Hall Green constituency, Roger Godsiff.

Police sources said the initiative was the first of its kind in the UK that sought to monitor a population seen as being "at risk" of extremism.

Astroturfing For Oona – What Einy Did Next

2010-06-17T01:02:31Z

It can’t have escaped the attention of Team Boris that there’s an actual selection process for Labour’s Mayoral candidate and that it’s a genuine two horse race between Ken Livingstone and Oona King. It certainly hasn’t escaped the attention of a Twitterer called ‘No2Ken‘ whose rather ageist bio declares:

Let’s stop 65-year-old Ken Livingstone from being Labour’s Mayoral candidate for 2012. Email – sayno2ken@gmail.com

Well, no one’s obliged to like the man, and there’s nothing to fear from an open selection campaign with both sides putting their best foot forwards, that’s party democracy (and it’ll be interesting if Boris gets a challenge, won’t it, borough boys?). However, is ‘No2Ken’ really a genuine grassroots Labour anti-Ken movement or something rather more sinister? Allow me to unfold a tale.

I was down in Plymouth over the weekend visiting family, and was thus off Twitter in general, although not entirely. I was thus not able at the time to work out what was going on with No2Ken whom I first became aware of with this message to me:

Ken does not relate to Londoners. We need a young, fresh and energetic hopeful for Labour. Don’t get stuck with second best

There’d been a previous one I picked up later aimed squarely at four London political types and cadging their support:

@AdamBienkov @sunny_hundal @BorisWatch @politic_animal Will you be supporting this mini-campaign against Ken becoming the Labour hopeful?

Scanning the account message history there are a number of tweets implying a connection between ‘No2Ken’ and the Labour Party – the use of ‘we’ when discussing internal party issues, for instance:

Labour needs a fresh new hopeful if they have any chance against Boris. Lab needs someone who can connect with modern Londoners

He should adapt another Obama campaign slogan – Change. Because that is what the Labour Party needs.

Look at his views on Europe, that’s the kind of stuff that will draw people away – they aren’t representative of Labour +

Average voters remember the various claims of corruption by Ken, true or not – it’s a major bummer for the Labour image

Bottom line is that Lab can’t simply accept Ken just because he showed up.We’ve lived through his defeat through Ken v Boris

Let me make clear that I am not solely promoting Oona to become the candidate – but, we need a wider range. Ken’s defeated

Londoners want change! We don’t need the same old giddy to lose Labour another election. Act before it’s too late.

We need to wake up and smell the coffee. We need to put up A fresh new oppenent against Boris. Ken is defeated.

Which ultra-safe pro-Ken constituency will @ken4london visit tomorrow? We need to get the views from ALL parts of London

I think it’s pretty clear from that that we’re intended to take this as coming from a Labour party supporter or member who wants a wider range of candidates and is opposed to Ken Livingstone. However, most of No2Ken’s tweets are RTs of other people, presumably found by simply searching Twitter for anyone mentioning Ken and retweeting those that are uncomplimentary. This does, however, lead to some unfortunate mishaps, such as retweeting one ScotBNP (‘Scottish BNP Member’ is his bio), a fervent anti-Muslim:

Richard Barnbrook on a Ken Livingstone comeback http://bit.ly/b0DlMP

Now, Oona King may be on the right of the Labour Party and voted for the Iraq War, but surely in three billion years a part Jewish part black Labour politician in London isn’t going to claim that she’s better than Ken Livingstone based on support from Richard bloody Barnbrook and his gang of Islamophobic neo-fascists? We can probably already conclude that this isn’t an official part of the Oona King campaign, not least because I’m 100% certain that if one of her people had done this they’d be thrown out before it rebounded badly. There are some places you don’t go.

As well as ideological mistakes No2Ken doesn’t check the geography too closely:

RT @bapartofmylife: RT @Jbroks86 I can not believe @UKLabour is serious about anti-Semitic Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London

Now, Jbroks86 turns out to be a ‘conservative, pro-Israel/Zionist, Anglophile, supporter of a Free Iran’ but more pertinently a ‘pro-Tea Party, Cecil County Young Republicans member(2006-)’ or, in other words, an American wingnut, in America (between Baltimore and Wilmington, in Maryland, to be exact) while ‘bapartofmylife’ is a ‘JEWESS blogger. I’m intense, opinionated and independent. Pro-CHOICE! NOBama!! If you don’t like that don’t follow me!’ and is from New York City. I’m not sure either of them have a vote in London Labour candidate selections, but I’m open to correction.

So, No2Ken’s idea of supporting the Labour Party consists of inadvertently associating Oona King with genuine anti-Semites while RTing the kind of American nut who thinks that raising the slightest objection to Israel murdering people puts you in the same moral league as Himmler. ’No2Ken’ is not, therefore, turning out to be a particularly well run astroturf operation, but if we’re sure it’s not Oona King’s team, who is actually behind it? Well, a little slice of good luck came to our rescue here, as on the evening of 14th June No2Ken sent me a message defending Boris’s new old friend Ray Lewis, whose hypocritical re-appointment by Boris (of which more later) came out that day.

Naturally, defending Boris decisions is not consistent with involvement in Labour Mayoral selections but is consistent with the behaviour of ex-Boris aide Einy Shah, so naturally I mused publicly that Einy and No2Ken might share something in common. In response ‘Einy90′ immediately appeared and started acting rather suspiciously. What on earth should one make of the following, which is of course non-comprehensive due to the difficulty of keeping up with her instant tweet deletions?:

18:34 ‘no comment’
18:38 ‘I think you should keep quiet about your discovery’
18:48 ‘Nothing. Forget about what I said’
18:55 ‘How much do you know?’
19:04 (as No2Ken) ‘Art to what?? Stop messing about, how much do you know?’
19:42 Listen, due to my app being totally fucked. It’s messed around with the accounts. You may now I hold the keys to @no2ken but any chance
19:42 That you could keep quiet
21:15 ‘Tell everyone I’m in big shit tomorrow’
23:12 ‘Since, I won’t be shouting my blunder out to the world - all will be forgotten. All works out in the end’
23:19 ‘No comment’

followed by, on the 15th:

22:29 You may call it astroturfing but some call it genius. Oona will be a disaster for Labour & Ken will be a disaster too … for the Tories. Q

So, to recap what we know:

‘No2Ken’ is not a pro-Labour anti-Ken account
‘No2Ken’ is nothing to do with Oona King’s campaign
It is at least partly and probably wholly run by Einy Shah, who’s a Conservative supporter of Boris with a past history of dodgy behaviour online
She still (as she’s admitted elsewhere) apparently working for Boris (whom she calls the ‘big cheese’ and who apparently likes her), albeit not in the Mayor’s Peer Outreach Team any more
‘No2Ken’ is a clear astroturf and profoundly dishonest, not least in its willingness to RT fascists and US wingnuts as if they’re worth listening to on Labour’s internal candidate selections, which incidentally also smears Oona King

What we don’t know:

Is it official? Is Einy’s role now operating as some kind of social media person for Team Boris or is the whole thing off her own bat?
Where did she learn that divide-and-conquer dirty tricks like this are an acceptable way of doing politics? She has, lest we forget, recently worked on Jo Johnson’s election campaign and I’m not sure the new MP for Orpington will enjoy the association any more than Oona King.

I think we should definitely be told. I also think Oona King could usefully disassociate herself and her campaign officially from ‘No2Ken’, as could other political followers such as James Cleverly, Joanne Cash, Sadiq Khan and Cllr Joshua Peck – it doesn’t do them any credit to lend official sanction to such disgraceful behaviour. Still, as she’s also now claiming to have voted for Boris in May 2008 while aged 17 (born 7/11/1990), it’s not exactly out of character from someone who apparently thinks rules don’t apply to her.

Update: Luke Waterfield informs me that Sadiq Khan MP has unfollowed and blocked No2Ken, who was followed automatically. Joanne Cash and Cllr Peck also seem to have stopped. Still tacitly supporting the astroturfing fool are the following big names:

James Cleverly AM
Oona_King
Stephen Pollard
GregHands (MP for Chelsea and Fulham)

Chop, chop!

Bliki: TeamRoom

2010-06-14T13:31:00Z

A common thing you find in agile projects is that the development team sits in a single open team room. It was advocated early on in Extreme Programming and called out as one of primary practices in the second edition. Agilists favor a open team room as it promotes lots of informal and deep communication between people on the team.

Why

Software development is an intense exercise in collaboration. An open space encourages regular conversations and interactions between people. You can see what everyone's doing and easily ask for help when you need to. Often you get serendipitous communication, where you overhear something that's really useful.

Hearing this, some people are concerned about noise, and would prefer private offices. In practice I find that teams don't find noise to be a serious issue. There's usually a hum of conversation going on, after all pair programming often accompanies this style of development. But the conversation isn't usually that distracting, particularly as you're focused on the conversation with your pair. I suspect the reason it's not that distracting is because the team has a common purpose around a collaborative activity. It isn't comparable to an open-plan office where everyone is doing something different.

Tips for a good Team Room

First make sure it is the right size for the team. While a team room should be open within itself, it should be closed to everyone else. In an ideal world you'd like flexible walls that can insulate one team from another, so an office consists of pods of teams. This is hard to do in practice. Our offices tend to be completely open, with little barriers between teams. This seems to work well-enough, although there are some complaints about the inter-team noise.

Pay attention to natural light. Humans are used to seeing the outside world, and all sorts of natural rhythms work off of light. So it's no surprise that people get very cranky if there isn't enough light about. I've spent plenty of days in enclosed conference rooms, and it certainly wears down my energy.

Provide enough space: about 50 square feet per person (4.5 square meters for those on metric).

With the right kind of space the next key thing is to ensure that the team has control over that space. An important part of agile thinking is that the team is responsible for how it works, and how it organizes its space is part of that. Ideally you want a team to have complete control over their space, with freedom to configure it how they like and reconfigure it at will. Things should be done so it's easy to move things around, because during the project the team will need to change things as the project changes.

The purpose-built tables in our Beijing office have handy baskets for power and other cables.

An immediate consequence of this is to ditch any kind of modular furniture that requires a facilities group to move more than an inch. Most teams I see use simple tables, and you can certainly go cheap here.

The biggest hassle is wires - primarily for power and network access. Ideally you want these underfloor or overhead so that people can easily route wires to the tables, wherever the tables happen to be.

The place to spend money on furniture is for good quality chairs. Programmers spend a lot of time sitting, and any physical damage due to poor posture will have a direct effect on the team's productivity - so don't stint here. It may be that some people will want strange chairs, such as balls or kneeling chairs. Do your best to accommodate them.

Some people are big fans of tables that can be adjusted between a sitting and standing height, as they find that standing for a while helps with back pain. These are harder to find, but worth looking into if your team members need it. Back pain is a common issue, but everyone's pain (and treatment) is different.

You'll need lots of wall space, as agilists love their information radiators. You want plenty of room for story walls, architectural diagrams, whatever people want to stick on the wall. A good bit of this wall space should be whiteboards so people can draw something whenever the mood takes them. Include some wheeled whiteboards. Make sure there's a digital camera around so people can easily record what's on the board. Now that displays are so cheap, consider getting some just for wall displays - this is particularly handy for dynamic displays such as build status. I've seen one team have projectors trained on a wall with various kinds of information displays.

The traditional layout is to have people working around clumps of desks. This gives you regular eye contact with the rest of your team. However I've heard many people sing the praises of the UPod.

People will occasionally need some private space, so ensure there are one or two small conference rooms available, with telephones. These can be used for privacy or when there's a concern about distraction. A large meeting room that the team can gather in for meetings away from the working space is also handy.

I've always been a big proponent of lots of monitor space. Clever software with multiple virtual workspaces is a great feature, but nothing is faster than just moving your eyes. Every workstation should have a couple of 20 inch monitors as a bare minimum. My desk has a pair of 20 inch monitors for my Ubuntu machine and a 25 inch for my mac laptop. I don't think that's at all excessive.

Software development is inherently creative, so expect to see lots of baubly distractions. Toys are commonly found around our teams (as Neal Ford says: "every team needs a plastic kangaroo"). There are good cognitive reasons why this is valuable, it's all about keeping the brain stimulated and creative.

Similarly do provide easy access to snacks and drinks. This helps support informal, conversational breaks in the team area. It's hard to be creative when you have to pay for awful coffee.

If you're working with remote workers, make it easy to set up a video link. Indeed many teams like having permanent video links to any remote workers so you can always maintain that casual video contact.

Useful Links

InfoQ summary of things for a team room.
William Pietri describes a team room he's used.
Bill Wake's gallery of team rooms and charts.
Rachel Davies's advice on building an agile environment.
Joel Spolsky is perhaps the best illustration for using individual offices rather than a single team room.
Rajeev Singh's thoughts on moving into this kind of team room at ThoughtWorks India.

My thanks to my ThoughtWorks colleagues for helping compile this information.

Brewing By Hand Brings Them True Hoppiness

2010-06-17T02:52:16Z

The New York Times reported last week that Boston Beer Works — which “helped create the red-hot small-beer movement when it introduced Sam Adams 26 years ago” — is in danger of losing its “craft” beer status. The company is getting too big.

“If we’re not a craft brewer,” said Jim Koch, president of Boston Beer, to the Times, “what else are we? We’re certainly not Budweiser.” (Don’t miss WBUR’s interview with Koch back in April.)

Sen. John Kerry has introduced a bill that would increase the production limit of small breweries from two to six million barrels a year.

Last night, I met a Cambridge couple that is definitely not in danger of losing their craft beer status — but they are growing fast. Dann Paquette and his wife, Martha Holley-Paquette, hand-brew Pretty Things beer. And they’re one of the few brewers left inside of 128, they say. (Pretty Things can’t officially be called a “brewery,” since federal law forbids that label unless they own the equipment.)

Pull up a chair. Dann Paquette and Martha Holley-Paquette brew Pretty Things artisan beer in Cambridge. (Andrew Phelps/WBUR)

My foodie friends rave about the stuff, and I came away impressed after a tasting at Deep Ellum in Allston. I sampled the flagship Jack D’or, whose mascot is a dancing, mustachioed barley corn; the complex Baby Tree, which is made with dried plums; and the rustic Field Mouse’s Farewell, the late spring seasonal.

Paquette has been brewing beer for about 18 years (after a stint as producer for “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”). The couple launched Pretty Things almost three years ago on $10,000 in capital. In the first year, Paquette says, they sold $180,000. Their brews are served at a number of high-quality establishments in Boston, and they’ve just hired the first employee, a sales rep, to branch out in New York and Philadelphia.

And it’s clearly a craft. Paquette tends to every ingredient and detail, even using a microscope to inspect for bacteria in the final product. The two designed the fantastical labels themselves, and each bottle is inscribed with poetry about that brew.

I interview them for a future radio story on Radio Boston. Look for a post on Public Radio Kitchen later this week.

Me: ”When you click on the button it takes you to the Paypal donation page that you set...

2010-06-02T13:22:47Z

Me: ”When you click on the button it takes you to the Paypal donation page that you set up.”

Client: “What do you mean? I don’t want the donate button to do this, I want it to automatically charge their card. These are seniors they won’t understand this if I don’t. You can’t have them type stuff in.”

Me: “But you wanted to go with Paypal because you couldn’t afford a secured shopping cart website. Either way, at some point they will have to type in their information.”

Client: ”Can’t you just take their credit card information without them knowing? That way they won’t get confused.”

An old scam still works

2010-05-25T16:19:05Z

In the very first paper I wrote on ATM fraud, Why Cryptosystems Fail, the very first example I gave of a fraud came from the case R v Moon at Hastings Crown Court in February 1992. Mr Moon was a teller at the TSB who noticed that address changes weren’t audited. He found a customer with over £10,000 in her account, changed her address to his, issued a card and pin, and changed the address back. He looted her account and when she complained, she wasn’t believed.

It’s still happening, most recently to a customer of the Abbey. Bank insider issues extra card, steals money, customer blamed – after all, chip and pin is infallible, isn’t it? Expecting banks to keep decent logs might be too much; and I supppose it’s way too much to expect bank fraud staff to read the research literature on their subject.

Announcing Google TV: TV meets web. Web meets TV.

2010-06-16T11:35:49Z

Shared by Ben H
Holy fuck

If there’s one entertainment device that people know and love, it’s the television. In fact, 4 billion people across the world watch TV and the average American spends five hours per day in front of one*. Recently, however, an increasing amount of our entertainment experience is coming from our phones and computers. One reason is that these devices have something that the TV lacks: the web. With the web, finding and accessing interesting content is fast and often as easy as a search. But the web still lacks many of the great features and the high-quality viewing experience that the TV offers.

So that got us thinking...what if we helped people experience the best of TV and the best of the web in one seamless experience? Imagine turning on the TV and getting all the channels and shows you normally watch and all of the websites you browse all day — including your favorite video, music and photo sites. We’re excited to announce that we’ve done just that.

Google TV is a new experience for television that combines the TV that you already know with the freedom and power of the Internet. With Google Chrome built in, you can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web. This opens up your TV from a few hundred channels to millions of channels of entertainment across TV and the web. Your television is also no longer confined to showing just video. With the entire Internet in your living room, your TV becomes more than a TV — it can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more.

Google TV uses search to give you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies. For example, already know the channel or program you want to watch? Just type in the name and you’re there. Want to check out that funny YouTube video on your 48” flat screen? It’s just a quick search away. If you know what you want to watch, but you’re not sure where to find it, just type in what you’re looking for and Google TV will help you find it on the web or on one of your many TV channels. If you’d rather browse than search, you can use your standard program guide, your DVR or the Google TV home screen, which provides quick access to all of your favorite entertainment so you’re always within reach of the content you love most.

Because Google TV is built on open platforms like Android and Google Chrome, these features are just a fraction of what Google TV can do. In our announcement today at Google I/O, we challenged web developers to start coming up with the next great web and Android apps designed specifically for the TV experience. Developers can start optimizing their websites for Google TV today. Soon after launch, we’ll release the Google TV SDK and web APIs for TV so that developers can build even richer applications and distribute them through Android Market. We’re looking forward to seeing all of the ways developers will use this new platform.

We’re working together with Sony and Logitech to put Google TV inside of televisions, Blu-ray players and companion boxes. These devices will go on sale this fall, and will be available at Best Buy stores nationwide. You can sign up here to get updates on Google TV availability.

This is an incredibly exciting time — for TV watchers, for developers and for the entire TV ecosystem. By giving people the power to experience what they love on TV and on the web on a single screen, Google TV turns the living room into a new platform for innovation. We're excited about what’s coming. We hope you are too.

*Nielsen, Three Screen Report, Fourth Quarter 2009

Posted by Salahuddin Choudhary, Google TV Product Manager

The Gift of Attention

2010-06-13T16:56:00Z

This past May I was thrilled to be able to attend Sugino Sensei's seminar in Sherbrooke, along with a large number of other Katori Shinto Ryu practitioners from both Ontario and Quebec. For three days we practiced under Sugino Sensei's keen eye. The experience brought back to me thoughts I'd had years ago, about how precious the gift of attention can be.

And while of course receiving such a gift is something to be treasured, in recent days I've been thinking of how simple it can be for any of us to GIVE such a gift as well.

When I face my partner in omote-tachi, or even when practicing kamae (the stances that form the foundation of Katori Shinto Ryu), I am most useful to them when I gift them with my full attention and spirit.

I don't mean that we must put on a fierce face and pretend to be locked in mortal combat, or try to intimidate or startle them. But we can give our attention to them completely, letting nothing distract us from their action. Not only with our eyes, but with our entire being as we perform the kata alertly, attentively, and with a fully present spirit.

It is so rare in our lives that anyone truly pays attention to us. Most people spend every moment consumed with self-reflection, condemning themselves or praising themselves -- usually without nearly as much cause as they imagine -- that they have little energy left over to consider others. Our own lives and worries are so important to us that we ignore the people all around us. This behaviour keeps us from learning, but just as important, it makes it hard for those around us to learn as well. When they do not receive our attention, they do not receive useful feedback that they can use in their efforts to learn and transform.

The practice of Katori offers us an opportunity to put our self-centered concerns aside and engage with others openly, presently. When we perform the katas, if we remain trapped in a selfish inward struggle, we fail to give our partner what they most need at this moment: our attention. This is one of the qualities that makes a teacher like Sugino Sensei so effective -- he sheds himself and focuses entirely on what the student is doing. It is a lesson to myself that regardless of how poor my technique may be, or how tired I am, I can still be of tremendous value to my partner simply by paying careful attention to them.

Photo courtesy of Michel Martin. Sugino Sensei is seated at center. Weins Sensei is seated at right and Mr. Reid (me) is seated at left.

On remembering and forgetting in Northern Ireland

2010-06-16T08:40:00Z

"Irish history is something no Englishman should forget and no Irishman should remember", wrote George Bernard Shaw 106 years ago.

The sense that there is at least a pinch of wisdom in his quip has grown considerably, not least since both sides have spent most of the period since he published John Bull's Other Island refusing their allotted roles. If it too flippant a remark to be an entirely appropriate response to the Bloody Sunday inquiry report, the events of yesterday also made Shaw's case.

It has been for the British to focus on uncovering and stating the truth. David Cameron's strong and dignified House of Commons statement, solemnly accepting responsibility for the "unjustified and unjustifiable" killings of citizens by soldiers acting in the name of the British state unequivocally owned the shocking (yet, by now, predictable) results of the inquiry in a way which spoke to the necessity of British remembering. Indeed, it was the clarity and authority (and so the very expensive, much lamented, comprehensiveness) of the Saville report's findings which muted the 'whataboutery' those asking 'why so much fuss about these killings and not others?

It has been the response of the families of the victims, and Derry's broader Catholic community which provides grounds for hope that the report may now provide closure. Certainly, the long campaign of the victim's families for the truth, and the exoneration of the deceased, speaks to the importance and value of their persistence and remembering too. Yet the sight of the large Derry crowd warmly applauding the words of the British Prime Minister suggested that official public acknowledgement of the truth - which would now be "the verdict of history of all time" - and the ability of the families to declare their relatives innocent of the slurs of the Widgery report, took priority yesterday over the question of future prosecutions of the perpetrators. The mood was one of catharsis, not of vengeance.

Yesterday it seemed, perhaps against expectations even over the last few days, that the report might prove more significant as a moment of reconciliation than another occasion for an auction between competing grievances about past wrongs, among those on any side who will only ever want to acknowledge the legitimacy of the hurt caused within one community while always blaming the victims within the other.

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan puts the essential point against those who would diminish the particular significance of Bloody Sunday:

Some commentators opposed the whole idea of reopening the wretched episode. Why such a disproportionate focus on Bloody Sunday? they asked. What about Bloody Friday? What about Birmingham and Warrington and Shankill and Crossmaglen and a hundred other IRA murders? Why should we even consider of prosecuting British Servicemen when we have freed hundreds of Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries?

The answer, surely, is that our soldiers are not to be judged by the same standard as terrorist bombers. They operate according to the rule of law. This is basis of their legitimacy and, indeed, of Britain’s jurisdiction in Northern Ireland. When rules are broken, there must be consequences. It is creditable that we should support British Servicemen. But we do not support them by taking, as it were, an anti-Dreyfusard position, refusing to admit that our soldiers can ever be in the wrong.

The individuals killed were innocent. They were marching for civil rights. To somehow regard the deaths of those killed as to be weighed in the balance against any acts perpetrated by any of their co-religionists, is to succumb to the mentality of an endless and inescapable civil war.

Yes, those killed were part of a community - two communities - often involved in a deep, complex and often tragic clash between two competing identities, two incompatible histories and two deeply felt sets of grievances often asserted to be irreconciliable. But the task of politics is to prove that claim wrong. The (fragile) achievement of politics is that it may be winning.

So there is already an emerging (if not universal) consensus that the inquiry was an important and necessary act on the part of the British state. That is right. But there may even be a danger of a congratulatory complacency creeping in. A classic "bad apples" theory of the actions of individual soliders ignores the scale of the official cover-up. (Indeed the perjury continued through this inquiry, and may provide the hardest question for prosecutors).

The hard truth is also that peace processes do often make a trade-off between peace and justice, as the release of those guilty of terrorist murders and atrocities demonstrates. The case for this inquiry was that the trade-off should not be made conveniently with the truth itself, but rather in what is done in the knowledge of it. It is ultimately necessary to remember and acknowledge if we are ever to forget.

Bloody Sunday began with a civil rights march of Northern Ireland's Catholics to protest their being treated as second class citizens. The point was tragically proved not just by the recklessness which killed thirteen people but, perhaps above all, by the state's lack of concern after the event to account seriously or honestly for their deaths.

It may have taken 38 years but, unlike the killings themselves, that was a wrong which could be put right. Bloody Sunday and the subsequent cover-up was an episode which has brought shame on British justice. As a day of necessary atonement, yesterday was finally also a good day for British justice and, it is to be hoped, for Northern Ireland too.