Now Microsoft try and copy Apple stores as well as front-ends

Words fail me at watching this video shot at Microsoft's store at the Mission Viejo mall in California. Yes Apple is cool and Microsoft is not, get over it...

The Queen's Speech - a thought on reducing the deficit

Pure electioneering but maybe for 2014/15 rather than 2010. This speech was about setting unachievable targets for the next Conservative government to fail to meet. In any case, the Labour promise is not to halve the accumulated debt in four years but to halve the annual deficit. So if this year's deficit is £200 billion then Labour would still be borrowing £100 billion in four years time and the UK debt would still be rising by £100 billion a year. This would mean that the UK's annual interest payments on the debt would continue to rise from the current projected figure of £65 billion per year especially if the cost of servicing this debt rises along with interest rates. It is quite possible that the UK would need to borrow £100 billion a year just to service its debt obligations.

A new menace on the roads of London

This Is London report a new menace on the roads of London.

It seems that a new generation of "intelligent" speed traps are being introduced as another way of raising money and making London's roads even more hazardous. These new average speed camera systems will be used to track cars over a wide area - such as a housing estate - instead of the old fashioned Gatso type that just flash at one place. Plenty of drivers will no doubt be receiving those £60 fines in the near future (I am not sure if they will also get 3 points).

So where in London is the first site? Mansfield Road, NW3; that's the road that links Camden Town/Haverstock Hill with Highgate Hill/Kentish Town Road. The whole of the 20mph zone on this road will be under the watchful gaze of the placed on hight new blue average speed cameras.

The usual suspects will no doubt say that if you obey the speed limit then you will have nothing to fear but the truth is somewhat at variance with this. From my experience of average speed cameras on stretches of motorway roadworks, drivers do indeed obey the speed limit unfortunately they achieve this by keeping one eye on their speedometer all the time. On a motorway with no traffic coming in the opposite direction, or coming from side-roads or cyclists weaving about or pedestrians crossing the road this is just about safe but on a London urban main road?

Of course nobody has explained why there is a 20mph speed limit on part of Mansfield Road, it's not a fast piece of road just a typical London road. What has happened over the last 15 years or so is that speed limits in London have bee reduced by around 10mph on main roads; the A40 dropped from 60mph to 50mph, the A406 from 50mph to 40mph and almost at the same time the speed cameras were introduced. Now we are to have many many more 20mph zones until 20mph is the standard speed for residential areas.

If this technology trial is successful then the plan is to roll these systems out across London and what a great revenue raiser they will be.


The line that is always used is that "Speed Kills" and that speed is a major factor in road accidents. This is of course rubbish as I pointed out 2 years ago

"A DfT strategy paper claimed speed was "a major contributory factor in about a third of all road accidents". The "excessive and inappropriate speed" that helped "to kill about 1,200 people" each year was "far more than any other single contributor to casualties on our roads". The source given for this claim, to be repeated as a mantra by ministers and officials for years to come, was a report from the government's Transport Research Laboratory, TRL Report 323: "A new system for recording contributory factors in road accidents". Not many people would have looked at this report, since it was only available for £45. But some who did were amazed. The evidence the report had cited to support its claim that speed was "a major contributory factor in about a third of all road accidents" simply wasn't there. Many other factors were named as contributing to road accidents, from driving without due care and attention to the influence of drink; from poor overtaking to nodding off at the wheel. But the figure given for accidents in which the main causative factor was "excessive speed" was way down the list, at only 7.3 per cent."

Do read the whole of that piece but this extract might also prove interesting:

"The statistics for Durham showed that, of 1,900 collisions each year, only three per cent involved cars that were exceeding the speed limit, just 60 accidents a year. Look more closely at the causes of these 60 accidents, the "actual cause of the accident invariably is drink-driving or drug-driving". Drug-taking was now involved in 40 per cent of Durham's fatal road accidents. Many accidents, he said, were caused by fatigue, although one of the most common causes was the failure of drivers to watch out for oncoming vehicles when turning right. To none of these could speed cameras offer any remedy. "The cause of accidents," Garvin (chief constable of Durham) concluded, "is clearly something different from exceeding the speed limit"."

Also

"In September 2006, the DfT finally conceded one of the central points that Safe Speed's Paul Smith had been arguing for five years: that only five per cent of road accidents were caused by drivers who were breaking the speed limit. In The Daily Telegraph, Smith was quoted as saying "the government's case for continuing to install cameras has been destroyed"."

So the truth is that speed cameras do not make the roads safer, are not needed and are being used to raise revenue - who would have thought it?

Too many funny lines come to mind

The Telegraph report that:

"The man who operated the Gordon, the puppet gopher that appeared on Children's BBC programmes with Phillip Schofield, is now the corporation’s head of compliance"

Paul Smith - the puppet master, the man pulling the strings (yes I know Gordon the Gopher was a glove puppet), the man with a hand in every pie...

Labour's priorities - compare and contrast

Soldiers killed whilst awaiting body armour but Labour Ministers spend £6.3 million in a year on chauffeur driven cars.

It's all a question of priorities I suppose.

Political Apologies

The Pedant General has a must-read piece over at Devils Kitchen giving us all a "handy cut-out-and-keep guide for politicians wishing to apologise for something."

Do take a look.

Free town-wide wifi

Swindon will be the first UK town to offer free wireless internet access across the whole town.

Digital City UK Ltd will run the project for Swindon Borough Council which has a 35% share and they intend to roll out the technology in other towns and cities in the UK.

The Swindon project, costing around £1 million will install a "WiFi mesh" offering blanket internet coverage for its 186,000 citizens and presumably a large number of visitors. The system will be free but Digital City hope to make money by selling relatively cheap 20MB links to those who require faster browsing and download speeds.

I wonder what the free speed will be? I suppose so long as it is faster than a 3G card then it will be fast enough for most people and it will be free. Somehow I doubt that access will be unlimited or Swindon could become the illegal download capital of the UK.

Geeks naked?

Nude London Tech Calendar from Leapanywhere.com on Vimeo.

OK so their not geeks but tech and new media entrepreneurs but it's all in a good cause so buy your copy of the 2010 calendar here and take a look at their home page here.

Details of the charity, Take Heart India can be found here.


Here's a list of those who will be in the calendar:
* Alan Wylie, Huddle
* Alicia Navarro, Skimbit
* Andrew J Scott, Rummble
* Anke Holst
* Anna Bance, Girl Meets Dress
* David Langer, Groupspaces
* Elizabeth Varley, TechHub
* Fabio de Bernardi, ilikeucoz
* Gabrielle Laine Peters
* Hermione Way, Techfluff.TV
* The Huddle team
* Joana Simoes
* Joe Stepniewski, Skimbit
* Joshua March, iPlatform
* Lucian Tarnowski, Brave New Talent
* Malcolm Scovil, LeapAnywhere
* Oliver Mardling, WhatTalent.com
* Poppy Dinsey, Globrix
* Rassami Hok-Ljungberg, 2 Pears
* The Reevoo team
* Sam Barnett, Struq
* Sam Mathews, fnatic & Evisua
* Sophie Cox, Worldeka
* Vincent Camara, intruders.tv
* Zuzanna Pasierbinska-Wilson, Huddle
* A special appearance by Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch Europe



Maybe for 2011 a nude calendar of geeky bloggers? Maybe not!

Flashmobbing Bondi Beach style

Thanks to Techfluff for the spot.

Dangerous things pelicans, especially to Bugatti Veyrons

The news that Andy House, owner of Performance Auto Sales in Lufkin, Texas, was driving on Interstate 45 early last week when he crashed his 2006 Bugatti Veyron into a nearby lake reached me along with a rather dull picture and the news that according to Mr. House, he had been distracted by a low-flying pelican which caused him to drop his cell phone and so lose control of the car... and drive into a lake. This was interesting but not very visual until I found this piece of video of the incident, apparently taken by two dudes excited by the presence of a Veyron and rather free with the word sh*t...


I don't see a low-flying pelican, do you?



The Bugatti Veyron is a beautiful and very expensive car, I presume this one is now ruined...

Here's some video of the vehicle recovery...

I thought the "problem" was deflation!

The BBC report but only on the Business Pages that

"The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) climbed to 1.5% in October, up from 1.1% in September.

Meanwhile the Retail Prices Index (RPI) inflation measure, which includes mortgage interest payments and housing costs, rose to -0.8% from -1.4%."

I thought that the agreed Labour/BBC narrative was that deflation was the problem and that only fools (like me) believed rampant inflation was coming soon. The BBC even desperately try to explain the rise in the CPI & RPI by blaming unusual external factors, not something that they ever did back in the early 1990s; but then that was an evil Conservative government not a lovely Labour one.

Massive inflation is on the way. Incidentally I note that the price of gold is now above 1130USD per oz.

Just remind me who's meant to be Prime Minister

The BBC report on the upcoming "Queen's Speech" which David Cameron has quite rightly characterised as the "most divisive, short-termist, shamelessly self-serving" one "in living memory". The BBC slip in this comment that I found interesting:

"A Downing Street spokesman said Business Secretary Lord Mandelson had briefed Tuesday's cabinet meeting on government on the key themes to be outlined in the Queen's Speech."

So an unelected member of the House of Lords briefed cabinet on the themes for the Queen's Speech; why Peter Mandelson and not Gordon Brown? Was Gordon Brown too busy saving the world from or just incapable of coherent thought and/or speech?


David Cameron recently summed up the planned Queen's Speech thus:

"Apparently it's all going to be about dividing lines between Gordon Brown and the Conservatives... That tells you all you need to know about the character of the government - and, indeed, this prime minister... Dig deeper into any of his plans and you'll find pettiness masquerading as principle.... Two and a half years ago the prime minister stood in Downing Street and told us that he would be 'strong in purpose, steadfast in will, resolute in action'. But tomorrow we will hear the most divisive, short-termist, shamelessly self-serving Queen's Speech in living memory."

I actually think that the public have rumbled Gordon Brown; they know that he is a liar and a schemer and that any bills proposed in the Queen's Speech are purely electioneering and division creating.

Do you think there might be more to this story than the headline?

The BBC loyally report that:

"Gordon Brown says he hopes control of some areas of Afghanistan can be handed over from 2010, raising the prospect of the eventual withdrawal of UK troops.

The prime minister wants to host a Nato meeting in January to "set a timetable" for transfer to full Afghan control. "

A conference in London with images of Gordon Brown bestriding the world stage alongside Barack Obama and setting a date to end Britain's involvement in an unpopular war in Afghanistan, I am sure that the timing is completely unconnected with an upcoming general election campaign.

Dr Who - The End of Time and The Waters of Mars

The Waters of Mars was average for 80% of the programme but The Doctor becoming somewhat unhinged at the end was rather frightening - The "Time Lord Victorious" was not the cuddly superhero Doctor that he has become in recent years. Some great acting by David Tennant who is rapidly becoming my favourite Doctor, just as he is about to be replaced...

Nice touch the Mars base bein called Bowie Base, "Life on Mars"... I wonder how many of the under 10s got that reference?


Anyway here's a hand-video from the filming of one of the "End of Time" episodes, thanks to Planet Gallifrey
The Christmas specials look to be real humdingers... "he will knock four times" and the Cloister Bell sound ominous...

BBC Freeview HD

BBC Freeview HD avaliable in London and Manchester in two weeks and one day - 2 December.

The BBC announce that:

"Today the BBC has confirmed the timetable that will make HD services on Freeview available to 50% of the population in time for next June's World Cup, and to 98.5% [1] of the population by the end of digital switchover in three years' time.

In order to bring the benefits of HD on Freeview to as many people as quickly as possible, the Freeview HD rollout has been accelerated with an advance network so that viewers in London, Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Bradford and Birmingham receive signals by the end of March 2010.

The majority of viewers will come into coverage at the same time that they go through digital switchover – including viewers in Manchester in December 2009 and those in Cardiff, who will get Freeview HD by the end of March 2010. For the 7% of the UK population who switched before December 2009, a retrofit programme will bring them into coverage before the end of November 2010.

...

Timetable (Freeview HD signal availability commences at switchover unless otherwise stated)

England

Area - transmitter group - date

Manchester, Winter Hill, 2 December 2009
London, Crystal Palace, 2 December 2009 – advance network
Newcastle and Tyneside, Pontop Pike, February 2010 – advance network
Leeds/Bradford, Emley Moor, March 2010 – advance network
Birmingham, Lichfield, March 2010 – advance network
Liverpool, central Lancashire, Cheshire, north Staffordshire, Winter Hill relays, March 2010 – retrofit
Exeter, parts of Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Stockland Hill, April 2010 – retrofit
Bristol, Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Mendip, April 2010
Devon, Cornwall, and the Isles of Scilly, Beacon Hill, Caradon Hill, Huntshaw Cross, Redruth August 2010 – retrofit
Cumbria and the Lake District, Caldbeck, October 2010 – retrofit"

Googling

Google bahrain - arrange social tennis in poland - This site is in position 10. Odd thing Google.

Paying the enemy?

Read this and get very very angry at what is being done in our name. I know that this Labour government are a) stupid and b) unconcerned at spending our money, but paying the expenses of those on control orders...

The sixty first weekly "No shit, Sherlock" award

This week's winner has to be the United Nations for providing the story behind this Telegraph story, apparently:

"The United Nations' nuclear watchdog has said Iran may have more secret nuclear sites it is hiding from the international community. "

"No shit, Sherlocks"

"The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant."

This story from last week was so astonishing that I expected it to receive wide media coverage but it didn't so here I go...

"A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for "doing his duty".

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden.

In his statement, he said: "I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges.

"I didn't know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him.

"At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall."

Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

Defending, Lionel Blackman told the jury Mr Clarke's garden backs onto a public green field, and his garden wall is significantly lower than his neighbours.

He also showed jurors a leaflet printed by Surrey Police explaining to citizens what they can do at a police station, which included "reporting found firearms".

Quizzing officer Garnett, who arrested Mr Clarke, he asked: "Are you aware of any notice issued by Surrey Police, or any publicity given to, telling citizens that if they find a firearm the only thing they should do is not touch it, report it by telephone, and not take it into a police station?"

To which, Mr Garnett replied: "No, I don't believe so."

Prosecuting, Brian Stalk, explained to the jury that possession of a firearm was a "strict liability" charge – therefore Mr Clarke's allegedly honest intent was irrelevant.

Just by having the gun in his possession he was guilty of the charge, and has no defence in law against it, he added.

But despite this, Mr Blackman urged members of the jury to consider how they would respond if they found a gun.

He said: "This is a very small case with a very big principle.

"You could be walking to a railway station on the way to work and find a firearm in a bin in the park.

"Is it unreasonable to take it to the police station?"

Paul Clarke will be sentenced on December 11.

Judge Christopher Critchlow said: "This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge.

"The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant." at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year's imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: "I didn't think for one moment I would be arrested.

"I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets."

The court heard how Mr Clarke was on the balcony of his home in Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, when he spotted a black bin liner at the bottom of his garden.

In his statement, he said: "I took it indoors and inside found a shorn-off shotgun and two cartridges.

"I didn't know what to do, so the next morning I rang the Chief Superintendent, Adrian Harper, and asked if I could pop in and see him.

"At the police station, I took the gun out of the bag and placed it on the table so it was pointing towards the wall."

Mr Clarke was then arrested immediately for possession of a firearm at Reigate police station, and taken to the cells.

Defending, Lionel Blackman told the jury Mr Clarke's garden backs onto a public green field, and his garden wall is significantly lower than his neighbours.

He also showed jurors a leaflet printed by Surrey Police explaining to citizens what they can do at a police station, which included "reporting found firearms".

Quizzing officer Garnett, who arrested Mr Clarke, he asked: "Are you aware of any notice issued by Surrey Police, or any publicity given to, telling citizens that if they find a firearm the only thing they should do is not touch it, report it by telephone, and not take it into a police station?"

To which, Mr Garnett replied: "No, I don't believe so."

Prosecuting, Brian Stalk, explained to the jury that possession of a firearm was a "strict liability" charge – therefore Mr Clarke's allegedly honest intent was irrelevant.

Just by having the gun in his possession he was guilty of the charge, and has no defence in law against it, he added.

But despite this, Mr Blackman urged members of the jury to consider how they would respond if they found a gun.

He said: "This is a very small case with a very big principle.

"You could be walking to a railway station on the way to work and find a firearm in a bin in the park.

"Is it unreasonable to take it to the police station?"

Paul Clarke will be sentenced on December 11.

Judge Christopher Critchlow said: "This is an unusual case, but in law there is no dispute that Mr Clarke has no defence to this charge.

"The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant.""

So it seems that a man who handed a gun, that he had found in his garden, into the police gets charged, convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for "possessing a firearm". Does nobody think that this might be a little over the top? I wonder how the judge summed up the case, can one find out? Was the jury directed to a guilty verdict via an explanation of "strict liability"?
I wonder if this is the same Paul Clarke and what light, if any, does that report shed on this case.


A contributor on Old Holborn found a news story that went a somewhat different way:

"A man who found a loaded gun linked to a gangland shooting was told by Scotland Yard to carry it across south London to a police station.

John Leary came across the weapon in a playground where it had been abandoned days after the crime. But the Met refused his request for a plain-clothes officer to collect it from his home.

Today the force admitted major failings over the matter.

Disabled Mr Leary, 51, found the weapon inside a plastic bag near his home on the Hemans estate in Stockwell. Speaking for the first time since the find, he said: "I was going to hang the bag on the railings until I felt its weight. When I looked inside there was a big revolver, a passport and some cash. It had a long barrel and I could see the chambers were loaded. There was no question of leaving it where kids play."

Immediately after finding the revolver he was confronted by gang members who tried to get him to hand it over. But he refused and called police.

Officers suggested they send a patrol car to his house, but he refused for fear of reprisals from the gang members who had seen him carry the bag away. "I told them it was more than my life was worth," said Mr Leary.

Police then advised him to go to his local station, in Larkhall Park, Wandsworth Road, but it was closed. He had to travel 2.5 miles into Clapham to Lavender Hill police station, where an officer agreed to receive the weapon. Mr Leary was taken into the Met's witness protection programme after the gang continued to target him, offering him £3,000 for the gun. They later subjected him to death threats and intimidation, forcing him to flee to his son's home."

So what would you do if you found a gun in your garden?

The future?

Could this be the prototype of the National Identity Registry front-end?