27 Jan 2012 by Dave.

Twitter bought Blacktype in July 2011 and as part of that acquisition got hold of Storm. This is a press release detailing the publication of Storm’s code on Github.

They position Storm as a parallel messaging, disk less system.

M Davey asks if this has much use in Capital Markets here.

I wonder if ‘Time Series Order’ might not be a serious inhibitor to its adoption, but Chief Engineer, Nathan Marz on his blog seems to think it could be part of the answer to a large number of problems.

Posted in messaging, twitter, social media, technology | No Comments »

23 Jan 2012 by admin.

While Labour turning it’s back on Keynes is a bigger story, the coalition’s attempt to act as ‘responsible capitalists’ is easier to write about.

A coalition government appointed commission reports that executive pay is out of control (really?) and that there should be trade union and/or workers representatives  on board pay committees, and that shareholder votes on pay should be binding. (You mean they’re not!) However the government decides that allowing workers to vote on the bosses pay would be ‘tokenism’. Hardly! Shareholders can sell up, Trade Unionists might actually fuck things up! Since Labour introduced the shareholder advisory vote in 2003, only 18 companies have rejected board pay agreements. Assuming that, its FTSE 250, over 9 years, that’s under 1% of company AGM’s have rejected a pay committee recommendation. Shareholders that think a company is badly run, sell up,  they do not hang on for the AGM and vote against the pay board recommendation, they don’t even hang on and replace the board. They sell up; that’s what Equity Liquidity means.

This’ll make a huge difference. Not!

In case you hadn’t noticed, there was a banking crisis four years ago, and in the UK two failing banks were nationalised and a third was merged with a successful bank to prove the old adage, “What happens when you hit a duck with a failing bank?”, “You get two dead ducks!”. Despite, that anyone saving with Nat. West., Halifax, Northern Rock and the Royal Bank of Scotland, or whose savings banks and pension funds had been lent to them should be bloody grateful to Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and the Labour Government; they saved the UK banking system and everyone’s savings! Despite the catastrophe, no one has been prosecuted, no-one’s in gaol and all the current government is talking about is taking Fred “the Shred” Goodwin’s knighthood away from him. I bet he’s worried about that. Ed Balls took Sharon Shoesmith’s pension from her; not that I approve of that really, but allowing the government to focus on the Fred’s gong is taking the piss. Who’s going to gaol?

The coalition’s campaign for responsible capitalism is all camouflage.

And while I don’t really believe there can be a responsible capitalism, the right are running scared of Ed Miliband who first reminded us of the idea that the corporate private sector was ripping us off; it’s just a surprise that people needed reminding.

No government with the Tories in it are going to help.

Posted in economics, business, politics | No Comments »

16 Jan 2012 by admin.

The White House, in a reply to a petition on its e-petitions site calling for them to oppose the current legislative attempts to censor the internet in the name of anti-piracy says, among other things,

“Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small. Across the globe, the openness of the Internet is increasingly central to innovation in business, government, and society and it must be protected. To minimize this risk, new legislation must be narrowly targeted only at sites beyond the reach of current U.S. law, cover activity clearly prohibited under existing U.S. laws, and be effectively tailored, with strong due process and focused on criminal activity…..”

It adds,

“We must avoid creating new cybersecurity risks or disrupting the underlying architecture of the Internet. Proposed laws must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS), a foundation of Internet security. Our analysis of the DNS filtering provisions in some proposed legislation suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity and yet leave contraband goods and services accessible online. We must avoid legislation that drives users to dangerous, unreliable DNS servers and puts next-generation security policies, such as the deployment of DNSSEC, at risk.”

It’s a shame they didn’t come to this conclusion earlier and continued to permit the US Trade Representative and the US’s Embassies the world over to lobby and bully for Hollywood’s laws and to seek extradition clearly non-criminal behaviour.

I demand that the US Government withdraw their extradition request for Richard O’Dwyer; its not in-line with the policy above. O’Dwyer is not a criminal; links are legal in the UK. (So actually, it is my view that foreign nationals should not lobby the US Government, just as I do not expect foreign nationals, or tax non-domiciles to finance politics in the UK . I have,however, signed one anti-SOPA petition; it was clearly labelled as a global initiative, so I would ask my US friends and comrades to take up O’Dwyer’s case. )

It is a disgrace that the White House can grandstand for its own fundamental rights and laws and its own business innovation while funding an oppressive lobbying regime and the legal pursuit of hobbyists.

It is a disgrace that British politicians and Judges, spinelessly permit this abuse to occur.

It is a disgrace that American legislators are prepared to attack the freedom of speech for the rest of the world in order to protect the super-profits of billionaires.

Posted in digital economy, culture, copyright, white house, press freedom, extradition, politics, internet, law, europe, technology | No Comments »

11 Jan 2012 by admin.

Last month, I reflected on the debate about the school curriculum for Information Technology, it seems that even the government are listening. Michael Gove the Secretary of State is making a speech later today, in which it seems that he plans to “abolish the national curriculum” for ICT and “set teachers free”.

I don’t think this’ll be enough. If the exam boards don’t change their exams, and we don’t make/train better skilled teachers, it won’t change.

Posted in education, digital economy, uk, politics | No Comments »

07 Jan 2012 by Dave.

Just before the turn of the year, I published a back dated personal review of the BT/TalkTalk vs Secretary of State for BIS seeking judicial review of the DE Act and a summary. The longer review was accidentally deleted, I have reposted it, dated 21st April 2011, and amended the hyper-link in the article of 30th Dec 2011. The old URL and it’s SURL no longer work. This http://is.gd/pODktv is a new SURL if you want one.

Posted in copyright, digital economy, uk, law, internet | No Comments »