Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Back To Work I Go!

Well, the sick leave is almost completely over; I go back to work on Tuesday

The sick note says: "Indoor duties for two weeks then to bus driving"

AT LAST!

I've been bloody climbing the walls with boredom this last while, I can tell you! The first month off was a bit of a novelty, aside from the shock of having had the bloody heart attack, of course; month number tow was settling into the daily routine.

Month number three (this last month)? Let me put it this way: I've been ready to try for low earth orbit on boredom power alone!

So, updates'll be a wee bit slower now, but at least I'll be back earning a half-decent wage again!

Enjoy your weekend! I know I will now

What next?

OK, for background on this, read the news, and come back...

How in the HELL can you copyright a street sign for pities sake?! Street signs display names, and are PUBLIC information. By copyrighting them, you are effectively prohibiting even map-makers from using the street names. Hell, someone writes an address on a letter, and bingo, copyright fees are incurred. The reason? If you copyright something, you MUST go after copyright violators, or lose the right to the copyright. It's a legal technicality thing, but trust me, it's true: Protect it or lose it.

Where the HELL do you draw the line?!

Easy. You TRADEMARK it, not copyright it.

Westminster Council went about this in entirely the wrong way - all they needed to do was TRADEMARK the DESIGN of the street signs, not copyright the content, to prevent unlicenced reproductions. Talk about local government stupidity.

It's also, and in my humble opinion, clearly a case of more Council officials seeing a potential money train, and going after it with little regard to the innocents who'll be caught in the middle. Say a tourist snaps a photo of the street sign. A council official notices, and gets a Copper to take their details, as they've obviously just committed copyright theft (image of copyrighted materials). Instant criminal, they just incurred a fine. See what I mean?

So, as I asked a moment or two ago:

WHERE do you draw the line?

By the way, fair use policy extends to all my blog articles - you MAY use text and images that I have produced, provided they are not used in any profit-making effort of any kind. For that, you'll need a licence from me ;) Third Party material may be subject to other copyright restrictions, so I wouldn't touch those if I were you ;) The T&C at the foot of the page will be amended before long :)

Welcome to the Great British Summer!

Well, so much for nicely delineated seasons, I guess - this was the view out of the front of my flat this morning! A bigger photo can be found here This was the view out of the back...


At least one of my neighbours had some fun :)

Whoops... IBM appears to be in the smelly stuff...

Just spotted this over on The Register...

It seems that IBM has been temporarily barred from bidding for new contracts with the US government. Now, the problem comes when you discover how they found out they were barred: Someone told them. Not someone from the USG. That'd be too easy.

Someone else who spotted the barring on the US Department of Justice website told 'em.

That's right. An ordinary Joe Public (a.k.a. "Third party") told Big Blue they were in Crapper Alley.

Here's my take on this...

OK, they're prohibited form making fresh tenders under this notice, and it's a federal notice to boot.

30 days to appeal such a prohibition is fine and dandy, but if you're NOT told you're under the hammer, you're royally screwed. IBM were damned lucky someone else spotted it, and told them.

So, the questions now become:
1. Why did the Feds not tell Big Blue that they were under a prohibition to tender?
2. Who profits from IBMs prohibition?

Answers on a postcard?

Wha-? Who turned out the lights?!

There I am, 23:40 or so, watching "Falling Down" on ITV4 (Freeview), and all of a sudden, everything goes dark. I also realise that everything's gone exceptionally quiet as well. No refrigerator chiller unit sounds, no mains-powered clock ticking. nothing. As quiet and dark as the grave. Great, thinks I. Sodding fusebox is on the blink.

Then it dawns on me that there's no light from the street lights coming in from the windows. Oops. Not good. First, find a torch. So, I slowly, carefully, made my way to the bedroom, and fumbled around for the torch I keep on my desk in the corner.

It went something like this... Fumble fumble juggle blindly - of course blindly, there ain't no bleedin' light to be had! - nearly dropped the sucker - ah, got it! Let there be light!

I have a rather decent SureFire Nitrolon G2. Great torch. Not so great if you aren't thinking when you turn the sucker on, of course. 65 Lumens of pure OUCH THAT HURT in the eyes. I wound up standing there for a full minute blinking rapidly, having been staring onto the business end when I turned the blasted thing on. D'OH.

Anyhow, to cut a long story short, I found EDFs number in the phone book, called them up (one of the few 0800 numbers left, I suspect, cheers guys :) Keep the number going!), got answered in nothing flat, told them where I was, and that we'd got a power cut, to be told the wonderful news that many tens of thousands of homes were without power across the borough. Oh 'eck.

Well, he'd been very helpful and efficient, had volunteered information rather than having to be squeezed like a stone for it, so I thanked the lad for the info, and before I could ask how long it'd be before we got power back, the lad on the other end told me they'd been relaxing watching the telly (I didn't ask if it was Falling Down he'd been watching!), when all hell cut lose on the phone - and I was the fiftieth one he'd answered from the same rough area, that they had their engineers trying to figure out what'd happened already, and that they'd get the power back on asap. All in one breath.

Fair enough, thought I, thanked the harried lad, and let him get on with the other several thousand calls on his board. Who the heck knew that a Michael Douglas movie was being watched by so many folks so late at night?!

Anyhow, I decided I needed to get out of the flat for a while, and dropped in on a mate who's another night owl like me (Since we're both radio hams, I called him on the radio first of course, I'm not a completely arrogant wotsit!), and when I got back, about four hours after the power cut, I found the power restored. Well done, EDF! Quick, effective, and little fuss :)

Now if only other firms could learn from that example!

EDIT: Seems the power cut made the news, at least locally... News Shopper

Free Our Data: Make taxpayers' data available to them

A nice blant this time

The Guardian has had this campaign running for a while now, but not being one of their readership, I'd not noticed it, until I came across it by chance at a forum I'm a member of...

I think that this is one argument we can all agree on (unless you work for OSGB, or are a Government minister of the Exchequer, etc )

Boiled down, the idea is that all government data (not, I hasten to add, classified or sensitive data) should be free for any individual, rather then business, to obtain (by means of electronic download, I hope), to re-use as he or she see fit.

Excellent idea, given that in the main, we've already paid for it through our taxes!

Read the campaign material: It's interesting, and a surprisingly common sense idea for once - if it all comes off, it'll be handy to actually be able to use the stuff we've already paid for!

It seems Orange are as difficult to get rid of as flies around dog droppings.

It's official. When I'm furious, it takes more than fifteen drafts to get the steam out of my ears.

I've had myriad problems over the last eighteen plus months, with Orange Broadband, but also with their customer disservice people. Such is the extent and rudeness of those folks that I'm attempting to take my business elsewhere, as you probably noticed below. I've got a Broadband "migration activation code" I believe it stands for - coming in the post. THAT was the easy part, for once.

I've been attempting to get a PAC (I'm reliably informed that this stands for Porting Authority Code) for my phone, but they keep telling me I have two months to run on the contract, when I have documentary evidence (see the scan in the previous post on this topic, below) confirming IN WRITING that my contract expired three months ago. Frankly, I do not care for their bully-boy style sales tactics one jot, and the sooner I'm out of there, the happier I'll be. I will not, out of good manners, say what I truly think of them, but you can rest assured that this is one man who will never, ever, recommend their service, or even return to them, at all.

Frankly, they have one final chance to do the decent thing, and admit they're wrong and give me the MAC code, and that will be on Tuesday, since they're likely to be on holiday over this weekend, and I do not fancy raising my blood pressure over the holiday weekend in any case.

Come Tuesday, however, I plan to take the least possible amount of my time over them. Failure on their part means that I cease using their SIM card in my fully paid-for non-contract sim-free phone, go to another [provider (O2, most likely), get a SIM-only deal, and use that number from then on, rather then the mobile number that I've been using for the last ten years or so. Grossly inconvenient that'll be as well, as I'll then have to notify ALL my contacts (well over two hundred) of the change in phone number, and some are bound to be missed off somehow.

Orange will then get my final Direct Debit payment at the end of the month (and you can be certain I'll be checking with the bank that they took the same amount as they claim in the bill this month), for the completed month to the last statement date, whereupon I cancel the Direct Debit, check the billable charges to that point, and send them a cheque in full and final settlement to their Chairmen with a covering letter explaining why. They want any more from me, they can issue a summons, and to hell with them.

That's how steamingly angry I am with those morons at Orange.

Hope that makes things clear