Monthly Archives: May 2009

Stolen RAF files are blackmailer’s dream

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It turns out that the UK government is absolutely fantastic at keeping your data secure! Not only were the 2 harddrives that went missing last year September with all the RAF’s personell information on it unencrypted; it turns out they contained details of extramarital affairs, drug problems, financial problems all with names and details. The records were used to track personell with potential problems in gaining security clearances!

MPs’ expenses: it’s getting ridiculous now

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So this guy gets a house from parliament: yes, UK MP’s are allowed to live in a tax payer paid house. NL MP’s are too.
He likes his garden, so he does it up – on tax payer’s expenses. Because he gets them as per the law. He owns ducks, so he makes an island for them. Not only will it look nice, it’ll protect them from foxes. This costs £1,645. Because the media hits it with ‘duck island’ he’s forced to resign.

Another cited case here is this guy who made an administrative error on which property he was collecting morgage interest from. The amount doesn’t make a difference, but the location on the form does. Up in arms! As though no-one else ever makes a mistake or even properly cares about their administration.

This witch hunt has got to stop!

UK Gov wants big brother, Lords doesn’t

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Quite surprisingly, the heriditiary rules of the UK, the House of Lords, is fighting vigorously for the UK populace’s right to privacy. Probaby because they know the first people the government will go after is them. The Government isn’t having any of it. They say that we can trust them to treat the data securely and safely. Like they’ve shown many times they can’t.

Hitler Jugend makes it to the UK

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Children as young as seven are being recruited to tattle on their neighbours. They are being taught how to collect evidence unseen as well as being given a special action pack complete with all the information and items you need to spy on your community in order to prosecute legally. They are calling themseslves ‘Street Champions’. My suggestion for a better name? ‘Cowardly Narc Pawns’.

UK Launches db of EVERY CHILD in the UK

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Well there it is: every baby will be stamped with a digital prison tatoo at birth. Only *cough* 300.000 childcare professionals – who are especially trustworthy technically adept people who will NEVER compromise the integrity of the database and leak data to anyone else, just like the UK government never does – will have full, unfettered access to every detail of your spawn’s life.

DIY Pocket-Sized Oscilloscope Kit For $33

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Using a oscilloscope for your projects is often an expensive endeavor. At the low end you are talking several hundred bucks at least%u2014but this DIY version fits in your pocket and only costs $33.

Features:

Max sample rate – 2M/s%uFF0C8 bits
Sample memory depth – 256 bytes
Analog bandwidth – 1MHz
Vertical sensitivity – 100mV/Div – 5V/Div
Vertical position adjustable with indicator
Input impedance – 1M%u03A9
Max input voltage – 50Vpp
DC/AC coupling
Horizontal – 5%u03BCs/Div – 10m(minute)/Div
Auto, normal and single trig modes
Rising/falling edge trigger
Trig level adjustable with indicator
Hold/run feature
Built-in 500Hz/5Vpp test signal
Frequency counter features with independant F and T read-outs (only for TTL level input signal)
9 – 12V DC or AC power supply
Dimension: 110mm X 65mm X 25mm (no case)
Weight: 70 gram
With Panels

The “Digital Storage Oscilloscope” may not be as fully featured as traditional models, but you definitely get a lot for your money. Plus, it’s open source so you can include the firmware in your tinkering. The oscilloscope comes in a kit version for the aforementioned $33, as well as a pre-built version for only $49.

Gizmodo – DIY Pocket-Sized Oscilloscope Kit For $33 – Digital storage oscilloscope

Google adds More Search Options

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wants to add more search options: allowing the user to filter through the results themselves more effectively

Especially they want webmasters to add stuctured data:

by adopting microformats or RDFa standards to mark up their HTML and bring this structured data to the surface. This will help people better understand the information you have on your page so they can spend more time there and less on Google. We will be rolling this feature out gradually to ensure that the quality of Google’s search results stays high

Some more information about Structured data here

More information on Microformats

and more on RDFa