Adzi.NET

Well I thought I had overcome my annoyance and fear of Apple, however, it was all reinstated 25 minutes ago when my iPod (during a routine software update) crashed and died a horrible death. I’ve had to reinstall iTunes on my PC, backup my playlists, restore my iPod to factory settings and then re-sync all my apps, music and notes.

Steve Jobs you’ve done it again!

Today I have launched a new site, Adzi.NET Takeaways! The single site for takeaways in Canterbury, Kent. You can view restaurants and takeaways by cuisine category, download menus in PDF format and read reviews! Take a look at http://eat.adzi.net

I’m currently sat on the South Eastern train service from Canterbury West to Waterloo East! The train arrived about 5 minutes early, as usual, and waited to depart! As we pull into Ashford International, on time, an announcement is made saying that we will be waiting for 12 minutes as we need to wait for another service to depart! 28 minutes later and we’re still at the platform! Now I’ve just heard that the service will terminate at London Bridge! One station before Waterloo East, because the train is so incredibly late. So instead of recording the train as late, it will now be completely stricken from any records as it never arrived in it’s final destination! Watch out South Eastern Trains because I’m in your tail gunning for a refund and compensation! Instead of arriving in Fleet at 22:18 it will be around 11pm… Cheers!

After I wrote this post, I made a connecting train from London Bridge to Waterloo East where the pre-pubescent train guard challenged me for having the wrong ticket! I replied that my ticket allowed me on any route through London on the overground network. He started shouting saying I don’t know what I’m talking about! At this point I told him to formicate himself, preferably with something large and pointy! This absolute monkey starts writing out a penalty notice to my disbeleif! He’s tried to issue me with a penalty fair for £20.00 for the “wrong ticket”! At this point my station stop came, I wasn’t going to be delayed so I told him to post it to me but, and I quote…
“if that slip drops onto my doormat I will be going for your job so think carefully about whether my ticket is actually illegal or wether your just a fucking idiot! Have a good night!”

As a lover of technology, I love the fact the one of the greatest rights a human has, voting, could soon be fully electronic. The principles of electronic voting are simple…

1. All votes can be tallied on individual machines within seconds, rather than hours or even days with the ballot papers.
2. All votes can be sent to a central server where within another few seconds, a computer can tabulate the results.
3. All votes are securely recorded on memory devices so any audit trails can be followed.

Now here’s the problems that I see…

Scenario 1 – Corruption

Mr X votes for Candidate A by pushing a button or touching the screen. The vote is logged and recorded. If the memory device that stores the vote corrupts, that vote is lost and Mr. X has lost his right to vote. His vote wont be counted. Now what if two thousand people use that same machine and the votes are corrupted, two thousand votes are lost which may actually lead to a completely different result.

Answer:This is a hard scenario to tackle. We can only rely on the manufacturers placing in backup devices and transmission sequences that ensures every single vote is counted. Time will only tell and thorough testing would have to take place, such as a mock election to give us a true picture.

Scenario 2 – Track My Vote

Mrs Y votes for the orange party. The underdogs, the yellow party, wins but doubt is thrown over the vote tallies. How can we trace everyone’s vote when voting is supposed to be a secret.

Answer:Trust! We all trust that corporations are keeping our data safe and secret. We all trust that the banks aren’t broadcasting our transactions to Mr & Mrs Busybody. We all trust that our ballot papers are counted and not ‘lost’, but throw in a computerised voting system and that distrust clouds our vision. We all see computers as great tools for business and personal use, but the majority of computer users don’t fully understand how that computer fetches our emails, access the word document or creates that pretty PowerPoint presentation. So how can Average Joe trust that a voting computer will accurately and securely tally his vote? We all have to believe the manufacturers specification of “There are many fail safes built in”. These fail safes may be backup storage that is rewritten every time a new vote is cast, transmission of individual votes so no storage takes place locally, uninteruptible power supplies. But what if all these failsafes fail. With paper ballots, we can see how many people turned out to vote, if a district ballot box is a few votes light then this can be traced to the electoral officer presiding in that district. Although the votes are secret, the numbers of voters arent. This principle can be applied to computer systems, but people will always have that worry that their name will be attached to their vote and if the vote for one of the publically despised parties, such as the BNP and their racists and hate filled policies, they could be criticised and fall subject to hatred. On a tangent, I fully support the campaigns to take down the BNP, however I also fully support a persons right to vote.

Scenario 3 – Bin Laden Stole my Vote

eTerrorism and malicious hackers may see the electronic voting system as a play ground to test their latest attacks and scripts. Nothing is 100% secure, as our British hacker, Gary McKinnon, proved when he infiltrated US government systems. So how can we trust that our vote will be transmitted and not tampered with. Remeber, attacks can also come from the inside. Whos to say a corrupt IT voting official wont change the results.

Answer: I havent got one. The way a voting system works is still a closely guarded secret. Are the votes held locally on the individual machines or are they transmitted each time someone votes? Who knows!

Electronic voting has many advantages, but, it has a fair few pitfalls too. Time will tell…hopefully.

The main reason I have my website and a hosting package is so I can play around with web technology and various other interesting programming techniques. It’s also a great revenue generator from the ad blocks I have on my site. If you dont like them, create an account and hey presto, they’re gone.

I’ve also been playing around with RSS feeds and Feedburner. I now have an RSS feed setup for this blog so check it out, comment or email me back if you find any bugs or glitches. The link for the feed should be to the left of this post.

My hits have gone through the roof for some reason, in the past week. I was averaging 30 – 40 hits per hour. This has now sky rocketed to almost 300h/ph. Surely there must be more interesting things out there…

How many Vegetarians are tired with boring dishes from the shops that taste like and closely resemble wall paper paste? I used to be vegetarian but I was tempted to the dark side however I still enjoy my mums homemade nut loaf! It tastes fantastic, has a fantastic texture and simply put… It’s not just for vegetarians!
I manage the website and the administrative side of my mums business, 24 Carrot Cuisine. We’re expanding our product range by offering hampers stuffed with home made delicacies and some of the finest speciality foods the UK has to offer. I would appreciate everyone who reads this (vegie or not) to comment or email me anything that you would like to see!
Thanks,
Adam

It’s chilly in my house as we haven’t got around to turning the radiators back on and this unusual September chill has caught us by surprise.
Ever since I got my iPod touch I’ve used it to tweet, blog, chat and skype via wifi, but it’s just occurred to me that arctic explorers would have to use a classic iPod or other generic mp3 player as the iPod touch and iPhone use a heat sensitive touch screen. My fingers are fairly cold and it’s taking twice as long to write this blog post where as my HTC touch cruise uses pressure sensitive touch screen technology. It’s less responsive than the iPod but unlike the iPod, doesn’t require a certain degree of finger temperature to work!
I like both but if I’m stranded in an Icelandic area with not a soul in site (but there is wifi coverage) then my HTC is the only choice…

Could a snake use an iPhone?

Twitter is being used for new and exciting purposes! Andy Clark has hooked his Twitter account up to monitoring systems to regularly tweet status updates such a power consumption!

I have wondered whether Twitter could be used for other things! Devices such as televisions, ovens, microwaves and even sprinkler systems could be controlled by tweeting specific codewords used to activate or deactivate said device! Programming a piece of code to read updates from the twitter server and searching each new tweet can’t be too hard…can it? You put your dinner in the oven before heading to work. Come quitting time, tweet your oven on and hey presto, roast beef ready for when you get in, or make sure your beloved daffy dills don’t perish while on holiday by tweeting to your sprinkler to run a 45 minute rain cycle! The possibilities are endless and it’s only a matter of time until someone has a twitter controlled house!

As many of my readers may know, Alan Turing was a true mathematical genius. His knowledge helped crack the enigma code, something most computers couldn’t do until recently, and inevitably, turned the war around to Britain’s favour. He was gay though, which was illegal back then. He was tried and sentenced to either a grisly time in prison or an experimental, “Chemical Castration”, whereby multiple series’ of female hormone injections were administered to “cure” his homosexuality. He took his own life just two years after, which was attributed to depression, cause by the cruel and inhumane way in which he was treated.

I signed that petition (which I posted before the data server crashed) along with 31’276 other people, asking the government to issue an apology on behalf of the Government at the time for the inhumane treatment Turing was subjected to and to grant him a posthumous knighthood for his amazing word at Bletchly Park during WWII. The government has replied to the signatories with the following…

Thank you for signing this petition. The Prime Minister has written a  response. Please read below.

Prime Minister: 2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to
honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am
both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can
point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by
anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is
thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown

 You can view the petition here http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/turing/ and it’s open for signatures until 20 January 2010.