Arcoarena

Stumbling Blocks

Some of my least favourite Labour policies appear to have hit (admittedly minor) problems.

Firstly a teenager is challenging curfews. And quite right too. I don’t see the point of branding all under 16’s as yobs or even potential yobs. It’s stupid, I’m sure that at 15 I wasn’t at home by 9pm and I don’t see why these kids should be either. A case of using a hammer to crack a nut I feel.

The second one is likely to be solved quicker and more easily than the first unfortunately. Some ID scanning techniques have hit teething troubles. It does make you wonder, especially since the sucess rates quoted in the article seem quite low if you want to start applying this to 60 million people. What happens if some of the biometrics don’t work, or if I gain or lose a lot of weight and my face shape changes. Does this cause a problem? Will Yo-yo dieters accross the country be unable to open bank accounts and locked up for presenting false information? One of my main worries about ID cards is that something that will work in 99.9% of case will fail for 60 thousand people. I seriously hope that the Government is planning for all the possible problems that occur.

My other main worry about ID cards is infact related to success rates. The government is planning to allow other agencies to access information. I’m guessing that one of these will be the Police. I’m also guessing that over 60 Million people it’s possible that the Police could come knocking on my door saying my fingerprints might match those at a crime scene, since I’m sure they don’t get complete matches due to smudging anyway.

Charles Clarke has also concerned me recently by stating that they had ‘listened to peoples concerns’. I don’t think I want to see what happens when they don’t.

Tootling Along

Well now that all the election excitement(?) is over it’s back to normal I guess.

The next few weeks plan to be quite busy. Firstly

I’m Moving, so all you people that think you know my home address and telephone number will have to update them soon. Unfortunately that also means I have to tell around 15 different companies. I’ve booked a van to move - we’re doing it the hard but cheap way. Problem is this time we’ve got a washing machine, that should be fun to try and move.

I’m going sailing soon. I’ve mentioned it before. The company have arranged 5 boats and we’re competing in a ‘just for fun’ race between different companies round the Isle of Wight. Xyratex entered boats last year, Microsoft won though. The Microsoft team did however go to the extreme length of practicing beforehand and actually knew how to put up a spinnaker. Damn them and they’re crafty ways.

I’m also visiting home at the end of May.

Anyhow, back to my VHDL testbench.