Who’s Government is the biggest hacker, China or the EU?

While reading about the recent cyberattacks revealed by Google I was struck by a sense of deja-view. Compare for example a recent times report with one from a year ago.

In the recent version China has been accused of hacking into e-mail accounts and planting trojans in order to spy on dissidents. This has sent shock waves around the Western world and is upheld as evidence of China’s human rights abuse. The trouble is that a year ago the EU initiated a plan to hack into its citizens computers in a very similar way.

The UK is well ahead of the curve when it comes to cyber surveillance with a suite of measures to monitor everyones activity, ranging from the legallisation of police hacking without warrants to the construction of a complete database of everyones online activity for police to access.

So what is the difference between China’s activity and that of the UK? Only that we have a different idea of the difference between a terrorist and a human rights activist, maybe. But in a country where councils use terrorist powers to spy on people who cheat to get their children into a good school, can we trust our authorities any more?

shared admissions

More info at http://langdonhills.org/2009/12/23/a-shared-admission-area-for-great-berry-and-lincewood/

Say “No” to The Great Berry / Lincewood Primary Schools Shared Catchment Area

Essex County Council have circulated a consultation document in Longdon Hills for a proposal to create a shared cathcment area for Great Berry and Lincewood Primary schools. The shared area will include New Avenure, Russetts, Savoy Close, Sullivan Way, Welbeck Rise and Welbeck Drive.

The following is a letter sent by one resident in the area to representatives of the council:

Dear Karen Garlick and John Schofield,

 

Today I received a consultation document for a proposed shared admission area for Great Berry and Lincewood Primary School. The proposed area will include my home [in this area]. I have read the document and understood that it will mean that this area will have a lower priority for admissions to Great Berry Primary School. At the same time we only get second priority to Lincewood school after the Lincewood School’s own priority catchment area. Since we are already closer than anyone outside that catchment area, this is not in fact a better priority than we currently have for Lincewood.

 

In view of this I wish it to be made known that I am strongly against the proposal.

 

It is not difficult to see what will happen if this proposal is approved. Although the current numbers may not present any problems for 2011 and 2012, there are likely to be further population increases within the Great Berry priority admissions area. For example new houses may be approved by Tesco. Furthermore, we know that Great Berry school does not like having more than two classes for each year and may revert to former numbers if their primary priority admissions area is reduced as proposed. With other homes planned for Basildon it will not be long before both Great Berry and Lincewood are oversubscribed with no room for children from their shared catchment area. Although we live very close to both Great Berry and Lincewood, children living here would not be able to get into either.

 

The situation is particularly unacceptable because of the growing problem for admissions to secondary schools in this area. In case you are not aware, most of Langdon Hills is not in the priority catchment area of any secondary school. Each year several children from this area do not find places in their four choice schools and are offered James Hornsby. There are no buses from this area that go there, and walking is a considerable distance with several very busy roads to cross. We have noticed that the secondary school admissions has been getting harder each year. Last year children who did not pass any special entrance tests for other schools only found late places at Brentwood County and Shenfield. With the construction of further houses in North Basildon and the closing of Sawyers Hall School these places are unlikely to be available in future years. I will give one other indication of how the difficulty of admissions is increasing: This year there were 133 pupils who sat the entrance test for the Billericay School, the previous year the number was 108 and in former years it had been much less. These children are competing for 27 places granted on the results of this test. In this situation with no choice of secondary school left, many parents will choose to move out of Langdon Hills when their children reach secondary school age and this will further increase the number of primary school children in the area.

 

I am aware of the problem faced by people living near Tescos who do not get a place in Great Berry and I appreciate that some action is needed to correct this. I agree with the council’s preferred option of expanding Great Berry, however I do not think this would need mixed age classes. It would be better to undertake a larger expansion to allow three classes in each year as this would provide a long term solution which takes into account the continuing increase of homes in the area. 

If this cannot be realised in the short term then a fairer change would be to transfer our area (i.e. the proposed shared catchment area) from the priority admissions area of Great Berry to the Priority admissions area of Lincewood. This would have exactly the same effect as the current proposal except that in the case where both Great Berry and Lincewood are oversubscribed we would have priority for Lincewood School over people who are much further away than us in the catchment area. Please could you let me know if this option was considered and if so, why was it rejected?

 

I have been lucky enough to see my children go through Great Berry and move on to [a good secondary school]. However I feel that I must speak up on behalf of future families who would like to live in this area. I also fear that the council’s policy for schools serving Langdon Hills will soon mean that families do not want to live here and businesses will move away. In the longer term, the much needed regeneration of the whole Basildon area will be set back many years as a result of this gradual erosion of education choices in the area. Please reconsider the consequences of your actions before it is too late.  

If you agree that this proposal is a bad idea you have 12Th February 2010 to make your opinion known to Essex County Council. Call Karen Garlick, the planning and admissions advisor on 01245 436708 or write to her at Essex County Council, Chelmsford Essex CM1 1GS

 

Parking Mayhem Awaits New Basildon Sports Village

Building work has at last begun on Basildon’s Sports Village. Scheduled to open in April 2011, it will provide sports facilites for gymnastics and swimmming. it will also include a sports hall and fitness gym with surrounding pitches for netball, football and rugby alongside the exisiting athletics track. It will be a great facility for residents of Basildon and nearby towns, but there is a problem.

Basildon council have decided to increase the existing parking area of 250 spaces to just 380. The additional 130 parking bays need to cope with the extra customers of the gyms and swimming pool. Anybody can see that it will be woefully inadequate. In fact it is not hard to add up how many space will be in demand as neighbouring sports facilities are closed to be rehoused in the Sports Village. The South Essex Gym has a parking area for 50 cars that is often full at week ends and evenings. Markhams Chase has about the same but the sports village has a fitness gym with 100 stations so lets expect 80 cars for them. The Gloustcer park swimming pool has 100 spaces, but many more people can be expected to use the bigger pool in the sports village, lets call it 150. The netball players say they need 100 spaces in the evenings, footballers will require the same. Add another 100 for rugby, athletics, the sports studio and sports hall and of course the staff theselves will need about 100 spaces. Oh dear it looks like we have exceeded the allocated spaces by about 300.

You may think that this is an overestimate because people will walk, go by bike, bus or car share. The fact is that most users of the existing facilities come from too far away. In many cases they are parents bringing children to sporting clubs after school. Cars are the only practical means of getting there for most people. The use of the parking spaces at the existing facilities peaks in the evenings and on Saturdays when they all fill up.

In fact the situation is a lot worse because the sporting vaillage has facilities to stage sporting events such as swiming galas or football tournaments. When this happens there will be a massive extra influx of spectators and competitors while the other usual club events still take place.

So what will happen? The only alternative parking in reach is in the shopping areas across the other side of Cranes Farm Road. People will be forced to park there and crossover to get to the village in huge numbers. Cranes Fram Road is a busy dual carriage way with a 50 mph speed limit and it has already been the scene of fatal accidents when people try to cross it.

So how many deaths on Cranes Farm Road will be needed before Basildon Council redo their maths and provide adequate parking spaces for the Sports Village? Let’s hope they come to their senses in time so that the answer is none.

Climate Research Aledged Fraud Exposed by Hackers

Over the last two days the blogosphere has been alive with the news that hackers have stolen data from the Climate Reasearch Unit in the UK and exposed emails that appear to confirm that scientists have been massaging data to enhance the impression that Global Warming is significant.

The CRU which is part of East Anglia University is the principal centre in the UK for providing and analysing data on the worlds climate. Its influence through the IPCC is global, so if these allegations are true then the whole spectrum of scientific research into climate change will be thrown into disarray.

To give an example of the kind of corresponsence revealed, here is an extract of an e-mail apparently sent by Phil Jones to Michael Mann in 2005:

Mike,
         I presume congratulations are in order – so congrats etc !
      Just sent loads of station data to Scott.  Make sure he documents everything better  this time !  And don’t leave stuff lying around on ftp sites – you never know who is   trawling   them.  The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear   there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I’ll delete the file rather than  send   to anyone.  Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? – our does !  The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it.
     We also  have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it – thought people could ask him for his model code.  He  has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that.  IPR should be relevant  here,  but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who’ll say we must adhere  to it !

This email, if genuine, appears to show that people are deliberately trying to avoid their obligations under the Freedom of Information Act. If this is what it means then the UK police need to raid the CRU quickly before they have time to wipe any further evidence. If it is not true then the CRU need to clarify what this means or confirm that it is faked. So far none of these things has happened.

Over at RealCimate they claim that these e-mails are private correspondence and should never have been made public. That is rubbish. These are e-mails sent as part of government funded research by a public organisation. As such they must be archived and made available to the public on request in accordance with the UK Freedom of Information Act. The trouble is that these emails show the lengths to which these so called scientists are prepared to go to evade the regulations.

 

Riemann Hypothesis Proved?

Finding a Proof of the Riemann Hypothesis is regarded as the greatest unsolved problem in mathematics. It was set by Bernhard Riemann in 1859 and has resisted all attempts at proof by the world’s best mathematicians ever since. It is the only remaining unsolved problem of a list set by Hilbert at the start of the twentieth century. The urgency of resolving it has increased in recent years since Andrew Wiles presented his solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem ten years ago which was reagrded at the time as the Holy Grail problem of number theory. Solving the Riemann Hypothesis is also the goal of one of the problems designated by the Clay Institute with a prize of a million dollars.

The Riemann Hypothesis is a statements about the zeros of the Zeta function and it is known to be related to a whole host of conjectures about the distribution of prime numbers. In the last few decades mathematicians and physicists have made connections between the problem and areas of quantum physics related to chaos theory. This suggests that a solution would shed light on many deep results about the universe. Anyone interested in more details should read one of the excellent paperbacks on the subject such as “The Music of the Primes” by Marcus du Sautoy.

Today a new proof of the Riemann Hypothesis by Raghunath Acharya appeared on the internet at http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.3973. If you happen to be an expert on quantum physics and number theory please go and check it and let us know what you think. Many proposed proofs of the hypothesis have been published but later withdrawn when an error has been pointed out. In our humble opinion, this proof is sophisticated enough to stand a chance of being correct but it does not touch on the really deep abstract ideas already thought to be relevant to the problem, so if it is correct its directness will be a surprise to many.

Your IP changed, You must have a static IP!

Sometimes when you are downloading from a filesharing site you may get thwarted with an annoying message saying something like “Your IP chaned, You must have static IP”. What is going on? Even those with dynamic IPs will know that they do not change suddenly in mid-web-surf, and in fact this message is just as commonly seen by people with static IPs. So what gives?

Assuming that the file sharing site is not completely broken, then there is only one sensible explanation for the problem. Your ISP is using a proxy server. At the last moment when you are about to download, the ISP switches the request to go through a proxy server with a different IP. The web server at the file sharing site sees the change in IP and decides not to play along. Why would that be a problem for them, and why does the ISP use the proxy?

There are in fact lots of reasons for the ISP to use a proxy. In the old days they were used to cache commonly accessed static content to speed up web surfing, but those days are gone. There is too much content for it to be practical, and too much risk of caching illegal content.

These days there are two main reasons why the ISPs use proxies in the UK. One is because they have to block content deemed illegal by the IWF. If a URL is designated to be censored, the ISP does it by passing all content on the same IP number through a proxie so they can read the headers and block the specific requests.

You may recall how this had nasty side effects when they suddenly decided an image on Wikipedia was illegal. The result was that wikipedia saw the proxies IP and would not let anyone in the UK do Wikipedia edits. The solution in that case was simple. To save themselves further ridicule the IWF quickly decided that the image was not illegal afterall.

However, it is not likely that this is why downloading is failing on filesharing sites, especially since there is another reason why the ISP will use proxies that fits the circumstances better. Network capacity in the UK is severely limited and ISPs dont want to invest anymore in the infrastructure. instead they want to limit our ability to download too much data by putting caps in their terms and conditions. If you download too much in a month you may be put on a slow network, or even be made to pay extra. But that is not enough for the ISPs whose imagination is not as limited as their bandwidth, and it also leads to people going elsewhere when they get blocked. So in addition that choke the bandwidth for P2P transactions and for websites where people download large files. This means that download speeds are slowed down enough to prevent most users being able to hit their caps, but not so much that everybody notices they are being affected.

So that is what the message means. Your ISP is slowing your downloads by passing it through a slow proxie server. The filesharing site in turn recognises this as a bottleneck and does not accept the download. Your only way out is to choose an ISP like www.bethere.co.uk who does not do this kind of nasty thing. That is what I have just done and no regrets.

So You Think U R Royal

A lot of people talk about royal connections in their ancestry, but a new web site is going beyond talk. At www.royalblood.co.uk you will find a family tree with over 1.4 million individuals. They say it is the largest genealogy in the world. I dont know if that is true, but the site has a unique feature I really like. Each individual or link is marked with a number in square brackets showing the number of steps needed to get to Charlemagne. Charlemagne was a Roman emprorer who sits at the root of many family trees especially those of nobility. It is said that everyone is descended from him, but even if this is true the records do not exists for most people. Nevertheless, it should be possible for everyone to trace a relationship to Charlmagne through marriages as well as direct blood relationships. That is exactly what Royal-Blood enables you to find. At least it does if your ancestors are in their tree. 1.4 million people may be a lot but it is not enough to make this site interesting. If it grows the matter will be different.

Enough of this Obesity Campaign

It seems like just a few short years since fashion magazines were target practice for the tabloids for showing too many thin models on their covers. Everybody nodded knowingly as they were told that this led to too many kids heading for conditions of anorexia and bulimia. That was before Jamie Oliver became a hero for his campaign to improve school dinners. Now schools send home letters telling us that our children must not include crisps in their school pack lunches even though they are far from overweight. Even the government is sending out spin suggesting that they will soon ban high fat products.

In a recent survey school children said the worst thing that could happen to them was becoming fat. This horror was up from position three the year before and position nine two years ago. Jamie Oliver, Schools and the government have smashed the mirror that the fashion magazines could only scratch the surface of.

Obesity is largely a genetic problem. Look at the family of any overweight child and the chances are you will see overweight siblings and overweight parents. If you have the wrong genes you should be very careful about what you eat. The situation is heightened because less children go outside to play due to parental paranoia about traffic and child molesters. Instead they sit at home playing video games. For luckier children this does not make them fat. Their genes have given them a metabolism that throws away the unneeded energy that their friends convert to body fat. In some cases they may have problems with being too thin, but nobody notices and they are still banned from eating high sugar foods. This difference stems from the different climates and conditions to which our ancestors adapted. In areas where it was very cold, or where food was sometimes scarce, it paid to have a reserve of body fat. In more temperate zones where food was plentiful a lean body shape was the better survival trait. Today populations have mixed and peoples life styles have changed, but we still bear the legacy of this diverse gene pool.

The sad part is that journalists, schools, governments and celebrity chefs don’t understand the science. All they understand is popular culture and how to manipulate it for their own political ends and wealth. The result is a swing that takes us from alarmism over too many kids being too thin to alarmism over too many kids being too fat. The reality is that most kids are fine but some are susceptible to one problem or the other. It seems likely that society will never be able to understand anything that is not black and white.

The new Dr Who will be Matt Smith

26 year old Matt Smith has been named as the new Dr Who to take over from David Tennant.

Matt has previously appeared on the BBC in “The History Boys”, “The Ruby in the Smoke”, “Part Animals” and “The Shadow in the North”. His new role was announced on “Dr Who Confidential” today, but we will have to wait until 2010 before we can see him in action.

At 26 he will be the youngest face of Dr Who. The first Doctors were noted for their age, but as the time lord has become older, his persona has become younger. When Tom Baker took up the role at the age of 40 he was regarded as especially young compared to the grandfather like figures of Jon Pertwee and William Hartnell who originated the role. But compared to recent actors he now seems positively middle aged.

At Bumroot we confidently predict that the next Dr Who will be a teenager and the program will eventually end once he had regressed to being a baby and his companion becomes his nanny.

Yes we know that Dr Who is walking towards 1000 years old but if we plot his bodily age against his base time we find scientifically that he will be going ga-ga-goo-goo in 2050