David Cameron’s Government and the dead…
First this, and then this. All in all, now is not a great time to be dead in the United Kingdom.
‘Twenty Twelve’ is back on BBC Two for a second season
I can’t believe that I missed this!
McGillLeaks publish cache of secret DAR files [Updated]
A group going by the name McGillLeaks have today published a cache of secret documents created by McGill University’s ‘Development and Alumni Relations‘ department.
On their website, McGillLeaks state that their aims in this disclosure are:
- to give a ‘clear account’ of the universities inner workings
- to expose the University’s relationship with the private sector
- and to create transparency within the University
The first release, of allegedly many, appears to be a number of lists of past and potential donors. A number of detailed donor profiles containing personal information, commercially sensitive information estimates of wealth have been released.
While the release of these documents is unfortunate for the University creating detailed profiles of key prospects is nothing but a standard operating procedure in the philanthropy ‘industry’.
As one commentator on Twitter wrote:
Certainly, the most controversial think in #McGillLeaks is that the document "Active Alumni in England" also includes Wales. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
@t_and_sympathy
Tea & Sympathy
The bottom line is that the actions from McGillLeaks are, to date, entirely incompatible with McGill’s policy of Safe Disclosure. In fact I would be hard-pressed to say the disclosure is anything other than malicious in intent.
McGill are yet to issue a statement on McGillLeaks.
Update 1: In addition to today’s release the McGillLeaks website has also posted an ‘insurance’ file. Insurance files are typical an encrypted copy of *everything* the leaking organisation has. By distributing this file from the onset, McGillLeaks have some protection from the suspension of their web-hosting.
If their site is forced offline, McGillLeaks can use other channels to release decryption keys and publish the remainder of their information.
An interesting point to note is that the insurance file is only 3 MB larger than the release that was made today. Either McGillLeaks have only 3 MB of additional documents or a total of 120 MB of documents. In all McGillLeaks could end up being a one hit wonder.
Update 2 at 01:00hrs, Tue 6 Mar: The McGill Daily and others have been contacted by lawyers representing McGill asking that the sites remove links to the McGillLeaks website.
Update 3 at 17:00hrs, Tue 6 Mar: Tuesday morning, the files linked to from the McGillLeaks website have been removed by their respective file-hosts.
Looks the the storm in a teacup that was #McGillLeaks is over for now as McGill lawyers act to remove files.
@rosscbrown
Ross C Brown
Montreal weather warnings by SMS message
What?
Environment Canada weather warnings sent as SMS messages to my iPhone
How?
I took the RSS feed from Environment Canada and set it up to post each update to Twitter. I then used Twitter’s SMS functionality to forward the updates to my phone.
Follow ‘WeatherWarnMTL’ on Twitter now!
- Follow WeatherWarnMTL on Twitter
- Turn on ‘mobile notifications’ from WeatherWarnMTL
- Sit back, relax and wait for the next winter storm!
Why bother?
When I started telling friends and family that I was considering moving to Montreal just before the winter, one item of advice that kept coming up was to keep an eye on the weather. They told me I was about to experience the worst winter of my life and only by the end of the season would I have learned how best to dress for the cold.
Taking heed of this advice, the first thing I did when I arrived in October was to source out a reliable weather forecast. The Weather Channel and Yahoo! Weather on my iPhone proved pretty useful in the early days but neither of these two services I found to be particularly useful in grabbing my attention when the forecast was turning nasty.
What I wanted was Environment Canada weather warnings pushed to my phone and my computer.
The weather warnings from Environment Canada are posted to a webpage that also includes an RSS feed so I could easily get almost-instant updates on my Mac. Getting updates to my iPhone was another challenge.
I first tried a number of RSS client apps for the iPhone but didn’t find any effective at ‘pushing’ updates to my phone. I then decided to use Twitter to import the RSS feed from Environment Canada, strip out irrelevant updates and post the warnings only to the Twitter timeline. Once this was done I want set up my cellphone for use with Twitter and subscribed to ‘mobile notifications’ from the account.
Now I receive an almost-instant notification when nasty weather is heading towards the city as well as an ‘all clear’ message. Overall I’d say they system works pretty well. That said I have noticed that Environment Canada can be a little overzealous with the warnings at times.
The Official Secrets Act and me, and you and (well…) everyone!
Signing the Official Secrets Act is a joke. No, really! I was thinking over the documents I signed when I started work with my current employer and one stands out as being nothing more than complete bureaucratic nonsense: the declaration of confidentiality – often referred to in popular culture as ‘signing the Official Secrets Act’.
Spotlight turns to Notebooks: Pre-Show Predictions
With just 45 minutes to go, it is time for some pre-show predictions. Just for the record, I’ve not been following the rumors so these are more or less random and thus will probably be way off!
There as been a lot of speculation over the last few weeks regarding the new notebooks from Apple. I am to the opinion that these notebooks have been delayed and that Apple was really looking to ship these last quarter when they updated their earnings forecast to suggest reduced numbers for last quarter. More…
Spotlight turns to Notebooks: Live Blog
Good morning and welcome to the Apple Live (in association with Ross C Brown Online and Kismet Networks) coverage of the Apple “The spotlight turns to notebooks’ keynote event coverage. More…
Back to College: Student Broadband
With universities and colleges around the country starting up teaching again for the 2008/09 session thousands of students nationwide will be moving into shinny new accommodation, most of which will be in the private sector.
One of the most important utilities for students besides electricity and gas will be high speed internet access. With an ever growing array of online study material and of course entertainment in the form of music and more recently streaming video such as BBC iPlayer, Sky Player, ITV’s offering and Demand Five, getting the right connection is more important.
If you are in college or university accommodation you’ll probably find that your internet is all ready provided but if you find yourself in your own accommodation or renting in the private sector you’ll probably have to sort it out yourself and in most areas you’ll three options, fixed-line broadband, cable broadband and mobile (sometimes known as 3G, cellular, HSDPA) broadband. Let’s check them out. More…
Let’s Rock: Steve’s Mercedes and it’s licence plates
Following the discovery of this picture (below) on flickr (reported here and here), showing the Mercedes-Benz owned by Steve Jobs sans number plates, there has been much discussion online of how exactly he gets away with it. More…
Let’s Rock: New iPods
One hour later, our live blog is over and the world has been blessed with three refreshed iPods, a new iTunes version and on Friday we’ll also have a new firmware version for the iPhone. Let’s take a closer look at the new iPods. More…