I think the biggest question is why do armchair quarterbacks like you feel compelled to criticize the work of people with the benefit of hindsight on a system that only with the most incredible dilligence could even get that far?
Can you imagine what NASA would have to wade through if this was tried? 'Please don't do it, the Face on Mars came to me in a dream and said it would hurt its healing Atlantean rays', 'Can you look for L Ron on the way down?', 'I'm writing to inform you that I purchased your proposed landing site from a web site and I will be charging a landing fee of ONE MILLION DOLLARS', 'Dude - it'd be bitchin' if Line 32050 said PRINT "I LOVE YOU BRITNEY"' and a million and one other idiocies.
NASA has had a relatively impressive success rate with Mars; compare this to the awful Russian space program attempts to visit the Red Planet, and ESA's ill-fated Mars program.
Agree entirely - except for the last bit; ESA's Mars Express orbiter is working just fine. Beagle 2 - thrown together in a hurry on a shoe-string and relying on marginal chances didn't make it.
Your government is elected by a minority of the electorate using a system that gives it an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons. Your Members of Parliament say their first loyalty is to the Party and the manifesto, not to the electorate. You ensure almost all votes are whipped through Parliament with fearful penalties if an MP disobeys the Party line. You have changed your Party conferences so that votes by the members have no bearing on policy making which is performed behind closed doors. You refuse freedom of information requests that would allow the electorate to see that policies are enacted according to regulations. You take money from multimillionaires and do not declare it to the authorities; coincidentally, all of these donors then become members of the House of Lords where they become law makers. You pass legislation that require people to get police permission to protest outside of Parliament. You rip up ancient laws that regulate the power of the State over the citizen and propose to take more for yourselves. You politicise the intelligence service, getting your spin doctors to sell a war planned in collusion with a foreign power.
You shouldn't be so much wondering why voters feel alienated, as be amazed that we haven't dragged you out of Downing Street and strung you up outside of Parliament.
They should have called in the experts, Microsoft!
Okay I know you're joking, but Microsoft have been one of the biggest critics of the UK government's ID card system as providing the ideal conduit for ID theft; so perhaps the Home Office really should have called them in.
I think the second only requires a small amount of imagination - clone a passport of someone who looks similar to you and you are good to go, especially since the customs agents will inevitably start relying on the computer to validate people rather than their own judgement.
Yep - just think how often your credit card signature is actually checked against that on the slip. Over here in the UK we've moved to chip 'n PIN, but a couple of recent trips to America really shocked me - my signature was NEVER checked against that on the card and on several occasions I paid using a terminal where the card was swiped, no PIN needed, no signature.
Passports and ID cards are going to go the same way. The government is telling us the passports/cards are guaranteed unforgeable so the users of the card are going to assume the card is the 'gold standard' for identity. If the card says it is genuine, then let that person through, don't worry about double-checking - the system has to be right doesn't it?
The GPS in most cellphones is such a piece of garbage there is no problem with this. the Boost mobile phones have even crappier GPS than normal. I would say that the service will not work far more than it will be abused. A cellphone in your pocket get's ZERO Gps signal. Hell the GPS in my blackberry never shows a good location and it's sitting 1.5 inches away from my body, a friends boost phone with built in GPS app couldnt get a lock on 3 sattelites within a 25 minute period sitting still in a clear sky condition.
Good point, fortunately there is plenty of work being done on getting location information using mobile phone basestations. Install the client software on your phone and it regularly measures the signal strength of a range of nearby basestations (not just the one currently handling the phone itself). It's straightforward math to determine the distance to each of those basestations based on the attenuation of the signal. The phone knows where the masts are (getting this info from a database), therefore it can triangulate where your phone is.
It's possible to get to 10m resolution in built-up areas where there are plenty of masts and it even works in urban canyons where GPS is a bit hit and miss at the best of times.
The really nice feature is that it doesn't need extra hardware which gobbles up your battery and it works on many phones already on the market.
That's such an odd choice of words, and really sounds forced - I'll bet this isn't random. I bet Microsoft has been trying to come up with a catchy term for the wireless sharing, in the hopes it'll make Zune seem more trendy. But c'mon - "squirt"? How much did they pay a marketing team to come up with that?
Shouldn't that be squirt(tm) ?
As for the marketing team, they're probably the same lot who think
Wel-
come
to the
social
doesn't look like piss-poor typesetting.
There's also a serious privacy issue at stake here
on
Biggest IT Disaster Ever?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The NPfIT system relies on a system called the IT Spine which will contain medical records of all people in the UK. These records can be shared around the network and can potentially be viewed by some 250,000 health workers. There is, at present, almost no provision for the protection of personal health records - the most personal information can be viewed without the knowledge of the patient's own doctor or the patient. The system is meant to have protections built in, including a series of 'sealed envelopes' where the most confidential information can be stored - none of them have been implemented.
The government has also passed legislation that will allow anyone on the system to release confidential information about a patient when it is seen to be in 'the public interest' (a deliberately vague term). Previously personal information could only be released under specific circumstances with the consent of a patient's GP or specialist. You can imagine how insecure this will be and what a tempting target for blackmailers and scum-sucking journalists looking for dirt.
Despite these concerns the government is proceeding to upload personal information on to the Spine using a system of 'implied consent' - that is, if you don't opt out, your data will be put on to this privacy nightmare. Once the information is on the Spine you cannot ask for it to be removed, nor amend it where it is found to be incorrect. The Guardian has produced the most readable to this meltdown and has also published a guide to ensuring your personal data is not put on to the spine.
In an official statement the British government expressed its delight with the recognition of NPfIT.
'We've been working on this for years,' a spokesman burbled, 'honestly, we'd like to thank EDS, Lockheed, Siemens, Microsoft and BT who've been laying down the groundwork for this cockup for years now.'
To what do they owe their success?
'Pacing, it's all about pacing. We started small with screw-ups in the Magistrates system, Air Traffic Control and the Child Support Agency, then we could take on more ambitious schemes.
'Frankly we never thought we'd top our work on the Passport network or the Department of Work and Pensions - I mean it's hard to beat ruining people's holidays or taking away their benefits. But somehow, we managed; personally I think it was getting a guy who failed his computing courses to run the project that sealed the win. We're thrilled, no one anywhere can boast of a track record like this, it's good to see Britain taking the lead in this exciting new field of technology.'
So will this mark the culmination of British government IT failures?
'Not for a minute!' the spokesman laughed, 'you ain't seen anything yet. Wait until we get to work on ID cards - we think we've got the perfect combination, a PM who couldn't spell Internet if he tried, a government department described by its own head as 'unfit for purpose', snakeoil biometric technology, a ludicrous budget, no specification and best of all, the guy who nearly bankrupted Sainsbury's with their IT system! Stay tuned!'
I don't think we can call the Blair government 'socialist' - it's signed up whole-heartedly to the Bush neocon agenda, has continually blocked attempts at tighter EU integration and is wholly wedded to the market.
We have a real problem in the UK that government departments have faith-based policies sold to them by the armies of lobbyists. So when David Blunkett heard about the infallibility of biometrics he decided we had to have biometric ID cards. Blair knows even less about technology so he was even more sold. When the policy was published as a Green Paper any unfavourable comments were just ignored.
When it became a government bill and was being debated in Parliament the London School of Economics produced a highly-critical report based on the available facts. Did the government respond calmly? Clarify? Reconsider? No, they made highly personal attacks bordering on libel against the authors of the report.
Ministers can't be expected to be experts on all matters, but they have a public duty to listen to all sides. Blair's government, on this and many other matters (sleaze and Iraq to name just two current crises for the government) ignore anyone who doesn't sign up wholeheartedly to the New Labour Project. When that is combined with a ridiculously large Parliamentary majority, a supine Cabinet, select committees packed with loyalists and zombie backbenchers it leaves the country in a very dangerous state.
It sounds like the government is still trying to work out what the scheme is going to do. The wretched Joan Ryan MP* (who is now responsible for the ID Cards system) admitted at Biometrics 2006 that the government is still working on the report that will say how ID cards will benefit individuals and government departments.
Mind you what she did say should chill the blood: 'Anything which streamlines the delivery of public and private sector services while protecting personal privacy must make the UK a more attractive country to do business in. And this reinforces the point that the potential is there to be realised in private sector transactions as well as in government - Opening a bank account; applying for a mortgage or taking out a loan - which all have benefits for the bank in reducing identity fraud and for the citizen in safeguarding their data and good credit record. Other areas of use could be when buying a car; travelling through Europe; shopping securely on-line; getting a driving licence; making a claim for social security benefits; buying alcohol; and when notifying all and sundry of a change of address.'
If the likes of Joan Ryan and her cronies have their way, buying a car, a bottle of wine or shopping online will become notifiable to the government.
So if you haven't done so already, it's time to join No2ID.
* If you want to know just how wretched. She stood up in the Commons this week and insisted that the current operation of the US/UK Extradition Treaty offered 'rough parity' between the two nations. This is the Treaty which we've ratified (but the US hasn't) that allows the US to extradite people from the UK on the grounds of hearsay without the case being heard in a British court; it doesn't work the other way round. Like ID cards we can thank Mad Mullah Blunkett for this one.
As the article points out, some of the postings appear to be in violation of Google's own policies; which include:
"Member agrees not to transmit through the Service any unlawful, harassing, libelous, abusive, threatening, or harmful material of any kind or nature. Member further agrees not to transmit any material that encourages conduct that could constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law or regulation."
Yet there are postings providing detailed information including names and addresses of anti-fascist activists. At the very least Google is obliged to investigate these postings; and if they break its conditions of service then the postings must be removed and/or the account suspended.
It seems bizarre for Google to claim that a court order is needed to remove the postings when Google clearly feels it has jurisdiction over what is and what is not posted using its service.
And you better believe Microsoft would weep with joy if people started using "Zune" as a verb.
They might not. Trademarks are meant to be adjectives not verbs; once people start talking about 'zuning' the trademark is well on the way to being diluted out of existence (so-called genericide). Many companies are very wary of verbing their trademarks - Adobe hates the term 'photoshopped' and Xerox has repeated said you can't 'xerox' a document, but you can copy it on a Xerox.
He *might* not have a missile-capable nuke, but Uncle Kim has tens of thousands of tonnes of good old fashioned chemical weapons that could be launched on the DMZ and Seoul with his ancient but perfectly capable SCUD-derived missiles. Attack North Korea and the whole of South Korea and all the American soldiers stationed there are in for a nasty, fatal surprise.
Besides on what justification in international law? North Korea is a stain on the world, but it hasn't actually broken any laws or treaties in detonating this device; North Korea withdrew from the Non Proliferation Treaty and is fully within its rights to design and test nuclear weapons. The last time the US and the UK were so cavalier with international law we ended up with Iraq - a crisis that has completely hamstrung the American military so that it is completely incapable of fighting another war, wrecked any form of international concensus and destroyed the credibility of the Blair government here in the UK. The real tragedy of this is that it is another example of the bankruptcy of the current Republican administration - Iraq, Palestine, Iran and now North Korea have all been mishandled by the Administration for short-term political expediency; we're now living in a much more dangerous world because of their ideological certainties. America could have continued with the Agreed Framework as put together by the Clinton administration in which fuel oil and light water reactors would go to the North in exchange for a cessation of weapons activities; but Congress and the current White House refused to go along. Much better to have an easy 'Axis of Evil' than complicated, painful negotiations.
And I say *might* about North Korea's weapon because we have no idea about his weapon design. It's more than likely North Korea has got a bomb design that harks all the way back to Fat-Man, but there is a chance that Pakistan's Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan has given them a more advanced design that will fit into a missile re-entry vehicle.
Thanks for the list of accidents, but the 'Nedelin Disaster' was caused by a fault on the prototype R16 ICBM; it was not a space-related accident.
Back to space, there was also the 1996 failure of a Chinese Long March 3B which crashed into a nearby village; the Chinese media said six people were killed.
'The Observer' is very much the paper of New Labour and many of its journalists and those of its sister 'The Guardian' have impeccable sources within the highest reaches of government. New Labour has a long and dishonourable record of announcing policies through leaks rather than in the House of Commons or in manifestos, so it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that this is an attempt to plant a proposed policy in the public domain.
There are NOT caverns down there, there are pores. A good reservoir rock might be up to 30% pores - 70% is still solid material. As oil is extracted from the top of a reservoir, groundwater tends to rise up from below under pressure to take its place. This is called water drive and is the main way oil is recovered from reservoirs in the early days of production. Gas pressure is a smaller component of production, but careful maintenance of gas pressure is needed, over-quick reduction can allow too-much water into the reservoir where it finds its way into the wells and brings an early end to production.
Subsidence is found in very few fields after prolonged extraction, most show no signs of the collapse you describe. The most famous subsidence is around Long Beach in California where there has been some 3m of subsidence - but no wholesale collapse because there isn't a hole to collapse into.
Campeche is receiving nitrogen injection because unlike many fields, Campeche does not receive a huge natural inflow of water into the reservoir below the oil. Water drive is normally relied on to push oil upwards; instead by injecting nitrogren above the oil, it acts to increase the pressure pushing down and keeps oil coming to the surface.
CO2 injection is a well-established technology in much of the US where it has been found that CO2 helps lower the viscosity of the crude. True carbon sequestration has been conducted by Statoil in the Sleipnir West gas field of the North Sea at a rate of approximately 1 million tonnes PA. The CO2 is recovered directly from the gas at the well-head as its concentration are above the legal limits imposed by European export limits.
Yes oil and gas extraction have been linked to Earth tremors at very shallow depth and are linked to the release of pre-existing stresses. The cause and effect of these tremors are well known from experiments conducted at Rangely in Colorado, where it was found tremors could be turned off and on by varying the rate of extraction. Similar tremors are known from fields in California, Texas and the North Sea.
The huge Sumatra 'quake was at great depth (30km) and distance from any hydrocarbon reserves. At 30km, even if oil source rocks existed, the oil would have been cracked into natural gas by a combination of pressure and heat. Furthermore, the physical characteristics of the 'quake are typical of those found in subduction zones, not the minor tremors found in oil fields.
There is no cause and effect between oil and gas production in Sumatra and the seismicity of the region - beyond the fact that the same tectonic pressures that caused the 'quake produce ideal conditions for the formation and entrapment of hydrocarbons.
The Kuwait fields may well have been damaged by a sudden release of pressure at the well-head when the Iraqis set off their explosives. This effect is well-known from oil-drilling history; many of the famous gushers of the early 20th Century that seemed to show vast resources were quickly followed by sudden collapses in production - the Spindletop field in Texas being the most famous example of what happens when pressures in fields are not controlled, it peaked in 1902 at over 17 million barrels p.a, but was down to less than 4 million in 1904.
Oil sands are only viable as long as natural gas to drive the boilers is in abundant supply. As natural gas prices head skyward the syncrude people are having to consider 'solutions' such as nuclear power to provide the heat.
If you use up 1 square mile of oil per year, whats left in its space? a giant massive cavern? or sea water?
* 50 years, theres 50 sq miles of empty earth under saudi.
Errrr no. Oil and gas (and water for that matter) are held in pores in the rock - just as water can be held in the pores of a sponge. Loose sandstones make great oil reservoirs, the Saudi fields are in limestone deposited as dung in shallow seas.
When you extract the oil the rock remains. No huge caverns, no need for worry.
The phenomenon of oil field replenishment appears to be a fluke in certain fields which are linked by faults to deeper reserves. Lowering the pressure in the upper part of the field forces oil up by gas and water pressure. It has nothing to do with the highly dubious theory of Mantle oil.
In the mean time, out here in the real world, the Saudis are ramping up production 50 percent in the next several years, and oil shale and tar sands are economically viable.
The Saudis claim they can can ramp up production, the reality on the ground is slightly different. In the 1980s Saudi Arabia added 88 billion barrels to its reserves without drilling a single well. The reason why? OPEC allocates exports on the basis of reserves - the more you have in your reserves, the more you can pump. At the same time Kuwait added 26 billion and Abu Dhabi TRIPLED its reserves. None of these countries have allowed external experts to study their reasoning for upping reserves. A team of independent geologists could easily prove these figures, but they are not allowed to do so. Think about that - we might all be banking on a lie.
Saudi Arabia plans to up production from about 10 million barrels per day to 15 million largely by developing existing fields, not bringing new reserves on-stream. Almost all of this oil will come from the four Saudi superfields - Ghawar, Safaniyah, Hanifa and Khafji - each of which is over 50 years old - an extraordinarily long period of time for a field to be productive. Almost 5 million barrels will come from Ghawar alone.
So can they do it? Seems unlikely, Saudi Aramco refuses to open its books, but the claimed figure of 258 billion barrels seems to be very high, a former director of Aramco has publicly said that proven reserves are no more than 130 billion barrels and the remainder must be extrapolated.
Other reports are coming out of Saudi Arabia that water is entering the oil wells which implies that the fields are near the end of their lives. Even Aramco admits that huge amounts of water must be injected into fields to maintain current production.
There are also serious reports that Saudi overproduction in the past has caused serious damage to the fields and that they will never generate the normal amount of oil that can be recovered from well-managed fields.
Tar sands - okay, let's set aside (as if we could) the environmental devastation these plants are wreaking on the Canadian landscape and the hideous greenhouse emissions related to producing syncrude. Let's take a look at the energy needed to make syncrude. Tar sand extraction in Canada uses natural gas to heat water; in 2004 Canada produced about 1 million barrels of syncrude per day which consumed 0.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Plans are to go to 2.2 million bpd which would consume 1.3 billion cubic feet of gas. So how are Canada's gas reserves? Production in 2003 (the last year I had figures) was 16.8 billion cubic feet per day - a 0.5 billion cubic foot DECREASE on the previous year. Canada's gas fields are entering long-term decline, just as a significant draw on their reserves comes along. Using natural gas to make LNG would make significantly better economic and environmental sense.
Oil shale in the American West is a non-goer, there simply isn't enough water around. The only significant source is the Colorado River which is overtapped already.
The more efficient you are, the less they'll produce. Prices will not change.
Not true, OPEC has always stated that oil should be in the $30 to $40 barrel range, not in the high sixties where it has been for a long time. They recognise that over $50 per barrel, it becomes economic for consuming countries to invest in alternative sources of energy such as oil sands and tar. Overpriced oil hurts producers long term plans.
What is almost unique about this situation is not that oil production is being throttled such as 1973-74 or 1980, it is that demand is running way ahead of supply. OPEC has called for consumers to cut back on consumption as there isn't enough infrastructure to get the stuff out of the ground, move and refine it fast enough to meet current let alone future demand.
Saudi Arabia is practically the only major producer that is planning on major increases in production in the near future, but there are plenty of geologists who believe that the Saudi reserves have been wildly overstated and that there is no way the country can ever meet these figures.
Nothing, but in the UK it is an offence to refuse to pass encryption keys to the Police if you are requested to do so.
It would probably be so in the U.S., as well, provided you could be shown to actually know it (i.e., you could claim to have spontaneously forgotten it, the old "I have no recollection of that, Senator," defense, but I'm not sure how long it would work).
Could 'pleading the Fifth' be used in a defence involving encryption? You refuse to divulge keys to data that might incriminate yourself.
Needless to say, Britain has no direct equivalent to the Fifth Amendment.
Please, someone in the U.K. gov get a clue about encryption!
The UK has quite a clue about cryptography. Read up about Bletchley House, Enigma, and public key encryption, which was developed in GCHQ quite a few years before Messrs Diffie and Hellman did.
The UK may have a great background in encryption - but this government doesn't have a clue about any aspect of security. The recent debate on the 'infallibility of biometrics' (as put to me by an MP in favour of ID cards), shows that they are prepared to burn tax-payers' money on security systems that give the illusion of protection (because they are full of gee-whizz technobabble that goes over the heads of 99% of the population) whilst being irredeemably unsound.
It's obvious to anyone with any knowledge of cryptography or computer security that backdoors are fundamentally a bad idea. The whole idea should have been kicked into touch there and then with the proponent of the system being told by the committee to go away in no uncertain terms. But because you can guarantee that none of the committee have any expertise in the relevant fields, he is indulged and given credence. A backdoor - only accessible to the government - that sounds so reasonable...
But because it's a mind-bogglingly stupid idea involving the deployment of high technology in the fight against an abstract noun I just know the Home Office will adopt it with relish.
This simply doesn't make sense. What prevents an user, using a different tool without said backdoor?
Nothing, but in the UK it is an offence to refuse to pass encryption keys to the Police if you are requested to do so.
This TCP idea doesn't give users access to the keys, so it falls outside of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - hence the supposed need for a backdoor into the encryption system.
Now we just have to wait for the media companies, that lobbied for TCP in the first place, to demand access to the back door so that they can check machines for illegal movies.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the biggest question is why do armchair quarterbacks like you feel compelled to criticize the work of people with the benefit of hindsight on a system that only with the most incredible dilligence could even get that far?
Can you imagine what NASA would have to wade through if this was tried? 'Please don't do it, the Face on Mars came to me in a dream and said it would hurt its healing Atlantean rays', 'Can you look for L Ron on the way down?', 'I'm writing to inform you that I purchased your proposed landing site from a web site and I will be charging a landing fee of ONE MILLION DOLLARS', 'Dude - it'd be bitchin' if Line 32050 said PRINT "I LOVE YOU BRITNEY"' and a million and one other idiocies.
NASA has had a relatively impressive success rate with Mars; compare this to the awful Russian space program attempts to visit the Red Planet, and ESA's ill-fated Mars program.
Agree entirely - except for the last bit; ESA's Mars Express orbiter is working just fine. Beagle 2 - thrown together in a hurry on a shoe-string and relying on marginal chances didn't make it.
Dear Matthew, (can I call you Matthew?)
Your government is elected by a minority of the electorate using a system that gives it an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons. Your Members of Parliament say their first loyalty is to the Party and the manifesto, not to the electorate. You ensure almost all votes are whipped through Parliament with fearful penalties if an MP disobeys the Party line. You have changed your Party conferences so that votes by the members have no bearing on policy making which is performed behind closed doors. You refuse freedom of information requests that would allow the electorate to see that policies are enacted according to regulations. You take money from multimillionaires and do not declare it to the authorities; coincidentally, all of these donors then become members of the House of Lords where they become law makers. You pass legislation that require people to get police permission to protest outside of Parliament. You rip up ancient laws that regulate the power of the State over the citizen and propose to take more for yourselves. You politicise the intelligence service, getting your spin doctors to sell a war planned in collusion with a foreign power.
You shouldn't be so much wondering why voters feel alienated, as be amazed that we haven't dragged you out of Downing Street and strung you up outside of Parliament.
They should have called in the experts, Microsoft!
Okay I know you're joking, but Microsoft have been one of the biggest critics of the UK government's ID card system as providing the ideal conduit for ID theft; so perhaps the Home Office really should have called them in.
Yep - just think how often your credit card signature is actually checked against that on the slip. Over here in the UK we've moved to chip 'n PIN, but a couple of recent trips to America really shocked me - my signature was NEVER checked against that on the card and on several occasions I paid using a terminal where the card was swiped, no PIN needed, no signature.
Passports and ID cards are going to go the same way. The government is telling us the passports/cards are guaranteed unforgeable so the users of the card are going to assume the card is the 'gold standard' for identity. If the card says it is genuine, then let that person through, don't worry about double-checking - the system has to be right doesn't it?
Good point, fortunately there is plenty of work being done on getting location information using mobile phone basestations. Install the client software on your phone and it regularly measures the signal strength of a range of nearby basestations (not just the one currently handling the phone itself). It's straightforward math to determine the distance to each of those basestations based on the attenuation of the signal. The phone knows where the masts are (getting this info from a database), therefore it can triangulate where your phone is.
It's possible to get to 10m resolution in built-up areas where there are plenty of masts and it even works in urban canyons where GPS is a bit hit and miss at the best of times.
The really nice feature is that it doesn't need extra hardware which gobbles up your battery and it works on many phones already on the market.
One sounds like a glue, the other a brand of European yogurt.
That's such an odd choice of words, and really sounds forced - I'll bet this isn't random. I bet Microsoft has been trying to come up with a catchy term for the wireless sharing, in the hopes it'll make Zune seem more trendy. But c'mon - "squirt"? How much did they pay a marketing team to come up with that?
Shouldn't that be squirt(tm) ?
As for the marketing team, they're probably the same lot who think
Wel-
come
to the
social
doesn't look like piss-poor typesetting.
The government has also passed legislation that will allow anyone on the system to release confidential information about a patient when it is seen to be in 'the public interest' (a deliberately vague term). Previously personal information could only be released under specific circumstances with the consent of a patient's GP or specialist. You can imagine how insecure this will be and what a tempting target for blackmailers and scum-sucking journalists looking for dirt.
Despite these concerns the government is proceeding to upload personal information on to the Spine using a system of 'implied consent' - that is, if you don't opt out, your data will be put on to this privacy nightmare. Once the information is on the Spine you cannot ask for it to be removed, nor amend it where it is found to be incorrect. The Guardian has produced the most readable to this meltdown and has also published a guide to ensuring your personal data is not put on to the spine.
'We've been working on this for years,' a spokesman burbled, 'honestly, we'd like to thank EDS, Lockheed, Siemens, Microsoft and BT who've been laying down the groundwork for this cockup for years now.'
To what do they owe their success?
'Pacing, it's all about pacing. We started small with screw-ups in the Magistrates system, Air Traffic Control and the Child Support Agency, then we could take on more ambitious schemes.
'Frankly we never thought we'd top our work on the Passport network or the Department of Work and Pensions - I mean it's hard to beat ruining people's holidays or taking away their benefits. But somehow, we managed; personally I think it was getting a guy who failed his computing courses to run the project that sealed the win. We're thrilled, no one anywhere can boast of a track record like this, it's good to see Britain taking the lead in this exciting new field of technology.'
So will this mark the culmination of British government IT failures?
'Not for a minute!' the spokesman laughed, 'you ain't seen anything yet. Wait until we get to work on ID cards - we think we've got the perfect combination, a PM who couldn't spell Internet if he tried, a government department described by its own head as 'unfit for purpose', snakeoil biometric technology, a ludicrous budget, no specification and best of all, the guy who nearly bankrupted Sainsbury's with their IT system! Stay tuned!'
I don't think we can call the Blair government 'socialist' - it's signed up whole-heartedly to the Bush neocon agenda, has continually blocked attempts at tighter EU integration and is wholly wedded to the market.
When it became a government bill and was being debated in Parliament the London School of Economics produced a highly-critical report based on the available facts. Did the government respond calmly? Clarify? Reconsider? No, they made highly personal attacks bordering on libel against the authors of the report.
Ministers can't be expected to be experts on all matters, but they have a public duty to listen to all sides. Blair's government, on this and many other matters (sleaze and Iraq to name just two current crises for the government) ignore anyone who doesn't sign up wholeheartedly to the New Labour Project. When that is combined with a ridiculously large Parliamentary majority, a supine Cabinet, select committees packed with loyalists and zombie backbenchers it leaves the country in a very dangerous state.
It sounds like the government is still trying to work out what the scheme is going to do. The wretched Joan Ryan MP* (who is now responsible for the ID Cards system) admitted at Biometrics 2006 that the government is still working on the report that will say how ID cards will benefit individuals and government departments.
Mind you what she did say should chill the blood: 'Anything which streamlines the delivery of public and private sector services while protecting personal privacy must make the UK a more attractive country to do business in. And this reinforces the point that the potential is there to be realised in private sector transactions as well as in government - Opening a bank account; applying for a mortgage or taking out a loan - which all have benefits for the bank in reducing identity fraud and for the citizen in safeguarding their data and good credit record. Other areas of use could be when buying a car; travelling through Europe; shopping securely on-line; getting a driving licence; making a claim for social security benefits; buying alcohol; and when notifying all and sundry of a change of address.'
If the likes of Joan Ryan and her cronies have their way, buying a car, a bottle of wine or shopping online will become notifiable to the government.
So if you haven't done so already, it's time to join No2ID.
* If you want to know just how wretched. She stood up in the Commons this week and insisted that the current operation of the US/UK Extradition Treaty offered 'rough parity' between the two nations. This is the Treaty which we've ratified (but the US hasn't) that allows the US to extradite people from the UK on the grounds of hearsay without the case being heard in a British court; it doesn't work the other way round. Like ID cards we can thank Mad Mullah Blunkett for this one.
As the article points out, some of the postings appear to be in violation of Google's own policies; which include: "Member agrees not to transmit through the Service any unlawful, harassing, libelous, abusive, threatening, or harmful material of any kind or nature. Member further agrees not to transmit any material that encourages conduct that could constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law or regulation." Yet there are postings providing detailed information including names and addresses of anti-fascist activists. At the very least Google is obliged to investigate these postings; and if they break its conditions of service then the postings must be removed and/or the account suspended. It seems bizarre for Google to claim that a court order is needed to remove the postings when Google clearly feels it has jurisdiction over what is and what is not posted using its service.
They might not. Trademarks are meant to be adjectives not verbs; once people start talking about 'zuning' the trademark is well on the way to being diluted out of existence (so-called genericide). Many companies are very wary of verbing their trademarks - Adobe hates the term 'photoshopped' and Xerox has repeated said you can't 'xerox' a document, but you can copy it on a Xerox.
Besides on what justification in international law? North Korea is a stain on the world, but it hasn't actually broken any laws or treaties in detonating this device; North Korea withdrew from the Non Proliferation Treaty and is fully within its rights to design and test nuclear weapons. The last time the US and the UK were so cavalier with international law we ended up with Iraq - a crisis that has completely hamstrung the American military so that it is completely incapable of fighting another war, wrecked any form of international concensus and destroyed the credibility of the Blair government here in the UK. The real tragedy of this is that it is another example of the bankruptcy of the current Republican administration - Iraq, Palestine, Iran and now North Korea have all been mishandled by the Administration for short-term political expediency; we're now living in a much more dangerous world because of their ideological certainties. America could have continued with the Agreed Framework as put together by the Clinton administration in which fuel oil and light water reactors would go to the North in exchange for a cessation of weapons activities; but Congress and the current White House refused to go along. Much better to have an easy 'Axis of Evil' than complicated, painful negotiations.
And I say *might* about North Korea's weapon because we have no idea about his weapon design. It's more than likely North Korea has got a bomb design that harks all the way back to Fat-Man, but there is a chance that Pakistan's Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan has given them a more advanced design that will fit into a missile re-entry vehicle.
Back to space, there was also the 1996 failure of a Chinese Long March 3B which crashed into a nearby village; the Chinese media said six people were killed.
'The Observer' is very much the paper of New Labour and many of its journalists and those of its sister 'The Guardian' have impeccable sources within the highest reaches of government. New Labour has a long and dishonourable record of announcing policies through leaks rather than in the House of Commons or in manifestos, so it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that this is an attempt to plant a proposed policy in the public domain.
There are NOT caverns down there, there are pores. A good reservoir rock might be up to 30% pores - 70% is still solid material. As oil is extracted from the top of a reservoir, groundwater tends to rise up from below under pressure to take its place. This is called water drive and is the main way oil is recovered from reservoirs in the early days of production. Gas pressure is a smaller component of production, but careful maintenance of gas pressure is needed, over-quick reduction can allow too-much water into the reservoir where it finds its way into the wells and brings an early end to production.
Subsidence is found in very few fields after prolonged extraction, most show no signs of the collapse you describe. The most famous subsidence is around Long Beach in California where there has been some 3m of subsidence - but no wholesale collapse because there isn't a hole to collapse into.
Campeche is receiving nitrogen injection because unlike many fields, Campeche does not receive a huge natural inflow of water into the reservoir below the oil. Water drive is normally relied on to push oil upwards; instead by injecting nitrogren above the oil, it acts to increase the pressure pushing down and keeps oil coming to the surface.
CO2 injection is a well-established technology in much of the US where it has been found that CO2 helps lower the viscosity of the crude. True carbon sequestration has been conducted by Statoil in the Sleipnir West gas field of the North Sea at a rate of approximately 1 million tonnes PA. The CO2 is recovered directly from the gas at the well-head as its concentration are above the legal limits imposed by European export limits.
Yes oil and gas extraction have been linked to Earth tremors at very shallow depth and are linked to the release of pre-existing stresses. The cause and effect of these tremors are well known from experiments conducted at Rangely in Colorado, where it was found tremors could be turned off and on by varying the rate of extraction. Similar tremors are known from fields in California, Texas and the North Sea.
The huge Sumatra 'quake was at great depth (30km) and distance from any hydrocarbon reserves. At 30km, even if oil source rocks existed, the oil would have been cracked into natural gas by a combination of pressure and heat. Furthermore, the physical characteristics of the 'quake are typical of those found in subduction zones, not the minor tremors found in oil fields.
There is no cause and effect between oil and gas production in Sumatra and the seismicity of the region - beyond the fact that the same tectonic pressures that caused the 'quake produce ideal conditions for the formation and entrapment of hydrocarbons.
The Kuwait fields may well have been damaged by a sudden release of pressure at the well-head when the Iraqis set off their explosives. This effect is well-known from oil-drilling history; many of the famous gushers of the early 20th Century that seemed to show vast resources were quickly followed by sudden collapses in production - the Spindletop field in Texas being the most famous example of what happens when pressures in fields are not controlled, it peaked in 1902 at over 17 million barrels p.a, but was down to less than 4 million in 1904.
Oil sands are only viable as long as natural gas to drive the boilers is in abundant supply. As natural gas prices head skyward the syncrude people are having to consider 'solutions' such as nuclear power to provide the heat.
Errrr no. Oil and gas (and water for that matter) are held in pores in the rock - just as water can be held in the pores of a sponge. Loose sandstones make great oil reservoirs, the Saudi fields are in limestone deposited as dung in shallow seas.
When you extract the oil the rock remains. No huge caverns, no need for worry.
The phenomenon of oil field replenishment appears to be a fluke in certain fields which are linked by faults to deeper reserves. Lowering the pressure in the upper part of the field forces oil up by gas and water pressure. It has nothing to do with the highly dubious theory of Mantle oil.
HTH.
The Saudis claim they can can ramp up production, the reality on the ground is slightly different. In the 1980s Saudi Arabia added 88 billion barrels to its reserves without drilling a single well. The reason why? OPEC allocates exports on the basis of reserves - the more you have in your reserves, the more you can pump. At the same time Kuwait added 26 billion and Abu Dhabi TRIPLED its reserves. None of these countries have allowed external experts to study their reasoning for upping reserves. A team of independent geologists could easily prove these figures, but they are not allowed to do so. Think about that - we might all be banking on a lie.
Saudi Arabia plans to up production from about 10 million barrels per day to 15 million largely by developing existing fields, not bringing new reserves on-stream. Almost all of this oil will come from the four Saudi superfields - Ghawar, Safaniyah, Hanifa and Khafji - each of which is over 50 years old - an extraordinarily long period of time for a field to be productive. Almost 5 million barrels will come from Ghawar alone.
So can they do it? Seems unlikely, Saudi Aramco refuses to open its books, but the claimed figure of 258 billion barrels seems to be very high, a former director of Aramco has publicly said that proven reserves are no more than 130 billion barrels and the remainder must be extrapolated.
Other reports are coming out of Saudi Arabia that water is entering the oil wells which implies that the fields are near the end of their lives. Even Aramco admits that huge amounts of water must be injected into fields to maintain current production.
There are also serious reports that Saudi overproduction in the past has caused serious damage to the fields and that they will never generate the normal amount of oil that can be recovered from well-managed fields.
Tar sands - okay, let's set aside (as if we could) the environmental devastation these plants are wreaking on the Canadian landscape and the hideous greenhouse emissions related to producing syncrude. Let's take a look at the energy needed to make syncrude. Tar sand extraction in Canada uses natural gas to heat water; in 2004 Canada produced about 1 million barrels of syncrude per day which consumed 0.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Plans are to go to 2.2 million bpd which would consume 1.3 billion cubic feet of gas. So how are Canada's gas reserves? Production in 2003 (the last year I had figures) was 16.8 billion cubic feet per day - a 0.5 billion cubic foot DECREASE on the previous year. Canada's gas fields are entering long-term decline, just as a significant draw on their reserves comes along. Using natural gas to make LNG would make significantly better economic and environmental sense.
Oil shale in the American West is a non-goer, there simply isn't enough water around. The only significant source is the Colorado River which is overtapped already.
And with that, I'm off to work.
HTH.
Not true, OPEC has always stated that oil should be in the $30 to $40 barrel range, not in the high sixties where it has been for a long time. They recognise that over $50 per barrel, it becomes economic for consuming countries to invest in alternative sources of energy such as oil sands and tar. Overpriced oil hurts producers long term plans.
What is almost unique about this situation is not that oil production is being throttled such as 1973-74 or 1980, it is that demand is running way ahead of supply. OPEC has called for consumers to cut back on consumption as there isn't enough infrastructure to get the stuff out of the ground, move and refine it fast enough to meet current let alone future demand.
Saudi Arabia is practically the only major producer that is planning on major increases in production in the near future, but there are plenty of geologists who believe that the Saudi reserves have been wildly overstated and that there is no way the country can ever meet these figures.
It would probably be so in the U.S., as well, provided you could be shown to actually know it (i.e., you could claim to have spontaneously forgotten it, the old "I have no recollection of that, Senator," defense, but I'm not sure how long it would work).
Could 'pleading the Fifth' be used in a defence involving encryption? You refuse to divulge keys to data that might incriminate yourself.
Needless to say, Britain has no direct equivalent to the Fifth Amendment.
The UK has quite a clue about cryptography. Read up about Bletchley House, Enigma, and public key encryption, which was developed in GCHQ quite a few years before Messrs Diffie and Hellman did.
The UK may have a great background in encryption - but this government doesn't have a clue about any aspect of security. The recent debate on the 'infallibility of biometrics' (as put to me by an MP in favour of ID cards), shows that they are prepared to burn tax-payers' money on security systems that give the illusion of protection (because they are full of gee-whizz technobabble that goes over the heads of 99% of the population) whilst being irredeemably unsound.
It's obvious to anyone with any knowledge of cryptography or computer security that backdoors are fundamentally a bad idea. The whole idea should have been kicked into touch there and then with the proponent of the system being told by the committee to go away in no uncertain terms. But because you can guarantee that none of the committee have any expertise in the relevant fields, he is indulged and given credence. A backdoor - only accessible to the government - that sounds so reasonable...
But because it's a mind-bogglingly stupid idea involving the deployment of high technology in the fight against an abstract noun I just know the Home Office will adopt it with relish.
Nothing, but in the UK it is an offence to refuse to pass encryption keys to the Police if you are requested to do so.
This TCP idea doesn't give users access to the keys, so it falls outside of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - hence the supposed need for a backdoor into the encryption system.
Now we just have to wait for the media companies, that lobbied for TCP in the first place, to demand access to the back door so that they can check machines for illegal movies.