How does your pay compare with the rest of the world?
March 31st, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Check it out here.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (1)
Our participation in UK Biobank
March 30th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
An incredible snapshot of the health and lifestyles of 500,000 Britons – including 26,000 people with diabetes and 50,000 with joint disorders, 41,000 teetotallers, and 11,000 heart attack patients – is now available for medical research. With more than 1,000 separate pieces of information already available on volunteers aged 40-69 when they joined the project, UK Biobank has amassed one of the most detailed large-scale health resources ever, with the goal of improving the health of future generations. You can find further information here.
My wife and I are two of the 500,000 who have participated in UK Biobank. It is almost two years since we underwent all the tests involved and I blogged about the experience here.
Posted in My life & thoughts, Social policy | Comments (0)
The remarkable story of Leopold Socha
March 29th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
You have never heard of him but he is commemorated by the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem (which I have visited) as “Righteous among the Nations” In the last year of Nazi occupation of Eastern Poland, he saved the lives of a group of Jews by hiding them in sewers.
The story has recently been portrayed in the Polish film “In Darkness” [see my review here] and you can read a brief account of this remarkable piece of history here.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
The death of a hero
March 28th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
In 1984, my first and only book was published. It was a biography of my wife’s father, the World War II Czech night intruder ace Karel Kuttelwascher and it was called “Night Hawk”. While doing picture research for the book at the Imperial War Museum, I came across a photograph of an aircraft called “The Darlington Spitfire”. In view of my family name, i was intrigued by the picture, bought a copy, and had it framed for my study.
The photograph showed a Canadian pilot in the cockpit of the aircraft. Later I researched the history of “The Darlington Spitfire” and found that many different pilots had flown it. One of the British pilots was Roy Flight who was her regular pilot at 118 Squadron over a period of two months. She carried him into battle on a total of 26 operations, never failing to bring him back unharmed. For details of these flights, check out the end of Part 5 and all of Parts 6 & 7 in my essay.
I have now learned that this week Roy Flight died in his adopted country of New Zealand. He was 90 and suffered from pancreatic cancer. I salute him and send condolences to his family ands friends.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
Why we all need regulation
March 27th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
This afternoon, I attended a workshop convened by the National Consumer Federation to debate the question “Are regulators failing consumers?” and to start the process of producing a Consumer Charter For Regulators. I was there in my capacity as a member of the Communications Consumer Panel.
in my break-out group, I argued that the Charter should begin by restating the need for regulation. So many business interests and quite a few politicians argue that regulation is an excessive cost on business that is overly intrusive and onerous. The simplistic mantra is often that we should have ‘light touch regulation’. In fact too little regulation can be a cost for consumers, citizens and the economy as a whole and what we should be talking of is ‘right touch regulation’.
Inadequate or ineffective regulation can be a cost:
- on consumers, because for instance inadequate competition and/or complicated switching processes can mean that consumers pay more than they should for services such as gas, electricity, or pay television
- on citizens, because for instance weak health & safety regulations can mean more accidents and more deaths and weak environmental regulations can mean flooding of homes or dirty beaches
- on the economy as a whole, because for instance wholly inadequate financial regulation required the taxpayer to spend £76 billion on bailing out UK banks and a grand total of £850 billion to sort out the financial mess [for details see here].
Posted in Consumer matters | Comments (0)
Will Obama’s healthcare reforms survive?
March 26th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
In Britain, Parliament passes a Bill, and that’s it. However controversial, once the Bill becomes an Act, the debate is over. Nobody argues that the measure is unconstitutional, not least because the UK does not have a constitution as generally understood. Of course, an Act can be subject to judicial review – as was the case with parts of the Digital Economy Act- but the grounds for JR are narrow and success is rare.
Now, over in the USA, it’s all very different. It may be two years since the Obama administration managed to get through Congress a major piece of reform legislation on healthcare officially called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but the debate is far from over. Today the US Supreme Court starts its deliberations in a hugely important case brought by no less than 26 states arguing that a key provision of the legislation is unconstitutional.
As a primer to the main arguments, see here. But this is going to be a long case.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)
What the (near) future might look like
March 26th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Microsoft has produced a vision of the future. Some of the technology displayed in the video has been patented by the company and some is already deployed!
To view, click here.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (1)
The three conclusions reached by almost all conferences/seminars/workshops that I attend
March 25th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
- The problem is complex and multi-facted
- There is no silver bullet or one size fits all
- We need to have more information/do more research/ have another meeting to bottom this out
Does any of this resonate with you?
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (1)
I hear ‘the Father of the Internet’
March 24th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
For those of us steeped in Internet matters, the wonderfully named Vint Cerf is a mystical figure. He is universally known as “the Father of the Internet” because – together with Bob Kahn – he published “A Protocol For Packet Network Internetworking” in 1974 which was the technical basis then and now for the Internet. Earlier this week. for the first time, I had the opportunity to hear Vint Cerf – now aged 68 and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google – speak at the second annual Nominet Policy Forum, a really excellent event which I attended as a member of Nominet’s Policy Stakeholder Committee.
He began with some key dates: he started work on the Internet protocol in 1973; the Net was ‘turned on’ in 1983; the Net ‘became public’ in 1993; and today in Kansas City Google is building an edge to edge 1 gigabit per second network.
He ran through some major forthcoming Internet changes:
- Address space runout IPv4->IPv6 – 6 June 2012
- Generic Top Level Domain expansion
- Domain Name System security DNSsec
- Strong(er) authentication, integrity
- New certificate regimes (ICANN working group called DANE)
- Internet of Things such as Smart Grid
- Internet enabled devices such as fridges and light bulbs
Expanding on the last point, he told us about the sensor systems he has for all the rooms in his house including his famous well-stocked wine cellar.
He went on to list further Internet trends:
- All media carried in IP packets
- Increased collaboration in all contexts
- Increased information sharing
- Online Digital Publication – all forms
- Potential Bit Rot Hazard – affecting all media such as photos
- Need for revision of IPR concepts – Net a giant copying machine
- Google’s self-driving cars – all cars interconnected
- Goggle Mars and Moon and Oceans and Sky
He moved on to look at what he called “grand challenges”:
- Coping with Bit Rot
- Deep linking indexing structured data
- Semantic indexing
- Real time language translation
- Collaboration with a synthetic intellect – conversations with computer
- Protection from harm for individuals and organisations
Finally he talked of something he dubbed the “Interplanetary Internet”:
- Cannot use ICP/IP
- Software running now on space station
- Every future satellite will be connected
- Next stop nearest star Alpha Centauri A
In the Q&A, he was asked about the Arab Spring and the role of the Net in these uprisings.He showed himself to be very realistic about the impact of the Net in these revolutions. He insisted that the technology was secondary to brave protestors and noted sanguinely that the outcome of the uprisings in different countries had been very variable. He warned against legislative and policy efforts to prevent anonymity on the Net and reminded his audience that “the USA was born in anonymous rebellion”. He argued: “I want the Net be safe and trusted” – but warned that many of the solutions proposed are too blunt.
Vint Cerf is a charismatic character – soft-spoken and funny with immense insight. This is a man who can go to bed at night knowing that literally he has changed the world.
Posted in Internet, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
My new appointment in the water sector (2)
March 21st, 2012 by Roger Darlington
A few days ago, I did a posting about my appointment as Chair of the Customer Challenge Group at South East Water. The company has now issued a media release on the appointment which you can read here.
Posted in Environment, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)