Tom Roper's Weblog

Terrorism Act 2006

There's a discussion on the Jiscmail list for website managers about the implications or university websites of this legislation, which came into force today. The police can demand that a statement on a website which they consider might encourage terrorism, or could be construed as the dissemination of terrorist publications, be taken down within two days. If the institution fails to comply, it can be prosecuted.

Apart from the well-known impossibility of defining terrorism, someone pointed out that the maximum jail term for failing (and thereby endorsing) to remove a piece of text on a website is the same as that for carrying a gun in a public place - seven years (para 7a).

Technorati Tags: terrorismact

Librarything: the cataloguer's webcam

Librarything now has a fascinating enhancement, a page where one can see all the recently added books, or, as Tim Spalding, the power behind librarything describes it, a LibraryHypnotismThing.

"I find it hypnotic, both fascinating and will-depleting at the same time. I hope you do too". he says. I certainly do.
My librarything may be seen here.

Technorati Tags: cataloguing, librarything

Flea pit

I tried to book some seats at the local branch of a chain of cinemas through their web site. It wouldn't work, at least not in Firefox. I tried Safari too, with no greater success.
I fired off an e-mail, and received the following reply about 24 hours later, the interpolated comments being mine:
"Please accept my apologies for any lack of functionality you have encountered whilst using the xxx Website. I can appreciate your frustration as an Internet user that you would like to use your browser of choice. However I'm sure you can appreciate from our point of view that we want to make our website as readily available to the general public as possible. [And we don't want the money or patronage of anti-social misfits who refuse to worship at Bill Gates' altar-TR]
As a result it made sense to invest heavily into our web site to ensure immediate functionality with the world's most popular and well used [they forgot to say most insecure-TR] Web Browser "Microsoft Internet Explorer" [why the quotation marks?-TR]. A significant majority of the world's internet users have IE installed on their machine even if it is not their first choice of browser so the option to access the xxx Website through this medium is always on offer to the customer. [Microsoft announced back in 2003 that they would no longer develop IE for the Mac, the page on their site now saying "....as of January 31st, 2006, Internet Explorer for the Mac is no longer available for download from Microsoft. It is recommended that Macintosh users migrate to more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari"-TR]
However I am happy to inform you that xxx is investing time and effort into ensuring functionality across the many Web Browsers available to
Internet Users, hopefully including Netscape Navigator and other Gecko based Web Browsers such as Opera and MoZilla. [Why the bizarre capitalisation of nouns...was this written by a German speaker? And the illiterate use of hopefully...?-TR]"

Technorati Tags: browsers, cinema, firefox

Wagner, Discovering Music and others

Through the typographically-odd column written by Norman Lebrecht in La Scena Musciale, I discover that, as well as the handful of tracks available for download with BBC Radio 3 Easter Monday's Ring in a Day complete broadcast of Der Ring des Nibelungen, the same station's Discovering Music has quietly launched a podcast linked to the A-level music syllabus, though they don't say which board, which will offer excerpts from the following, with commentary interspersed, over the next six weeks :

1 April Schubert's Unfinished Symphony
22 April Bruckner's Motets
13 May Haydn's Symphony No 60 'Il Distrato'
3 June Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique
17 June Haydn / Telemann Trumpet Concertos
1 July Schubert's 5th Symphony
The podcast is available form: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/radio3/discoveringmusic/rss.xml

Technorati Tags: wagner, podcasts

Ancient Spaces

Games are not usually my thing, but Ancient Spaces, to be launched this summer, looks an exception. I came across it in Wired. Ancient Spaces is a collaboration between Oxford and the University of British Columbia, and originally the idea of Michael Griffin, an Oxford graduate.

Grand National Day

Aintree 145: Tarlac
Aintree 215: Hoo La Baloo
Aintree 250: Hardy Eustace
Aintree 325: Rimsky
Aintree 415: Cornish Rebel

Technorati Tags: aintree, grandnational, horseracing

Second day at Aintree

Aintree 200: Star de Mohaison
Aintree 235: Black Jack Ketchum
Aintree 310: Fondmort
Aintree 345: Almost Broke
Aintree 420: Straw Bear
Aintree 455: Model Son

Technorati Tags: aintree, horseracing

Information literacy website launched

A series of partners, including Eduserv, CILIP AND SCONUL have launched an information literacy website. It will offer news, case studies, examples of best practice and freely available toolkits.

First day of Grand National Meeting

Aintree 200: My Way de Solzen
Aintree 235: Beef or Salmon
Aintree 310: Five Along
Aintree 420: Andreas
Aintree 455: Natal

Technorati Tags: horseracing, aintree

THES on European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH)

Today's THES reports that the Arts and Humanities Research Council is proposing a Europe-wide citation index. The database is being put together by the European Science Foundation, though there's nothing about it on the AHRC website, apart from a contact name.

Technorati Tags: citations, rae