Here in the UK, there has been a pretty large storm about BT's trials (and  proposed implementation) of the obnoxious Phorm system in which all users' web browsing sessions are intercepted and data extracted in order to deliver targeted advertising.  A No 10 petition has collected a large number of signatories, and several websites have been set up to explain the problems associated with Phorm and to campaign against it.  See isphormlegal for example.

Over in the USA, a company called NebuAd have been playing the same game.  Working with several ISPs, they have been playing fast and loose with customer rights.  Now it seems the chickens may be coming home to roost. Ars Technica reports that a class action has been launched against NebuAd and its ISP collaborators. As Ars Technica reports:

Reports broke yesterday on fora (such as nodpi) and The Register that a PlusNet customer had received an invitation to join BT Webwise.  Plusnet is an ISP acquired by BT in 2006, but run as a separate business.  The current trials of the vile Phorm system of data snooping began on BT customers 30th September and were supposed to last for 30 days.  There had been much speculation that these trials either had not started, that they were late starting, and that BT were having trouble finding the desired naive users to sign up.

So, what's a PlusNet customer doing receiving an invitation to BT Webwise?  What kind of botched system is in place here, and can we actually trust BT to manage the hardware and software that Phorm have placed in their system?

Ars Technica reports that objections to the Australian Government's internet filtering plans are growing, with ISPs joining the clamour.  Discontent is fuelled by the lack of appropriate opt-out (as I posted previously).  Apparently they have begun testing the system in Tasmania.  presumably they think Tasmania is sufficiently backwater that objections will be ignored (a bit like the Tories treated Scotland when plotting the now discredited poll tax bac in the 1980s).

One of the anti-Phorm gang has set up a concise web page outlining the objections many have to the BT-Phorm data snooping system. What's particularly useful is that every assertion has a citation supporting it.  Read it and weep over what has become of British Telecom. [update: apologies, I botched the link, now corrected]

Yesterday I succumbed to temptation and bought a 32Gb iPod Touch to replace my venerable 2Gb iPod Nano. I realised before this purchase that my limited Windows resource would be a challenge: my library of music files is held on a fileserver running Ubuntu 8.10, and my sole XP machine is a small partition on an IBM laptop (I had decided I'd rather not fanny around jailbreaking the iPod, unless absoutely necessary).  Still, there was enough disk space to get iTunes installed and to sync some music to the iPod.

The iPod is everything I'd expected, a terrific UI, effective touch screen, easy to set up wireless comms.  But oh dear, it does show the fingerprints!

A scary reminder of the 1958 movie The Fly, here's writer-illustrator Zina Saunders' (no relation) picture of the ghastly Palin. Check out her website for a some acute political art, and click on this thumbnail for the bigger image.

I think that's me in the lab coat.

 Wolbachia pipientis is a rather peculiar bacterium.  It's an intracellular organism, and is found in a wide variety of tax, including nematodes, crustacea, and arachnids.  About 20% of insect species are thought to have Wolbachia.  Wolbachia has evolved a number of mechanisms to ensure transmission, which is generally maternal.  There are a number of consequences of infection with these intracellular bacteria observed in different species - including reproductive isolation between infected and uninfected strains of the mosquito Culex pipiens.  I also recall seeing a old paper (though I've long-since lost the citation) which claimes a growth advantage of infected Drosophila larvae in crowded culture, though I think this must have predated the identification of Wolbachia.

So some laboratory Drosophila strains are infected with Wolbachia, while some are not.  This can lead to artefacts in many experiments.  For example, in my own lab, we had some perplexing results concerning the effects of particular transgene on viability of some combinations - the involvement of Wolbachia became clear firstly when we noticed the effects depended on which which strain was paternal and which maternal in the cross, and finally the observation that  this effect vanished after treating the transgenic stocks with antibiotic.  These kind of artefacts are particularly important to consider when working with complex characteristics such as lifespan (as we do in my lab).

The Register reports latest developments in the Australian Government's ambitions to censor all internet traffic.  Originating as some misguided initiative to "protect the children" (whatever happened to parental responsibility?), it now appears that Australian internet users are likely to face a situation where they must choose from one of two censored streams.  Opting out of the "child-friendly" stream (which blocks a wide range of supposedly harmful content), merely subjects the user to an adult filter that blocks material deemed by the government to be inappropriate for adults.

Is this patronising and paternalistic system the future of the internet?  Or has it the potential to lead to unreasonable censorship?

The Register reports that the anti ID card campaigners No2ID have succeeded in their long standing aim to obtain samples of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's fingerprints.

Hot on the heels of announcing plans for draconian new communications monitoring Smith is taking forward the batty ID card agenda (first victims: overseas people, second victims: airport workers).  Now it seems a glass bearing her dabs has been "borrowed" and those precious prints preserved, presumably for some nefarious purpose.

Back on 11th October, the Open Rights Group (together with a number of other concerned organisations) held a protest in Parliament Square to publicise the growing surveillance we are all subjected to.  A large mosaic constructed from images of CCTV installations was assembled.  The image (below) has been released under a Creative Commons licence.  A bigger version is available. 

From the ORG "The Big Picture" wiki: