Re: www.gateway.gov.uk
On Sat 09 Jun, Robert Shiels wrote: Assume for a moment that I'm using lynx on Linux, and I want to send the government my tax return securely. What are the security implications, can it actually be done. I don't want to go off half-cocked and complain about something when I don't fully understand why the alternative is better. Could someone explain it to me, and give me an address to send my complaint to, and I'll definitely do it. As someone else has pointed out, this derived from a Linuxuser article at http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/articles/issue11/gateway.html This points out that most Government IT is now contracted out and this is so far as I am aware correct. Most departments appear to have *no* professional computing staff. (Some months ago I converted a Court Guide prepared by a judge into HTML. The intention was that this should be put on the Court Service site. Unfortunately Court Service had had its site redesigned -- white text on a purple background, etc -- and so the 39 files needed to be topped and tailed with their standard templates. When I suggested that this would not take even me more than an hour to do with Perl I was told by the Court Service IT department We use DreamWeaver, we have no need for Perl. The Guide -- complete with meta tags on each page saying meta name=author content=The Court Service Publications Branch -- appeared on the CS site about 6 weeks later.) One of the main outside companies used by Departments is EDS. So far as certificates are concerned, at a meeting I went to a week or so ago the chairman, who is employed by another legal government department, handed round a message to him from a colleague saying that all contact with outsiders would require the use of digital certificates. The message was accompanied by a Paper which gave the impression of being written by someone in the department. In fact it was a topped and tailed copy of a paper written by one of the certificate suppliers, Entrust, on PKI (public key infrastructure?) http://www.entrust.com/resourcecenter/descriptions/152.htm Unsurprisingly it claims that digital certificates are essential. I note that the whole idea of PKI has been questioned: http://www.counterpane.com/pki-risks.html Another series of Articles from the Register show that EDS in NZ have dropped the idea in relation to their Revenue. If it is not essential there presumably it is not essential here. See the three links at the end of http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/19340.html But how one persuades the civil service of that I don't know. Roger H -- Roger Horne, 11 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A 3QB mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http:www.hrothgar.co.uk/
Re: God bless Micro$oft
On Mon 28 May, Paul Makepeace wrote: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/19239.html Entertaining (and http:www.gateway.co.uk would not let me in today.) But I wonder what the site is for. The main Government site has been http://www.open.gov.uk . That is closing, because presumably Government is no longer to be open. But it is claimed that it is to be replaced by the ghastly http://www.ukonline.gov.uk, not the gateway site. (From the ukonline site: Life Episodes: A helping hand with the events in your life click Having a baby ..) Roger -- Roger Horne, 11 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A 3QB mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.hrothgar.co.uk/
RE: Politics (was RE: BOFHs requiring license)
On Mon 14 May, Matthew Jones wrote: No, class sizes are down in primary schools (were primaries specified on the pledge card?). Secondary school classes are level or *slightly* up, IIRC. Some spokesman on the radio this morning promised to reduce class sizes in primary schools and to recruit more secondary school teachers. How can they achieve the former without recruiting more teachers? Merge the Dept of Education and MAFF? Roger -- Roger Horne 11 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A 3QB mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.hrothgar.co.uk/
Re: The Natives are Revolting
On Wed 18 Apr, David Cantrell wrote:
On Wed, Apr 18, 2001 at 10:20:51PM +0100, Dave Cross wrote:
bk:http://www.cookwood.com/cgi-bin/lcastro/perlbbs.pl?profile=bk
Chris: http://www.cookwood.com/cgi-bin/lcastro/perlbbs.pl?profile=chris
ROFLMAO!
and for your edification, 'chris' just wrote in reply to jns:
" And I can program better than you any day of the week. Bring it on if
you want a challange. I will totally blow you and any supporter away
in a programming match. "
But they *are* only children. ("Chris" claims to be 13 and I bet the others
are not much older.)
Far more interesting is that Castro claims that the "profiles" are copyright
1998 Elizabeth Castro.
(Although "Chris"'s website http://storedscripts.virtualave.net/ is quite,
um, entertaining ...)
Roger
(A *much* older amateur)
--
Roger Horne
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.hrothgar.co.uk/
Re: Wavelan
On Tue 10 Apr, Robin Szemeti wrote: and .. should I ever find any of the Lucent/Orinoco/Agere Wavelan cards I'll buy them in a Flash(tm) .. neither freebsd services or your mates in Norwich have any .. infact no one does :( ... http://www.expansys.com/category.asp?cat=WIREL claim delivery 3 days, but whether they are what you want or how their prices compare I have no idea. (Cheap efficient when I bought my Psion netBook some time ago.) Roger -- Roger Horne 11 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A 3QB mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.hrothgar.co.uk/
Re: The Open Constitution Project (was Re: Crazy Idea)
On Tue 03 Apr, Jonathan Stowe wrote: OK. SO we persuade Mr Horne to blag us electronic copies of the entire UK law, upload it to the CVS server on SourceForge and then announce the project on slashdot Why me ... ? (Quite a bit is getting onto http://www.bailii.org , run by the Aussies, although I am not convinced that their software is as good as they claim at http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/LegInfo/97_2gree/default.htm ) Roger -- Roger Horne 11 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A 3QB mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.hrothgar.co.uk/
Re: Freebies
On Tue 13 Mar, Dave Cross wrote:
Not clear which particular book you mean.
The Cgi/Perl Cookbook by Craig Pratchett and Matthew Wright. John Wiley
Son. One of the current "reviews" on Amazon.com says:
This is obviously a book that a lot of time and care went into, on the part
of both authors. The CGI/Perl Cookbook has all of the best "goodies" from
the excellent Matt's Script Archive website on its CD-ROM, and a chapter on
each of the scripts carefully walks you through every line, explaining (in
refreshingly non-technogeek language!) the programming theory behind each
element and how the total script works. I found this very useful when I
began writing my own Perl scripts.
Matt's easy-to-modify CGI scripts are also great for people who don't care
*why* it works, they just want it to work. With the excellent documentation
Craig and Matt supply, these are as close to foolproof as CGI scripting
("Aaagh! 500 Server Error!!") gets, and all 20 scripts covered in the book
are the basic, useful kind that anyone handling websites will want to use
sooner or later (guestbook, form mail, feedback, and a really well-designed
web store.)
Excellent value; this is the kind of book you'll keep and use for years,
whether it's your stepping-stone to writing your own scripts or whether you
never want to get more in-depth than just typing in the path to your Perl
executable.
Was this review helpful to you?
13 out of 14 people replied "yes".
Roger
--
Roger Horne
11 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A 3QB
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.hrothgar.co.uk/
Re: Dream weaver
On Wed 24 Jan, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dreamweaver (I know, don't ask) But I must ! You are only the second person I have heard of who has used it... In November I was asked by a Judge to convert a court guide written in Word into HTML. Only real problem was the index which was good, but indexed pages, not paragraphs. I solved this with a bit of creative editing of the Word file, a script, and MakeIndex. A colleague and I then checked each page on every available OS and browser and it was then sent off by the Judge to Court Service to be put on their site, assuming it would appear there within a couple of days. It turned out that Court Service requires that every page on its site should be topped and tailed with a template which ensures that the page is in the default colours of white text on a sludge blue background. Hardly difficult to achieve, although hideous[1]. Even without using TT, and as an amateur, it took me less than half an hour to extract the templates from another file on the site and to write a script that topped and tailed all 37 files in about 20 seconds. (OK, my version probably needed a bit of tidying up by hand.) But when I asked those in charge of the Court Service site why they could not do the same I was told "We don't have Perl and we don't need it, we use Dreamweaver. It will take us 5 days to do the work". The files appeared on the CS site 6 weeks later. Am I right in thinking that what CS said made as much sense as "We don't need a case of claret because we have a pound of brussels sprouts"? rh [1] http://www.courtservice.gov.uk -- Roger Horne 11 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, London WC2A 3QB mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.hrothgar.co.uk/
