From American Museum of Natural History News

That pub on the left looks familiar…

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So have seventeen seconds of extreme cuteness instead:

Over the past several years, security compliance requirements have become more restrictive, while the technology infrastructure necessary to meet these requirements has expanded greatly. Despite our strong desire to continue providing the Thawte Personal E-mail Certificate and Web of Trust services, the ever-expanding standards and technology requirements will outpace our ability to maintain these services at the high level of quality we require. As a result, Thawte Personal E-Mail Certificates and the Web of Trust will be discontinued on November 16, 2009 and will no longer be available after that date.

This is a real shame — I’ve had one of these for ten years, and have been verifying other peoples’ identities for them for eight.

I’m in San Francisco at the moment, but will be motorbiking through California over the next couple days. More photos soon — I’ll not have my laptop with me, so I’ll be updating my twitter feed first.

Is this a legal fail in any way? Quotes from a letter received from the RAC today:

You’ve asked us not to send you any information about the other products and services RAC could offer you.

Indeed I did.

Normally we wouldn’t, but we’ve made some important changes at RAC that could benefit you. So, as a valued member, we wanted to make sure you were aware of them.

Translation: Because we actually don’t give a fuck about you, we’ll ignore your stated instructions and tell you anyway.

Did they even look at the chance this would piss off more people than would buy from them? Idiots.

Male Peacock Butterfly

Originally uploaded by AlanFleming

Inachis Io, the peacock butterfly. Sadly out of focus, but it was a grabbed shot with the iPhone.

There’s a great post by Charlie Stross on his blog today, linking the current noise in the USA about healthcare reform and also the release of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi from prison in Scotland:

Even if Al Megrahi is a mass-murderer, the fact remains that he is dying. It is long-standing policy in Scotland to exercise the prerogative of mercy when possible; in general, if an imprisoned criminal is terminally ill, a request for release (for hospice care, basically) is usually granted unless they are believed to be a danger to the public.

That’s because the justice system isn’t solely about punishment. It’s about respect for the greater good of society, which is better served by rehabilitation and reconcilliation than by revenge. We do not make ourselves better people by exercising a gruesome revenge on the bodies of our vanquished foes. Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Minister, did exactly the right thing in sending Al Megrahi home to die.

I’ve been watching the war of words with increasing disbelief for the past month, trying to get my head around the reason why so many loud, vocal citizens seem to be so adamantly opposed to something that’s in their own best interests — the US healthcare system is utterly dysfunctional, even for those with health insurance costs are spiraling out of control, and the current system is becoming a major drag on economic productivity — many business start-ups abort because the founders can’t obtain healthcare, many novelists of my acquaintance are in serious financial trouble or are terrified of giving up the day job (that comes with insurance), and so on. The current mess is responsible for 22,000 avoidable deaths per year — a 9/11 scale catastrophe every six weeks.

The subjects vary — crime and penal policy, healthcare, don’t get me started on foreign policy — but there is an ideological approach in America that is distinguished by one common characteristic: words and deeds utterly lacking in the quality of mercy.

This is very true amongst the suburbanised middle class of America. It’s worse than just a lack of mercy – it’s an ingrained conservative selfishness — all I care about is that I get what I believe I deserve.

Unfortunately, I’m hearing this a lot again from people here who don’t remember the Thatcher years. Listening to a party in the garden two doors up from me last night, there was expressions of exactly the same selfishness. Expect the four to twelve years after the next election to be frightening, people.

Hollinwood sign apes LA’s rival:

A recreation of the iconic Hollywood sign, which nestles in the Californian hills, has appeared on a grass verge by the side of the M60 – in Hollinwood.
No-one has yet claimed responsibility for the sign, which at 3ft (0.9m) high is dwarfed by its famous cousin.
An Oldham Council spokesman said it was “definitely not a council initiative”.

(Via BBC News Online.)

It’s been a long time since I last read “Time Enough for Love” by Robert Heinlein, but I’m having flashes of one part of it at the moment.

I have an idea for a web application — one that could work out very well indeed, and I’ve given myself four months in startup mode to see if I can make it happen. I’m at the end of the second week of this, and I still keep thinking of things I need to get done in order for this to work. Some of them are complicated, like coding a feature of the application. Some are simpler, like writing a data privacy policy.

In the novel, there is a sequence where the protagonist is setting out on a pioneering trip. With a fixed amount of carrying capacity, he works and re-works the list of items to take, and at least once has the shock of realising he’s missed something obvious but vital off the list.

I’m going through that right now. My app will involve taking payment for its function. So how the heck did it take me two weeks to realise I’ll need to buy an SSL certificate, in order to secure the transmission of peoples’ sensitive information?

*facepalm*

(This whole is big, scary, and fun. I should talk a little more about it here.)