20-Second Clarinet Solo compressed to <1k

I think that this is probably the sonic equivalent of vector graphics. "In order to get this done, they created a model of the clarinet itself -- essentially replicating each aspect of the sound rather than creating thousands of digital samples from a performance of it. The resulting file occupies less than a kilobyte despite including all of the audio materials. By comparison, the same clarinet sample would occupy 32KB as a MIDI file."
Researchers Cram 20-Second Clarinet Solo into Sub-Kilobyte File | Listening Post from Wired.com:

Children's NIR can't be guaranteed as safe

I can't help feeling that this 'trial run' of ID cards /NIR rather blows the gaffe on the whole enterprise, particularly the claim to protect our identities from misuse.

Though it stresses the sophistication of the electronic security surrounding the databank, it acknowledges: "No system can be 100% guaranteed against misuse." The government was warned by family campaigners that parents would be concerned about the number of people able to search the database, and about the potential security risk.

I think that this is a recognition, in effect, that the concerns about NIR wrt security are well-founded and that in reality there is no security. Time to stop wasting our money on developing this white elephant.
330,000 users to have access to database on England's children | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics

Technorati Tags: ID_cards, NIR, UK, security, costs

Russia cyberwar with Estonia?

This is worrying because I suspect it is a kind of warm-up, 'proof of concept' thing, and as one commentator said, "it would be difficult to prove the Russian state's responsibility, and that the Kremlin could inflict much more serious cyber-damage if it chose to."
The more serious things would be disprupting IT controls relating to communications, water, power ... just think if orders can't be made for food, or your power is arbitrarily off and on ... This is the shape of things to come, I fear.
PS. This Wired interview-article has helpful perspectives germane to the whole cyber war thing.
Russia accused of unleashing cyberwar to disable Estonia | Russia | Guardian Unlimited:

Still think we should have a National Identity Register?

It's worrying enough to read of the pig's-ear that's been made of this.

Hundreds of register offices across the country have been ordered to abandon a new online system for recording births, deaths and marriages in the latest IT fiasco to hit the government.

But then go to the end of the article for the reminder of how many government IT projects have bitten the dust. And then there's the clear precedent of function creep identified in this report: "State databases, the way the European Data Protection Supervisor talks about them in its annual report quickly grow beyond their function and not always with benign consequences for the people they have numbered." So, thank God for the failures -even if not for the waste of public moneys.
Chaos as register offices are told to abandon £6m computer system-News-Politics-TimesOnline

Technorati Tags: ID_cards, NIR, UK, IT