Microsoft are to equip Longhorn with RSS functionality. That is a very good idea, with no end of incredibly useful applications:

For example, if you go to a conference, your calendar schedule could be continuously updated by a web feed, or you could have a regularly updated list of the top 20 downloads from a music site. Grandparents could have a screensaver auto-updated with pictures of their grandchildren as the parents post them to a photo-sharing site, or a “live” version of their kids’ Amazon wish-lists.

It’s important, though, that Microsoft do this well. If they try and restrict use, or don’t use enough imagination to enable ideas like those above to be implemented, then the value is lost.

Microsoft aren’t too good at this kind of thing. They don’t like relinquishing control. But I can hope that the leopard has changed its spots, and that Longhorn will bring a very innovative operating system from the behemoth.

And I don’t think I’ve mentioned to date (despite my best intentions) the news that the first IE7 beta is due relatively soon. Which I happen to think is also good news.

So that makes two reasons to be cheerful… at least for now

Stephen Moss asks in the Guardian…

Has chess had its chips thanks to computers?

As with most questions in newspaper headlines, the answer is ‘no’.

Computers can do a great many things better than humans. A well-equipped computer could almost certainly beat humans at any number of sports, and if we widen the problem to include machines as well as computers, then there’s barely a sport I can think of that humans are better at. The difference is, the development of computers that can rival the chess-playing ability of the human brain is something new. But it no more invalidates the game than motor cars invalidate marathons.

Chess will continue, and I’ll continue to be beaten, as humans try to out-do each other, even if computers are better than them. And to suggest otherwise is nothing more than a cry for attention and an attempt to get people to read an article. It worked.

Regular readers may be wondering where the symbol has disappeared to. The answer is simple: It has retired to somewhere suitably sunny, as it is no longer required. You can now print any page on the site much more easily: Simply use your browser’s ‘Print’ function. This will print a specially formatted version of the page, designed for printing – even including the full URIs of any links, which is a very handy feature when printing for future reference.

I hope that this makes the printing process a little more straightforward, and makes the resulting output a little more useful.

From the Times:

Hundreds of volunteers are being trained by police to trap drivers speeding on rural roads. The “village vigilante” scheme, which started as a local experiment in traffic policing, has quietly expanded across large swathes of the country.

I should be raging about this. I should be up in arms about the fact that the police are essentially sanctioning and aiding vigilante action. I should be pointing out that we pay police to keep law and order in this country, and they shouldn’t be out recruiting the public to do that job for them. But I can’t; it just seems like too much of a good idea.

Speeding is a huge problem in this country, and an area of widespread law-breaking. You’d think that this very fact would lead politicians to reconsider the law in the first place, but it hasn’t. That’s neither here nor there in this discussion, though, because a lot of speeding is senselessly dangerous. Therefore, to go back to a situation where people caught speeding are not issued with a fine, but instead with advice on why they shouldn’t be doing it, and thus increasing drivers’ education and understanding of the problem, can only be a very good thing. The fact that the police are asking volunteers to help out with this scheme so that they can concentrate on catching ‘real’ criminals should surely delight Daily Mail readers everywhere.

These volunteers have no police powers. They’re simply issuing advice to motorists. It’s no different to charities advising kids not to get into drugs because they can be seriously detrimental to health. So whilst I’m less than impressed with other ‘community policing’ measures such as CSOs, this doesn’t seem such a bad idea to me. So I’d broadly support the proposal.

Michael Portillo has written a piece in today’s Times that I almost entirely agree with. That doesn’t happen very often.

From the Sindie:

The cost of an NHS dental check-up is to rise sharply to help pay for a ceiling on the costliest treatments.

This government burying bad news amid all the Live8 coverage? Never.

With Live8 continuing around the more affluent parts of the Western world, it would seem remiss of me not to blog about it today. But what’s left to say?

I could align myself with Simon Murray, and implore you to

understand that change will not happen by wearing a fashion accessory bracelet on your wrist, listening to a few pop songs and saying please… by making this small trip up the road I can learn and find out about these issues from those who have a better understanding than me and certainly a better understanding than the aforementioned millionaire pop stars and those whose sole interest in Africa lies in the economic interest of the corporations that run their countries rather than the wellbeing of the global population.

I could point out that

this is a very strange protest – a mass mobilisation that is essentially in support of government policy

There’s an observation to be made, in that many people ‘protesting’ against ‘poverty’ also marched against the war in Iraq on the basis that it’s illogical to declare war on a concept (the War on Terror).

There’s also the comment about the woolliness of the aims of Make Poverty History which allow enough wiggle room to drive several double-decker buses through (eg ‘Trade Justice’), in terms of announcing after the event that the G8 have helped, but not gone far enough (as will be the inevitable conclusion). And, of course, the fact that many African leaders don’t want ‘more and better aid’, they just want the barriers to their plans removed, so that they can work themselves towards a better future. Nobody seems to have bothered to meet with and ask these leaders – or indeed African citizens themselves – what they feel would be the best possible help for each of their individual countries and cultures.

But, for all it’s perceived failings, Live8 and Make Poverty History are attracting lots of people (referring more to the performers and organisers than the crowd, who probably care less about the campaign than about seeing the performers) who have genuine feelings on the subject, and genuinely want to help. Not actually help to solve anything, you understand, but want to help to moan about the current situation. But these people are giving their time and energy to something they see as a good cause. And that’s something that’s in fast decline in modern society. Not only that, it’s also brought the issues back home to an awful lots of people. So I think it’s right to applaud the efforts of these campaigns, however futile they may ultimately be.

During the election campaign, Mr Blair said

You cannot determine specifically how many people are here illegally

He even said it was impossible to estimate the number. I know, because I sat and watched the interview when he made these claims.

Also during the election campaign, John Salt came up with a figure of 500,000 illegal immigrants, which ministers called

grossly inaccurate

Of course, how they knew it was inaccurate when they were unable to make the calculations themselves is a mystery.

Now it’s quite understandable that the Labour party would be a little coy about admitting that 500,000 people are in the country illegally when an election is being fought in which immigration and asylum are central themes.

Yesterday, though, the Home Office declared that there are approximately 570,000 illegal immigrants in the country. Which is, no doubt, a help when we’re debating an ID cards bill, which is (nonsensically) supposed to tackle illegal immigration.

Clearly confused, some bright spark asked the Prime Minister’s Offical Spokesperson if it had come as a surprise to the Prime Minister that Home Office were able to produce statistics on illegal immigration given that he had said that such figures were impossible to calculate. The PMOS’s reply? That Tony Blair could not possibly have known the figure during the interview because it hadn’t yet been calculated. So why he said it was impossible to calculate, nobody really knows.

Putting to him that this was convenient that this figure had not been available during the General Election but was now being used to justify ID Cards didn’t get anybody much further. The PMOS simply replied that the figures were not being used to justify ID cards, and…

In all of this we should not lose sight that asylum applications are down 73% from the peak of October 2002.

See what he did there? He jumped from immigration to asylum, despite condemning the Tory party during the election for confusing the two in people’s minds. In answer to a question quite clearly about immigration, he tells us that asylum applications are down!

But we really shouldn’t be surprised at all this. Tony Blair’s public image no longer matters as he’s not seeking re-election, and thus is not accountable to the wider electorate any more. He can do what he likes, and get the dirty work done without having to worry about looking bad in public. And what did Alan Milburn say during the campaign?

I’d do anything to win the election.

Guess what? He has.