headhuntme.co.uk

A more focused approach to recruitment that ensures total anonymity for candidates and a highly targeted selection process for recruiters, headhuntme.co.uk is unique.

I'm not sure about "unique" but it is certainly unusual, rare and any other synonym for "nearly unique" that you can think of.
One of the biggest issues for executives and professionals in researching the job market is that their current employer will find out too soon. A look around at what might be available is simply that -- it is not necessarily saying "I'm dissatisfied with what I've got" but could well be saying "The more I look at possible openings the more I like where I am". Guaranteed anonymity during the preliminary process is essential and this is what headhuntme.co.uk offers.

All UK government websites must be WCAG AA compliant

Brian Kelly at UK Web Focus (13 October) explains why he believes, along with a number of other experts in the field, that the requirement to comply with the WCAG Guidelines is inappropriate.

The UK Government has published a Public consultation on Delivering Inclusive Websites document (TG102). This document (available in MS Word and PDF formats) states that all government Web sites must comply with the WCAG AA guidelines by December 2008. And failure to comply will result in the withdrawal of the .gov.uk domain. Great, you may think. At last the Government is doing something positive for people with disabilities. I would disagree - I think this is a flawed approach for several reasons.

A well-thought-out argument that makes sense. Please read and comment back to Brian if appropriate.

Killing botnets

Botnets, networks of compromised computers, are here to stay. Sadly, the Storm is just one of many active botnets today. According to Dr. Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks, "We currently track about 1,800 live botnets a day. The bulk of those come up and go down within a day." As for how many machines are infected, he couldn't estimate. Is there are any hope that we might someday kill off botnets entirely? Read more

Thanks to CNet

Progress in synthetic classification: towards unique definition of concepts

Gnoli, Claudio (2007)
In Proceedings Information access for the global community: an international seminar on the Universal Decimal Classification Extensions and corrections to the UDC, 29, The Hague.
Full text available as PDF
Abstract
The evolution of bibliographic classification schemes, from the end of the 19th century to our time, shows a trend of increasing possibilities to combine concepts in a classmark. While the early schemes, like DDC and LCC, were largely enumerative, more and more synthetic devices have appeared with common auxiliaries, facets, and phase relationships. The last editions of UDC and the UDC-derived FATKS project follow this evolution, by introducing more specific phase relationships and more common auxiliaries, like those for general properties and processes. This agrees with Farradane's principle that each concept should have a place of unique definition, instead of being re-notated in each context where it occurs. This evolution appears to be unfinished, as even in most synthetic schemes many concepts have a different notation according to the disciplinary main classes where they occur. To overcome this limitation, main classes should be defined in terms of phenomena rather than disciplines: the Integrative Level Classification (ILC) research project is currently exploring this possibility. Examples with UDC, FATKS, and ILC notations are discussed.

Home safe and well

And , no morphine cloud! I survived through the whole "after the operation" period with just the epidural topped up with paracetamol and codeine.
I can now walk so much better than I could before I went in to the hospital that I have to be VERY careful not to overdo things. I'm not officially back at work for another four weeks but when "the office" (or one of them) is only a step from the dining room and I can work all day in my nightwear and dressing-gown it's difficult to keep from doing something.
The plan is to work through the incoming mail and posts etc and then catch up with the drafts making them into substantive posts.
I don't think that anyone is overly bothered about much between now and Christmas anyway -- and rest assured that if it's urgent I will tell you about it.

PS: I've just heard that Dawn was taken in to emergency intensive care at 5am this morning following some kind of allergic collapse. No more details available as yet. If you can then prayer would be welcome by this devout Christian and her family, if prayer is not your "thing" then just send lots of good wishes over the air-waves.
Thank you.

Oops

Forgot to admit that I have not cleared all my "waiting in the drafts folder" items but I'm now falling asleep over the keyboard so they will simply have to stay in the cupboard for a week (or so)!

10 interesting things I've read since 22 November

I have, of course, read a lot more than 10 interesting things in nearly two weeks -- and I've only got nine in here.

I had thirty-six hours notice that there is, hopefully, actually going to be a bed available for me in the hospital so it's in at 10am on Wednesday, operated on Thursday morning and get back to something like normality sometime the following Monday. The intervening period will be spent so full of morphine that I'll be on cloud nine!

Anyway -- the bizarre, the interesting and the thought-provoking (I hope).

1. Webcam cheddar fetches £1,145 on eBay from VNUNET.COM by Ian Williams
   Wedginald, the cheddar cheese watched by millions over the Internet, has been auctioned off for BBC Children in Need.


2. Speed penalty point plan attacked - BBC News from Inner Temple Library by Sally “Plans to increase penalty points for speeding motorists could ‘criminalise’ a large section of the UK’s workforce, driving instructors have warned.” Full story
   My immediate reaction to this? Unprintable! If you break the law then you deserve the punishment. And if the rats who race over the humps down our tiny street could be caught I'd be more than happy to do worse to them than "criminalise" them.


3. Law won't help Darling's data victims
   The law is impotent when your data is carelessly lost or discarded by government or companies, discovers Stewart Mitchell of PCPro
   I don't understand why the data victims belong to the Chancellor nor do I understand why there is no recompense in law for damage done -- except, I suppose, that the damage hasn't actually happened as yet and could be a long way down the line for some people.


4. Friday fun from Science, Engineering & Technology Blog by Anne
   Did you know that Intute has a collection of interactive science quizzes? Check them out! They range from fun topics such as dinosaurs and chocolate through to more educational content such as mineralogy and the periodic table. Top quiz scores are posted on the site.


5. The importance of art 35,000 years old discovered in the Swabian Jura. Originating some 15,000 years before the cave paintings of Southern France. Aside from the beauty this shows the importance of representational art in human evolution. You can read the article here, and Dave Snowden found it thanks to Thinking Meat.


6. The Wednesday Word Wise Roundup from Word Wise by Dan Santow
   "Not too long ago – don’t ask why – I was trying to think of what that little indentation between one’s nose and one’s upper lip is called. Not only didn’t I know its name, I had no idea how to even start a search for it (Google “little indentation between one’s nose and one’s upper lip”?). Then I read about the Visual Dictionary Online at Lifehacker and within about six seconds learned it’s called a philtrum (“small cutaneous depression extending from the lower part of the nose to the upper lip”). The Visual Dictionary Online, from Merriam-Webster, is illustration-based and as Lifehacker points out, it can help you “find the name of a whatsit.” It's also a load of fun to surf through."


7. Dan continues: "I’ve been ranting and raving for years about the use and misuse of the word “unique,” and a few weeks ago The Wall Street Journal’s online Style & Substance column weighed in (happily, on my side, even if that wasn’t its intention). According to the Journal: “Talent Scouts For Cirque du Soleil Walk a Tightrope: Ms. Giasson’s Tiny Acrobat Just Might Be Too Unique,” said the headline, resurrecting the perennial conundrum of whether there are degrees of uniqueness. The short answer, as we said ominously in May, is “not on our watch.” Because unique uniquely means one of a kind, we should say such things are too rare or too unusual. Then there is the issue of “unique” users aka “unique” visitors, an imprecise but often quoted measurement of the number of individual visitors to Web sites. When we use the term, we should use quotation marks around unique to indicate it’s an industry term that uses unique in a unique way."


8. The English do poetry says Morgan Meis at 3 Quarks Daily
   Here are two opening lines:
   “Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,”
   “Lord, the Roman hycinths are blooming in bowls and”
   The first is from Walter Raleigh’s The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage, the second from T.S. Eliot’s A Song for Simeon.
   The American play jazz, the French write essays, the Germans compose music -- the English? They do poetry.
9. Purge This from Kids Lit Get ready to be a little ticked off. Or a lot, if you are like me. Publishers in the UK are censoring children's books not for sexual content or violence, but for real evil. Brace yourself. Ready? They are protecting your children from (gasp) sharp objects and walking alone - IN BOOKS. Yup. So, no child in Britain will be exposed to the horror of sharp sticks, fire-breathing dragons, perching on ladders, or heating elements glowing red. Well, thank goodness that someone is protecting my children! I mean, silly mother that I am, I might have read them books about dragons, swords, painting the stars on ladders, or any number of things. Now let's understand what the real enemy is here: IMAGINATION! GASP!Wouldn't want those kids to start thinking, dreaming, learning! Just turn the TV back on. They won't see anything bad there. It's the books that are dangerous. You could lose an eye!
10. Well that's going to have to wait until I get out of "that tha 'orspital" when I've been "done". I didn't think I was doing too badly -- got the printed ADSET Members' Update finished, PDF and Word versions created and sent; wrote a business newsletter for my colleague Leonora at The Accounting Bureau and all this with only thirty-six hours warning that there was, in fact, a bed booked for me!