Virtually Spot On

I have to admit that I tend to read The Reg more for its entertainment value than for its incisive analysis (with the honorable exception of John Lettice's pieces on ID cards, which always manage to be worth reading on both counts). But there's no doubt that sometimes there's some sharp thinking as well as sharp writing.

Like this piece on Microsoft's snuggle-up with XenSource in the field of server virtualisation:

Knowing that it can't compete in the market in the interim, Microsoft has played the old IBM trick of creating confusion. Don't go with VMware. Go with XenSource. That's who we like. Have a look at what they have to offer.

Spot on.

UK ID Cards DOA?

Regular/long-suffering readers will know that I am an implacable foe of the UK Government's scheme to make everyone in the country carry ID cards. As well as being a huge waste of money (all £19 billion of it), they will inevitably make us less secure (just ask Bruce Schneier).

So I was delighted to come across this fantastic scoop by The Sunday Times, which suggests that the scheme is much closer to collapse than even I might have hoped. This is based on some killer emails that were leaked to the newspaper by senior civil servants involved in the doomed project.

A sample of their candid views:

This has all the inauspicious signs of a project continuing to be driven by an arbitrary end date rather than reality.

...

I conclude that we are setting ourselves up to fail.

...

Just because ministers say do something does not mean we ignore reality - which is what seems to have happened on ID Card

And don't miss John Lettice's usual lucid analysis of what all this really means.

OU on UK ID DBs

Talking of the Open University, here's an interesting research report from them on the UK Government's plans to introduce ID cards. The study looks at things from a slightly novel angle: people's attitudes to the scheme, and how they vary according to the details.

The most interesting result was that even those moderately in favour of the idea became markedly less enthusiastic when the card was compulsory and a centralised rather than distributed database was used to store the information. Since this is precisely what the government is planning to do, the research rather blows a hole in their story that the British population is simply begging them to introduce ID cards. John Lettice has provided more of his usual clear-headed analysis on the subject.

What is also fascinating is how the British public - or at least the sample interviewed - demonstrated an innate sense of how unwise such a centralised database would be. I think this argues a considerable understanding of what is on the face of it quite an abstract technical issue. There's hope yet - for the UK people, if not for the UK Government....

Blogs and Open Government

The indispensable John Lettice (don't miss his repeated skewering of the UK's idiotic ID card plans) makes a nice connection between blogging - in particular the extraordinary sight of UK Home Office Minister Hazel Blears' blogging - and a more open form of government. Well, potentially, at least....