Valley of debt

Have a loan, have a loan
Have a loan onward
All in the valley of debt
they all blundered
Forward the .com brigade
"Charge free for us" they said
Into the valley of debt
They all blundered

Alan Cox, http://www.linux.org.uk/~alan/charge.html

Schedule for the further future

It's just coincidence that it's Friday, but I'm thinking about my plans from now until the end of the year. I need to mail my boss later and sort out holiday I think.

Fixtures:

Aug 24-27th: BiCon. See you all there.
Sep 9: Comics reading round Mir.
Sep 12-13th: NESSIE workshop, London. http://www.isg.rhul.ac.uk/nessie/
Oct 2: Alison's birthday
Oct 6: Alison's birthday party
Oct 13-21: Holiday in France
Oct 31 - Nov 6: Whitby

I only get to go to NESSIE if my work pays, but I'd like to go and it might well be OK with them.

So here's a provisional plan. Around the weekend of September 16th-17th would be about the right time for me to visit Berlin again, being 6 weeks since last time. It also fits in well with Nessie, which finishes on the lunchtime of the 13th. If I don't mind missing the comics reading thing (which would be a shame, but...) then I can do this: travel to London on the evening of Fri Sep 7th, go to the Nessie workshop on the Wed and Thu (Sep 12-13), hop onto a plane Thu eve (the workshop finishes lunchtime) and go to Berlin, fly back to London on the following Thu Sep 20th, then travel back to Edinburgh on Sun eve or Monday morning (Sep 23/24th). Whew!

purplerabbits, I'll give you a call later and we can synchronise our diaries...

Schneier tells it like it is

Every time I write about the impossibility of effectively protecting digital files on a general-purpose computer, I get responses from people decrying the death of copyright. "How will authors and artists get paid for their work?" they ask me. Truth be told, I don't know. I feel rather like the physicist who just explained relativity to a group of would-be interstellar travelers, only to be asked: "How do you expect us to get to the stars, then?" I'm sorry, but I don't know that, either.

http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0108.html