In the news: Man dies, taking all his company’s vital network passwords with him. He should have used this interesting program: Dead Man’s Switch. If it isn’t regularly reset, the program posts pre-composed e-mails to pre-selected addresses, and protect sensitive files by encrypting or destroying them. So if you die, it tells everyone.
Still, it does have some drawbacks. “I went on vacation, and forgot all about the switch,” said Kenny LaGuardia, a Web designer from Los Angeles. “When I returned home, the program had posted, ‘So I guess I’m dead’ messages to all the newslists I subscribe to, and destroyed all my adult entertainment files.” (via wired)

Kelly Watch: If anyone thought the anti-BBC slant to the papers over the last couple of days was merely the papers backing up public opinion, think again.
“It is understood, ” says the Telegraph, “that on Saturday afternoon political journalists on the News of the World … had been preparing to write a critical piece on the Government.
That afternoon they were suddenly informed that the opposite was now required.”
Many of the papers reported menacing phonecalls from Number 10 over the weekend. And what links all the papers that tore the BBC apart over the weekend? Rupert Murdoch owns them – a man who desparately wants the government to let him buy Channel 5. The Guardian tells all.

Bird gets clever. Well done it. (1 MB)

So there I was last night, watching a documentary on the “disgraced peer” Jeffrey Archer, when up popped his former friend Michael Stacpoole, who helped lie at his trial and give his various prostitutes a pay off. Cue lots of phoning, emailing and calls across the office today confirming that he is indeed related to me, and that he now manages to maintain a healthy chain of “gentleman’s clubs”. All a bit embarrassing really.
I DID, however, enjoy having my surname splashed across the screen…

An interesting (well, vaguely) look at the underground – what it looks like, what it used to look like, and what it really looks like.

A blog for everyone – BBC analyses weblogs (blogs) like this one. In summary, as Guy Chapman put it, “The great thing about blogs is that anyone can set one up. The only problem is that anyone can set one up.”

A brilliant email forward from Mark R: Symptoms that you’re over 25

As some of you know, I am primarily in charge of the web and Call Centre systems at a rapidly growing retail company, with a side salad of UK-wide system support. It’s busy.
I booked a holiday back in February for the first week of August. All week. It turns out that a major catalogue release is scheduled for that week, along with the huge launch of the website. These two factors could cause major technical problems.
I’m not a popular man.

A lot of conjecture tonight on the David Kelly debacle. My theory’s gaining ground – check out these two threads (one, two) on metafilter, a big discussion forum. If you read those, you’ll note a key fact I discovered – that every time Dr Kelly’s story is mentioned on the television, the BBC use the term “apparent suicide”. Look at the BBC News website too – they say he was “found dead”, and that he “died from a slit wrist”. In fact i’ve just searched the site for “kelly suicide”, and not once does it use the single word “suicide” – “apparent suicide”, yes, and “bled to death”… Very non-committal, and no mention of suicide at all. But it’s been confirmed, hasn’t it? Or do they know something we don’t…
But anyway, avanti, enough. Let everyone else tussle with it. I’m off to find some exceedingly silly links for you all.

Paul D contacted me today to say that wibbler.com’s become over-political of late. True, its not the usual fare here in wibbler.com, and so I’ll try to put it to bed after the next post. If nothing gets my goat in the coming days, of course.