Improbulus has an excellent post on the changes in security at the First Direct online banking service. Online banking's security is a joke. They ought to just bite the bullet and give them those hash-time generators. The more passwords, security codes and account numbers banks give out, the less secure they become - because you need to remember more stuff you write it down! 
Lee seems to be enjoying Jesus Camp. Horror movies need not exist except as camp - real life is far more horrific than any horror movie.
A student at my college has created a petition that wants to put philosophy and critical thinking as a central part of the educational system. I've signed it, but it isn't going to happen. Politicians don't want philosophers, they want followers. This is the case, this has always been the case and it isn't likely to change any time soon. People don't send their kids to school to have them learn how to think. They send them their so they can get a piece of paper which they can then use to get a job and earn money. Philosophy has a vital part to play in the education of individuals. But to think that the British school system tries to educate individuals is foolish.
Mike has an announcement and demo of GrazrScript 1.2.
Cory Doctorow has an article about reading off screens. Since I got Plucker for my Palm Pilot, I do read quite a bit of fiction from screens. The problem I have with a lot of ebooks and PDFs is that the page numbering is out of sync with the print editions - meaning that they are as good as useless for academic work. I have read a very large novel as a PDF on my computer screen once.
BoingBoing reports that Yahoo is getting ready to launch Flickr for China. Tip: posting photos tagged 'falungong' isn't a smart idea, unless you dig the idea of having your organs ripped out and sold.
Some thoughts on the SemWeb 
Some particularly prescient thoughts. First, Dave Beckett:
The semantic web is: a webby way to link data. That is all.
Everything beyond that is entirely optional fluff: data vs metadata, syntaxes, ontologies, query languages, rules, logic, ...
And Ora Lassila:
After 10+ years of work into various aspects of the Semantic Web and its constituent technologies, I am now fully convinced (read: no longer in denial) that most of the remaining challenges to realize the Semantic Web vision have nothing to do with the underlying technologies involving data, ontologies, reasoning, etc. Instead, it all comes down to user interfaces and usability. Somehow, I repeatedly run into a situation where some use of Semantic Web technologies that would make a nice end-user application is "blocked" by the fact that the user interface is the real challenge.
Danny Ayers also appeared on Talking With Talis, a great podcast about information science, librarianship and such in the era of Web 2.0 and stuff. I listened to his talk today on my very slow train to London today. User interface is an important part of what Danny was saying.
I can't promise a beautiful user interface yet. I have a things that I want to say about this, but I'm not sure it's right to announce it yet.
Tags: semweb, davebeckett, dannyayers, oralassila, user interface, user experience
