In recent years, the Government has attempted to raise the profile of consultation and improve the way it is undertaken, for example by producing the Code of Practice on Written Consultation in November 2000. The Code set out minimum standards of written consultation for central government. Quoted in the forward to the Code, the Prime Minister Tony Blair said "I believe that the message is spreading throughout the administration that better consultation means better results". A report by the National Audit Office argued: "it is important that in order to develop a clear understanding of the issue, departments consult…those who will benefit from the policy or those affected indirectly and those who may have to implement the policy" [From VIEWFINDER: A POLICY MAKER’S GUIDE TO PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT - note: PDF document]

How very interesting given that they admit that Foundation Hospitals and University Fees were policies put together without sufficient consultation - it would appear that they should have listened to their own advice. Also odd to read the above and then hear Peter Hain say variable rate fees are non-negotiable - odd way to do a consultation.

We do not see why a consumer downloading music from the Internet to make a private copy for personal and noncommercial use should be prosecuted at all [via InfoWorld: Breach of copyright no crime under draft E.U. law: November 28, 2003: By : E-business Strategies]

 Well, its a view. Should one be disturbed that they don't see why? In the good ol' days, we all knew we were doing wrong borrowing friends LPs and taping them, but we did it anyway 'cos we was wild and the odds of getting 'done' were incredibly small.

As it turns out, it's possible to replace the battery for as little as $49 using third-party kits. Apple itself offers a battery-replacement service for about $106 including mailing, with a 90-day guarantee on materials and workmanship. Apple's program was introduced only in the past two weeks.  [via iPod's 'dirty secret' wins Web fans | CNET News.com]

 What a wonderful statement of new industrialism - a product life of 18months. My shaver has a longer lifespan than this, what's up with these gadgets, it must be 'by design'?

Radeox Render Engine API (REA)

REA is a lightweight standard API for Wiki rendering engines. This makes it easy to plug a rendering engine that suits your needs into your wiki. Or this makes the rendering engine from your wiki available to others. Using REA you can make wiki engines exchangeable. The API is LGPL (lighter license like Apache possible) and written for Java.

 [via Radeox :: Radeox]

XAML for .NET 1.1.  

You read that right, Chris Sells points to a company that has created a version of XAML for 1.1. [Andrew Stopford]

Man, that was fast. Program with XAML today. Looks pretty cool. [via LonghornBlogs.com]

 Worth a look.

http://www.decafbad.com/blog/tech/dynamic_polling_freq_too.html

My aggregator, at present, pays attention to whether or not it found new items at the last poll of a feed. If it didn't, it gradually backs off from polling (adding 1 hour to the interval, with a max of 24 hours). If it does find new items, it jumps to attention (dividing the interval in half, with a min of 1 hour.)

Posted by: l.m.orchard on November 25, 2003 10:14 AM [via TeledyN: The End of RSS]

 This is essentially what iMunch does.

... So the problem is not J2EE itself, it's just that the people who use it to build applications don't know how to network, are lousy programmers, and can't cope when things go wrong.... [via Loosely Coupled weblog - J2EE 'grossly unreliable']

So who is going to do the analysis that says Windows is not reliable, but the problem is not Windows itself but the people who use it to build applications.... Perhaps that's already been done, perhaps MS hope the solution is called Longhorn (the one where 10K lines of code reduces to 1, of course if it is then unrealiable, it's MSs' fault - except of course the one line has a ton of attributes and if you don't use those right...).

Scientists find mystery particle.  Researchers find one of the basic building blocks of matter, but it does not fit with current particle theory. [via BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

 Ahhh, ye goode olde quark, strangeness and charm. Surely they could have come up with a better name than X(3872).

Confusing Hype with Reality.  ...... Robert Scoble writes ... Blogging and RSS feeds are nice, but they are the icing on the cake of interacting with and satisfying your customer needs not the end all and be all of them.  [via Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life]

 Dare seems to have taken it on as a mission to try and undo the senseless hype - its an amusing battle.

Aussies blown away by Poms rugby style.  The online poll never lies [via The Register]

 Vote, vote, vote! At the time of this writing upto 82000 votes and still holding good at 83%, which means some must also be in there trying to up the dull rating. The vote is here.