Some time ago, I penned an article “Heroes of Computing” where I discussed what, in my opinion, was a lamentable lack of awareness for pioneers of the computing profession, even within the profession itself.

And what of those most notable pioneers?

Charles Babbage, who many people credit with building the first computer was ridiculed and died a lonely man.

Ada Lovelace, who wrote logic that would run on Babbage’s machines and is often cited as the worlds first programmer died of bloodletting from her physicians as a treatment of uterine cancer.

And, finally, Alan Turing, one of the most brilliant minds this country has ever produced, whose contributions to the war effort in WWII at Bletchley Park is widely regarded to have shortened it by two years sparing potentially millions of lives, was forced to undergo chemical castration after being convicted of homosexuality.

Image by Christopher_Hawkins via Flickr

Lets look at this in a different light.

Alan Turing invented the computer and was castrated and persecuted. Alan Sugar sold computers and was knighted.

So, I was delighted when I was directed towards a new e-Petition on the UK government website, calling for his pardon.

In 2009 then British Prime-Minister, Gordon Brown, issued a formal apology on behalf of the British government. Stating “I’m proud to say sorry to a real war hero.”

People may cite the context of that era and state that, at the time, homosexuality was illegal. But even if you account for that, Alan Turing’s treatment was still utterly appalling.

He was prosecuted for gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885, the same piece of legislation used nearly seven decades earlier to prosecute Oscar Wilde. The punishment was quite different, however. Wilde was sentenced to two years imprisonment and hard labour, whilst Turing was offered chemical castration as an alternative to imprisonment. The sentence is widely regarded to be a knee-jerk reaction at the time to acute public anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents. Turing was, of course,  never accused nor suspected of espionage in any shape or form.

In this instance, I think it’s also worth referencing the case in 2006 where the British Government formally pardoned 306 soldiers who were executed for desertion during the World War One. This was considered by many to be most brutal of wars, as many ordinary individuals, conscripted and wrenched away from their family and loved-ones were subject to a gruesome and almost unimaginable horror.

It was recognised that in many cases these people were probably sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The pardon allowed their families to remember them in honour and to celebrate their life and sacrifice.

In the centenary of his birth I see that it is only fitting that the same gesture be bestowed upon Turing. By all accounts he was an inspirational and brilliant man who encompassed the very best of British ingenuity and inventiveness, and is someone whose life should be more publicised and celebrated.

So, please, if you are a British citizen I would implore you to sign the government E-Petition. The link is below

https://submissions.epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/23526

I stumbled across this message recently during the course of developing a bespoke jQuery plugin for one of our systems.

The offending code in question was

/*****************************************************************************/
/*Private functions.
/*****************************************************************************/

Given its structure, I found myself blinded to the offending code until I spotted that I had indeed omitted the closing ‘*/’ from the second line.

The message it yielded in full was:

Stopping, unable to continue. (4% scanned).

This message is easy enough to understand, but it’s one of those that causes JSLint to halt in its tracks

The omission of a closing statement to any block of code can result in inadvertently nesting any proceeding code. Block comments are more forgiving of the omission, because the second opening ‘/* will be treated as a comment itself.

However, consider the following:

/*Private functions.    /*Nested Comment*/   */

In the above code, the first close-comment will close everything, and the second will be left dangling. This is even shown up by the syntax-highlighter (if you can see it).

One user did ask this question of Douglas Crockford, who responded

JSLint stops because it sees comments that are nested. That is usually
an indication of a serious coding error. In the face of such errors,
JSLint stops.

So there we have it. Don’t nest your comments.

This article is one of a series on the error and warning messages produced by JSLint.

I saw this homepage recently, where the website ownser offers anyone else with the name “Ashley Hurst” an email address @JamesWiseman.com and it occurred to me that it might be nice to offer an equivalent service here on JamesWiseman.com.

So, if your name is James Wiseman, and you are looking for an email address @JamesWiseman.com then drop me a line.

I currently have dibs on the following:

• mail
• james
• adsense
• webmaster

But you are welcome to anything else (within reason – nothing sweary or offensive)

I’m not planning to charge anything, but if it becaomes hassle to administer, then I may ask for a small one-off fee, or something.

We can work the details out

What better use of blog that to promote your own family and friends?

Well, following the triumphant debut of my brother Richard in the inaugural Wiseman goes wild! Episode 1 : Jerk Chicken, I thought I’d plug the second in the epic “Wiseman goes wild” series Wiseman goes wild. Episode 1.1. Wiseman ‘does’ ikea!

Produced by Dan Marowak it features tips and hints for foraging when you find yourself in you local Swedish furniture store. This epic video is a must see. Or something.

Anyhow, that’s my job done. And to think, this once used to be about programming!

Last year I outed ChemistDirect.co.uk as having given my email address to spammers in my article ChemistDirect.co.uk Exposed Me to Spam Email. Now, over a year later, I can out them once again.

After receiving the original email I decided to set them another trap, signing up with a number of different email addresses over a period of time, each with a date indicator in the email I supplied.

The format was as follows:

chemistdirect141592[yyymmdd] "at" jameswiseman.com

You can read more on my spam trap technique in this article

So, I few days ago I received an email addressed to ‘chemistdirect14159220101008′ ‘at’ jameswiseman.com. This meant that the email address I had given out on the 8th October 2010 (as indicated by the ’20101008′ part had been compromised)

The message was as follows:

I'm waiting for you,

Katelynn [web address]

Hayden

Like previously, this redirected to a pharmaceutical website offering Viagra.

So, despite a comment purporting to be from their IT Department telling me that ‘We take user data security very seriously as our business depends on this’  it seems that ChemistDirect are still up to their old tricks.

And, if the email addresses are compromised, how safe are the credit card details that you are submitting?

Just a thought.

DO NOT REPLY EITHER WAY – THIS IS A SCAM

Just received this message

Do you have a trapped or frozen pension? Achieve 7% growth and release 25% cash now! Text pension for a free review to release cash

Received from:

• +447895123861 / 07895123861

This is one of many messages that are circulating as originally highlighted in my article Debt Settlement Order Spam Text Message. If you ever receive anything that remotely fits this template then delete it.

This is another example of an anonymous company, spamming the text mailboxes of thousands in order to exploit some of the must vulnerable. For someone in serious debt, the opportunity to ‘unlock’ a pension whilst achieving 25% growth might seem favourable.

However, it is impossible to unlock your pension before the age of 55. The 25% mentioned in the text message refers to the 25% tax-free cash, that you can opt to take anyway. This is an option presented to you by your pension provider when you cash in, or ‘vest’ your pension anyway.

The companies that offer this service will be intent on taking a sizeable percentage of any ‘unlocked’ money, potentially condemning  the victims to hardship in their retirement years.  This article at MoneyExtra.com carries more information on the pitfalls of pension unlocking and some possible alternatives.

Reporting

You may be report these messages to your provider. The following links may help:

Vodafone – How do I report spam text messages? Forward the spam message to VSPAM (87726).

Orange – Stop spam text messages. If you are on Orange and get spam messages, please forward them to 7726 free from your Orange phone. By doing this you are helping Orange to collate information to help reduce spam messages being sent to you and others.

02 also allow you to report on 7726. See: SPAM and unwanted subscription texts

I would also try forwarding the message onto 7726 if you are with T-Mobile or Three.

You can also try NumberCop and DoNotCall.gov

Back in May 2009, the Guardian newspaper wrote an article Spam to go – the new mobile menace. It recommends a number of organisations you can contact.

To complain about an inappropriate text, call the Advertising Standards Authority 020 7492 2222 or go to www.asa.org.uk/asa/contact/

To resolve continual mobile spam despite texting “stop”, contact the ICO on 01625 54 57 45 or go to www.ico.gov.uk/complaints.aspx

For help with premium rate text spam, call PhonepayPlus on 0800 500 212 or log on to www.phonepayplus.org.uk/output/Make-a-complaint.aspxDue to a new legislation, those struggling with debt can now apply to have it written off. For more information text the word ‘INFO’ or to opt-out text stop.

When referring to function arguments in JavaScript, we almost always refer to them by the name by which they were passed:

function foo(a) {
    var b = a;   //refer to the function parameter 'a',
    //....
}

However, there is an object representing these arguments to which we can refer. This is the arguments object.

This object provides us with some useful properties, which include .length and .callee. It also allows us to refer to the argument by position like so:

function foo(a) {
    var b = arguments[0];
}

It is this use of the arguments object that JSLint complains about. Variables are given names to identify what they are and what they mean. There are a valuable tool for writing self-documenting code, and referring to them in any other way makes little sense. You’re also relying on the argument being in a particular position. If you ever change the order of the arguments in the function definition, you’ll have to change the index by which you reference each argument.

Moreover, unless your variable name is longer than 12 characters, you will require  more keystrokes to refer to the arguments themselves. In addition to this, opimisers like GZip which can give variables and arguments shorter names for compression and obfuscation purposes are likely to skip over these instances, reducing the compression capability of your code.

Refer to this post on JavaScript arguments at seifi.org for more information on the arguments object.

Special thanks to this article at Programming Goodies for highlighting this as missing from my list of JSLint Errors.

A Guide To JSLint Messages

This article is one of a series on the error and warning messages produced by JSLint.

DO NOT REPLY EITHER WAY – THIS IS A SCAM

IMPORTANT!:Loans & Credit Cards can now have their INTEREST & CHARGES FROZEN if you’re unable to make the repayments. For more info txt INFO or txt stop to stop.

Received from:

• +447938402427/07938402427

Image via Wikipedia

This is a spam text message WHICH IS ILLEGAL. The companies that use this form of marketing are equivalent to the people who buy stolen goods. These are not the sort of companies you want to do business with! It is likely that any dealing with them will leave you worse off.

This is one of many messages that are circulating as originally highlighted in my article Debt Settlement Order Spam Text Message. If you ever receive anything that remotely fits this template then delete it.

As for the ability to ‘Freeze’ the charges, there is a Debt Relief Order (Link to Citizens Advice Bureau), which is only available to people in very very very specific circumstances and who remain in those circumstances for the duration of the order. It also has some marked consequences, which are not to be taken lightly. You can find these by scrolling down through this article.

Moreover, Debt Relief Orders can only be processed through an approved intermediary (otherwise known as a “Competent Authority). These can be found by visiting this site. Note, the company that is touting for your business will NOT be an approved intermediary.

Again, DO NOT REPLY. This is a random act of spamming – a computer program is systematically trying to send this out to thousands of numbers at random. It has, by sheer chance, found your number!

And, if you can, post the number in the comments below. This will help people searching by that number alone find this article and avoid any potential trouble arising from replying.

Also, please. please post any variants in full. I have had so many comments from people in desperate circumstances who are being targeted by the parasites that operate these scams.

Are You a Victim?

Screenchannel Television is making a new series about debt and loans and are looking for people to share their experiences. If have been a victim of this scam, or have even considered responding and are interested in taking part, then you can read more in this article.

How Does It Work?

The whole setup is quite elaborate. But in essence there is a computer program that pretends to be the number you see that sends out all the spam messages. Meanwhile, another computer program monitors the text-message mailbox of all of the numbers you see. If you reply, then you are added to a database of numbers to be called (and for future spamming).

I’ve written this up in full at: Telephony Leads and Debt Management Companies – How It Works.

Reporting

You may be report these messages to your provider. The following links may help:

Vodafone – How do I report spam text messages? Forward the spam message to VSPAM (87726).

Orange – Stop spam text messages. If you are on Orange and get spam messages, please forward them to 7726 free from your Orange phone. By doing this you are helping Orange to collate information to help reduce spam messages being sent to you and others.

02 also allow you to report on 7726. See: SPAM and unwanted subscription texts

I would also try forwarding the message onto 7726 if you are with T-Mobile or Three.

You can also try NumberCop and DoNotCall.gov

Back in May 2009, the Guardian newspaper wrote an article Spam to go – the new mobile menace. It recommends a number of organisations you can contact.

To complain about an inappropriate text, call the Advertising Standards Authority 020 7492 2222 or go to www.asa.org.uk/asa/contact/

To resolve continual mobile spam despite texting “stop”, contact the ICO on 01625 54 57 45 or go to www.ico.gov.uk/complaints.aspx

For help with premium rate text spam, call PhonepayPlus on 0800 500 212 or log on to www.phonepayplus.org.uk/output/Make-a-complaint.aspx