Craig Mayhew’s Blog

I am a keen believer in law. It stops me being killed for my wallet while walking to the shop, keeps my house from being broken into while walking to said shop and my family safe.

So when a new law is passed – I do my best to comply. This one however, is ridiculous.

The EU Cookie law.

A law passed by the european union as a european directive. A directive to protect online users from cookies. The same cookies that make the web as we know it actually work.

So to get my site to adhere to the european law (which is slightly different depending on the EU country so I assume as I am not a solicitor and to be on the safe side that I need to abide by all variations). All I need to do is get informed consent from my website visitors before placing any cookies on their machine. It is important to note at this point that it’s not just cookies from craigmayhew.com but also any cookies from third party services I use on my site (facebook buttons, twitter buttons, google analytics, google adsense… the list goes on).

So, all I need to do is prevent any anonymous google analytics data from being recorded, adverts displayed and twitter/facebook buttons from appearing until I have “implied consent” from the website user.

I could achieve complied consent by displaying a banner at the top (welcome back to the 90’s!) asking the user to consent to cookies, deny cookies or continue anyway which would default to allowing cookies. Assuming they consent or continue then I can record anonymous google analytics data, display adverts and use twitter/facebook buttons, but only on the second page view.

Great – except 90% of my visitors only visit one page on my site. They find the exact page they need via Google, read the page, get the info and get out. So now I can’t get advertising revenue from 90% of users?

Oh wait I could display a dialog to every first time visitor before content is loaded demanding they accept my cookies or leave. Yea that would keep the site profitable.

Thanks EU directive, good one.

In response I have removed all advertising, analytics and all share buttons. So on the upside you as the site user have slightly faster page loads, but with reduced functionality. The silver lining for me is that the site no longer makes any money and so I no longer have to worry about paying tax for it :)

The BBC caught my eye with a recent article on the possibility of a UK spaceport. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18114439. This is a nice idea but I doubt we have any near term use for it.

What we really need is a government effort to develop the worlds first space elevator. The first country to do this will have a monopoly over the space industry as it should reduce the cost of sending objects into space by 95%. Not to mention all the patents and intellectual property that could be profited from.

If the UK decided to do this it could create many jobs. Suddenly the world would be sending all their material and technology here that they want sending into space. It would establish the UK as the leaders in a new field. I’m sure it would go a long way to sorting out the UK debt crisis in the long term …

Oh the fun… Hopefully this will help you with testing in IE.

Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image
https://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=11575

Utilu IE Collection
http://utilu.com/IECollection/

I came across this recently, it had me in stiches and I have no idea if it’s serious.

It’s a patent application for walking through walls. There are several gems in here including “Upon reading his explanation, I realized that the thunderstorm is actually a hyperspace physics phenomenom.” and my personal favourite “How to generate negative mass, traverse hyperspace and walk through walls, even with a dog”.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/20946878/Walking-through-walls-US20060014125A1

A quick Google and there are several patents by the same chap JOHN QUINCY ST. CLAIR.

http://www.google.co.uk/patents?id=nB-dAAAAEBAJ&pg=PA1&dq=US2003/0197093Al&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iUHzTsy-HI3H8gPMo8jGAQ&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=US2003%2F0197093Al&f=false