Just how incredible is Google? At the moment, it's telling me it contains 3,083,324,652 pages. That's three billion web pages, and my searches take no more than 0.1 seconds. Do you remember old (well, fairly recent actually) cop thriller movies where they would have to search the police database for criminals matching a specific profile? And it would take hours, sometimes days to complete the search? (They've probably bought one of these by now!) I remember back in the old days of the web, when search technology was dominated by Yahoo (manual directory) and Altavista (automatic robot). Sure, there was competition, Hotbot and Lycos to mention two, but now ask anyone how they search the web and they'll more than likely reply "Google". Pretty incredible considering they only went beta in 1998. Hats off!

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Following on from the recent stories in the press about the end of the consultation period for entitlement cards, I took the opportunity to visit the Stand.org.uk website and use their facility to write to the Government and fax my MP, Jane Griffiths about the issue. To her credit she replied very quickly but unfortunately didn't offer me any answers to the questions and issues I raised (and rather worryingly can't seem to use a spell checker). Her response was a pathetic "those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear".
Also she picked up on my mentioning illegal immigrants and almost instantly took the defensive, assuming I have something against them as a group. Of course I had to retort with a rather long email attacking her wishy-washy reply, explaining in detail that it's not that I have anything against illegal immigrants per se, more that anyone in that situation is very likely to find a 'high value' ID card (Entitlement card, if you prefer) a perfect tool in their quest to blend into society unnoticed. I also sent her a few links to articles on the net which may help her to form an opinion ;-)
I kind of got the impression that either she didn't have the first clue about Blunkett's proposals for a National Entitlement Card or worse, she thought I was a reactionary Daily Mail reader who didn't understand it apart from it must have something to do with illegal immigrants. I hope I managed to set her straight on both issues. Incidentally, my opposition to a National ID (Entitlement) card runs deep. To find out how deep, drop me a line (use this link to )

While you're here, please visit my homepage and leave me a tag (the thingy on the right).

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