Cloud computing is a good thing? Well probably, however it is predicated on the availability of cloud applications to run in the cloud (Cloud computing will change business technology, knowledge.computing.co.uk).

Problem - applications to service particular functional needs are frequently determined and bounded by organisational preferences rather than inherent characteristics, so software tends to reflect the likes and dislikes of the commissioner, which many others reject on a "not invented here" basis.

The solution is that there needs to be a consensus on best of breed functional flows before applications can be easily picked up. For  example, the accounting industry has a best-of-breed process defined by the  accounting standards and several hundred years of double entry book-keeping. Result - companies can pick up most accounting software and use it successfully.

A converse example is the industry and sector where I am employed - public education for 16 to 19-year olds. Here we have little common and even less agreed mapping of function in, say, the administration of students. This results in multiple vendors with differing packages which do not even meet
external constraints in standard ways. Here, and throughout higher and further education generally, institutions cannot see a way to introduce even limited shared services, according to a recent survey.

So, for us, cloud computing is just a dream.

Jim Blair

One of the most important UK IT pioneers, David Caminer, died on 19 June.

He was head of LEO Computers, which took the Cambridge University EDSAC and turned it into the "first business computer in the world" in 1951, for Joe Lyons, the teashop chain. LEO Computers sold out in 1963 to English Electric, which then sold it to ICT, the forerunner of ICL, in 1967.

Three important things about LEO are relevant to the present.

First, it came from much closer co-operation between industry and universities. And the industrial partner was not an electronics company, but a retailer with a business problem to solve - payroll and the stock control of buns. Caminer called the LEO story "user-driven innovation", the only innovation that works.

Caminer and the LEO programmers and systems analysts were people who understood business before they became involved with computers. Unlike the products of today's "computer science" graduates, their systems - payrolls of 30,000 workers - were implemented on time and on budget, and actually worked.
Finally, when the LEO team merged with ICT, a box-shifter, their business   knowledge was undervalued. They lost out in management in-fighting, and moved on. The British computer  industry was never the
same again.

Unlike most computer people, the LEO people had  subsequent distinguished careers in academia and business. The most famous was Tim Holley, the "fat cat" who launched the National Lottery for Camelot, then the largest network in Europe. Again, it came in on time and within budget.

David Caminer and his team can still teach us a thing or two.

Richard Sarson

I read with interest your interview with Tim Byles regarding Building Schools for the Future (BSF) (School plan is to build, not demolish).

I note that he uses the mantra: "We are in the business of educational transformation; this is not a bricks and mortar project".

However, the examples he quotes are all linked to administration and facilities management rather than teaching and learning or the engagement of reluctant learners.

Where is the talk of personalising learning with engaging online resources sorted by learning type and ability? Where is the access to media-rich learning on an individual basis? Where is the principle of anywhere, anytime learning that allows our most able to access advanced learning material to extend their horizons, while at the same time allowing a child off school to catch up with missed work?

The administration systems are important, and engagement of parents in their children's learning is vital, but the learning activities are missing from this view of BSF. The danger of BSF is
re-creating the same education system in new buildings, and that will not transform education.

Our children deserve better learning environments than the tired and worn out schools they occupy. BSF is a long overdue investment in our education infrastructure and we must applaud our government for making this commitment. All is far from perfect, however. Is educational transformation at the forefront when schools are told by architects that, because of heat considerations, there should be no more than five PCs in a classroom?

Children find learning most engaging when they are trying something new in an environment where they feel safe and secure in case something goes wrong.

Well, BSF is certainly trying something new but as for feeling safe and secure?

Stephen Douglas
City Learning Centre Manager

John Jones appears to have all the answers with regard to Building Schools for the Future (BSF) and seems to be putting the blame squarely on IT support staff (Vice-like grip, letters.computing.co.uk).

Maybe if the education system employed teachers who were actually IT-competent, and did more to check on what the pupils are really trying to do with their computers in lessons rather than concentrate on their work, we wouldn't have to block such "innovation".

The only things we have to block is YouTube - because there is little related to education on there - social networking, proxy-bypass and games sites because the pupils cannot control themselves enough to not play games or chat when they should be working.

It gets to the point that we're having to manage behaviour because a teacher cannot.

I've never had to turn a teacher's idea down because of "firewall issues", but I have had to disappoint them when they purchase outdated software designed for Windows 95 or NT or is not designed to be run on a  network because they didn't speak to us first.

Perhaps John has watched far too many TV commercials for teacher training where all the little darlings are polite, friendly and willing to learn.

Instead of "advising",  perhaps he should spend some time in real schools and see the problems we face on a daily basis - threats, abuse, blatant attempts to bypass security, theft and damage.

If the pupils and staff don't respect the equipment we manage, they can hardly expect any respect from us.

Andy Davis

There are lots of good and bad things about the BSF programme, but one thing we must not forget is that BSF is not the solution (Consistency is key, letters.computing.co.uk).

If some IT systems in schools are bad, why not create a company that goes to schools every so often to help network managers with problems? Why not set up, manage and send experts to help IT departments in schools? Create policies about standard IT, and help schools with IT problems.

Putting public sector organisations under the umbrella of a private sector company is not solving any problems, it is going to increase them. My managers think so, teachers in my school think so, so what is going on? Why are the top guys not hearing us?

At a previous IT BSF meeting, they told us we have the opportunity to create the classrooms of the future. But suppliers taking the contracts are going to implement their systems, so it's just more of the same - but it will cost more.

I am disappointed that secondary schools are wasting all that taxpayers' money.

Jose, submitted on the web

Despite calls to introduce pure computer software patents in the UK, many observers will be encouraged to see the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) appealing the recent Symbian court decision (Confusion reigns on software patents). It is worth reflecting on the importance of this move.

Judging from the US, where pure computer software patents can be granted, the evidence of success in
extending patent law in this field is mixed. The software industry in the US grew exponentially without pure software patents, suggesting they are not necessary to promote innovation and, rather than acting as an incentive, prevent competitors from developing in a similar field.

Extending patent law in this case is widely recognised as unworkable, particularly in a field where
innovation is usually accomplished in increments too small to be viewed as inventive steps, and where freelance businesses use the free and automatic protection of copyright protection.

Introducing pure software patents could raise the costs for small software developers to mitigate against risks surrounding research and development, thereby inflating the capital needs of  software development.

The government-commissioned Gowers Review of Intellectual Property agreed with this position, and recommended that changes in the current position on pure software patents, business method patents and gene patents should only be  made in light of economic evidence that they would enhance innovation to offset the considerable costs.

Many commercial and  individual software developers are glad the UK IPO is  taking a stand to listen to all interests in our industry, not merely vested practitioners.

Laura Creighton
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
www.ffii.org
Shareholder Report
www.reportlab.org

Pieter Hintjens
Director Imatix Ltd
www.imatix.com
General Secretary European Software Market Association (ESOMA)
www.esoma.org

Aidan Maguire,
Director Blue Fountain Systems
www.bluefountain.com

It is a pity that this kind of legal action only stifles progress (High Court rewrites UK software patent rules). Imagine if someone had patented binary or the alphabet.

Introducing patents to software is the reason all the big software companies are embroiled in constant court battles. Every company seems determined to patent every software concept they can, knowing that it will screw up some other software producer's ideas.

Ah well, one of the few remaining bastions of the UK's computer industry is destroyed.

Andrew, submitted on the web

While I would agree with Andy Hopkirk's statement that the number of people interested in virtualisation is large (Windows Server: the verdict), I would not wholly agree that the number of those with the ability to experiment with virtualisation is quite small.

The drive for virtualisation is not coming from the lofty heights of academia or research, or from some long-developed strategic plan, but from the ground floor of computing Ð where daily firefighting with limited datacentre space, ever-increasing power requirements and the need to get better value out of
datacentre assets.

Virtualisation has moved rapidly from an interesting technology to an essential part of dealing with the datacentre challenges of the 21st century.

While the National Computing Centre might be able to stand back and take a strategic view, the average IT user cannot wait and wants today's solutions to today's problems.

As second-generation virtual server products have slashed prices without  sacrificing functionality, techniques which have been the preserve of the enterprise are becoming available to small businesses.

Virtualisation is not  optional. That bandwagon is rolling and it will not wait for people to catch up.

David Galton-Fenzi

What planet is Robert Chapman on? (The lure of the public sector).

Is it planet BSF (Building Schools for the Future), or BSP as we call it in our school Ð Building Schools For Profit?

Has he even had a sniff of working in IT support in a school? Come to work in education IT, he says. Well I did, in 1998 when innovation, dynamism and thinking on your feet were key to driving forward IT provision in schools.

Now it will be a very different proposition - as other people quite rightly point out - when schools' technical staff are downgraded to time-constrained monitor monkeys who may not even work in one place but could be shifted around.

I know plenty of people who have jumped ship in the past three years as they see what is unfolding and would prefer to swim rather than sink with the BSF project.

I am employed in a BSF school and have had to  put up with the stress, heartache, uncertainty and mushroom management of the IT provision. Just the thought of rereading a proposal for one of our almost-built BSF schools sends a shiver down my spine.

I can see it now: wireless everywhere, hundreds of laptops in students' hands, computer-controlled door access all flooded throughout the school and all requiring expert on-the-spot support. It will be a nightmare, especially when the private company renegotiates our contracts after the two protected years, which it will do, and downgrades all the IT staff or even makes some   redundant in the relentless pursuit of profit.

Am I jumping ship? You bet I am, as soon as possible. Get out of IT in education before BSF gets in.

Saul Hudson

Large suppliers hate innovation because it disturbs the status quo and it could threaten their dominance and profits (Innovation gets risk assessment).

Accordingly, at their behest, UK government has been forced - by dint of threatened withdrawal of consultancies, directorships, lecture tours and so on for MPs and senior civil servants in their dotage - to go to a great deal of trouble to eliminate small, innovative companies from public sector contracts.

For example, all NHS IT contracts are solely with the big five. Look at any public contract IT pre-qualification questionnaire and you will see that it is impossible for a small UK company to meet the criteria, thus they are eliminated. The contract goes to the big suppliers for up to 10 times the cost and they outsource the work to the third world to maximise their megaprofits.

In the US, public bodies are compelled to use a proportion of their expenditure on small companies, and until similar legislation is applied in the UK, innovation will continue to be stifled and the new industry leaders of the future will never be UK companies.

Name withheld on request

There are far more important things surrounding the misuse of the internet that the government should be dealing with before it even thinks about media piracy (Government to attack download pirates).

The government does not seem to care as much when the little people are wronged, but any injustice to industry makes it pulls its finger out. I doubt the entertainment industry is going to have a lean Christmas because of media piracy.

Dylan, submitted on the web

I was pleased to read of the launch of a Web 2.0 security forum in Computing (Web 2.0 security forum launches), as our view has been that more and more companies are adopting Web 2.0 technologies without implementing sufficient security policies and practices.

Web 2.0 within the workplace is not a fad that is going to disappear; the technology and applications make a whole new mode of working possible that will lead to increased productivity and profitability. However, it will be necessary for businesses to face up to the accompanying security issues to reap the benefits Web 2.0 promises.

Businesses need to educate staff on best practice and their individual responsibility in helping secure new web applications.

IT departments must also take responsibility for the security below this surface level, which involves keeping a close eye on the network and bandwidth rhythms and professionally auditing applications.
Organisations that work to raise awareness of these issues can only help the overall progress of new, powerful applications in the enterprise, as secure best practice here will enable whole new ways of working.

Simon Haighton-Williams
Web Technology Group

Call me a Luddite if you want, but I remain unimpressed by Bill Gates' vision of the future, which sounds more like Futurama or the Jetsons every day (The revolution is only just beginning).

So, we will see "computing available everywhere", will we? Isn't the word for that "intrusive"? If computing is available via "a wide range of devices, often taking advantage of nearby displays and projection surfaces", that sounds to me more like the future as envisioned by science fiction author Philip K. Dick, with advertising and messages being beamed directly to you wherever you are, as you walk down the street, lie in bed, take a shower, or whatever. Intrusive? The word doesn't do it justice.
And when Gates talks about delivering "the best experience for the device you are using", whose definition of "best" is he using?

My ideal experience is not being surrounded by screens of all differing shapes, sizes and colours, demanding my attention and a response, regardless of whatever it is I am actually trying to do, such as buy groceries, enjoy a drive in the countryside or listen to some music - something I definitely want to do without distractions of any sort.

He needs to remember that visions such as George Orwell's 1984 and Dick's Blade Runner are much better described as dystopias, rather than utopias.

Get in step with the real world, Bill - and by the way, I don't think it is going to look much like your vision of it.

Peter Royle

I could not agree more (Facebook is not all it was cracked up to be).

Fast forward five years from now and all the most successful networks will either have a common cause, such as microfinance for the poor, or be a utility that helps you achieve a goal over and above just "hanging out" and self-publishing.

Recent scientific studies suggest that sustainable networks - those that do not degrade - are associated with "low clustering". In other words, diversity in groups is far more successful than density - so networks with thousands of small groups rather than dozens of big groups are the most robust.
Facebook is a highly dense cluster. A word to the wise: decentralise - small pieces, loosely joined.

Leon Benjamin

We will probably see other acquisitions because all the big players are afraid to miss the "next big search thing" (Microsoft deal heralds further consolidation). In most cases, though, they will be buying technology based on the same principle - keyword recognition.

You can add arcane semantic or linguistic algorithms and invest in taxonomies, but you will still have to give a system an exact definition.

But what if the keyword is misspelled? Will the engine work in this case? What if you do not know exactly what you are looking for, but just have a vague notion?

There are other solutions that deal with this problem by imitating the work of the human brain - we do not look for keywords, we look for patterns.

This sort of system means no need for dictionaries that list most common misspellings, no need for inverted indexes, Boolean operators, and taxonomies. Just type in a stream of misspelled consciousness, and the system will find the match.

Such queries will make most search engines catatonic with confusion.

Yegor Kuznetsov

I've read through this story several times (Bill Gates outlines his vision for the next digital decade), even between the lines, but I still cannot find Gates making reference to the future being shiny, overpriced and as functional as a wet haddock with a small iPod forced into its mouth. iPhone reference? I think not.
However, Gates is stating the obvious. What happened to the days when he used to predict and propose as opposed to spieling about obvious "Web 2.0" tech horizons? Come on, we know that rubbish, tell us something.

JT, submitted on the web

Andrew Parker makes some good points (Outsourcing must not be a battle), but what a study cannot uncover is that innovation is something that occurs over time, not at the moment of signing the deal.

Assuming the contract is sensible, the client is still responsible for creating an environment that not only encourages innovation, but also measures it as part of the overall engagement scorecard.

I have worked with more than 20 outsourcing client engagements to develop the governance processes, and have found that clients sometimes create conditions which make service provider innovation impossible.

Clients often retain the very people who should go to the service provider to ensure innovation, so denying the service provider the most knowledgeable people, as well as creating immediate micromanagement and discord in the relationship.

Andrew Parker says owners of outsourcing relationships should make sure their colleagues appreciate the service provider innovating to hold down costs. He should try to walk in the shoes of a real owner of an outsourcing deal - often the most thankless and politically-charged role in an organisation.

Customers only care about themselves, not the service provider.  Relationship owners should focus on making sure that service levels really meet the needs of the consumers of the service. This is an area where I have frequently seen service levels revised, sometimes too late to correct consumer perceptions, which are hard to change once set.

Finally, clients frequently take far too long to raise issues that are impediments to the services and to innovation, partly through lack of experience but perhaps partly because they are afraid to damage their 'partnership'.

Allowing issues to fester is very damaging to a services relationship. For clients seeking innovation, intelligent management and sensitivity to the fact that the service provider's people are human beings are prerequisites to achieving a relationship in which innovation is possible.

Cynthia Batty

Gartner's Ken McGee and other analysts have concluded that the looming threat of recession may force some CIOs to cut their IT budgets for 2008 (CIOs must prepare for economic uncertainty).

But considering the correlation between innovation, growth initiatives and the technology that fosters them, this option could prove unfeasible for many organisations.

The conundrum is how to grow the business and the corresponding infrastructure in the face of stagnant or declining IT budgets.

Eliminating outdated or underused IT assets may  offer immediate cost relief, but how do businesses support growth?

Obviously, the ideal is to be able to do more with existing resources, and this  is where application virtualisation is tipped as the next big thing for IT infrastructure in 2008.

By providing the tools to create a flexible, on-demand infrastructure that intelligently provisions processing power as and when required across the entire organisation, application virtualisation enables CIOs to do more with less.

Return on investment is quick and easily supported, and as markets tighten and competition grows, this is one of the few technologies that can improve customer service levels and internal service level agreements.

Rather than inducing mass eliminations, the predicted IT budget squeeze could be an opportunity for the savvy CIO to capitalise on up-and-coming technologies, and harness resources rather than cut them.

Alun Baker

Once the likes of IBM, CA and Oracle take over a market leader, the level of innovation drops to a standstill (IBM to acquire Cognos for $4.9bn, www.computing.co.uk/2203235).

The little guys, still run by an enthusiastic owner, keep innovating and providing value added service. In three years’ time firms will be leaving the likes of Cognos, just as they left and are leaving Lotus, Rational and all the others.

Greg Soulsby

I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about attitudes towards science and technology in the UK (An inconvenient truth about science, Editor's diary, editor.computing.co.uk).

How many people who are seriously concerned about climate change and are looking to "do their bit" are aware of the work of companies such as Ecowatts or the Searl Solution? These are UK companies working with truly revolutionary ideas that are hardly ever given a mention, or are rubbished out of hand as frauds.

So it is with a lot of UK  science and technology. It seems technology today is seen as more of a curse than a blessing in this country,  despite our amazing heritage and success in technology in days gone by.
We should be doing more to support and promote our technology workers rather than trying to knock them down and drive them away.

Gordon Docherty

I support David Chassels' comments about exploitation of innovation (Tough nut to crack, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk). As an observer of the market for innovation in the UK who regularly engages with high-growth small businesses, the most common complaints I hear are the difficulties in raising finance as these companies move to market, and also the problems of establishing stable revenues.

The typical story is: "We cannot raise finance without sight of sales, but the sales cannot come until the finance is in place to create and market the product." It is almost inevitable that companies fall short on their sales projections, even once they have raised funding, leading to disappointment and stress for the entrepreneurs and their investors.

In the UK we tend to be weaker in our sales focus than in the US. This is particularly because we do not focus hard enough on quarterly sales targets. However, we also suffer from very long buying cycles by potential customers and long decision chains. We would like every larger corporate to appoint a principal (or a team) to front their effort to engage with innovative businesses.

Modwenna Rees-Mogg

If readers really understood the psychology behind entrepreneurship, they would appreciate that a prime motivator is actually creating an enterprise. They would also appreciate that, while capital growth may manifest, it may not immediately be tangible (Business loses in capital gains tax, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk).

I fully support the Chancellor's attempt to streamline the taxation system, including making capital gains tax (CGT) simpler to administer. It was absurd for entrepreneurs to invest in an enterprise, to asset strip that enterprise and then to be levied only about 10 per cent tax on their capital gains.

Perhaps readers will recall the antagonism shown by IT contractors towards the introduction of IR47.

Although previously IT techies may have bought an off-the-shelf company, paid themselves high dividends and avoided paying their fair share of tax and National Insurance, the Inland Revenue finally caught up with the tax dodge. Thankfully, they started paying their fair share of tax.

The same issue arises when levying CGT. Although there is absolutely nothing wrong with entrepreneurs accruing wealth from their endeavours, let us avoid any tendency to condemn a change simply because we may lose out on capital gains.

Rebecca Pidgeon

As a product marketing executive, I can't always wait for my developer teams to write, test and launch new code in today's compressed market cycles (The death of packaged applications revisited, Freeform Dynamics blog, freeform.computing.co.uk).

I am not knocking software programmers, without whom marketing guys would have nothing to promote. They are the engineers that build the infrastructure that makes a better life for everyone. But in my defence, I'm the guy who lets people know about developers' inventions. I also add value by creating new uses for their applications.

So if my customers need a new feature now, I have two choices. I can reach out to my already-overloaded development team to create a new application, or I can find a company that already has a solution that we can integrate. Thus my job becomes more of a packager of third-party technology into one workable solution that I can price and sell to my market.

If I have a great idea for a new product, a quick web search will return three companies that have already launched it and have a platform with which we can connect. The product rollout game has become faster.

Mark Dlugozima

Are we so desperate that comment from businesses that have yet to use Facebook become spokespersons? (Business faces up to social networks).

Rather than Zopa thinking about it, what about Lending Club, which launched on Facebook?
Business needs to stop talking about it and start trying it. Sony BMG's Dylan application is proof that more pointed advertising applications work if they are well thought-out and designed.

Understanding the relevance to your business is key, but Facebook has been much hyped for several months. Any advertiser still talking about it may have missed the boat already.

Two of the UK's leading lights for innovation, and they're stuck on how to use Facebook. How frustrating.

Charles, submitted on the web

While funds for UK innovation are always welcome (£1bn for UK innovation needs to be doubled), I think your article and Lord Sainsbury's report miss a very important aspect of the problem - successful exploitation of our innovation.

In some respects this has been recognised by the setting up of the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), which seems to be using the right words. Whether actions will match and produce results remains to be seen.

Ask any innovator what he or she really wants and it is access to a market to get sales. This is where our US friends really understand how to create economic wealth. This is where the CBI should be thinking what it can do to help itself and achieve the goal of seeing successful technologies grow into successful companies.

The ones that do make it to commercial production very often sell out too early - usually from exhaustion and frustration at UK government and companies' failure to listen to, never mind buy into, something new.

True venture capital in this country still lies with the business angels, but even they have limits. Creating an environment that gives a better chance of commercial exploitation is a winner for all yet we are just so bad at this vital aspect.

The easy reply is that we are not good at selling, but is it that? I think it is that we are not good at buying - there are too many barriers to encourage adoption of the new - unless of course it comes from IBM, Microsoft and so on.

It's time for some really radical thinking. The government may be on track with the TSB but what is the CBI doing other than complaining that £1bn is not enough?

David Chassels

I endorse Richard Sarsons’ praise of the contribution to the computer industry of Maurice Wilkes (Leo came from a different breed)

And I would echo his disappointment at the performance of  latter leaders of the UK computer industry.
I was particularly pleased to see that Joe Lyons and Leo were recognised for the business-needs driven approach which led  to the world’s first business computer, Leo 1.

This autumn sees the 60th anniversary of the Leo Project. To celebrate this, there is an event in London on Friday 19 October run by the Leo Computers Society.

Anyone who has connections with Leo computers, including users, are eligible to attend along with members of the BCS CCS group. Details of the event can be found through our web site: www.Leo-computers.org.uk.

Peter G Byford
Chairman, Leo Computers Society

The achievements of Maurice Wilkes  and his generation (Presidents past and present) put the performance of the great and good of the BCS and the UK industry ever since in a harsh light.

Wilkes did things much more quickly than today’s academics. In 1946, he decided to build a computer as a tool for the Cambridge Maths Lab. By 1949 he had produced Edsac from scratch, with a bit of help from John van Neumann in the US. Some claim it was the first programmed computer in the world.
Edsac also spawned the first business computer in the world, Leo, in 1951.

Wilkes went from an idea in his head to a business application in only five years. Match that today.
The use was thought up by the baker Joe Lyons, not an IT guy. Three years later, Lyons decided to market Leo because none of the business machine companies, including IBM, had come up with a viable alternative. Leo came from the needs of a business user, not from the airy-fairy ideas of computer scientists.

There are plenty of messages in this heartening story for the BCS of today. Most of these messages contradict conventional wisdom.

One is about professionalism. The Leo people did not learn about computers at school or university, as computers did not exist at that time. Their knowledge came from the professions they were in before they joined Joe Lyons.

They were accountants, management trainees, production engineers who learned the techie bit as they went on.

Perhaps people should learn a profession first, and only then be let loose on computers. Maurice Wilkes and his contemporaries were giants ­ I sometimes wonder about their successors.

Richard Sarson

As a mere customer I am becoming concerned by the ideas being put forward by firms for using RFID (M&S forges ahead with RFID).

When I walk into a store or airport I have no desire for anyone to know who I am or what I bought last time. When I am ready to do so, I will make myself known and at that point, my details can be retrieved ­ when I have given my permission to do so. My personal privacy is about all I have left and RFID threatens to remove even that.I appreciate that firms are out to make money and I have no problem with that, but when it comes to the stage when I can no longer be anonymous anywhere then I have to start crying foul.
David Coull

Tackling the same problem with a succession of new approaches and methodologies is a very interesting type of innovation (Can the drive for efficiency kill innovation? Management and IT blog).

In a sense it is almost research ­ as tools and technologies are honed to an optimal solution to the issue, it affords a rare opportunity to truly explore the comparative merits of the various approaches.
Although not perhaps as pure as totally green-field innovation in a totally new arena, this iterative honing is perhaps more enlightening in the long run.

Geno Esposito

RFID parking - what a great idea (Council drives RFID parking).

In fact why not go the whole hog, and replace the tax disc, and just put scanners and cameras on lamp posts, then any cars without tax can be photographed and charged. And when you decide to lock the town down to congestion charging just ring the town with sensors, and charge people going in and out. Then to make the local council more money ring the motorway and toll charge that, and if the driver travels faster than 75mph fine them while you’re at it.

If a car is stolen or used in a crime, police can track it by RFID as it moves and intercept the thief, cutting down crime and reducing our insurance. Best of all do it all using one bit of technology paid for by the tax disc charge,

That would be good spending by government, Oh sorry I forgot…

Andrew Rayner

You say that the new Terminal 5 building at Heathrow Airport is big enough to contain 55 football pitches (BA pilots T5 technical systems).

If the dimensions of the T5 building in your article are correct, then the size of the roof, can only be roughly 12 football pitches in size given the regulation 100 metres by 60 metres size of an average football pitch.
Whoever came up with the 55 football pitches statistic was obviously only a five-a-side player.
Andy Wilson

As a local authority security manager, I have followed the debate about online fraud (Lloyds TSB extends card fraud technology, 14 March, Letters, 22 March). I thought my personal precautions were adequate.
But I must commend the Co-operative Bank for preventing one of my Visa cards being used to withdraw at least £4,000 in Norway, the only Scandinavian country I have yet to visit.
The first I knew of it was when I tried to buy a Mothers' Day gift for my wife in the Body Shop and had to answer a few security questions before the transaction was authorised.
I had used the card infrequently over the past year in the UK and few times on holiday in Malta and Barcelona. I was always careful to conceal my Pin and other security information and used it only at trusted outlets, apart from perhaps abroad.
It just goes to show that no one is immune from this type of theft and the sooner a more secure system is introduced, the better for everyone.
Tony Hainsworth

Yogesh Raja’s suggestion that we use memory sticks to combat credit card fraud is a terrible idea (Lloyds TSB extends card fraud technology, 14 March, Letters, 22 March). If someone steals my card, they have to guess my PIN, with a memory stick all they have to do is remember to steal that as well.
How can I then prove a transaction was not made by me when it was authorised by my stick. Raja’s scheme would also involve massive investment to replace all the old ATMs to achieve less security than chip-and-PIN.
Standardisation would be a nightmare, no two banks would use the same system and ultimately this would fail because the skimmed info would bee-mailed abroad to be used in ATMs there.
But I would support the use of ID cards to replace e-wallets, cards and memory sticks. All I would need is a card reader for my PC and some software from the bank to heavily encrypt my details onto the card.
It would be really nice to be able to configure the ID card for different levels of security for different levels of transaction. For example, Pin for purchases under £30, but up to £50 if no finger print scanner is available. Ultimately I would like to leave my cards at home and only use my ID card, only breaking out cards for trips abroad.
Michael Pearce

Surely the London Underground is just about the capital’s only refuge from annoying and pervasive mobile technology (Mobile phone services to be tested on Tube, 15 March).
Like Tony Wood (Letters, 22 March), I think encouraging people to use mobiles on the London Underground is unacceptable in the social sense. Although I am a mobile user - for convenience rather than just because I can – I always think twice before I make or take calls.
Does this development not also present other security issues yet to emerge? Of course, mobile technology could have helped greatly with some of the tragic events on the underground in recent years, but this could be achieved using private networks instead.
Gordon Dale

I see that Lloyds TSB is to expand automated phone alerts for suspicious card activity to include debit cards (Lloyds TSB extends card fraud technology, 14 March).
But fraud will continue to grow until banks start to use memory stick systems. These can be used to stop fraudulent ATM use. An ATM would only be activated by the personalised code stored on the stick. Why would anyone be tempted to use stolen or skimmed cards when they know that ATMs will not work without the key?
The sticks can also be used to activate printers to print out small stickers with the individual's image and name on it. These can be attached to documents and countersigned.
Anyone misusing the system for criminal purposes would also be providing the authorities with their identity.
Yogesh Raja