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Fun and updates

Quite a mixed bag today with updates, updates and craziness.

First of all, an expired certificate effectively bricked all Firefox plug-ins yesterday, leaving a lot of people really pee'd off.

Really handy stuff such as ad-blockers were no longer working and that gave a lot of regular Net users their first view of the "naked" internet for quite some time. Apparently most of them were shocked at what they saw :-)

A new version has been now circulated which apparently fixes the problems but since I don't actually use any plug-ins it hasn't affected me and I can neither confirm nor deny the efficacy of this repair.

However, it's really bad form when a major player forgets to renew a certificate and that has to raise concern over what other things have been forgotten or overlooked. Browser security is "a big thing" these days and it does shake one's confidence somewhat when your browser of choice seems to be in the hands of folk who don't know how to set some kind of alarm on their calendars.

I'm still a Firefox fan because I have to say that Chrome just doesn't "click" with me. It's kind of like wearing someone else's shoes... yeah, it works but it just feels uncomfortably wierd and somehow unsanitory. Or maybe that's just me.

And now for a different kind of update...

You will recall that I mentioned in a recent column how the Brits were going to be forced to pay 16.50 UK pounds a year in order to own a drone or RC model aircraft, as of December 1.

I mentioned that I was going to organise a call to action and see if we couldn't pit the power of the Net against the power of the politicians and bureaucrats. Well the video I posted with the call to action received some 30,000 views and I suspect a great many of those who watched it actually followed through on the call.

As a result, the UK government seems to have come to the realisation that perhaps they ought to be consulting a little more closely with the RC flying community before thrusting this ridiculous tax and an age limit on them.

The BMFA (the UK's national model flying body) posted this statement indicating that the head of their organisation had been called to have a chat with the (red?) Baroness Vere of Norbiton, the UK's Aviation Minister.

I don't know if it was my video, or the BMFA's own call to action that produced this response (probably a combination of both) but clearly, the power of the Net is something that even governments are having to take into account when trying to impose their rule over the public.

However, I've not finished with my initiative yet. You will recall that I made mention of bringing the media in to bat in a way that turns public opinion (predominantly "anti-drone" at present) around and in favour of the hobby.

Stay tuned for more on that!

And finally, on this no-news day, I thought I would share this video.

Fantastic! I love it when keen amateurs demonstrate a total disregard for personal safety and decide just to "give it a go" in a way that challenges, but does not overcome, the laws of physics and commonsense.

This is the sort of endeavour that made Pakistan great!

More please!

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