Posts by Benjy

Israel tests biometric database

The UK and Israel

I am very familiar both with the UK (as I live here) and Israel (as a Jew who's spent a large amount of time there, has family there etc).

I made no comment as to whether a database cannot be compromised or anything. The sole point of my comment was that Israel already has a national ID card, so that's already one "hearts and minds" hurdle overcome - the concept of an ID card. What goes on it is then a second step.

On the other hand, in the UK, both steps have yet to be given convincing arguments.

Not the same as the UK

This can't be directly compared to the UK identity cards, simply because in Israel it's already compulsory for everybody to have an identity card (a teudat zohut), and to carry it with them at all times (foreigners must have their passports with them at all times).

Orange can't find BlackBerry maps

Orange and FT

Orange was founded by Hutchinson Telecom in 1994 (perhaps you were confusing HT an FT) and only became part of France Telecom in 2000.

I was an Orange customer from 1995 to 2005 and without a doubt the service went down hugely once FT were in control.

US imposes 72 hour pre-reg for Visa waiver travellers

What does it have to do with us?

I fail to see what the EU has to complain about. The USA is its own country and can make any rules it likes for people travelling there. If you don't like them, don't travel there.

eBayer invites buyers to rip him off

DNS

Ronny - with all due respect, I don't think you understand how DNS is involved in the delivery of E-Mail.

MX records and A records are nothing to do with each other, and you can easily have A records for www.somedomain.com and somedomain.com pointing to the same webserver (configured with name-based virtual hosts and therefore hosting hundreds of domains), while separately having the MX record for somedomain.com pointing to a mail server (that could again handle mail traffic for multiple hosts), allowing the mail to be delivered regardless of what the A record(s) point to.

That said, if the domain doesn't have an MX record, then most mailers will attempt to send to the server pointed to by the A record (I think). But otherwise it doesn't matter.

As you say, of course, there are plenty of other services that are hosted on the internet, and indeed we might have "ftp.somedomain.com" and various others. But as most people (certainly in the general public) want the website, it makes sense to have the truncated "somedomain.com" be assumed to be "www.somedomain.com".

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