Posts by Simon

Is the internet going down down under?

Hidden motives?

We know that Australia is a more than happy member of the "Coalition of the Willing", cosying up to USA and UK political interests.

Blanket censorship of the internet is a key goal of the folks in charge (the people behind the people in government). The internet is too powerful a tool to be left uncontrolled. Left unencumbered, who knows what we might do with it..... We might actually demand some honest politics, the dismissal of all investment bankers or even perhaps a revolution.

Can't have that!!! Not if you need to keep iron control over the poor taxpayers. How else will they get away with bombing countries, centralising monetary control and abolishing national borders?

They SAY it's "for the children", in the same way that the Nazis were only after the Jews, until they decided they wanted to kill pretty much anyone who didn't have blonde hair and blue eyes.

They bombard children with crap all day long everywhere else. There are pictures of practically naked people everywhere you look. In California, they've been giving kids in kindergarden "pledge cards" not to discriminate against the LGBT community (because of course, no-one ever discriminates against heterosexuals....)

Local authorities want to start teaching 5 year-olds about sex education and gay sex apparently. At the same time, governments want to PROTECT children?

This is the start of a very slippery slope.

Google pinches fewer pennies in video shutdown

An email with a link

to update credit card details....

Cue a phishing attack?

I mean, google video DTO/DTR customers will be expecting an email from google, will they check close enough that the email they receive is actually genuine?

Tiscali rained off in marathon email snafu

Irony?

Sorry, don't see the irony.

Gmail can go tits up as well. Service guarantee on a free service? Don't think so.

Best bet is to PAY for your email!! That's right, have a contract where the company supplies an email service for a consideration, ie money. That means a contract, which you can then kick their arses over when they breach it.

I haven't gone through the T&Cs for free email, either from ISPs or from Google and the like. But I'm reasonably confident that there will be some get-out clause about "best efforts" with zero comeback if the system goes down.

Besides, what do you expect for free? As with "free broadband", you get what you pay for.

Nokia says patent dispute hurts 3G

Gordon Brown killed 3G...

...the day he agreed that an il-thought-through auction in cahoots with LSE would suffice for selling the spectrum for 3G.

£22.5 billion for five pieces of paper is possibly the most successful scam in the history of scams. Of course the mobile operators are equally to blame. No-one wanted to play chicken so up and up went the valuations on the spectrum.

And what did prudent Gordo do with the cash? He paid down the national debt. So the reason that UK mobile bills are so silly, and the cost of 3G bandwidth (which by 2007 should be free flowing at low cost) is even sillier, is because every mobile phone bill is in effect a bill for interest on the national debt.

Just think, if these companies didn't have to cover £4-5bn in licence costs, they could have slashed the cost of mobile internet, which is the biggest thing holding back its development.

The UK is prime territory for developing products and services around the mobile phone, but £22.5 billion in debt has instead stifled development for years to come.

Just one of the many reasons why the UK is a basket case.

Abbey online banking takes 24-hour lie down

Crappy as usual

Abbey's online banking is crappy as per usual.

So I haven't been able to check my balance on and off for a couple of days, or move any money..... it's only my main business account, something Abbey don't give a stuff about.

Their online banking is always down at the weekend for "maintenance" which means I can't do a thing until Monday morning.

Look out Alliance & Leicester, here I come!

Future PCs to integrate powerline Ethernet

Good idea

At last, a sensible solution when saturated wireless networks make the technology un-usable.

But how will this be implemented? As part of the PSU? Or will the be a second mains plug just for the purposes of ethernet? IF it's part of the PSU, what will the price premium be? Will we be able to buy off-the-shelf replacements if the PSU dies?

JP - ethernet over powerline is not a particular security concern because you can change the passwords on the equipment to match, thus giving you a closed network.

In the home environment, and in many corporate environments, you've already "cleared" security if you are on the premises. All it does is provide a more reliable way of connecting to the network. It doesn't get in the way of user authentication. If you need network credentials to access resources, ethernet over powerline doesn't really make any difference to the security setup.

In any case, electricity meters suppress the signal, so there's no chance of your neighbours stealing net access from you.

VPro will be a wonderful technology when it is rolled out properly to mass market. But if PC World techs can stuff up a PC in person, what makes anyone think it would be different operating remotely? There's still plenty of potential for wiping a user's important files (read My Documents, email etc) - data deletion is something they appear to be good at.