Posts by David Urmston

Children should get keys to their data when they come of age

What age would that be ?

Pensionable age ?

Or some new Post Pension age, yet to be spun out by New Labrador ?

VOIP and the web baffle Brit spook wiretappers

Oh, if only they were so honest !

" .. but nobody wants to refer to a secret internal-security body by the initials "SS".

You mean, "no one in Government wants to refer to them as the "SS"."

Well it's about time.

Social Security always has had several connotations in my mind - thanks to having a disability.

Todays' "Plastics", as my teenage daughter refers to them, are getting to be as bad as the old "SS" with their "Stop and Search" tactics. They can be found every lunch time, crawling the streets of a high class, suburb of Oxford and probably elsewhere too. Terrorising pupils from years 11, 12 and 13, who are taking their lunch break from what is reportedly, the third best, GCSE results state school.

They are conducting preventative policing and being paid as well, one assumes.

Are these twats completely mindless zombies, just like Hitlers Stupid Sods ?

For me at least, the cretins are painting a very clear picture of exactly "who" Gordon and the White Hall crew believe we are being terrorised by. 2000 teenagers luncheoning with their possee in da hood ! No wonder they had to blank out the details, these kids study IT, Sociology, Politics etc at 'A' level and without a doubt, they know so much more about anonimisers and proxy servers than White Howl will ever know. Especially as they keep giving their secrets away.

Onion Rings and encryption keys are not things that the "Plastics" are likely to find in a school kids pocket at lunch time, no matter what Gordon's GCHQ spooks think.

Bank turns London man into RFID-enabled guinea pig

Unseen price hikes

Hmmm,

once this technology is wide spread, we won't even notice that the car parking fee, price of the newspaper, tube fare, etc has increased yet again.

Obviously also plenty of room for dodgy things to occur at Car Boot Sales and as you walk by any number of street hawkers. Lucky heather to a bus load of punters in one trip to the next stop, cheap at only £9.99 a pop.

And when was the last time someone bought a ticket for a concert at less than £10 ?

Along with the price of calls to 0845 and 0870 customer service people to make a complaint !!!!

It makes me wonder just who is doing the skimming on this one.

AT&T to crush copyrighted network packets

Anyone noticed something ?

Never mind "Return of The Machines", from over here in the UK the perspective is that many of these copyright protagonists have surnames which make them look like members of the "Mafia" !

Remember the "Gansta" stories in the films,

As they grew up in the hoods extorting dosh from the local entreprenuers, the big boys moved away from the dangerous passtimes of running illegal booze, gambling casinos and prostitution by pursuading the US government to legalise their various financial interests. The clever ones got fancy lawyers and bought their local and state Government Reps before buying into the Entertainments Business, which if you remember, is totally legit and a good cover for laundering cash from other illegal interests.

In a few decades the hoodlum cretins have crawled out of the gutters of Chicago, New York, etc, and bought luxurious gafs in places like Montanna (read Jared Diamonds book, "Collapse"). Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha......

Bye the way, isn't it possible to design new encryption algorythms that the file "copywrong owners" don't have. Web 2.0 anyone ?

I am currently working on a taser that can detect folks who want to make money out of other peep's art. I'm following the train of thought that these suckers never actually listen to music or watch films, cos' they are too busy counting their dwindling unethical profits and don't have the time. There must be a missing common sense gene, or something that's detectable by it's absence, without having to ask them to "lick this sir", or "breathe into the bag sir" ?

I'm outta here .

Vista sets 2007 land-speed record for copying and deleting

Just say no - to Vista

One of my PC repair business clients phoned the other day to say that her new Vista powered machine can't find her wireless router. She said that her existing XP machine can still see it though, and could I come out to sort it out.

My advice was for her to take the laptop back to the shop and ask for one with XP or Linux, and when she has done this, to ring me back.

I don't give a monkeys about the very lucrative income I won't earn from these jobs as I can do without the boring task of relearning how to fix another MS Operating Shitstorm. I am retraining to be a chimney sweep instead, and it's much more rewarding. Also, I now feel that I've helped to save someones life, rather than their music/film collection. And I still get to use IT equipment.

PS, with a few tweaks, some additional memory and a separate graphics card, even Windows 98 could be made stable, more stable in fact than any MS OS since. My main machine has a dual core Athlon 64, runs Windows 2000 Pro and Ubuntu like a dream. I gave a new XP box to my kids to play Bebo and MSN with years ago, and still can't see any reason to change what I do except to fix other peoples broken boxes.

PPS Can someone please explain why people will pay over a £1000 for a MAC running *nix on Intel architecture ?

ALF

MIA in Iowa - personal data on 3m UK driving test candidates

Why would the States be interested in our drivers ?

Just in case any of our plucky citizens try to drive to the States, of course.

Sperm-derived power system for nanobots patented

Reg job offers

Staff required at new UK spunk manufacturing plant.

Only tossers need apply.

Must have own driving license.

New taskforce to discuss why more people aren't turning to digital

They could make us switch

They could simply outlaw analogue broadcasting,

or

switch it off, just like analogue TV is being switched off.

Then we'd have to listen even - if it is crap music produced by their crappy recording industry pals, or smug tw*ts talking about what might be happening.

Alf

Met Police to pilot Tasers

Next they will

Give them to Community Wardens, who will be on the streets ready to Taser the none uptaking teenagers to coerce them into listening to DAB radio instead of illicit MP3s on their mobile phones.

It's not the Rise of the Machines that I worry about, more like the f*ckers who wield 'em.

Alf

Cambridge computing profs 'desperate' for applicants

BSc IT @ Oxford

No one in the industry knows what it is !

It changes shape so fast, business people glaze over when you engage them, maths heads yawn.

And the kids have moved on before you get to sequential anything.

Anyways, I'm now a cheery chimney sweep, occaisionally pissing about with BT Business Broadband software and a motley roll out of Windows boxes. The intricacies of burning wood in stoves is far more intrigueing than MS Office's excuse for productivity tools, anyday.

The BSc in IT got me the job 'cos my boss doesn't want to deal with any of it, not even eMail.

But whether or not there is a future in IT, who knows.

My daughter at 15, wants to be a hair dresser and will probably make more money than me.

Lag caught with phone charger up jacksie

Sounds like a

suitable punishment for certain of those more detestable crimes, like posting SPAM, 419 fraudsters, bot herders, paedo's and those sod's who keep shovelling Tax payers money into bogus IT projects, like the National ID scheme.

ALF

Police will share data across Europe

New start-up requires IT staff

Hi,

having failed to get a job in IT with an ethical company in the UK, I've decided to set up an off shore data store, where ever it's legal to aggregate all this private data being collected by our nice EU cousins. Then I intend to sell it to which ever British police force is having difficulty obtaining the data from their colleagues in the next county.

Reckon I could make a few bob before things go tits up entirely, anyone want a job ?

Alf

Strange spoofing technique evades anti-phishing filters

NOT mucking around with science teaching ?

Apologies for a quirk of the OS, as the title of my earlier comment has somehow been replaced with the title of a post that I made about two weeks ago.

?????

If you can fathom that one you can solve the strange phishing attempt.

regards

Alf

mucking around with science teaching ?

When the gap between nerds and everyone else finally closes, this type of vulnerability might disappear, along with some of the infuriating comments.

Until then, it might be more helpful if the holier than thou's amongst us came down off their lofty platters once in a while and descended into the valley along with the rest of us. Particularly when folks are trying to resolve a serious issue. Rather than trotting out that tired old line, "it never happens to me".

I don't know which is sadder, those who get ripped off through their lack of technical knonwledge or those who never leave their monitors.

Yes, "running a respectable Operating System" is part of the solution, but we also need an operating system that everyone can use without requiring a team of petrol heads to get it going and to make sure that it hasn't slipped into promiscuous mode because the user clicked on something or went to a popular web site.

Cyfaill's smugness won't last forever, and then maybe I'll laugh, or not.

By the way Cyfaill, I've been using Windoze Orrible Systems for a number (17) of years, and (touching the wood of my head) I haven't succumbed to any invasion yet, though I have witnessed numerous malicious attempts.

Luckily todays end users are becoming more observant, well maybe the non Linux people anyways.

regards Alf

New, New Labour gets new logo and website

Horse shit

Roses always thrive best when fed copious amounts of horse shit on their roots. Their colour is also influenced by their intake of nutrients and grafting on other stock.

And shares presumabley !

Don't get upset, it isn't only the techies over here that've had their heads in the IT bucket, my kids have two mobile phones each and numerous on-line avatars that keep them mentally challenged on a daily basis.

Now that we've got Terminator kill-bots to be run by an excellent example of a successful Private Finance Initiative (PFI) system called 'Skynet' which is being deployed in "South West Asia" (wherever that is ? wasn't it the Middle East last week ?), and our sixth sense has been replaced by Balance (latest GCSE Science), does it matter who is nominally the head of a provincial European government ?

Just make sure you buy the right stocks, eh ! Anyone want to buy some yellow ?

Horse shit

Roses always thrive best when fed copious amounts of horse shit on their roots. Their colour is also influenced by their intake of nutrients and grafting on other stock.

And shares presumabley !

Don't get upset, it isn't only the techies over here that've had their heads in the IT bucket, my kids have two mobile phones each and numerous on-line avatars that keep them mentally challenged on a daily basis.

Now that we've got Terminator kill-bots to be run by an excellent example of a successful Private Finance Initiative (PFI) system called 'Skynet' which is being deployed in "South West Asia" (wherever that is ? wasn't it the Middle East last week ?), and our sixth sense has been replaced by Balance (latest GCSE Science), does it matter who is nominally the head of a provincial European government ?

Just make sure you buy the right stocks, eh ! Anyone want to buy some yellow ?

Satnav driver's car totalled by train

For heavens sake

Aren't designers supposed to use risk mitigation when designing information systems ?

Which if I remember correctly proposes the theory that you can't program the end user.

Perhaps if they included the possibility that a real humans would be driving the vehicles, SatNav would be condidered a safety critical system and wouldn't be sitting on so many dashboards.

As humans are so notoriously unpredictable, perhaps the system designers should include folks who can't read a map/drive a car as part of the design team, chimps spring to mind.

Alf

Boffins to UK.gov: Don't muck around with science teaching

mucking around with science teaching ?

What, you mean, they haven't started yet ?

My daughter in year 10 at an Oxford, designated "science school", has been receiving the new GCSE "Additional Applied Science" teaching material, introduced in 2006. The introductory letter from the school says,

"Due to the nature of the material covered, the course is not suitable for students who wish to go on to study science at "A" level."

You may be interested or perhaps horrified to learn that amongst the other stuff in curriculum, she has been taught that the "Sixth Sense" is "Balance".

Please tell me that teaching them this kind of practical science is for everyone's benefit, right ? Like using MS applications to teach Computer Science at university ?

This is "knowledge" for the lower orders, and quite rightly, it shouldn't lead the pupil towards a GCSE "A" Science, or the bastards will be making pipe bombs, short range tactical nuclear weapons and their own Tasers to make them more efficient when they go out mugging folks with jobs or fronting the police.

Please tell me that I'm dreaming !

Alf

Vista – End of the Dream?

Dream or nightmare ?

I hate it when peoples dreams are shattered, but I hate it more when people are taken in and abused by big business.

Then only reason companies like Microsoft feel that they have to upgrade their product every week is because of the idea that if they don't they will be left behind.

So what is wrong with being left behind if you can't keep up. In Britain we have a thing called social security for people who can't manage to keep up with everyone else because they have some debilitating factor.

What racks me off more than anything else is that in Britain at least we have a government which also supports big business, often when the firm is really crap, like Rover and can't keep up, we have Income Support for the industry which far outstrips the generosity we pile on our old and disabled. IMHO Microsoft has held such favoured status for far too long. As you say, besides the new party dress, we are going to be shafted by the same old tart.

Unfortunately, I must not be a proper geek as I've always thought this way and wondered when the education sector was going to wake up. Instead I read that the Royal Navy put our Nuclear capability into the safe hands of Windows 2000 only weeks within weeks of MS announcing that they were stopping support for it.

It all beggards belief, especially as my IT degree was largely to do with using MS applications.

If you believe the advertising of a US company, you will get all you deserve.

I just have to try to resolve those mistakes so that folks can just get on with their lives.

regards

Alf