Posts by Trev

Wikimedia becomes latest to ban Phorm

Blocking only sorts part of the problem

From what I know about Phorm, a lot of the problems are caused by it reading where you're going and logging that data, so even without scanning web sites it's going to be able to figure a lot about you. Just URL alone will help for keywords (like Google does).

As for blocking the webwise system, what'd be useful is to know the IP ranges of the bots esp as their robots.txt knowledge seems to be essentially zilch, ie: not offering a user agent. Wonder what user agent they're going to use, eg: fake it?

As a sidenote -,interesting to see they're trying to sell this as an anti-phishing system as well as advertising tracking. Can't imagine how that'll work, and there are so many better systems out there that we don't need another faked one. Oh well - hopefully they'll get closed down by the EU.

Ad watchdog gives thumbs up for female TV orgasms

They never watched Emmerdale?

These people seem to forget that most "impressionable young kids" aren't going to be up at 10pm and those who are, are either older or way ahead of anything on the ads.

Also, why on earth do they keep thinking that kids give a monkeys about this stuff? I can tell you from personal experience that even your average 10 year old knows what sex and related activities are but they're much more concerned with Hanna Montana. By the time they have any interest in the former, they'd probably storm off if you called them "young".

And as the subject says - don't they watch Emmerdale and Hollyoaks!? From what I've seen there's a lot more in those than any Durex O advert.

Before anyone questions the IT angle - this stuff works well with battery operated devices, and since there are now ones that you can control remotely, I guess that counts....maybe.

US mums sue anti-sexting crusader

Ah, we've found the witch hunter general...

Reminds me of the 1700's when they used to use all kinds of punishments against people of this and older for doing anything vaugely un-churchworthy. It sounds like certain parts of the US have turned the clock back, or perhaps never moved forward although I always thought it was the south that was truly backwards.

They might also want to sue the school while they're at it for unlawful taking of the phones and when they win this, sue the DA for handling stolen goods. Not sure that'll go down too well in his re-election bid.

Either that or Barack - you've really gotta start sorting out the more insane bits of your country before it becomes more of a laughing stock than it currently is...!

Btw, wonder what happens if they move out of the state - can they still be "prosecuted"?

Facebook encourages ISP customer protests over Phorm

Maybe Facebook wants to use Phorm?

One reason they might be very reluctant to actually come out and say it's bad is simply that one day they hope to utilise the Phorm data for advertising purposes, but currently they're in too much hot water elsewhere to actually publically admit it...?

With regards scraping the data - that is an interesting point as most of the focus so far seems to have been on picking out the URLs you visit and profiling you based on that rather than analysing the actual content. The latter could be a lot harder as they need to filter out only port 80 packets (generally), and then try to fit them together in a useful way.

Curious point on the encryption, but virtually impossible to implement since you'd block out the majority of your users without them understanding or caring why. No commercial web site is going to want to do this.

O2, Vodafone in cabinet bunk-up

Allowing the other into their cabinets?

Maybe they've got separate locks for each bay, but isn't it a little risky to allow someone else into your cabinets, and thus to potentially fiddle with your equipment?

Not suggesting that Vodafone or O2 would actually have a policy of disconnecting the other, but the more people you have working there the more likely accidents are such as pulling the wrong cable, or leaning on the reboot button while installing a new unit.

Guess it'd keep the legal depts happy sending accusations to each other for every incident.

Third e-bike to line up for 'zero-emission' TT sprint

Are they secretly trying to kill electric?

I'm sure they could at the very least take something like a BMW or similar base and just change the engine to the electric motor. Also couldn't they make the electric motor look like a proper petrol one even if it's actually a plastic case, and possibly add the noise via computers? That might actually sell even if it didn't have any genuine power, eg: town use.

Agree with the comment about brakes too considering they do this on petrol cars.

Wacko theory - maybe it's not secretly the oil companies trying to discredit electric, but is actually the aliens from Independence Day waiting for us to create the perfect CO/2 atmosphere and then take over the world....maybe.