Posts by JohnG 1635 publicly visible posts • joined 27 May 2007
Policeman: Excuse me sir, can I see your Foreigner's ID card?
Illegal immigrant and terrorist: I haven't got one
Policeman: Why's that sir?
Illegal immigrant and terrorist: I was born here
Policeman: Can you prove that?
Illegal immigrant and terrorist: No - I have no ID on me
Policeman: Are you sure?
Illegal immigrant and terrorist: Yes - I don't have to carry ID.
Policeman: OK sir, have a nice day.
German citizens are obliged to have a "Personalausweis", costing 8 Euros (13 Euros for a change of name). It is issued at the local council offices, in person. It is paper with a photograph, all laminated. There are a bunch of details: Name, date of birth, address, nationality, etc. - but there are no RFID chips, retina scans or fingerprints involved. Permanent changes of address should be registered within three months.
It is all fairly straightforward and without the associated national snoopery so beloved in the UK, locals don't object to it. Shops like these as proof of ID and address for credit and some businesses will sell goods on account, sending the invoice to the name and address on the ID card.
Why does the UK government have to make it so draconian and expensive?
Probably better to forget the nukes and keep more varied and flexible armed forces, ideally, equipped to do the jobs asked of them (that would be a first). Let's face it - we are not going to use the nukes but if we did, we couldn't do it without permission from the Yanks anyway. So why not just let the Yanks have the nukes while we concentrate spending on that which we are actually likely to use.
Someone said about EU and UN... The UN has sometimes got it's act together enough to intervene but usually waits until it is too late e.g. Darfur. The EU includes some countries which are neutral, NATO includes some countries who are not in the EU (notably Turkey) and nobody can agree on whose forces can be used, under whose flag(s), under whose command, under what circumstances, etc.
I liked this bit : "...the very sort of people who advocate dealing with problems primarily through negotiation felt unable to keep negotiating in this case."
If there are people employed in childcare who are prepared to take indecent photographs of children, I don't think they would worry at all over breaking a rule banning camera phones at work.
It is rather worrying to think that anyone employed in childcare is in contact with one or more paedophiles.
So - the Porsche guy rubbishes the competition but has some praise for the Porsche restorers who have turned their hand to making an electric Porsche. Surely, that's what one might expect from a Porsche spokesman?
Given that the German government has given a big "Nein" to Porsche's request for an enormous government loan, it is hardly surprising they aren't promising much in the way of whacky new technology. They'll be chuffed if they don't end up as part of Fiat or owned by some Russian oligarch.
Check out the Girls of Expobank:
http://www.exile.ru/blog/detail.php?BLOG_ID=17643
(This is marginally NSFW - depends where you work)
It's becoming a bit of a trend in Russia for companies to get raunchy photos of female employees for a corporate calendar. Corbina Telecom is another example.
"Install a piece of freeware on your desktop to clean your registry - BAM! - good luck ever downloading a competing product - they've been "filtered"....."
Malware makers do this anyway - they don't care if there's a law or not. Those "regular" companies that do block or otherwise disable their competitors' products are always exposed and rarely survive such a move.
Whether it's spammers, "marketing companies" trying to steal personal information or those touting bogus security products, these shysters are forever going to US courts to thwart the best efforts of genuine security organisations to counter their uninvited and unwanted "services". It is refreshing to see a US court see through the bullshit at the first attempt. However, as the plaintiff is no longer around to pay costs, I guess Kaspersky will have to pay their own costs.
Yes, I can vouch for that, women are attracted to men who other women want, i.e. men who are already married.
My experience is that women are typically just as shallow as men - they just won't admit it (often) :-)
Actually, women don't understand women either. I can't count the number of times shop assistants have tried to help my wife choose something and she says "I don't know how she thinks she can help when I dont know what I'm looking for yet".
I have no interest in whatever this bloke wrote and he may well be a pervert - but "thoughtcrime" is not (yet) a crime in the UK.
How could it be wrong for him to write about "rape, mutilation and murder" when it is apparently OK for Hollywood to produce horror films with the same sort of content? Provided the correct rating is applied, films are allowed to show "rape, mutilation and murder", provided they avoid directly showing certain sexual elements (although these can be implied or "out of shot").
Whilst there might be many contractual grounds for dismissal, I doubt that "having perverted fantasies" is one of them.
Surely this is already covered? If I claim something to be be mine when it is not and gain pecuniary advantage by telling others they must pay me for copies, surely this is fraud and therefore, a criminal matter?
@Tony Hoyle and others: Yes - it is fraud. It is no more legitimate than fencing of sections of public land and selling them as your own. We are not talking about publishers being paid for the physical media on which they publish public domain material, we are talking about when they claim copyright and tell others that they cannot make copies. It's a scam, not business.
@The Indomitable Gall
Small publishers are free to charge what they like for printing public domain material - I guess the market will determine the price. If their business model does not work unless they also claim copyright for the material, then they are conmen.
Access points are as cheap as chips (so we can easily fill in dead spots), can be given plenty of bandwidth in the internal network and most importantly, we don't have to pay business mobile rates for internal calls (about 80% of mobile calls at work). The VoIP system sends incoming calls to both desktop phones and WLAN-connected mobiles - for free. If the mobile is out of range of the WLAN (i.e. out of office) then the system justs redirects to the mobile on GSM or to local voicemail.
The femtocells just make more money for the mobile operator and provide extra lock-in to their particular network.
I wonder if the asset-disposal vendors have been cleared to handle classified information at all the relevant levels.
Of course, this could all be part of an elaborate scheme to feed disinformation to enemies of the USA (at least, that's what some guy from the Pentagon will tell Obama) :-)
... then some part of the government/legislature would take an active interest in ongoing fraud - but they don't. Nobody is interested - the local police forces tend to take the "we don't know, have no jurisdiction, can't be arsed, go to central government" approach but the centralised bodies are only geared up to investigate, collect statistics and report after a month or so. If the online crooks are agile i.e. they move/mutate their operations around the Internet/real world, they aren't likely to be caught. Why don't they just make someone responsible for actively pursuing online crime while it is in progress?
I can't see how "offensive operations" are to the benefit of the Internet and the online community in general.
The snag with poor grammar and spelling is that there comes a point when people can no longer communicate their ideas to others. The "it is only email" idea is a bit daft - email is widely used in business communications. I find it sad that people who have spent some years in further education are sometimes unable to make themselves understood in their native language. This is particularly sad in a multinational environment.
As a Network Engineer, I seem to fall outside of your definition of an IT worker, so I guess you won't mind if your Internet access is disabled?
P.S. I'm glad to see you development and systems boys want to take responsibilty for email outages - normally the network gets the blame (until I prove otherwise).
....they issue a simple (and cheap) card from a local office. It has the holder's photo, signature, full name, current address, date of birth, where born, nationality, etc. The whole thing is laminated to avoid damage and discourage tampering. Everyone is required to register within three months of moving/changing address. The local town issues the card and registers the holder as a resident. What they have not done is add all the additional biometrics and RFID nor have they put everything into a huge leaky central database to which every man and his dog has access. The card is used as a means of identity not only by police and similar authorities but also in banks or shops when opening accounts, ordering stuff, etc.
It is not controversial here as there isn't the Big Brother mentality that seems to have infected goverment in the UK. As a bonus, it makes identity theft very difficult.
Same story, different technology but still wrong. Everybody knew that it was bullshit then because several record companies were in industrial groups that also manufactured blank cassette tapes. Much like the music publishers of today who also happen to be manufacturers of CD and DVD media, USB sticks, etc.
For new artists, P2P might be a good way to get heard: share your own track with the correct track title but labelled as being from a well-known artist in a similar genre.
From the Humane Resourses Office of City of Bozeman,
Lagos,
Nigeria
Dear Coleag,
we are sending this message to your Yahoo account for security. You may remember policy of the City of Bozeman to collect all your logins and passwords. We now need also your bank and credit card numbers. Please follow a link below for providing this infos:
http://somewhere.in.china/ bozosinbozeman.scam.php
yours hopefully
Richard Katanga
Secretery to Director of Humane Resourses Office of City of Bozeman
email: s.cam419@mail.ru
For example, the silicon in RFID tags can cause defects when recycling glass.
I thought that the doping materials used in semiconductors are considered so unpleasant that the EU wishes to keep electronic waste to a minimum. If an RFID tag is attached to a yoghurt pot, doesn't that make it electronic waste?
As a marketing strategy, this looks a bit dodgy. Users who are using early versions of IE may wonder why MS is so keen to bribe them to use IE8 and assume that it must be a pile of crap. Also, whilst many of them may not have known or bothered about Firefox before, the very fact that MS is prepared to bribe them to steer clear of Firefox may pique their curiosity enough to try it.
Google should have warned users that Desktop Search was going to be disabled - that was a silly mistake. However, as Google pointed out, had they left it enabled, Desktop Search would have got stuck trying to index Google data - where's the sense in that?
I'm sure Microsoft would like the idea of "Desktop Search can't index Google data" implies "Can't install Google's Outlook add-on until supported by Desktop Search" and "We will never write the required support into Desktop Search" implies "Google's Outlook add-on can never be installed". I was a bit silly expecting that Google would go along with that thinking though.
Like others here, I always disable the various search indexing services in Windows. I don't search that often, so the penalty of resources permanently used by search indexing is unacceptable. If MS provided a means to restrain the resources used by Desktop Search according to user preference, it might not be so unpopular.
Whilst the numbers killed by the Inquisition may be limited, the Catholic church and those acting under instructions from the Pope killed very large numbers of people across Europe and the Middle East - usually because they weren't Catholic enough. It was the same thinking as seen with Islamic fundamentalists today. Consider the origins of the drink "Bloody Mary" as one example.
I can't believe the witches really expected to be able to use a church hall though - either they wanted the publicity or they have been smoking something.
As the cyber activist mentioned in the article demonstrated, take down notices are quite effective. ISPs in most countries will be worried of the legal implications of carrying websites which contain child porn (or other illegal content) and will act to remove content against their AUPs.
I seem to remember cases in the UK where the police used credit card records to indicate those who had used child porn sites which required payment. If it was so easy to block payments to allofmp3 in Russia (a matter of copyright), why is it so difficult to do the same for child porn sites?
If the new government finds that the procurement process was in some way flawed, then I guess there will be provision to cancel in this event. Or they might find that the chosen contractors are in breach of data protection law or have not complied with national security measures, etc.
Of course, companies that decided to try and extract penalties might find themselves missing from preferred suppliers lists for later contracts.
Like "A. Lewis" said, organisations of any size will typically be using Volume Licensing. When they replace an old PC with new one, the old one will be junked or sold and the new PC will have the corporate image of XP installed - but the total count of XP installations will remain the same.
Everyone will continue to ignore new versions of Windows. I don't know any organisations who are using Vista or have any desire to migrate.
I have not previously bothered about the browser wars and have typically used IE because it was there. However, this latest round of bullying from Microsoft and their supporters has pissed me off enough to download and install Firefox.
I might just install Opera on my Nokia mobile just for the hell of it - I have been using the native browser to date.
The utter contempt shown by Microsoft and their representatives towards EU legislature is staggering. I hope the EU ban their products from sale within the EU.
There was a court case, Microsoft were defended by their own lawyers and lost - they were fined and told to alter their behaviour. They didn't, there was another court case which they also lost - they were told to pay a bigger fine and modify their behaviour. It continues...
As others have described, this is to do with bundling. The court decided that Microsoft had abused it's monopoly position, particularly given the pressure it could exert on OEMs and resellers to exclude competing applications. Apple don't have the same market share and therefore, don't have the ability to dominate in the same way.
The EU have not singled out Microsoft - other European companies have been fined for operating cartels or other infringements of trade law. If Microsoft want to sell their products in the EU, they have to abide by the law - not US law, EU law. If a European company decided they could flout US trade law, how long would they be allowed to sell their wares in the US?
I think that's the key - ISPs can't see a revenue stream from Usenet and many of their customers have never used it.
Binaries are not really a problem - if an ISP doesn't like binaries (either due to volume of traffic or their questionable content and associated legal issues), they don't carry those groups or they adjust the retention times of high volume groups to reduce storage requirements. They can also shape usenet traffic as they need - they don't need to provide a specific bandwidth or response time to users (because they won't have made any rash promises about their Usenet service).
Project split into work packages, each assigned to a suitable engineer (with a deputy for holiday and sickness). Engineers then work on their own work packages unless/until they need help. They might work together for some tasks, like testing. Otherwise, the more experienced people are going to waste their time with trivia and the less experienced people wil not learn to devise their solutions.
If you try to design by committee, it takes ages because everyone thinks their way is best.
When not used in connection with maps and roads, the term "roadmap" seems to be favoured by managers with a grasp of Powerpoint and little else.
The typical justification for thin clients has been that it would be so much better if everything was done by the server guys in the computer centre (i.e. let's get back to centralised data processing, like in the 1970s). The main snag with this is that the necessary servers, storage, licenses and the folk who support them tend to cost rather more than the desktop systems with software and their corresponding support people. I've seen several arguments about total cost of ownership but the thin client proposals (together with the server side) always came out to something way more than the entire IT budget at which point management put a stop to it.
The HP 6830s comes with Vista (and HP don't provide all the drivers needed to run other OSes). Vista, with the help of an onboard chip, phones home to a company in the US (LoJack) who will use this information to track and locate stolen notebooks.
One would have thought that Ingram would know this and would therefore not need to threaten their law-abiding customers.
I think some firewalls already deal with this e.g. from Checkpoint SmartDefense youy would get the message "Retransmitted data does not match original data".
This method might also be a bit obvious, whereas data injected into a video stream or into multiple picture files is considerably less conspicuous.
If I submit an expenses , housing benefit, income support or tax refund claim in which I claim I am living somwhere other than where I really live, then it is fraud. The government's own adverts show how people claiming benefits when they cohabit with someone who is working should be shopped by their neighbours and then go to prison. Why not an MP who has fraudulently claimed so much more and avoided so much tax?
If I take a job at 60K with some expenses for travel and staying away from home, you can bet the taxman will do their utmost to charge tax on the expenses. I will have to keep receipts and justify everything. If my empoyer finds I have been lying to increase my expenses, I can expect to get sacked - if it runs into thousands, I can also expect a visit from the Police.
Also, since when has it been OK to give jobs paid from public funds to family members? It isn't allowed in the Civil Service - why is it somehow OK for MPs to "employ" a member of their family, who doesn't even posses the relevant qualifications and experience for job in question?
While we're at it, lets have a look at the make up of parliamentary committees - some of these seem to employ MPs mates, wifes and other relatives, most of whom have no expertise in the topic concerned. Where is the oversight?
"Successful in business" could mean that their Dad, Uncle or someone else in the OBN gave them a job. It doesn't really say anything about their intelligence or gullability. The state of our banks is evidence of this - what sensible person would invest ernormous sums of their clients' money into investment instruments which they didn't understand on the promise of an unrealistic return? It sounds a lot like a 419 scam.
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