Posts by JohnG

The future of the SIM hangs by a single wire

@Curtis W. Rendon "...why I would ever bother to buy a SIM card"

To change network if you decide that the tariff of your current network operator is no longer the best for you. You might also want to be able to change to a local operator's network when abroad instead of paying roaming charges.

If there is a return to the association of the phone's electronic serial number to a given network (like in the days of analogue cellphones), do you think your operator will help you change networks at will?

UK teen is world's youngest certified ethical hacker (maybe)

Certification needed in Germany..

.. for anyone who uses hacking tools like Wireshark, nmap, etc. A law enacted last summer means that possession of such tools in Germany is allowed only for certified security professionals.

Big Brother firm tech exec locked up in UAE

Stopover in UAE

I had the misfortune to have a stopover in UAE on the way back from Thailand a few months ago. It was enough to put me off visiting anywhere in that region again. Judging by the state of the airport, i hate to think what the prisons are like.

Iran fires rocket 'into space', plans satellite for '09

Oil refineries

What a shame they can't put some resources into building some more oil refining capacity. Despite being such a large exporter of crude oil, Iran is second only to the USA in importing refined product.

French police plan Windows-free jails, offices

They're going to use Ubumtoo in jails with no windows?

Manteau, porte...

Commuter jetpacks offered: $100k, August delivery

When the fuel runs out....

...does it gradually loose power or does it just stop and drop unfortunate commuter like a stone?

IPS leak suggests ID card fingerprint chop

Why not just start with a photo?

This is what most Western european countries use for their ID cards. A simple photo ID with your name and address is adequate for most situations where you have to provide proof of identity. National identity cards from EU member states or EU photocard driving licenses are deemed to be adequate proof of identity to enter the UK.

They could always add the other biometric nonsense as and when (or if) they get their act together.

Hogging the Trough: The EFF Strikes Back

Some kind of control is needed...

... to ensure everyone gets a fair share. Traditional mechanisms tend to share on a per TCP connection basis. Most P2P apps have exploited this by simply having large numbers of simultaneous connections. (I don't think this is news to anybody). It's pretty obvious that providers are going to try to limit the impact of such applications on their other customers. Their sales and marketing people have ensured that details of this is buried in legalese in their terms and conditions but it is there.

Illegal immigrants spared the gamma-ray scanner

@Nev

As the first sentence of the article indicates, it is British immigration officals (not French) who are stationed at the French end of the tunnel. Immigration formalities are completed before you enter the tunnel, to save time at the other end. This is true at both ends - the French have their officials stationed at the UK end of the tunnel.

The French are saying that British officials cannot use British-owned equipment to check people entering Britain.

Of course, if the French can get any such irradiated illegal immigrants to present themselves to the relevant officials in Brussels, I'm sure they would also be happy to provide them with the neccessary travel documents in order to make the trip to Brussels... :-)

Do we need computer competence tests?

Licensed to....

...live in a house. You have to be able to fix basic problems like faulty plumbing or electrics.

....drive a car. you have to be able to fix basic problems like failure to start due to loose wiring to ECU.

....use a camera. You have to be able to pass a test of all the basic features like use of Program mode.

...use a cooker. You have to pass a basic cookery course.

...use a mobile phone. You have to pass a test in the the current SMS jargon and know how to setup MMS and data features.

Yeah right.

Most home routers 'vulnerable to remote take-over'

UPNP was intended ...

...to be a fix for users who didn't know how to configure their routers. Sadly these are probably the group most likely to be directed to a website with all kinds of whacky exploits.

US-Iranian naval clash: Radio trolls probably to blame

It is not the first incident...

There have been a few incidents recently, one of which did involve a USN ship firing warning shots to ward off small Iranian boats:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=090_1200091019

The Iranians (or maybe just their president) seem hell-bent on having a war with the US and given the amount of oil carried through the Straits, provoking some kind of incident there might be a good way to kick things off.

Canucks kill second attempt at 'iPod tax'

Are they going to give the music away...

...if/when they get a tax on players?

GPS is killing children

TomTom likes motorways

I have used various versions of TomTom over the years and it seems to have an obsession with using motorways and major roads in general. I also tried Navigon and it didn't seem to be much different in that respect. This leads me to think that the Dutch research is a bit suspect.

UK.gov New Year resolution: must build nuke powerplants

Either more nuclear plants or agree with whatever Mr Putin says.

Gazprom shares have been climbing like mad since the Summer but maybe they will keep on going...

Byrne puts fake ID frighteners on illegal employers

Employers to be unpaid immigration officials?

So, as an employer, I am supposed to do the job that the Home Office should have done already!

If I only check documents of people I think are foreign, I am automatically in breach of anti-discrimination law, so I have to check everyone's documents.

How the fuck do I know what a genuine Right to Work stamp in some passport should look like for any given year?

Like someone else pointed out, the rest of Europe uses locally issued residency permits. Typically, employers simply record the permit numbers along with names in regular tax submissions - it's the job of the tax office to check if these tally with permits issued.

NHS frets over Brits' genitalia

As the Yanks don't contribute to the NHS....

...they don't have to look at a potentially offensive website for free healthcare advice.

If the NHS hopes to reduce under age pregnancy rates, maybe they should look across the Channel rather than across the Atlantic. Attitudes to nudity on the Continent are quite relaxed compared to the UK and yet they have lower teenage pregancy rates.

Congestion charge dodgers register Bentleys as minicabs

Crosschecking mini cab firms records ...

...will have the useful side effect of wiping out all the ones without private hire insurance, driver's without licenses or worse still, drivers illegally in the country who have never taken a test anywhere.

Finger-chopping jihadis derail MPs scanner system, claims MoS

The mark of the beast...

...should be tattooed on every MPs forehead. This doesn't really help with identification but it would give members of the public more opprtunity to spot and avoid them. Then they should be microchipped like my cat. If microchips are inserted into each MPs arse, potential terrorists would have to root around some unpleasant (and usually large) real estate to find a microchip. You could have a PIN as well but they would only write it down somewhere obvious.

Pennsylvania woman in legal doo-doo for lav profanities

She should sue the cop....

...on the basis that he must be a pervert to be hanging around outside her bathroom window and invading her privacy in the first place. Was he just listening or was he trying to cop an eyeful? :-)

Swearing at work 'good for business'

In Germany...

... there's quite a few ex-Army types here who get away with a level of profanity that would have seen them hauled before personnel/HR back in Blighty. The Germans seem to have accepted that this is perfectly normal for Brits.

My favourite phrase was some years ago when a German girl asked some guy to check something on our X25 network... His response after a cursory investigation: "The fuckin' fucker's fucked" :-)

LG KG271 and KG275 budget phones

Not a luddite...

...but I will probably get a phone like one of these soon.

At work, I often select and setup phones (for other peopl) to use GPRS/UMTS for email retrieval and the like. The latest gag is setting up Nokia phones to use VOIP via WLAN when the user is in the office.

However, for myself, I just want a phone to be phone, make and receive calls and send the odd SMS. I don't want it making data connections if I accidentally hit the cunningly preprogrammed button. I don't want a digital camera with a crappy lens - I have a real camera for taking photos. If I want to run some application, I like a screen bigger than a postage stamp.

A phone which is just a phone and will fit in my shirt pocket would be ideal.

Mystery Israeli satellite telly disruption blamed on UN

Unlikely to be a ship

It seems unlikey that a ship-borne tracking radar or surveillance radar would have sufficient power, spread over enough area to affect so many satellite TV subscribers. Bear in mind that satellite dishes are highly directional and (unsurprisingly) point skywards towards the satellite of choice.

Of course, someone could be jamming the relevant uplinks to the relevant satellites (Amos1&2). That could be difficult to pinpoint and even more difficult to stop if the source happens to be in a non-friendly country.

eBay boots off Skype rival

Restraint of trade?

Say someone tried to open an AT&T cell phone shop within a shopping mall whose owners had shares in Verizon - if the mall then moved to close the store, that might be a restraint on trade. Of course, US law maybe different to UK and EU law in this respect.

Data retention law makes little difference to telcos, says trade body

So the terrorists and crooks...

...just need to sign up with VOIP services outside the EU to avoid such monitoring.

Also, if they use a SIM also purchased outisde the EU, they can access the Internet within the EU without the likelehood of identification.

eBay: Botnets are Linux-happy

Most PCs "hidden" by dynamic NAT...

..and therefore can't be used to host a phishing website. The compromised PCs (probably running Windows) are used to send the phishing emails, containing a link to the phishing site. The phishing site is likely to be hosted on a compromised webserver, which may well be running linux. I thought this would be bleeding obvious but maybe the bloke from ebay thinks everyone with a compromised Windows system will be running a website from their PC and will have therefore setup static NAT on their broadband router for incoming web traffic.

Arsonists target Cornish housing developments

Let's build a wall ...

..all the way up the Devon side of the Tamar and let the Cornish go their own way.

Top judge: put everyone in UK on the DNA database

Illegal immigrants would be missed then...

Anyone who is not legally in the country and has not chosen not to claim asylum would not be known to the authorities and would not appear in the database.

What was the government's estimate of illegals in the UK? 500,000 or so? If one of them commits a crime, they would not be one of the 60 suspects in the example above.

Given that two wanted Al Qaeda suspects were amongst 10000 erroneously issued with British passports last year, I don't hold much faith in the processes and procedures of government departments.

Microsoft remedies failed to create competition

It's not about programming and IDEs...

...It's about writing letters to suppliers, adding up a few columns of numbers and putting them into a pretty presentation for management. This is all done by people who have no interest in programming and for whom the computer is a multi-purpose tool. This is what company desktop systems are purchased for and it is what companies are prepared to spend money on.

Microsoft was not always in the dominant position they enjoy now: Wordperfect was the word processor of choice for years - Word was laughed at. Lotus123 was the top spreadsheet package for years (I knew many accounts people who would even write their CVs with it) - Excel was nowhere to be seen. Desktop publishing was the exclusive domain of Apple. Microsoft just plugged away until they were producing what companies would buy.

If I have to choose what to buy in for a company today, what choice do I have? The nearest thing to competiton for MS Office is StarOffice/OpenOffice and it's just not there yet. The look and feel is not close enough to give to non-expert users.

Pentagon bins home-front threat database

That name is already in use...

... for the device they might want to use against those peacenik hippies:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/talon.htm

http://www.foster-miller.com/lemming.htm

One would hope they might choose the SWAT/MP version with a TASER instead of the more threatening variant with an M16 or 50 calibre machine gun.

MS update sends PCs 'haywire'

Worked for me

I had all this weeks's updates install in one hit and had no problems whatsoever. Dual screens with different resolutions, SATA RAID, VPN client software - everything works. I must be one of the lucky ones then.

Physics GCSE: 'insultingly easy, non scientific, and vague'

Silver lining

There is one upside to this... The government have messed about with pensions and told us we will have to work until we die. I may now have some chance of keeping my job as the youngsters won't be able to do it.

Toyota Prius is not so green, says ads watchdog

Just to clarify....

The Prius battery pack works like a capacitor - taking energy from the engine and/or the vehicle's inertia. There is no provision for plug-in charging. The idea is that the petrol engine can be run for optimum efficiency/least emissions at any given vehicle speed and any excess energy goes to the battery pack. Conversely, energy can be taken from the battery pack to supplement the engine when that is deemed more efficient. At low speeds and when at a standstill, the petrol engine can be turned off completely - this is where most of the emissions savings come from.

It's a pity that there is not a diesel Prius but I guess Toyota were thinking mostly of the American market when it was designed.

As I understand it, Toyota envisages a future hybrid using a hydrogen fuel cell instead of the petrol engine.

UK gov skills shortage jeopardising IT projects

Pay peanuts, get monkeys

As public sector IT (in the UK) pays so little, the significant advantage seems to be how difficult it is to get fired - even if utterly incompetent. What sort of people are they likely to attract (and keep)?

Home Office discusses thief-proof phones

ID in Hardware

I seem to remember that the old analogue cell phones used OTP chips to store a unique identification number, instead of using a replacable SIM. You could replace the chip containing the unique number but it was not worth the effort - sourcing the right chip and then replacing it without frying the rest of the phone is a lot harder than flashing a phone using a suitable cable.

However, the manufacturers are unlikely to want to return to the complication of making the phones unique at manufacture, especially as theft-replacement probably boosts their sales.