Posts by Alister 4260 publicly visible posts • joined 19 May 2010
I hear Balmer is looking for a job. He says hes worked with mobiles before.
No, I'm sorry, but he doesn't meet the required standards. The article clearly states
Technical expertise in the underlying engineering and physics would also be highly desirable, and some knowledge of the wider telecoms and networking field is essential.
On that basis alone, he's got no chance...
:-)
Unfortunately, whilst a nice idea in principle, it is becoming clearer as more information is released that the underlying infrastructure of the current internet has been fatally compromised by the efforts of security services worldwide.
I can't see that there will ever be an internet which is free from the possibility of such interception,apart from starting again from scratch with new hardware, software and cryptography standards untainted by government interference, and this is not a feasible or practical solution for the internet as a whole.
But not the first species we did it to...
Most farm and domestic animals, and most farmed crops have been untouched by "natural selection" since humans started selective breeding, which is something like10 millennia ago.
So if your face happens to resemble a poor quality image of someone who one shop keeper was suspicious of, all the local shopkeepers are going to be treating you as suspicious and keeping an eye on you every time you go out shopping. Every shop you go into is gong to be making it clear they are watching you. Every time.
So what? Unless you were planning to carry out some criminal activity, does it matter if the staff are watching you?
Innovation is monopoly abuse?
Microsoft was innovating when they stuck IE in their OS?
Google are innovating when they put all their products and services first in search results?
I see this comparison a lot and it's completely false. Nobody is under any obligation to use Google as their search engine, and if they do, they don't have to click on the sponsored links, or links to Google products.
The only way your analogy would stack up is if Google ONLY returned search results pointing to their own products, and nobody else's, which is clearly not the case.
these companies are only doing what we ask: come up with stupid products that the cretinous will buy in their millions on the back of seeing inexplicably popular celebutards wear one.
Alistair, aren't you a little young to be exhibiting "Grumpy old man" syndrome?
That said, thanks, great article.
The NAO said in a report that border staff managed to cut immigration queue times down during the London Olympics, but only at the expense of neglecting their other duties.
Ok, so the Tech used is inefficient, as repeated above by most commentards, but no-one seems to have noticed that this report is based on a period when the number of incoming visitors to the UK had almost doubled compared to normal, and yet the staffing levels were not adequately increased to deal with this.
It's hardly surprising, then, that the Border staff did the best they could with what was available to them, and prioritised the queues of incoming travelers over their other duties, and yet now they are being admonished for doing that. Had they ignored the queues and continued to carry out all their duties equally, I'm sure they would have been criticised for that as well
I am not in any way connected with the immigration service or any other affiliated organisation, by the way, I just think it's typical UK government behaviour to blame anyone other than the policy makers (themselves) when a lack of forward planning is highlighted.
Interesting that the two don't quite agree:
Snowden says: "The journalists I have worked with have, at my request, been judicious and careful in ensuring that the only things disclosed are what the public should know but that does not place any person in danger ..."
Greenwald says: "I'm not aware of, nor subject to, any agreement that imposes any limitations of any kind on the reporting that I am doing on these documents. I would never agree to any such limitations."
So which is it?
In a post last week, (here) where there was a discussion about using Tor to evade interception of web browsing by Google, the NSA or anyone else, I made the following comment:
I notice that certain sections of the UK press have cottoned on to the use of the Tor network, and have labelled it "a tool of paedos".
It would not surprise me if we soon see calls for knee-jerk legislation to try and block anonymising services, VPNs and encryption software.
It appears I was partially correct, I just got the country wrong...
I wonder what percentage of households in Britain don't have the luxury of a driveway to park their car in, and therefore could only charge an electric / hybrid by trailing an extension lead across the public pavement.
Or what about the traveling salesman who stays at a different Hotel every night, how many Trust House Fortes have 13 Amp sockets in the car park?
This is surely the biggest sticking point for many who would otherwise consider one of these vehicles.
If a big enough percentage of internet users takes these security measures, the spooks will either have to change their methods or expend insane amounts of money to continue with their fishing expeditions.
...or make them illegal. That seems to be the easy route.
The problem with your list that I can see is that if you follow it, and take other similar actions to avoid interception of your internet use, you risk inviting greater scrutiny, as your behaviour could be profiled as terrorist / paedo / naughty.
Not saying it is right in any way, but it seems to me that we are rapidly heading towards a situation where any attempt to keep data private (particularly email and phone conversations, and web browsing habits) , will automatically be flagged as suspicious.
I notice that certain sections of the UK press have cottoned on to the use of the Tor network, and have labelled it "a tool of paedos".
It would not surprise me if we soon see calls for knee-jerk legislation to try and block anonymising services, VPNs and encryption software.
We all like to moan about and abuse Microsoft, but until recently there really hasn't been a viable alternative to Active Directory for centralised user management which integrates with shared resources, email accounts etc.
That coupled with the fact that if you wanted to do business with other companies, you had to be able to create, edit and access Microsoft's file formats, meant that in practice, however much you may have disliked Microsoft, you had to use their products to function as a business.
However, as more and more of the day-to-day functionality is transferred to the "cloud", the less is the need for the old centralised philosophy and therefore the less is the need for reliance on Microsoft products.
Pah!
Lasers, Inkjets, Dot-Matrix; modern claptrap.
When I first started playing with computers, I had a GPO type 7 Teleprinter which I used for RTTY and packet BBS.
It took two people to lift it, and every time it did a carriage return it used to jump about a foot to the right
You could hear it for miles around - chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga... CRASH!
Really big companies hire consultancies to create a radio map their sites, while small businesses just plug in a domestic-grade hotspot or two.
Bit of a sweeping statement, that.
We are a small business (@50 staff) but when we moved offices a couple of years ago, we spent as much time planning our WiFi provision in the new building (three floors) as we did our wired infrastructure. We did extensive testing using a variety of different access points and end user devices before deciding on a final configuration.
As a result we have a robust secure office WiFi network, and an accessible guest WiFi which is on a separate broadband connection.
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