Posts by FreeBrad

Police create mega crime database to rule them all. Is your numberplate in it? Could be

Re: ANPR, CCTV and the death of privacy

In a word Yes! If we stay in the European Union (Which hopefully we will not) then an intrusive device called e-Call will be mandated from 2018 in all new cars. To start off with it will call the police in the event of an accident but with a little function creep, it will not be long before it records moving traffic so-called "Offences".

Will be handy in a few years time though when a few have been scrapped then they can be set off all over the place to lead the police on a wild goose chase while the crims make their getaway.

Pentip

The police have a database called pentip that records vehicle related so-called "Offences" and the responses to things such as S.172 notices for example. If you nominate a driver that cannot be traced then this is recorded; if you do it several times then the police think that they have some sort of right to investigate you. The funniest thing is when they try and take them to court and you put them to proof; they can have all the data that they like, but if they have no proof that the actual offence that they are charging you with has been committed by you then there is nothing that they can do about it other than try and scare you.

The simple way to defeat these intrusive databases is to put the police and the Crown to proof on every aspect. It costs them a fortune and they normally cannot do it.

The last time Earth was this hot hippos lived in Britain (that’s 130,000 years ago)

Re: Hottest temperature ever

Maybe you would like to ask Galilleo?

Lies, Damned Lies; and statistics

No true scientist would write an article like this without mentioning that the real reason that it is so warm is because we are experiencing the strongest el-nino that we have had in a generation. This article is nothing but slight of hand propaganda capitialising on a freak weather event.

By virtue of the fact that releases of Co2 displace water vapour and other atmospheric gasses, coupled with its minimal global warming potential, anthropogenic co2 is more likely to reduce the temperature than increase it. Although in truth we could not release enough of it to have a significant impact either way.

No escape: Microsoft injects 'Get Windows 10' nagware into biz PCs

We're ahead of the curve for once.

For once (and it is not very often I can say this) we took the right decisions and are moving away from Microsoft. The big stumbling block has always been exchange server and it hasn't been easy replacing it with something that will do exactly what we wanted but we have successfully built and installed a linux box that has taken over the functionality and allowed us to standardise everything on the postgres dbs. We started off with 4 MS servers and now we have one that is nothing more than a backup domain controller which will be retired soon. The workstations are already running cross platform applications such as thudnerbird, firefox and libre office, the accounting software is php and any remaining bespoke software can run on OSX.

It has taken about 8 - 10 months of hard work, but we will be Microsoft free (save for a couple of laptops) in the next few weeks.

Thin Client Devices Revisited

Just built a load of xterm clients out of old laptops

I have just been working on a project where it is an absolute must that the end user cannot go wandering around the system, browsing the internet or anthing else so have just put togeter a load of xterm only clients that will be running a curses application. It sounded arcane when I started, but taking into account the speed of the interface (mostly thanks to function keys) and the lack of distractions the saving in man hours has been phenomenal; not to mention the control over security being second to none.

CISA latest: Law urging tech giants to share your info with the Feds shows no sign of stopping

Re: Roe v. Wade

The left have always been authoritarian, constantly and consistently demanding laws and regulations that restrict what would ordinarily be non criminal activities. Most of the pre-crime/non-crime laws such as speeding have been continually backed by the left. The right tend to want less regulation, but more severe punishment.

Satnav launches are like buses: none for ages then three arrive at once

Re: Road user charging

Wow, that is quite a bit of diatribe, but the bottom line is this: Notwithstanding stealth taxes such as scameras and parking charges, 33 billion GBP is paid to the treasury by road users. This is way in excess of our extremely poorly maintained and poorly designed roads.

My question would be more: Why is it that when we get behind the wheel of a car we are supposed to accept intrusions that we would otherwise deem so unacceptable that there would be riots on the streets (and yes I am including all those cameras that you mention) Let me sit in your garden taking pictures through your window if you disagree.

I could not care less what the Italians care about; if they are dumb enough to jump over a cliff then I see no reason to follow them.

As for why Galileo? - A. Metadata.

I do not know how old you are, but when they brought in the driving licence it was never dreamed of that it would be used in the way that it is used today. If you cannot see that corrupt governments will gradually use function creep then you are going around with blinkers on.

Road user charging

The purpose of Galileo was to facilitate european road user charging. A whole lot of technology is on its way into cars that is designed to sting drivers at every opportunity. Link Galileo with Ecall and you already have enough tech to monitor, track and charge every individual that uses a car; well everybody that cannot disable it anyway :)

BlackBerry ponders putting Android on future mobes

Re: Dear God, please, no!

I love my passport; it's fast, highly configurable and even though I have fairly big clumsy fingers the keyboard is no problem; the build quality is good too.

BB10 is maturing but is pretty stable, even with the android apps; The blackberry hub is of great benefit and being able to turn off location services at the touch of a button assigned to the quick pull down menu is priceless for somebody who values their privacy but from time to time still needs to use the device as a sat nav.

Ford: Our latest car gizmo will CHOKE OFF your FUEL if you're speeding

No-No Limits

I've never liked fords much anyway so I will not miss never owning one. When the speed limits are set according to the vehicle that I am driving, the weather conditions and the road conditions at the particular time that I am using that road then I might consider capitulation. Until then they can shove their speed limits up their ........ Well you get the idea!

What could possibly go wrong? Banks could provide ID assurance for Gov.UK – report

Hi Mr. Burglar, would you like the keys to my house?

Does anybody seriously think that a link between you bank account and your driving licence for example would not lead to the government helping themselves to your cash whenever they saw fit.

The government are in essence thieves so given a direct link to your bank account, they would not be able to resist.

Yes, I know that it is only about validating identity at the moment but do you seriously think that function creep will not raise its ugly head once they have their foot in the door?

Survey: Win8 only HALF as popular as Win7 among IT bosses

Eachway bet

We have had AIX and WIN servers running harmoniously for years now so it is not the hardest thing in the world for us to jump ship on the workstations which already consist of a mixture of osx and win boxes anyway. With win8 looming around the corner and XP on its way out I have decided to test Linux Mint. Up till now the proprietary desktop is not stable enough for certain tasks, but the KDE version is looking promising. There are 2 problems at the moment which are 1. A reliable exchange server client and 2. libreoffice calc not rendering text boxes correctly in spreadsheets. I think that wine and MS office will give me headaches so that is a last resort. Whatever happens in the end, we will not be moving to Windows 8 if we can at all help it.

Climate sceptic? You're probably a 'Birther', don't vaccinate your kids

There is no difference between communism and socialism. I wish that the ideology of the left had gone the same way as the mammoth, but unfortunately it isn't; otherwise the three main political parties would not exist. All of them are proponents of big government, public surveillance and authoritarian rule which are key elements of socialism and communism.

How on earth do you think that both communism and anarchism can be dead? they are at opposite ends of the spectrum; And we are a hell of a lot closer to communism than anarchism .

I am an Anarchist (well a libertarian at least) and even I agree that anarchism is dead but communism? The word has changed, sure, but the ideology remains the same. I really can't see the difference between socialism and communism.

Sysadmins! There's no shame in using a mouse to delete files

Everything has its place

On AIX I use cli for most things but there are times when I need the gui interface. The gui on AIX is ancient, CDE1.0 but it does enough to copy and paste up conf files and for debugging purposes. There is no doubt that a gui helps to jog the memory, but if you have a reasonable memory for commands then cli is way quicker.

Having said that windows NEEDS the gui. The layers upon layers of code and the complexity in windows mean that it would be difficult to find anything without the gui. Rooting through the AD schema or the registry using cli if you are not entirely sure what you are looking for does not really sound appealing.

Powershell is good although my experience is limited to the MS Exchange server version, but why on earth do the commands have to be so bleeding long?

Having said all that, if you want to win a CLI vs GUI argument in favour of the CLI give someday a cisco router. I could have set up the entire thing in the amount of time it takes for the GUI to "discover" the thing.

Greenpeace targets Apple with 10-foot Pod stunt

Apple are going up in my estimations

I like many others believed that Apple was as socialist loony lefty company that had ideals so far removed from my own that I found it difficult to support them.

The fact that Apple don't pander to the ridiculous loony left and the anthropogenic climate change goons just improves their standing as far as I am concerned.

Az mayor offers Prince Harry beer and pizza in fornication row

Round we go again

The 1689 Bill of Rights describes in detail what happened last time. It also pretty much describes what is happening now.

What we actually need is a 100% libertarian constitution with checks and balances that ensure that any new statute complies with the said constitution.

We also need to abolish groups, alliances or other versions of political parties in parliament. Only then will we see a decent future (for the next 400 years or so until function creep sets in and we all go around again).

Pay-by-wave: At least it's better than being mugged

Audit Trail

I will not use this type of payment because of the audit trail that can be generated if cash is abandoned in favour of card payments.

I don't class myself as a conspiracy theorist, but a scumbag government (and I might add that we haven't had any other kind for my 40 years on this planet) will certainly use such an audit trail to automaticlly calculte your taxes and take the money from your account without intervention.

Bradley Manning accuser to meet with prosecutors

Would you

Would you aid and abet a group who DID kill someone? (see collateral murder video)