Posts by Jacqui 563 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Aug 2007
ensure SMBs are kept out.
The only reason the current lot want to allow SMBs to bid direct is to force the price bid by the big five downwards. No small business will *ever* win a bid - opt outs are built into the terms such as a small business not having resource of some form ("cash liquidity" is often used to exclude SMB's).
Did the author not bother with minimal basic security tests such as nmap -P0 ... for internal and external interfaces?
I would have been very interested in the port fingerprint from internal and external interfaces?
Also if the devices handle multiple (>2) interfaces, how easy is it to set up zones such as a DMZ?
And the "snidy" comment about ppp (dialup) is just plain nasty - I use ppp to talk to DSL "bridge" devices. Having the host control PPPoA or PPPoE can be very handy and you end up with more IPs available to the host as theer is no router to steal an IP :-)
Jacqui
Just recovered from two days of NTHell internet outages - not fun.
A friend's NTL phone line is going to be dead for at least four weeks because staff "blew" a new line into the ducts and managed to wreck a number of existing lines. FWIU the outsourced ducting work and it will be another MONTH before they can arrange to have the "staff" come back and fix the problem. Until then they have redirected her phone line to her mobile but are charging her for the rediect and are not prepared to even discuss compo for the outage until the problem is resolved.
in the center of the steering wheel was proposed by one safety engineer. This in his expert opinion would save more lives that it would risk.
His logic - a *lot* of people drive to what they feel is a safe speed and airbags, crumple zones etc make them feel "Invunerable". Therefore instead of a minor shunt youendup with a major pileup with many deaths and a major cost to the govmint.
A notional one foot long spike in the centre of the steering wheel would focus drivers attention to the fact that even a small bump is dangerous and makes them take appropriate care.
If this attention seeking merkin twonk wants to get attention he shouldpropose a "spike" retrofit.
This would certainly clear the roads of those unfit to drive - darwinism at its best!
my day job involves developing, deploying and supporting remote headless systems.
I know a number of small business who make a reasonable living supporting linux servers for cash strapped local SMB's. The savings can be very significant especially when your IT server estate can be managed over a VPN link.
Furthermore installing windows in a virtual machine on top of a linux box makes remote system ops seriously easy - checkpointing v'd windows desktops also makes cleaning up infected PCs a doddle - and a remotely manageable task.
there are a very good reasons windows tries its very hardest to touch the raw iron - and none of them benefit the small business :-(
My advice for a small business would be to visit your local linux user group. There are probably a couple of rabid anti-MS folks but most people I have met at LUG are hobbyists or prefessionals like myself - or staff/owners from small businesses. Its a great way to network and find a reputable support supplier.
it has been suggested (in some medical forums) that there may be a link between backscatter radiation and cataracts. The concensus was that in ten years time the legal folks will have enough evidence to stop thier use and sue the companies making these machines into the ground.
When I worked fro cray, some senior staff would travel to the states roughly twice a month.
Their laptops (identical to otehr staff laptops) ended up with disk faults in less that two years.
The other identical machines lastes the full three years and after replacement lasted many mor years secondary use.
I somehow doubt US x-ray machines have changed much.
The telcos are (in)directly responsile for the rotting scumbag leeches who run these autodialers.
1) they make a profit from them as customers.
2) they make an INSANE profit from charging people 5+UKP/mo for NOT removing CLI data on thier line.
3) they make silly amounts of profit running call barring/vettng.
If you complain to your telco they take details and tell you nothing can be done but if you would like to sign up for thier CLI/barring/vetting services...
I know four people who have recently dropped thier landlines because of the actions of the telcos. All this means is that the telcos have to make mroe profit out of those of us left with a line.
Jacqui
p.s. if you have CLI, asterisk or similar does wonders and barring vetting calls.
The merkins and the brits businesses are all looking at Canada as the last home of the free/brave/...
Perhaps this is because "Due South" is being used as a hole filler by the BBC once more.
I have to say given the joke/ripoff that is a UK pension fund, canada must look very enticing to an ~30ish UK business.
Remember folks email is a postcard style service - anyone running a "hop" can read your email! And it happens.
So how best to "cheese" thier results?
SAV would hopefully create a vast amount of traffic logs for thier noo puta's to scan. I suspect they will scan envelope initially then headers and finally content in short order.
And if you think corps will not *pay* for access to this highly lucrative data...
From the ad it sounds like they are prepared to accept recruits straight out of uni - for a "lead/expert" role - for ~30K and a basic pension when google finance and bio offer betweern 45 and 60K (or more if you are an "expert"). And anyone who thinks joining as a specialist will be a career path needs to talk to a good shrink or recruiter.
Given the salary is the idea to dissuade qualified candidates so they can apply to bring some already hired indian PhD grads in for 30K or less as there are no UK IT specialists available.
Hmm when Oracle on a certified supported/stable linux platform went belly up once a day (memory leak in Oracle itself) Oracle's fix (after two weeks of support hell) was to "reboot at midnight". They then closed the support ticket!
Perhaps they should include "its not our fault" on thier logo! Its seems downtime is never due to Oracle being a buggy, memory leaking mess.
These days we use PostgreSQL - it has its problems but a least if something goes wrong we can delve into the source (usually sort it ourselves) or hire a Pg internals specialist if need be. Oracle support is and always will be a joke.
Seriously well done! But as they say what next - those incontinent TV muppets (TopGear) have already tried to turn del's wheels into a shuttle - so I would skip the shuttle idea.
The rocket side of things gets messy (legally and logistically) however the idea of a (small) powered craft launched from a balloon suspended platform under ground (or pre-programmed) control.
Come on guys - a *real* into space launch for "minibucks"? While taking the wee-wee out of NASA every step of the way.
I have to say a really good first attempt/proof of concept but what next?
How about a shuttle or NCC1701A shaped craft. The aerodynamics can be sorted out as we all know that the shuttle is supposed to be the definitive shape for re-entry and there are plenty of flying (powered) enterpise models around.
Jacqui
Dont tet the grauniad or telepap get wind of your success otherwise you will hear of balloon launched gliders (possibly packed with explosives made out of chewing gum/flour/mintos+7up/... - a prominent gov expert cited) as the new threat. A new EU wide institution to vet, xray and peado check everyone involved in a non commercial balloon launch industry will be required - with ID cards being suggested as the solution.
police forces and NHS trusts will do what they have done since this started - pay off complainants with out of court, "no publicity" settlements and make up some "real" figures that could possibly be within 0.01% accurate.
Police, NHS trusts and councils are using every dirty trick in the book to try and remove anyone with small kids who need a babysitter from a position with a decent salary.
Lots of societies and clubs (dog/fishing/beekeeping/... clubs) are now (unoffically) limiting membership to over 18's to avoid the paperwork and insurance costs this legislation requires.
We are now in a situation where no one with half a brain is prepared to volunteer for anything in case the nutters who run this quango pattern match your name with some conviced drug dealer or peado and your home ends up being firebombed. Not every case makes the news!
Lester
when the plane is flying there will be a force exerted upon the wings in an UPWARD direction.
The wings are attached to the fuselage and this UPWARD force would if unresisted rip the wings off in an UPWARD direction. Spars added under the wings will be under tension NOT compression (when in flight). However during lift the spars maybe under compression.
Of course the above completely ignores the reality of air pressure pockets and wind currents which will cause possible (high) positive and (low) negative loads on the wing surfaces during flight - or aleast I hope that is why you have attached spars? :-)
BTW I think the idea of going bigger (next time) and adding a small laser gyro and with some very basic electronics to tie the GPS into some servos to aim/land the plane at a destination.
Perhaps aim for a paper based shuttle - complete with heatshield :-)
Then the military will want some :-)
Peter, I suspected that my post would be rejected.
I have no problem with migrating public DNS onto a managed service but I have seen one outsourcer get a customer to migrate thier *internal* DNS (windows network) to thier managed service. To say it was a disaster (timeouts, network congestion, latency) is an understatment.
Moving to a managed service is a smart move *at the right time* but at the wrong time or ousourcing he wrong thing (or to the wrong people) can be a nightmare.
Personally I think anyone who writes a "content free" FUD article just damages his employers reputation which is why I will not write for work - doing it "right" just takes too much time and effort :-)
Some of the article made sense but the cloud FUD was laughable. All the article needed was a couple of "cybers" and a "think of the children" :-)
In the past, I have found companies usually only go for this sort of ad when they are desperate for new business. And being desperate usually implies some sort of problem...
There are good reasons why you should outsource DNS but very very good reasons why this has to be assessed and managed - and if as Mr Joffe suggests DNS is business critical then outsourcing for anyone capable of running thier own secure systems could be one risk too far.
Jacqui
A good few years ago (thatchers reign?) an IBM? beancounter at the IOD took the stage and proudly announced he had saved millions by paying very very late. Many SMEs went bankrupt and he said he managed to settle debts with the administrtors for pennies on the pound.
It caused a ruckus when it his the papers but he got a standing ovation. That mentatlity still rules.
Also any small business with a relationship with a large company will not complain when payment is late or the big company decides to unilaterally change terms as they usually rely upon the contact.
The problem with this any any other law is that it costs MONEY to take action against the big boys but they have lawyers on staff so can afford to let a case drag through the courts for years.
Doing work for the gov or NHS is even worse than the private sector - they can evade a debt sinmply by renaming themselves - also they can safely ignore legal obligations and know as they are not "directors" they are not liable for such "errors".
The reality is that nothing has changed and the legislation is toothless.
I forgot to add - nthell have already joined the 'all your bits belong to us' brigade!
My 50meg service suddenly went from ~8MB to ~1MB overnight with horrifiv latency.
Nothng unusual you say - virgin are not noted for a stable network...
But I found the problem - NTL's DNS servers were returning **ONE** IP address for EVERY lookup - it does not matter what name you entered you got the same IP!
It seemed that the box that they pointed to was slurping and forwarding all traffic!
Sounds like Virgin are doing a Phorm on thier 50Mb customers :-(
Thankfully I run my own named and removed the forwarders for the NThell dns servers and hey presto net access was fast(ish) once more,. OK nowhere near what is promised in the ads but then when was the last time anyone believed anything beardy said?
I still have to live with the crap that is NTHell http "accellerators" but all other protocols (ncluding work VPN) are no longer taking minutes to connect or hang for long periods.
In the demon days, they asked each member of demon to pay roughly 100UKP to be delisted.
Demon contacted them at the time and was told how much it woud cost to delist their ranges - it was silly money. Demon decided that was too expensive and i dont blame them.
Sorry, SORBS was initially a SPEWS extortion racket. I have not had any dealing with then (apart from trying to keep one IP on thier database and keeping an eye in the various mail lists) but I somehow doubt things have changed much even with the buyout.
They blacklisted all demon fixed IP addresses in the early days. When we contacted SORBS we were asked to pay a 100UKP fee to be "delisted". I dont think anything has changed since those early days - we had the same problem with a BT fixed IP range. I think some parts of the Zen fixed ip ranges are still listed/unusable because of sorbs.
If you consider they were asking 100UKP per IP address from every demon customer (this was well over 10 years ago) that is a lot of moolah! I would be rich now if I had considered a similar extortion racket for all of the fixed IP DSL ranges out there...
Personally, I have an IP on sorbs (intentionally) and keep a blacklist of any mailgates who use sorbs. Smaller MSP's often complain when we blacklist thier incoming email and I suggest they pay our delisting fee similar to SORBS. They dont seem to appreciate that response.
probably thinks ths is cheap good advertising - but them since it cost him so little he probably thinks it is worth it.
There are much, much worse than RAir - being able to cancel other airlines flights an major UK arports then call people the day before and sugegst they re-book with them is seriously scummy.
Magic - now .gov.uk are on a quango hunt and suddenly the "do nothing but lunch" quangos are now coming out of the woodwork with anything they can quickly put together to provide an excuse for continued existence.
I would certainly be very very worried about presenting a new (HCI model/interface) to testers without having knowledge of who they are/work for etc.
After all .gov.uk, .mil.uk and .police.uk have a proven track record of filtching technology rather than paying for it. I suspect this is aimed at the SMB market and is ran by the large providers as a way to gather intel on emerging HCI and apps. You dont believe the big four *.uk suppliers actually waste money innovating when the SMB's will provide new ideas they can filtch?
FWIU (someone correct me) BBC is licence funded but BBC worldwide is effectively a private company using assets such as DrWho to make mega bucks which ends up in the pockets of those running said private company. Ok when I say in thier pockets, I mean in thier massive pension funds and used to fund 5K a night expenses bills when out there in the US or on a jolly.
The UK is having to leave schools with holes in the roof but the BBC can still spend a couple of mill a year just for artwork to decorate thier london offices and at the same time plead poverty.
Cut the licence fee in half - Cut all senior management pensions in half and have the NAO investigate the funny money flows through the private parts of the BBC!
Spamhaus hit my shady radar when they suddenly needed money to fight the US case. It was odd that at that exact time, lots of unis and small businesses were blocked from the free SH services and told they had to pay up.
Of course, non of them we told to pay up until well after they noticed all of thier mail was being bounced. I know one MSP and one uni that ended up bouncng thier own internal email :-)
I do hope the whitelist project works but I will not hold my breath.
are nice folks but I have only met two that were brits - the rest were germans, young students or older poles doing hard, low paid work. Given the lack of security in thier stores and low staff counts, it would be an ideal target for a machine "switch".
FWIICR, I think lidl would be more or a target as unlike aldi only accept debit (not credit) cards and banks dont refund debit transactions in the UK. So the next time you are asked "cash or card" in one of these stores, stick to cash!
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