Posts by Pete

phone the mark? how 1990's

Why bother going to the trouble of calling people to extort money. Isn't that what the internet's for?

Now I may be a bit out of touch, what with receiving almost no spam - ever. However it seems that a few million emails, sent at virtually no cost, would prick a few consciences and reap more rewards than spending time and money on old-fashioned methods like phone calls, as this gives the victim the opportunity to question their fraudsters.

This is where everyone else tells me that they already get a bazillion of these emails every day - oh well, there goes another make-money-fast idea!

classroom? kids? benefit?

It's always been my belief (supported by years of observation as a young 'un) that the education system exists for the benefit of the teachers and everyone else employed in the system. The reason mobiles are verboten in schools is because teachers dislike being interrupted: "Hello I'M IN CLASS RIGHT NOW" and especially because they dislike being filmed - given the likelihood of the video being doctored and appearing on youtube.

However, there is a possible upside. One of my ex-teachers is now an elected public figure. I'm sure that if the right video clips had been made widely available, the good people of <name deleted> could've been better informed about the mistake they were about to make.

@censored

> any RFID passport or credit card I'm forced to have will accidentally be placed in a cloth bag and hit several times with a mallet.

That's fine - your choice and no-one forces you to have a CC or a passport.

However, I hope you like having to use cash only - obviously you've never (yet) applied for a university place, worked for "the man" or had to prove your identity. In the future, you'll never have a foreign holiday and when the time comes, forego a driving license and becoming a "non-person" without an ID card.

To paraphrase Ian Dury "Sometimes you have to bend with the wind. Sometimes you have to break with it, and sometimes you just have to break wind."

I wouldn't

... recommend anyone changes - in either direction.

These days nobody cares, they just want to get stuff done. Provided the operating system doesn't get in the way (yes, Vista: I'm looking at you!) it simply makes no difference anymore. All options are pretty much stable. pretty much secure and will support your keyboard, mouse, network and screen.

There's little to be gained by going through the pain of working out how the "other guys" do things

or you could give it away, yourself

Most areas have a "freecycle" email group, for stuff that you no longer want, but other people might be able to use. Why not put your old computing kit (and pretty much anything else) up for grabs on that, and save your neighbours the trouble of having to buy new HP kit?

cycle time?

I didn't see anything in the article to say how many shots this thingy is capable of firing in a given time (presuming, of course that it's not continuous).

If one of the deployment possibilities is against mortars, it would be a real shame if it could successfully take out the first one - but have to ask the emeny if they wouldn't mind waiting several minutes before lobbing off their next $20 shell, 'cos our $10+++million laser isn't ready yet.

let's talk about restoring your data

So you've availed yourself of this generous, but time-limited offer. You've already max'd out your ISP's fair-usage policy by uploading the entire contents of your hard disk to "the cloud".

Some time later, when you've changed ISP, lost your laptop and all the secret government data it contained - you say to your boss "no worries, mate. I uploaded all that sensitive data to a third party. All I have to do is pull it all back down again". In true cliche-ridden TV drama style, he/she says "OK, you've got 24 hours", so off you go.

Now, it turns out that the data you sent up incrementally over several weeks, all has to be restored in one long session. You start on the mammoth task - hoping that your new ISP won't notice and cut you off before you're done. The restore starts well: 1MByte/sec. Since you've lousy at maths, you don't realise that this alone will blow your 24 hour deadline. As time goes on, the speed drops - your ISP is shaping your download traffic. 1 MB/Sec becomes 500KB .. 400 .. 300. Once the kiddies get out of school and start goofing around on the internet the speed drops even more. At this point you get out your calculator and work out it'll take a week to get all your data back.

When you start your new job, you realise the folly of your ways. Pop out to the computer shop for a DVD writer and a 100 disks and use this for future backups. Of course, no-one told you that DVDs (esp. cheap ones) degrade over time.

they didn't really win.

From the article, the claimant was paying £15k a year and suffered 22% downtime. They got 1200 quid back.

Just simple arithmetic says that 22% of £15 grand is £3300, so the claimant has still lost £2000

unbeleivable!

Where the hell can you get a laptop off eBay for £6.99?

needs excellent SPAM filters

If you're going to serve up ads based on the content of people's email, then make sure you're not simply adding to the amount of unwanted mail they already receive. If the scanning company lets through SPAM, they'll start serving ads based on the contents of these unsolicited emails, which helps no-one.

What would be interesting is if the content scanners start firing emails back at the sender, based on the contents of what they sent you.

24 hours to errect the house?

... but it'll still take 5 years to get the planning permission

welcome to the real world, laddie

Oh dear, sounds like someone's just got out of college and discovered that out here, things don't always work the way they do in your lectures on "best practice" and "software design".

ID cards for squirrels

that'll stop the new menace - for sure!

@T. Harrell

Hmmm, a large rock hanging over our heads. Have a quick read of Larry Niven's "Footfall" for some ideas how to use this (hint: not for mining)

Success is being at the top of the gravity well, not the top of the food chain.

@Lyndon Hills @Eddie

> who knows where they've been before you get them...

Quite. there might be another person who secretes their cash down their Y-fronts ... and then secretes.

You probably wouldn't be the first person to contract an STD from a banknote, but you might be the least blameworthy. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

needs a better protocol

It sounds like the "relaxed attitude" is not limited to frequency use, but was also adopted by whoever designed such a brittle system.

The obvious question is: why do trees need a radio link to turn the water on/off when everyone else manages with either a simple timer, or even simpler rainfall (maybe these places just aren't meant to have trees or lawns). You'd hope that someone, somewhere would have done even a little testing and thought about some "what if" situations - not necessarily involving police radios, but everyone who's listened to a car radio knows that the signal can fade, get interfered with or be distorted/garbled.

From the article, it sounds like these guys still haven't learned the lesson, but merely want to avoid it by turning down the cops' wick (just wait until the "sorry we couldn't respond, our radios have been emasculated" stories appear).

Maybe they should stick to gardening and leave RF communications to the specialists.

the real questions are

... why did they think you'd be interested in those particular titles?

>These keywords are actual terms recently used by your customers

and what exactly do you do for your "customers"?

@Steven

> Were in a bloody recession

This is how it was explained to me by someone in "the business".

During a recession property crime increases, so the govt needs to spend more on security.

During a boom (spending, not literal), people are more affluent and therefore more afraid of being a victim of property crime, so the govt. needs to spend more on security.

You see the pattern here?

I expect the same sort of thinking is used when subjugation of the people is the subject, too.

or ...

a small number of electrical appliances in a far-away country get hot - nobody harmed.

blatant profiteering

Considering that the pound is now at $1.86 and sliding fast (an unheard of 11 straight days of drops) and is at it's LOWEST against the dollar for 2 years, these company's reasons are transparently untrue.

If currency rates were the real reason for increasing their prices, they would've done it a year or more ago - when the dollar was much weaker than it is today. In fact their true and only reason for raising prices s because everyone else is - and are being allowed to get away with it.

ahhh - *this* is how web 2.0 makes money

We heard yesterday about an online review service that was offering to reorder bad reviews on payment of an advertising fee. Now we have another service that has turned evil and is demanding money from it's vic^H^H^Husers.

How many online retailers, communities or websites have people handed out their personal details to. I can just imagine the next stage:

"Dear Mr. X, we have noticed a breach in our security and think your bank details have have been compromised. However for a fee of £5 we will review your account and notify you if, in fact, your personal information was among those inadvertently published."

Maybe we should all just sit back and wait for the ransom emails to start arriving.

storage for the lazy

I love these kind of announcements. They all give the impression that you're buying an infinitely sized bit-bucket. Just toss your data in and walk away: it'll be stored, managed, backed-up, snapshotted, mirrored and replicated. You don't have to think about anything - just write the cheque and tell the nice delivery man where you want it delivered.

Sadly, it never works like that. A disk is a disk, is a disk. They're still just spinning platters: you can only access each one so many times in a second. Need faster access? simple, just slap in more cache and watch as the law of diminishing returns dips into your wallet for increasingly large expenditure for increasingly minor gains.

Decide you want to reorganise the whole mess, after months or years of unplanned operations? Too bad. The time it will take to back up the array (and possibly restore it if things go bad) is longer than your maximum permitted downtime: usually a weekend. Of course, you can always buy another one and learn from your mistakes.

Ultimately, there's no substitute for knowing your applications. For getting reliaible forecasts of business growth. For having talented staff who appreciate the shortcomings and can exploit the benefits. However, since most companies don't have these things, they get into a situation where lack of money spent on attracting, retaining and training good people is spent many times over buying in the promise of technology to fix the problem for them.

even more important

.. is that energy companies are GLOBAL.

When most people hear "BP made record profits... " or "Centrica's profits were £X per second ...", they immediately associate the company name with their parochial experience. So, BP means the petrol station down the road, Centrica means British gas, which means "the gas board". - Wrong.

The small part of these global energy companies that the man in the street comes across not only represent a tiny part of these businesses, but don't even make that much money. So the popular view (egged on by the shrill headlines in the Red-Tops) is that petrol prices are high - so the garages are making huge profits from british motorists - so they should be punished with "windfall" taxes.

In fact, most of the money is made overseas, in foreign oil-fields and only comes back to the UK because we have a liberal business environment that makes it worth their while to be registered (and therefore pay tax) in the UK.

Even funnier - when listening to the "tax them 'til the pips squeak" brigade" is that they don't realise that their pension funds are MAJOR investors in these companies. Mugging them for a windfall tax therefore has the effect of reducing the energy company's profits - which would otherwise be paid to our pension funds. Net result: more tax for the government to waste, lower pensions for us. Duh!

possible compensation package

Maybe he'll offer all these people compensation - in the form of a discount on the "I am rich" application..

newflash!

The suit from CNET said

> This makes YouTube seem like student video

Personally I thought youtube *was* student video. Even the best of it is shaky, out of focus, with lousy sound, worse colours and diabolical resolution.

Personally, I don't care whether Silverlight's better or worse than Flash. Since I run Linux/Firefox X64, installing Adobe's offering brings back bad memories of configuring printers in Windows 3.1 (get this addon, download that wrapper, rename something else, copy files here, there and everywhere - then when all's done it plays a few websites until it locks/crashes/dumps). So if it spurs Adobe to produce a player for more platforms I'll be happy. Alternatively if MS produces a silverlight thingy for my platform, I'll drop Flash faster than an oozing baby.

in 4 words:

what's the IT angle?

legal until told otherwise?

> Judge Xavier Rodriguez said that it was crucial that the KaZaA software had not told Harper that there was anything illegal about her actions

I can see a whole new line of defence here.

"The gun didn't tell me it was illegal to shoot people"

"The money didn't tell me it was illegal to buy drugs"

"The beer didn't tell me it was illegal to drink underage"

"The car didn't tell me it was illegal to drive that fast"

I have a sneaking suspicion that what we have here is a very smart (or lucky) lawyer and a particularly clueless judge. I'd be surprised if any teen, from any background had NOT been told ad-nauseam about the "evils" of file sharing. Maybe the judge should consider this defence himself:

"The defendant didn't tell me if she was lying"

let's go the whole hog.

Why not CGI the whole olympics?

If it was done in the format of a video game, then no doubt the female athletes would be pneumatically enhanced, the male athletes would sport unfeasibly large ......... guns.

You could replace all that boring old running with car chases, the shot-put could become a hand-grenade. For the high-jump, the height would be measured in 100s of metres (yes, it's a VIDEO game - reality? - pah!) and the long jump could be between buildings. Instead of the rifle-shooting, use bazookas and the archery would, of course, require flaming arrows.

So far as drugs testing of athletes go, this would remain mandatory - with the slight change that any who failed would be offered a wide selection of powders to make it all more interesting.

Slap an "18" certificate on the whole mess (just to ensure all the under-15s buy it) and change the backdrop every year. You never know, if this was readied for 2012 we might be able to avoid a crippling white-elephant of a hare-brained scheme and actually make a profit from hosting it, virtually of course.

Been done before

This was first done many years ago. unfortunately the scientist who invented it, put the prototype down somewhere and now can't find it.

don't sneeze

you'll be accused of being a bio-terrorist.

To these guys *everything* looks like a terrorist attack of some sort or the other. That's what they get paid (extremely well, both corporately and individually) to spot. Given such a huge vested interest and such a receptive governmental structure - who are using all this FUD to promote their own aims too, this is hardly a surprise. This big problem is that no-one is prepared, or in a position, to stand up and make them account for their claims, or the restrictions they impose. Questions like "how many deaths have you actually prevented?" or "Why did you claim a threat, when there wasn't any?" all get ducked under the excuse of security.

If there's one single lesson that should be taught in schools - every day, it's the story about the boy who cried "wolf!"

I'm all right, Jack ... oooh! maybe I'm not

I wonder if this is one of those "it only applies to foreigners" things. That senators and other lofty individuals don't mind putting "other" people to grave inconvenience and loss. However, when they realise that, just maybe, the same rules aplpy to them, too they start to worry.

Just like for King Canute, the tide of restrictions, limitations and curtailed freedoms is coming in. You can either stand in the water and order it back, or you can get off the beach. The one thing you can't do is stop it.

Sadly the speed of thought is slower than the speed of eroding liberties.

who needs a state-controlled media

when all the "free" channels do is swallow the government line, whole, without challenging it?

OK. Points to The Times for bringing it to people's attention. However I have a sneaking suspicion that this issue won't get picked up by any other highstreet-publication - or TV/Radio. The reasons being that:

a.) it's too abstract

b.) it involves numbers

c.) there are no pictures

d.) it's not about the olympics

As the old song goes: "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose". In the case of press freedom, we've already lost any critical, intellectual or iconoclastic reporting, so I guess that makes them free, afterall.

... provided they can afford the travel insurance

To be an adult (18 or more) in 1945 means you're at least 81 now.

Most insurance companies won't take on new business for people who are above a given age - frequently somewhere in their 70's. Even for existing customers, the T's and C's are so onerous - with exclusions, conditions and excesses that it's not unusual for the insurance to cost more than the trip, even with a £1000 excess.

So the government's "generosity" is tempered to a huge degree by the fact that most OAPs simply can't afford to travel abroad, whether they wanted to or not. I'm sure they realised this when they introduced the scheme in 2004 - having waited long enough to ensure that most people wouldn't or couldn't take up the offer.

makes you glad

.. that judges in the UK are too clueless and out-of-touch to know how to use the internet, even less look things up on Wikipedia.

Get on with your work

Considering council tax (that which pays for these people to surf the 'net) goes up by more than inflation every year - a trend that shows no sign of slowing down, my advice would be to cut their internet PRIVILEGES completely.

I do not feel the need to pay for them to be goofing around, when it's taken them since February to change the 3 streetlights in my little road. (Two done, one still not working).

I'm all for them using websites to provide access to council functions, where it lowers costs - but when all my enquiries simply get responded to by a robotic "thanks you for your communication" and nothing else, I can't help wondering what they spend their time doing - now I know.

Wirecutters are the best security

The most widespread security problem (just waiting to happen) is commercial PCs with too many ports.Most companies buy off the shelf desktop machines and just possibly have their disti pre-load the operating system with a custom screensaver and call that "added value".

I don't know whether it's because they don't understand security, or simply that they don't care - but anyone with any experience in IT knows about "sneaker nets". While they don't use floppy disks anymore, the modern equivalent lets much more data be surreptitiously moved around (or out, as in this case).

Even if companies can't buy PCs without USB connections, or in some cases without built-in wifi, the modifications are quite simple. Merely disabling the ports in software is not enough, as a determined baddie will have the ability to reset them. Given the parlous standards of change-control, you may even find that the machines were "repaired" by inadvertent software updates while in use. While we're at it, best to replace the chassis screws with vandal-proof ones, to stop casual case-openers, too.

If you're worried about voiding warranties, just find another suport organisation. It's not as if they're scarce and one that's any good will recognise the reasoning and have the flexibility to work with your disabled machines.

Problem solved!

This is excellent news - we're responsible for the CO2 emitted by our trading partners. That must mean that they're to blame for the carbon we burn to provide them with the goods and services they get from us. Further, since we use "good" energy - with less CO2 per kWH, then we don't even need a trading surplus to be in the black - global warming wise.

No.

I'm responsible for the emissions (burp!) I make . You have the choice to emit, or not, as you like. You have to be a particularly determined activist to pile the whole world's woes on the UK. Nice try, but this kind of double-think will only work on numerically illiterate and uneducated politicians ..... what am I saying?

This is how the truth gets made

Now that the bogus story about photographers needing permits has (although inadvertantly) hit the mainstream in a "serious" publication, you can almost see the process working itself out.

Some people will think that it's a good idea. Others will think it was already illegal - either for anti-terrorist reasons or misplaced "think of the children" notions. The politicians will sit on the fence - and when there's no public outcry, will realise that here's a liberty no-one cares about - or will miss. They'll be able to score a minor and temporary "tough on crime(?)" victory with little or no criticism.

Meanwhile anyone with a camera will become a pariah. Photography will become something that can only be practiced discretely, then with explicit permission, then in the privacy of your own home, then not at all. In the meantime, the do-gooders and politicans all pat themselves on the back for making us all a little safer.

Much more of this safety, and no-one will be allowed to do anything.

@Gordon Pyra

The biggest blockage to getting the right staff in the right positions is the recruitment agencies. Most of them are failed estate agents and wouldn't know a C compiler from a haystack, even if they'd ever seen either. They get given a wish-list from a client and follow it slavishly. "You have 4 years Java? Sorry the requirement is for someone with 3 years <click>" the reason being that don't know what any of the terms mean, what the client is _really_ asking for and are so scared that another agency (all of whom are living a cut-throat, hand-to-mouth existence) will dish the dirt on them, or that they'll pass one too many CVs to the equally clueless client H.R. dept and get kicked out, themselves.

If an agency did ever appear, that was staffed by diligent, honest, intelligent and qualified sales analysts, they wouldn't last a week. The clients wouldn't deal with them because they'd ask too many questions and the flood of fanciful CVs would so overwhelm them that they'd spend days sorting through the applications for each post - instead of using the tried and trusted method of throwing the whole lot into the air - whichever CVs stick to the ceiling get an interview. Afterall, as Napoleon observed "it's better to be lucky than good".

Only makes sense to fetch things back

There's no way something like this would or could be deployed to a troublespot. The craft would have to have a fixed glidepath on approach and would therefore be far too vulnerable to a baddie with a stinger. Plus the runway would have to be pretty dam' close to perfect - and very, very long.

There are already better and cheaper ways to get more stuff into space. Lets face it, if the only way is up there's little point wasting payload on a reusable last stage. That leaves us with the only other possibility: to bring back things that are already in orbit (or will be, at some time in the future).

So, the most interesting part of this is to try and work out what could possibly be in LEO, that is worth $100M a pop to bring back to earth?

can't compete with "good enough"

Nobody cares about operating systems - they don't actually do the work you want done. That's done by the applications. The best thing an operating system can do is not crash and keep your data and working environment relatively safe.

From that basis, it's fair enough for a new PC to run Vista - provided of course that the user doesn't have to learn new stuff, and that it will support all the bits'n'bobs that person (or organisation) wants to interface it with. Oh yes, and that it runs the applications you actually want to use.

That's where the problems start, Vista gets in the way. The ideal operating system would be completely invisible: just doing it's thing quietly in the background and not getting between the users and their objectives. Even worse, as an operating system it doesn't offer any compelling new benefits (note: not features) that a large group of people actually need. This isn't Apple, so eye candy doesn't count, guys.

This is where XP was successful, not because it was particularly good, but because it's predecessor was not up to the job. The problems and unreliability of W2K - even with 4 service packs, meant that people were willing to shell-out for XP and the advantages it gave: not getting in the way, not crashing and letting them get on with their work. That it would also run their old hardware and applications without having to buy new "XP approved" versions helped a lot, too.

So far as the future goes, there are no operating systems "killer apps", the lack of backwards compatibility for both hardware and software is a major disadvantage and crushing hardware requirements are the last straw. Until the people in charge of Vista Mk2, or preferable XP Mk3, realiise that, like a good butler the O/S should only be noticeable by it's absence, and that it's neither a feature nor a benefit in itself, they will always be competing with the "good enough" older stuff.

My favourite quote from the release of Vista was from an obviously non-technical woman looking at the Aeroglass interface. When told that Vista had cost $10Bn to develop, her response was "Is that all they did?" Pretty much sums up the whole world's response.

genetic predisposition to crime???

When you cut through the woolly talk - is this one of the research programmes they're planning?

I can imagine that if it ever came out that this is what they're planning, there would be riots (which, presumably would result in even more DNA for the scientists to investigate - maybe that's the idea). And rightly so.

No wonder the police don't want their own DNA included in these projects - it might uncover some hard truths about the "type" of people who join the force.

Nightmare on Elm St.

Many years ago when I was "last level" support for a hardware supplier, we got a call from a disti who had installed a network for a high-profile client. It suffered from occasional, but disastrous networking problems. Back then, networking was a black art (remember those old, thick, yellow networking cables?). After piling in their own people, analysers, reflectometers, tracing software and everything else they could throw at it, they finally called us in.I sat in a small cubby room for days (on charge, natch') squeezed in with seized/evidence equipment - yes it was No. 10 Elm St. and all the disti's kit, and nothing happened. After a while, the account manager thought the problem must've somehow fixed itself and was considering declaring the problem "solved". You guessed it - massive packet loss, collisions, machines crashing. The TDR showed up which cabling segment was at fault and off we went to find out what was going on.

It turned out that the cable was running under a staircase - with one rocky step, just by a window. When a courier had made a delivery, or a pickup, he would call in to get the next job. It turned out that mobile reception in the building was lousy and the only place his phone would work was near that particular window. There he'd stand for a couple of minutes, squashing the 10 base-2 cable and causing networking ructions. While he was not the only person to use that staircase, no-one else loitered on that particular step for any length of time, so the problems from people passing by were too small to notice.

No evidence, so accident more likely

If I was a zillionaire and wanted to fake my death, I wouldn't be worried about the value of one crummy little plane. I'd make sure the wreckage was found (added points for a body burnt beyond recognition/DNA matching). However, with the amount of money he had, I seriously doubt that even the best auditor could spot a few mil. missing from anywhere in the estate - especially if SF had time to prepare things.

@Brian Murray

I don't this the issue is that people are being sensitive, as much as they are reacting to the unprofessionalism displayed by the author. You wouldn't use such language in a document you write for work, or in school/university work - at any level. The reason being that it detracts from the content and reduces the credibility of the message - as we have seen here, with so many of the responses being about the language, not the topic itself.

The quickest way to go bankrupt

... is to base your business plan on what people tell you they want.

Apart from the well-known problem that people respond to surveys by trying to please the surveyor - giving the answer they think the surveyor wants to hear, the "man in the street" has a very idealised self-image. Ask questions about what they think about over-eating or littering and they'll agree those are bad things - then drop their empty crisp bag on the pavement as they walk away.

Even worse: ask them if they'd be willing to pay (say) £5 for a new product and a lot of people will say "yes". Respond with "OK, here it is, lets have your money" and the excuses will start. The only way to actually work out what will be a success is to start making things (or offering a service). If people buy it then it stands a chance. If not, go and do something else before you go bust.

When asked, 9 out of 10 people said they didn't believe in surveys.

The policy no-one dares push

This used to be a tenet of the Ecology Party way back, when. However the policy got quietly brushed under the carpet as they metamorphosed into the Greens. The obvious reason being that, while a logical extension of "use less, save the environment", it's incredibl;y unpopular - most of the party's supporters being parents (and all having been children) 'n' all. Principles are one thing, getting a shot at power is something else.

Recent events (petrol/gas/leccy price rises) have shown us that, when people as a whole are put in the position of deciding whether to consume less energy, or pay more for it, they want to carry on as they always have - the Centrica chappy's unpopular comment about having to wear another sweater being a classic example. No doubt when the greenies are given the choice of not having more kids or saving the planet they'll make a similar lifestyle choice.

I wonder what it'll take to make us all start living up to the principles we espouse? Actions speak louder than words.