"59 ravey non-users"
And *boy* were they tough to find
16327 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
You fail to ask the *key* question which will save the *most* amount of money and time.
Does the UK *need* a centralised ever expanding warehouse of license plate data with *no* oversight?
BTW I'm fairly sure your post will be either one of those 1/2 up, 1/2 down voted posts or unvoted, as to agree with one side of it would imply you agreed with the other.
Hint: You've described a sensible and efficient way to implement a centralised system (very reasonable) for an effective and highly authoritarian vehicle (and by extension person) tracking system. Not very reasonable.
Would you care to clarify your view?
"I've been working in development of Police IT systems for nearly twenty years, and I've yet to see a requirements spec for a system which comes anywhere close to actually defining what they need. "
Have you ever seen a cost/benefit analysis explaining *why* it was needed in the first place?
Or was this one of those "Oh look at the super-duper new tech. We *must* have it" sort of buying decisions?
It's *very* curious to outsiders that while the 43 forces make much of their independence they seem very coordinated on some things but go in near random directions on others.
Not a flame but actual puzzlement given that *all* these systems ultimately send their information to the same place and presumably update PNC2 as part of the process.
Fingerprints can't tell you a persons gender.
Fingerprints can't tell who you're related to, regardless of who you think your parents are.
Fingerprints can't tell if you have a variety of hereditary diseases.
DNA can't tell you if this person has 1 or more twins which match them for DNA but could have committed the crime.
Aside from the fact fingerprints have been in use in the UK since at least the 1890's whereas DNA has not I'd think there *are* reasons for treating DNA *more* stringently than fingerprints.
BTW the failure of the Scottish fingerprints service in recent years does not give much faith that fingerprint comparison by humans is being either properly taught or carried out.
"It is a valid if controversial point, there are some benefits to taking DNA samples at birth, "
Positive reasons can *always* be made for something like this.
Just give up a *little* more of your privacy forever and it will make administration *so* much easier (for us).
"You just have to protect it from misuse, "
Forever.
"Personally, I think you should be able to choose to have your sample deleted "
You seem to think such institutions *accept* they are run for the benefit of members of society.
The reality is it has taken a case in the ECHR to get the UK govt to do this for *innocent* people. It's taken 2 *years* to this accepted by the so-called government but more relevantly ACPO who seem to function as an unelected unaccountable setter of UK law enforcement policy
"Mind you I'd be happier if the Police kept all their officers and employees biometric data in the same way they do in the US, rather than expect it of everyone else."
Outside of watching CSI I've no idea of how (if) the US really retains law enforcement staff's DNA. The UK does but in a *separate* file of Police DNA. This suggests there is an automatic *assumption* that any *Police* DNA found is a result of them being present at scene of crime.
So the chance of a corrupt officer being picked up by *their* DNA at a crime scene looks to be pretty slim as long as they don't arouse suspicion.
I wonder what happens to it when the leave the Police?
I think the mix of points you make would either get as many votes up as down or cause people not to vote at all.
I'll still go for the down vote.
This was very much in line with ACPO's a-citizen-is-just-a-criminal-we-have-not-caught-yet mindset, popular with the EU commission as well (Data Retention Directive)
And what was *so* difficult about deleting the ones *already* held?
Viewing DNA and the data records generated from it under the Data Protection Act would seem to come under excessive and unnecessary.
A *very* grudging start.
I think you're talking about cases which are the *exception* rather than the rule.
Most cases don't need or use mass screening.
The Police has been retaining DNA when people have either *not* been charged in the first place (IE No trial at all) , or gone to trial and been found not guilty.
No one is asking for the destruction of DNA samples collected during scene of crime
"But in a case where someone was a potential suspect, "
"Potential suspect" I think you've been watching too much TV. Someone is either a suspect (in which case you gather evidence and charge them) or they are not, in which case any samples tanke from them are being held unlawfully.
"even with a 'delete when no longer useful' policy, wouldn't people *still* have to trust the police to decide when they think the odds were very low of evidence arising that could lead to a DNA match with a particular person?"
It's trust in the police (or rather ACPO and the senior plods and Home Office civil servants) that is low.
A clear law does not require *trust* in the Police. The ECHR ruling makes the continues holding of collected samples useless in a trial. The "Oh we happened to have retained samples" line no longer works. It's inadmissible.
The criminal who is *so* clever that they can only be bought to trial through the (unlawful) collection of their DNA is a great standby for TV cop shows. I don't think most criminals get away with crimes because they leave no clues. I think they leave no clues the Police can either in some cases *afford* to or in other cases *bother* to investigate.
UK subjects *might* have gone along with the ID card, although there is a common law tradition in the UK (absent from many other countries in Europe) that people do not *need* a government supplied card/piece of plastic/tattoo to tell *other* people who the are.
In the UK it was *never* about the card.
It was the building of a cradle-to-grave record of your *entire* life. This is what Tony Blair, a number of senior civil servants and a whole bunch of government con-tractors wanted.
BTW A database with (from the results of other data problems bought to light in a child support claim) *no* (let me just repeat that for the benefit of non UK readers) *NO* audit trail to know whose been reading/deleting/amending/emailing-their-friend-in-a-private-detective-agency your file.
As for the price of passports. In the UK the Passport Office took on responseability for the ID card programme and magically the cost of UK passport started rising, just at the times the costs started rising on the scheme (which the Labor government liked to described as "self financing")
A quote that Benjamin Franklin became the sig for a lot of US posters following 9/11. I paraphrase.
"Those people who give up basic freedoms for security deserve neither security nor freedom"
As true today as a decade ago.
are still in place.
And the DWP is buying data on the open market.
*Most* of the people who drove this nonsense are still in place and waiting for the next change of government/terrorist-incident/massive-fraud/elected-demagogue-leader so they can come out of the wood work and offer their oh-so-simple "solution"
A database has been destroyed. Good.
But not the idea of *having* such a database, and a few more besides.
"They don't want to read everyone's email, they just want to know where the messages start and where they go."
You might like to check the spec on Dettica's hardware for a start and consider how they will confirm that the packets contain what they *claim* to contain.
Deep packet inspection perhaps?
I am of course *completely* convinced that the contents would not be recorded.
I wonder if anyone has realised this means basically recording the entire contents of the BT internet backbone *every* day?
But then to a dedicated data fetishist you can never have *too* much data. As long as they don't have to pay the storage costs of course.
The classic civil servant CMA mentality of "Oh but this contract is bigger than 50% of your turnover. It's *too* scary to use you" could still scupper.
Not that that stopped the NHS betting the hospital (in fact several hospitals) on a software company whose accounts were fraudulent.
They were *special*.
Cautious thumbs up.
I seem to recall something along those lines.
I use IE for *nothing* in my day to day browsing. However I am taking a course. Tried to go to the web page and (surprise surprise) it's implemented with ActiveX.
This "feature" and the apps that use is AFAIK the *only* major reason for retaining IE9 (or it's even less compatible forebears).
OTOH I suspect systems developed to *proper* open standards would have been slow to begin with but with faster release cycles (and ability to change *between* browsers because they can all read the same standards) they would have gotten better faster.
Do not want.
I worked a bit wit a PDP running VMS. Nice business OS as I recall. I'm told a lot of banks ran VAXen clusters because it gave them affordable reliability. Perhaps they still do.
I cannot get my head *why* anyone would think a data word that was *not* a power of 2 would be a good idea.
That said I've some experience of the boxes of the Harris Corp. 24 bits with an assembler (IIRC) whose mnemonics changed depending what part of the word you're addressing and for which the preferred programming language in terms of functions to access the OS was FORTRAN.
They're meant to have been quite good for running geological survey imaging systems and the DOGS CAD package. Rarely has something being *so* well named.
Fair Well Ken, although at least some of the VMS architecture lives on under the covers of NT and its successors.
"ten seconds with a multimeter would have told you what you needed to know and then a TDR would have pinpointed it for you if it was a large enough run to stop you walking it."
We could not afford a TDR.
We cold not afford the multimeter.
We played find the loose connector the old fashioned way.
No fun at 2am in the morning.
Some of this stuff reminds me of a piece of Chris Rock's stand up work on YouTube. The bit about a war going on between black people and n*****s, and how the latter want credit for something you're supposed to do as a matter of course.
"Well, we're going to stop holding the DNA of *innocent* people"
You stupid m**********rs, the ECHR told the *previous* government to do that.
I can only hope that, were a government spokesman asked *when* they plan to repeal the moronic drawn porn laws, they do not reply "S**t I don't know, keeping it *real*"
"If the law and corresponding crime is so complicated that a jury can't follow it then it's more of a lure-and-trap than a law."
Not so. The *law* might be quite simple. However the actual mechanics of a fraud can be hideously complex (consider the $40Bn Ponzi pyramid scheme).
Now if you were a defense barrister one tactic you *might* consider would be to so *bury* the jury in minutiae and trivia that they declare your client not guilty just so they can *go* home, ideally after a couple of weeks at £200ph so that's the kids school fees taken care of.
This is one that *looks* like it's going to give people a fairer trial.
In reality I suspect most of the people who *finally* get to the inside of a courtroom for fraud are actually *guilty*.
Of course some of them are also large campaign contributors to political parties.
"What actually happened is that detention could be pushed back up beyond 14 days under emergency legislation if the government felt so inclined."
Could a government easily make it *impossible* for future legislation to permit something?
Good point. Jacquie Smith pointed out that Labor could make carrying identity cards compulsorily with essentially a one clause bill.
None of that namby pamby getting a consensus when you've got a big parliamentary majority.
It's an interesting question if the UK would even get *this* if the Conservatives had a majority or weather they'd just spout aphorisms like "Let sleeping dogs lie, least said soonest mended" etc.
"The truly free capitalist way is to create a new ISP who's 1 singular aim is to turn every webfilter on and create a smoothed edge garden for the kids end of then see what the take up is."
I paraphrase but Ms Perry quoted in her speech a survey (sponsored by O2 IIRC) which claimed over 80% of parents were concerned their children were seeing inappropriate content (but could not work out how to do anything about it or could not be bothered).
So you'd think *some* of the c450 landline ISP's would queuing up to offer this sort of peace-of-mind (at *very* reasonable prices given the *huge* supposed demand).
Strangely I have not heard of *any* such package, even from one of the bit 6 who (again paraphrasing Ms Perry) hold >90% of the UK market and so logically should be able to offer this at *rock* bottom prices, if so minded. After all TOTC! (I think it lacks impact without the hysterical apostrophe at the end).
"As I've said in the past, I run a site selling Leather Bondage Gear, but my site is registered with Net Nanny, Cyber Sitter etc and has "Adults Only" and 18+ tags so that anyone who *chooses* to install and activate filters can block it."
So in point of fact as one of the *providers* of some of the sort of stuff that little Tonquil and Jocasta *might* be traumatised by you make *every* effort to ensure they can't get to you in the first place (provided mummy and daddy cared enough to set up the software on their PC) and if they do they have a pretty good idea that they will see something not viewed as appropriate for viewers under 18 (or thereabouts depending on your location).
"Unfortunately there are those who think that we should *all* be treated as children and that the filters should be on *unless* we switch them off."
Yes that seems *exactly* the attitude they are adopting.
You'd never think the internet was designed from day 1 for adult use only. All the core sites were either government funded research labs or universities. No minors allowed.
I've seen responses from computer types and parents but it's rare to see posts from someone involved in *supplying* adult content, even something most people would view as fairly innocuous (depending on the level of description of course).
I suspect a lot of the "anti" group see you and other similar web masters as unconcerned about exposing children to such content, and viewing their little darlings as "future consumers."
Which gives some idea of how much they *really* know about the people and sites they are protesting against.
Thumbs up for going on the record, being up front and not hiding behind AC.
They can pretty much knock up a bill on a whim. Their staff will probably do most of the "writing" (or rather one of their stuff who goes on to a nice job with Big Music having inserted a few choice clauses in the case of the DCMA. Thanks to JP for that little anecdote)
It can be as stupid as they like.
It can have a load of irrelevant clause included.
How *far* it gets depends on the support of *individual* Senators and Congress persons, party support (I'd guess a fair number of these "leaders" do just what their party tells them in any event). quality of the holiday (or important "fact finding" tour as they described it in their expenses) they arranged for the other members of a committee the chaired etc.
And of course how much the big investors (or "contributors" as politicians like to call them) in their campaign "contributed" to others in the relevant House.
Mine would have a copy of "The Power Game" in the pocket.
*very* high risk, *very* high return gambles.
Unfortunately the ultimate objective does have to have *some* sort of military application in the near-mid term.
NB DARPA was where project Orion (interstellar travel by nuclear bombs. A real bang bang machine) wound up.
Freeman Dyson described what happened next in an article in Science simply called "Death of a project."
"Laws do not stop criminals"
Quite true
"The pornographers will simply tag their junk as child-friendly to bypass the filters."
You equate adult entertainment with breaking the law. Most of these folk already subscribe to *all* the main web filtering services (the ones already *fitted* to all new UK PCs) which Ms Perry can't seem to work (or hire someone to work for her). You might also notice the age buttons warning people of adult content and asking them to confirm they are over the age of consent.
Note that. You might *go* to the site by accident but you'd have to be illiterate in the language the web site is written in (and the website would have to have no pictures on its welcome page) for you *not* to realize what you're about to do.
This is *not* a self certification scheme. She expects someone to "Certify" them.
All c250 million web sites.
To meet the standards of the Obscene Publications Act (watch the video. She outlines her whole "cunning" plan to the other 7 odd wingnuts who actually turned up)
An Interesting side point (she neatly avoids) how would YouTube work? *many* "content suppliers" who aren't familiar with the contents of the OPA. And frankly WTF would they be?
It's a tolerant smile. which is rather more than you can expect from Ms Perry.
MS does not "gamble" on success it buys it.
Looked at logically it needed to have a high profile Windows adoption from a make someone has heard of.
I've always found it ironic that having worked so hard to kill pen computing in the early 90's (good job Bill) MS should keep trying to revive it.
MS is a jealous god and I suspect other posters views that Dell will only be allowed to sell Windows hosted tablets is likely.
It will be interesting to see equal sized tablets running different OS's face off.
When this is areal product.
I guess I always thought that anyone who bought this sort of tech would have that *already*.
A bit like the difference between "file size" that Windows *loves* to show you (and AFAIK remains f**k all use as Windows can't put two files closer together than a sector) and "Size on disk" which is rather more relevant
In a database context de-dupe is also called data normalisation.
I don't think *anyone* expects that to actually speed up a database in terms of the number of disk accesses.
Thumbs up because some people out there who should know this probably just found it our reading that blog. PSA obligation fulfilled.
And as other El Reg articles have shown Mercury is a *very* nasty long term poison.
I'm frankly amazed more (most?) crematoria don't have some kind of heat recovery system already.
If you choose to go with cremation it's tough to get the human body to ignite and I think anything which recovers some of that heat (within reason) is a brilliant idea. IIRC some power station cooling water is used to heat fish farms. Would anybody have found *that* idea as comment worthy?
"Exactly the point missed in all the debates on the subject in the media. Does anyone know the ratio of heat from gas:bodies that could be extracted on average (and is Redditch's population averagely fat?)"
Wasn't that the former constituency of Jacquie Smith, ex Home Secretary?
I seem to recall the West Midlands tops the list of UK counties for obesity at 29% of the population.
But is Redditch in the West Midlands?
I *guarantee* he will be back.
Either on the letterhead of some company doing this or behind the scenes as some kind of "consultant" or "non-executive Director."
He's tasted easy money from a bulk mail operation (it would be libelous to call it a scam).
Put him on the list of just-this-side-of-the-law types whose businesses tend to run for a few years then shut down, next to the likes of "Geoff Stevens." He ran an operation promising SME's help to get UK government grants. Now he runs Harrison Black, which promises to help UK businesses lower their business rent.
Stevens was banned from being a UK company director for 11 years. Partnerships and sole traders are not regulated by companies house.
Glass because I'll drink to any judge who can look past the technology BS and see the real case.
Note I think this would need some kind of "lunar transfer stage." I'd expect F9 to be able to push a payload to escape velocity and then separate to save weight but you'd need a stage to fire at the moon to put it into a parking orbit, or at least cancel some of the velocity, otherwise your package will hit *hard*.
AFAIK that stage does not exist yet, but its design could make it an interesting addition to Spacex's product range. The weight of the stage and the Isp it can deliver can make a *critical* difference to the payload such a system can deliver.
I'd expect them to use the Draco hypergolic thruster technology they have developed but I'd like them to have a go at one of the newer ideas in propellant pressurization, either one of the reciprocating pump designs ( a couple exist) or the dissolved pressurant idea pioneered by the French.
A *relatively* cheap rocket system which can put a known sized (if small) package into lunar (or Mars or Venus) orbit at relatively short notice could pick up the market for smaller projects in this area, both from JPL and ESA and JAXA. Giving either many more scientists a shot at getting results (or possibly getting multiple snapshots of the same phenomena or testing more refined versions of their instruments). It might encourage people who'd *never* thought about sending something to another moon or planet some ideas.
It's the difference between loading a tent and sleeping bag into your car for a week and buying an RV.
I thought HP partly bought them for the Alpha architecture and the VAX/VMS as very much the crown jewels of the company.
I think the period of roughly 50s-70s seems to have been something of a golden age of paternalistic large companies (specifically IBM, HP and DEC). Sadly this also bought something of an introspective parochial mind set which made them slow to adapt to the realisation that some things from "outside" would break down the walls of their walled gardens (Unix, MS DOS, Ethernet for example).
It's a tricky one.
I think possibly looking at the market capitalization (# of shares x share price) at the time when AOL merged with Time Warner and then when they (de-merged? Dropped the Time Warner bit?) or before they bought BEBO might give an idea of the power of this company to destroy shareholder value.
Reverse Midas effect?
Never again.
Let the IT ignorant f*****t who has sign off authority make the decisions and live with them.
I'll tell them they have a problem and what will happen if they don't handle it.
"It's just one of those things"
No you w***er it's your failure to plan.
I guess having a "responsible" job is easy if you have no actual sense *of* responsibility.
I'll dowse the flames and return shortly.