Posts by JaitcH

Multiple nationality causes confusion!

Some short-sighted court orders/injunctions are frequently unenforceable. When someone registers at a social web site they are quite able to use Russia, or China or Cambodia as their home country. So how would a Beak determine what posts were illegal?

I have, legally, three passports. Often laws of one of these countries conflict with those of another. I also reside/work in a fourth country whose interests are often diametrically different to my other countries - particularly when it comes to military products we sell. One countries 'terrorist' is another's 'freedom fighter'.

So I usually follow the principal of "When in Rome ..." Trying to enforce laws in areas outside a jurisdiction is dumb.

Since a week ago last Sunday ...

our company adopted satellite pagers.

We also have a Mitel IP switch that receives Freephone 800 type calls from people who have received pages and, on request, will connect parties together.

Sorry GCHQ/NSA - we are using our radio comms even less these days. Me - very, very rarely.

I have a feeling that VietNam cell companies don't participate in data sharing, any way, along with China.

VietNam has a human population of around 83-million and a working cell handset population of 125-million! That should confuse the NSA CO-TRAVELLER software.

US Fuel additive blocked in Canada but overturned by WTO

There is a US fuel additive, whose name I can't find, that was been blocked for use in Canada as it is poisonous to young children.

A US company used an international agreement to overturn the Canadian law - so now we have this US muck harming Canadian children's health. AND CANADA had to pay MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in damages, too!

Few of these agreements are good and SECRET AGREEMENTS are NEVER good.

P.S. I forgot to add, this muck is banned for use in the USA

Who asked the USA to be the World Plod?

Once again the USA goes out of it's way to make friends/create enemies. Not satisfied with blocking imports at it's borders it goes out it's way to stir up ill will. Then it wonders why is one of the most hated countries in the world.

The main driver in this sort of trade is the exorbitant profit margins Western companies make when exploiting cheap labour in overseas countries. If the differentials were reasonable, say 20-25% there wouldn't be enough margin in shipping knock-offs.

The better quality knock-offs are often made on 'third' shifts where the legitimate products are made on the day and evening shifts. I know of a couple of factories where this happens in Shenzhen, so the quality is there.

If the Western companies actually made product in the West they would be justified in charging such high prices.

I am amazed at the uses of Burberry style pattern (a true copy) are destined for. Burberry hot pants are attractive, as are the motorcycle gloves of the same pattern. Maybe the Facebook guy would like a Burberry Hoodie for Christmas. Really fetching.

A section of the company makes military and industrial robotic vehicles and I often pop over to China to get deals on parts. I was at a factory where they moulded Mecanum rubber tyres/tires (the tires that allow vehicles move in any direction without steering) .

I asked why some product was just poured into canvas bags in large quantity whilst others were packed 4 tyres/tires in plastic bags. The answer was that the bulk were being sent to dealers on InterNet discount sites and the '4s' were packed separately and sold for 8-14 times higher by the ultimate retailer.

These LED mass sellers in the West buy their product by weight. I bought 10 kilograms each of various colours - untested - and when they reached our plant (where we have a high-speed tester) the cost per 3mm LED was around 0.03 US cents each.

These are typical cost relationships for many, many products.

Western product samples are imported, they are X-rayed and analysed and even the software stripped from memories - forget e-fuse protection! I have a PCB contractor in Shenzhen who will let me see any part of his operation except how they strip software from ROMs, etc.

Talking about World Plod. Did you know the U.S. Coastguard (for safeguarding 'homeland' coasts) has a Coastguard Base in Israel!

Talking about leaky house drop cables ...

Cable TV has been available in Canada for many years - in fact some Canadian companies were cable pioneers.

Early installations were somewhat 'ad hoc' being made before any standards had really been laid down. Often house drops were simply spaded in under lawn turf.

Now, some 40 years on, the cables are working their way to the surface and all it takes is a lawn mower to shave the shield/screen off the cable.

Often the first knowledge of this damage is from aircraft pilots who complain about TV programming they hear on their AM radios when coming in to land at Toronto International!

How about a gift to mankind ... for Christmas?

Perhaps Docomo could donate it to the world, or at least Google Android users, as a humanitarian gesture.

Walking potential dead is a world-wide phenomena. Perhaps someone can work on an App for motorcycle drivers, too.

We have over 4-million motorcycles here in Ho Chi Minh City and most seem to text whilst driving!

P.S. Why do people hold the cell in the left hand and hold it against the right-hand ear? Vietnamese drivers routinely stick the cell handsets under their safety helmet straps and talk whilst using both hands for driving.

Someone dropped the backdoor into the device ...

It's what CISCO does to most of it's InterNet network products and why Obama is supporting their sale - all NSA compliant.

Let's hope that India and Pakistan can be crossed off the ...

aid, handouts and free grant lists now they have money to waste on nuclear weapons and spacecraft.

Did you know that the UK actually still sends grant money to Israel! Some needy country!

Nuts.

It's great living next to Land of Cheap aka The World's Workshop aka China

It is now possible to buy a half-decent feature cell handset, with two SIM slots, for $15 in Ho Chi Minh City. Bottom end Android smartphones, with capacitive screens, go for $35.

Couple these prices with VietNam's government-mandated open (unlocked) cell handset policy and VNPT's basic cell service it's easy to see why students of all ages carry some form of cell handset.

The government-owned, for profit, VNPT basic plan supplies a starter prepaid SIM and airtime for $10 and coupled with their 'poor peoples plan' (one outgoing call/SMS per month to maintain SIM validity) can keep people available for over a year. I have a SMS only unit on which I dropped $20 six years ago using the 'poor' plan and I can still receive incoming SMS messages and have a balance of Dong 210,000 (USD$9.96 / GBP6.08).

A replacement SIM costs $0.15 + a Dong10,000 (USD$0.47 / GBP0.29) top up. VNPT still makes millions (dollars) profits. Their subsidiary, Mobiphone, caters to the youth market with all sorts of messaging, etc AND FREE EVENINGS/OVERNIGHTS!

Samsung, and Apple, maintain their prices for high end cell handsets - Samsung used it's regional activation feature to 'eliminate' the grey market - although all Samsung units are sold unlocked in VietNam. As VietNam has no laws against price fixing, and legit dealers have to sell at stipulated prices, they give 'promotions' (aka discounts) by loading you down with very useful accessories such as Bluetooth headsets, battery chargers, etc.

Sounds more like a US Honeypot trap

So they can persuade him to leave ... then, Gotcha!

Smarter to stay facing the four walls he knows than others he doesn't.

HOW MUCH has Plod cost the UK Taxpayer to watch Assange so far, I wonder?

Heathrow wouldn't be the same ...

without all the exorbitantly priced 'duty free' shops - this would mean passengers could save 30-60 minutes reaching their gates.

And what other idiot airport would put a duty free store just before arriving passengers hit the Customs Red and Green exits?

In the States the human genome was patented, so we better watch out otherwise ...

Apple will try yet another prior art patent filing.

The question is, what would they use the theory for in practice? Not that this would stop them as history has proven.

There should be a EU ...

law that forces deals in one EU country be honoured/offered in all others.

Of course, Britain is either half in or half out of the EU so perhaps some of the blame belongs to Cameron and Company.

"A CERT, Computer Emergency Response Team, is a service set up by ... or government"

Just who will be dumb enough to trust any government, particularly the UK or US governments, given how they have betrayed trust placed in them by the taxpaying public and even politicians.

These guys lie - on TV - that says it all.

As long as there is a ...

PATRIOT Act, or similar, ANY attempt of concealing everything from US Government eyes is doomed to failure as long as Twitter servers reside in the USA.

So what is the point of this?

Some companies, such as Adobe, seem to relish the opportunity to update ...

as it seems every time I switch on my computer there is that charcoal window demanding I install yet another 'important update'.

Damn annoying, although it let's me refill my coffee cup.

The Problem isn't the inter-switching connections but likely the 'last mile'

Bell Canada, some 20 years ago, cabled a fairly large sub-division in North York, Toronto with fibre optic cable. Then the Neanderthal cable company came along later and laid co-ax into each of the homes.

For around 10-15 years the Canadian telco's have been running high-capacity fibre in to new highrises and, with changes in the law, the former telephone only and cable TV only companies have been able to compete by offering all forms of communications.

The challenge will be forcing these two industries to share facilities in the 'last mile' to customers premises.

Of course, there remains the question of what terminal equipment will be used, important since telco's abandoned the home telephone 'instrument' business some decades ago.

Here in VietNam, following the defeat of the Americans in the American War in VietNam, European companies cleaned up by running fibre cable up and down the length of the country (and crossways, too) with digital switches completing the backbone. All communications is via fibre. Satellites are used to feed TV to remote areas.

Digital subscriber lines completed the system to homes in major towns but in more remote areas telephone lines remain.

Both my office in Buon Ma Thuot, as well as my wife's two hotels, located in cities with 400,00o+ souls, are fed with 200Mbyte fibre cables. Our summer house, midway between between BMT and Da Lat has 30 Mbyte InterNet - there are only 20 odd houses in the hamlet who also have similar speed service.

Interestingly, in Ho Chi Minh City, the competing communications companies have joined together - easy to do when you have a government such as ours - and my new apartment has a terminal which can supply digital landline as well as three InterNet feeds from different companies and two digital HD television signals. The service options are selected by a small matrix of selector pins.

Jail doesn't solve these problems ...

but fining the offenders a large sum, based upon their present income, would be more effective and cheaper to enforce.

Jail harms offenders families, burdens the welfare services and satisfies no ones goals.

Acers in a mess ... plenty of spare motherboards but no spare keyboards

Out here in the Far East the ACER branches in several countries have no replacement keyboards so Customer Service staff are tearing newer style keyboards apart so they can repair the older (2 years) keyboards.

Battery packs are no problem as there are replacement cells available and Motherboards gather dust on shelves - they are more reliable than keyboards. Plastic cases abound, too, I'm not sure on the spare LCD screen status.

So move your chatroom servers to the USA

where speech is protected.

If you check, most of the papers are based on servers away from the UK. The Reg is coming from all over these days ... except China. Makes it hard to select the optimum satellite InterNet source. For cable destinations to the West we use a Singapore cable, for the East-bound we use a HongKong cable.

"Scrolling and Bouncing" ...

no doubt is what is happening in Job's wooden burial box.

All his well laid plans unravelling.

How do 'high-altitude balloons' and WiFi/ISM ...

work?

I and some colleagues, a couple of years ago, mounted some solar-powered TD-Link WiFi access points atop some mountains in Son La Province in north-western VietNam so some dispersed villages of the same ethnic group could communicate via a virtual 'landline' (phones on the wall).

These mountains were only around 2,500 metres high and we used TD-Link directional antennae pointing at different villages for the mountain/village links. As you might imagine, there is precious little in these areas and we were able to patch the software and even add RF amplifiers for one village without the 'authorities' even catching on what we had done.

Our links have now been continuously operational, without maintenance, since installation although we expect to have climb up those terrible slopes to change batteries within a couple of years. Speaks well of TD-Link reliability, too. The telephone switches for each village were refurbished Mitel SX10 and SX10E with custom built interfaces to the WiFi

My question is given that ISM bands are shared and power limited - how much of a footprint will Google achieve or will they use the re-allocated wireless “D-block” of 700 MHz spectrum?

I thought CISCO only leaked data, not cash

If this guy hadn't taken a break, I wonder how long it would have taken CISCO to cotton on to this leak?

If you Google: "cisco money theft" you'll see CISCO has numerous activities involving fraud.

A CISCO report cited by PC World included the line: "However, many banks are not sophisticated enough to do this, and the money is lost."

I guess CISCO'S "sophistication" is somewhat lacking, too.

The Three Monkeys on display

Why should ANYONE believe a Pony & Cart show - except gullible people?

Obviously they have learnt from the US version with Clap-Trap Clapper and Alexander admitting to lying. Likely pre-scripted questions with the force of cotton-balls. Just another act in Security Theatre.

And what was the purpose ... to accuse an American of leaking UK secrets?

That their 'secrets' leaked out was the problem with NSA and NSA' ability to keep things confidential. These things should have been kept on a UK-controlled server.

Given that Ms. Manning had previously outed all the secrets from the State Department, The Three Monkeys should have wised up and had a chat with their friends in the USA.

Obviously the Monkeys don't understand/accept they have broken the public trust and they have much work to do to restore even a modicum of trust.

I have these all over - they are called PIR (Passive Infra-Red) sensors

It's how I cut my home, hotel and office electricity bills.

My automobiles and motorcycles use BlueTooth and PIR proximity technology. And I use Ultrasound to sense gas and water tank levels as well as for security (lights).

And NEST thermometers and the new smoke detectors detect motion.

Perhaps Apple could patent prior art as a patentable process.

3,000 of these turned out to be back in prison, out of the country, released or dead

Serco and G4S aren't only to blame - they do have their reputations, as useless, to maintain - but also the government auditors who failed to detect these frauds for years.

And will the government demand refunds with interest I wonder?

Alexander, Clapper past their Best Before dates.

US Cyber Command, the team tasked with protecting US government computer systems, seems to be less than successful judging by the youthful characters accused of penetrating US computer systems.

Besides, having the diverse tasks under different heads, of equal seniority, might well avoid some of the excesses that our friend Snowden has detailed.

Clearly Alexander blew it, be it his excesses or his lieing to Congress. Even his charm strategies are wearing thin with the aged Diane Feinstein (now EIGHTY) having to rewrite her scripts to fit the occasion.

Question: Which Command will get to keep the Starship control centre, the manifestation of Alexander's ego?

Who the hell would want to bug a meeting of vapid Tories ...

masturbating their egos. Can you imagine how boring it could be listening to the likes of May, Hague or Cameron.

Next, lead-lined boxes will be de rigeur for board rooms, as the latest corporate status symbol.