Posts by JimmyPage 3224 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Mar 2010
Because the media space has already been filled with an atmosphere of "if you object you must have some sinister agenda" usually in the same breath as "paedophile", or "terrorist" depending on the sound of your name, and colour of your skin.
The only place you'll get a libertarian view is more off-grid ... blogs, twitter, Facebook ... that is all the places the government want's to bring under it's control.
Actually, I suspect this is what 95% of our MPs genuinely think is possible.
You know the old joke about a jury being made of 12 people too stupid to avoid jury duty ? Well the matching political axiom is that parliament is made up of people too stupid to do real work.
I suspect a 3 question grilling would reveal that the majority of MPs struggle with the distinction between Google search results and the fact that they aren't hosted by google ... do you remember when you were learning about computers, and had to distinguish between A and (A) ??????
and Google are not the only search engine. Although I'd be quite happy if our elected representatives believed they were.
What about Yahoo! ? Bing ? Not sure if Magellan or Altavista still exist, but this could be a great incentive for their revival.
Or - heaven forfend - what if a bunch of people donated some CPU time to a crowdsourced search engine with a distributed database. Try and shut *that* down ....
that kids today (anyone under the age of 30) just won't fully appreciate the tension of the 70s and 80s. I was 14 in 1980, and recall me and my friends (all fairly geeky) were convinced it was a question of "if" not "when" the 4-minute warning would come.
"Protect and Survive" was considered essential reading.
Facebook has now built up a very detailed picture of people who *aren't* on Facebook, simply by dint of cross-referencing the address books of everyone who *is* on Facebook.
Since there's fuck all I can do about it, it's just ticking over at 1/10 on the worry-o-meter, but it's interesting to speculate what they can do with this information. The most straightforward being to serve up a list of social-networking refuseniks to any future administration who decide that people who aren't on Facebook have something to hide. But it could go way deeper than that.
When I first signed up for my hotmail account (back in 1995), it was made crystal clear to me in the T&Cs (as I recall them) that under no circumstances was I to share my password with anyone.
So what has changed that people are now allowed to give their precious login details to these sites ?
Does anyone recall that story from a few years back where a guy was jailed because he signed up to Facebook, gave FB his hotmail login, and FB proceeded to spam his address book including his ex-wife who had an injunction against him. Judge was unimpressed with his claims of innocence and basically said "you're a dick for giving your hotmail password to Facebook" ?
vaguely musing with MrsJP a few days ago that there's a certain symmetry in people today choosing to go to a coffee shop because they can also access the lastest news via wifi.
Seems remarkably similar to 200 years ago where you went to the coffee shop to access the latest news (via newspaper).
One thing I know for sure about MS is they are very hot on localisation ... I know this after having to install a South Korean version of windows (from the MSDN) to flush out a bug we could not get to happen here. IIRC it was to do with Unicode and 4-byte character codes.
the problem is it's a fine line between forewarning the innocent, and aiding the guilty.
Many years ago when I worked at a large supermarket, we were warned in quite some detail of a shoplifting scam. A few weeks later a relative of one of the managers was caught in a rival supermarket trying the exact same scam ...
"A day late, and a dollar short".
You might have pulled a stunt off like this 10 years ago. But nowadays, with a proliferation of millions of people sending each other links every second of the day, I suspect most "on" filters will get turned "off" within 24 hours, as people start wanting to access the links their friends can see.
Out of curiosity, how many links on (say) they Daily Mail website will require opting out ?
of the Post Office/BT claiming copyright in the phone book, even though it's just an ordered list of names. As I recall the court agreed that it could be protected by copyright, since the work had gone into to making it an original work.
Now I'm typing I think there was a company in the 80s who started scanning and OCRing phone books to provide their own database. This ruling stopped them dead (and incidentally removed any need for BT to then release an electronic phone book).
Nokia Lumia 620 - supplied by work.
despite being a bit of a tech-head geek, I also have a family, and simply could not sell getting an iPhone to the budget committee ('er indoors). And since the iPhone has come out, nothing anyone I know who has one has made me go "I MUST have an iPhone".
My (continued) grumble about WP8 is lack of apps (and for the poster above who said he wanted WP to have more apps *and* features, as far as I can see, it's the apps that provide the features).
And to all the Android fanbois out there ... 'er indoors has an HTC Wildfire, and trying to get it's text-to-speech and speech-to-text working ... well after 18 months they still aren't[1]. And don't get me started about the bluetooth.
[1]Most apps for TTS are really concerned about how many accents they can provide. Actually features - not so important.
I acquired an old UPS from an office move, and spent many happy hours setting it up with NUT on my linux "media server". Thoroughly tested the power-off procedure. In my case, on power cut, I send an SMS[1] via an old PAYG phone (although the next project is to set it up with a broadband dongle I recently acquired). I then wait 10 minutes (because we have had a number of <30 second power cuts of late[2]). If there is still no power a further SMS is sent, and I shut down gracefully. I leave power-up as a manual process, as sometimes power can be restored for a few minutes and go down again.
[1]I wasn't quite so smug first time, when I rigged the system to send an email instead. Tested perfectly, but when a real power cut came, the lack of power to the router (in another room) was a bit of a handicap.
[2]Power cuts are pretty commonplace now. Never used to be. Either metal theft, or the lights are starting to go out.
one of the joys of English - something fundamental to it's core, and honed by centuries of nicking words from other peoples languages - is the ambiguity of parts of speech.
The second SMS content became called "a text", it was axiomatic that the act of preparing/sending one would be "to text".
Any noun can be a verb, if you stick "to" before it. Try it sometime. Especially with foreigners ....
Most homes still need the ability to write and print a letter, print a coupon out, etc.
None of which needs a new PC. Sure, there will still be a market for PC to replace broken, unrepairable models, but I stand by my assertion. You'll still get PCs, but they'll be niche.
A similar story befell thermionic valves - they were essentially a stopgap (for different reasons) until transistors came along. You can still get valves - indeed they are essential in some high-power applications. But they're niche.
VHS was a stopgap until we had DVDs. DVDs themselves were a stopgap until streaming media arrived.
In all my 30 years computing, I have only bought 2 new computers. An Amstrad 1512 (which I upgraded to a 1640), and a Memorex-Telex PC in 1992. All the other computers I have owned have been second hand, and/or acquired (legally) from work. In all that time, I have never felt underpowered, or in need of something newer.
Currently the Page household runs on 2 2008 Dell boxes (one for wifey, one for sprog) that I acquired when my office closed in 2010. Running Windows 7, there's no reason why they shouldn't last another 5 years .....
that PCs were a stopgap, until mobiles and tablets joined games consoles and media players in a landscape where rather than having a single box do several different things, you had several different boxes doing several different things ?
For 80% of the great public, computing is about email/social networks, browsing, and media delivery (YouTube). With a little bit of gaming. None of which *needs* a PC anymore.
"retina" displays - or IOW displays which exceed the resolution of the human eye.
Am I correct in thinking that once we have reached this level of detail, then there's no point in going any further ? So 300dpi appears to be the limit - we won't be seeing a 1000dpi display anytime soon ?
Presumably the next push is even more colours and control of brightness ?
How many accounts with how many websites could have been opened used a recycled email address ?
Yes, data protection should mean that websites don't keep data longer then necessary. But given my time around the marketeers, that doesn't count for much.
So the owner of a recycled account one days receives an email - addressed to the previous account holder - with personal details in it, along with a link to send a new password to that email address ...
I was thinking more in terms of computer education. When I started in the 80s, if you did Computer Science, you left being able to program. OK, it was BASIC, and you couldn't get enough GOTOs. But at least you knew how to make the computer do what *you* wanted to. You got an idea of how it was done, and the ways in which it could be done - with all the attendant learning about bugs, data mistypes, control, flow, exceptions, etc etc.
Nowadays, my 17 year old son comes home, and tells me he's a web developer because he used Dreamweaver at college. I show him a web page in Notepad, and he goes "huh".
The only real developers I have met, under 30, learned their skills in spite of the education system, not because of it.
it seems astonishing - nay unbelievable - that in the early 1980s, the country leading the world in computer science and education was the UK. Hands down. I recall reading stories in the US-based computer magazines and science periodicals where they often mentioned how advanced the UK was in getting kids and computers together.
It was a *Tory* government policy to get a computer into every classroom - hello BBC "B" !
Briefly, the UK was a world leader.
I agree that in real life this injunction will be ignored. Although if I were the security services I would be *very* careful what I did with anything gleaned from the data. I don't think there was anything unforeseen about Mirandas detention - even if Miranda himself had no idea it could happen. I have a feeling any "data" they do get is certainly tainted.
But as with the mysterious visit from GCHQ to "destroy" the data, this injunction is symbolic. It's symbolic that we do live under the rule of law. But best of all, it's bound to piss Teresa May off, which in itself is a worthy aim.
Greenwald and the Guardian arrange for his partner to courier classified information through one of the very countries most affected by it's existence.
The government of that country detain and seize data storage and associated passwords from the person couriering.
The government send experts to oversee the destruction of computer equipment at the Guardians offices to "destroy stolen data".
Like each player is acting out some bizarre ritual ?
I would be astounded if the security services didn't hoover up semi-public data about who is interested in what, politically.
Those No. 10 petitions ? The ones where you need to provide your UK address & email ?
Any Justgiving campaign.
Letters pages and public fora ?
eBay activity.
Amazon reviews ....
The spooks knew about big data years ago.
would imply that this is in someway unplanned. It's all *very* planned, believe me. The UK government has concocted a fiction that "private" companies aren't covered by the ECHR, and therefore can do as they please. So the government can outsource it's obligations under the ECHR to a private company, and then hold their hands up and say "nothing to do with us, guv".
Eventually, the ECHR will wise up to this, and there will be a very clear ruling that any agency that acts on behalf of the state is bound by the same rules. Which explains this current governments obsession with trying to leave the ECHR.
Does anyone remember when ACPO was allowed to ignore a FOI request as they are a "private organisation" ?
FWIW the Yanks tend to be much tougher on this.
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