Posts by Mark Eaton-Park 122 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Feb 2009
With the population levels continuing to increase in China you would have thought they would be promoting pron as an alternative to the the real thing.
I say China should reverse policy such that their needy individuals are so swamped with the stuff they have to beat it off.
I would have thought it unlikely that the Government would provide a laptop that could access anything other than Gov sites and censored email, as otherwise they would leave themselves open to being sued should the wrong person see something offensive.
The intent here is to sack off some more jobcentre staff by buying a few laptops from Crapita, after all, even with the low wages that the JS staff get you can buy at least 30 laptops per redundant JS staffer and keep your investors happy http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4836024.stm.
I imagine their thinking is that if you can monitor all the unemployed remotely so as to be certain they are looking for work for so many hours per week, you can identify the ones that are not and these can have their benefit removed. You can also have all those unsightly unemployed stuck at home having to press a button every 30 seconds as though they were under house arrest or had some disease rather than having them in public where they might infect the others.
So buy a few laptops, sack some JS staff and give some more public money to Crapita, nice one
I understand from your report that the reason that TMo were told not not disclose the data theft was to avoid damaging the legal case against said theft.
I take it that the ICO can prove that they took legal advice that guaranteed that the case would not be weaken before making their broadcast. If the ICO cannot show evidence to support their breach of confidence then there should be an official investigation of the ICO.
My reading of your report is that TMo acted correctly and the ICO have tarnished TMo's image for the ICO's benefit a clear case of abuse of trust.
WIndows 7 is basically a fixed Vista and like the NT4 service pack that supported direct X and USB that was never released they sold it as a new product. M$ should be made to fix Vista not charge people again for the product they already paid for. What exactly are you getting for your money? there isn't any additional functionality, it is solely the interface. If I thought pretty pictures for buttons made a difference I would have bought a Mac. What I want is an OS that will allow me to use my computer productively i.e. to run applications not spend hours messing with the desktop. The OS should be invisible unless M$ are going to include their office, development suit. What I see is a ton of additional processes that I don't need using up my processor bandwidth, M$ should pay me as they seem to run more unnecessary code on my machine than I do. If M$ had said fair enough Vista was a mistake here is what we really wanted you to run and you can have it for free, I would say fair enough but to charge people again and again because they still can't code it right is offensive. Don't bother buying W7 buy snow leopard instead that way if you need pretty pictures to remind your how to use a computer at least it will be stable and wont cost you as much.
The answer to credit card fraud has already been posted however this article was aimed at increasing the support for the UK ID card by suggesting that a single proof of identity would stop this sort of thing.
This type of fraud will not be prevented by ID cards, in fact real identity theft will increase once the Government agencies get to loose your UKID data as they have with every other database they have got their hands on.
The banks should not be able to make unsubstantiated accusations against you if your card details are misused due to faults in their system nor penalise you for their errors. It is the same as car insurance, if I do not incur accident costs why should I be held accountable for those that do, I have to pay more because I do not have a say in the matter.
All my personal information should be my property and require me to agree to an use/ transfer/ collation, agencies who want unnecessary access to my data should not be permitted.
How many times have you applied for something only for the agent to ask for your NI/ DOB etc when it has nothing to do with the service offered. This information is then freely available to all their staff and any other agency share data with. All this without requiring additional authorisation from me, the data owner, it is hardly surprising that people I would not want to have my information know all about me and can use this information against me.
The issues that cause these "IT" problems relate to bad working practices and planning
1. Vulnerabilities in the software due to bad developement practice and implementation
2. PC users not being responsible or interested in their equipment as it keeps changing
3. Lack of proper planning when the network was designed.
4. Lack of IT proficient staff.
(1) It is possible to code software without bugs / security holes, however as the software vendors are not held responsible for the failings in their products they do release without the product being "finished". The myth that it is so complex that it cannot be done is just an excuse for pushing rubbish out the door so as to get the money in faster.
(2) As software vendors continually move or change the interface so as to continue making money for a product they have already developed, IT skills depreciate rapidly over time. Most users are not interested in having their computer working properly as it "isn't their problem". If you were to compare their attitude with other workers who use tools as part of their job, you would see how strange this is. "I can't make my screw driver work" is not really an acceptable excuse for low performance outside of IT. "The manager ran amok with his screw driver stabbing his colleagues because he had been sent a letter laced with LSD" would be front page news but when it is malware its just one of those things, not a total failure of site security and foresight.
(3) Most networks are not designed but rather just grow until their performance / security becomes an issue. If a network designer was brought in earlier then a consistent policy for infrastructure modification / expansion would control the explosion of kit that occurs when departments are given a time limited budget for new kit.
(4) Most jobs now contain some element of IT so why employ someone who doesn't know how to do all the job. If they are highly skilled in some other area but not IT then they will need to be trained sufficiently for them to be able to do all their work rather than having to employ someone else to do what they will not. The premise that lots of semi-skilled workers are a financial saving is false, yes 90% of the time a monkey could do any job but they are paying skilled staff rates for the 10%. The old adage "pay peanuts, get monkeys" is the current working status of most companies and the reason why consultants who can do the 10% are able to get contracts.
"but they are still better than the alternative" actually no.
One of the alternatives is to do away with broadcast based media completely and download what you want without adverts as and when YOU want to watch it.
At present the producers of shows are selling to broadcasters/ networks, if everyone was downloading only the content they wanted the producers could sell direct to their audience.
Given that the start up for being a distributor would then be the cost of a server and internet bandwidth the delivery costs could come down without the need to flood your audience with rubbish they don't want to watch.
Adverts have cause loads of problems in society without them giving anything back, the premise that they make it cheaper to watch quality content is false, the vendor / broadcaster just makes more money.
The BBC has by pure fluke produced some quality programming in the past however if you balance their latest content against time you wonder where your license fee went. I rarely watch BBC as they are not interested in what I want to watch only what is cheap in all senses of the word.
The media industry is always b1tching about how they aren't making enough money. If I had my way they would be paid after I had viewed their content and decided how relevant and entertaining I thought it was, rather than being suckered by adverts for films and shows that don't live up to their promises.
If they want to advertise it should be invisible to those who are not interested in seeing it, like this page I can scroll right past the adverts on the top, they don't keep forcing me to acknowledge them every 15 minutes.
Spot on Jess, I have a TV license and even when I didn't have a TV they were hounding me. It would be fairly difficult to pick up a laptop screen but not impossible, if the detector vans are watching what I am doing on my laptop then that is an invasion of privacy.
Don't accept email from servers that are not guaranteeing authenticity and are willing to accept damage costs in the event of spam relay.
Everyone who knows how email works also knows how easy it is to spoof the sender field, even when they check against the senders IP it can be spoofed. However if all email has to be within the ISP domain and they are responsible for the content an abuser can have their account blocked. All free email services should limit new account post if they want to be able to provide a service.
It would be fairly simple to set up via the existing domain registration system, simply a Y/N question if you accept liability for spam, if you don't then you will not have your email relayed.
Problem solved
I got a couple of these power line jobbies with my BT vision back before the Phorm was admitted by BT, only reason that BT were pushing them that I could think of was because the Home Hub only had two network sockets. Given that your TV is unlikely to be where the telephone some into the house it would have been handy, that is if I didn't already have an existing cat5 and a ton of gadgets already powered near the TV.
Issue here is that BT broke the law and again just like PHORM, OFCOM did nothing.
HAM radio is just as valid a hobby as computers and the IT community should be supporting this infringement of bandwidth rather than saying if it ain't a PC we don't like it.
BT and OFCOM are the baddies
If I bought a car and it failed to the extent that Vista does I would have already taken it back, also they do give you a discount its called "trade in".
I got Vista with this PC but until Windows 7 it was running a retail version of XP. Under Law all products have to be fit for purpose and Vista just wasnt fit for anything but the bin.
Windows 7 is basically Vista without all the programming and design errors so why should existing vista users have to pay for an upgrade.
M$ should be made to give all vista users a free upgrade to windows 7 this being as vista never worked properly and M$ fixing the errors and saying it is a new OS is unacceptable.
I understand that fixing vista cost money however that was money they should have spent before releasing vista in the first place.
M$ didn't invent the GUI they ripped it off Apple who in turn ripped it from Xerox.
They, M$, haven't been leaders in innovation at all they just buy up anyone who has a good idea and let the marketing boys hide the feature in the bloat they sell.
Just out of interest what exactly is wrong with CLI, it is still used by the real professionals, only "users" need a GUI as on the whole they don't understand or care about what the computer is actually doing.
This is where M$ did very well, in convincing companies that ten monkeys who can use a GUI are equivalent to an Engineer. The monkeys may eventually get it right by clicking them buttons at random but when it really matters you need someone who knows what they are doing and CLI is very good at separating the monkeys from the men.
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