Posts by Smooth Newt
33 posts • joined Monday 6th July 2009 12:26 GMT
Re: so what happened?
But Oracle is a smaller business as far as the Government is concerned.
Questions you should have asked
"We do also record the telephone numbers the SMSs are from and to."
Q. Do you think that the telephone numbers of the people that somone communicates with can be sensitive?
"One of the reasons for that is there's a huge amount of radio information that gets transmitted."
Q. Does this include data which could be used to track the user's location - for example the times and identities of the base stations the phone has been talking to, maybe the signal strength too?
"There are a sequence of key codes that can be typed by the user that cause the software to do things in the control center."
Q. What is the sequence of key codes that will turn the bloody thing off.
Pointless
There are already loads of awards for engineering. How many people have heard of the British Engineering Excellence Awards, the MacRobert Award or the James Watt International Gold Medal?
I doubt even a million quid is enough to get a decent headline outside of the trade press.
Aqua regia...
...dissolves gold, the opposite of precipitation.
Could be worse - a common way of extracting gold is to dissolve it in a solution of sodium cyanide.
Don't need radiation proof armour
In a hazardous environment why would you want a person inside the suit at all - better to separate the sensors and the motors, and control it remotely.
Mess in non-public spaces
Children play in gardens too.
Cyber security
Glad to hear that the government are going to spend over half a billion pounds of our money on a new IT program. What could possibly go wrong?
"Real" certificates next time
Surprised there isn't a Syrian Internet Network Information Center already registered by default as a CA in my browser. The Chinese are well ahead of the curve here but I think the others will soon catch up.
Airliner Flight 322 hit a tree on takeoff at São Paulo, Brazil.
Hang on whilst my mind boggles.
Great idea
They could reduce crime figures in the same way. Only people over, say 30, are allowed to report a crime and it costs them £1000 each time.
Interference?
I wonder whether the electromagnetic radiation produced by switching all that current would interfere with the ship's radar and telecommunications.
Posted in MPs wake up to 21st century and internet
And in another story
"I don't know of a Westminster hall debate that has ever changed anything."
says former minister Chris Mullin at a hearing a few days ago of the Commons public accounts committee. ( e.g. http://www.epolitix.com/latestnews/article-detail/newsarticle/ministers-engage-in-too-much-pointless-activity/ )
Adobe Reader
Three weeks for a simple fix to critical, currently exploited patch seems like taking the piss.
But maybe Adobe have worked out that this type of problem doesn't actually affect their core business or their revenues.
After all it is not going to affect Adobe Acrobat Writer sales. The reader is just a loss leader, Adobe aren't actually going to make any money out of fixing it.
@A bit lame of the Germans...
Which particular part would that be? Oh yes, part of the generation now 80s and 90s. Just because someone's great-grandfather was a Nazi then it doesn't mean that they must be too.
So where is the pornography?
If the images are like this, then why call it pornography? It's just a girl in a bikini.
Re: Yes and no
I think the Guildford Four or the Maguire Seven might disagree that the police did a "damn good job" during the time of the IRA.
ICO Enforcement
The phrase "Like being savaged by a dead sheep" comes to mind
Won't miss these pretend rights
This one was new to me but I remember Nu Labour banging on about how people now had the right to request flexible working as if they were giving us something.
I always thought I could ask for anything I wanted and my employer could refuse it on the grounds that it would cost them money. But apparently I now had the "right" to do something I could always do before.
I was always waiting for them to give me the right to breath, ask my employer for a pay rise, or vote for someone else.
Posted in Fragrant tech thief stalks Whitehall
Business grade...
That will be for looking at Excel spreadsheets then. Need an ultra fast processor and all the trimmings for that, obviously.
Script kiddie?
The quality of the description might have given a clue:
"View and modify HTTP/HTTPS headers it's base on tamper data but many problems have been solved in this version .
in tamper data u may get empty page and don't get any informations in the addon
this problem have been solved
if you have any advices please tell me,
John"
Graph pretty meaningless
without error bars.
Posted in UK.gov scraps stop'n'search terror power
Yes you can thank the Tories
I am not normally a Tory supporter, but they have not dragged their feet for more than a year over this ruling, as they could have done. Compare and contrast the handling of the December 2008 ruling by the same court over the retention of DNA of innocent people, particularly by NuLabour.
Posted in Home Office promises spycam review
@why the fuss?
It is a strange argument that it could save one life in a particular and unusual set of hypothetical circumstances.
On the other hand the millions squandered on this could be spent on healthcare and definitely save many lives.
How about child found dead because you preferred the money to be wasted on an ANPR system...
Posted in Home Office promises spycam review
Why do the DLVA need SORN declarations?
When there is such a big ANPR network? I am sure all that money that the DVLA receives from fining people has nothing to do with it.
When huge freight-carrying airships become a reality
They will have to be covered in strong wire mesh to stop pigs roosting on them.
It's vastly better than a UAV
at airshows
Posted in Hoodies swipe bus for YouTube joyride
Yes I was 16 once...
But I was never that stupid. I never risked people's lives or did tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage (although it was such a long time ago that it would have been "tens of pounds").
Posted in Europe approves US mass data grab
European Parlliament will probably approve it
Sadly the Parliament's three largest political blocks are all for it. There is a copy of the agreement at at http://www.statewatch.org/news/2010/jun/eu-usa-draft-swift-agreement-com-final-3.pdf It seems to be full of the useless "safeguards" you might expect with no actual teeth, like expensive penalties for breaches.
Nothing special about IT security
IT security doesn't belong on its own special pedestal. It is no different from any other type of risk management. The first example quote is completely wrong - the business needs to realise that typical rules about return on investment *really do* apply.
Balance probabilities and impacts with the costs of mitigation just like any other risk. Just like health and safety, fire and flood insurance, your biggest customer going bust or shopping somewhere else etc.
Posted in BT boss brands Britain illiterate
So what?
Half the population have below-average intelligence, some way below. You can't teach a dog to read either, no matter how good the teacher is.
Don't panic quite yet
Instead note the comment in the article that "this amendment has little chance of progressing through parliament".
Further amendments needed
The bill defines "extreme writing", but fails to even mention extreme ironing or extreme croquet.
