* Posts by JohnG

1635 publicly visible posts • joined 27 May 2007

I own Facebook, claims New York fuel salesman

JohnG

Wood Pellets

The point of wood pellets as fuel is that, in conjunction with a suitable boiler and feed system, pellets of a fixed size can be delivered and burnt automatically. It is an alternative to oil for heating in areas where mains gas is unavailable.

Distie thief gets 14 months despite CPS 'incompetence'

JohnG

Prison

Given this bloke was not prosecuted for more recent crimes than the thefts of 4 years ago and is a taxpayer, he doesn't appear to be a threat to the public. As the government are releasing many prisoners early (like Raoul Moat), a custodial sentence seems OTT in this case.

Mother faked ID to 'disappear' child from school waiting list

JohnG

"Estonia is probably the most technologically advanced country in the EU"

If this is correct, then Estonia shouldn't be a net recipient of EU funds and should be paying back some of the money they have already had. Maybe the UK could have some to improve some of the dire schools from which parents are desperate for their children to avoid.

Parliament misled over Climategate report, says MP

JohnG

Champions of climate change

The problems start when people are hired to be champions of a particular theory, viewpoint or policy. If people are hired with the express purpose of proving or justifying a particular policy, you are hardly likely to end up with unbiased research.

Given that policies to prevent or slow climate change are likely to have a substantial impact on everyone, there is a need to have genuine unbiased research as justification for the pain that will follow. Instead it has been turned into a religion of believers and non-believers, with many prepared to bend or suppress the truth to suit their own beliefs.

UK.gov scraps stop'n'search terror power

JohnG

"This wasn't done by choice" Oh yes it was

From a speech given on 26 June 2009 by David Cameron, outlining the intentions of the next Conservative government:

"We will review the use of the Terrorism Act's Section 44, and the stop and search powers contained within it."

There was also good stuff about RIPA, the US/UK extradition treaty and the ID card scheme.

JohnG

Legal obligations

The ruling was made under the previous government but they did not remove the measure and made it clear they would fight the court ruling, despite Gordon having signed the Lisbon Treaty which made the ECHR legally binding on all EU member states.

BT and TalkTalk threaten court to kill Mandybill

JohnG

Bad legislation

Those of a suspicious nature might wonder why this legislation was pushed through without time for debate, just before the General Election by members of a government expecting to lose their jobs. It might be interesting to speculate which individuals or organisations might benefit from such legislation and what they might be prepared to offer in return.

This legislation should certainly be on the coalition's list of laws to be repealed.

Lindsay Lohan goes down for 90 days

JohnG

ODFO!

She got caught twice - and got off lightly both times ....but with conditions. She has chosen to break those conditions and has found out that being pretty, rich and famous is not always enough to get away with continually taking the piss out of the authorities. A short stay in the big house seems just the right thing to make clear that the law also applies to her.

JohnG

Booze tagging

She did not have to wear that booze anklet - she could have just gone straight to jail - she had that choice.

About professional help: maybe that's why the court wanted her to attend alcohol education classes. Now the court are really helping her because she will be attending those classes in jail, without the distractions of well paid work, film festivals and the like.

£99 iPhone stunt backfires

JohnG

Bait advertising

Advertising prices for goods which are not available for sale is known as Bait Advertising and is expressly prohibited under the Unfair Consumer Practice Directive, which came into force last year. Crapola may need to have a chat with their lawyers.

RAC prof: Road charges can end the ripoff of motorists

JohnG

Transport: UK vs. Germany

I have lived in Germany for about 10 years now and still find the differences in transport strange.

The equivalent of VED is about the same here in Germany (about 100 euros per annum for my car). The petrol is now about the same price (the exchange rate made it cheaper in the UK for a while). Insurance is about 400 Euros a year and is probably a bit cheaper than I would pay in the UK.

I drive to work - it takes about 10 minutes as there is not much congestion. I park for free in the company car park. I could take the tram - it stops 400m from my house and little bit further away from my work.

Public transport is far more frequent than in the UK and my impression is that it is generally cheaper.

Given the tax burden in the UK and Germany is about the same, why the hell is the public transport in the UK so poor? All the UK governments and local authorities ever do is increase taxes but never deliver a viable public transport system or even adequate parking. Where does all the money go in the UK? Germany has a welfare state, schools, etc. but still manages to build and maintain viable public transport without the need to continually extort more money from motorists. WTF is going on in the UK?

JohnG

No VED

Why not simply display MOT and insurance discs instead of a tax disc?

In some countries, insurers are obliged to tell the authorities when you cancel your vehicle policy, thereby triggering a check that the vehicle has been insured elsewhere or is off the road.

The current UK system has not prevented large numbers of untaxed, untested and uninsured vehicles from being driven around so I am all for the migration of the DVLA to something cheaper.

Brighton NIMBYs complain over BT broadband upgrades

JohnG

Harm

So, if your local council decided to allow some company to install huge advertising hoardings on the pavement outside your house because the revenue would benefit the wider community, you would have no problem with this? It is not as if looking at the back of an advertising hoarding would be physically harmful to you, it it?

The street does not belong to BT so why should they be able to dump their stuff there with minimal constraints when everyone else has to jump through hoops to get planning permission to build anything on their own properties?

Apple seeks antenna engineers after 'Death Grip' debacle

JohnG

Handsfree

I assumed that the antenna issue was an intentional part of the design - with the aim of preventing users from having their right hand free when using their iPhone - for the same sort of reason that they don't allow saucy apps in their shop.

Two infosec blunders that betrayed the Russian spy ring

JohnG

They were going to run

"Since it's clear that these people have been "known" for sometime you have to wonder why bust them now?"

The complaint filing more or less indicates what happened: An undercover FBI agent managed to convince Anna Chapman that he was sent to help her and she gave him her laptop to be fixed. He later gave her a fake passport to give to someone else. After this, she must have realised something was wrong, bought a PAYG mobile phone and an international calling card (presumably to contact her bosses in Moscow) and she did not attend another prearranged meeting. The FBI must then have realised they had been rumbled and decided to arrest everyone before they escaped.

JohnG

Not the first signs of dodgy KGB agents...

The arrest of a drunk driver in the company of an unidentified blonde back in 1971 hastened Oleg Lyalin's defection:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/september/30/newsid_2523000/2523457.stm

I liked the bit "You cannot talk to me, you cannot beat me, I am a KGB officer." Classic.

Not quite as good as the Profumo affair but more entertaining than leaving notebooks in wine bars or that WLAN rock.

JohnG

Not even spies

None of them have been charged with espionage. The related charge is that of "acting as agent of a foreign power (without registering)" with a maximum sentence of 5 years. If they had registered as agents of the Russian government, they could have lobbied and researched legally and in the open.

The most serious charges any of them face are those of money laundering - i.e. bringing in bundles of cash and not declaring it or paying tax on it - maximum sentence of 20 years.

Russian spy ring bust uncovers tech toolkit

JohnG

Red hair

Russian girls often use Henna as hair colouring - hence the popularity of that red colour. You may also have noticed that Anna Chapman was also blond in one of the popular photos from her Facebook pages.

BTW A few people seem confused about her surname. The big surprise is that she changed her name when she got married (apparently to an English guy) - her maiden name was Kuschenko. As for the first name, the transliteration of Russian into English or other non-Cyrillic languages tends to leave some flexibility about the exact spelling - hence Anna, Anja, Anya, etc.

JohnG
Joke

Cypress?

What - he was up a tree?

JohnG

"What do you mean he's gone?"

Some people from the local US embassy are probably updating their CVs now.

If he has gone north, it will be interesting to see if Turkey (as big mates of the USA) go out of their way to find him.

JohnG

commercially available tool

Given that the complaint filings refer several times to "a commercially available tool that can detect the presence of wireless networks", it seems likely that they purchased something (may be something like Omnipeek) rather than using Open Source or other freebies.

JohnG

Nowhere to run

Having had to cough bail from his espionage pay, he's now probably being followed around by a gaggle of spooks and has then had to blow another chunk of his espionage pay on a room at some Cypriot hotel.

JohnG

Really

Yes- "99 Fake Street" was the address she used, along with the name "Irene Kutsov".

JohnG

International fugitives

Maybe the Americans asked friendly nations to detain him on the basis that he is wanted in the USA. Cyprus would probably expect similar cooperation in the event that they wished to catch someone who had broken their laws and then left the island. Ronnie Biggs went to Brazil precisely because they had no extradition agreement with the UK.

Budget to cost over a million jobs: Official

JohnG

Public sector v. Private sector

Where does the that pays for the public sector come from? Taxes. It stands to reason that the more public sector jobs you create, the more taxes are needed to fund them. If the public sector is not to act like a huge fucking parasite, the private sector needs to grow to a point where the public sector can be paid without bleeding the private sector to death. If like the last government, you address unemployment by creating public sector jobs, then you end up with ridiculous levels of public spending which has to be dealt with while the interest rates are still low if the country isn't going to be bled dry simply by the interest payments on former spending.

Cisco uncloaks Android video tablet for suits

JohnG

"US$1000 is about £663"

Really? You don't say.

Let me explain: If you take the price charged by Cisco in the USA for some standard product and compare it with price charged for the same product in the UK, you will find that the UK price is substantially higher, even when you take duty, shipping and unfavourable exchange rates into account.

JohnG

"....target price point is under $1,000"

....or about 1500 GBP if you're in the UK.

Nipper's naked arse provokes Street View outrage

JohnG

Sun in Greater Manchester?

I didn't know they had sun in Greater Manchester, I was told it rains all the time up north.

Job club firm loses thousands of details

JohnG

"You can try the bizarre test to see if you would qualify as a UK citizen here"

I got 18 out of 24 = just passed.

This is mainly because my wife has recently taken and passed this test.

Spoof beer ad mocks England footie flops

JohnG

Worse for me

I live in Germany and spent the day at some outdoor event surrounded by Germans with a live radio commentary playing in the background.

At least Hamilton and Button are still ahead of the rest in F1.

Oklahoma granny sues cops over tasering

JohnG

911 calls recorded?

Presumably, the veracity of the grandson's statement concerning his call to 911 can be verified by retrieving the recording. If policemen were sent instead of paramedics or if the recording has gone missing, then the the city will have to explain why.

Regardless, I think they will difficulty explaining why they felt it necessary to enter an old woman's home and assault them because the she refused to take some medicine. IANAL but I would have thought that any adult (not already the subject of some court order concerning their mental state) has every right to refuse medication.

UK arms industry 'same as striking coal miners' - Army head

JohnG

Russia

Interestingly, the Russian defence industry is adopting NATO standards across the board. They see NATO as a good potential export market.

Google vanishes Android apps from citizen phones

JohnG
Big Brother

OTT

Whatever the justification, Google's action is a bit OTT. Why not just block the application with an accompanying informative message advising uninstallation and include a means for the user to remove the block if they see fit?

Google seeks interwebs speed boost with TCP tweak

JohnG

There is more than just http to consider

Whilst http and its use on the Internet may be important, it is not the only application to use TCP. In corporate environments, http is likely to behind file serving and databases, in terms of TCP traffic volumes. When tinkering with TCP parameters/algorithms, it is important to consider the function and performance of all applications in use.

The snag with the idea of using multiple TCP connections (like common P2P apps) is that this subverts the typical "per connection" sharing of bandwidth and is likely to be countered by traffic shaping measures. Given that some P2P apps masquerade as http traffic to get around firewall restrictions, it is reasonable to assume that TCP connections on http or https ports will already be considered for such constraints (Google Maps sometimes falls foul of such measures).

Scotland Yard mulls Google Wi-Fi slurp

JohnG

Intent

The difficulty for Google is that they did not bother to store encrypted payload data, only the unencrypted payload data. This indicates that a decision not to store the encrypted payload data was based on the knowledge that no useful information could be gleaned from it - but that the unencrypted data might be rather more useful.

Possible benefit to Google is not relevant in determining the legality of their actions in this case. i might intercept someone's emails out of idle curiosity but that would not a viable defence against conviction.

Naked Cowboy wrestles Naked Cowgirl

JohnG

Not naked

Purely in the interests of journalistic research, some Google searches suggest that there are several "Naked Cowgirls" in NY and elsewhere. However, none of them are actually naked until you get to continental Europe. Not far from where I live, this young lady will apparently strut her stuff starting off in a cowgirl costume but ending in her birthday suit: (NSFW)

http://www.strip-jasmin.de/

Twitter on a ZX Spectrum

JohnG

Old stuff

I still have a ZX81 boxed up somewhere - and it still worked the last time I powered it up.

My computing started on an IBM system using an early version of Fortran via Hollerith cards. The system also had BASIC which could be used interactively via teletypes - I remember playing Lunar Lander and Star Trek using a teletype :-)

I also used the Commodore PET and the Apple II - both excellent machines of their time.

Tom Stoppard: Tech is destroying the written word

JohnG

Psychology is clearly just a humanities subject because...

,,,it only involves reading a few books and a couple of essays to get through each year of the course. When I was at university, it was the subject of choice for girls who had came to university to find a husband and did not want a heavy workload but wanted to feel superior to those taking Sociology. Media Studies is another possibility - get a degree for watching TV and reading a few newspapers then writing about it.

Google claims Wi-Fi slurp legal in the US

JohnG

Oh yes they were

"Google wasn't trying to steal data they were just using AP names to create non-GPS maps."

No, that's not right - Google were capturing and storing payload data in addition to the SSIDs. That's what the fuss is about, not the geolocation of SSIDs. The particular difficulty for Google is that they didn't bother to store encrypted payload data, only the unencrypted data, which implies some intention to use the contents of the payload data.

"Would you leave your door open then cry when you got burgled ?"

No, I would just laugh it off, happy in the knowledge that some junkie can get a few quid towards his next fix for the sale of my family heirlooms.

Are you implying that failure to secure property justifies it's theft? If you drop your credit card in the street, would you be happy for the finder to use your card and not expect them to be prosecuted if caught?

Also, if the Google Street View operators were not certified security professionals (e.g. CISSP), then they were in breach of criminal law when they drove around Germany - for the possession of the software in question. This is a big corporation - they have enough lawyers - they should have known what they were doing was illegal.

Googlegate: Mapping a scandal of global proportions

JohnG

MAC addresses are not routable

True but that doesn't mean Google or others cannot determine your router's MAC address (e.g. http://test-geolocation.appspot.com/), The point is that the router MAC address acts like a cookie you cannot delete. Whilst the Internet facing IP address may change regularly and cookies may be deleted, the router's MAC address is likely to remain for at least a couple of years. It is the linkage of all the retrieved information that is significant. You may be blocking cookies and not allowing various active web content but if someone else using the same WLAN is less careful, then they will have leaked your location in addition to their own (because you will both be using the same Internet facing IP).

JohnG

Illegal interception

Someone's ignorance or carelessness does not give others carte blanche to break the law whilst exploiting them. If you drop your credit card, does your lack of care justify the finder to use it?

JohnG

Interception illegal

".... how much data did Google actually capture?"

I think they coughed to capturing about 600GB of data.

"True, they probably shouldn't have done it and they should just delete the data and be done with it. But come on, is this realy any different to overhearing a conversation on a train?"

Yes, it is different: Overhearing a conversation on a train is not illegal and needs no particular effort or special equipment. Intercepting someone else's communications is illegal in many countries. Additionally, the mere possession of the necessary software to capture traffic and to extract useful data (other than by a certified security professional) is illegal in several countries.

JohnG

Interception is illegal

It does not matter how stupid people are in not encrypting their WLANs - it does not allow Google or anyone else to intercept their communications. Intercepting other people's communications is illegal in many countries.

Radiation warning labels for deadly mobes!

JohnG

Microwave ovens?

Are they going to insist on similar Specific Absorption Rate labelling for other devices, like microwave ovens? Unlike mobile phones, microwave ovens actually use a wavelength more suited to boiling your eyeballs and use substantially higher powers, so one would assume that these should be first on the list of stuff needing some seriously scary labelling.

Then there's Bluetooth headsets, microwave motion detectors in security systems,.....

Breaking Google's last taboo

JohnG

price comparison sites

"Well those price comparison sites are already earmarked for extinction and few will mourn their passing - they don't really add much value."

I disagree - I use price comparison sites to find the best prices for purchases like SD cards, memory or hard disks. They do what they say - compare prices. I do not want any added value, I just want to know who sells xyz item for the best price. If I want to know technical details of the products, I look elsewhere. The results of Google's shopping search are almost always dramatically more expensive and often, less relevant.

Currency moves cost small biz dear

JohnG

Low pound

"Small business owners in the UK blame currency movements for threatening their ability to export goods - or at least to export goods profitably."

If they could not export goods profitably with the GBP at record lows over the last few years, then they are doomed, regardless of what/how they hedge.

The company that paid for the research is in the FX business and can apparently offer the sort of currency management services promoted^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdiscussed in the article. There's a surprise :-)

Gov hits brakes on vetting scheme

JohnG

Meg Hitler

"For Labour, Shadow Home Office Minister Meg Hillier MP said: "Labour had already reviewed and altered the scheme. It was never about vetting private family arrangements or infrequent contact with children."

Much like RIPA was all about terrorism and was never to be used to spy on citizens for anything trivial. More poorly written legislation suitable for use by officials against innocent people they don't like.

You think mobile voice is expensive?

JohnG

Local SIM

If I want to use mobile data or voice in any country, I buy a local SIM. A few countries make this difficult (like Germany, where you have to show proof of residency to have a local number), in which case, I stick to VoIP via WiFi. I only ever use roaming for emergencies.

Sarko to walk tall in factory visit

JohnG

Putin same height

Vladimir Putin is also 5' 5" but it doesn't appear to bother him at all.

Palin boob-probe Reg hack dubbed an Ass Clown

JohnG

Left or right?

Surely, she would have had both left and right done? Unless only the left side was done to stop her leaning to far to the right.