Jules Verne's...

'Master of the World' might be fun. Especially if you could borrow ThrustSSC or the Bloodhound for the car....

Millionaire has a spaceship that can land on Mars?

That's nothing - I have a brick in my garden that can land on Mars just as effectively. In fact, I think I have it here in my pocket.....

@ JustThinking

"The injunction already says its a "studded device, resembling a hedgehog, which straps to the wheels of golf trolleys". Presumably rivals can buy one and take it apart to analyse it in detail.

Is there much more to know?"

Er... How much it cost to make, what the minimum profit they are willing to accept is, who they are interested in targeting for sales.....etc. etc....

Obviously....

been caused by Climate Change (aka Global Warming, until the Earth started getting colder)....

Turn off your standbys, and pay vast electricity bills, and these things will go away...

That was a long time ago....

"..a long night in a dank, windowless basement room with one naked lightbulb hanging from a slowly swinging wire..."

Does someone on the Vulture staff still remember the 'Callan' intro...?

http://www.tv-timewarp.co.uk/callan/ refers...

@steve114

"..No way is it a 'space' ship. I know what I mean by 'space', and you simply can't be anywhere there without doing escape velocity first..."

I get the impression that you do not know what 'escape velocity' is. Why don't you have a look at the Wiki, where you will find out that escape velocity can be any figure down to 0, depending on your height.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity

(And no, you do not have to achieve 'escape velocity' to get into space. You could happily go to the Moon by climbing up a ladder if you had enough energy and time...)

@Glen 4

"..Has this guy got any info to share? Doesn't seem that way ..."

Um?? His resignation letter is full of facts - they are the reasons why he resigned. Of course, I suppose you think he was bribed to do this by Big Oil...

A flame will do, but there really ought to be a 'scam' icon...

Does anyone else worry about....

..the fact that the artist's impression clearly shows a green and fertile land on the day AND night side of the planet, although you would expect the night side to be a permanent icecap....?

This sort of inconsistency should be legislated against...

Osama is totally uninterested in this....

All he wanted was to get the US out of Saudi, Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, MI5 are very happy about this. Since they ran out of work when the Berlin Wall came down, they have been stoking up fear wherever they could find it, and this sort of reaction from the authorities is just what they want when the time to consider their budget comes round....

By the way, did you see that they are now pushing the Irish Threat again? Looks like they have given up on keeping Iraq/Afghanistan going, and are going back to something they are used to. I wonder if they can get the Irish to oblige....

I recall....

...the mess that the Home Office Radio Regulatory Board got into over CB.

When CB radios first hit the UK they broadcast on the 27Mhz band, which was already used for radio control of model aircraft. They caused huge amounts of damage to this hobby, and endangered public safety. The aeromodellers asked for help - they paid an annual license fee to use their frequency, but the Home Office did nothing. At the time, they did seem to understand what a frequency clash was, and I recall speaking to an official who actually suggested that CBers and aeromodellers in a local area got together to work out times when each group could use their equipment....

Story of government and a completely non-technical civil service really.

Think a little more...

"...If the US hadn't armed half the flipping nutters in the world, then there would be no need for US troops to be sent half way round the world to have their brains blown out their country! ..." AC

Umm, true. But then, if there was no need for US troops to be sent half way round the world to kill lots of locals before a few have their brains blown out, what need would there be for the US Army?

And if there was no need for the US Army, what need would there be for the giant weapons manufacturing sector? And a vast intelligence sector? And a huge security industry......

And if there was no need for the various threat response sectors, it would be harder for some people get very rich. So, you see, it is very important that America keeps defending the free world against all threats, and that threats are manufactured whenever we run short of them.

A lot of people in the various diplomatic centres round the world are currently looking very hard for a reliable enemy to take the place of the Eastern Bloc, and justify their existence. It looks to me like the Muslim world has been already been chosen.....

For God's sake, Dan, where is your cynicism...?

“Theres' (sic) a lot of people that the second they see a big company get compromised we immediately think its a state-sponsored effort and likewise when we see a power company get some malware we immediately think that it's a targeted attack sponsored by a nation state when in actual fact it turns out to be someone viewing a Viagra commercial they shouldn't have looked at. "

There's a very simple reason why you don't have effective systems for pinpointing web 'attacks'.

Who is going to benefit from the realisation that most 'Cyber Attacks' are really bored staff, script kiddies and spam merchants? NOT the US and UK Security Services, who build up their budgets on the assumption that the 'Axis of Evil' is behind all attacks on the freedom-loving western democracies.

The last thing they want is for the politicians to realise that the reason for their collective existence collapsed with the Berlin Wall. You want work in this field, you'd better be prepared to pretend that western computing is continually under attack from sources that ONLY a State Security Service can defend against.....

Is it illegal to defend impossible statements in Germany?

"The greatest commander of all time"?

Hitler had a string of successes with brinkmanship diplomacy driving German expansion during the 1930s. If he had stopped there he would probably have been hailed as the Father of the first European Superstate. But he didn't.

Hitler then carved up Poland between Germany and Russia. If he had cheated the Russians and invaded them in defence of the Poles, he would have gained all the lebesraum he wanted, and had the unqualified support of France, the US and Britain. But he didn't.

After Guderian and von Manheim had conducted their brilliant blitzkreig through the Low Countries, Hitler could have been master of all Europe if he had extended the fight to a British invasion. And if he had kept the momentum going, he would probably have won. But he didn't.

And finally, he could have let his skilled generals have their say in the invasion of Russia. But he didn't, and instead wasted German and Russian (and lots of other Eastern European) lives like water. And comprehensively lost the war for Germany.

So it is hard to see how he was 'the greatest' . Charismatic, possibly. But, in the end, spectacularly unsuccessful....

What was that title...?

"How can UK.gov spend £35m on a website?...Here's how..."

Only you DON'T tell us how!. You just say that that's what they spent.

If you have done a lot of in-depth research - where's the detailed costings...?

I'm 52, you know...

and I remember the fiasco with CB in the 1980s. It broadcast right on top of the allocated model aircraft slot at 27Mhz. Obviously causing much damage and danger.

The Home Office Radio Regulatory Department (as was) held up their hands in horror and said "We didn't know it would do that.".

Thirty years on, their children have obviously reached the same position in OFCOM....

Does everyone think anything goes?

...or should some things, like what you eat and drink, and how you pay, be left to personal preference?

If anything goes, can the BNP purchase the rights for the next official Olympic Racial Group to be Aryan? It was fine at the 1936 Olympics.....

And the obligatory...

"I'm ninety-five, you know......"

.

.

.

.

"What was the question again?....."

Was it the first?

"...When Apple's Macintosh was released in January 1984, it was the first mass-market PC to have networking built in.."

Not sure what you mean by the 'first' - you could buy a BBC B with built-in (on the motherboard) EcoNet in 1981-2. Not many of this varient were sold in the UK (not many UK homes had a multi-system network requirement then), but all the US export ones had this in 1983....

It is instructive...

... to see Nature Conservation activists so much at odds with nature doing what comes naturally...

It used to be the Puritains who were anxious that no one anywhere should be suspected of having a good time. I see that this particular religious quirk hs now well established amongst the bearded and open-toe sandaled amongst us.

I presume they gained some satisfaction from making these observations? And isn't that illegal under the 2003 'Having sex in a non-prescribed manner' Act? I think the Bestiality Squad should be called in here...

I'm going to be very old-fashioned...

...and suggest that marriage vows should be brought into the equation.

If they're not married, Rogers should be considering them separately. But if they are married, they have made a solemn and binding promise to love, honour, share all worldly goods, etc...

Under those circumstances the law always used to consider a husband and wife as one legal entity - until a century ago the wife's property was considered to be the husband's - they were "unica persona, quia taro una et sanguis onus".

That would make it quite reasonable for Rogers to assume that any directions about their billing could equally well come from either of them, the default assumption being that, having taken marriage vows, they would be acting together in trust.

Gabriela seems to have secretly broken that compact, and is now claiming that Rogers should not have been treating her as if she was still abiding by it, although she would have been claiming to do so publicly. Trying to have your cake and eat it at the same time springs to mind...

You don't quite get it...

“If the answer to that question is yes then it's a technical violation of the US computer crimes statutes. In other words, you do so at your own legal peril."

"If there is little or no enforcement, who really worries about risk? " - tuna1

The problem is NOT that you will be arrested yourself. The problem is that if you have broken the law while investigating a presumed attacker, you will find it difficult if you ever get the case to court. Your legal standing will be 'in peril'.....

Wf

"...If the IPCC ignores the enforcement notice too, the Information Commissioner will have the option of taking it to the High Court, for contempt of court..."

However, Police Chief Constables have been known before now (vide Jim Bates) to announce that they will ignore any legal instruction from a court, presumably because they are above the Law....

and in that case, the Information Commissioner might find himself falling down a flight of stairs, banged up for an indefinite period without charge and accused of being a kiddyfiddler on the strength of the photo of his daughter on his desk...

So...if I were to fart in a bike shop...

...they'd think they needed to junk all their stock??

13,200 suckers. eh?

Now that we have their names and addresses, I'm sure there are a lot of people who would be willing to defreay the cost of this abortive exercise in Stalinist government by offering to purchase said list...

And when we've pumped that well dry, we can pass the list to the NHS for psychological research on the ability of some people to live without actually using their brains...

Win all round, really...?

So we close down...

the European airspace at the whim of a computer model which has been proven incorrect, and now someone's trying to close down the Atlantic on the same basis?

Remember, the CO2 scare that we're just coming out of was driven entirely by models. Hasn't anyone noticed that these models are just plain wrong? All the time?

How the SS really do lobbying...

"...This week The Sun cited "senior security sources" warning that cuts would make an attack on the Olympics more likely....."

Cuts in the SS and SIS budgets would have **ck-all effect on Olympic Security. If anything, SS involvement would be more likely to inflame British Muslims and encourage amateur attacks. That's what's happened so far.

However, there is a way the SS could ensure their jobs are safe for a bit longer (after all the other WW2 countries have long since shrunk their spook services). They could brief up another war, like they did with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Korea again, anyone? We haven't had a war there since the 1950s, and it must be essential to safeguard our supplies of Lucky Goldstar white goods.....

There is going to be a lot of nonsense spouted about this...

..so I suggest that everyone gets a basic principle clear in their mind.

The offence of theft involves taking somebody's property with the intention of permanently depriving them of it.

It is therefore hard to see Jason Chen being successfully charged with theft - he seems to have advertised that he had it, and was willing to return the item in question.

It is easier to see Brian Hogan charged with theft - he seems not to have been willing to return the item, and, indeed, did not. He sold it on to a third party. There should be some consideration of whether the initial refusal of Apple to accept the phone lets him off the hook. If it does not, then a charge could well be laid.

If Brian Hogan is successfully charged with theft, then Jason Chen's position is an interesting one. We have seen that he cannot be charged with theft, but there would seem to be a strong case to answer that he might be guilty of handling stolen goods.

I look forward to some interesting legal shennaingans, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossibility_defense refers....

Beer because that is the best companion to complicated arguments. It makes them seem so simple....

Simple statement....

I'm really glad she lost thirty pounds, and hope she spends a lot more in a vain attempt to get it back....

Please...!

...Let these be virtual police raids carried out by Second Life rozzers on a virtual home in the cloud.....

Not a problem...

"...beyond a certain point the Earth gets too small to have a jolly old way big enough to advance..." AC

Just do what the Brits used to do.

Pick a war with a small nation, preferably one with mountains around it to keep the war localised. Pick a nation which is small, but has a world-renowned fighting reputation. Examples might be the Irish, Zulus, or Afghans. At a pinch, the Scots. But not France or Italy. Nepal, certainly, but not Tibet, who would just gaze at you uncuriously if you drove a tank up their main roads and offer you flowers...

A small nation means that Treasury will only allow you a small budget, so it won't cost much. But fighting a warrior nation means you will have to work hard and apply maximum ingenuity to stay alive. Together, these provide the perfect recipe for maintaining a well-honed but low-cost military and a thriving weapons research industry.

The Israelis have been doing this ever since they were invented...

Of course...

...it is possible to measure 'IT Security'.

You can measure compliance with standards. You can measure 'effectiveness' at year-end retrospectively against some measure like total cost of incidents/total security spend. You can do a lot of other things. I have spent a career in HMG and Industry doing just that, including lecturing on the subject.

A better question, however, is whether 'measuring' some aspect of 'security' is a fundamentally good idea. Security is not easily defined (unless you do it glibly), but it is obviously a process, not a state, and as much of an art as a science.

Art may certainly be 'appreciated' and 'criticised'. But would 'measuring art' help a lot?

I suspect what you are thinking of doing is 'selling' security to business. This certainly needs to be done properly - scare tactics do it very badly. But if you are thinking of doing this primarily through Benthamite measurement I suggest that you will run into difficulties - just as if you had tried to sell art, honour or beauty to customers in a purely utilitarian manner....

icon - security geek has left the building...

Ummm...

"...although the newspaper group does not believe any CVs were copied or accessed..."

Has ANY contract jobseeker got ANY objection to their CVs being spread around as widely as possible...?

There is a lack here....

...a lack of a 'humorous exaggeration ' icon.

Perhaps it would help if I said 'very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very high'?

I was imagining something like a grouse tied to a weather balloon.........

icon is the best I can do...

What happened...?

"...Something then occurred that caused the vehicle to lose acceleration....."

My guess is either a very (very, very...) high-flying bird strike, or the hypersonic vehicle cabin crew decided on a go-slow.....

Paris, because I think she'll be a great contender for the 'Mile-High AND Mile-A-Second' club....

Astronomical heads-up...

...his new black granite tombstone "decorated with a model of the solar system, a golden sun encircled by six of the planets"....

Looks like Uranus and Neptune are going to go the same way as Pluto...

Cashback from the government...??

"..The government is set to refuse refunds to people who have forked out good money for ID cards..."

Like the Lottery, the ID Cards turned out to be a tax on stupidity and gullibility. Presumably these were the people who were calling for more government interference in our lives? I can't think of a better group of people to tax a bit!

Although, of course, these items may command a high price on ebay as rarities? Perhaps the early purchasers were cleverer than we thought.......

British overstatement?

"This is the most radical programme of decentralisation this country has ever seen..."

It's actually very little. But the quote is literally true, because the country has NEVER seen ANY programme of decentralisation......

I have an idea...

...we could use a series of chemical explosions, suitably muffled by passing them through a pipe. We could arrange for these chemical explosions to take place in big metal box, with valves to let them out a carefully-timed intervals, corresponding to the speed of the car....

@doesanyonespeaksense

"..he broke the law - he admits it - there's an extradition treaty with the Americans- what's to decide..."

Um.. this is a game of pass-the-parcel.

Yes, there is an extradition treaty. Yes, the court case was quite watertight under the treaty. Yes, the treaty is manifestly unfair. And Yes, the Yanks under Bush didn't give a flying f*** about that when they were looking to justify aggressive action round the world.

However, NOW, it would be a huge embarrassment to both new administrations if it were to go ahead. BUT, as you say, the law is unambiguous.

SO, let us watch the dance as both sides start to tie themselves into knots...