Posts by Russell Preece

My experience

...of Office 365 is pretty much the same as the article. General setup was ok, although the move for one of my clients from BPOS was a bit of a pain because of some weird auto discover issues which ended up with me having to manually remove entries from Windows Credential Manager.

It works well as a general rule, and is fairly well featured, but little things (big things for my clients!) like the daily recipient limit can be a right pain, and Microsoft's stance is essentially "tough".

Powershell is pretty powerful, but some of the things that you have use Powershell to do could have easily been included in the web admin, like password expiry options and the ability to create Email Contacts.

One amusing thing about the whole setup is the fact that their quarantine notification messages for spam appear in the Junk Email folder for quite a few users... :)

Am I really the first to say....

"bitty....."

That is all.

http://www.writetothem.com

Get your comments into your MP here. Somebody accused me in a previous comment section of bleating about it but not doing anything, so I sat down yesterday and wrote a 2100 word analysis of the risks and effectiveness of this proposed database. I have now sent it to my MP, my MEP's (in case it gets that far) and to an Earl concerned with privacy issues.

I suggest you all do the same. If people want to see what I've written for some guidance, drop me an email or i'll post it on here (not sure if the reg comments will allow 2100 words).

@@@ Russell Preece

Exactly AC.

The thing that gets me the most is that all this money will be spent on this huge project, and eventually it will become redundant and the money that could have been better spent on useful things like, dare I say it, more police on the streets instead of sitting behind keyboards, will be wasted.

One thing I find amusing is that the angle being presented by jacqui (deliberately lowercase) is that they need to keep up with changing technology to being able to intercept terrorist communications, and I've heard the use of Skype being brandished around as an example of the need for the database.

Problem is (and I'm relying on things i've read here, so I might be wrong) Skype's communications protocol is encrypted, so that puts a damn great FAIL on that reasoning alone.

If they have no understanding of the technology and the problems in implementing it, they have no right whatsoever to waste our taxpayers money on it.

Encryption Keys and Passwords

In the broader sense of forcing "suspects" to hand over the encryption keys and passwords, what would happen if you had the following setup for logging into your accounts.

On creating your password, you type a password into it then get somebody else (girfriend, wife, sibling etc) to type a password directly after yours. On logging in, you can only get in if both of you type your passwords in the same way, but not disclosing each others passwords.

Surely the authorities demanding the password would be stumped, as the other person wouldn't be a suspect, and therefore you have duly given them your password, but that doesn't make the complete string. They still can't get in, and can't make the other person a suspect without proof...

Anybody know if this would be sufficient? It would be a hassle, granted, but would be a good way of securing against this preposterous ruling.

Of course you could just tell them that was the situation and get the other person to agree to saying they have the other password :)

Pillock!!

The guy, and the rest of the crazed scientology nutcases, should be locked up.

"Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident it's not like anyone else. As you drive past, you know you have to do something about it because you know you're the only one that can really help."

What!?? I think you'll find, Mr Cruise, that any decent human being - religious or not - will stop at the scene of an accident to provide aid if the emergency services are not already at the scene. Why does being a scientologist change that?

And also, stop brainwashing Katie. She still will be my future wife when she wriggles out of your clutches! :o)

Has everyone missed the point...

...if you don't go to dodgy websites in the first place where these people are likely to have put the crafted flash, then you haven't got a problem.

Again - common sense and having half a brain prevails.

I'm leaving my UPnP on, thankyou very much, even if I don't have many applications that use it.

@ But the disk...

I agree, all they do is reformat! We had a PC in recently which had been taken to PC World with a system32/config hive error (easily fixable, and with other data still on the disk!) and the guys had just whacked an XP disc in and started to reformat and reinstall. Our customer had already told them not to do anything until he had given the go ahead, and just as they had started the setup he called them to say he was taking it for a second opinion (us). They obviously just turned the machine off mid-format as we could only *just* recover some of the data that was left, but with no filenames (MFT gone).

I did press our customer to complain/sue but he was just happy he got a few documents back...

Worst thing is they give independent computer outlets like ourselves a bad rep!