* Posts by Pete

486 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Mar 2007

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Home Office backs e-crime overhaul

Pete Silver badge

Accentuate the positive

eliminate the negative.

Step 1. Work out what crimes your police force are good at solving.

Step 2. Create more offences in those categories

Step 3. Put up barriers to reporting, for crimes you're not good at solving (or that are too hard, expensive, unglamorous), so they don't get reported - see step 4.

Step 4. Reorganise the way crime figures are reported. Say, into 3 groups: reported, recorded and detected

Step 5. Choose whichever of these groups shows the biggest improvement, claim this is the most relevant measurement.

Step 6. Praise your officers for doing such a good job at reducing crime.

Step 7. At the same time you're saying crime is at it's lowest for years, claim there are new, hidden threats that mean you need even more officers

Step 8. Instigate a process of continual improvement, so it's impossible to compare current and past performance as the rules get changed too frequently.

When code goes bad: What to watch for

Pete Silver badge

I can forgive every coding blunder

except MiXeD CapiTals.

While I realise that some coding styles recommend this practice, they are simply wrong. For those of us who actually type in code - rather than playing a video game with an IDE and hoping something compilable pops out, having to swap cases is a pain. If you want to seperate out distinct words in a variable/class name be sensible and use embedded "-"'s or something else that inserts whitespace (or close - to) without having to use two fingers to type one character.

Brits more fearful of ID fraud

Pete Silver badge

we fear what we do not know

It's not I.D fraud per-se that people are fearful of, it's all the unknown elements around it: will I lose money? will I be help accountable? will it be a lot of hassle to set things right? will it affect my credit rating?

Once ID fraud becomes mainstream, people will approach it with the same nonchalance as a parking ticket - remember when you got your first?

The key thing it that unless you're so stupid that to allow you to *have* money is in itself negligent, people simply don't bear the cost, even in the small number of cases where the money isn't recovered. The ones who should be fearful are the banks[1] - it's their lax security that allows this to happen in the first place (idea: how about texting the card-holder each time a "card not present" transaction takes place? They do this in some places.) Hopefullly if the losses get high enough, the banks will actually get up and take some effective measures to prevent it.

[1] yes, yes, I know: we all pay for it eventually - increased charges - yadda yadda.

BAE chief exec, director detained at US airports

Pete Silver badge

doesn't look good

Considering the fate of the "Natwest 3" who were banged up in an american jail for a transaction in the UK with a UK company that was legal here. Their crime? the payments touched a server in the US.

However in the BAE case the yanks are screaming (well, some of their defence companies - which to all intents and purposes means the US govt) that they *might* have lost contracts. For that heinous crime (not of allegedly bribing someone) of getting caught, no doubt these paragons of virtue will no doubt demand Guantanamo Bay. Afterall it was a defence contract and it did affect the US national interest - stands to reason that they are therefore terrorists!

Of course you could always hope that the british government will stand up for the rights of it's citizens - considering all the tax they received and the jobs that were created. However in the natwest case the govt. was noticable in it's absence of any kind of support for it's citizens at all. If the roles had been reverersed, far from rolling over and playing dead, the americans would probably have sent in in the marines.

Bill Gates unveils interactive wallpaper

Pete Silver badge

RSI claims like you've never seen before

Ahhh yes, touch screens.

Along with videophones and a few other technologies that people wish for until they try them. Given the decades they've been possible, why haven't they ever been successful?

Putting aside the purely practical (and hygenic) question of who's going to clean up all the smears and smudges that will now be all over your walls - instead of just around the light switch. The more fundemental question is just how long do you think you;ll be able to use one of these babies before your arm drops off?

If you don't beleive me, just try holding your arm outstretched for a few minutes. Now imagine imitating a a fruit-machine for 8 hours a day.

It may look cool on the "minority report" to have some guy waving his arms about - no, hang on a second, it doesn't look cool at all - just stupid. However the people who seem to be promoting technologies like touch-wallpaper and M$'s "surface" don't seem to have tried them with normal people in ordinary settings, where the physical exertion of long-term use is only matched by the sheer impracticaliity (plus floorspace needs). Finally, who actually has a spare wall that's within streching distance of where they like to sit? Give me a remote control anytime.

HP buys EDS: What are they thinking?

Pete Silver badge

an ideal match (no, really)

Let's face it, HP makes printer ink. Oh it has a small computer division, but we can effectively forget about that. EDS creates lots of documents (and very little else, from what we hear). What could be better than HP producing all the ink and EDS using it?

Given that being bought by HP is pretty much the kiss of death (Compaq, Unix Systems Lab, and nearly 100 other companies they've bought over the years) I hope they remember to step up production of red ink.

British Gas sues Accenture

Pete Silver badge

deep joy!

> It said: "British Gas sought to establish what went wrong and why

Just ask anybody (me included) who worked on the project, saw the architecture diagrams, project plans or spent any time at Accenture's project office in Chertsey. We all knew it was doomed back in 2002, before it had even started to roll out.

Normally if you're betting the company - or it's reputation on a new IT project, you limit yourself to things you know how to do. Maybe include one new aspect - or possibly two if they're non-critical. You don't completely redesign the whole shebang with all new, totally unfamilar technology that none of your people know how to support.

As an example, if you've never, ever implemented or run a Siebel system you don't jump in with what was at the time, the world's largest single Siebal instance.Part of the blame, of course, goes with the Centrica higher management and directors who let the Accidenture dreamers, sorry - designers, float off into airy-fairy land with their ludicrous designs, impossibly complex applications and utterly unsupportable implementations.

I'm no lover of Centrica (I was contracting, afterall) but I really hope they win big on this one.

Swiss ponder the 'dignity of plants'

Pete Silver badge

someone has WAY too much spare time and money

Dignity? Pah.

Anyone with an ounce (or should that be: gram) of sense realises that only beings with self-awareness are even possibilities for dignity. Even so, when you watch see a pig - even an "organic" one in a field, happily rolling around in it's own sh... you realise that dignity is purely a human construct and to transfer it to other members of the natural world is simply ludicrous. A historical (apocryphal) example is the story about victorians placing lace garments over table laegs, in order not to offend.

from the article:

> Specifically, the committee has issued a "decision tree presenting the different issues that need to be taken into account for each case".

All I can say is, I hope they took into account how the decision tree feels about this, and the the "issuing" was done in a dignified manner.

Barclays Capital slashes contractor rates by 10%

Pete Silver badge

how about cutting a few managers instead

They can cut rates - but I bet the contractors will silently cut the amount of work they do, too.

I think "Dilbert" had something to say on the matter. When you cut people's pay they just goof around (surf the web, take long lunches, do less work) more to restore the balance.

Since it's the contractors and techy-permies who actually do the work, they're the last people you want to antagonise. How about reducing some of the higher-up headcount, who wouldn't be missed. It may even be that without them, the work gets done better, faster and happier.

Top cop brands CCTV a 'fiasco'

Pete Silver badge

@ bless 'um

> He said investigating officers don't like looking through CCTV images "because it's hard work".

OK. I've been racking my brains since I read this. the only question I can possibly think of is:

hard work. harder than what?

Really, sitting in a room watching telly. If that's the police definition of hard work that it explains a lot about their utter lack of interest in actually catching criminals.

Maybe we should consider scrapping the police and spending the money on a national property insurance scheme. If you legalised drugs, too you could spend the money saved from paying the cops PLUS the revenue from selling legal dope. This could then be used to buy replacement goods for the (now much smaller number of) victims of property crime. Once you find a way of dealing with vehicle crime and the very occasional murder - now that drug gangs no longer exist, your crime problem will have solved itself.

Police go slow with encryption key terror powers

Pete Silver badge

what is encryption anyway?

OK, so the cops smash down your door, ransack the house, kick the dog and take away your PC.

On the disk they find several files with names like "plan1.enc" and since they can't read the format, they assume the files are encrypted. While you're in the cell, suspended by your toes from the rafters the head interrogator comes in and demands to know your password. Assuming he means the login password, you tell him there isn't one (as is most frequently the case). He assumes you're lying and beats you up a bit more. After you regain conciousness, he asks again - this time actually saying what he meant: the passwords for the encrypted files. Again you deny any knowledge and tell him there aren't any encrypted files. Sometime later, you some back around.

After your period of detention without trial, when you actually get before the beak, the accusation is made that you refused to disclose your passwords and can the court impose an extra 5 year sentence for this heinous crime, too, please? Since the cops - with all their fine equipment have been unable to break the encryption using a brute-force method, they assume you're a terrorist and that the data contained within is therefore a threat to national security and you're to be shipped off to somewhere dark and secluded for the rest of your natural - to safeguard the law-abiding population - of course.

Enter a newbie recruit into the police's all-encompassing security division. She is going through your PC as a training exercise and notices the odd files, with the .enc extensions. She gets out an old copy of Lotus 1-2-3 and starts reading your household accounts. Over coffee, later that morning she mentions this to her boss, who then reports to his boss and so it goes up the ladder: your .enc files weren;t encrypted, just as you had always claimed.

IT'S JUST THAT THE POLICE WERE UNABLE TO READ THEM

and therefore assumed the worst. This is a case of having to prove yourself innocent. You're very lucky, because the person in the next cell tells a similar story - except in their case, the files didn't contain any content at all. They were just blocks of truly random numbers that he was using to test a random number generator - hence no decryption algorithm in the world could extract plaintext from the "ciphertext"

Moral: just because you can't read a file, doesn't mean it's encrypted. Just because the "criminal" doesn't give you the password, doens't mean a file is encrypted, just because a block of data looks like encrypted data doesn't mean it is.

This is a very dangerous area as the only way to prove that data is harmless is to decrypt it - which is not always possible.

Added green burden could ground flying cars for good

Pete Silver badge

blimp

Forget any idea of a personal vehicle that requires an engine to maintain it's position - they're just too unsafe for the average Joe. (Don't believe me? take a look at the parlous state of some of the cars you see on the road.)

When a car dies, once any forward motion has been disipated you can just get out and walk - no chance of that with an aircraft. The closest you can get is with some kind of neutral bouyancy vehicle - so long as you don't try to get out, naturally.

You would, of course, need some way to manage the uptrust, so that a single individual can pop over to the shops - and still "fly" back with an extra payload of shopping, or so you don't go floating off into the stratosphere on you way to work on Monday, after taking the family and mother-in-law for a sunday float down to the seaside.

However, the whole idea is doomed to falure - you think petrol shortages bite. Wait until the world runs out of Helium!

Your personal data just got permanently cached at the US border

Pete Silver badge

external drives?

While all the fuss is focussed on laptops, how about all the extras that go with them?

Is the average, minimum wage, security guard up to identifying and scanning external drives (that may well be in your pocket, rather than the lappy's case)? How abot the CF/SD card in your camera - now available in 32GB versions for the seriously paranoid. What about fingernail sized micro-SD cards. Would your average peaked-cap piggie even be able to spot one, since they don't even trigger the metal detectors.

I suppose it all adds to the security theatre - although only the seriously stupid would ever get caught by these superficial and ineffective checks.

Welsh blogger fined over 'menacing' plod blog

Pete Silver badge

re: grow up people! (Magistrate's court)

A Magistrate's court is the lowest form of court. It is run either by three JP's or a single judge, depending where in the country you are. Forget any notions about juries, or well-formed, incisive legal argument, this is much closer to "<ding> next please!" than the foundations of our legal system.

If you're up before the Justices of the Peace, you're effectively sitting in front of three citizens. They have been on a couple of courses to explain what their powers are and to give them the briefest veneer of english law.

They have no legal training.

If something complicated comes up, they have someone in court to advise them on points of law. However THEY ARE JUST NORMAL PEOPLE. If they could get in to a decent club, they'd probably spend their days playing golf, instead of reading the Daily Mail and handing out arbitrary justice, depending on how they feel that particular day.

Idea: go to a court for a day, see them in action (anyone can just walk in off the street). You'll never think about law the same way again.

Pete Silver badge

sign of the times

When everything that gets written is open to misinterpretation.

When everything is interpreted in the worst possible way

When there's no such thing as "too much" security

When people are afraid of anything out of the ordinary

When an apology is no longer enough

When legal action is the first step, not the last

Build a 14.5 watt data center in a shoebox

Pete Silver badge

@Pete - correction

apparently this brick^H^H^H^H^Hcomputer does have a couple of USB ports, and a whopping 8 BITs of digital I-O. I apologise for my earlier ommission and would like to correct my summary of the device. Paint a housebrick white and tie a USB cable around it. You can then use either one as an anchor for a model boat - there: it does have a use, afterall.

To even hint at the possibility of using it in a datacentre (except possibly as a doorstop) is laughable. Although the article does admit that the box "limps along ...". I already have boxes that perform all the functions this thing claims (ref: mini-itx). I've been using them for years. They're cheaper, more flexible and support a greater range of O/S, being "proper" PC architectures 'n'all.

Probably the best use for this product is what Buffalo suggest (top of page 2): aim it at windows - preferably someone else's.

Pete Silver badge

overpriced, underpowered, no applications or IO

This is the box that fatgadget are selling for USD. 500. But once you've bought one, what then? It won't run windows, solaris, hp-ux or any other other commercial operating system (I said commercial, for the linux boys & girls). if you do want to run Linux applications, you'll have to port them to it's PPC architecture and squeeze them into the 128MB of memory. Once there, then what?

These things can't interact with the outside world - except through the spare ethernet port - no digital I-O, no serial/parallel ports - not even a USB.

If you want to do real work in an embedded environment, buy a TINI or a dedicated embedded system.

If you are thinking of gettig one of these, save your money. Buy a housebrick and paint it white. it'll have the same functionality, be cheaper and use less power. ................ summary: pointless

'We could wake up smarter' - Ballmer hints at Win XP reprieve

Pete Silver badge

wake up Smarter? he's been asleep for years

So they're eventually going to wake him/her up? I doubt if they'll recognise the place after the length of time they've been gone. it must be at least 7 years: 2 years of Vista and 5 years for it's development, with not a sight of "Smarter" during the entire time.

Given the rumoured $10B that vista cost, it is hopefuilly a lesson that MS won't forget in a hurry.

Funny thing: XP has just had it's new service pack released - not the kind of thing you'd do for a product that was going to be dead in a few months. Makes ya' kinda' think they've been planning this for some time.

The web rip-offs nobody cares about

Pete Silver badge

fake software is easy to fix - if you want to

One indication that your product (whether it's a handbag or a copy of Pho..<cough>..op) is overpriced is when others start to make conterfeit copies.

For tangible goods, there's not too much you can do - except assist/make the authorities find and destroy the merchandise. For software, the situation is much easier. There are now very few barriers to stop a product from working if it's not validated.

It has been suggested that some software providers turn a blind eye to fakes, as it acts like freeware and gets people using the stuff. Then later they may decide to buy a copy - if they don't have the money, well you haven't lost a customer as they couldn't afford it anyway. Of course they'd never admit to this in public and the judge would probably choke with laughter if you tried this as a defence "Hrrumph, very serious matter .... string him up ... court adjourned"

While not condoning the practice, you've got to ask yourself why the supplier of a £N-hundred product is so nonchalant about so-called "losses" due to fakes.

Girl-only fish species survives by cloning

Pete Silver badge

@So the only thing they did was make a bad model?

> Many models try to explain why this is bad ...

Sounds like the guy who came up with this theory has anthropomorphised it a bit. For most species, the more offspring, the better, unless of course they consume all the available food supply and eat themselves into extinction. But that's got nothing to do with whether they're all the same gender or not - many (most?) species produce multiple offspring in a single litter. Not all the offspring will survive to maturity - the greater the number you produce in a hostile environment, the greater the number that will survive to reproduce, since fish aren't known for their nuturing skills.

I just want to know: without any males, what do they spend their time complaining about?

US court waves through border laptop searches

Pete Silver badge

expect to get sent back and barred from entry

> I wonder how they'd react to data encryption

Let's remember that it makes absolutely no difference to the immigration person whether you enter the country or get turned around and sent home on the next flight. They have nothing to gain, and possibly a lot to lose, from letting someone in who might be a threat.

More: they have time. If it takes 20 minutes to scan a laptop (think: how long does your anit-virus take to do a FULL scan), then that's how long they'll keep you - and the person in front of you - and the person in front of them. it makes no differernce to the guys if it takes you 3 hours or 3 days (just so long as you don't die in the queue) to pass through the system, because of all the scans that take place.

If you encrypt your data - why, it'll just take longer. Plus they will assume you are hiding something and be even more thorough - you can't reason or plead with these people and their laws are completely on their side.

How they'll deal with a linux laptop will be interesting to see. Personally I think you'd be very lucky indeed if they even gave you the option of completely erasing and reformatting the disk, raher than denying you entry.

Dubai mobe cracking demo barred by Heathrow boffin bust

Pete Silver badge

they really just wanted to see how he did it ...

... so they can do it to us.

> Their undetectable method impressed by being up to 10,000 times faster than the brute force number crunching it's thought government agencies use

If this really does what it says on the tin then it'll be very useful. Maybe cutting research budgets and spending the money on security efforts like this is more cost effective after all.

I wonder if he stands any chance of getting his kit back after the govt. have reverse-engineered it? ...... nah!

Pete Silver badge

oooops, didn't read the whole story

so he did get the parts back.

Sounds like when my company sent a server for BT type approval in the 80's. Out went a nice new £10,000 box. Back came a crate full of pieces.

The marketing guy just cried.

Google (re-)branded world's greatest brand

Pete Silver badge

didn't we have this a week or two ago?

Last time this came up, a few weeks ago, wasn't it apple or mac or summat that was the "world's most successful brand"?

Maybe this lot polled a different group (from a different world - google earth?) to get a different result. Oh well, I suppose it's just another excuse for a piss-up and someone, somewhere gets another plaque to hang up next to the same one they awarded themselves last year.

Awards are like standards. If you don't like one, just choose another

You'll learn to love mobile TV

Pete Silver badge

lots more flat noses

There's a basic difference between seeing something and hearing something. It's to do with attention.

Unless you're some species of bat, you don't use your ears to help you navigate the mean streets. That means that ears are largely redundant when you're outdoors. They can be a positive disadvantage when the other half - or the kids kick-off, too. What this means is that using your ears for something else, while you go about the arduous and stressful task of living, is quite possible and frequently better than hearing all the otherr stuff that's going on around you.

Contrast that with looking at things. In broad terms, you can only see one thing at a time. We're constantly flicking our sight in different directions: checking the road (or pavement) in front of us, taking a split second to focus on something from our periphery, checking out the nice-looking individual coming towards up, making sure the nasty looking person isn't about to rob us.Bring a portablt TV into that mix and you have the worst of all worlds. You can't function AND watch TV at the same time - that's why we have sofas. Watch TV while crossing a road and your relatives will conclude that nature actively selects against this trait. Try it while driving or cycling and you'll probably take a few other people with you. Even walking down the road while watching TV is a bad idea. Apart from being oblivious to the people around you - or being distracted from the program so often as to make watching it pointless, you're much more likely to bump into someone, or smack into a tree or lampost and damage your face.

That's why,even when books were the height of popularity, people always made sure they were stationary while reading. Postable TV has all the same disadvantages as well as being impossible to see the tiny little, postage-stamp sized screen in anything approading sunshine.

Maybe a vaguely distracting trinket for the terminally fidgety, but for normal people? stick to the iPod and save your nose.

eBay ponders Skype bail out

Pete Silver badge

square pegs, round holes

So you have a few $billion burning a hole in your paypal account - what a terrible situation to find yourself in. Suddenly your shareholders (for it is they who turn the screws) wake up to this. They start enquiring, then asking, then demanding that your give them MORE for their investments.

What's a poor old CEO to do. You look around, but all you can see are minnows - mere $100million-worth companies. Definitely not worth your attention as you have 10 or 20 times that much - and you've got to spend it, or the shareholders will find someone who will.

Eventually you find a "real" company - one that has a paper worth closer to what you were looking for. You wave money at them, until they finally start to pay attention. They quickly accept your panicky overtures and wave goodbye to you with a "thanks, chum" and barely concealed glee as they trouser the loot and run to the bank before you change your mind.

Your online bargain-basement sales company now owns a phone company. When you wake up the next morning, after the euphoria has washed off and have one of those "oh shit, what just happened" moments. Then you start on the next panic - explaining to the people who's money you've just spent, what you've got for them. Hastily dusting off your complimentary copy of "Buying dot-com companies for DUMMIES" you start to rehearse the mantra: "convergence, strategic direction, synergy, growth" and all the other words that previously doomed CEOs have spouted when the buyers remorse has hit them, too.

Chapter 2 tells you that as long as the new acquisition is still making money, you're probably OK, no need for the golden parachute just yet. However as time goes on, theshareholders (yes, them again) start asking what you're going to do with. Stumped for a reply, someone whispers in your ear "well the costs have all been swallowed, we could just dump it". Chapter 3 of the DUMMIES book tells you to wait a year or two until memories have faded, then quietly look for another sucker to unload it onto. Use the same weasel words as before and hope they are as dumb (or desperate) as you were. Get whatever you can for it, take the cash and then wait for the cycle to start all over again, as you now have excess cash on the books - though less than before. Repeat until all the cash has gone, or you get the boot.

Of course, it's not your money ...... why should you care?

Miserly marks get smart to UK phishing fraudsters

Pete Silver badge

Bigger incentives

looks like they;ll have to offer people more choccy bars for their passwords!

US law makers seek ban on in-flight calls

Pete Silver badge

while we're at it

let's ban screaming babies from planes too.

> For politicians this kind of legislation is great, however - it has a near-zero chance of becoming law, allowing them to look as though they're fighting for public rights while actually doing nothing

If only there were reliable ways to keep them doing nothing. We'd all be much better off if they stopped interfering in our everyday lives. Just how many laws are "enough" anyway?

Women love chocolate more than password security

Pete Silver badge

and of course people always answer truthfully

The funny thing about surveys: you tend to get the response you want.

Ask people if they'd give away their password for a sweetie and people will think "oooh, passwords ...... security ...... mustn't divulge ....."

Do a bit of social engineering, for instance phone them up and claim to be from the support desk. Say you need their password to install the upgrades that will make their PCs twice as fast and they'll probably even let you tickle their tummies(!), too.

Just for the record, my password is "chocolate". Can I have my Mars bar now? And I don't believe you're from the help desk.

IT depts under threat as City braces for 20,000 job cuts

Pete Silver badge

@Ryan Clark

Yes, absolutely. You need to keep the core skills that allow your business to function. What you don't need are all the additional bit'n'pieces. It just goes to show how many non-contributing people there are in IT.

It's part of the cycle. During the good times, more pointless job functions are created (think: standards, compliance, process, quality, anything with the word "manager" in the title) None of these people ever see a customer, generate revenue or create product. Generally, they do the opposite: slow things down by having a "sign off", come up with reasons why things can't be done and add to costs by adding redundacy to processes and architectures that they don't understand - and probably won't have the desired effect anyway.

It's only when times get tough that the fat is trimmed. The problem is that a lot of companies can't tell the difference between a productive employee and one who goes to lots of meetings. The consequence is that they shed th wrong people and soon afterwards either go bust or get taken over.

Controversial DNA profiling technique approved

Pete Silver badge

The tech's OK, the social problems are very bad

All this technique does is establish a "link" between the person who's DNA is detected and the object, or person, it was found on. There's no qualitative information about how close that link is: simply that it exists.

So, for example. If you hand someone a bank-note, it has your DNA on it. The quantity is minute, but it's enough to say that you (as well as hundreds or thousands of others) have touched that piece of paper.

Now, if that note is found on a terrorist - or their blown-up corpse, there's a link established between you and that person.

If you happen to be associated with a "likely" group of people, who for whatever reason are under suspicion of a possible involvement (note the fuzziness of these previous statements), then having your DNA as evidence could be all that's needed to "prove" you were involved. The evidence presented in your trial could be along the lines of:

"We've been monitoring Mr/Ms X as an associate of <terrorist> and have conclusive DNA proof of their connection"

This technology is actually negative progress in terms of criminal investigations. Instead of the old "round up the usual suspects and see who talks", the usual suspects are now anybody that the immensely widened net now trawls in. The chances are good that *someone* of the hundreds of suspects can be nicked for something associated with the case. Great for clear-up figures and headlines, terrible for catching the perpetrators (who are still at liberty, to do it all again)

Like a drunk with a lamp-post, LCN is more use to prop up a shakey case than to provide illumination about who dunnit..

US will sky spy-sat to eye spy-sats

Pete Silver badge

The Emperor's new satellite

Is this an example of blinkered thinking?

The idea that just because the americans have (and rely on) spy satellites, other countries do the same. I don't know who the americans consider their enemies -although I'm sure their list is long: without a suitable level of paranoia, they'd have difficulty in justifying the expense of all these pointless toys. However if I was a member of a "hostile" government and I wanted to know what the yanks were up to, I'd simply get in touch with the diaspora and ask them. Whether they are working in low paid (illegal?) jobs, such as cleaners or in highly privileged positions such as researchers, someone's bound to know something - or to know someone who know's what the hell is going on. And all this without a satellite in sight - apart from the one that handles the phone call, This is much more reliable than using satellite imagery - as the WMD debacle illustrated (remember the photos the americans put in front of the UN), since the people on the ground can tell you what's going on inside buildings, not to just photograph their outsides. Plus the intel' can be gained on cloudy days and at night!

Finally, if there was something that I really, absolutely, desperately needed a photo of, there are lots of commercial operations such as SPOT that can oblige. it it ain't big enough to appear in one of their photos, If probably isn't that important.

Ofcom reins in TV psychics and adult chat

Pete Silver badge

isn't it *all* advertising?

When it comes down to basics, anytime you exhort people to spend money, you're subjecting them to advertising. This even holds true for charities - it's quite possible to advertise a charity, and by association the work it does.

While that may be a rather extreme view ("we only make a charge to cover our costs" as a BBC executive might bleat) it seems to me that you can't draw a line anywhere: one programme saying "spend £X and you'll get a benefit" is advertising, whereas another saying "spend £Y and you'll get a different benefit" isn't.

So let's have the time spent promoting competitions, phones-in's, votes and all the other ways of moving money from the viewers to the TV programmers classed as advertising time and contributing towards the time allowed for commercials. If your channel's franchise doesn't permit advertising, well too bad. Score one for the viewers.

Transcript disappears minister's 'hack-proof' ID register claim

Pete Silver badge

That's what I like to see

re-writing history before it's even happened.

Now if only I could do that with my (losing) bet on the Grand National last weekend: I wouldn't care what this, or any other government got up to - I'd buy my own.

O2 says 128Kb/s is all its 3G customers need

Pete Silver badge

the more you spend, the faster you go?

It seems to me that the weasel word here is "corporate". Normally when companies use this (or it's close cousin "enterprise") they really just mean rich. Or possibly just one of the poor gits who accidentally used data when abraod - at the usurious rates the operators have been able to charge - with no recourse for the vict^H^H^H^Hcustomer.

Given that 3G costs are accrued per megabyte, then the faster your pipe the faster you spend. If I was to be cynical about this, I'd reckon that those customers who spend the most are given the faster connections - so that they can spend even more, even faster. Of course the other way to try for a higher quality connection is to threaten to transfer to another supplier. O2 seem to be (well, IMHO) remarkably flexible in giving away deals when faced with the prospect of losing someone - or is it the prospect of the competition gaining someone? Whether PAYG users (who, in reality, are the only ones safe from having their bank accounts freed of all and any funds, due to a careless or unnoticed press of a button) have the same bargaining powers is questionable, however.

Even if you do manage to get upgraded, as the article says - 3G speeds are highly variable and after the honeymoon period, you may well find that your data rate drops back to "normal". I guess this is standard behaviour for a technology that cannot be benchmarked due to the high number of random factors and the high margins on the mutually overpriiced services.

Influential tech pundit says iPhone 'will be 3G in 60 days'

Pete Silver badge

I'm sure the advertisers can't wait

For all the hype that will surround this launch (not that it will get to the UK anytime soon).

It will be interesting to see if the fanboys remember how they were stung by early adoption of the original (dare we say "old") iphone - what with the price cuts so soon after it's launch.

For the rest of us, who don't need a trendiness badge and just want to make a few calls, I'd sum it all up with a big fat YAWN

US teen cuffed for disposable camera 'Taser'

Pete Silver badge

Ban wooly jumpers and nylon knickers

If we're talking electric shocks, what about static electricity?

Presumably if you accidentally give someone - or yourself a shock that's OK. But if you do it deliberately that classes your clothes as a dangerous weapon.

GPS tracking fights teenage trauma

Pete Silver badge

This tech. doesn't track the kids

It only tracks the phones - and since it uses GPS, it doesn't work if they're indoors, or switch it off.

Presumably, any savvy kid could leave their phone and therefore the GPS, on when they go to a "good" place. Then turn it off and nip over to their mate's house and once inside, switch it back on again. The GPS would only record the last known position - i.e. when they went into their house. After the phone is indoors it loses the GPS signal. When it's off it can't know it's been moved, so when it is switched back on, then provided it's indoors again the GPS can't say that it's not in the same location anymore.

That's assuming the kids don't just leave the phone switched off - or even go out without it.

Aussie laser-pointer dazzle attacks on airliners: Bad

Pete Silver badge

@Pete - Pete replies

OK team, I've read the responses - not convinced. Here's why.

As was pointed out, laser beams spread. It's only a few milli-radians but the wider the beam, the lower the brilliance and the less dazzling effect. The further away the wider the beam and the lower the light intensity again. Inverse square - the effect falls off rapidly.

Next, passengers not seeing the effect: The size of the window is irrelevant. Provided you are close enough - e.g. in the window seat your field of view is as good as a forward-looking pilot's. There should be some reports from passengers

Third, to actually illuminate a pilot, as has been pointed out you have to be virtually on the flight path. Someone under the aircraft or to the side can't see the pilot and (more to the point) the pilot can't see them, even out of the corner of their eyes WW2 spotlights? They illuminated the side/bottom of the planse. Even when caught in the spotlights, virtually NONE were hit by AAA. It was more a morale thing than a defence thing.

Almost last. Sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but the power of lasers sold inthe shops is more a work of fiction than fact. The ones advertised at 20mW, 50mW 100mW etc. are generally nowhere near that - it's only advertising. Yes a few can pop a balloon, but move the balloon a mile away and you won't even light it, let alone burst it. One thing that people don't realise is that the power of these pointers falls off as the batteries get low and as the laser ages.

Nearly there.... I still don't buy the ability of a person to hand-aim a laser onto a moving target over a mile away for any significant time. It's simply not possible and I defy anyone to prove otherwise. As a benchmark, the moon subtends an angle of 0.5 degree - you can't hand-aim a laser at that for any time, let alone the front of a plane - let alone the pilot's window - let alone the pilot's eye - even for a millisecond, even if they weren't moving.

Finally (phew) any terrorist worth their salt would use an IR laser - that leaves no visual trace and can therefore be placed at any location with impunity. In case you're wondering, a green laser is in reality an IR laser diode with a frequency doubler (or trebler) integrated.

Pete Silver badge

How unlucky can you get?

This sounds to me like the sort of thing you see in hollywood movies. One group of people armed to the teeth with high-powered automatic weapons up against the "good guy" with a hand-gun. During a pause in the action where the baddies have shot off hundreds of rounds - all to no avail, our hero rolls out from behind cover and while moving fires off three or four rounds. Each one hits a different target and instantly kills him, while the star ('cos it's always the star) brushes off the dirt and walks away without a scratch on him. We accept the absurdity of the scene because we know it's fiction - no-one beleives it could actually happen like that.

Now, let's think about dazzling an airline pilot with a hand-held laser. First of all, the plane is travelling at a couple of hundred MPH, descending or ascending (if it's not near an airport it'd be too small to "hit") and subject to, hopefully only, small amounts of turbulence: bumping the plane in all three dimensions at once. Into that you have someone at least a mile away with a hand held device that he or she is apparently able to aim accurately enough to hit the pilot's pupil - which would be at best 7mm across, even at night. (Though at night you couldn't even see the cockpit window, even if you could make out where the front of the plane was.)

Now I don't doubt the pilots do, occasioanlly, get a stray reflection - given all the lights we surround ourselves with. There may even be a microsecond here or there where some fool with a laser does manage to randomly wave it across a plane's window. (Hint: how many passengers have witnessed this? Considering there are hundreds of passengers sitting by windows and only a couple of pilots, you'd expect some sort of corroberation - let's hear it). But to say there are pilots out there who have actually been dazzled by a concerted effort from malevolent individuals? Bruce Willis would be proud of their aim.

How an app called WarmTouch nailed a grenade-stockpiling cyber extortionist

Pete Silver badge

what a great piece of advertising

Considering the number of times the product name is mentioned, this looks simply like a piece of sales copy.

This idoesn't appear to be anything different from what a human profiler does anyway - it certainly seems to produce the same results (as other posters here have noted). It's then just a case of rounding up the usual suspects and seeing which one(s) fits the description.

However, coming from THE COMPUTER it must be right and therefore is above criticism from us, mere mortals. No doubt a jury of the gullible, uneducated and computer illiterate - sorry: your peers will just swallow it's output, hook, line and sinker and come up with the "right" decision.Which is, afterall, what the detective agency is paid to do.

Apple 'most successful world brand'

Pete Silver badge

They only polled the marketers

So says the story. They didn't poll any real people.

I also suspect, but can't prove, that the poll was conducted in english (well, 'merkin). So given their normal definition of "the world", that means the US. (Sort-of reinforced by the top 4 winners).

Plus there's no information about what "categories" or choices there were: were these pre-defined from a list of the 5 named cpmpanies, or free-form: enter anything you like?

Sounds like a great bit of marketing in itself. Creates lots of publicity, didn't cost much, contains no useful information and gets other media to promote it. Wonderful!

EMC eyes video snooping biz

Pete Silver badge

an everlasting success story

That's the nice thing about the security industry - it's recession proof. When times are tough there are more bad people about, so a greater need to keep tabs on them. When times are good, there's more money and people are insecure about having it nicked by the bad people, so a greater need to keep tabs on them.

Luckily however, no-one is ever actually asked if they want more surveillance, cameras, intrusion, curtailed freedoms. It all just sort of happens. Which is nice for the suppliers as they rarely get held to account, or are questioned. It's very similar to the position with arms dealers - they only *make* the weapons, they don't *use* them - so nothing that happens as a consequence is their fault.

Of course, we're only intruding on "them", and "we" don't do anything wrong, so have nothing to hide.

Open AJAX frameworks not fit for 'power users'

Pete Silver badge

right, for the wrong reasons

It's not power users who have the problems with AJAX websites, it's those with a disability. This is the bigest factor preventing it's commercial acceptance in most western countries.

Most AJAX (and other web 2.0 technologies) fail to provide the level of accessibility mandated by the Disability Discrimination Act and it's equivalents in other countries. The unenlightened may not care about this, for themselves and for their personal websites - so long as it looks Coooool, dude. Organisations are more responsible and take other needs into account.

Awed fraudsters defeated by UK's passport interviews

Pete Silver badge
Happy

It's in everyone's interest

Let's think about this for a second: issuing someone with a passport enables them to go away and commit crimes somewhere else.

What possible reason is there for the british govt. (or any other govt, for that matter) to stop people from leaving the country and doing bad things elsewhere. Surely it's much better for this to happen than for the baddies to commit thier heinous crimes in this country?

Given how crap our police are at actually apprehending criminals and that since someone forgot to build any new jails, we can't imprison people who deserve it anyhow - it's probably for the best to "export" or outsource our criminal system to countries that can do it better. Obviously, you need to actually have british criminals in those countries for this to work - and you can't do that if they don't have passports. While, it's in those target countries' best interests to have effective border controls, to stop the wave of british criminals from entering (fortunately since the UK didn't join the Schengen agreement, other european countries can prevent brits getting in), but this is very different from not issuing passports in the first place.

I like to think of giving passports to people as a kind of voluntary transportation. Go overseas, commit crimes, get caught (possibly a new experience that adds to the whole novelty), do you bird and don't be a burden on the british taxpayer. Maybe we should issue passports automatically to people as soon as they come out of prison?

US Wi-Fi piggybacking won't put you in pokey

Pete Silver badge

.... but it could get the WiFi owner locked up

Having read, over the weekend, about the american authorities (can't remember which one - there are so many) who is setting up honeypot servers to (en)trap porn surfers. I can't help wondering what would be the situation if an anonymous surfer, piggybacking on someone's WiFi tripped one of these sites. The only person who would/could get a kick-in the door would be the hapless WiFi owner.

They'd then have to use the "It wasn't me, it was someone else - I don't know who" defence, which is well known for it's failsafe rating in any law-abiding state (it's not that hard to type with your tongue in your cheek). This defence is obviously related to the old chestnut about stolen goods: "I didn't steal them, someone else must've put them in my living room".

Of course, in the pursuit of their investigations, it's quite possible that the cops find something even more worthy of their attention on the WiFi owners machine. Who said stupidity isn't a crime?

Of laptops and US border searches

Pete Silver badge

@Ian Stuart

but you better fix it afterwards!

Erm, I've been told that Customs & Excise are under no obligation to hand back working or intact property after a search. One of the scarey aspects of them is they can literally rip your suitcase apart looking for contraband, and you have no recourse for compensation. Likewise, I would expect they would feel quite justified in handing you a bag of parts - that used to be youyr laptop ...... or car!

Court order? we don't need no steenkin' court order!

Pete Silver badge

old fashioned thinking

so a government needs to think you're suspicious before it can search your laptop. OK - what's more suspicious than refusing a request of "can I juist have a look at your laptop, sir?" They've got you both ways: damned if you do, damned if you don't.

So far as being searched on your way into a "secure" facility. Maybe unreasonable, but what IS reasonable is having all your data scanned on the way out. If you can't think of a reason why, I'd have to ask what you're doing reading an IT forum.

Now while I agree that software won't blow up a plane, and that a self-respecting ponographer will have any dubious material stored safely away in an online backup facility - or stored on micro SD cards that will simply not get found (even if you don't swallow them), or recognised for what they are. However, we have to realise that governments feel a paranoid, driven, imperative to make sure that no-one has any dodgy stuff on them. They've got us used to submitting to degrading enough investigations of our person and our property, it's not too far to expect them to go after our data. They'd want a brain-dump if they had the technology.

The old-fashioned thinking is that they'll find anything. As I said, any decent terrorist will have their data squirreled away where it won't be found - but this new act of security theatre will make the grannies feel a little easier about flying - until of course they're found in possession of some data they didn't know they had.

State Department workers snooped on all three prez candidates

Pete Silver badge

really - is anyone surprised?

I would expect that bored call-centre staff around the world look up the records of famous people. The only shock here is the reaction to it. Maybe that's because this is one of the few administrative functions that the yanks haven't outsourced - so it's still within their control.

No doubt the credit-card bills, medical records, call-logs and police files of pretty much anyone you can name is available in a low-pay, english-speaking country that hosts outsourced workers. All you have to do is find the right place, stand outside and wave money.

Maybe, just maybe the synapses of whichever of these candidates is unlucky enough to win the elections will fire at some point in the next 4 years and make the connection: personal data in database ..... potential for bad people to access it .... we mustn't store more than is absolutely necessary. However, I'm sure there's almost no chance of this happening.

Nokia passes buck over Greenpeace eco rating reduction

Pete Silver badge

and how does Greenpeace rate as a mobile phone supplier?

The wonderful thing about being an advocate for some cause or other is that you can appoint yourself qualified to make pronouncements about anything, anywhere and your followers will accept what you say.

This is not limited to GP, or any other "cause". Apple do it themselves - just look at the uncritical acceptance that their followers bestow on pretty much anything they bring out! I'm expecting an Apple-logo'd cardboard box to get rave reviews from the style-over-substance brigade any day now.

Right, back to the rant.Here we have an organisation who, if not explicitly anti-technology, certainly give the impression that we'd all be better off without a lot of the stuff we take for granted. They have somehow decided that we all need to know their opinions on how other people run their businesses. Maybe it's time for a few of the "targets" to start taking a closer look at how GP run themselves.

Maybe BP could see how they stack up as a petrochemical supplier, HBOS could see how well they manage as a bank and Nokia could research their standing as a mobile phone producer. What's that you say? "But GP aren't any of those things, they're a P.R. company!".

And there lies the answer: Nokia, or any of the other companies GP took it upon themselves to investigate, aren't an ecology company either. They make stuff for profit. Yes, it's nice not to waste materials and energy (because that lowers profits and hacks a few people off) but to have a bunch of outsiders criticise you for not meeting their standards in a field where you aren't a player must be rather galling. Maybe GP should be offering some constructive advice and help - rather than just sitting on the sidelines sniping at the easy targets.

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