Posts by Ken Green

who reads contracts

"NASA spokesmen said that all the other NASA employees didn't seem to mind, and nor did thousands of other workers on the federal payroll, also subject to the badging scheme."

Perhaps it's because these are the type of people most likely to read the bits of paper put in front of them.

The "Great Global Warning Swindle"

Whether the "Great Global Warning Swindle" was wholly accurate is to my mind not the most import issue. The program certainly raised issues that need to be addressed. We are constantly told by the media that their is consensus in the scientific community about the causes of global warning and there clearly is not. When scientists have to threaten court action to have their names removed from paper because they are either being miss-represented or were not even consulted then there is something seriously wrong.

Also it is right to point out that where ever you find a correlation you have to at least consider which factor is driving the relationship.

In order to have good science you need to have informed discussion. The program did certainly present many things that should be discussed.

OK, here someone is saying that all gobal warning in the past is caused by solar activity, but this one is caused by man made CO2.

It will be interesting to read this paper.

Spoofed IP addresses

I've never understood why all ISP don't filter out IP packets that don't have a senders IP address that corresponds to the line. It doesn't take that much effort surely. There is rarely a good reason for sending out IP packets that aren't addressed from a sending system on a most lines. The only valid use I can think of for it is bonding uplinks and that's just the sort of thing that ISP are likely to want to limit, so they can charge a premium for the service.

Justice needs to be seen to be done!

How are we supposed to believe in an independent judicial systems if everyone disappears off into a private meeting and sorts things out behind closed doors.

How does one file a freedom of information request against this kind of thing?

Is Europe going to follow the US model after all and let Microsoft write their own punishment?

Shhoting them would be an expensive waste

Liam, it would make more sense to make the committee members reimburse the £400K they've so thoroughly wasted. Shooting them would be a waste of bullets.

How does this apply to the press?

>Our data protection regime lets us take holiday snaps, even of strangers, provided

>we're doing so for private purposes. But if we're taking snaps for commercial use,

>where individuals are identifiable, there is no such exemption. We need to notify

>the subjects, and that's hard for Google to do. Even a loudspeaker on top of the

>camera cars ("Hi, it's Google here, say 'cheese' everybody!") might not suffice.

So how does this apply to the press? They take pictures for "commercial use" do they have to go around and get consent from everyone in the frame? How do the paparazzi operate? They make a living from photographing people without their consent. The morons who run our news programmes on TV these days seem to think that the only way to read a report about anything is to stand outside a building remotely connected with the event and film a reporter, do they have to get informed consent from every passer by? If I said no would they have to stop their live broadcast and wait for me to go on my way. They certainly have no right to obstruct me.

Is this another case of "The law is an ass"?

Metric isn't easier

Sorry but base 10 sucks. It's the sum of two prime numbers so fractions don't work.

halves are OK, you can have metric halves.

quarters, these require 2 decimal places, indicating that you're measurements are accurate to 1 part in 100!

Thirds, forget it. You can't have a metric third.

As an engineering unit - sorry metric isn't too clever.

But then considering that the definitions were rushed through prematurely then perhaps this isn't a great surprise. The whole metric system is based on some rather poor measurements. Add to that that it was aimed at a definition based on 40,000,000 meters and 40 is hardly a "metric" value.

At least feet and inches are based on something that is nominally "human" in scale.

They'll track you on foot too

Don't think that by getting out of your car you're going to escape.

Oh no, the government are keen looking at technologies like facial recognition so they can track you if they can see you. OK so facial recognition systems might not work, but so what, you're guilty until proven innocent in this new world. Just ask anyone who's had a picture of a plastic with their cars reg on it sent to them through the post.

Vodafone offer a rebate

Last week Vodafone offer to pay £100 back into my bank account if I didn't upgrade. I'll probably still replace my phone coz I think it's S**T, but if I wasn't so pissed off with the phone I'd probably go for it.

Linux v Windows ease of use

When it comes to installing PCs my recent experience is that installing Linux is much easier. The various installs I've done, the different flavours of Linux have recognised all my hardware and installed it correctly. Where as I still can't get several bits of one of my HP laptops to work correctly under XP, even using the special Windows recovery media provided.

Gone in 1800 seconds

A tip: Set up the IPs statically and leave the DHCP switced on, only ban all addresses the DHCP will provide. Couple this with WPA and MAC address filtering and it might take up to half an hour for the hacker to get in :)

Or alternatively set up the Wifi so that it only routes to your VPN server. Or better still both :-)

What do you mean that most home users don't have a VPN server?

Parents and childrens names

As a parent I frequently bemoan the total lack of rights that we have, against the rights of our children. But here I think their needs to be some balance. Parents should have the right to call their children anything they want, but the kids should be given the right to appeal once they reach a reasonable age. Failing that they should be able to sue their parents for naming them things like "Fifi Trivibelle" or how ever it was spelt.

One of my Grandma's uncles was apparently christened Hugh Stink.