Re: The weakest point ... ?
"the bit between the screen and the keyboard"
Did you mean between the chair and the keyboard, or do you have a particularly dodgy batch of VGA cables in mind?
"I am the weakest link, goodbye"
1261 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Jul 2007
Much like BA, BBC and lots of other things beginning with B from that era. It was all a huge Ponzi scheme
I recall an article a while back on unfunded local government pensions, roughly 25% of your council tax payments goes to paying current retirees (YMMV). Its only going to get worse.
All final benefit pension schemes should be stopped, obligations already incurred must be honoured (painful as it will be for a long time) and for those retiring in the next five years a modified system for the remainder of their time should be introduced to soften the blow. For everyone else there should be money purchase only from now on, run along the Dutch lines (far less in the way of onerous charges).
After all, these people who think saving 10% of their income for 30-40 years should generate perhaps half their income for a further 30-40 years have been seriously misled. To put it politely.
may I recommend attending any performance by John Robertson of his "Dark Room" shows.
Australian performer I saw in the UK (Pwllheli, no that's not Elvish) a couple of months ago so probably accessible to readers of Vultures North and South.
www.thejohnroberston.com/thedarkroom or Duckduckgo "you awake to find yourself in a dark room"
As with the plague, renaissance and remodelling the road network in our capital city we've always been a bit behind in following those continental fads.
Surely trying this would prove to the Shoreditch luvvies that in fact we've reconsidered and are now terribly cosmopolitan remainers at heart?
The long black one. Yes, its leather. No, I'm not sure from which particular mammal.
...five years ago (and possibly more recently).
It takes quite a bit of resources to keep a constant watch on someone, and even if you suspect something very troubling, if after a while nothing has materialised that is actionable then you have to consider using those resources for investigating something else that has been reported to you. Until a crime is committed there is still the presumption of innocence, otherwise you're simply advocating that we have lifelong monitoring of every person who has ever been reported to the authorities, whether that be a genuine concern or a malicious neighbour, in fact becoming the very Stasi-like state many here are complaining about.
Given that, the authorities have a difficult balance to strike in order to deal with the massive changes in how people communicate that technology has brought about in recent years, how this can then be used by people wishing to generally do harm, and how they can protect us from such people. I'm not saying they've got it correct or are even headed along the right path, and the encryption issue does present a huge dilemma that I have very mixed views on, but they need to try and this is an early step along the way. Regrettably progress will involve making mistakes which will adversely affect people. Hopefully as the technology matures, along with the users and society's attitudes, something will develop that redresses the balance to the satisfaction of all. After all, a century after its introduction we still haven't got legislation or social attitudes that effectively protects people from the risks presented by the motorcar hurling along the highway.
I get hacked off seeing a DVD £5 cheaper on the same shelf in Tesco the week after I bought it, but if I wait for the price to drop, it gets discontinued. It's like whenever you buy something, there's always some smug git who tells you it was cheaper at some website, or that you have to hunt around for vouchers to attractions to feel you're not being ripped off with the prices on the door.
Life is too short
Just a plain price for stuff.
Thank you
If, the first time, your connected car has a major IT security problem (viz. Fiat, Chrysler/Jeep etc.) some journalistic wag decides to refer to you as "Mr. Hack-it", is this something about which you eventually tyre or tire, given that people drive on the former in the UK but the latter in the US?
" if the system is that critical"
Think about who will be inconvenienced.
Then think about who will decide how critical that really is.
I saw a documentary/long advert for Heathrow some time ago which showed their VVIP terminal. I don't expect you get much in the way of queues there even if the computers fail
According to the quote attributed to Munk, it seemed to be going fine before Synep came along.
Does this mean that Plutus's original business model was in fact valid, or was it some kind of accidental Ponzi scheme that just took a long time to start to crumble?
If, as I infer from this, it was the Synep takeover that made things go wrong, essentially as they appear to have been crooks and drained the money in order to purchase all the goodies mentioned in another Reg article on this affair, then there seems to be an unwarranted bashing of the original concept.
I know its picky, but I find the wording disappointing. Leaving aside that not everyone in America needing help in an emergency is necessarily American, presumably other people are allowed to assist and form part of the employee/volunteer base of emergency services? I believe generally you have to be a US Citizen to be in the police but does the same hold for Fire and (where separate) Ambulance services?
I'm not American, but I have no problem helping, as a simple matter of human decency. Of course I appreciate that response times from the UK might be a little longer than desirable, but I assume that in areas of low population density (perhaps near either of the US's borders with Canada) there are some agreements to respond cross border if that will be more likely to save human life, possibly even to preserve property.
I have the feeling I'm going to be told this is a rather naïve view, but I'd be interested to learn whether or not cross border responses take place.
"The chimes of Big Ben" required only eight.
Strangely enough that episode of The Prisoner was on only the other day.
Freeview 61 or thereabouts for anyone wanting a bit of nostalgia/warning. Currently the series is running every weekday.
Be seeing you.
Take them to court!
In the same way that some US corporates have use investor state resolution to sue other governments for restricting their trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-state_dispute_settlement, perhaps a plucky non-US internet upstart might sue the US for similarly disadvantaging any traffic that they might wish to send to customers in the US.
IIRC there was to be an expansion of this principle in various trade treaties being negotiated although I think they've run into some trouble recently.
If its anything like the Tesla, and I asked the salesperson directly, then you also lose some of the useful built in things like mapping, traffic updates etc.
This seems to be the way newer cars are going at present.
That's a shame, possibly very stupid, as I'd prefer any updates to be done only with the thing is parked at home and when I accept them (having hopefully checked there are no reported problems for early updaters) but would rather need some of the navigation functions to make the car useful. Yes I could have a backup satnav from Halfords stuck to the windscreen but that's not really the point in a modern car and most drivers of such things will not understand the need to be so discriminating regarding their data connections.
So, could possibly be mounted in the axis of a naval vessel, the sort with the power already in place for rail guns?
As for what happened to Lineac3, they're just doing all the marketing in binary, "The Lineac 1000" will sound much better than Lineac 8 when some president announces it is being deployed to quell whatever fuzzy-wuzzies we're not friends with at that particular time.
Was a Panorama about FB and what it was doing to help candidates in the US election.
There was a little about general privacy for users, although I think it really could have been fleshed out much more to be effective, although that might be seen as beyond Auntie's remit.
I've not used FB out of general privacy concerns, but I found the interview segments with their Director of Policy most disconcerting. I'd hope someone can do something longer on this, reaching a primetime audience so that people can make a more informed choice.
To be clear, is that 24 months from launch, or from the date a particular handset is purchased?
Then if it's the latter, do earlier purchases get extended benefit or do they need to pay a subscription after 24 months?
Much easier to say that updates are guaranteed until at least a certain date, at least for the purchaser. This can always be extended if the model proves popular and long lived.
Recently there have been lots of comments about law enforcement authorities of one kind or another, often based in the USA applying extraterritoriality or just demanding information without judicial oversight.
In this instance both these issues appear not to be relevant, and the police are making a not unreasonable enquiry, but still copping some flak. In the old days if someone were to, for example, burn down a building, it would not be unreasonable for the police to enquire of the local library if someone had recently checked out "Mrs. Miggins' Guide to Arson and Animal Husbandry for Beginners". Good old fashioned police work I think it used to be called.
If this search turns up any evidence, I would be very surprised (although I am aware that the legal systems in some states can be strange to us Brits) if this lead to a conviction without at least some further proof. It might however raise a reasonable cause to make further enquiries relating to one or more people. If it turns out that the search was by the local "soup kitchen" service because the person had applied to be a volunteer, this would then hopefully be looked at, seen to be a coincidence and dismissed, allowing the police to concentrate their resources somewhere hopefully more fruitful.
As for the amount of tech info, if the link comes back to a phone which suspect X says "this is mine, no-one else uses it" this could help prove a case. if it turns out to be a shared PC in a student house left unsecured then of course its a bit trickier for the police, but again not an unreasonable request.