Pots and kettles...
... come to mind, bitch!
6899 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jan 2007
... was when I read this document that I got this document forwarded to me:
http://www.care-data.info/
I thought I'd done enough by opting out of the Summary Care Record and similar nonsense, but this is something completely different and I'd urge everyone to opt out ASAP because this data doesn't even make an attempt at the fig leaf of being "anonymised" and you'll be giving your information to Cameron's Cronies in perpetuity for them to use in any commercial way they want!
"I'll bet their money would be better spent exchanging laser pointers for $10 McDonald's coupons."
Great, so they'll buy a cheap laser pointer for a buck or two and swap it for a coupon that's worth five times the value and then buy another pointer...
... in the case of all those '"tons" of fraudulent transactions', the card issuer immediately snatched the money back from the retailers and gave it back to him before actually *checking* with the retailer to see if they were fraudulent in the first place...
... Oh, no, hang on, that's what PayPal does, isn't it?
"Flappy Bird scammers pounce on unsuspecting users
"Scam artists seeking to capitalise on the demise of popular mobile game Flappy Bird have released harmful clones.
"Apps that appeared to be identical to the original have been designed to trick users into sending premium rate text messages."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26136781
Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994
60AA Powers to require removal of disguises
(1)Where—
(a)an authorisation under section 60 is for the time being in force in relation to any locality for any period, or
(b)an authorisation under subsection (3) that the powers conferred by subsection (2) shall be exercisable at any place in a locality is in force for any period,
those powers shall be exercisable at any place in that locality at any time in that period.
(2)This subsection confers power on any constable in uniform—
(a)to require any person to remove any item which the constable reasonably believes that person is wearing wholly or mainly for the purpose of concealing his identity;
(b)to seize any item which the constable reasonably believes any person intends to wear wholly or mainly for that purpose.
This is a great idea *in principle*, but it also has the potential to be abused as a tool of repression.
Already we've seen totalitarian regimes shutting down phone service in areas where people are protesting (or even sending messages saying "you're in a protest, we know who you are!") so now imagine that they can remotely brick any phones they want.
The only safe (for us) way for this to work is that the "brick" code is owned and stored by the customer, not by the phone company so I can call them and say "My phone has been stolen, the brick code is 'Correct Horse Battery Staple', please shut it down."
The "Downing Street police porn arrests" story mentions the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 (sec 63-67) which is the "Extreme Pornography" section.
It will be interesting to see what (if anything!) is done if they are shown to have possessed extreme porn...
"... usually claiming the fault is with [the] customer-owned router."
This seems to be Virgin "Support's" default position and they'll try to get you to book a technician to come round in a couple of days and tell you that, no, it's a fault with their BB Network...
No, it's because they *know* that the majority of people are either too lazy to actually *do* something about the crap that our lords and masters come up with or are so cynical about the whole political process that they realise that it really doesn't matter what we try and do, the politicians are going to do it anyway in their usual "completely divorced from the real world" manner.
"One of the more useful applications of QR codes is the ability to store contact info."
Ok, fair enough, that was an application I'd not considered.
But why can't (or isn't) such a thing be done on a case-by-case basis: "This application needs your permission to write to your Contacts - Allow/ Disallow/ Allow Permanently"?
I'd be happier with a system like that rather than one that demands over-arching permissions as a condition for installation.
I just tried to download a QR reader for my Moto-G. For some reason it said it needed access to my Contacts list!
WHY FFS???
Until *WE* get the choice of what data and personal information gets passed to Apps and the ability to say "You can have X and Y, but not Z" then there is *NO* real security.
"In the UK a firm is said to have monopoly power if it has more than 25% of the market share. For example, Tesco @30% market share or Google 90% of search engine traffic."
http://www.economicshelp.org/microessays/markets/monopoly/
http://www.blacksacademy.net/content/3328.html
"In the UK politics is the new Class war with the Labour Party Demonising anyone who is successful."
Thank you for those words from the Tory Party spokesman who went on to demonise anyone who is unemployed by implicitly characterising them as not "Hard Working" and not "Honest" and suggesting that anyone on benefits is a workshy scrounger and parasite...
"The problem there is that, in my experience, people do not read what they are signing"
Actually you make a good point there.
Whilst making an edit to my site, I once accidentally broke the link to the Terms and Conditions page from the checkout and it stayed that way for a couple of months.
Yet *everybody* when they ordered, ticked the box saying "I have read the Terms and Conditions" even though it was physically imposible for them to have done so...!
As part of my business, I have an e-mail list.
This is 100% *OPT IN*,you either have to click the box at the checkout on my website or put your e-mail address in the "sign up" list or physically write it down on a piece of paper if you buy something from the stall I run at a market once a month.
*NOBODY* gets anything from me if they haven't asked for it.
So *WHY* do I see e-mail unsubscribes where someone has ticked the box "Spammy content"? FFS, the instructions to opt out are in the e-mail. You can click on a link and unsubscribe. You can visit our website and unsubscribe, hells teeth, you can phone up our office and unsubscribe, but only *after* you opted in in the first place!
So don't accuse me of spamming you when you asked me to send you e-mails!
And, of course, there's a difference between someone *saying* they would pay more and actually *paying* more.
If the surveyors had then said "Ok, stick your hand in your pocket right now and pay", how many people would have said "Sure!" and how many would have said "Err, well..."?
"I could happily live with BBC4 only."
Except that, with a subscription model, BBC4 would probably be first against the wall. "Too niche, too boring, nobody wants to watch a documentary about XYZ, we'll never sell it to other broadcasters, no, get rid of it and let's have more Britain's Got Big Brother Coming Dancing Strictly Through a Hole in a Wall on Ice..."
"where there are two, consumers can and will switch"
Riiiiiight.
That's why everyone is now on the best energy tariff and with the best bank current account and buys petrol from the cheapest garage around and has the most sensible mobile phone tariff and why you never see online businesses saying "here are our new terms and conditions, agree to them or close your account" and people sticking with them because they can't be bothered to switch or don't realise there's a better option or think (often quiet rightly) that the other options are equally as bad...