I suspect that the reason this was handled in the UK was to protect the identity of the person whose account was hacked. It's probable that if the case was heard in the US the identity would have to have been revealed . There must be more to this than reported.
"The DPA contains an exemption which states that personal data can be processed for the purposes of the prevention or detection of crime without having to inform individuals if informing the individuals would jeopardise the ability to prevent or detect crime."
That's OK then - since virtually everybody has probably committed a crime against one of the myriad of laws and regulations that abound the Statue Book, it will always be possible to find a "potential" crime to justify the shared snooping..
"The goal is to prevent, detect, investigate and prosecute terrorist offenses and related crimes as well as other serious cross-border crimes punishable by a sentence of imprisonment of at least three years,"
That's OK then covers just about anything, except double parking,under the US sentencing regime.
I suspect that Apple win not bow to the Australian Courts.
Very soon a missive from the US of A will land in Canberra talking about free trade agreements etc and the whole thing will slip peacefully away. Proving once again the power of the corporations.
So we are up for hoards of people just buying a ticket to use the free WiFi. Platforms will become depositories of pad/laptop users camped out while real passengers have to scurry around them to get on the trains. :-)
Just like the situation in coffee shops that offer free WiFi.
So a country hoards it's natural resources (which we must assume are it's sovereign possessions) to maintain high prices and it upset the EU / US and GB - only because they want access to the resources.
But it is OK for other countries to "control" the flow of their natural resources to keep the price high, diamonds, gold, for example.
I don't like what China are doing but I can't see an argument that justifies the "we can force you to sell us your goods" stance.
So Google are the new bad boys because they tried to clear up a mess with another "mess".
I don't have a direct financial arrangement with Google so as an end user I'm not directly impacted by the alleged "Anti Trust" nature of their operation - I'd just prefer that they did not harvest user data for whatever they do with it - but then they could not run their business and would have to start charging for their services. 10 Euro a search?
I'd be more impressed with the EU mandarins if they addressed the stupid situation with patents and the "Bad Boy" tactics of those manufacturers who actually take money from us, while collecting information about what we do with our computing devices and control what we are allowed to download and install on them.
BTW - I'm still a conspiracy theorist - the Google data collection is on behalf of the CIA/FBI/Homeland Security who I'm sure all have direct access to it. I can't see the US government allowing the establishment of what is probably the worlds largest database/computing system unless they had some access/control. (don't forget ANY of your financial data that goes anywhere near a US server belongs to the US.)
So gang enter shopping centre- the 'Nominated Holder" is given all their phones and starts to wander around the centre avoiding the areas where the gang of nasties are pilfering the shops profits.
Defense - "look at your phone tracks - we was all over the other side of the centre guv"
I'm getting a tinfoil hat for my phone!
" The alleged perpetrators of the scam are Nigerian, Thai and Taiwanese, a huge practical obstacle to any seizure or possible criminal proceedings, even assuming the miscreants were sitting on piles of money."
"The judgment is in the US, and the guilty parties are not. Applying the judgment extra-territorially is a significant hurdle for retribution on a practical level,"
Don't American Court rulings have worldwide application now (probably slipped in a recent Free Trade Treaty) so what is the problem? - just use an extradition warrant.
Oh sorry those are only of use if the person is in the UK , they probably don't work for other countries (yet).
What worries me is that the UK is high on the removal requests. Historically the UK promotes it's self as having freedom of speech (I'm never sure about freedom of expression) and often points to other countries that have restrictive regimes, censorship and other terrible obstacles to "democracy'. But some of these countries don't have a high "please take down rate" .
Singapore 0
Russia <10
Pakistan <10
Malaysia <10
Libya <10
Israel <10
Indonesia <10
Google releases the Report under it's "transparency" banner. Lets expand transparency and report the detail of the specific requests so we can learn what our government does not want us to see. If that offends a Court Order then don't list those sites covered by Court Order. Certainly if Google did not take the site down then I see no reason for us not to be told which sites were requested. That way we can start to understand what we are being shielded from.
If only to save the planet. All that power consumed by the receives must add to global warming and battery operated receivers are a no go (unless you lug spare AA cells around with you.) While TX power is lower, than the kWatts of FM, there are more TXs so overall the DAB experimentation has been a green failure!
Thanks eWill - PDF redaction can sometime go wrong. As you say Reg readers will already know these solutions to nosey governments.
I last saw this error on a State Government Contract in Australia. The public document had all pricing redacted but changing Adobe Preferences / Text custom colour soon showed the $s up (red text looks good on a black background)
LOL - I'm in Sydney Australia and had no idea that the predators of the past had moved onto solar!
The solar argument is raging here based on much the same issue about the buy back of kW - People's panels are not generating what they were sold - and we have a bit more sun than the UK!
Seems that the Double Glazing salesmen have retrained as Solar Panel salesmen.
As for the FIT this is currently a debacle in the New South Wales Government , who have a similar too lucrative scheme, where they are desperately trying to reduce the payment having discovered that it costs a lot.
The domestic solar "initiative" is nothing more than a wealth redistribution system!
What's next? El'Reg being extradited because it linked to a story about someone linking to a link?
It's the Wikileaks argument again - you told the world, that something we did not want the world to know about was out there, you are therefore guilty of a serious crime.
I think all the UK free press should post a list of the naughty links on their front page to show the level of civil disgust. The crime is no different to saying "Joe's bookshop in High Street has a sign telling yo where you can buy a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover from" and if taken to the lengths the US seem to be inclined to go could directly impact on UK Editors.
If you have a paper map in front of you the Northings and Eastings OS grid reference is far superior for finding your way around. and recording where points of interest are - long may it reign.
It can't be that complicated as the handheld GPS unit I had 10 years ago had it as a display option.
As for the Carriers, OFCOM should just seek the change in legislation to make provision of the data compulsory (for ALL transmission sites) - Even Australia's ACMA have managed this - all site details being available on it's database. http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD..PC/pc=PC_505
It's a shame that the detailed scrutiny that company lawyers apply to enforcing the wildest patent claims is not exercised by the Patent Office when they assess the patent application in the first place.
I fail to see how a "Button" (rounded corners square or any other shape) can be patentable given that it seems every conceivable shape of button already exists - look at the buttons that operate a lift, industrial controls, microwaves etc. all have similar buttons of many shapes. All Apple seem to have done is copy an existing shape and put it on a screen.
I see nothing "original" in any of the Apple buttons and icons, Green has been used as "Go" for dialling in many systems, the telephone handset is an international symbol, I have a calculator from the 80's with nice rounded corners and a chrome / bright metal trim.
In the name of scientific research I put www.sex.xxx into Chrome (build 10.0.648.204) and it did go to Google search. Then tried in IE8 and the site resolved.
Posting on line seems to be the way guaranteed to reveal the census information to authorities who, in my view, should have no right to that information. ISP’s, server operators and of course the US “security” authorities who have right of access to any information that passes through servers on US soil or owned/operated by US companies.
OFCOM missed an opportunity – they should have paid Google Street View to record the sites along with the locals WiFi. Everything they needed could have been collected. Mind you I thought OFCOM (radio investigation branch) had some pretty nifty frequency scanner/traingulators of their own.
I have the fortune to live in inner Sydney about 1.5km from the exchange. I get an ADSL2+ speed of around 18mbs. Browsing is fine with a little page lag especially to sites like BBC , The Reg and some local Aus sites served Overseas.
I also have an ADSL connection at my mothers in middle England also about 1.5 km from the exchange the ADSL reports speeds of around 5 mbs.
However the UK site delivers far snappier browsing with perceivably less lag that the Aus "fast" link.
So in my experience the secret to fast browsing is really the ISP back bone not the ADSL to the customer.
US Trade Mark and Patent rulings are getting stupider and more invasive than the PC crap we have to suffer. How on earth can a sentence become a trade mark?
Every now and again I wish that these silly "edicts" from Police would get tested in the courts - let the police present the evidence of who was offended and let them explain why.
I'd hope that a reasonable magistrate would have the sense to give the police/prosecution service a B good telling off for wasting public money - it's a bush, clearly a bush, if we go around letting one person object to things like this then we have become a very introverted society.
PC Plod has gone PC mad - the Chief Constable should receive a "Please explain" from the local Police committee.
Sad as it is the initial intent was to a) prove they could do it b) have a laugh at the stuck up self importance of an American Corporation.
In my opinion a fine would have been appropriate - the slammer for a corporate "loss" of $90k is totally OTT - it's not like they took the cash from the till.
Another reason to minimise dealings with US companies and avoid their country.
OS Authorities are not going to let EU auditors trample around their databases so there is no way of enforcing the good intent. Once the data is in a foreign administrations computer it will stay there for ever - simple as that.
The first transgression will be Tax authorities - PNRs are just part of the bigger big brother roll out.
I've heard this argument for "banging up" people who try to open cabin doors at altitude and endanger an aircraft.
I was always under the impression that the doors cannot be opened when there is a pressure difference - they are effectively locked until the plane gets to a low altitude.
If a server is to serve up location based services it needs to know the location but how can it serve those services to the phone without knowing the phones ID?
If I ask the BBC News page to serve me the article on Phorm the BBC server becomes aware of my IP - whats the difference?
How many of the fanbois would have signed up for the anti Phorm submission to the (last) government but are now heralding the IEquivalent as a great advance.
As I see it to "provide and improve location-based products and services" needs as a minimum two bits of information the location and identity of the phone. Both are personal information so there will be no "anonymous" element to that data.
Further who is deciding what constitutes "improvement" - bet it's about serving more content to a device based on Apple's (and their partners, friends and associates) concept of what you need to be told.
Lets hope journalists keep a close watch on this story so that we know when the mobile is returned and the police have apologised.
Maybe the professional photographic fraternity should put a tourist advert together along the lines of "Come to London (for the Olympics) and loose your camera, be searched by the police and embarrassed in public". Nip off to The Mayor and make it clear that unless the actions of the Police are reigned in they will start a world-wide release of the advert.
There is nothing more guaranteed to cause change than the potential for a politician to loose money on a high profile venture.
Simplest thing would be for companies to delete details in sales records once the sale is complete just leaving a sales reference number and value.
Won't happen as the companies are building their own datasets around the details for their own potentially privacy invading and targeted advertising.
What annoys me is that some distant government and it's questionable agencies is able to find out what I have bought on line - without any protection from my own government. It's scary when you realise how many servers associated with on line transactions (sales/banking etc) are located in a country where apparent privacies mean nothing.
I think Street View will come to be seen as the Doomsday Book of the modern millennium.
It is quite simply a fantastic application of technology, I'm just thankful that the project is run by an independent organisation - not Government - if the latter we would probably be looking at the pictures in sepia at 40x30 resolution.
Maybe it may help crims but only a little and no more than looking at maps and driving by. I'm sure a good crim will stake-out their target, drive by themselves and make their own assessment.
I consider it's value to the public far greater than the odd crim activity (and embarrassing picture of a drunk in the gutter)
As for invasion of privacy - how can this be? The streets are not private and, at present, it's perfectly legal to take any picture from a street and publish them.
Hope the Tesco failure does not effect the UK VoIP industry. I am in Australia and my local VoiP provider gives me un-timed calls to UK "normal" numbers for 8 cents (about 6 pence) i.e. cheaper than BT to BT local calls - or even the BT flagfall. So there must be a lot of fat in the BT pricing.
On top of that I have a UK DID from coms.com in my mums home town and also London so UK friends and relatives can call me at UK local rates. VoIP has cut my phone costs significantly - to the extent that I no longer think about the cost of a call.
Australia seems to be hijacking the term Aboriginal for itself. Technically it refers to any countries original indigenous people.
Evans (of ED) is apparently an ex-pat Aussie living in the US. In an article at
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/1028037/encyclopedia-dramatica-owner-could-face-charges he is quoted as saying "My counsel has advised me that I can never under any circumstances visit my family in Sydney again, nor otherwise make any appearances on Australian soil,"
What happened to satire, parody, and good old belly laughs at oneself?
"Beeb director-general Mark Thompson will admit in March that the Corporation is bloated and needs to trim down its services to allow commercial rivals to compete."
Why? The Beeb seem to have a better grasp of what is successful than the commercial competitors who only seem to sling out material for dumb masses. If the BBC are producing successful broadcasts long may they continue.
We pay the license fee for quality programming not to allow dross from commercial concerns into our living room.
Come on Beeb put your back catalogue on line so we can escape the adverts!
Please all you democratic poms, with your Speakers Corner soap boxes PLEASE spread the word around as much as possible so that the Lord Protector Conroy gets as much press as possible exposing the stupidity of his "filter" in a democratic society.
Hopefully it will then become apparent to the mass of Australians too busy on redtube.com and betfair.com to notice that very soon their screen will be blank. (those two sites being RC and on the leaked Blacklist that Wikkileaks posted)
I don’t remember being told that every penny I spend could be subject to US Government assessment..
Of more concern is the data mining that could be applied to industry – the US could mine the transactions and work out who paid who what $ to derive contract costs. e.g. BAE may have a contract with an airport in Spain for radar – it would not take much effort for the US to work out that the payments from the airport authority to BAE represented the contract cost and tell Boeing. Next time a US corporation bids for similar work it does so at a commercial advantage.
The EU should say “Non” and only release information when compelling evidence is submitted and scrutinised inside the EU by accountable people.
The horse has bolted of course as every $ we spend on our credit cards is monitored in the US anyway – all the CC transactions ultimately are byAmex/Visa/MasterCard who all have servers in the US so are all subject to FBI/CIA scrutiny - back to cash for me!!
I'm not too sure that the current US President has anything like the same feeling for Britian that previous one had.
Our current Prime Minister will not have recognised that so he will not only agree to financial information but probably that of the Inland Revenue, National Health, DVLC and data from all the Number Plate Recognition cameras as well in order to garner favour.
Good decision - British justice needs to be reminded that it is "Innocent till proved (in a Court) Guilty" - There has been too much scope creep requiring innocent parties to justify their innocence. Well done HMRC
I have just dropped Panasonic off my camera upgrade list .
Would Ford get away with “We have noticed that customers are using petrol which is not sourced from our partner provider Sainsbury. Our engine computers have been configured to prevent non Sainsbury fuel being used for your protection”
What next "Our camera will no longer accept third party memory cards"
Last time I checked the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act was a Law, administerd, one would think, through the courts and Ministry of Justice. (yuk title too 1984) So what on earth has the ICO, which I think is a QANGO, got to do with it?
By all means let the ICO deal with the Phorm issue BUT let the law deal with ISP's who break the RIPA.
Unfortunatly the anti Phorm fight focused on the result of the illegal extraction of date rather than the act of aquiring that data.
Lets find a way to have the discussion without involving Phorm, then they won't get the publicity but the breaches of the RIPA will be challenged.
If you think forward Phorm will become the government spy, collecting the information that no government could ever get Laws passed for.
Register
76 posts • joined Wednesday 6th February 2008 13:25 GMT
Page:
I suspect that the reason this was handled in the UK was to protect the identity of the person whose account was hacked. It's probable that if the case was heard in the US the identity would have to have been revealed . There must be more to this than reported.
"The DPA contains an exemption which states that personal data can be processed for the purposes of the prevention or detection of crime without having to inform individuals if informing the individuals would jeopardise the ability to prevent or detect crime."
That's OK then - since virtually everybody has probably committed a crime against one of the myriad of laws and regulations that abound the Statue Book, it will always be possible to find a "potential" crime to justify the shared snooping..
"The goal is to prevent, detect, investigate and prosecute terrorist offenses and related crimes as well as other serious cross-border crimes punishable by a sentence of imprisonment of at least three years,"
That's OK then covers just about anything, except double parking,under the US sentencing regime.
ooops!
I suspect that Apple will not bow to the Australian Courts.
I suspect that Apple win not bow to the Australian Courts.
Very soon a missive from the US of A will land in Canberra talking about free trade agreements etc and the whole thing will slip peacefully away. Proving once again the power of the corporations.
So we are up for hoards of people just buying a ticket to use the free WiFi. Platforms will become depositories of pad/laptop users camped out while real passengers have to scurry around them to get on the trains. :-)
Just like the situation in coffee shops that offer free WiFi.
So a country hoards it's natural resources (which we must assume are it's sovereign possessions) to maintain high prices and it upset the EU / US and GB - only because they want access to the resources.
But it is OK for other countries to "control" the flow of their natural resources to keep the price high, diamonds, gold, for example.
I don't like what China are doing but I can't see an argument that justifies the "we can force you to sell us your goods" stance.
50,000 files - won't be long before they appear on Wikileaks.
Bad Boy's
So Google are the new bad boys because they tried to clear up a mess with another "mess".
I don't have a direct financial arrangement with Google so as an end user I'm not directly impacted by the alleged "Anti Trust" nature of their operation - I'd just prefer that they did not harvest user data for whatever they do with it - but then they could not run their business and would have to start charging for their services. 10 Euro a search?
I'd be more impressed with the EU mandarins if they addressed the stupid situation with patents and the "Bad Boy" tactics of those manufacturers who actually take money from us, while collecting information about what we do with our computing devices and control what we are allowed to download and install on them.
BTW - I'm still a conspiracy theorist - the Google data collection is on behalf of the CIA/FBI/Homeland Security who I'm sure all have direct access to it. I can't see the US government allowing the establishment of what is probably the worlds largest database/computing system unless they had some access/control. (don't forget ANY of your financial data that goes anywhere near a US server belongs to the US.)
Getting Setlenent
" The alleged perpetrators of the scam are Nigerian, Thai and Taiwanese, a huge practical obstacle to any seizure or possible criminal proceedings, even assuming the miscreants were sitting on piles of money."
"The judgment is in the US, and the guilty parties are not. Applying the judgment extra-territorially is a significant hurdle for retribution on a practical level,"
Don't American Court rulings have worldwide application now (probably slipped in a recent Free Trade Treaty) so what is the problem? - just use an extradition warrant.
Oh sorry those are only of use if the person is in the UK , they probably don't work for other countries (yet).
Why the UK
What worries me is that the UK is high on the removal requests. Historically the UK promotes it's self as having freedom of speech (I'm never sure about freedom of expression) and often points to other countries that have restrictive regimes, censorship and other terrible obstacles to "democracy'. But some of these countries don't have a high "please take down rate" .
Singapore 0
Russia <10
Pakistan <10
Malaysia <10
Libya <10
Israel <10
Indonesia <10
Google releases the Report under it's "transparency" banner. Lets expand transparency and report the detail of the specific requests so we can learn what our government does not want us to see. If that offends a Court Order then don't list those sites covered by Court Order. Certainly if Google did not take the site down then I see no reason for us not to be told which sites were requested. That way we can start to understand what we are being shielded from.
DAB should be killed
If only to save the planet. All that power consumed by the receives must add to global warming and battery operated receivers are a no go (unless you lug spare AA cells around with you.) While TX power is lower, than the kWatts of FM, there are more TXs so overall the DAB experimentation has been a green failure!
Redaction
Thanks eWill - PDF redaction can sometime go wrong. As you say Reg readers will already know these solutions to nosey governments.
I last saw this error on a State Government Contract in Australia. The public document had all pricing redacted but changing Adobe Preferences / Text custom colour soon showed the $s up (red text looks good on a black background)
Double Glazing salesmen have retrained
LOL - I'm in Sydney Australia and had no idea that the predators of the past had moved onto solar!
The solar argument is raging here based on much the same issue about the buy back of kW - People's panels are not generating what they were sold - and we have a bit more sun than the UK!
More Spin
Seems that the Double Glazing salesmen have retrained as Solar Panel salesmen.
As for the FIT this is currently a debacle in the New South Wales Government , who have a similar too lucrative scheme, where they are desperately trying to reduce the payment having discovered that it costs a lot.
The domestic solar "initiative" is nothing more than a wealth redistribution system!
What Next
What's next? El'Reg being extradited because it linked to a story about someone linking to a link?
It's the Wikileaks argument again - you told the world, that something we did not want the world to know about was out there, you are therefore guilty of a serious crime.
I think all the UK free press should post a list of the naughty links on their front page to show the level of civil disgust. The crime is no different to saying "Joe's bookshop in High Street has a sign telling yo where you can buy a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover from" and if taken to the lengths the US seem to be inclined to go could directly impact on UK Editors.
Map Co-Ords
If you have a paper map in front of you the Northings and Eastings OS grid reference is far superior for finding your way around. and recording where points of interest are - long may it reign.
It can't be that complicated as the handheld GPS unit I had 10 years ago had it as a display option.
As for the Carriers, OFCOM should just seek the change in legislation to make provision of the data compulsory (for ALL transmission sites) - Even Australia's ACMA have managed this - all site details being available on it's database. http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD..PC/pc=PC_505
Patent
It's a shame that the detailed scrutiny that company lawyers apply to enforcing the wildest patent claims is not exercised by the Patent Office when they assess the patent application in the first place.
I fail to see how a "Button" (rounded corners square or any other shape) can be patentable given that it seems every conceivable shape of button already exists - look at the buttons that operate a lift, industrial controls, microwaves etc. all have similar buttons of many shapes. All Apple seem to have done is copy an existing shape and put it on a screen.
I see nothing "original" in any of the Apple buttons and icons, Green has been used as "Go" for dialling in many systems, the telephone handset is an international symbol, I have a calculator from the 80's with nice rounded corners and a chrome / bright metal trim.
xxx in Chrome
In the name of scientific research I put www.sex.xxx into Chrome (build 10.0.648.204) and it did go to Google search. Then tried in IE8 and the site resolved.
Now it resolves in Chrome
Yet another iphone release
iYawn.
Cenus drips
Posting on line seems to be the way guaranteed to reveal the census information to authorities who, in my view, should have no right to that information. ISP’s, server operators and of course the US “security” authorities who have right of access to any information that passes through servers on US soil or owned/operated by US companies.
Missed opportunity
OFCOM missed an opportunity – they should have paid Google Street View to record the sites along with the locals WiFi. Everything they needed could have been collected. Mind you I thought OFCOM (radio investigation branch) had some pretty nifty frequency scanner/traingulators of their own.
Connection speed is not the only measure
I have the fortune to live in inner Sydney about 1.5km from the exchange. I get an ADSL2+ speed of around 18mbs. Browsing is fine with a little page lag especially to sites like BBC , The Reg and some local Aus sites served Overseas.
I also have an ADSL connection at my mothers in middle England also about 1.5 km from the exchange the ADSL reports speeds of around 5 mbs.
However the UK site delivers far snappier browsing with perceivably less lag that the Aus "fast" link.
So in my experience the secret to fast browsing is really the ISP back bone not the ADSL to the customer.
"Security & Privacy"
What prey is private about walking round a shopping mall open to the public ?
Hardly Normal
"(like good 'ol "Hardly Normal" - not my expression"
Hardly Normal Ltd is a registered trading name of Harvey Normal (no joke)
Wot about the UK
Maybe the Reg could add another column listing the UK price as well just to show that the UK gets equally screwed when compared to US pricing.
DPI is good for you....
The ISP’s will claim they need government money to pay for this invasion.
“No! - just raise your rates to users” the government will say
“That’s not fair we will become uncompetitive”
“Tough – we want the data”
“What if we offset costs selling advertising based on the content of the data?”
“Go for it – that’s why we have never pursed BT and their Phorm initiative – we knew DPI was good for you”
Standby for ISP sanctioned SPAM by the bucket load
Worse than PC
US Trade Mark and Patent rulings are getting stupider and more invasive than the PC crap we have to suffer. How on earth can a sentence become a trade mark?
Anyway all I am about to seek approval for.
“I have an App for that”
“An App for that we have”
“We have an App for that” etc. etc.
PC Plod gone PC mad
Every now and again I wish that these silly "edicts" from Police would get tested in the courts - let the police present the evidence of who was offended and let them explain why.
I'd hope that a reasonable magistrate would have the sense to give the police/prosecution service a B good telling off for wasting public money - it's a bush, clearly a bush, if we go around letting one person object to things like this then we have become a very introverted society.
PC Plod has gone PC mad - the Chief Constable should receive a "Please explain" from the local Police committee.
18 months too much
Sad as it is the initial intent was to a) prove they could do it b) have a laugh at the stuck up self importance of an American Corporation.
In my opinion a fine would have been appropriate - the slammer for a corporate "loss" of $90k is totally OTT - it's not like they took the cash from the till.
Another reason to minimise dealings with US companies and avoid their country.
PNR Standards
No teeth - waste of paper!
OS Authorities are not going to let EU auditors trample around their databases so there is no way of enforcing the good intent. Once the data is in a foreign administrations computer it will stay there for ever - simple as that.
The first transgression will be Tax authorities - PNRs are just part of the bigger big brother roll out.
Cabin Doors
I've heard this argument for "banging up" people who try to open cabin doors at altitude and endanger an aircraft.
I was always under the impression that the doors cannot be opened when there is a pressure difference - they are effectively locked until the plane gets to a low altitude.
Can anyone confirm?
Fred and his excuse
As a local radio station put it;
Q: “What have Fred Nile and the Japanese whalers got in common?”
A: “They both do it for research.”
Boom Boom (or should that be Bang Bang.?)
Re: Phorm Apple Pie
If a server is to serve up location based services it needs to know the location but how can it serve those services to the phone without knowing the phones ID?
If I ask the BBC News page to serve me the article on Phorm the BBC server becomes aware of my IP - whats the difference?
Phorm Apple Pie
How many of the fanbois would have signed up for the anti Phorm submission to the (last) government but are now heralding the IEquivalent as a great advance.
As I see it to "provide and improve location-based products and services" needs as a minimum two bits of information the location and identity of the phone. Both are personal information so there will be no "anonymous" element to that data.
Further who is deciding what constitutes "improvement" - bet it's about serving more content to a device based on Apple's (and their partners, friends and associates) concept of what you need to be told.
The Followup
Lets hope journalists keep a close watch on this story so that we know when the mobile is returned and the police have apologised.
Maybe the professional photographic fraternity should put a tourist advert together along the lines of "Come to London (for the Olympics) and loose your camera, be searched by the police and embarrassed in public". Nip off to The Mayor and make it clear that unless the actions of the Police are reigned in they will start a world-wide release of the advert.
There is nothing more guaranteed to cause change than the potential for a politician to loose money on a high profile venture.
Government snoop[ing
Simplest thing would be for companies to delete details in sales records once the sale is complete just leaving a sales reference number and value.
Won't happen as the companies are building their own datasets around the details for their own potentially privacy invading and targeted advertising.
What annoys me is that some distant government and it's questionable agencies is able to find out what I have bought on line - without any protection from my own government. It's scary when you realise how many servers associated with on line transactions (sales/banking etc) are located in a country where apparent privacies mean nothing.
Doomsday
I think Street View will come to be seen as the Doomsday Book of the modern millennium.
It is quite simply a fantastic application of technology, I'm just thankful that the project is run by an independent organisation - not Government - if the latter we would probably be looking at the pictures in sepia at 40x30 resolution.
Maybe it may help crims but only a little and no more than looking at maps and driving by. I'm sure a good crim will stake-out their target, drive by themselves and make their own assessment.
I consider it's value to the public far greater than the odd crim activity (and embarrassing picture of a drunk in the gutter)
As for invasion of privacy - how can this be? The streets are not private and, at present, it's perfectly legal to take any picture from a street and publish them.
VoIP is good for you
Hope the Tesco failure does not effect the UK VoIP industry. I am in Australia and my local VoiP provider gives me un-timed calls to UK "normal" numbers for 8 cents (about 6 pence) i.e. cheaper than BT to BT local calls - or even the BT flagfall. So there must be a lot of fat in the BT pricing.
On top of that I have a UK DID from coms.com in my mums home town and also London so UK friends and relatives can call me at UK local rates. VoIP has cut my phone costs significantly - to the extent that I no longer think about the cost of a call.
Australia the Guardian of the world
Australia seems to be hijacking the term Aboriginal for itself. Technically it refers to any countries original indigenous people.
Evans (of ED) is apparently an ex-pat Aussie living in the US. In an article at
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/1028037/encyclopedia-dramatica-owner-could-face-charges he is quoted as saying "My counsel has advised me that I can never under any circumstances visit my family in Sydney again, nor otherwise make any appearances on Australian soil,"
What happened to satire, parody, and good old belly laughs at oneself?
Why?
"Beeb director-general Mark Thompson will admit in March that the Corporation is bloated and needs to trim down its services to allow commercial rivals to compete."
Why? The Beeb seem to have a better grasp of what is successful than the commercial competitors who only seem to sling out material for dumb masses. If the BBC are producing successful broadcasts long may they continue.
We pay the license fee for quality programming not to allow dross from commercial concerns into our living room.
Come on Beeb put your back catalogue on line so we can escape the adverts!
Help Aussies
Please all you democratic poms, with your Speakers Corner soap boxes PLEASE spread the word around as much as possible so that the Lord Protector Conroy gets as much press as possible exposing the stupidity of his "filter" in a democratic society.
Hopefully it will then become apparent to the mass of Australians too busy on redtube.com and betfair.com to notice that very soon their screen will be blank. (those two sites being RC and on the leaked Blacklist that Wikkileaks posted)
Sill out money
Proof read by the Grauniadan?
US getting our banking details
I don’t remember being told that every penny I spend could be subject to US Government assessment..
Of more concern is the data mining that could be applied to industry – the US could mine the transactions and work out who paid who what $ to derive contract costs. e.g. BAE may have a contract with an airport in Spain for radar – it would not take much effort for the US to work out that the payments from the airport authority to BAE represented the contract cost and tell Boeing. Next time a US corporation bids for similar work it does so at a commercial advantage.
The EU should say “Non” and only release information when compelling evidence is submitted and scrutinised inside the EU by accountable people.
The horse has bolted of course as every $ we spend on our credit cards is monitored in the US anyway – all the CC transactions ultimately are byAmex/Visa/MasterCard who all have servers in the US so are all subject to FBI/CIA scrutiny - back to cash for me!!
US Special Partnership
I'm not too sure that the current US President has anything like the same feeling for Britian that previous one had.
Our current Prime Minister will not have recognised that so he will not only agree to financial information but probably that of the Inland Revenue, National Health, DVLC and data from all the Number Plate Recognition cameras as well in order to garner favour.
Teltext good for
teletext good for:
TV listings
News reading at your own pace/interest
Weather
Update program running times for VCRs
Accurate time
If no more TText on "ITV" then give the bandwidth to the BBC to repeat their CeeFax output.
Justice
Good decision - British justice needs to be reminded that it is "Innocent till proved (in a Court) Guilty" - There has been too much scope creep requiring innocent parties to justify their innocence. Well done HMRC
Panasonic customer base reduces
I have just dropped Panasonic off my camera upgrade list .
Would Ford get away with “We have noticed that customers are using petrol which is not sourced from our partner provider Sainsbury. Our engine computers have been configured to prevent non Sainsbury fuel being used for your protection”
What next "Our camera will no longer accept third party memory cards"
Phorm
Last time I checked the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act was a Law, administerd, one would think, through the courts and Ministry of Justice. (yuk title too 1984) So what on earth has the ICO, which I think is a QANGO, got to do with it?
By all means let the ICO deal with the Phorm issue BUT let the law deal with ISP's who break the RIPA.
Unfortunatly the anti Phorm fight focused on the result of the illegal extraction of date rather than the act of aquiring that data.
Lets find a way to have the discussion without involving Phorm, then they won't get the publicity but the breaches of the RIPA will be challenged.
If you think forward Phorm will become the government spy, collecting the information that no government could ever get Laws passed for.
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