Actually, we were hoping to cling on for 10 years and then let the SNP take Scotland off our hands just as the oil tails off, the SNP should do that for us without much bother.
In all seriousness, though, looking at the figures, without oil Scotland will need London dearly.
I'm not accusing BT of negligence for not catching the pirates. I'm accusing BT of negligence because they are supplying their users with broken, easily compromised security when much better alternatives are available using the exact same hardware.
Lots and lots of these boxes are in use, secured only by 40 bit WEP. I'm saying that considering that WEP can be cracked with great ease, how easy would it be to deny that the traffic came from you. Could someone up in court simply say "I didn't do it, I guess someone must be abusing my computer/access point".
If BT thought such security was up to the user, why are they not supplying the boxes with an enabled, open wireless connection? They provide step by step instructions for its use and installation of WEP in an era when it is known to be deeply flawed. To what extent users should be expected to be educated about the security of their computer systems is an interesting point to debate. It would, however, be very easy for BT to use WPA-TKIP by default. The only reason I can fathom for not doing this would be the expense (and potential for bad feeling) involved in supporting users with old, WEP only drivers.
What are the odds of a WEP network in a suburban area being cracked into over, say, a year? I suppose it all hinges on that.
IANAL, but consider that the majority of BTs home DSL equipment ships with WEP, often 40 bit WEP, enabled by default. Would this in itself be grounds enough to plausibly deny that the traffic came from the person paying for the box? Not to mention she sheer, massive, embarrassing level of negligence on the part of BT.
I was catching a bus from Walthamstow Bus Station, part of a busy transport interchange in East London. On my way I saw the police kicking the living crap out of someone. I went up to start filming, and was told by a "Community Support" officer not to take pictures. I asked what law I was violating, and was met with the witty answer of "the law that says you can't film that over there". Right then. Seeing no point in continuing this conversation while the man continued to be smashed around by the Metropolitan Police, I went to the other side of a toughened glass barrier, stood on some chairs and started filming from there. It was at this point that I was grabbed by two officers and stopped and searched under the terrorism act, 2004. Unfortunately, as I shut the shutter on my K800i, all footage was lost:(
They're actually allowed to arbitrarily search anyone in London under this law, arbitrarily, as it's designated a zone of terrorist threat or somesuch. The mistake the officer searching me (whos full details I do have) claimed that I had been filming covertly. Standing on a chair holding a camera above my head, I'd not felt this to be covert, so I submitted the "stop and account" slip to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, who handed the investigation back to the local force, who stalled the investigation for long enough that the CCTV had been erased!
The rest is history, I'm afraid. There are wranglings going on with my MP regarding this, but should I be in such a position again I'll be damn sure to make certain that the footage is saved.
15 Miles really isn't a significant cycling distance. I used to cycle this route (genericised for relative anonymity) daily to work, it used to take roughly 30 minutes depending how I felt, I was also in good company. (I now live literally next door to work, I do still cycle to college in the evenings, via this route)
To be fair London is mostly as flat as a pancake, particularly the North East (The boroughs of Newham and Tower Hamlets quite literally don't have a hill between them), but it's also definitely not a cycling city, something you're very aware of while trying to keep up an adequate speed 2 lanes from the kerb to cross a flyover. I have, however, come to enjoy Vehicular Cycling and happily use major junctions without incident. Segregated cycle facilities are usually rubbish anyway, sometimes absurdly so..
My point is one about attitude. The first few days you do the ride it will seem hard, no doubt. You may have to get up early, you might need a shower (or at least some wipes and a change of clothes) when you get in. It will, however, become normal very quickly. Cycling produces endorphins that will keep you happy all day, you'll lose weight and look and feel better, as you become fitter you'll sweat less and arrive at work feeling awake and happy, you'll wonder why everybody else drives to work, wondering why they won't even try it. You'll also save money on fuel and maintenance.
It sounds to me like you're scared of both the roads and the exercise. Both become normal, daily things that hold no fear very quickly. I'd be interested to see a map of your proposed route to see how bad it could possibly be. If you're 3.5 stone overweight it sounds like the time to do something about it is right now, take the plunge.
There was some discussion in London a while back that the traffic lights at a number of junctions had their red phase increase and green phase decreased just before the introduction of congestion charging and then decreased once it was enforced.
I'm not sure the extent to which these accusations were justified (they were originated by the Evening Standard, which has a long, acrimonious relationship with the mayor. It's an interesting thought, though.
Some caveats for the EU apply here. Mobile carriers in the EU tend to be national (certainly the case with O2 in the UK), it will cost the same to use an iPhone anywhere in the UK. I wouldn't want to make wild guesses as to how many people regularly travel between EU states, but throwing that to the wind I'm guessing that with language and border issues (especially in the UK) this mobility is much lower than in the US. A second point being that as of very recently roaming charges within the EU are regulated, it's still expensive, but unlikely to be more expensive than any other phone.
I thought something very similar when I started reading the story, but the combinations of boroughs changed my mind. There are so many factors involved in crime clear up rate that this story is still fairly worthless (and it is from the evening standard, who love moaning about anything they can lay their hands on).
So, we have 5 'High camera' boroughs, they're all officially classed as inner london and have a correspondingly high crime rate. Of the 5 high camera boroughs, 2 sets of 2 are neighbours, Lewisham and Greenwich and Hackney and Tower Hamlets. Hackney and Tower Hamlets are an interesting pair, one has an above average clear up rate, and one has a lower than average clear up rate. These two boroughs between them (tower hamlets in whole and southern hackney) constitute the East End, traditionally thought of as one of the worst slums in Europe. The area consists mostly of social housing and old victorian terraces (for the gentrifiers), both boroughs have a stonkingly high crime rate (especially Hackney, which has a feirce reputation for drugs, guns and violent crime). Discussing the subtle differences between the boroughs (of which there are many) is outside the scope of the post, my point is that the factors that effect crime are broadly similar, as is the crime rate and number of cameras. Some other factor is effecting the clear up rate.
As for the low camera boroughs, the average price for a house in 'The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea' is now over $2,000,000US and Sutton is an affluent southwestern suburb flirting with rural Surrey with one of the lowest crime rates in London. Waltham Forest however is home to some of the poorest and most deprived neighbourhoods in London, lying just NE of Hackney.
My point is that to look at the clear up rate and number of CCTV cameras is really oversimplistic, but that's what the evening standard does.
This sounds rather like a distortion of AT&Ts long distance network crash during January 1990. This is detailed pretty comprehensively in The Hacker Crackdown.
In short AT&Ts switching software at the time had issues if one switch recieved 2 calls within a certain time period (the full details are sketchy, it's been some time since I read the book) and point in its operation it would hand over its calls to another switch and reboot. Unfortunately it would also go down when other switches that previously rebooted attempted to reconnect while it was coming up. A chain reaction occured knocking out large portions of AT&Ts long distance network.
Badly told, but a quick search for 4ESS in the book gets a more detailed explanation for the interested.
Facebook and others have been irritating me for a while. Where as previously you had access to your friends arrangements, photos etc. over open protocols such as E-mail and real life, now ever increasing numbers of my friends are reluctant to arrange things over anything other than their chosen social networking sites.
This annexation of social space for commercial interest is a much bigger loss than any gain we get through the functionality gained through using these things. I for one am unwilling to sign up to sites that claim the right to investigate my life and license my works for 'free'. People follow the functionality offered, we need to find an open way of implementing the social networking facilities provided by these sites if we are to maintain our rights to privacy and truly enhance the way we communicate.
I could ramble, but let's keep it short and sweet.
I've only just started watching this video, but I've noticed something. I think this is the only time I've ever seen someone doing a public speech sipping on a bottle of cola. If he uses cola instead of water that might explain his paunch.
Just a pedants point about markets, really. Microsoft sell windows in a number of markets. Many machines run windows, but depending on their purpose and usage they may be competing with different products from different vendors. A home computer is generally the most open, a good deal of home users would be well suited by some linux distro or other, or by a macintosh. Corporate networks may be so heavily tied in to certain pieces of windows infrastructure that there is very little direct competition Print and certain creative industries are strongly (emotionally? historically?) tied to the Mac platform, and an engineer at a nuclear power station may have specialised uses for a laptop running SPARC Solaris. Of course, server markets are far more open, and MS have fewer and weaker monopolies in such markets and will be competing with various UNIX and UNIX-like OSen (I shan't go on).
To conclude, to say that free software is MS's only real competition is demonstrably untrue. To talk about windows as having one market is completely unhelpful.
The reason MS are doing this is because they are their own biggest competitor. Over the last 5 years the wintel world has been left with what is in some ways a rather privileged positon. As MS hadn't been able to bring vista to market until well after schedule, they'd been forced to support XP and keep it running nicely. Now, despite the malware pandemic that this situation has arguably allowed to flourish, this situation has had a number of benefits for PC users. The first and most noticable is that for the last few years PCs have seemed stonkingly fast. It's also created a market for stonkingly cheap PC's as components that amply meet home office/multimedia requirements which havn't been inflated by new versions of windows.
The world has essentially got used to microsoft not playing it's little trick on it. Most usersare entirely happy with the current capability of their computers under XP. They see no need to upgrade. MS needs to create an environment where vista only software with enough appeal to drive software purchases (OEM or otherwise) is being created. If nobody wants to upgrade to vista and no-one will purchase it MS will be forced to support it and rely on other revenue streams (so that's office, then), and they really don't want to have to do that. They need to re-sell you the same product, to do the same thing... over and over and over again.
I've seen a few people state being able to index your gmail as an advantage over and above pop. I suppose that's fine if you want to keep your mail soley online, but gmail offers pop and spotlight will index apple mail. I suppose there are advantages if you're using thunderbird, or some other client that spotlight can't access.
I do think it has to be said, though, that if you really want desktop search that includes your e-mail using apple mail seems like less of a sacrifice than sharing all the data with them that google desktop necessitates. I suppose that's a matter of priorities, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, we were hoping to cling on for 10 years and then let the SNP take Scotland off our hands just as the oil tails off, the SNP should do that for us without much bother.
In all seriousness, though, looking at the figures, without oil Scotland will need London dearly.
Ssssh! We were planning to wait 10 year and *then* cut the funding.
I'm not accusing BT of negligence for not catching the pirates. I'm accusing BT of negligence because they are supplying their users with broken, easily compromised security when much better alternatives are available using the exact same hardware.
Lots and lots of these boxes are in use, secured only by 40 bit WEP. I'm saying that considering that WEP can be cracked with great ease, how easy would it be to deny that the traffic came from you. Could someone up in court simply say "I didn't do it, I guess someone must be abusing my computer/access point".
If BT thought such security was up to the user, why are they not supplying the boxes with an enabled, open wireless connection? They provide step by step instructions for its use and installation of WEP in an era when it is known to be deeply flawed. To what extent users should be expected to be educated about the security of their computer systems is an interesting point to debate. It would, however, be very easy for BT to use WPA-TKIP by default. The only reason I can fathom for not doing this would be the expense (and potential for bad feeling) involved in supporting users with old, WEP only drivers.
What are the odds of a WEP network in a suburban area being cracked into over, say, a year? I suppose it all hinges on that.
IANAL, but consider that the majority of BTs home DSL equipment ships with WEP, often 40 bit WEP, enabled by default. Would this in itself be grounds enough to plausibly deny that the traffic came from the person paying for the box? Not to mention she sheer, massive, embarrassing level of negligence on the part of BT.
I was catching a bus from Walthamstow Bus Station, part of a busy transport interchange in East London. On my way I saw the police kicking the living crap out of someone. I went up to start filming, and was told by a "Community Support" officer not to take pictures. I asked what law I was violating, and was met with the witty answer of "the law that says you can't film that over there". Right then. Seeing no point in continuing this conversation while the man continued to be smashed around by the Metropolitan Police, I went to the other side of a toughened glass barrier, stood on some chairs and started filming from there. It was at this point that I was grabbed by two officers and stopped and searched under the terrorism act, 2004. Unfortunately, as I shut the shutter on my K800i, all footage was lost :(
They're actually allowed to arbitrarily search anyone in London under this law, arbitrarily, as it's designated a zone of terrorist threat or somesuch. The mistake the officer searching me (whos full details I do have) claimed that I had been filming covertly. Standing on a chair holding a camera above my head, I'd not felt this to be covert, so I submitted the "stop and account" slip to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, who handed the investigation back to the local force, who stalled the investigation for long enough that the CCTV had been erased!
The rest is history, I'm afraid. There are wranglings going on with my MP regarding this, but should I be in such a position again I'll be damn sure to make certain that the footage is saved.
Heh :) I got the joke even if no-one else did!
While they're at it they should just purchase this wonderful device to demagentize your CD's.
15 Miles really isn't a significant cycling distance. I used to cycle this route (genericised for relative anonymity) daily to work, it used to take roughly 30 minutes depending how I felt, I was also in good company. (I now live literally next door to work, I do still cycle to college in the evenings, via this route)
To be fair London is mostly as flat as a pancake, particularly the North East (The boroughs of Newham and Tower Hamlets quite literally don't have a hill between them), but it's also definitely not a cycling city, something you're very aware of while trying to keep up an adequate speed 2 lanes from the kerb to cross a flyover. I have, however, come to enjoy Vehicular Cycling and happily use major junctions without incident. Segregated cycle facilities are usually rubbish anyway, sometimes absurdly so..
My point is one about attitude. The first few days you do the ride it will seem hard, no doubt. You may have to get up early, you might need a shower (or at least some wipes and a change of clothes) when you get in. It will, however, become normal very quickly. Cycling produces endorphins that will keep you happy all day, you'll lose weight and look and feel better, as you become fitter you'll sweat less and arrive at work feeling awake and happy, you'll wonder why everybody else drives to work, wondering why they won't even try it. You'll also save money on fuel and maintenance.
It sounds to me like you're scared of both the roads and the exercise. Both become normal, daily things that hold no fear very quickly. I'd be interested to see a map of your proposed route to see how bad it could possibly be. If you're 3.5 stone overweight it sounds like the time to do something about it is right now, take the plunge.
There was some discussion in London a while back that the traffic lights at a number of junctions had their red phase increase and green phase decreased just before the introduction of congestion charging and then decreased once it was enforced.
I'm not sure the extent to which these accusations were justified (they were originated by the Evening Standard, which has a long, acrimonious relationship with the mayor. It's an interesting thought, though.
Someone has just pointed me to this CD Demagnetizer.
I do hope this is a joke.
The digital cable scam is quite a wonderful thing. I nearly fell off my chair when i saw this wonderful offering from Denon.
That 1.5m 'denon-link' cable certainly looks familiar. Nice fabric coating, mind.....
Some caveats for the EU apply here. Mobile carriers in the EU tend to be national (certainly the case with O2 in the UK), it will cost the same to use an iPhone anywhere in the UK. I wouldn't want to make wild guesses as to how many people regularly travel between EU states, but throwing that to the wind I'm guessing that with language and border issues (especially in the UK) this mobility is much lower than in the US. A second point being that as of very recently roaming charges within the EU are regulated, it's still expensive, but unlikely to be more expensive than any other phone.
Uncle Sam? I think you mean Aunt Lizzy!
Keep in mind that this is published by the deeply sensationalist evening standard. They recently had "Thames Floods: Prepare To Flee" as a headline.
I thought something very similar when I started reading the story, but the combinations of boroughs changed my mind. There are so many factors involved in crime clear up rate that this story is still fairly worthless (and it is from the evening standard, who love moaning about anything they can lay their hands on).
So, we have 5 'High camera' boroughs, they're all officially classed as inner london and have a correspondingly high crime rate. Of the 5 high camera boroughs, 2 sets of 2 are neighbours, Lewisham and Greenwich and Hackney and Tower Hamlets. Hackney and Tower Hamlets are an interesting pair, one has an above average clear up rate, and one has a lower than average clear up rate. These two boroughs between them (tower hamlets in whole and southern hackney) constitute the East End, traditionally thought of as one of the worst slums in Europe. The area consists mostly of social housing and old victorian terraces (for the gentrifiers), both boroughs have a stonkingly high crime rate (especially Hackney, which has a feirce reputation for drugs, guns and violent crime). Discussing the subtle differences between the boroughs (of which there are many) is outside the scope of the post, my point is that the factors that effect crime are broadly similar, as is the crime rate and number of cameras. Some other factor is effecting the clear up rate.
As for the low camera boroughs, the average price for a house in 'The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea' is now over $2,000,000US and Sutton is an affluent southwestern suburb flirting with rural Surrey with one of the lowest crime rates in London. Waltham Forest however is home to some of the poorest and most deprived neighbourhoods in London, lying just NE of Hackney.
My point is that to look at the clear up rate and number of CCTV cameras is really oversimplistic, but that's what the evening standard does.
This sounds rather like a distortion of AT&Ts long distance network crash during January 1990. This is detailed pretty comprehensively in The Hacker Crackdown.
In short AT&Ts switching software at the time had issues if one switch recieved 2 calls within a certain time period (the full details are sketchy, it's been some time since I read the book) and point in its operation it would hand over its calls to another switch and reboot. Unfortunately it would also go down when other switches that previously rebooted attempted to reconnect while it was coming up. A chain reaction occured knocking out large portions of AT&Ts long distance network.
Badly told, but a quick search for 4ESS in the book gets a more detailed explanation for the interested.
Oh well. At least with gmail you get the option to use POP/SMTP, which in their case is SSL secured.
Of course, you still have to use web access to enable it.
The address given on the 'company' website is:
Medison Europe Limited
27 Ruffets Wood
Gravesend, Kent
DA12 5JQ
England
Facebook and others have been irritating me for a while. Where as previously you had access to your friends arrangements, photos etc. over open protocols such as E-mail and real life, now ever increasing numbers of my friends are reluctant to arrange things over anything other than their chosen social networking sites.
This annexation of social space for commercial interest is a much bigger loss than any gain we get through the functionality gained through using these things. I for one am unwilling to sign up to sites that claim the right to investigate my life and license my works for 'free'. People follow the functionality offered, we need to find an open way of implementing the social networking facilities provided by these sites if we are to maintain our rights to privacy and truly enhance the way we communicate.
I could ramble, but let's keep it short and sweet.
I've only just started watching this video, but I've noticed something. I think this is the only time I've ever seen someone doing a public speech sipping on a bottle of cola. If he uses cola instead of water that might explain his paunch.
You might want to try 'ps -ax | grep mDNS'. HFS+ != case sensitive, grep == case sensitive.
Oops
"MS's only real competition is Free Software"
Just a pedants point about markets, really. Microsoft sell windows in a number of markets. Many machines run windows, but depending on their purpose and usage they may be competing with different products from different vendors. A home computer is generally the most open, a good deal of home users would be well suited by some linux distro or other, or by a macintosh. Corporate networks may be so heavily tied in to certain pieces of windows infrastructure that there is very little direct competition Print and certain creative industries are strongly (emotionally? historically?) tied to the Mac platform, and an engineer at a nuclear power station may have specialised uses for a laptop running SPARC Solaris. Of course, server markets are far more open, and MS have fewer and weaker monopolies in such markets and will be competing with various UNIX and UNIX-like OSen (I shan't go on).
To conclude, to say that free software is MS's only real competition is demonstrably untrue. To talk about windows as having one market is completely unhelpful.
The reason MS are doing this is because they are their own biggest competitor. Over the last 5 years the wintel world has been left with what is in some ways a rather privileged positon. As MS hadn't been able to bring vista to market until well after schedule, they'd been forced to support XP and keep it running nicely. Now, despite the malware pandemic that this situation has arguably allowed to flourish, this situation has had a number of benefits for PC users. The first and most noticable is that for the last few years PCs have seemed stonkingly fast. It's also created a market for stonkingly cheap PC's as components that amply meet home office/multimedia requirements which havn't been inflated by new versions of windows. The world has essentially got used to microsoft not playing it's little trick on it. Most usersare entirely happy with the current capability of their computers under XP. They see no need to upgrade. MS needs to create an environment where vista only software with enough appeal to drive software purchases (OEM or otherwise) is being created. If nobody wants to upgrade to vista and no-one will purchase it MS will be forced to support it and rely on other revenue streams (so that's office, then), and they really don't want to have to do that. They need to re-sell you the same product, to do the same thing ... over and over and over again.
I've seen a few people state being able to index your gmail as an advantage over and above pop. I suppose that's fine if you want to keep your mail soley online, but gmail offers pop and spotlight will index apple mail. I suppose there are advantages if you're using thunderbird, or some other client that spotlight can't access.
I do think it has to be said, though, that if you really want desktop search that includes your e-mail using apple mail seems like less of a sacrifice than sharing all the data with them that google desktop necessitates. I suppose that's a matter of priorities, though.