Get this - a year or so ago I had a party in my flat, and loads of friends-of-friends were invited so I sort of trusted my friends to know who they were bringing. Me and my mate Dean both got our 8210s nicked and a 6210 went too. Unbelievable when you consider I paid for the music,beer,'smoke' and they still nick my stuff!
I think you find most were being shipped abroad to other GSM using countries. It's worth it too because not every countries operators subsidise handsets like in the UK. Think razors/razor blades.
Oh and many crims use them as one-time only handsets, which is why even the crappy handsets are being nicked.
That's rubbish. I went up to Preston a while ago to see the family. On the saturday I went to the outdoor market where a bloke was reprogramming the IMEI numbers on THREE mobiles that a kid brought over. He seemed to know the kid too, which would suggest he was a regular. Cmon i'm as privacy conscious as the rest of you but for f*ck sake those phones were stolen from people like you and me. Don't make it too easy for them.
This bill is needed. Now before all the geeks go on about their god-given right to impress their friends with new IMEI numbers(?!) i'll tell you something.
EVERYONE I know here in Britain who owns a mobile has had one robbed at some point in time. People have been murdered for their mobiles as they're an easy target, especially from children, and the resell value is high. There are some places I wouldn't go with a mobile visible, not that I would go waving it around anyway.
There are some freedoms worth fighting for but - the right to change an IMEI number? Get a grip. I'd prefer the right to walk down the street without getting the mobile robbed.
Oh, and not being able to change the IMEI means the phone can be permanently barred or even tracked. If it's changed you're stuffed.
Well said! Same for the previous comments about windoze users. I suspect some users here sit waiting for a new headling so they can stick some pap in containing the words beowulf/windoze/boxen.
I agree with you 100%. I love interviews, never get worried or anxious, but as soon as I get an 'exam' or written test. I always point out that if they put me in front of a pc I could write the code but some interviewers look at me as if i'm from mars.
A good place to look for jobs is www.jobserve.com - it's a UK oriented site but has a fair amount of european jobs there too. It's a good site to get the address of europe-wide agencies too (there is a link off the main page listing all the agencies that advertise there.)
But the european market is dead, especially here in the UK. Our dense government has bowed to pressure from large consultancies that have convinced them there is a skills shortage - so the consultancies can now bring in cheap contractors from india. There's nothing wrong with that in a buoyany market of course but as most contract workers I know are 'inbetween work' it's a dense attitude on the part of our government.
I'm okay because not working gives me time to work on my PVR project (and to watch the England v Argentina football match today;-) ) but don't expect to walk into a job.
Also don't expect an agency to reply to your emailed cv - out of >100 cvs I have sent in the last couple of months, only *5* were acknowledged. Sorta says something about the number of people looking for work if they can't be bothered to send a 30 second email. Mind you, when the market picks up, guess which agencies I will be working with?!
So maybe the way forward for would be to have a password on my P2P client which is prompted for on every download. Surely there is nothing which stops me from leaving that password blank? The clients could automatically try to logon with a blank password. If they guessed it, would they be circumventing my protection against illegal downloads?
Fair enough. But if I use the standard disclaimer 'do not download this unless you have a license', like all the mame roms sites, do I have a defence? It's only a question i'm not being facetious about this.
Surely it's akin to leaving the cd I have bought in my garden. If the RIAA see this cd there and decide to copy it, how do I get in trouble for it?
Thats a good point. Where is the crime committed - at the point I leave an mp3 of a tune I bought, or at the point they downloaded it? Who has committed the crime, me or the RIAA?
Quite right. How many 12 year olds on the internet have all the Adobe programs? How many of those would have bought then?
And all these measures achieve is to slow people down. We'll all start using wrapster etc. to encode our mp3s as word documents. Are they going to check ALL shared files (not just obvious mp3s) for signatures?
Thats silly. I have a wind-up radio which is fantastic when camping (like going to music festivals, such as glastonbury (http://glastonbury-festivals.co.uk).
It's actually quite good fun too. People actually fight over spending 30 seconds winding the radio up. It's very social, you ought to try something different sometime!
So they swap them outside the store for $5 of booze...
I'm only jesting but, seriously, it's actually best to give it to *local* homeless charities, like one of those halfway houses or it'll get p*ssed up the wall.
I wouldn't give anything to a national charity after I used to get on the bus with a guy here (Cheltenham, UK) who worked for a phone marketing company. He handled projects for large UK charities and they just took 40% off whatever was pledged over the phone. If some old lady made a large donation, they used to celebrate in the pub. Disgusting.
Because my Pioneer 525 player in my lounge got nicked 2 weeks ago by some complete scum!
Which is good because i'm building a *quiet* pc in a mATX case which will not only play DVDs, but mp3, PVR, etc etc.
Aside from convergence another reason is that my projector - the £3500 box sat right next to the £120 DVD player that got nicked:-) - has a native resolution of 1024*768. Its internal scaler (from DVD res -> XGA) is fairly poor, so the PC will actually have better output than the Pioneer.
And how do you suppose these people get a linux distro on their pc. Bearing in mind the usual driver issues/incompatibilities etc?
I appreciate the spyware may not be your ISPs fault, and it costs to have people like you on the frontline, but recommending Linux to noobs? Sorry, but the penguin just ain't ready for the AOL masses. You're just helping someone butcher a pc that someone with a clue will have to wipe and reinstall. Are you really advocating the use of an unsupported platform to the sort of people who call your ISP? If you worked for me you'd have been fired by now.
(Unless a distro comes preinstalled, and is only used for AOL - but thats a different story)
Well some crappy cdr drives (my old mitsumi for a start) had really crappy audio firmware so I actually got far better sound from the DAE method. It used more processor time but was worth it. Also laptops sometimes dont have them purely due to lack of space and the fact that most users either couldn't give a s*it or wouldn't know the difference.
Oh, and 20 cents actually makes a lot more difference at retail - more like $5 - with the cutthroat margins these days that makes a difference.
I know they're fairly marginal reasons but my point is purely that there are a lot of machines setup like this out there, regardless of the reasons.
Yeah I know this is a geek-oriented site but - for the love of Jehovah or whoever - quit bitching about MS. They came up with a great product at a cheap price that is now even cheaper.
If any multi-millionaire was as grim as you are and actually bought all these X-Boxen they'd be idiots. I'd rather they gave the money to charity rather than spend it on a beef with BillG.
And who mentioned Tux-Racer? Listen, I love the idea of Linux as much as the next geek but how *average* is that game? And thats the best they can come up with?
Not strictly true. Lots of pcs, especially laptops, dont have an output to the sound card. So the cpu basically rips the audio in data form and converts it to pcm. Which takes a lot of cpu, especially if the cd is scratched.
This is the case in a minority of pcs, granted, but it's enough to kill the cpu on a half decent machine.
seany.
Re: Corporate use of spyware
on
Spy v. Spy
·
· Score: 1
Whenever starting at a new job or contract, I *always* cripple the monitoring aspects of SMS first. It's a bitch to do, too. If they don't trust me they shouldn't hire me.
Slashdot Mirror
Cheltenham now but i'm from Preston.
Get this - a year or so ago I had a party in my flat, and loads of friends-of-friends were invited so I sort of trusted my friends to know who they were bringing. Me and my mate Dean both got our 8210s nicked and a 6210 went too. Unbelievable when you consider I paid for the music,beer,'smoke' and they still nick my stuff!
seany
I think you find most were being shipped abroad to other GSM using countries. It's worth it too because not every countries operators subsidise handsets like in the UK. Think razors/razor blades.
Oh and many crims use them as one-time only handsets, which is why even the crappy handsets are being nicked.
seany
Okay then wiseguy lets just scrap VIN numbers - and see how long your car lasts sat outside the house.
That's rubbish. I went up to Preston a while ago to see the family. On the saturday I went to the outdoor market where a bloke was reprogramming the IMEI numbers on THREE mobiles that a kid brought over. He seemed to know the kid too, which would suggest he was a regular. Cmon i'm as privacy conscious as the rest of you but for f*ck sake those phones were stolen from people like you and me. Don't make it too easy for them.
seany
This bill is needed. Now before all the geeks go on about their god-given right to impress their friends with new IMEI numbers(?!) i'll tell you something.
EVERYONE I know here in Britain who owns a mobile has had one robbed at some point in time. People have been murdered for their mobiles as they're an easy target, especially from children, and the resell value is high. There are some places I wouldn't go with a mobile visible, not that I would go waving it around anyway.
There are some freedoms worth fighting for but - the right to change an IMEI number? Get a grip. I'd prefer the right to walk down the street without getting the mobile robbed.
Oh, and not being able to change the IMEI means the phone can be permanently barred or even tracked. If it's changed you're stuffed.
seany
Well said! Same for the previous comments about windoze users. I suspect some users here sit waiting for a new headling so they can stick some pap in containing the words beowulf/windoze/boxen.
seany
I agree with you 100%. I love interviews, never get worried or anxious, but as soon as I get an 'exam' or written test. I always point out that if they put me in front of a pc I could write the code but some interviewers look at me as if i'm from mars.
seany
A good place to look for jobs is www.jobserve.com - it's a UK oriented site but has a fair amount of european jobs there too. It's a good site to get the address of europe-wide agencies too (there is a link off the main page listing all the agencies that advertise there.)
;-) ) but don't expect to walk into a job.
But the european market is dead, especially here in the UK. Our dense government has bowed to pressure from large consultancies that have convinced them there is a skills shortage - so the consultancies can now bring in cheap contractors from india. There's nothing wrong with that in a buoyany market of course but as most contract workers I know are 'inbetween work' it's a dense attitude on the part of our government.
I'm okay because not working gives me time to work on my PVR project (and to watch the England v Argentina football match today
Also don't expect an agency to reply to your emailed cv - out of >100 cvs I have sent in the last couple of months, only *5* were acknowledged. Sorta says something about the number of people looking for work if they can't be bothered to send a 30 second email. Mind you, when the market picks up, guess which agencies I will be working with?!
seany
So maybe the way forward for would be to have a password on my P2P client which is prompted for on every download. Surely there is nothing which stops me from leaving that password blank? The clients could automatically try to logon with a blank password. If they guessed it, would they be circumventing my protection against illegal downloads?
seany
Fair enough. But if I use the standard disclaimer 'do not download this unless you have a license', like all the mame roms sites, do I have a defence? It's only a question i'm not being facetious about this.
Surely it's akin to leaving the cd I have bought in my garden. If the RIAA see this cd there and decide to copy it, how do I get in trouble for it?
Ta,
seany
Thats a good point. Where is the crime committed - at the point I leave an mp3 of a tune I bought, or at the point they downloaded it? Who has committed the crime, me or the RIAA?
seany
Yes but hospitals have costs per user - each room and nurse has a tangible value which must be paid for.
It doesn't cost Adobe anything for a 12 year old having a copy of Acrobat, unless they would have bought it.
Do you think Adobe will reduce the cost of their software if sales go up 50%? This is very similar to believing in Santa Claus.
seany.
Irony? You're an Idiot? Both of the above?!?!?
Quite right. How many 12 year olds on the internet have all the Adobe programs? How many of those would have bought then?
And all these measures achieve is to slow people down. We'll all start using wrapster etc. to encode our mp3s as word documents. Are they going to check ALL shared files (not just obvious mp3s) for signatures?
seany
Wasn't it the zylons?
Thats silly. I have a wind-up radio which is fantastic when camping (like going to music festivals, such as glastonbury (http://glastonbury-festivals.co.uk) .
It's actually quite good fun too. People actually fight over spending 30 seconds winding the radio up. It's very social, you ought to try something different sometime!
seany
So they swap them outside the store for $5 of booze...
I'm only jesting but, seriously, it's actually best to give it to *local* homeless charities, like one of those halfway houses or it'll get p*ssed up the wall.
I wouldn't give anything to a national charity after I used to get on the bus with a guy here (Cheltenham, UK) who worked for a phone marketing company. He handled projects for large UK charities and they just took 40% off whatever was pledged over the phone. If some old lady made a large donation, they used to celebrate in the pub. Disgusting.
seany.
Because my Pioneer 525 player in my lounge got nicked 2 weeks ago by some complete scum!
:-) - has a native resolution of 1024*768. Its internal scaler (from DVD res -> XGA) is fairly poor, so the PC will actually have better output than the Pioneer.
Which is good because i'm building a *quiet* pc in a mATX case which will not only play DVDs, but mp3, PVR, etc etc.
Aside from convergence another reason is that my projector - the £3500 box sat right next to the £120 DVD player that got nicked
seany
That's a silly analogy. If you give the homeless $10 each, they'll obviously spend it on booze and fags.
I see your point though.
seany
And how do you suppose these people get a linux distro on their pc. Bearing in mind the usual driver issues/incompatibilities etc?
I appreciate the spyware may not be your ISPs fault, and it costs to have people like you on the frontline, but recommending Linux to noobs? Sorry, but the penguin just ain't ready for the AOL masses. You're just helping someone butcher a pc that someone with a clue will have to wipe and reinstall. Are you really advocating the use of an unsupported platform to the sort of people who call your ISP? If you worked for me you'd have been fired by now.
(Unless a distro comes preinstalled, and is only used for AOL - but thats a different story)
seany.
You're a muppet. Sad geek-o posts like that are what make people look at open source software and think 'what a load of muppets'.
sean.
Well some crappy cdr drives (my old mitsumi for a start) had really crappy audio firmware so I actually got far better sound from the DAE method. It used more processor time but was worth it. Also laptops sometimes dont have them purely due to lack of space and the fact that most users either couldn't give a s*it or wouldn't know the difference.
Oh, and 20 cents actually makes a lot more difference at retail - more like $5 - with the cutthroat margins these days that makes a difference.
I know they're fairly marginal reasons but my point is purely that there are a lot of machines setup like this out there, regardless of the reasons.
seany.
You are really sad.
Yeah I know this is a geek-oriented site but - for the love of Jehovah or whoever - quit bitching about MS. They came up with a great product at a cheap price that is now even cheaper.
If any multi-millionaire was as grim as you are and actually bought all these X-Boxen they'd be idiots. I'd rather they gave the money to charity rather than spend it on a beef with BillG.
And who mentioned Tux-Racer? Listen, I love the idea of Linux as much as the next geek but how *average* is that game? And thats the best they can come up with?
Grow up guys!(you are all guys, aren't you??)
- seany.
Not strictly true. Lots of pcs, especially laptops, dont have an output to the sound card. So the cpu basically rips the audio in data form and converts it to pcm. Which takes a lot of cpu, especially if the cd is scratched. This is the case in a minority of pcs, granted, but it's enough to kill the cpu on a half decent machine. seany.
Whenever starting at a new job or contract, I *always* cripple the monitoring aspects of SMS first. It's a bitch to do, too. If they don't trust me they shouldn't hire me.